Chapter 89
Lee Seong-hyeok's hometown was Hamgyongbuk-do, at the far northern end of the country.
The closer one lived to Pyongyang, the more loyal to the Party one was considered. By that measure, Lee Seong-hyeok had been born with a poor ‘class background.’
He wanted to escape that kind of life.
So he studied ‘Juche ideology’ harder than anyone else.
Calling it an ideology was generous. It was a discipline devoted to praising the Kim family.
What kind of discipline was that, anyway?
He couldn't understand it at first, but he studied harder than anyone else.
Then, somewhere along the way, he had an epiphany.
Could they really be so great?
At that moment, Lee Seong-hyeok awakened.
The class he awakened as was a holy knight ─a Crusader─
That's right.
He was the standard-bearer of Juche ideology.
He believed in Juche ideology and received faith from North Korea's Kim family...
He was a holy knight of Juche ideology.
After awakening, he naturally rose through the ranks.
After all, could there be any greater symbol of loyalty than a holy knight who believed himself to be a god?
He was used as a propaganda tool throughout North Korea and showered with every kind of support.
In no time, he became the strongest Hunter in North Korea.
When the new successor seized power and swept away the military leadership, replacing it with Hunters, Lee Seong-hyeok rose to the heart of North Korea's power structure.
During that process...
He saw many things.
The horrors he'd witnessed as a poor child in Hamgyongbuk-do, but had since forgotten.
The Supreme Leader, stuffing his own belly while people starved to death.
The moment he realized that the one he served and worshiped wasn't a benevolent god of Juche, but merely a worthless dictator.
[Your faith is wavering.]
[Until you find a new object of faith, all your faith-related stats will plummet.]
He began to grow weaker.
At first, he somehow managed to hide it...
But he wasn't the only Hunter in Pyongyang.
There were five Hunters just as powerful as he was, each keeping the others in check and watching them.
They noticed that Lee Seong-hyeok was growing weaker.
It might have been fine if he'd had a different class...
But of all things, he was a Crusader.
A Crusader losing power meant his faith had weakened, which meant his ‘faith in Juche ideology’ had weakened.
He'd barely managed to bluff his way through a self-criticism session by insisting the claims were baseless and summoning the last of his faith. But now his anxiety grew, and his faith plummeted even faster.
“Honey, take Min-seok and get in the car.”
“What's going on?”
“... If things go on like this, I'll be purged, and you'll be sent to Aoji. I can't let things end like this.”
“Ah...”
His wife, who knew roughly what had been going on lately, though not the exact details, covered her face and wept before nodding.
Fortunately, she wasn't a fervent supporter of the Party, either.
“I'll follow you, dear.”
He couldn't just take them in the car.
Anyone would find it strange if he took his family from Pyongyang and headed south.
To buy some time, he used an illusion item he'd obtained in a Gate to create temporary illusions of his wife and child.
Then he put the two of them in the trunk.
“I'm sorry, my dear.”
“It's all right.”
And so they headed south.
The official excuse was an inspection of the Gates in the south.
He pretended to be searching for a Gate as close as possible to the border and planned his route accordingly.
Then...
He suddenly changed course.
As soon as it became clear he was driving straight for the Military Demarcation Line, the border with South Korea, all hell broke loose.
First, fighter jets took off.
A MiG spotted his vehicle and immediately opened fire with its machine guns. Brrrrt!
“Ghk!”
KABOOM! A tremendous explosion rang out, but his barrier was still holding strong.
He was draining the last of his faith to keep the barrier up.
Under normal circumstances, he could have split a fighter jet in two with his Holy Sword...
But right now, he couldn't even think about attacking.
As he continued heading south, the Military Demarcation Line soon came into view.
He pressed on southward.
BANG! BANG!
The land mines exploding one after another made his internal injuries worse and worse.
His mouth was already full of blood that had welled up from within.
Then a tank appeared in his field of vision. He had no idea when they'd managed to bring it in.
Please, just miss. Please.
He prayed, but...
Seeing the tank shell coming straight for the car, he had no choice but to scrape together what strength he had left and raise his barrier.
THOOM! As the shell grazed the barrier with a heavy impact...
“Gaaaaagh!”
He spat out all the blood he'd been holding back until then.
It seemed the sound had reached the trunk, because a faint voice called out.
“A-Are you all right?”
“... I'm fine. I can hold on.”
It was a lie.
He no longer had the strength to block another tank shell.
Meanwhile, the tank was preparing a second shot.
At that moment.
Two of the people gathered in the distance on the South Korean side, apparently waiting to welcome him...
raced toward him at tremendous speed.
“Th-Those...”
Then they rushed right past him...
And split the tank in two.
“Th-They're incredible Hunters.”
He hadn't gotten a good look as they flashed past, but both of them seemed to be older.
To wield that kind of power at their age...
Hadn't he been taught that South Korean Hunters were steeped in capitalism and lacked a revolutionary spirit?
That they were nowhere near as strong as the Republic's Hunters.
Had even that been a lie?
He felt hollow.
Even at full strength, he doubted he could handle either of them.
Still, the good news was...
Those people were helping him defect.
Now that those monsters had gone, they wouldn't attack him again, would they?
He felt a little relieved and focused on the steering wheel as he navigated the rough road.
SHWEEEE!
From far away came the sound of something ripping through the air.
It was a formation of MiGs.
He leaned out the window to check the fighters closing in as though they were about to rake him with their guns, and clenched his teeth.
Was this where it ended?
He summoned a very thin protective barrier for one last desperate attempt.
As he drew a deep breath in despair...
The fighter jets...
were breaking apart into dust in midair and vanishing.
As if they'd never been there at all...
And something that had flown in faster than the fighter jets came alongside his car and landed.
A person?
Had someone just flown over here?
The car had stopped before he knew it. The man who'd landed beside it knocked on his window and smiled.
When he rolled it down...
“Are you Mr. Lee Seong-hyeok?”
“... I'm Lee Seong-hyeok.”
“Looks like I got here just in time. I'm Kim Segyun. Welcome to the Republic of Korea.”
“So you're Mr. Kim. But, um... the fighter jets...”
“Yes, I took care of them. You don't need to worry.”
That's right.
This was the man.
But why could he see a halo behind his head?
A radiance that couldn't compare to the paltry dictator he'd once believed was a god...
It shone behind this man named Kim Segyun.
Was it a skill?
An item?
Or else...
Could it really be...
‘No, no.’
He didn't intend to make the mistake of worshiping a mere human as a god ever again.
Humans couldn't become gods.
No matter what flowery words you wrapped around it, a human was still just a human.
He shook his head, and only then did something occur to him.
“Ah! My wife and son are in the trunk.”
“The trunk?”
“That's right.”
“We need to get them out right away. They must've been cramped in there.”
When they opened the trunk, his wife and son were on the verge of collapse.
“I-Is it over?”
“Yes! Honey, we're alive!”
As the two embraced in joy...
Kim Segyun cleared his throat and spoke to him with a serious expression.
“Mr. Lee Seong-hyeok.”
“Y-Yes, Mr. Kim.”
“... Did you know your wife had tuberculosis?”
“I did.”
“Why wasn't she treated...?”
“The Republic had no medicine for it, so I was treating her with divine power.”
“W-With divine power?”
“Yes, but my divine power is depleted right now... I haven't been able to treat her for a while.”
Kim Segyun let out a long sigh, then spoke with sympathy.
“Tuberculosis is such a frightening disease...”
“... I know. My mother died of pulmonary tuberculosis.”
“Just a moment.”
He muttered something, then said,
“Your wife's tuberculosis and other infectious diseases should all be completely cured now.”
“What?”
“Just a moment.”
Kim Segyun took something from his inventory and handed it to his wife.
Then he handed one just like it to Lee Seong-hyeok, too.
“Drink this.”
“What is it?”
“A potion.”
“A potion... M-Medicine?”
“Yes.”
A potion.
One of the incredibly rare items found in Gates.
It was also one of the essential items that had to be offered to the Kim family whenever one was found.
In fact, even Lee Seong-hyeok, North Korea's strongest Hunter, didn't have a single potion.
He'd offered every one to the Supreme Leader.
“Such a precious thing...”
“It is precious, but... it's all right. I can make more.”
“Y-You can make potions in South Korea?”
“Not South Korea. I make them myself.”
He could make potions?
Just what was this man?
As Lee Seong-hyeok stood there in a daze...
His wife's complexion improved in an instant after she drank the potion.
“I'm not having any trouble breathing at all.”
“I removed all the tuberculosis bacteria from your body and repaired the circulation the bacteria had damaged. You should be fine now. You must've suffered so much. It would've been incredibly hard. In that condition, you must've coughed up a lot of blood, too.”
“... I did.”
“Honey! You coughed up blood?”
“......”
While she was suffering badly enough to cough up blood, what had he been doing as her husband?
Lee Seong-hyeok clawed at his head in self-reproach.
“Your son was infected with tuberculosis, too, so I treated him right away. Fortunately, he's still growing, so now that the source of the infection is gone, he'll recover quickly. Nothing compares to children's ability to recover—not even a potion.”
“Th-Thank you!”
He'd lost count of how many times he'd thanked him, but...
Even so...
What Kim Segyun had done was so incredible that he couldn't possibly hold back his gratitude.
After staring blankly for a while, Kim Segyun gave a faint smile and said,
“If you don't believe me, you can get examined at a hospital in the South.”
“It's not that I don't believe you...”
“You're pretty healthy yourself, Mr. Lee. Maybe that's because you're Awakened.”
How could he...
do something like this?
“W-Was it divine power?”
“No.”
“Then...”
“Hmm... How should I put it?”
After pondering for a moment...
Kim Segyun opened his mouth.
“Divine authority?”
**
By the time I'd nearly reached the Military Demarcation Line, a formation of North Korean fighter jets had appeared ahead.
As the formation came in low to fire its machine guns...
I unleashed a legion of Gluttony numbering in the trillions and scattered the fighter jets into molecular fragments.
When the jets had been torn apart halfway, the pilots panicked and ejected.
Gluttony dismantled the pilotless fighter jets in midair.
While I was chatting briefly with Lee Seong-hyeok, who was defecting, I learned that his wife and child were in the trunk, too.
They looked unwell at a glance, so I used Mision...
And sure enough.
How could there be so much tuberculosis bacteria in them...?
In its latent stage, tuberculosis was incredibly weak.
It was so frail that it would die off if pitted against almost any other bacterium or virus.
But once it had the chance to spread...
It became such a vicious bacterium that no amount of medicine could help.
He'd tried to deal with tuberculosis using divine power alone. I understood the circumstances, but it was tantamount to suicide.
Treatment might work in the early stages, but once tuberculosis had spread, a large amount of antibiotics was essential.
It wasn't an illness that could be overcome with divine power, which merely boosted the body's self-healing ability.
Well, of course...
[Individual, ‘Pride,’ uses ‘Thoughts of Authority.’]
[Pride has gained control over all pathogens within the target, ‘Kim Hye-seon.’]
Yeah, out of your body. All of you.
... It was easy as a click for me now, though.
The tuberculosis bacteria emerged as if scattering into the air, searching for another host as though disappointed...
But the Gluttony individuals that had returned from dismantling the fighter jets simply ate them up.
While I was treating her...
Lee Seong-hyeok asked me in astonishment,
“Was that divine power?”
“No.”
It wasn't divine power.
“Then...”
“... Who knows?”
What should I call it?
“Divine authority?”
Well, it was Pride's authority, so...
But at that moment.
[Crusader ‘Lee Seong-hyeok’ wishes to become your believer.]
[Would you like to use Divine Authority to make him your holy knight?]
[You can appoint him as a Church Guardian Knight by using 100 Divine Authority.]
[You can appoint him as a Senior Holy Knight by using 20 Divine Authority.]
[You can appoint him as a regular Holy Knight by using 5 Divine Authority.]
... What is this now?