I Became the Apostle of an Evil God Chapter 35

Van let out a soft sigh. A dark foreboding made him dread the rest of the story even more. Orma stared for a moment at Van, whose face had gone pale with his mouth slightly agape, before he resumed speaking.

“To be honest, I only half-listened back then. I’d always heard that gods are fickle, and that Banan was the most fickle of them all.”

“…I see.”

“I couldn’t understand why she was suddenly acting all familiar. On top of that, abruptly asking if I wanted to become a god? I politely replied to Banan’s question, telling her that I had never once thought about such a thing.”

“And how did she react to that?”

“She looked disappointed for a fraction of a second, but regardless, Banan just nodded without saying much and vanished again. I just figured that since the world was ending, even a god was spouting nonsense. Or maybe she had gone mad from fear.”

Hearing him say that with a playful smirk, Van inwardly marveled at Orma’s sheer mental fortitude. Any ordinary human would have lost their mind a long time ago. Just looking at what had happened to him before he threw himself into hell, wasn’t every single bit of it the kind of thing no person of normal sanity could endure?

Hmm… Van wasn’t just thinking this out of a desire to look up to and revere Orma as his god; the man truly was an extraordinary being. His callous, cold-blooded mindset that didn’t care whether others lived or died, his fierce way of speaking, and his constant grumbling about everything—those were only characteristics of his current, utterly broken self. Back when he was called a hero, he must have been so resilient and kind that he practically radiated brilliance.

Without realizing it, Van began to picture the Orma of those days. And the more dazzlingly magnificent that image became, the more a greedy desire swelled within him to somehow restore Orma to the way he used to be.

“…Why are you suddenly staring at me like that?”

“How am I staring?”

“Kind of intensely…. Why do you suddenly look so motivated?”

“I’m always motivated, man.”

“No, whenever Banan’s name came up, you used to practically dead-eye me to show how much you hated getting dragged into bothersome things. So why the sudden change?”

Had it really been that obvious? Van froze like a subordinate who had made it glaringly obvious he didn’t want to work, only to get caught by his boss and told, “Don’t make it so obvious.” But lacking any real social finesse, he just rolled his eyes and flashed an awkward smile, silently urging him to keep talking. Orma knitted his brows slightly, let out a soft sigh, and began speaking again.

“Anyway, my aversion to becoming a god was the same back then. I don’t believe in eternity.”

“Aren’t there plenty of humans who dream of eternal youth and immortality? But the fact that you didn’t want to become an eternal, immortal being from the very beginning… was that perhaps because of the gods Banan and Muhwi?”

“I can’t say it’s completely unrelated. But that wasn’t the deciding reason. Before Banan even asked me if I wanted to become a god, there was already a being who had made a similar proposal and promise. Who do you think it was?”

If Orma’s absolute loathing of the idea of ‘living forever’ had formed even before his friction with Banan… after all, hadn’t he calmly accepted his own short human lifespan even while having a dragon that lived incomparably longer as an adoptive father and another as a friend?

Which meant the entity that had tried to entice Orma must have been one that didn’t know him well, thinking it was a highly ‘sweet’ temptation to win over a human.

Van slowly lowered his gaze, recalling an illustration related to Orma that he had seen in the game. Orma from the days he was called a hero. Across from him, the entity he was confronting had been drawn….

“Was it a demon?”

“Exactly.”

The lore of Mox Nox definitely documented the existence of demons. However, after the final boss became Orma, the so-called evil god, they had vanished like the wind.

Even in the ‘Holy Scripture’ securely kept by the Church of Serca, the lore regarding demons wasn’t described with much importance, and that was entirely because everyone believed Orma, the ‘hero,’ had defeated them.

“Well, I’ll keep a boring story short. Every single one of those demons tried to win me over. Don’t you find it strange that they didn’t try to kill me?”

“Perhaps they thought they could never defeat you, sir?”

“No, they looked at me as the savior who would rescue them.”

“That is a bit strange. Didn’t the god Serca prophesy first that you were the hero who would save the world, sir? Yet the demons also regarded you as a savior who would rescue them?”

“Yeah, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Every last one of those demons proposed that I join them in destroying this world and become the god of a ‘new world.'”

“A new world….”

“And while doing so, they tried to entice me by saying I could become eternal just like them.”

To Orma, those words sounded incredibly bizarre. It made it sound as if demons were ‘eternal’ beings. If so, where did these eternal, immortal demons come from, and where had they been cooped up all this time?

Yet, on the flip side, Orma had an inkling that the moment he unraveled that mystery, he would learn the ultimate secret of this world.

“Even now, strange things… calamities are happening to the world. I can’t say for certain that it has nothing to do with the demons, but anyway, even back then, such thoughts made me feel uneasy about the idea of becoming eternal.”

There’s a reason for the old saying that ignorance is bliss. With his innate intuition, Orma realized that if he got involved any further, he would be dragged into an event so monumentally massive that he wouldn’t be able to turn back.

Yet, in the end, he failed to escape the board laid out by those transcendent entities and became an exceptional pawn.

“Thinking back on it… don’t you think that thing called ‘divine liquor’ is strange? Why does something like that even exist? A liquor that turns a human into a god.”

An utterly ridiculous item. When asked if it didn’t sound exactly like a scammer tricking someone into buying a fake miraculous medicine, Van nodded.

In fact, the ‘divine liquor’ that had turned Orma into a god was a subject of much debate among many users in the game community. Usually, the ‘lore nerds’ who explored and analyzed the game’s story would deduce hidden plots through short sub-quests or Easter eggs, and the divine liquor was one of the topics they had investigated.

Since Van had been completely new to the game itself, he hadn’t thought much of it, but the content of a post he had happened to stumble upon and skim through was quite fascinating. He couldn’t remember it clearly because he hadn’t read it closely, but he believed that post had raised questions beginning with who on earth actually created the divine liquor.

“As you’ve probably guessed, the divine liquor was brewed by Banan.”

“Yes, though I did find it strange. No matter if she is a god, to think Lady Banan possesses the power to turn a human into a god.”

“I think it was a poisoned chalice crafted for me from the very start.”

“A poisoned chalice…?”

“Because even Banan herself didn’t know that something like divine liquor existed. But then, one day out of nowhere, she found out. She learned that there was a method to turn a human into a god.”

“So, only Banan can brew the divine liquor… yet Lady Banan herself didn’t initially know the recipe for it?”

Orma slowly curled the corners of his lips up, confirming it. At the same time, Van’s mind became incredibly complex and dizzying.

Who on earth told Banan about the divine liquor? Could it be those demons? No, that was also strange. No matter the circumstances, there was no way Banan would immediately brew a liquor just because a demon told her to….

“I didn’t know it back then, but after getting thrown into hell and brooding over it for a long time, the thought suddenly struck me. Did someone want me to become a god? And did Banan fall for that someone’s bait?”

“Who is the target of your suspicion, sir?”

“…Well, it would be an entity capable of swaying Banan.”

If so, then it wasn’t Muhwi. Since Banan one-sidedly disliked Muhwi, it was obvious she wouldn’t have listened even if he told her about something like divine liquor.

Then… was it Serca?

“…I don’t know what you’ll think, but I’ve known all along what Banan truly thought of me. And that made me hate it even more.”

Ultimately, he had wished to die without ever knowing the sincerity of that god. He had only wanted to remain as a hero who saved the world in a single line of human history books, never desiring the attention of a distant, transcendent entity. However, the sincerity of the god that he ultimately discovered was so hideous it made Orma sick to his stomach.

“Lady Banan toward you, sir….”

“Yeah, I know. In truth, the one who couldn’t distinguish between dreams and reality wasn’t Muhwi—it was Banan. Banan was simply terrified of me. She was utterly terrified of loving a human child who would live a short life and inevitably die.”

The reason Banan had drawn a cold line and treated Orma with detachment was because she knew herself far too well; she knew that if she faced her son from her dream again, she would helplessly fall for him. She didn’t want to grow attached. She didn’t want to love him.

Yet, just like Orma, chasing after the single thing they couldn’t have despite possessing countless others was no different for a god. Someone who pried into that weakness of Banan’s had subtly dropped the method of brewing the divine liquor to her.

“Banan asked me if I wanted to become a god, and I refused. Yet she went ahead and brewed the divine liquor anyway.”

“Hmm….”

“As if she knew that, inevitably, a day would come when I would have no choice but to drink it.”

To Banan, who had hidden her true feelings of loving a human child out of fear of parting ways, someone had revealed the existence of the divine liquor. And Banan, ultimately defying Orma’s wish not to become a god, desired for him to become a god just like her and remain by her side for eternity.

Did Banan know… that her greed would ultimately break Orma entirely? If she had known, would Banan be regretting that choice? Or would she still consider it an ‘unavoidable necessity’?

With a bitter sneer, Orma downed the rest of his drink. It tasted terribly awful. The human alcohol, which failed to bring even a shred of intoxication, instead cleared Orma’s mind brightly, delivering the answer.

That even if Banan were to go back to that time, she would still turn him into this monstrosity that was neither human nor god.