Chapter 309

The Apostle of Evolution was abruptly reminded of the moment he’d first arrived on this barren planet called Earth. He had come as a fragment of his soul, carried on a piece of a falling star, torn into bits and sent to this unimpressive floating piece of matter. That day, his highest priority had been to hide his presence.

“I must hurry before he finds me...”

It was an urgent situation. He had barely succeeded in reaching this planet without drawing the attention of the shadow army, but he couldn’t be certain how long he could stay hidden from that terrifying king of darkness.

The Apostle of Evolution decided to first conceal himself within the bodies of this planet’s native inhabitants. However, he encountered a problem.

“There seems to be no vessel capable of holding me...”

One by one, humans screamed and perished, their vessels broken the moment their souls came into contact with his mana.

The people of this world were shockingly fragile. The search for a suitable vessel was proving far more difficult than expected, leaving the Apostle puzzled.

“I don’t believe it.

Why are the creatures here so weak?”

He was only a tiny fragment of his former self, broken up and scattered to avoid the shadow army’s notice. Yet these vessels could not even contain such a minuscule part of him. When compared to the immense power of the shadow army in the vast reaches of space, the creatures on Earth seemed almost laughable.

“Has living in peace caused them to deteriorate?”

Even if that were the case, it simply didn’t make sense. These beings were far too frail, even if he went by the assumption that all of Earth’s combatants were out in space, leaving only those incapable of fighting behind.

The Apostle decided to put his curiosity aside until later. There was no telling when he might be discovered. First and foremost, he had to find a vessel in which to hide.

He then encountered the elderly and those nearing death.

“The creatures of this planet live such short lives too?”

He found sickly humans lying in their hospital beds, surrounded by beeping monitors as their final breaths drew near. Doctors hovered nearby, ready to announce their departure when the moment arrived.

A curious fascination overtook the Apostle as he observed these peculiar places called “hospitals.” The humans lay there side by side, dying, their weak souls waiting to depart their vessels on their own accord. This was more than enough to excite the Apostle’s urge to learn.

“I have a great idea.”

If an already occupied vessel could not accept his mana, what of a vessel without a proper owner? Perhaps he could take the vessels that had stopped functioning and no longer belonged to anyone.

There was nothing to lose by trying this out. The first few attempts failed, as the timing was incredibly difficult to get right.

Fortunately, many old people were dying in the hospitals, providing plenty of opportunities. After several tries, he eventually succeeded in his goal. At the exact moment the heart of a frail old man stopped beating, the invader from the Outer Universes entered the space where the human soul had just been, taking its place.

Quietly and without drawing attention, he spread his mana through the body that was already dead and growing cold. The doctors and nurses, unable to sense the mana, remained clueless about what was happening right under their noses. No one had noticed that the old man with age spots covering his face had moved his fingers slightly just as his heart stopped.

The heart monitor flatlined, and a doctor declared that the man had passed. The body was promptly moved to a different building for a simple funeral.

No one cried. Instead, those around the body began to argue. They fought over the old man’s wealth and various other matters, but the Apostle didn’t care. It was none of his business what sort of life the old man had lived. His only interest was in the fact that the body, though dead, was perfectly fine after he had entered it.

“I did it!

It’s a success!”

The invader was grinning inside the cold, lifeless body. He was now beyond the reach of death.

Of course, from this point onward, very careful control of mana would be required. This was a resurrection—or, to be more precise, the stealing of a body right before death could claim it.

“I will need to mend the inner workings so it can move again.”

The funeral continued for three days. It took him those three days—three

long

days—to carefully prepare the broken vessel for reuse.

While nothing seemed to change on the outside, a startling miracle was taking place inside the corpse. Eventually, the cold body began to twitch inside the coffin. At first, it was the fingers that moved, then the toes. Movement was beginning in the places farthest away from the heart.

Unfortunately, those who had been busy discussing the possessions of the old man throughout those three days failed to notice these slight motions. It wasn’t until the old man himself opened the coffin and rose that they realized something was wrong.

“Aiiiiiie!”

“F-Father?!”

The apostle thus successfully found a disguise, but he was unable to express the joy he felt upon his triumph. He maintained a neutral expression as he watched the humans scream at him. While he managed to look around by moving the muscles in the neck using mana, he was still struggling to move the muscles in the face. Without emotion on his face, he slowly relaxed the stiff muscles in his neck, creating a truly horrifying sight.

Everyone who saw him reacted in the same way. Nobody was happy that their loved one had come back from the dead. Some fainted on the spot, while others collapsed to the floor, trembling and weak. The only emotions they felt were shock, awe, and pure terror.

The Apostle observed them glumly, noting that the fear he had caused was a result of nothing more than a simple movement. For him, the priority was to handle the problems on the inside, rather than waste his mana on surface-level concerns like the look on his face.

He focused on the brain. He poured mana into the organ, which had been deteriorating for the past three days since the old man died. The task of absorbing every bit of information about this planet from that brain required a great deal of fine mana control.

Part of that knowledge included the ability to use language, and he managed to speak to the humans.

“I... did... it.”

The shock of the people who surrounded him reached its peak. It had been no less than three days since the doctors had declared the man dead. He hadn’t so much as breathed for those three days in the coffin, yet here he was—alive and speaking. It was nothing short of a miracle.

“G-good god...”

When one of the onlookers muttered, the Apostle’s sense of hearing carried the appropriate signals to his brain.

When he understood the meaning of the words, the blank expression on his face shifted for the first time. There were more than two hundred individual muscles in the human face, so even making a single expression was an annoying task that involved moving many of those muscles at once. Despite this difficulty, the Apostle felt the urge to smile.

God

.

The word that had come from the frightened creature was a reference to the one who had sent him to this planet. He grinned successfully.

“God, huh?”

His smile was broad, if a little awkward, as he muttered the word. The clumsiness quickly melted from his face, and his speech became more fluent.

“I am not a god,

though I do serve one.”

As he spoke, a holy aura descended upon the Apostle’s— No, the resurrected old man’s head.

“So I want you to listen to me, all of you.

The one who has sent me has a message for you all...”

The humans, who had been on the verge of passing out, grew hazy-eyed at the bright glow. The Apostle raised his hands, now wizened with age, and spoke.

“Praise the gods.

Worship the gods.

Prove your faith.

Those who do not abide by the word...”

Light flashed across the room.

“Shall die.”

The Church of the Outer Gods was born.

***

“And that is what I’ve been through so far.”

The pink brain in its tank had shown Suho a rapid series of images. The entire slideshow had flitted before his eyes in less than a second.

“And why are you bothering to show me this?” Suho asked.

“To excite your sympathy, of course.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Suho gave a dry laugh at the Apostle of Evolution’s reply. The look in his eyes as he stared at the brain, however, was sharper than ever.

“You seem quite confident, considering you’ve been caught hiding.”

“It is only natural for a living creature to beg for life.”

“And that seems a little too subservient coming from a follower of the Itarim.”

“What else can I do?

There is nowhere left to run.

And to be honest, I never imagined you would find me so quickly.”

Suho stared at the brain.

“Why are you looking at me like that?

” the Apostle asked.

“You seem worried that I have some other plot in mind.

Well, I am all out.”

“You seem able to see me just fine, even without eyes,” Suho said, narrowing his eyes.

The brain wriggled, almost as if it was shrugging nonexistent shoulders.

“That’s not so difficult to accomplish.

Every experiment I have created served as an extension of myself, a sensory organ.

So how did you see through my hallucination?

I worked quite hard on it.”

The pink brain was genuinely curious. He had put a great deal of effort into creating this place where his true self was hidden. There were many layers of concealment, including the dimensional breach, a complicated maze, and even a hallucination at the end. Yet Suho had seen through it all and zeroed in on the brain.

“You have a lot of questions,” Suho said. Then he added confidently, “You’re researching immortality. That means you don’t want to die. But despite that, you acted like you didn’t care if I killed you. So I tried a little destruction.”

The brain fell silent.

Suho raised his fist, black energy swirling from it. A grin spread across his face.