Chapter 2 - What is life?
What is life?
Life is an egg. A boiled egg.
What does this mean?
No matter how hard you try, it means nothing.
Like me, who lived with kindness until the end and eventually fell into the game.
First, I will confess honestly with my hands on my heart.
I manipulated the save file using Editor.
But listen to my story.
I feel guilt for using an editor in the game.
This game, which I can’t even remember the name of, is a single game. That is, no matter what I do to the save file, no one is harmed.
Second, you might wonder, “If you’re a real gamer, shouldn’t you just enjoy the game?”
That’s right. That’s definitely right.
If you truly love games, you’re right to avoid the use of an editor who kills interest in accomplishments.
But I’ll make an excuse. Entering my late twenties, my life was too busy and tiring to play games, a hobby that I really love. So I compromised with reality. By using the editor only to start under the conditions I want.
Yes. I used the editor up to the point where I changed my job to the ‘Priest of Corruption’, which was the reason I bought this game in the first place.
The game, which I can’t remember the name of, was released under the motto of “Infinite degrees of freedom,” and was a free world filled with countless jobs. As always, I looked for news and information about new games from time to time, and I got hooked on one of the games’ jobs, “The Priest of Corruption.”
The Church of Corruption.
Isn’t it a name that sounds like the world’s public enemy? If the Church of Corruption had been a beneficial one to the world, it would have been called the Church of Fermentation. Oh, I’d really like to eat kimchi now.
(Kimchi is a staple food in Korean cuisine, is a traditional side dish of salted and fermented vegetables. He kinda meant it as a pun?)
Anyway.
The Church of Corruption in the game was already annihilated. The player begins a journey with the goal of finding the 13 holy relics spread around the world by chasing the traces of the church, collecting rare materials, passing hard trials, and finally succeeding in becoming a priest of corruption.
That’s all I know about the Priest of Corruption. I didn’t read more because it would have been a spoiler.
The evaluation of the Priest of Corruption play was very simple.
The pre-defined difficulty level is terrible. The level of difficulty while playing is terrible. Performance is also poor.
This single line of evaluation made my heart beat. Bad performance? Which means that most people don’t choose it.
In the first place, I enjoyed playing games and being treated like a dead man. Some would criticize me for being a useless hipster, but what can I do with my heartbeat when I see a bad job? I was born like this.
So, I immediately quit the game and moved the character to the former location with all the ingredients needed for the Priest of Corruption job change in the character using an editor that was roaming the internet.
This is one of the choices that I still deeply regret.
Why didn’t I seek more convenience?
You can take all the stats, you can put a lot of money in your pockets, or even turn on invincibility!
If I knew I was going to fall into the game, I would have just created a dishonest character.
With all the materials for the job change ready, I mechanically pressed enter while watching the job change quest. As the materials disappeared one by one, the quest to change jobs proceeded in an instant.
And the moment I pressed the ‘Yes’ button on the last job change quest.
I fell into this game.
Becoming a ‘Priest of Corruption’.
Dry hands wriggled in my chest pocket.
And in my head, a word took shape.
‘Kill!’
‘Kill! Kill!’
Yes, it’s the “mother of corruption” I serve that cries out like this old death metal singer.
In fact, this was also a great development, as she was able to deliver her words only after she absorbed the divinity of the first holy relic.
Until I took the first relic, she didn’t say a single word to me, and she just wavered and conveyed her intentions with the best use of that shriveled hand. Of course, there were no important messages at all.
Five years.
It was the time it took me to steal the first of the thirteen relics.
Five years ago. When I woke up in this game, all I had was a uniform of the Church of Corruption and a hand wriggling on my chest.
This ‘Mother’s Hand of Corruption’ was the last material for the Priest of Corruption and should have disappeared at the same time as the job change. However, for some reason, this withered hand, wriggling on my chest without disappearing, acted as a walkie-talkie connecting me and the ‘Mother of Corruption’.
The presence of a giant being felt beyond that hand made it easier than I thought to admit that I really fell into the game world.
In particular, this priest of corruption was a body optimized for me, a modern person, to survive in this world.
In the game’s setting, the Priest of Corruption is an enhanced human whose body has been modified with drugs.
As the world’s public church, the Priest of Corruption was oriented toward a small number of elites, and most of the quests to become a Priest of Corruption were focused on collecting rare materials needed to transform the body.
The only good thing about this body is that attacks without “divinity” cannot kill the priest of corruption.
Thanks to that, I was still alive even though my head was cut off by the rangers who chased me earlier.
Excellent physical ability and sensitive five senses. A body that does not die unless divinity is used. It would be nice to say that the body was created assuming that modern people live in a fantasy world.
However, when this modified body became my body, there were fatal drawbacks.
Compared to the sensitive five senses, the part of the brain where the emotions moved seemed to be a little broken. I’ve never seen blood before, but now I don’t care about any cruel sight.
Yeah, it’s more of an advantage.
The problem was that I became a body that could no longer taste anything.
I lost my sense of taste.
The loss of taste was nothing at first, but it came as a bigger drawback over time.
I want to eat something delicious. Very, very much. I want to eat grilled pork belly wrapped in kimchi! I want to eat fried kimchi with fried rice! I want to eat black bean noodles and sweet and sour pork!
‘Kill!’
The Mother of Corruption’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts.
“You don’t have to rush me, I’ll move. Mother of Corruption.”
I took a heavy step across the snowfield. The thick snow obstructed my steps persistently, but my steel-like body walked through the snowfield.
‘Kill!’
“No matter how hard you go about it, you won’t find the next sacred thing right away. I need some time to stay out of the way for this disturbance to calm down. Mother.”
I’m a man which says two words with one mouth.
(Chinese idiom in a Korean novel… ;-; It means he is controversial. It’s like I’m saying the food is good, but then I will also say that it’s not delicious. )
If you say two words with one mouth, they say you have two fathers. Because I used one editor, suddenly I have two mothers.
Still, “The Mother of Corruption” was the only one in the world I could trust without a doubt.
I was the only priest of a goddess who was hated by all. So I didn’t hate the voice of the goddess who whines every day.
As the sun went down, a terrible darkness fell in the forest, where you couldn’t see an inch ahead.
Fortunately, as a reinforced human being, I could see ahead enough with just a little light, and my tireless legs led my body.
The cold that seemed to cut off flesh hit my face with the wind.
The cold was tolerable, but all kinds of thoughts could not stop from popping in my head.
I’d choose a job that ends up as a con artist, just like my mother always told me.
Warrior. Wizard. Sorcerer. These crappy jobs.
Wouldn’t it be okay if I chose that kind of job, and not experience all this cold wind and snowfield?
The wind blew and the snow began to fall.
It’s a blizzard.
No matter how hard human beings were, there were definitely limitations. I quickly looked around and found a place to lie down for a while until the blizzard stopped.
I happened to see a dark cave in the distance.
As I entered the dark cave, breaking through the snow that had piled up to my thighs, a pair of eyes stared at me.
It was a bear the size of a house.
‘Kill!’
“I’m not going to fight. Mother of Corruption.”
I sat down in front of the cave in a wary gaze. That giant bear won’t attack me first.
Most monsters and animals were neutral to the priest of corruption in the game. That is, unless I make the first strike, they won’t attack me.
From what I have understood from living with this body, animals and monsters seem to feel the unclean energy that intelligent creatures do not feel.
Thanks to this, all but a few unusual animals were neutral to me.
Under the bear’s gaze, I closed my eyes and settled inside. A status window with everything omitted slowly popped up in my mind.
[Divinity: 1623]
All of the original stats disappeared, and the only thing left in my status window was Divinity.
That divinity serves as a kind of skill points for the ‘Priest of Corruption’.
The exchange fee was very simple.
If you pay 10,000 divinity, you get one ‘power’.
It’s like a vending machine, the power comes out just as you put divinity in it.
However, thanks to the vending machine-like system, I have recently succeeded in absorbing the whole divinity of a holy object and awakening one ‘power’. If you use it openly, though, you’ll also get one ‘power’: to be tracked down by all kinds of religions.
As I leaned against the cold cave wall, I felt a little sad.
What kind of case is it that, falling into a game?
‘Kill!’
“I’m not depressed. Mother of corruption. Stop worrying.”
I held the dry hand in my arms.
Still, I’m glad I’m not entirely alone. My mind calmed down a little as I held this dried-up hand.
Yeah, 13 holy relics. No, now, if I gather all the divinity of the 12 remaining holy relics, the Mother of Corruption will fulfill all my wishes.
Then, I have to ask her to restore my sense of taste first.
After falling into this world, I replayed the self-suggestions that I always made in my mind.
This world is just a game after all, and I’m just playing a slightly realistic virtual reality game.
So let’s enjoy this life.
My butt was a little sore because of the bumpy stone floor. I muttered mournfully.
“I’m a little sad, though.”
“Stop there.”
Guards were blocking me. Well-maintained equipment showed that they were fairly well-disciplined.
“Show me your ID.”
I smiled as reverently as possible and spoke in a sincere voice. Right now, I was wearing a priest’s uniform from one of my small, two-column inventory.
“May happiness remain unshakable in your life. I lost my ID card because I was in distress on the way here.”
The guard, who looked me up and down, asked me briefly.
“Which church’s priest are you?”
“Of the goddess of maintenance, who protects everyday life.”
It is a great felony to lie about the name of the god the priest serves. The punishment was given by God himself to the priest, not by the church. The impersonation of priests by those who are not priests is also subject to punishment. Those who impersonated priests were engraved with a “stigma” because of God’s anger. The “stigma” of sin, that is only visible to the members of the church concerned.
The guard bowed his head slightly.
“Welcome to Guise, priest, but you’d better make a new ID card as soon as you get in.”
I smiled kindly.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
‘Kill!’
Our benevolent Mother of Corruption was very tolerant of this impersonation. Thanks to Mother of Corruption’s protection, I was able to impersonate other priests without paying any price for it.
So I entered the northern city of Guise, pretending to believe in a god, with my body covered by snow.
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