Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 359

359. Greatness as an Ability

It wasn’t just Maeng Wooshin and the person stuck in the mud who were surprised.

“On your head? Light?”

The child stared blankly at Rembrary’s hair.

“Where did it come from?”

The child thoroughly examined Rembrary’s head, as if believing he had hidden a light bulb in his hair.

But realizing there wasn’t even a place to hide a cell phone, let alone a light bulb, the child fell into confusion.

“Aren’t you a healer?”

“People often mistake my awakened ability for healing.”

“It’s not…?”

The child, of course, and Maeng Wooshin and the person next to him, who were watching this scene on the screen, tensed up. Healing ability alone is amazing. Was he actually a different kind of ability user? Is healing ability a secondary ability that comes with it?

“Then, what is the healer’s real ability…?”

“Greatness.”

“Greatness…?”

The child was surprised and repeated, “Greatness!” but Maeng Wooshin, who had been full of expectations, felt deflated and inadvertently muttered, “That bastard…”

However, even the great Rembrary couldn’t know what kind of reactions people were showing on the rooftop, so after adjusting the halo lighting a little, making it bright enough to see around inside, he began to properly observe the top floor.

“There’s nothing here.”

But there was nothing to observe. Even when the darkness receded, the top floor was barren. As Rembrary said, there was nothing here.

Like a space where no furniture has been brought in yet after moving in, nothing was visible except for the walls and windows. There weren’t even any walls dividing the space, so the entire floor looked like one giant room.

“It’s brighter now… but how do we go up?”

The child, also worried about this atmosphere, muttered and walked to the window. Rembrary followed, and through the window, an enormous, unknown fish swam past.

“Jo Woon?”

“Yes?”

“Was that a whale just now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then was it an anchovy?”

“…I don’t think so. Why?”

“It looked like someone I know.”

Someone? The child frowned and looked out the window, but the giant fish that had swam past was nowhere to be seen.

“I should have taken a picture and shown it to Anchovy [Shin Jo Woon’s nickname].”

Rembrary regretted missing the opportunity to tease Shin Jo Woon, but calmly began to examine the room again.

A dry floor without trash but also without a clean feeling, windows with signs of use, walls with sticker residue from paper that had been attached and removed, corners of the floor with long drag marks as if heavy furniture like desks or bookshelves had been moved…

“Hmm?”

In the midst of this, Rembrary finally found something strange there. The child, hearing the sound, scurried over.

“What is it? Did you find something? Can we go up now?”

“This.”

The child looked at where Rembrary was pointing. But the child didn’t understand at all why Rembrary was staring so intently at ‘that’.

“What is this?”

It couldn’t be helped. It was just a faint scribble remaining on the spot where the floor and wall met.

But Rembrary was still frowning as he looked at the scribble.

“It’s a trace of the Second-in-Command.”

“A trace of the Second-in-Command?”

What is that? The child still didn’t understand.

Instead of giving a long explanation, Rembrary looked up at the ceiling and prayed to Redrin.

‘Redrin-nim [an honorific], the symbol of Lumena-nim [another honorific] remains here.’

As Rembrary stared intently at the ceiling, the child asked again.

“Who is the Second-in-Command?”

“The owner of the chick.”

“The owner of the chicken farm?”

“It’s someone on a slightly larger scale than that.”

“The owner of a big ranch?”

“The great one I follow always said this to the owner of the chick: ‘That everything beneath you is a chicken is because your head is a chicken. Why do you insist on keeping chicken-shaped people beneath you? No matter how much I think about it, I don’t understand, so you must answer my question.'”

“Yes?”

“Then the owner of the chick said this.”

“?”

“If you weren’t a god, I would have killed you right away.”

“Yeah?”

Rembrary recalled the friendly conversation between Redrin and Lumena and smiled sadly. He remembered the good old days before the Demon King invaded.

Redrin and Lumena sometimes shared the fruits of the gods and had pleasant conversations. The two gods would sometimes ask Rembrary questions, and Lumena did so on this day as well.

Lumena jokingly asked Rembrary, “High Priest of the Dog Bastard, aren’t you ashamed of your god?” and Rembrary smiled and gave a witty answer.

“I don’t understand the words of chickens.”

To that answer, the god Lumena said,

“This bastard and that bastard are exactly the same.”

She praised him kindly. Although her face was contorted when she praised him, Rembrary knew that it wasn’t an angry expression.

The god Lumena was shy and had a habit of frowning when she praised someone.

“Thinking about the old days, I miss them so much.”

“Healer-nim [an honorific]… you look sad.”

“It’s okay.”

Rembrary looked down at Lumena’s symbol and placed his hand on it.

“Let’s find out why this is here first. My god seems to be busy right now.”

* * *

The moment he touched the symbol, Rembrary saw the events that had unfolded in this town at a rapid pace. Rembrary involuntarily lamented.

“Pitiable.”

The child was bewildered and asked as Rembrary suddenly touched the symbol and teared up.

“What is it? Why are you crying all of a sudden?”

Rembrary took his hand off the symbol and looked at the child. The child tilted his head.

Rembrary sighed, bent his knees, and then opened his arms to hug the child once before lowering his arms. When he looked at the child at eye level, the child asked again.

“Why are you crying?”

“Your two younger siblings…”

“!”

“I will definitely find them for you.”

When Rembrary knew even what the child hadn’t said, the child blinked in embarrassment. But soon he realized that wasn’t important and took half a step back in protest.

“Why, why, are you talking like my siblings aren’t here? My siblings are up there! The monster is taking people to the roof! My siblings are there too!”

Rembrary reached out to calm the child down. To send divine power to this child as he had done to Keshi before going on stage.

But the child stepped back. At that moment. Finally, the elevator appeared.

The child quickly ran to the elevator and got in. The angry child frantically pressed the close button, but the elevator didn’t close.

When Rembrary got into the elevator, the elevator finally went up.

The child was sobbing, and as soon as the rooftop door opened, he immediately ran outside, calling out his siblings’ names.

Rembrary sadly watched him from inside the elevator.

* * *

The elevator surrounding Rembrary disappeared again before long. The child had also gone behind the water tank and was no longer visible.

Rembrary looked around the rooftop, recalling the memories conveyed by Lumena’s symbol. If the memories contained in that symbol were true, then the child’s siblings would certainly not be here.

‘The child’s two younger siblings have already passed through the rift. I can’t be sure they died after passing through the rift… but I can’t find them here.’

This city had a particularly large rift compared to other places, and as such, the damage was even greater. It was the passing god Lumena who helped at this time.

Lumena was not as strong as she was in her original world, so she didn’t have the power to eliminate or reduce the size of the rift.

However, she felt that she was also responsible for the state of this world, so as a temporary measure, she moved buildings to block the rift. The seal of Lumena remaining on the top floor was a trace of Lumena’s power.

‘But where is Maeng Wooshin?’

Before long, Rembrary found white mud on one side of the rooftop. The Baldy Bird was nowhere to be seen, but Maeng Wooshin, whom Rembrary was looking for, was in the mud. Along with someone he didn’t know. Perhaps it was Daeju, but upon closer inspection, it wasn’t Daeju.

“Rembrary!”

As Rembrary approached, Maeng Wooshin called his name desperately, as if they were very close.

“Why aren’t you coming out instead of staying there?”

Maeng Wooshin’s expression momentarily distorted at Rembrary’s question. Still, like a veteran actor, he desperately and pitifully pleaded for help.

“I’m not staying here on purpose; I can’t get out! No matter what I do, my feet won’t move. Help me, Rembrary.”

“Where’s the Baldy Bird?”

“I don’t know about pterodactyls. It was sitting on top of that water tank earlier, but suddenly flew away somewhere.”

“Where to?”

As soon as Rembrary asked the question, a tremendous sound was heard not far away. There was also something like a bird’s scream mixed in, so Rembrary immediately realized where the Baldy Bird had flown. The bird seemed to be fighting someone.

“I will help you.”

But the important thing Rembrary had to do now was to pull Maeng Wooshin out of the mud. If, as he said, he couldn’t get out of this mud on his own.

Rembrary reached out his hand, and Maeng Wooshin desperately clung to it.

“Hold on tight.”

As Rembrary pulled Maeng Wooshin’s hands straight, Maeng Wooshin slipped out of the mud. It was a bland result for mud that he could never get out of on his own.

“Thank you.”

While Maeng Wooshin was bowing to the floor, Rembrary also stretched out his arm to the side to pull out another person.

“You grab it too.”

However, just as Rembrary was about to save that person, Maeng Wooshin, who had regained his energy, stubbornly insisted from the side.

“Don’t save this guy!”

When Rembrary looked at him in bewilderment as he was about to pull the person, Maeng Wooshin pointed at the person and told him in detail about his previous actions.

“That person is the one who said that there’s no way you could come up here every time you came up! Why save such a guy? Even if you save him, he’ll just talk badly about meeting you later, right?”

The townsperson had only been saying negative things because there was no hope until Rembrary came up, but now that he was able to get out of this place, Maeng Wooshin was saying such things next to him, so he got angry and shouted.

“Fuck, Maeng Wooshin! If I live, I’m going to be your anti [a dedicated hater]! Every time your article comes up, I’m going to say that I don’t know how a bastard who can’t act for shit became a famous actor! If you hear someone cursing you, know it’s me!”

It’s a relief that they both look fine. They must not be too injured since they can talk so well.

Rembrary was dumbfounded that they were just fighting instead of praising him in this situation, but he pulled the townsperson out of the mud anyway.

After pulling him out and seeing that he had no legs, he made legs for him, and the person was sadly smiling at first, but later stared blankly at Rembrary in horror and muttered.

“Greatness is really… an ability.”