Chapter 113

Chapter 113
## Chapter: 113

## Chapter Title: The Divine Illness

—

“I-I beg of you, show me mercy. Please.”

Observing the noblewoman from House Dersian as she knelt prostrate on the ground, I gave a subtle, internal nod.

She looked completely broken.

Her features were becoming more hollow with every passing day.

The sheer terror of the “disinfection” had clearly pushed her to the edge, finally forcing her to come crawling to me. The agonizing uncertainty of her own survival had broken her pride.

> “She is convinced she might be among the guilty.”

If she weren’t a player, she might have maintained her composure. However, watching those around her vanish into thin air one by one must have ignited a deep-seated dread. Perhaps a flickering sense of guilt over her own actions had driven her to this. Regardless of the reason, it was a lead I had to follow.

“…You wish to remain among the living?”

I let the question hang in the air with a heavy tone. The Dersian lady began nodding her head with the frantic energy of someone who had lost her mind.

“Y-Yes! If you only spare my life, I will submit to any order you give.”

I idly ran a hand over my chin, considering the situation. In truth, she hadn’t been on the original list of “sinners.” But she had no way of knowing that, and I certainly wasn’t going to enlighten her.

“To her, I am a high-ranking member of the Reaper Church. Someone possessing the same weight of command as Number One.”

It wasn’t a total fabrication. Number One had already identified me as a protector of the “golden orthodox lineage,” a peer to their own status.

I stepped toward the trembling woman. While she remained bowed, I reached down and tilted her chin upward so she was forced to look at me. Her eyes were unfocused, her pupils vibrating with raw panic. She was truly convinced that her life rested entirely in my hands.

In that case, I could work with this.

“Anything at all?”

“If you just let me live…”

She was willing to trade anything for her breath. I allowed a slow, confident smile to spread across my face. This was born of her own delusion, but I could easily sharpen that misunderstanding by playing the part.

“Isabella von Dersian. Do you understand why you have been brought here?”

“B-Because… because I am considered a ‘suspect’… am I not?”

“And do you understand the reason you were placed on that list?”

“That is…”

She trailed off. She didn’t have an answer. None of the hundred “auction participants” gathered in this place knew the specific charges against them, yet all were labeled as potential sinners. Every single one had a shadow of doubt cast upon them, and the lady of House Dersian was no different.

“Are you truly Isabella?”

“Pardon…?”

Her face went blank, as if I had asked something utterly nonsensical. I shifted my approach.

“How long have you been Isabella?”

“Since the moment I was born, of course…”

She wasn’t being deceptive. She genuinely believed she was the one and only “Isabella.” I felt a flicker of annoyance. I had worked under the assumption that she was aware of being a substitute. Did this imply that the Isabella currently ascending the throne in the desert realm of Paysalmer was the actual fraud?

“Is that memory the only thing that is real?”

No, that didn’t track. The Isabella in the desert had surfaced with her mind wiped clean. The only anchor she possessed was her full name. There was no chance that name was a lie. She was a character I had personally developed; “Isabella von Dersian” was her foundational “true name,” not some mere handle. In this world, the name chosen during character creation functioned like a title, while every entity possessed an underlying “true name.”

Therefore, the Isabella in the desert was undeniably the real Isabella von Dersian.

“What is the very first thing you remember? How old were you?”

“…My earliest memory is from when I was three years old.”

“And were you a part of House Dersian even then?”

“Y-Yes, without question. Why are you questioning this…?”

“You will speak only when spoken to. Tell me—did you have a twin? Were there ever two ‘Isabellas’?”

“No… Wait!”

As if a bolt of lightning had struck her, the woman’s eyes snapped wide.

“I… I believe I recall a girl who looked exactly like me. Is that what this is about?”

“Continue.”

“There was a child who suffered from the ‘divine illness.’ We weren’t twins, but she possessed an aura so similar to mine it was haunting. I remember her because of that. B-But I was strictly forbidden from approaching her… and then, quite suddenly, she was gone.”

Divine illness? A malady named after the heavens? I had never heard of such a condition.

“This ‘divine illness’… explain it.”

“I… I only know what I overheard the family patriarchs saying. I truly don’t know the nature of the sickness…”

I pushed for more, but she seemed genuinely ignorant. I felt a headache forming. It appeared this “divine illness” was the missing link to Isabella’s past.

“The resemblance is uncanny.”

The woman before me and the Isabella in the desert shared subtle, haunting similarities. While they might have grown into different people, as children, they could easily have passed for identical twins.

“I-It isn’t me! It has to be that other girl. She is the sinner!”

The Dersian lady began to protest with desperate fervor. She was bending my questions to fit whatever narrative ensured her survival. Regardless of her panic, one thing was becoming clear.

“The elders were in on it. If the child with the divine illness is the Isabella in the desert, then House Dersian likely threw her away.”

It was a thread I needed to pull, though I wasn’t yet certain if finding the truth of her birth would actually bring peace to the Isabella in the desert. Still, I had what I needed for now.

“I will let you live.”

“Aaah…!”

“However, there are terms.”

“W-What must I do?”

“Go back to your kin. Investigate the child with the divine illness with the utmost secrecy. Once you have something, seek me out through Hudson in Arcana. If your information is valid, I will consider your debt paid. But if you utter a single word to anyone else or step out of line, your name goes right back to the top of the ‘disinfection’ list.”

“Y-Yes! I will do exactly as you say!”

She nodded so hard it looked painful. The terror on her face was replaced by an intense, burning resolve. She was now fully convinced that she had been mistaken for that “ill” child, and that misunderstanding had solidified her loyalty to me.

“Is there anything else I should be aware of?” I prompted.

She hesitated for a beat, her expression turning grave.

“…House Dersian has a secret ambition. They intend to seize all four evil gods and turn them into ‘living weapons.’ Their attempt in Delphian was a disaster, but they haven’t stopped. I’ve heard rumors that if they can secure Baal, they will have the key to waking the other three…”

Her revelation hit with the force of a physical blow.

“Interesting.”

To save her own skin, she had just handed her entire family over to me. A truly commendable survival instinct.

—

With the “disinfection” and the “auction” both reaching their grim conclusions, only 75 participants were left standing. The missing 24, along with their retinues, had been harvested by the Reaper Church.

“He managed to slip through.”

Number 53, the Master, had somehow navigated the trap. Even through the secondary trials on the following day, his intuition had kept him one step ahead. He was lucky, certainly, but his survival instincts were bordering on supernatural.

“So, this is the heart of the Reaper Church.”

Once the purging was finished, I followed Number One and arrived at their primary stronghold. After a series of spatial leaps, a colossal and breathtakingly grand palace materialized.

This sprawling, majestic land was none other than the Imperial Palace. It was a territory I had never managed to set foot in during all my years playing Pangeniar.

### Evil God

Back on Earth, the Master ground his teeth so hard they clicked. He had made it out of the Empire alive, but the weight of the humiliation was suffocating.

“Those bastards actually set a trap for me?”

He had staked so much on that high-end auction. He had liquidated rare ruins at a loss just to have the capital to compete. The financial hit was staggering. But money could be remade. The scar on his ego, however, was permanent. They had hunted him like an animal. He, a man who once ruled as an overlord, had been reduced to a panicked scavenger overnight.

He could have swallowed all of that, eventually. But then there was *that* moment.

“How dare you…!”

It played over in his mind. The moment his hand touched the powder of truth. It was the single most degrading moment of his life in the Empire, a memory he wanted to burn from existence.

“You. If you want to keep your head, you’d better start talking.”

The Master turned his lethal gaze toward Black Night. She swallowed hard, her body trembling under the pressure of his killing intent.

“W-Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’ve been playing both ends, haven’t you? Working for the Empire while staying by my side.”

“W-What? I was a victim! I was snatched just like anyone else!”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“It’s the truth! They grabbed me to squeeze information about you out of me. I stayed silent—that’s the only reason we’re standing here!”

*Crack!*

The Master’s fist blurred forward.

The very air around Black Night’s head shattered like a window pane. Space Break—one of the Master’s most terrifying signature skills.

“You expect me to believe you were kidnapped and didn’t sell me out? Do I look like a fool?”

Black Night hadn’t been in the main hall. Escaping that place unnoticed was impossible. From a distance, it looked like a abduction, but she was the target. If she had been taken against her will, she was exactly the kind of person who would invent lies about the Master just to save her own skin.

If it wasn’t a kidnapping, there was only one logical conclusion. She had been an agent of the Empire since the beginning.

“I’ll give you one chance to tell the truth. If you don’t, I will dismantle you. I’ll start with your face, then I’ll pull your hair out by the roots, drag every tooth from your jaw, and sear the holes shut before pouring salt into the wounds. I will take you apart piece by piece.”

“A… Ugh…”

Black Night went pale. She knew he wasn’t exaggerating. He was fully prepared to end her.

“F-Fine! Stop! I’ll tell you! But you have to understand—I didn’t realize what that place actually was! I was just selling tiny scraps of ‘player’ data for some extra cash…!”

“Did you sell my data?”

“Never! I’m greedy, but I’m not suicidal! If I put you in danger, I’m in danger too. And if I had known that man in the mask was one of them, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near him. I got played too, dammit!”

“How long has this been going on?”

“T-They reached out to me recently. Maybe six months ago? Please, you have to believe me!”

She sounded genuinely distressed. It was likely she had made a side business out of brokering player information. She probably wasn’t the only one; there were likely dozens of informants like her feeding the Empire data. They had used that collective intelligence to bait the auction trap.

Black Night licked her lips, her voice shaking.

“But we’re out now, right? They won’t think we’re players anymore. The Reaper Church is ruthless—if they knew for sure, they never would have let us go.”

“Wrong. They let you go on purpose.”

The Master was certain of it. They knew exactly what Black Night was. If they released her, it was because she still had a use. Betrayal is a steep hill to climb the first time, but a slippery slope the second. Especially for a mercenary who sold secrets for pocket change.

Black Night scowled. “They knew? Even with the fake leads I buried in the reports?”

“Yes. And when they come knocking again, you won’t be able to say no. You’re trapped between us now—betray either side, and you’re a corpse.”

“…That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit the Reaper Church’s MO.”

Historically, the Reaper Church didn’t negotiate with sinners. If you were marked, you were hunted or executed. The idea of them “trading” was unheard of.

“The rules have changed. The world is different now.”

“What changed?”

The Master looked at her with pure disdain for her ignorance.

“Wilhelm is dead.”

“…What does a dead man have to do with this?”

“Wilhelm was the one person the Reaper Church recognized as a player’s avatar but refused to touch. He was the one entity they were afraid to even approach.”

“Wait. They *knew* about him?”

The Master didn’t feel like explaining the nuances. Unlike Black Night, he possessed a much deeper understanding of the Great Expedition’s inner workings. The Reaper Church had files on Wilhelm, yet they had kept their distance. They never assigned him a reaper. They never branded him.

“Wilhelm was the anchor that kept the Reaper Church’s fanaticism in check.”

The Master wasn’t privy to the exact “why,” but he was convinced the Empire’s refusal to join the Great Expedition was linked to Wilhelm—and by extension, the Reaper Church.

However, a systematic “player cull” of this magnitude was new. If it had happened in the past, he would have heard the screams. Why had they suddenly abandoned their surgical strikes for a mass slaughter? Was it because Wilhelm was no longer there to watch them?

“The timeline fits. Six months ago is when Wilhelm fell.”

There was another chilling realization. The moment the Reaper Church began recruiting informants like Black Night perfectly mirrored the collapse of the Great Expedition. It wasn’t a coincidence.

“The Reaper Church. Are you bastards really planning to wipe out every player in Pangeniar?”

The sheer scale of the malice was breathtaking. They weren’t being treated as rivals or enemies. They were being treated like a plague that needed to be scrubbed away.