I’m a Young God, Won’t You Raise Me?

At Kwak Hanmuk’s words, I raised a hand to my eyes.

Had they turned golden again?

The heat I could feel through my palm was certainly intense.

Every time the color of my eyes changed, I experienced similar symptoms, so I had already grown somewhat used to it.

But Kwak Hanmuk’s reaction was far too exaggerated.

He had already seen my eyes change several times.

Before entering The Cell Block X, we had even briefly talked about that phenomenon.

And yet.

Now he was acting as if it were the first time he had ever witnessed something like it.

Since I still didn’t understand what was happening, Kwak Hanmuk glanced around.

Then he led me over to the monitor I had destroyed by driving the riot baton into it.

The dark screen reflected my face.

“…Huh?”

I moved so close that my face was almost pressed against the monitor.

On the black panel, I saw a pair of radiant golden eyes.

With deep crimson pupils.

My irises and pupils had taken on different colors, just like Je Hyuno’s.

Those golden eyes, pierced by scarlet pupils, did not look human in the slightest.

I completely understood why Kwak Hanmuk had reacted that way.

I rubbed my eyes with my hand.

But nothing changed.

Unable to hide my bewilderment, I muttered,

“I don’t know either…”

I truly.

Had no idea what was happening.

“It is a completely natural process of growth, Mr. Gunbam.”

Dominic said something utterly unbelievable beside my ear.

As I stood there motionless, not paying much attention to his words, Kwak Hanmuk pressed me again.

“Are you really okay?”

“I don’t know that either…”

“Damn it this is driving me crazy.”

Kwak Hanmuk ran a hand through his hair in frustration.

As I remained bewildered by the inexplicable changes in my body, a system window appeared.

The heat of the ■■■■ is practically a deadly poison to a Young God.

You understand that, if you fail to digest it, you will eventually be consumed by that heat.

‘Just what the hell did I eat?’

I wished I could erase those damn black boxes once and for all.

But the system window completely ignored my thoughts and continued displaying messages.

You dislike the version of yourself dominated by that heat.

Because that is not the kind of Young God you wish to become.

Furthermore, you understand that simply reducing everything to ashes will never allow you to reach the True Ending.

I could more or less understand what it was trying to say.

After all, just before Kwak Hanmuk arrived, my state of mind had clearly been strange.

Now that I had calmed down, I could tell just how irrationally I had been acting.

And Dominic.

He had been subtly encouraging that impulse.

‘I suppose he wants me to act like a god rather than a human being.’

He always treated me as a Young God.

And he expected my words and actions to be worthy of that title.

As I reached that conclusion, a huge suspicion arose in my mind.

No matter how much I thought about it.

I became more and more convinced that Dominic had done something to me during Slay to Plate.

Ever since then, I had felt that I had changed a little.

“I enjoyed sharing a meal with Mr. Gunbam at the restaurant.”

I remembered those words Dominic had said to me.

The word “meal” that he had used and the system’s constant references to “digesting” seemed to be connected.

I decided that, when I had the chance.

Questioning the Pudding Slime outright was impossible.

But at the very least, I would try to skillfully coax the truth out of him.

The system window appeared again, as though it had been waiting for that moment.

You become even more wary of the dreadful calamity.

I ignored the new message and spoke.

“Captain Kwak, I think we’d better get out of here first.”

I explained that, if we stayed too long, the door would close and we would be trapped inside.

Kwak Hanmuk looked into my eyes once more.

“…Yeah. Let’s get out first. Your eyes have already returned to normal.”

As soon as he started walking, I hurriedly called out to him.

“Ah, wait a moment. I have to pick something up.”

I ran over to a corner and picked up the vine plant I had left there.

I had set it down just anywhere, but it had apparently crawled over to the corner on its own.

The moment I touched it.

The vines hurriedly wrapped themselves around me.

Had it thought I was going to abandon it?

It clung tightly to me, as though it had decided never to let go.

Creature Number 1 had always been extremely timid.

It couldn’t see.

Nor could it hear.

But it had clearly felt every vibration from the fight.

It was only natural that it was terrified.

I gently stroked the vines a couple of times.

When he saw me carrying the plant, Kwak Hanmuk folded his arms and looked down at me.

All I could offer was a rather awkward excuse.

“Well I need it to achieve the True Ending. Really.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“So… can I take it with me?”

“Right now, Albam is making me want to say no just because he’s asking.”

“……”

I couldn’t tell whether he was serious or just joking.

When he saw that I couldn’t answer right away, Kwak Hanmuk let out a small laugh.

“Let’s go.”

With my superior’s permission, I followed Kwak Hanmuk while carrying the vine plant with me.

The door leading to the third training room, where the final lesson was originally supposed to begin, had been completely smashed.

It seemed Kwak Hanmuk had simply forced it down.

If I had continued the training normally, the real brainwashing to turn me into a prison guard would have begun from that point onward.

Fortunately, Kwak Hanmuk had arrived before the third lesson started.

Because he showed up much earlier than I had expected, everything ended up going much better than planned.

Just before the Chief of Security forcibly took me away, I had sent Kwak Hanmuk a message.

In it, I explained how to reach the training center for new prison guards.

According to my original calculations, by the time the training was about to end, my prison guard conversion rate would have reached 98%.

That was why it was so important for Kwak Hanmuk to arrive before it was too late.

It wasn’t an easy task.

First, he had to obtain the neutralizer stored inside the secret safe in the prison guards’ break room.

The guards consumed Neo on a regular basis.

However, they occasionally suffered side effects, and that was what the neutralizer was for.

Naturally, it was an item whose existence they would never reveal to a newly assigned prison guard like Kwak Hanmuk.

But that wasn’t a problem.

I knew both the location of the safe and its combination.

As long as he chose the right moment, when the room was empty, stealing the neutralizer was fairly easy.

The real problem was the chapel.

The prison had a rather modest chapel, though it contained all the furnishings one would expect to find in a church.

Beneath the pulpit was a hidden door leading to an underground passage.

That underground labyrinth led directly to the training center for new prison guards.

However, whenever you entered the chapel, it was always mandatory to meet the Prison Chaplain.

The first major obstacle was convincing him to allow us to use the secret passage.

I had explained to Kwak Hanmuk how to persuade the Prison Chaplain, but it was quite a complicated process and required a great deal of time.

And even if he managed to convince him, there was still the labyrinth to get through.

Even knowing the correct route, crossing that enormous underground labyrinth took quite a while.

And yet.

Kwak Hanmuk had overcome every one of those obstacles and reached me at an incredible speed.

‘Just as expected of Captain Kwak.’

I thought all that was left was to make our way back through the labyrinth.

But.

“…Wow.”

I couldn’t help but genuinely admire him.

The beads of Kwak Hanmuk’s boxwood rosary stretched throughout the entire labyrinth.

All you had to do was follow the rosary to reach the exit directly.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

After giving Kwak Hanmuk, who was smiling proudly, a hearty round of applause, we followed the trail of the rosary and made our way through the labyrinth.

If it hadn’t been for him, even I would have taken quite a while to find the exit.

Thanks to that, we escaped with incredible ease.

At last, we reached the exit of the labyrinth.

A tremendously long ladder stood before us.

I looked up at it.

Once we climbed that ladder.

We would finally be able to get out.

However, it was unbelievably long.

Its upper end disappeared into absolute darkness.

And it felt as though, even after passing through that darkness, there would still be a long way left to climb.

‘Captain Kwak really does have incredible stamina.’

He had come down that ladder by himself, crossed the labyrinth, and then come to find me.

I couldn’t help but be impressed.

As I found myself admiring his physical endurance once again, Kwak Hanmuk approached the ladder first.

He held a flashlight between his teeth and shook the ladder with both hands to check its stability.

Despite appearances, it was firmly secured and didn’t move even a millimeter.

He handed the flashlight back to me and said,

“We can climb at the same time. Let’s go.”

After that brief explanation, he gestured with his chin.

“You first, hyung.”

He sounded as though he were talking to someone much older than himself.

‘When in reality, he’s the older one.’

I didn’t understand why he insisted so much on those jokes, but it wasn’t worth thinking too deeply about.

I was just about to start climbing when I stopped.

The problem was where to put the flashlight.

If I clipped it to my clothes, there was a chance it would fall.

When I asked him about it, Kwak Hanmuk replied that he had come down without turning on any flashlight.

Even though it had been completely dark down there.

“I think I’ll need it…”

If I were alone, that would be one thing.

But if I made a mistake while climbing, Kwak Hanmuk, who was directly below me, could get hurt as well.

I wanted to do it in the safest way possible.

Kwak Hanmuk looked me up and down, searching for a good place to secure the flashlight.

His gray eyes traveled from my feet until they stopped on my forearm.

“What if you put it there?”

To be honest.

I had been thinking exactly the same thing.

I gently stroked the vine plant to give it a small warning beforehand.

Then I carefully slipped the flashlight between its vines.

Since it was so timid, I was worried it might get frightened.

But fortunately, it firmly held the flashlight with its vines.

Watching the plant holding the flashlight, Kwak Hanmuk commented in admiration,

“Good thing you brought it.”

I nodded at the compliment, as though I had just obtained a very useful item.

Then I grabbed hold of the ladder.

“I’m going up.”

“Yeah. Go ahead, Hyung Albam.”

The two of us began climbing.

From below, Kwak Hanmuk kept joking around.

“Albam. Your butt is way too close.”

“Sorry. I’ll climb faster.”

But whenever I sped up, he would move right up behind me again.

“I’m going to have to train you a little.”

He kept teasing me, saying things like a chestnut without its shell was still empty on the inside.

I simply replied that I would fill that emptiness someday.

Just as I was thinking he was especially playful today.

“When you officially join, you’ll finally go through recruit training.”

His words made my hands stop for a moment.

Although my official rank would be that of a recruit, I had never received formal training at the Trial Response Agency.

As I wondered what that training would be like, Kwak Hanmuk answered naturally.

“I’ll teach you how to shoot myself.”

Wouldn’t I be able to join the same team as well?

I wanted to ask him one more time.

But I held myself back.

The fact that the leader of such a busy operations team was personally offering to teach me how to shoot was already a tremendous gesture.

Kwak Hanmuk kept joking around for the rest of the climb.

Thanks to chatting with him, I hardly noticed the effort.

We climbed the endless ladder sooner than I had expected.

When we finally reached the hatch leading to the surface, I felt deeply grateful to him.

Just as I was about to push it open.

Clank.

The hatch opened on its own from the other side.

And standing there was someone I never would have expected to find.

A muscular man dressed in a black cassock looked down at me.

I opened my eyes wide.

“…Lieutenant Won?”

As he held out his hand to me, he replied in his usual dry tone,

“Recruit Han. Grab on.”

Won Taebeom’s role was that of the Prison Chaplain.