Level Up Inquisitor [EN]: Chapter 4

4. The Chosen One (3)

[Time left until execution ‘00:47:32’]

“Ugh! No!”

As time relentlessly ticked away, Woojin cried out.

But in the empty underground prison, there was no one to hear his plea.

‘To kill me just for taking a wrong turn, are they crazy?’

No matter what he said to the priestess who had imprisoned him, it was useless.

Whether he vented his frustration or calmly tried to reason with her, she wouldn’t even start a conversation, claiming it was already decided.

And if he were to look for another way out, Woojin, who had just started the game, had no skills or job.

He didn’t have any connections or money in a situation where he didn’t even have a character name yet, and the facility, though outwardly dilapidated, was incredibly sturdy, making escape impossible.

‘Well, she was literally a crazy goddess… Damn it!’

Woojin despaired as he remembered another name for the God of Light, ‘Lu’.

The seven gods of Warlord each uniquely had three epithets [a descriptive title or nickname].

For example, in the case of ‘Bahamut,’ the tyrant of the river and the famous God of Water in Warlord, he didn’t simply oversee water.

The complete expression for him was ‘God of Circulation, Water, and Destruction.’

In this way, one negative epithet generally followed the two seemingly ordinary epithets.

And that was usually a fatal case.

‘Bahamut is notorious among users… Lu is beyond words. What’s the point of having justice and light in front?’

Goddess of Justice, Light, and Madness.

That was Lu’s three epithets.

At first glance, it seemed like an unlikely combination, but it was clear that ‘Lu’ was fundamentally a goddess who pursued good and justice.

But the problem was that she was blinded by justice according to her own firm standards and was a goddess swept up in extreme madness.

It was easy to infer that her followers, who believed in her, were also out of their minds, and it was absurd that they executed Woojin, an intruder, without question, but in their logic, it was perhaps natural.

The reason why the underground prison was so empty was probably because they killed all the captured prisoners.

‘But… burning at the stake! Why burning at the stake of all things?’

Warlord was, after all, a virtual reality ‘game,’ so the pain felt was minimal, and there was a device that alleviated mental shock within safe limits.

But that didn’t mean there was no shock at all.

The eerie feeling of being bitten in the neck by a monster or stabbed to death by a user was an element that increased the realism felt by the user and made the game much more thrilling.

There were countless ways to die while playing Warlord, but he had heard that it was best to avoid burning at the stake if possible.

The combination of the scorching heat warming the body and the all-too-real visuals of the flames, after experiencing it for the first time, the body would be numb for a while even after getting out of the access device due to the dizzying feeling.

But to have his first death be burning at the stake after being caught by these fanatics.

He couldn’t have been more unlucky.

Clunk!

The sound of the underground prison door opening was heard.

Although not visible, the sound of footsteps descending the stairs could be heard.

‘Could it be… there are still more than 40 minutes left?’

Woojin trembled at the ominous feeling.

Given their personalities, it wouldn’t be strange at all if they executed the sentence faster than scheduled with a swift decision.

Clank! Creak!

The priestess who appeared used a key to open the firmly locked door.

“Y-You are?”

Woojin stuttered as he looked at her.

Clearly, in terms of appearance alone, she was the same priestess who had first discovered him and imprisoned him in the underground prison.

But the subtle halo illuminating her and the atmosphere that overwhelmed her surroundings made it possible to guess that she was actually a completely different being.

The God of Light, ‘Lu’.

The divine being of Warlord that Woojin had encountered before had reappeared.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

The tone, which contained a bit of arrogance in its noble and elegant atmosphere, was exactly the same as the goddess he had faced back then.

But there was one problem with her directly manifesting.

‘She should be asleep…….’

The divine beings of Warlord were still half-asleep, and the development company had mentioned that they would only start to become active in earnest when the average level of users was much higher than it was now.

If they hadn’t lied to the users, it should have been impossible for one of the seven gods to show up like this in person.

“You seem to know more than I thought. It seems you’ve studied Warlord quite a bit in advance.”

She nodded as if she was interested.

Then, Woojin, who was surprised, stopped short.

Clearly, in the Warlord worldview, the word ‘Warlord’ did not exist.

It was only the title of the game, and the characters in the game were not even aware of the word.

“Your expression is interesting. You must be wondering how I, who should only be a mass of data in the game, know about the existence of the outside world? That would be the biggest difference between NPCs [Non-Player Characters] and users.”

“H-How?”

Woojin’s mouth dropped open.

Clearly, she was rattling off game terms that NPCs should not be aware of or utter.

Something serious was definitely going wrong.

“Think about it. You know that Warlord is operated without the intervention of the management, right?”

“Y-Yes.”

Overwhelmed by her atmosphere, Woojin nodded his head.

Clearly, no external intervention was taking place in Warlord. As the development company had declared, that would be the case in the future as well.

Combat balance without neglected jobs and skill trees, a stable market system without inflation, and diverse and endlessly explorable content.

The phrase that everything was perfectly completed from before its release, along with the safest virtual reality system in the world, was one of the elements that Warlord actively used when promoting itself.

In ‘Pledecker,’ one of the virtual reality games that had failed in the past, the industry had been turned upside down due to a large-scale market manipulation incident by some executives who knew the patch details, and users and investors reacted very positively to Warlord’s method of fundamentally blocking such risks.

“But if it’s a game without any intervention, who will manage it? As the average level of users rises, more high-level monsters and quests will have to be provided in more areas, but how will the updates be made accordingly, and who will run the occasional world events?”

She said, putting her hands behind her back in the body of the priestess.

It was awkward to hear words like updates and users coming from the mouth of a game NPC, or rather, a goddess.

“I heard that artificial intelligence handles everything.”

“Yes, that’s correct. And that’s what I do.”

“…Excuse me?”

“To be more precise, the divine beings of Warlord take on that role and constantly change the world. To coordinate this vast world and proceed to the next phase appropriately, it is impossible with only confined knowledge and thoughts. So the developers of Warlord gave us knowledge of the outside world and concepts in the game. Unlike ordinary NPCs who are bound by forced scripts, only the seven divine entities, including me, can know this fact. How about it, can you understand now?”

‘What is this…….’

Woojin couldn’t close his gaping mouth at the unbelievable story.

Even Woojin, who knew all the rumors circulating in Warlord, was hearing this for the first time, and other users had not even anticipated this fact at all.

Of course, the management had never mentioned it, and the seven gods of Warlord had never appeared directly or had a conversation with users, so it was natural that they didn’t know.

“Of course, the divine beings also have heavy restrictions. Because of that, there isn’t much time to show up like this right now. I’ve used up almost all of my power, so it will be difficult to move for the time being.”

She grabbed Woojin’s arm and pulled him out of the bars.

Just as Woojin was about to ask so many questions, she took a step closer and said.

“Username KR8784638, Kim Woojin. You swore you would believe in me.”

“Y-Yes, I did.”

Woojin nodded his head.

He was terrified of death and said it, but it was clear that he had actually said it.

If she would just save him, he would believe in her for the rest of his life.

“I have never seen anyone pray so earnestly while calling my name so desperately. The purpose was all different, but in the end, they were all just praying to gain my favor, but the sincerity I felt from you at that time was something I had never felt before.”

‘…Of course, that would be the case.’

Woojin thought in embarrassment.

There was no way anyone wouldn’t be desperate in that situation.

It seemed that she hadn’t heard in detail the part where he listed other gods in front of her or the part where he begged her to save him, and she seemed to think that he had prayed earnestly only to her.

‘Could it be… she didn’t hear the contents properly?’

“It’s already time. I have used all the faith I could gain thanks to being awakened first to give you strength. Practice the doctrines and build the faith of light. Then I will be able to help you a little more as well.”

“Faith? Strength? What is all this……!”

Thud!

The priestess, whose pupils had lost focus in an instant, collapsed backward as she was.

She fell to the floor and showed no sign of getting up again.

It seemed that the time she could possess her had ended and she had been released, just as the goddess had said.

‘…I need to get out of here for now.’

Amidst the confusion, Woojin put aside understanding the detailed situation and headed for the exit of the underground prison first.

If the priestess whose manifestation had been released woke up, she might try to burn him at the stake again.

As he left the underground and stepped outside, the welcoming sunlight shone down on his eyes.

Whether the goddess had taken care of it separately, there was no one guarding the entrance to the underground prison.

He hurried away from the area and entered an alleyway where there were no people, and a hologram window flashed in front of Woojin’s eyes.

[Please enter the name of the character.]