Chapter 385: Scapegoat |
["He is to lay all their iniquities on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of an appointed man... The goat is to be released in the wilderness, and it will carry on itself all their sins to a place where no one lives." — Leviticus]
...
One person’s last-minute vote change was of little consequence. Father Lazzio glanced from the accused short-haired girl to William and asked with a smile, "Son of God, are you certain that Guest Number 8 is a heretic?"
William’s voice was rigid. "I believe she is. I'm sorry, but she has to die for the rest of us to live... The more of us who make it, the better our chances of clearing the Final Instance. Once we do, we can resurrect everyone who has died in this game."
His last words were less an explanation than a balm for his own conscience.
He had always considered himself a good person, someone happy to lend a hand, willing to make small sacrifices for the well-being of others. But at this moment, he was forced to confront the truth: he was, at his core, an ordinary, selfish person who would harm another to save his own skin.
"Hah! You make it sound so noble," the short-haired girl sneered, unable to move but glaring daggers at William. "But why should I be the one to die? Why not you? You want to kill me because of my skill, that's all. But I swear I won't use it—another judgment does me no good! In the end, you're all just a bunch of cowards, afraid to die!"
William said nothing. He knew exactly what he was doing: choosing a scapegoat. The short-haired girl would die in his place, and the other players who had voted along with him would share the guilt of killing an innocent, their individual responsibility diluted by the group.
The other players didn't bother to speak. A condemned woman had no voice, no right to waste their time.
The next second, an immense, invisible force slammed down on her from above. The girl coughed up a spray of blood and crumpled into her chair like a deflated ball, her eyes losing focus.
Father Lazzio walked over, grabbed her by the arm, and began dragging her toward the temple doors.
The players rose silently, straggling after them. They all wanted to see what fate awaited a player condemned as a heretic.
Outside the temple, a crowd of black-robed believers had already gathered. The moment the players stepped through the great doors, they too were instantly clad in black robes.
As before, Qi Si was lounging on the main throne inside the temple, his right hand propping up his cheek. His left eye reflected the scene within the temple, while his right eye gazed down from the heavens, taking in the entire Holy City at a glance.
Father Lazzio dragged the limp form of the short-haired girl to the center of the square, where a massive black cross had been erected at a slant. Its dark surface was caked with so much dried blood that, from a distance, it looked less holy than utterly demonic.
The eyes of the surrounding believers burned with a uniform fanaticism. They pressed in toward the cross, jostling for a better view, yet tactfully left a small clearing around it. Now they were shouting and cheering with excitement.
"Execute the heretic!"
"Nail her up! Appease the Lord's wrath!"
It was an exact echo of the day before—history, it seemed, was content to repeat itself.
Asakura Yuko's grip on her knife tightened. It was as if she could see the phantoms of countless predecessors overlapping in this very spot, a convergence of the absurd, the bloody, and the darkly comic. The victim was no longer an individual but a symbol, a mere prop in a farce.
On the cross, long, sharp nails were driven into the short-haired girl's limbs. Rusted black iron pierced pale flesh, and fresh blood began to gush forth.
Her screams rose, high and piercing, above the cheers of the crowd. They grew louder at first, then, after a moment, began to fade.
William kept his head bowed the entire time, unable to watch. But the sounds and the smell were inescapable. Never before had the weight of his actions been so crushingly real: he had killed someone.
Regret washed over him. Accusing the wrong person wouldn't necessarily save him. He should have refused to accuse anyone at all. At least then he could have died with a clear conscience...
The execution lasted a full minute. Finally, the short-haired girl's head slumped forward lifelessly. Specks of white light emanated from her chest, coalescing in the air to form a silver-white card engraved with the image of wings.
[Identity Card: Believer]
Only then was the condemned woman's identity confirmed. The pool of blood reflected William's blank face and the panicked expressions of the believers.
After a second of stunned silence, the crowd erupted, and the square plunged into chaos.
"Wrong! It was wrong!" an old woman shrieked, clawing at her face as she collapsed to her knees, her nails digging bloody furrows into her wrinkled cheeks.
One after another, the believers fell to their knees. Some prostrated themselves toward the cross, while others took out knives and began to carve away their own flesh.
"We have wrongly judged our own kin!"
"Lord! Forgive us!"
Amid the wails, the smile faded from Father Lazzio's face, his once-benevolent gaze turning ice-cold. He raised a hand to silence the crowd, his head twisting at an unnatural angle to fix on William, who was hiding in the shadows.
As if on command, the heads of every NPC snapped around one hundred and eighty degrees. Hundreds of pairs of bloodshot eyes locked onto the man who had served as the "Son of God."
The other players prudently backed away, parting to form a path that left William exposed to the NPCs' hostile gaze.
Father Lazzio's face was grim as he announced in a loud voice, "The Son of God made an error in judgment, causing our Lord to lose one of his faithful. Before the Lord, all believers are equal. He must pay the price for his actions."
The hidden danger finally bared its fangs.
William's face turned ashen. He staggered back a step, but then stopped.
He closed his eyes, no longer struggling, no longer trying to run. An expression of peaceful release settled over his features.
A moment of cowardice had led him to do the unthinkable, and it hadn't brought him salvation. Perhaps a gruesome death was the punishment sent by God.
He stood frozen in place like a statue, lost in silent thought. The cross pendant Father Lazzio had placed around his neck suddenly shot up above his head, swelling to an immense size in seconds. It then plunged down, striking him squarely on the crown of his skull.
His skull and limbs shattered simultaneously. A dull thud mingled with the sharp crack of breaking bone. In an instant, the man was reduced to a spray of gore and a pulpy mess on the ground.
The fresh stream of blood met the pool beneath the cross, merging into a crimson lake that reflected the faces of the onlookers.
Silver-white specks of light materialized from the void, forming a new line of text:
[Identity Card: Believer (Son of God)]
In just a few short minutes, the Believer faction had lost two members. The players stood in stunned silence, feeling the sheer malice of this instance firsthand. They watched as the black cross, stained a brilliant, gruesome crimson, shrank rapidly back into a finger-length pendant that hovered silently in the air.
Only a single thread of scarlet extended from its base, coiling around it like a tiny serpent, a testament to the life that had just been extinguished.
The smile returned to Father Lazzio's face. He walked over and took the blood-stained cross pendant in his hand.
In the dead silence, he slowly swept his gaze over the other players standing nearby and asked with a smile, "Now... who else would like to be the Son of God?"
From the shadows, Thompson slowly raised his hand.
...
After the execution, the players split off into the teams they had formed on the first day. The representatives from the Weird Investigation Bureau chose the square in front of the temple as their meeting spot.
They had just found an open spot when Fujiwara Shinno turned to Thompson with a suspicious look. "Sir, perhaps you can explain your actions just now? First, you changed your vote at the last minute to target a god-level NPC. Then you volunteered to become the Son of God. I have reason to believe you've discovered a clue."
Thompson's expression didn't change. He shrugged. "I was just running an experiment. When I voted for Qi Si, Father Lazzio didn't stop me or say anything. That proves a god-level NPC can be targeted. If we pool our votes for him tomorrow, we might be able to use the game's mechanics to execute him. This instance might shut down immediately.
"As for taking the Son of God position, that was just a bit of insurance. By publicly voting for a god-level NPC, I've surely made myself his target. I'd rather not die before dawn."
The other representatives nodded, accepting his explanation. They didn't truly believe a god-level NPC could be eliminated by a vote—just as they hadn't believed Fu Jue could be so easily killed by a recording skill—but it was worth a shot.
The tall woman spoke up. "Next, I want to confirm something: whether the [Fallen Savior] identity card is among the six of us. Let's do this the old way. Everyone grab a piece of paper. If you have the card, draw a triangle. If you don't, draw a circle."
Each representative tore a page from their History Page, scribbled on it with a pen, then crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it to the ground. They mixed the papers together.
The tall woman bent down, picked up the dirty paper wads, and unfolded them one by one.
A circle. Another circle. Still circles... Every single paper had a circle drawn on it. Not one triangle!
Silence spread through the air. A chill inevitably crept up everyone's spine, like being splashed by water while walking by a river, only to look down and see the body of someone who had just drowned themselves.
Giles broke the silence abruptly. "Do you think... Fu Jue is really dead?"
Fujiwara Shinno snorted. "How could he be alive? Brylen is dead, which means the skill activated successfully. We're talking about a causality-level mechanic here. No matter how powerful Fu Jue is, he can't defy the game's fundamental rules..."
"That's right," the Jewish man chimed in. "We all saw it with our own eyes. Fu Jue was eaten by the statue. It's not like he put the glasses on it himself, right? With weapon-type items sealed, I don't believe he'd have the guts to provoke a death trap."
"Exactly!" Fran added. "I searched the room myself. There was nowhere to hide and no secret passages."
"If Fu Jue is truly dead, then there are only two possibilities," Giles said, his tone turning serious after a pause. "First, the [Fallen Savior] card was reclaimed by the instance, and we'll be dealt with by the higher-ups when we get out. Second, someone here is hiding the card and is so paranoid they won't even reveal it anonymously."
He scanned the faces around him, his gaze as sharp as a hawk's. "Which do you think it is?"
...
Back in the temple, Qi Si rested his chin on his clasped hands and stared into the empty air before him, a playful smile on his lips. "Fu Jue... or should I say, Puppet Master. Is this your idea of cooperation? As impolite as ever, I see."
There was no reply. As the saying goes, you can't wake a person who's pretending to be asleep. The same, it seemed, applied to a person pretending to be dead.
Qi Si had known Fu Jue was the Puppet Master the moment he saw the Revelation Stele. Identity Cards were unique; only one person could hold a specific card at any given time.
In the Frog Hospital, the Puppet Master had shown him the [Fallen Savior] card. But on the Revelation Stele, the name corresponding to that card was "Fu Jue." At that point, all identities were laid bare.
The so-called savior, the hope of all humanity, turned out to be a member of an anti-human organization. The Kyushu Guild, which hunted slaughter-stream players to extinction, was secretly harboring the leader of a slaughter-stream guild. The situation was brimming with dark humor and theatrical irony.
Thinking back now, the Puppet Master's initial act of revealing his identity card had been far too deliberate. It seemed he had intentionally leaked certain information, perhaps anticipating today's scenario and preparing for their collaboration in advance.
Some things didn't need to be spelled out. Combining what he already knew, Qi Si had a good grasp of Fu Jue's intentions.
During the vote, Fu Jue had his puppet point the finger at him. It was a clear threat, a way to drag Qi Si into the fray and shatter his bystander status.
According to the principles of a truel, he was now the obvious target for everyone. He could either abandon his authority and leave the instance, or he could play right into Fu Jue's hands and start dealing with the other players.
At the same time, by using his puppet to guide the vote, Fu Jue had ensured the elimination of the short-haired girl who possessed the skill to [Call a New Judgment]. This bought Qi Si time.
The next judgment wouldn't be held until tomorrow morning at the earliest. That gave him a full day to figure out how to handle the other players.
This conveniently paved the way for eliminating his opponents, but it also prevented him from immediately using a skill like [Let the Dead Bury Their Dead] to take the true culprit down with everyone else.
Of course, Qi Si wasn't without options to break this deadlock. All he had to do was reveal that Fu Jue was the Puppet Master. He was sure there were plenty of players who enjoyed infighting and would gladly cooperate with a malevolent god to take down the number one player.
But that wouldn't benefit Qi Si. The Weird Investigation Bureau had strength in numbers, and they would surely turn on him after Fu Jue was dead. While they likely couldn't kill him in this instance, he would almost certainly lose his chance at the Authority of Space and Time.
It was better to cooperate with Fu Jue, clean up the other players, and then leisurely collect the Authority of Space and Time.
"Not long ago, you told me that you would kill whoever became a god. Now I've become a god, and you're cooperating with me. Interesting." Qi Si tapped a finger against his chin, his smile brilliant. "I once thought of a fascinating question, and it just occurred to me that I've never asked you:
"A madman challenges you to a killing contest. Whoever kills more people within a set time wins. If you win, nothing happens. If you lose, he destroys the world. I'd like to know... what would you choose?"
The black-robed god gazed forward with a faint smile, waiting patiently. Slowly, the silhouette of a man in a black suit was reflected in his scarlet eyes.
From the shifting void, a cold voice answered, each word deliberate: "I would kill the madman."
"An expected answer." Qi Si snapped his fingers, his smile widening. "In that case, perhaps you and I can make a new deal."