The Outer God Needs Warmth

A wide open space lies beneath the gray castle walls, separating the royal castle from the outside.

Just yesterday, Tis-ha’s coffin had been placed there after making a round of the capital, but now, in the center of the vast square, a high altar had been erected.

The people living inside the castle knew exactly what it meant.

The execution platform.

When a heinous criminal is found, their crimes are made public, and they are executed before the eyes of everyone.

This method of execution is carried out to correct the laws of the kingdom, but unfortunately, the class that benefits from it views it differently. And those overseeing the event are well aware of this.

The execution serves as a form of entertainment for the citizens, a sort of circus.

Human blood brings excitement.

Watching a criminal being gruesomely executed provides a primal pleasure to people.

It might be hard to understand just from hearing this. One might think that these people are primitive.

But if you think a little deeper, you'll realize: do we not get excited when we watch videos of someone making a mistake and being torn apart by others?

This is not about good or bad people.

It’s closer to an acquired trait from the process of socialization. In primitive societies, failing to condemn a wrongdoer would have led to the collapse of society.

Outsiders are excluded, and those who don’t follow the rules are killed or driven out.

If you don't do that?

Life in primitive times was far too harsh for individuals to survive alone.

When society disintegrates, the group falls apart.

And we are a group that survived together. So it is not surprising that this trait has been passed down through the blood.

Thus, when the signs of the blood festival began, people instinctively started gathering in the square in front of the castle.

What villain would be screaming and dying today?

With the reaction to yesterday’s funeral, the square in front of the castle was filled with a huge crowd.

Among the crowd, there were those who felt satisfaction.

The priest and the knight.

Seeing the number of people gathered in the square, they rejoiced, believing this was an opportunity to show the might of the Holy Spirit Church in Ansellus.

They even discussed how they might torment the girl, the so-called evil god, and make her beg for her life.

In the current world, those declared enemies of the gods are truly people who can be treated however one pleases. Even if they weren’t evil gods, humans would behave the same way, without guilt.

There are generally two main reasons why humans become extremely cruel.

They feel justified, or they no longer see the other person as human.

And when both occur, something even more horrific happens.

A good example of this in modern history would be the witch hunts. Of course, some nations later lived out the actual days of idyllic slaughter, but in this case, the analogy to the witch hunts fits best.

Of course, the foreign press deserved to be hunted like a witch.

She wasn’t even a human being; she was a mere beast.

Meanwhile, the people of the Holy Spirit Church pondered how they might handle the foreign press.

There was one other person who was waiting eagerly.

None other than the foreign press herself.

Although her expression didn’t show it, she was already thinking about how to speak in a way that would further torment the gods, considering the people gathered around her.

Most of her composure, however, was rooted in another place. The foreign press had been watching three men reading papers diligently from a mansion on the outskirts of the capital.

None of them had given a second thought to what was happening around them.

Especially since the most dangerous element, Hyungkeshni, was among the crowd, waiting for the foreign press to be executed.

If Hyungkeshni changed her mind and decided to erase the foreign press from existence, it was highly likely that she would harm the three men reading from afar.

There was no way to stop that.

The contract Hyungkeshni had to protect only involved creating the book. She hadn’t promised anything beyond that, and the foreign press knew it well.

Because, in case of an emergency, the foreign press needed to either bless Hyungkeshni or at least guide her to be killed by one of her blessed people.

If they stalled for time until those three finished reading the book, the foreign press would win.

That’s what the foreign press thought, as they glanced at the chains on their arms, legs, and neck. These restraints had been placed on them by the Holy Spirit Church’s knight to prevent their escape when leaving the castle.

The restraints had symbols, written in the unique characters used by the Holy Spirit Church to call upon the power of the gods. These symbols were indeed actively binding the foreign press.

No, it wasn’t just binding them—it was attacking them like a tiny spoon digging into their flesh.

The excruciating pain was there. If a normal person had felt it, they would have experienced their whole body being shredded alive. And that was the pain the foreign press was feeling.

But the foreign press didn’t even feel the discomfort.

What tormented them was not the pain, but the cold that relentlessly dug into their body. It went beyond the flesh and bone, continuously gnawing at something far more important within.

That’s why they were so obsessed with warmth.

For warmth, they could do anything.

They knew that any temporary warmth they gained would only prolong the pain if they couldn’t maintain it.

So, despite the maddening impulse, they didn’t look ahead. Instead, they focused on looking far into the distance.

If they were a little simpler, they would have scuttled like a bug, rushing toward the warmth ahead to escape the endless pain.

Many people mistakenly think that they can get used to pain. But the human body doesn’t have that function. Biologically, pain doesn’t have a mechanism to adapt to it.@@novelbin@@

One can’t adapt. It’s not just about physical pain; it’s even worse if one has a particular illness.

And so the foreign press yearned for warmth.

But there was a reason they couldn’t just move impulsively. They couldn’t run straight toward warmth to escape that horrible pain.

Underneath, the foreign press knew that dying was impossible for them.

The fear and despair were the driving forces that suppressed their impulses.

That’s why the foreign press was thinking as much as they could, trying to look far ahead. They didn’t expect too much.

The only treasure they could obtain in this world was the technique to summon themselves into another world. That was the only goal they had, and they expected nothing more.

So, in this moment, they decided to torment the gods, like watching a short video on their phone while waiting for the download to complete.

How effective it was didn’t really matter to them.

As long as they could make a mockery of the gods, that was enough.

If the main quest was to obtain the summoning method, then what they were doing here was not a side quest, but more like a mini-game.

It didn’t matter whether they succeeded or failed; it was simply a matter of passing the time.

So they fully embraced it.

After quite some time passed, when the execution platform was completed and the foreign press was dragged up, they continued with this thought.

And in front of the crowd, with everyone watching, they knelt before the platform.

The knight stepped forward, introduced himself briefly. Anyone with even the slightest interest in rumors would immediately recognize who he was.

The most famous knight of the Holy Spirit Church in this era.

He briefly introduced himself, then read the letter from the head of the Holy Spirit Church again, which he had read before the king.

Then, he declared that this evil god was the one who had contracted with Tis-ha, and kicked the kneeling girl’s cheek with his foot.

If one didn’t know she was the foreign press, it would have been a cruel scene indeed.

But the crowd was ecstatic.

There was the evil witch. Of course, to ordinary people, there wasn’t much difference between an evil god and an evil witch, so the term was somewhat misused.

But the meaning was the same.

A creature that could die painfully.

“This evil god made a contract with your hero, Tis-ha! Do you know why he had such superhuman strength? Because he received power from this evil god!”

In an instant, the square fell silent.

This was a tremendous event. Tis-ha, the hero of the Holy Spirit Church, had made a contract with an evil god. While many would have preferred to dismiss it as nonsense, there were several people with purple hair standing in the corner of the execution platform.

They knew that purple hair symbolized royal blood.

This made the confusion even greater.

Seeing them, the knight smiled satisfactorily, and to further degrade Tis-ha, began to tell an old story.

Over 80 years ago, no one in the capital knew the full details, but it was an event that had occurred long ago.

The heretics of the evil god had invaded the Ansellus Kingdom and had even destroyed the capital.

And those heretics had all had purple hair.

The knight shouted loudly.

“Tis-ha was a heretic. But he repented for his sins and entered the compassionate embrace of the Holy Spirit! But even though the punishment is gone, the sin remains.”

He blamed the very person they had mourned just yesterday.

For the knight and the priest, this speech was merely an attempt to diminish Tis-ha and elevate the Holy Spirit Church’s status. No matter how great Tis-ha was as a hero, he had died an old man.

By revealing the truth, they thought the people of Ansellus would look down on Tis-ha and hold the Holy Spirit Church in even greater reverence.

But here in the capital of Ansellus, Tis-ha was a great king. He had risen from the ruins of the Ansellus Kingdom and established an empire larger than ever before.

The adults in this crowd knew the reign of that king.

The children here grew up hearing the legend of that king.

There was a slight crack.

And unfortunately, they had given the foreign press the opportunity to speak, hoping it would make the execution show even more enjoyable.

The knight brought a long sword and, pointing to the citizens, pressed the blade into the foreign press's shoulder while shouting for them to confess their sins.

It was a technique to make someone confess their sins. In some countries, it's called a form of gaslighting, a kind of forced self-criticism.

If they were human, they would have had a hard time enduring this.

If they were human.

The foreign press opened their mouth.

"Yes. I gave Tis-ha a blessing."

And the foreign press only spoke the truth. They knew that if they lied, it would eventually be exposed, so they didn’t tell a single lie.

This was when the truth finally came to light.

"He was raised in a cult called the Mirae Hope Sect, born pure but questioning the cult that killed people as sacrifices."

A small detail about Tis-ha’s past slowly began to emerge.

Perhaps the one who knew more about Tis-ha than anyone else in this world, the foreign press began to tell his story in detail.

Not to reveal the truth, but to pour poison into the world, pure evil.

"He was forced to come before me and take the blessing. Otherwise, he would have been killed, so it was inevitable."

The knight, shocked by the unexpected words, shoved the sword further into the foreign press’s shoulder to silence them.

But to the foreign press, that pain was merely a signal.

"After receiving the blessing and escaping death, Tis-ha saw his chance and escaped the cult. To stop the cult’s immoral practices, he came to the Ansellus Kingdom. There, he gained recognition through his purity, and the Holy Spirit Church invited him to convert, which he accepted."

This was a story the Holy Spirit Church would love.

The knight thought it was a good tale and loosened his grip on the sword stuck in the foreign press's back.

On the surface, it sounded as though the Holy Spirit Church had forgiven and embraced the heretic. The priest behind him also thought this was a good story.

They were thinking from the Holy Spirit Church’s perspective.

So, they couldn’t anticipate what the foreign press would say next.

"Tis-ha became a follower of the Holy Spirit. Even so, I continued to bless him, because humanity has the freedom to choose their religion."

No one could have predicted this.

That the foreign press would say that the gods themselves give humans the freedom to choose their faith.

The foreign press didn’t realize the impact of these words.

They simply wanted to deal with the troublesome religious matters.

That’s all they felt.

The godly monster, now actively releasing poison into the world.

While those three were stalling to read the book, or perhaps tormenting the gods in the meantime, that’s how it was done.