Chapter 57

I kinda worked my way through the poison, but there hasn’t been much change in the Ansellus Kingdom.

Looks like everything’s going according to plan, isn’t it?

Well, if it was all going as planned, then I’d be a god.

At least one good thing is that people with purple hair, including the Ansellus royal family, aren’t being discriminated against.

So unless something crazy happens, all the harvesters in the Ansellus Kingdom will survive.

Alright.

This part went as expected.

Now, dragging this out works in my favor.

You who’ve received my blessing.

Nah, since I’m the only one around here anyway, let’s call you harvester.

Harvesters have a biological advantage over relatively normal people.

First off, once you take me in and your body turns dark, not only does it heal itself and enhance physical abilities, but your brain gets sharper too. I don’t know why just sharing myself causes these effects, but if it works, we might as well use it.

So as harvesters rise higher, they’ll spread more and farther.

Especially in the first world, most people start from at least a decent level instead of rock bottom. They’ll spread even further.

Like Tisah’s descendants.

As the number of harvester descendants grows, another chance to rise will come.

Maybe by then, I’ll catch the witch who tricked me and ran away.

But catching that witch is just a side goal.

Sure, she really pissed me off by tricking me, but do I *have* to catch her to achieve my purpose? Hmm…

Yasle’s tech is already enough.

No, actually, it’s not quite enough.

The problem with Yasle’s memories is that they’re too large in volume.

Still, I can’t use Thungkeshni’s tech.

Even if I remove just the traps, there’s still a chance Thungkeshni’s knowledge alone won’t be able to summon me.

Analyzing Thungkeshni’s traps, it seems like she drops a fishing line and lures monsters into human bodies, turning them into stone.

If the idea was to seal me, then I’d have to be inside the person’s body.

But the fishing line never reached down to where I am.

Out of 10 attempts, it never touched the bottom once. That means it’s likely not the summoner but the tech itself that has issues.

Thungkeshni’s traps were never meant for me to begin with.

Seriously, what’s her deal?

She seems old but kinda clumsy.

Looking into information about the Witch of Ecstasy, all that comes up are small folk tales or records of minor incidents.

She doesn’t cause any major disasters.

Maybe that’s why she survived.

Anyway, thinking about this witch makes me angry, so let’s ignore her and focus on other things.

Right now, I’ve put all the info in my head back into Yasle’s knowledge.

But this stuff takes up way too much space.

If it were books, I could roughly absorb them in three years, but Yasle’s knowledge takes ten years minimum. That’s why most people die before fully receiving it.

Even if you could control time, the person would still need to absorb it over a long period.

Otherwise, their brain melts and they turn into mush.

And even if someone manages to spend that much time absorbing it, another problem arises.

Thungkeshni’s books didn’t have this issue, but when I give Yasle’s memories, the person uses his magic.

Most problems are solved with that.

And once they’re solved?

There’s no need to summon me.

So eat well, live well, reproduce well…

If they did, it would create a foundation for me to rise later, but reality isn’t that simple.

Basically, because the summoning magic is tied to morally questionable magic, harvesters usually meet tragic ends.

It feels like they’re riding a rollercoaster back down to the bottom. If this were stock trading, every single item would be covered in bright blue. Red means profit, blue means loss.

Plus, when it’s set to “take everything at the end,” you can’t sell when it’s red.

So when a harvester’s life goes completely south…

In other words, when their life starts falling apart…

By that point, they’re desperate enough to summon me, but by then, harvesters have already become extreme criminals, like mass murderers.

They’re on the run.

It’s hard to perform summoning magic that requires dozens of offerings when you’re in such a state.

But after watching closely, I noticed something: the offerings for summoning me can’t just be anyone—they have to be chosen.

Specifically, the kind of person who can serve as my vessel is an extremely rare material. Rebecca Rolfe was one of those offerings that Yasle spent a long time searching for.

Following the magic used to find those offerings leads back to memories of the Yeongyang Church Nation era. It’s possible this magic wasn’t originally for finding offerings but rather for finding people needed by the Yeongyang Church Nation.

There was no tradition of sacrificing living beings in the Yeongyang Church Nation.

Since I’m guessing based on watching foreign movies, I can’t say for sure, but it probably wasn’t for offerings.

Given that most of the people found through this magic receive high-level education within the Yeongyang Church Nation, it’s likely they possess some spiritual abilities.

So Rebecca Rolfe probably had that kind of ability too.

Was she like a shaman or something?

That’s why, excluding the first world, out of 281 currently active harvesters, only three are attempting to summon me.

For reference, those 281 people live in entirely different worlds.

It’s not just worlds between medieval and modern times. There are even wuxia-style worlds with completely different naming conventions.

Of course, there are modern and futuristic worlds too.

But the more futuristic it gets, the more I see people satisfying their desires by watching pornographic videos. It’s kinda weird.

Anyway, there are people having virtual reality sex, and in some cases, humanity is being farmed by machines.

One guy woke up in a tank filled with strange liquid right after receiving my blessing. Then the machine managing it shot a beam that made him burst into flames.

Something about malignant transformation?

Yeah, when the implant and chip in his head explode, that’s what happens.

In another futuristic world, people use implants to verify their identity.

When someone became a harvester, their implanted chip broke, erasing their identity. They ended up in a refugee-like situation and were dragged to a detention camp.

Am I just incompatible with advanced worlds?

That would be inconvenient.

Fortunately, out of the 281 people in 281 different worlds, only five are in futuristic settings.

I can get what I need from the others.

While observing the flow of these worlds, I confirm my goals.

First, the most important goal:

Gaining warmth.

And the main goal for that:

Establishing an automatic warmth collection system.

I can partially see a future where this can be achieved.

I’ve created harvesters to gather warmth for me. When they kill someone, the warmth of the deceased flows to me.

Based on this, I plan to spread harvesters across countless worlds to gain warmth.

But there’s a limit to numbers. Even if I bless everyone indiscriminately to produce harvesters, if the population exceeds a certain amount, production can’t keep up.

Fortunately, I recently discovered that this can be passed down through bloodlines. Though I’m not directly inside, the contract is already completed.

So if I find and push myself in, there’s no need for a separate contract—done!

And in places with many descendants, I can enter a world without needing a special body. Whether this always works or has conditions needs to be investigated step by step.

Even if I can’t ascend, harvesters will automatically increase.

Still, this feels a bit unstable, so I want to create an agent to make harvesters on my behalf. After blessing hundreds of people in the first world, I only got one result.

The yield is the problem.

Yield, yield.

But I still don’t have a clear idea how to create a blessing agent.

I need a breakthrough.

I’m considering whether to slip in some pseudo-religious teachings along with the summoning method once it stabilizes.

Since I have Yasle, maybe patching together what he did when creating the Future Hope Church will work.

Thinking about it now, it’s really rewarding to have waited so long.

Yasle’s memories are truly a treasure trove.

That’s why witches don’t cut it.

Let’s summarize:

Need to improve the summoning method.

Confirm the possibility of creating blessing agents.

Bother the witch.

The last one would be nice if I can manage it.

Huh?

While observing a harvester who briefly rose, ghost-like, spitting warmth before disappearing, a big event happened in the first world.

A continent-wide famine struck.

I didn’t notice because I was seeing things from a human perspective.

Some harvesters were being killed, and others were slaughtering what looked like peasants. Turns out it’s been two years of bad harvests, and the king explained it in a meeting.

It’s happening in all countries.

They’re distributing stored grain and moving to help, but it’s not easy.

Even a high-ranking noble who became a harvester is eating only one meal a day.

I don’t know if this is a Little Ice Age or if a volcano erupted somewhere, but it’s a pretty severe famine.

While hoping the number of harvesters doesn’t drop too much, I notice something strange happening.

They’re shouting this word:

Outsider.

Yeah.

People who believe in me have appeared. I thought no one would believe in a dead god, but apparently, people think differently.

Instead, they blame the Seongsin Church, claiming our god was killed, which caused this disaster. They’re bringing up something that happened over four years ago.

Ah, right. It’s been about four years since I evaporated in the Seongsin Church’s light.

Normally, such riots would target the king in the capital, but this time, the arrows are pointed at the Seongsin Church. Priests are even being killed.

Even in the Ansellus Kingdom.

The logic pushed by the new group is harsh.

This famine happened because the Seongsin killed the Outsider.

If not, is the Seongsin trying to kill us?

Has God abandoned us?

Some members of the Seongsin Church tried to incite fear by saying I cursed everyone upon my death, but unfortunately, it didn’t stick.

Too many people witnessed my death.

And the fact that I, as a god, gave strength to those in despair, was crucial.

Our god, who picked up everyone the Seongsin Church abandoned, wouldn’t abandon us.

The first world has a worldview similar to early modern Europe. So priests were part of the upper class—people the poor barely dared to look at.

Which side has more convincing arguments is obvious without saying.

While I thought about separating religion and politics, looking at this, it seems primitive faith is becoming a religion again.

I took a closer interest in the first world.

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