[‘5’ worth of Divine power makes the impossible possible.]
My Divine power had more than doubled compared to last time.
As its effect took hold—
“W-what is this...!?”
The vampires who were hustling to ladle my dishes and force-feed them
looked around in alarm.
The Abnormal Appetites sprawled on the floor
in pretty awful shape—
“This aura is...”
“What on earth...”
—had a gray light settle over their bodies,
a presence with no obvious identity.
Seeing it,
I couldn’t help being a little surprised myself.
“Is it... a typified mana... or something?”
The only time I’d seen a force take such a definite form was
the pure white radiance that poured out when priest-line Awakened healed the wounded—
that is, holy power.
“So it wasn’t called Divine power for nothing.”
The aura coiling around the Abnormal Appetites
was the very Divine power of 5 that had been somewhere inside me.
A gunmetal gray glow with a strange mix of texture and sheen.
At first it threw me,
but looking again, it felt...
oddly familiar.
“Steel...”
That thought flashed through my head,
and I gave a hollow laugh.
“Do even things like this have to be GI-flavored?”
My level-30 job had rolled over into War Chef—
a mess hall cook, basically—ridiculous enough,
and now the form of my Divine power was steel.
Weirdly barracks-like.
“So I’m doomed to never ETS for the rest of my life, is that it?”
Anyway.
As that gray light descended on the mangled human beings,
srrrk...
change began.
They were ones I’d carved away and drained as much blood and flesh from as possible.
On those bodies,
new flesh began to bud.
“...Grotesque every time I see it.”
Vampires have powerful regenerative abilities,
but even from a vampire’s perspective, the sight seemed pretty mystical.
However,
the visuals weren’t what mattered.
“If my prediction’s right...”
Just like with the first case who returned from Abnormal Appetite to human—Lee Hyunjin—
“over a hundred humans with the job [Abnormal Appetite] should appear...!”
That’s what I expected.
[Error occurred!]
“Eh?”
A new message window blocked my view.
“W-what kind of crap is this.”
Error?
This system throws errors too!?
[For unique jobs that can Awaken only by special methods, more than one instance cannot exist.]
I grasped the cause quickly.
Lee Hyunjin, the first success in returning to human—
she had been a special case,
and thus got a special job.
But you can’t hand out the same job to a second person.
No, hold on.
Which means—
“My broken-job copy project...!?”
—doesn’t work.
Not that failing to copy a busted job was the real problem.
The real problem was—
“If they come back as humans but still hold their contractor job...”
then the plan to free them from the demon
fails from the jump.
In that moment when it felt like
my effort was going to fizzle out in vain—
[Divine power grasps the user’s intent......]
The aura covering the contractors
surged once, violently.
[It guides Awakening in a new direction.]
“...?”
Steel-bright Divine power
burrowed ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) into the contractors’ bodies—
kudduk...
krk-krk-krk...
Something tore and snapped,
then reattached and aligned with a grating sound.
I couldn’t precisely comprehend
what was happening,
but from the agonized groans they let out—
“Grrroooaa...”
“Ah, it huuurts...!”
—I knew they were suffering a pain
nearly on par with when I had prepped them with my own hands.
And then,
after those eerie sounds had echoed for a long while—
how much time had passed?
[Ingredient Appraisal (Enhanced)]
[Primate — Humankind — Abnormal Appetite]
->
[Primate — Humankind (New!)]
At the moment
they finished their brief detour and returned to being human—
[Awakened: Choi Wonjun]
[Job: ...... ]
—the job name that appeared before my eyes was,
well.
“...Not bad, maybe?”
A lot better than I’d expected.
And then,
a system message scrolled across my vision.
[You have achieved an Achievement!]
[These were people bound to a mighty external entity.]
[Cases of being freed after making a contract with an external entity are exceedingly rare.]
[And if the method was cooking—this may well be a first in the entire universe!]
[A miracle hard to find across all dimensions.]
[You have accomplished an achievement fit to be told as legend in ages to come.]
[Achievement: Chef of Liberation]
[This is a higher achievement than ‘Chef of Blooming’!]
[A reward is granted for a great achievement.]
[As a reward, you obtain the supreme ingredient: ‘Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng’.]
[As a reward, you obtain the trait — ‘Forced Feeding’.]
“Sweet.”
Felt like it had been a while
since I saw an achievement pop.
****
“J... just... kill me...”
The painful time went on without end.
Those with weak minds could faint shortly after the pain began,
but those with strong minds, unfairly,
had to suffer longer precisely because of that strong will.
“Puhaaaah...!”
The man once called the Guide,
Choi Wonjun, was the example.
“Hah... hah...”
In that pain that seemed endless,
at some point he too finally blacked out,
and when he opened his eyes—
“W-where... am I?”
—he was inside an ordinary room.
Looking around,
he saw other contractors sleeping and groaning as if trapped in nightmares.
“...Was that just now a dream?”
No.
It couldn’t be a dream.
Apart from the fact that pain that vivid can’t be a dream,
there was no reason this many people would be lying here asleep.
As proof—
“Oh, we already have one awake.”
“...!”
From the kitchen side,
footsteps approached,
and with a voice that sounded somehow familiar...
the leader of the contractors,
the man who had sought to save humanity even at the cost of his own life—
“H-hiieeeeek...!”
—let out a scream of terror.
****
“H-hiieeeeek...!”
“......”
“J-just not that pain again, please...!”
He screamed,
snot and tears running.
“Was that really his image...?”
When we talked, he’d carried himself with some gravity.
I hadn’t known he was the type to make that kind of “hiiiik” sound.
Well...
To be fair—
“I did engineer it to a degree.”
I still didn’t know
what kind of humans they were.
I knew they had tried to sacrifice for humanity,
but that aside,
I didn’t yet know what kind of dirty parts they might have.
I had decided to annul the contracts and return them to human,
but that thought nagged at me.
So I deliberately skipped the anesthetic dish and did the prep.
The effect gained
was pretty simple.
“S-spare... me...”
Fear.
Once they’ve taken that much pain,
they feel fear just seeing my face.
Even Lee Hyunjin, who kept a human mind with extraordinary will even after becoming a monster,
was like that,
so the ones who threw themselves to the demon because they had no hope...
no need to say more.
“Well... you did commit sins. Consider it punishment.”
I’m sorry for them,
but thanks to that fear, even if they’re humans with some risk factors,
I’ll be able to control and subdue them easily.
Anyway.
After a little while like that—
“...P-pardon the outburst.”
“Looks like you’ve calmed down now.”
Others began to wake one by one,
and Wonjun, the man who’d been their de facto leader, too—
“...Thank you.”
—was still sweating cold from fear,
but he’d settled enough that we could at least talk.
“We would have continued working like slaves under the demon until we offered up our lives... or, if we somehow survived, we would have turned into monsters like other creatures. The idea that we could part from that demon... I can’t believe it.”
“Well, I took my shot half as a gamble. Glad it took.”
“Then... may I ask one question?”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you go so far... to save us like this?”
I smirked.
I was pretty sure I’d explained the gist back when they were monsters,
but maybe the pain wiped it.
“First off, it’s a manpower shortage.”
“Manpower...? You had that many soldiers, and you say that?”
“Who said anything about our unit.”
“...?”
“I’m talking about Earth.”
“...!”
With so few human beings left alive,
you can never have enough force to fight monsters.
“You want us... to fight the monsters.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
At that,
shadows fell across the contractors’ faces.
“...Is that compulsory?”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“We are truly grateful you freed us from the demon. Grateful enough that if you ordered us to fight monsters, we would. However...”
It seemed they all felt the same;
they nodded with Wonjun,
and he continued.
“In the end... it’s impossible to overcome this annihilation.”
“Come on. You never get tired of this line?”
“I know you are immeasurably strong. But I heard much in my dealings with the demon. Worlds that possessed all manner of overwhelming power... and even those worlds could not escape annihilation.”
“...Hmph.”
Right.
That’s the crux.
“It’s not like they loved demons. That’s not why they contracted.”
Annihilation approaching this world.
The despair that it couldn’t be overcome,
and the desire to save at least a fraction of humankind...
they reached out to the demon who offered to let them escape.
“Our plan was to borrow demonic power and flee... and we failed.”
“......”
“If annihilation is coming anyway, we would like to live out our remaining days quietly until it comes.”
A deep despair pervaded them.
Unless I solved that despair,
even if I forced weapons into their hands,
humans sunk in despair would never fight properly.
In that case—
...Hah.
“So there’s no other way, after all.”
It wasn’t exactly to my taste,
but—
“You can’t overcome annihilation, and unlike other races you can’t flee. That’s why you’re this depressed, right?”
“...Yes.”
“In that case, that one—”
Time to employ a method
that had been verified to some extent through my own troops.
“I’ll solve it.”
“...What?”
Their eyes stabbed into my face,
as if wondering what I meant.
“T-that’s not something anyone could do.”
“Heh. ‘Impossible,’ huh.”
They traded looks,
clearly unconvinced.
I let out a breath of disbelief and said,
“You believed that demon could get you out.”
“W-we did.”
“And you believed it was impossible to free yourselves from that demon.”
“That too... yes.”
That demon had been so powerful.
It would have been impossible to slip his grasp—
“And I went and solved that one.”
“...!”
“Still going to say ‘impossible’ at me?”
Realization spread
across their faces.
“With my troops and with these people too...”
One reason Taejun tried to funnel achievements to me—
I could guess at least one part of it.
“There is no god you can trust in this world.”
In that case,
what this world needs is—
“Even if it bore the ominous name ‘demon,’ while you believed in it you felt rather at ease, didn’t you?”
“...I regret it now, but at the time, yes.”
“The object changes, that’s all. I’ll be the one you place that belief in.”
A being strong enough
to grant faith on par with a god.
“No matter how great you are... you’re just a human. How are we supposed to trust an ordinary human...”
“I’ll put my name on a promise for that part.”
Granting that level of trust
isn’t easy.
“If you believe in me and follow, we’ll either overcome this annihilation... or, failing that, I’ll definitely find a way to get off this world.”
“...!”
We’ll probably eat dirt for a long time yet.
But—
“It’s not that there’s no way to keep a promise with them.”
The mountain range where Myohyangsa is set.
The gate beneath it... [Heavenly Mountain Martial Hall].
“Inside there are Seohwan’s and Miho’s master.”
Most likely, the very person who tore the Hall free
to shelter it from annihilation.
I hadn’t approached because it was too dangerous,
but he would still be inside the gate.
Someday, when we’re ready enough,
we could go to him and obtain a way to escape this world.
“...Are we really allowed to hold such absurd faith?”
“Just try believing for now. If it doesn’t work out, curse me later. ‘You told us to trust and follow, and it was a lie,’ like that.”
Unlike that demon bastard,
I’m not petty enough to sulk because you badmouth me down the line.
“...Haha. If the world is going to end anyway... I suppose ending like that or just ending comes to much the same.”
“Just know this, though.”
“Hm?”
Wonjun laughed, a little helpless,
and he and the others looked at me, as if to ask what I meant.
“If you decide to follow me, you might be treated worse than you were by the demon.”
“......”
Contrary to my initial assumption,
they hadn’t been brainwashed by the demon.
Even if it bordered on fraud,
what they had with the demon was ultimately a deal.
But—
“If you come with me... you’ll be subjected to things like brainwashing.”
They had held rather risky ideas.
I had used fear to take them in,
but that wasn’t enough.
On top of that,
they’d have to eat a ton of my “cooking.”
“But there are a few things I can state flat-out.”
“What...?”
Feeding you a ton of my dishes,
in one sense, is worse than the demon demanding a contract.
But unlike the demon—
“You’ll die as pure humans, even when you die.”
“......”
“And to begin with... aren’t you angry?”
“Angry?”
“That demon.”
He forced a fraudulent contract on them
and toyed with them as he pleased.
“...We are resentful.”
“But... the demon is a mighty being. Us getting angry won’t change anything.”
“If you decide to believe in me, I can promise at least this.”
Whatever they decide,
as for me—
“I’m the kind who can’t die easy unless I pay back what’s done to me.”
The demon told them
that someday
he himself would descend into this world.
“Better for us.”
Someday,
when the moment comes that the demon descends—
“I’ll stab that demon through you.”
“...!”
[Choi Wonjun]
[Job: Demon Hunter Lv.1]
[Who knows demons better than anyone?]
[Probably none other than the demons’ own minions.]
[No one can know demons in more detail than those who learned their power and knowledge under them!]
[When those who were once slaves to demons gain freedom,]
[they are reborn as demon hunters finer than any other.]
The humans he toyed with—
for them to be the ones to exterminate him is, indeed—
[Great Evil Acts Knowledge]
[You come to understand the actions of evil and how to counter them, naturally.]
[Great Demon Knowledge]
[You come to understand demons and how to hunt them, naturally.]
[Magi Refining]
[You can refine and handle magi, power derived from demons.]
[If you hunt beings born of the demonic, then someday,]
[you may gain the power to hunt a mighty demon.]
“I wonder how good demon meat tastes...”
Because that would be
the biggest way to pay him back.
“Aren’t you curious?”
