Chapter 13
"How dare this lowly merchant blaspheme against the divine!!"
Leon’s thunderous roar was more than a mere shout.
In the human world, the words of its highest-ranking being—a living saint and demigod—possessed magic of their own.
The fury he revealed was more than an ordinary human could endure.
"Gasp...!"
His breath caught. His eardrums trembled, and his mind reeled.
The roar of an agent of divinity, beyond anything a mere mortal could imagine, made Director Park’s heart lurch.
Though Director Park couldn’t understand the reason for such fury, one thing was clear.
The life and death of Park Jongchan, an executive director at one of the Doojeong Group’s core companies, lay in the hands of the otherworlder before him.
"Y-Your Majesty!"
At that moment, Hari sensed the danger and stepped in front of Leon. Her own legs were trembling, but she forced herself to stand and tried to stop him.
"P-please, no. If you k-kill him, we’ll be in trouble too...!"
A survivor’s status didn’t grant blanket immunity. Understanding Leon’s culture and hierarchy only went so far as long as he didn’t commit a crime.
Of course, Leon’s value was incomparable to that of some executive director at a domestic conglomerate. Even so, this was too much.
"Hmph. I appreciate your honest counsel, but do not misunderstand. This king is no colt, charging about like a heedless fool."
At his words, Hari, Director Park, and the secretaries all breathed a sigh of relief. Director Park, whose life had narrowly been spared, broke out in a cold sweat.
"Fool. You have confessed your own crime."
"E-Excuse me? No, I...!"
What on earth had Director Park done wrong? Sure, the price had been lowballed. But there was no way a barbarian who’d been on Earth for less than a week could know that, was there?
Feeling wronged, Director Park cautiously protested.
"I-I truly don’t know what I’ve done wrong."
"Good heavens... How can you be so ignorant and unenlightened?"
By now, Leon’s eyes held pity rather than contempt.
"Those crops were grown on land blessed by Demera. It is a blessing bestowed by the divine upon farmers who toil and sweat to till and tend their fields."
Humans are a people who cannot survive alone.
When the harvest failed, they had to go hungry, yet even in their hunger, they still had to go out and work the fields.
They dug into the earth, stealing its seeds from the soil.
"Therefore, those who are farmers must give thanks for the earth’s bounty and be grateful to the divinity who made that land."
They must first understand faith and divinity, and the blessings bestowed by the divine.
Such blessings couldn’t be bought even with a fortune; they were bestowed upon those with grateful hearts and faith.
"Child, you lowly creature who pursues vulgar profit and deceives others. How can you seek to profit from the fruits of divinity when you don’t even believe?"
"P-Profit...!"
Director Park gritted their teeth and backed away. Watching them leave as if to say they’d remember this, Hari voiced her concern.
"Um... will this be all right? From Your Majesty’s perspective, he’s a lowly merchant, but... he’s a person of considerable influence."
"Hmph. He isn’t worth worrying about."
Leon didn’t dismiss the influence of merchants—or businessmen.
In modern civilization, corporations played a tremendous role. They had expanded their influence far and wide in the fertile soil of capitalism.
"With the Pantheon at my side, I will not be shaken by a merchant like that."
Yet he had overwhelming confidence. No, it was no exaggeration to call it certainty.
He was the one chosen by the divinities of the Pantheon.
He was a chosen one, a king acknowledged by heaven.
The living proof of the divine right of kings.
The emperor of the empire, the steel dwarves of the underground cities, and the guardians of the forest all acknowledged the authority of a demigod.
Only the wanton and unruly treated an agent of the gods lightly.
They would be excluded and left behind in the divine world to come.
There was no point in dealing with every ignorant, benighted commoner who didn’t know their place.
"By the way, is what I told you to prepare ready?"
"Um... You mean the missionary work among the farmers?"
"That’s right. Of course, this will benefit this country as well."
Hari recalled what Leon had requested a while ago. As expected, the Hunter Association had been thrown into an uproar.
"Actually, we received a call before Director Park Jongchan came by. They said they had suitable land..."
The problem was that there was too much of it. If Leon could resolve this issue, there was no reason for the Hunter Association not to help. Above all, the President had been pleased when he heard about it.
* * * *
Ever since the Gate crisis, humanity had lost countless areas of farmland.
Governments were already struggling to deal with Gates appearing in cities, so they often failed to notice Gates that opened in the countryside or remote areas.
As a result, countless Gates triggered Dungeon Breaks, and vast tracts of land were contaminated.
The only reason humanity wasn’t suffering a severe food crisis was that so many people had died.
A few plains that governments had failed to protect became so thoroughly contaminated that the damage was practically permanent, creating countless displaced people.
The Naju Plain. Old Man Choi, who had spent his whole life tilling its fields, was one of them.
"Dad. Are you staring at the fields again, first thing in the morning?"
"......"
Even in response to his son’s question, Old Man Choi silently gazed at his land, contaminated by mana.
These days, Old Man Choi worked at a grocery store in town with the help of government subsidies. But until five years ago, he’d been a farmer in Naju.
He’d spent eighty years driving oxen and operating tractors. But five years ago, a failed attempt to clear a Red-ranked Gate led to a Dungeon Break, and the whole Naju Plain was contaminated with mana.
The contamination was so severe that countless farmers, including Old Man Choi, lost their land.
"Sigh..."
Nothing could be done with mana-contaminated land. Ordinary people were contaminated just by stepping onto it; only Hunters could endure it.
It was land where crops couldn’t grow, and nobody wanted to buy it. The government offered subsidies based on its size, but the payments were paltry.
He kept buying mana-purification reagents from the Mage Tower and applying them, but even that had its limits. Land that was too badly contaminated couldn’t be cleansed by reagents.
The next new reagent would work, surely. Then an even better one would come along.
Old Man Choi had spent his savings buying reagents from the Mage Tower. Now he was the only one in the surrounding fields still buying them.
"You should give up now. Even the government can’t do anything about that land."
"Be quiet! I raised you and your siblings on rice grown on that land, and I sent you all to college! What kind of land do you think that is? I worked my whole life to build it up!"
When he was born, a terrible war had divided the nation. He grew up in a land reduced to ruins by the flames of war, living on chocolate handed out by American soldiers.
He had a great dream.
He would acquire a fine piece of land and farm it. He would raise his children so they’d never have to envy anyone.
It was land he’d bought with the money he’d earned risking his life against the Viet Cong in Vietnam. He’d gradually added to it whenever he had a little money to spare.
The land—the fields—were everything to Old Man Choi.
He’d thought that if he could just harvest one last crop and pass it all on to his children, he could put a fitting end to his life, but...
"Damn those bastards. Those vile monsters!"
They’d appeared and contaminated his land. For twenty-five years, he’d trembled at the thought of mana contaminating the earth, praying that the Gates would never come to his land. But in the end, one had contaminated it.
Now he had only one wish.
Just once. He wanted to plant seedlings on his land just one more time and see it turn golden again.
He wanted to see that sight just once before he died.
"Dad, did you hear what the village chief said? The Hunter Association is bringing something to show us."
"It’s probably another new reagent. The stuff doesn’t even work, and it costs a fortune."
The reagents sold by the Mage Tower were expensive. The government offered subsidies, but they were still expensive even with those.
And despite the price, the purification rate wasn’t high. If you were unlucky, it could take two years.
And they were completely useless on land with high levels of contamination, like the Naju Plain.
"Let’s hear what kind of nonsense they’re spouting this time."
Old Man Choi was always cursing the Association and the Mage Tower, but he never missed a gathering like this. He wanted to hold on to even the faintest glimmer of hope.
"I am Leon Dragonia Lionheart. I have come to spread the faith among you."
At the village hall, the blond nobleman who arrived with Hunter Association employees spouted even more outlandish nonsense than the Mage Tower mages who usually came by.
And then──
A golden crop began to grow in Old Man Choi’s fields.
"Ah..."
It was land that hadn’t been purified despite being drenched in expensive reagents, subjected to shamanistic rituals, and even blessed by a church pastor.
It was cursed land where not even a single pest could survive, let alone a crop.
And yet... And yet...
"Ahh...!"
Old Man Choi fell to his knees before the blond man. Overwhelmed with gratitude for the miracle he’d wrought, he asked,
"W-Who are you?!"
The Mage Tower’s merchants, the noisy shamans, the clergy who’d told him all this was a trial sent by God...
To Old Man Choi, the man before him was a god and a savior, more than any of them.
"Farmer with noble hands. I am the Lionheart King, an agent of the Pantheon and its high priest, come to bring you the divinity of life and abundance."
On that day, Demera gained her first believer on Earth. Following his lead, the farmers of the contaminated land bowed down as one.
* * * *
It really worked.
Hari marveled as she looked out over the cleansed Naju Plain.
The Honam Plain had only just begun to show signs of contamination. It could still be purified with the Mage Tower’s reagents.
So to Hari and the other Association employees, the purification of the Honam Plain had seemed like nothing more than a special power Leon possessed.
But Leon had insisted again and again that it was a divine miracle, and demanded a chance to prove it.
That was the purification of the Naju Plain.
A wasteland that had been completely contaminated after a Red Gate caused a Dungeon Break five years earlier.
Even the Mage Tower’s new reagents had no effect on it.
Leon had volunteered to purify that wasteland, with a few conditions.
"First, inform the President. It’s unfortunate that I cannot meet him in person."
"P-please let that one go."
In the end, Leon made his proposal over the phone, and the President gave the Hunter Association discretion to handle it.
"As stipulated in the contract, the owners of 8,735 hectares of privately owned farmland in this area of the Naju Plain will be brought under Your Majesty’s ‘guild’ as its supporters. Of course... this is contingent on the residents’ consent and the government purchasing the ‘Blessed Rice.’"
"That is no concern of mine."
With the Association’s help, Leon had established a guild in Korea. He named it the ‘Pantheon,’ after the faith he intended to spread throughout this world.
The guild could also be granted a special autonomous district, where its members could live and train... and conduct support programs.
For example, it could have a guild-operated forge or magic-item workshop, as well as allow related businesses to move in and enjoy tax benefits.
It was a law reluctantly passed after the abuses of the Top Ten Guilds, but it had given Leon a lawful fief of his own.
Of course, the government had put minimum safeguards in place, so the arrangement wasn’t permanent.
"Do not worry. How could I covet a lawful fief in another country? This is solely to spread the faith. When the time comes, I shall return it to the President."
"Um... strictly speaking, you’d be returning it to the people."
Leon had no interest in acquiring territory in this country. South Korea was far too small for him to covet.
It would have to be bigger to restore the glory of the Kingdom of Lionheart. And now he could see a suitable stepping-stone; once his power grew, he planned to expand in that direction.
"First, we need to get the residents’ consent to join Your Majesty’s guild. They’ll need residency rights in the guild’s special autonomous district."
"That will not be a problem."
Leon approached the farmers waiting nearby. Some were middle-aged, while others were elderly.
"O-oh, you’re here, Leon Dr... Dra..."
Old Man Choi greeted Leon with a bow, but hadn’t managed to memorize his long name.
'Ah... He’s going to get scolded.'
That was His Majesty, the Lionheart King, who’d just been roaring at people. He didn’t even allow others to say his name without permission.
But contrary to Hari’s expectations, Leon smiled gently and spoke.
"You may simply call me Your Majesty, old man."
"Oh, goodness... I’m sorry."
'What?! Does he treat people differently?!'
Hari made a sulky face, but Leon continued.
"Your name is Choi Cheoljin, correct?"
"Yes, that’s right."
"You have sworn to serve Demera, the goddess of life and abundance. What of the others?"
At that, a middle-aged man stepped forward.
"S-so... Will you purify our land too?"
Leon frowned at the middle-aged man’s words. Though clearly displeased, he spoke as if teaching an ignorant commoner.
"Do not try to bargain with divinity. This king promises you no reward."
He despised narrow-minded faith.
He loathed vulgar beliefs that promised to grant wishes in exchange for donations, faith, or devotion.
One could not bargain with the gods.
If they offered true faith, the divine would surely bestow blessings of its own accord.
To make wishes in exchange for faith was to doubt divinity and try to bargain with it.
"This king shall give you the proper teachings. Will you hear the teachings of the divine?"
"I-I believe."
"I am not forcing you to believe. The choice is yours alone."
Just then, a young man approached. He was a rare sight in such a rural village—or rather, he was a son who’d inherited his late father’s land and been invited here.
"I-I... go to church..."
"That does not matter. You may believe in both."
"I-Is that all right?"
"There are many divinities. There are many fine gods in this world; why should you believe in only one?"
The Pantheon’s faith recognized many gods.
It was polytheistic to begin with, and placed no restrictions on faith.
"Following the teachings and putting them into practice is up to you alone. I will not force you to believe."
Of course, if anyone appeared who worshiped an evil god, he would mercilessly cut off their head and tear their soul to shreds.
"Join my guild. Follow the proper procedures, enter the settlement I establish, and learn the goddess’s teachings."
"I’ll do it! Please, let me join!"
Old Man Choi embraced the faith with fervor. It was a miracle that neither the government, the Mage Tower, the shamans, nor the pastors had been able to perform.
He had encountered a real divinity, and that divine being had cleansed his land.
How could he not believe?
How could he not be grateful to the one who had given his old body another chance to till the fields?
Overjoyed to be able to bring his life to a fitting close, Old Man Choi bowed down in tears.
"I-I’ll follow you."
"M-Me too...!"
One by one, those who had hesitated stepped forward.
Their land had been contaminated by mana and was worthless to anyone. If someone was offering to purify it, what did they have to lose?
"Do you swear to follow the divinity of life and abundance and put its teachings into practice?"
"I-I swear!"
"I swear!"
Thus, they officially became residents of Leon’s Pantheon Guild.
Leon knew they were focused on the purification of their land, but he was certain that one day they would find true faith.
"Good. If you believe and follow her, you too are children of the goddess. As the king who acts on behalf of the gods, I shall bless you as is only proper."
Leon lifted the Grail and poured the holy water inside over the heads of the new believers.
Holy power entered through the crowns of their heads, and a mysterious energy flowed into them.
'I-Incredible... My mind’s clear, and I feel full of strength!'
'It feels like I’m seeing the world in a whole new way!'
'W-Was that really the goddess? That straw doll?'
'Ooh, goddess! Demera, goddess of life and abundance...!'
As people began to worship the goddess, their faith flowed into the Lionheart. The goddess Demera would surely transform it into holy power.
"Build a temple. It need not be grand. Just gather together and pray once a week."
Leon spread the teachings of life and abundance. They weren’t difficult to follow, so all they had to do was put them into practice.
And then the most important moment arrived.
"How... should we make our offerings?"
Even as the believers accepted this new faith, they were privately uneasy.
Religions usually found all sorts of reasons to collect regular offerings, didn’t they?
They paid offerings to help their children do well in school, and offerings to expand the temple...
Their finances were already tight. They hadn’t been able to farm for five years, after all.
"You only have to give one thing."
At those words, the believers’ faces brightened. They wouldn’t have to make new offerings for every holiday or seasonal festival? What a bargain—
"A nine-tenths tithe."
""......Yes?""
Thinking they must have misheard, the wide-eyed believers stared at Leon as he declared proudly,
"Give nine-tenths of your harvest as an offering. How merciful is that?"
Hearing that from behind him, Hari thought,
'Isn’t that just downright evil?!'