The Evil God Beyond the Smartphone - Chapter 4

—“Even if you want to escape, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to run to, does there?”

“Ugh…”

Euthenia bit her lip and looked up at the man in front of her .

There was no one to support her now, no one she had to protect her.

It is a strangely irrational world.

Her father is in prison despite his lifelong sacrifice for the weak .

But the bandit in front of her was still just walking freely around the perimeter, despite the fact that they were killing people mercilessly.

“Now you have to decide whether you will die here or be sold as a slave?”

“….”

“Wouldn’t it be better to live, even if you have to struggle a bit as a slave?”

kekeke. An unpleasant sound of laughter came from the bandit’s mouth.

I didn’t want to hear that unpleasant voice any more.

Why should I have to listen to those insolent voices instead of my father’s kind voice?

All I could think was that the world was an unfair place.

And the moment she realized this, a desire arose in her heart.

I want this kind of world to be destroyed.

“If you have trouble, I will decide for you.”

The bandit who had finished his words, immediately approached Euthenia.

Tuk! Tuk! Step by step.

The sound of footsteps cutting through the bushes pierced Euthenia’s ears.

There was no more escape.

She had no choice but to accept her fate at this moment.

Having given up everything, Euthenia squeezed both eyes shut.

Then, the moment the bandit approached her tried to reach out his hand towards Euthenia.

Rumble-!Rumble-!CLAP!!

A thunderous voice rang out and lightning fell.

“Ahhhrrrrrr…!”

“Ah…?”

At the sound of ear-piercing thunder, Euthenia raised her head to check what was going on in front of her.

She had been in denial of reality until a moment ago, but a startling sight was spread out before her eyes.

A bandit had been struck by sharp lightning and was rolling on the floor.

The damage caused by the lightning strike was considerable, and the bandit was foaming with eyes rolled.

The sudden impact of the lightning strike took Euthenia by surprise.

Soon, there were two lightning strikes.

“Kuuuuuu…”

Kwalu! Quarr! Quarrrrrrn!

In the blink of an eye, in the world of bright flash.

The bandit leader, struck by lightning, remained motionless, lying on the ground.

The thunder that struck so violently stopped the bandit’s breath.

Euthenia was even more astonished to see this, and looked up at the sky where the lightning had struck.

Not even a single small dark cloud seemed to be visible in the sky where the thunder rumbled.

The lightning she saw was no ordinary thunder.

“Huh? boss? Don’t tell me you’re dead?”

“There’s not even a cloud in the sky. How in the world ….”

The dead bandit’s appearance made the other bandits in the vicinity shudder in fear.

Out of the blue, a bolt of lightning fell and killed the leader.

Although they had been bandits for several years, this was the first time they had seen such a strange phenomenon.

One of the bandits seemed to have grasped the situation quickly, or so he exclaimed, pointing to the ashen and scattered corpse of his boss.

“Magic! That’ magic for sure!”

“Magic… magic, you say?”

“So you’re saying that that woman is a Wizard?”

The bandits’ gazes all turned to Euthenia.

Wizards. They are a source of fear and awe for those who do not know magic.

The old tales of how an entire village was wiped out by an evil witch are not unknown to most people.

The eyes of the bandits looking at Euthenia seemed to be full of fear.

However, this was something that Euthenia could not understand from her position, as she was the one receiving the gaze of fearful bandits.

(Someone must have used magic. If so, who on earth used magic?)

Euthenia turned her head away and slowly looked around.

Sheer cliffs, dense mountain forests.

In either case, she could not see any human form.

No one she thought was a magician was nearby.

Of course, in the meantime, the fear in the hearts of the bandits gradually swelled in size, and soon some of them began to throw away their weapons and flee.

“E, she’s a wizard… R-run away!”

“W-what’s a wizard doing in the countryside like this…?”

The bandits, who had turned their backs on Euthenia, moved screaming down the mountain.

But the lightning raining down from the sky was not satisfied with a single victim.

Rumble-!Rumble-!CLAP!!

The lightning struck again, swallowing the fleeing bandits.

The lightning fell with a roar and judged the frightened bandits mercilessly.

“Ahhhhh…!”

“Ah! h-help me…”

Each time the sky flickered, a new scream rose from the bandit’s mouth.

The bandits died one by one in the continuous lightning strikes.

Occasionally, some bandits were lucky enough to escape the lightning, but it was futile in the face of successive lightning strikes.

Among the bandits, with two exceptions, all met their end by lightning.

And the last remaining bandits died rolling on the floor in pain, bruised all over their bodies instead of by lightning.

It was a more brutal death than the bandits who had died before.

Euthenia sat up with a dim look on her face as the bandits were cleared out in an instant.

“What on earth is this…”

The opponents were bandits proficient in combat.

They had been bandits for quite some time and easily slaughtered the people of the village.

However, even such bandits were unable to move and fell under the thunderbolts that followed one after the other.

Euthenia’s gaze looked at the bandits, who were scattered in ashes.

The bandits, out of breath from the unidentified attacks, were all scattered in ashes.

It was the same for the bandits, who had fallen with bruises all over his body.

“They are disappearing.”

The blackened remnants of the bandits scattered and disappeared like an illusion.

No more traces of bandits could be found in the area.

Euthenia was the only one left in this place after a brief commotion had passed.

At the sight of the bandits, who had completely disappeared, Euthenia thought of a single existence in her mind.

“–god.”

No matter how much magic is used, corpses are bound to remain.

However, the unidentified magic even completely took away the corpses of the enemy.

It was as if all life had been put back where it belonged.

There was only one existence she could think of that could do this.

An omnipotent being watching over her in the distant sky .

In short, those who were called gods.

“I… wasn’t alone.”

Pon.

A tingling sensation spread from Euthenia’s heart as she looked up at the sky.

It was similar to when, as a child, her father would watch over her at night and give her honey chestnuts, when she was afraid.

Her heart aches when she thinks so. Tears trickled from her eyes.

Nevertheless, Euthenia still had a faint smile in her mouth.

Because now she realized she was not alone.

“Thank you.”

Euthenia put her hands together to convey gratitude towards the sky.

A sky without a single dark cloud.

However, Euthenia did not get a second honey chestnut.

***

“Oh, there’s just one left?”

I looked at the screen of my phone, holding back the morning yawn that threatened to spill from my mouth.

At the bottom of the screen, on which the game was turned on, various messages were still floating.

They were messages that had newly surfaced while attacking the bands of bandits that had gathered.

Of course, most of the messages were about using magic and that my karma had gone up after defeating the characters.

—<Lightning>.

—<Lightning>.

—Karma increased by 1.

—<Lightning>.

—Karma increased by 1.

—Karma increased by 1.

I used <Lightning> magic to instantly defeat the bandit characters who had grouped together.

<Lightning> is a powerful skill that deals 15 damage even if used only once.

It did not take me very long to defeat a group of bandits.

However, even a powerful skill cannot avoid the drain on magic power caused by it.

In the end, I ran out of magic power and had to defeat the bandits by busily moving my fingers.

I moved my fingers nearly 100 times, which made my fingers ache from the quick barrage.

It wasn’t a total waste of time, though, as I gained karma that amounted to 5 because of it.

“Still, if I could only eliminate this one, I’d be done.”

I shifted my gaze to the last remaining character.

I could see the character sitting up in the middle of the screen, looking around.

It was the character who had just sat on the floor with a crying emoji on its face.

Perhaps it was because I had defeated all the bandits nearby.

She was now sitting up and crying .

I don’t know what happened between the bandits and her.

But now that I have led the bandits who chased her to the path of Hades, she will be able to meet her end comfortably.

“You shall also go with them.”

Thus the moment I touched the head of my one remaining character.

The speech balloon floating above the character’s head turned strange.

I looked carefully at the speech balloon blinking above the character’s head.

There, emojis with diverse content were alternately output.

– (sad)

– (happy)

– (thankful)

– (sadness)

– (happy)

She cried and laughed and thanked; she cried and laughed again.

For the first time in my life I was flustered by the emoji patterns I was seeing.

So far, the patterns shown by the characters clicked on me had been more constant.

Or a question mark symbol floating above their heads.

Or show an emoji that cries right away.

This character, however, showed a peculiar form of crying and laughing.

“Is there a problem with the AI intelligence?”

My fingers tried to click on the character, but somehow I hesitated.

How could a character express gratitude for being attacked?

This is one of the most unique characters I have ever met so far.

It would be nice to eliminate this character and earn some karma, but I might never see such a character again too.

After a few moments of pondering, I took my finger back out again, which had been approaching the character.

“Well, I guess I can spare this one.”

My fingers were just starting to ache from just hitting the character repeatedly.

It would be good to keep an eye on this character for a while while I play.

Because if I change my mind later, I can just use <Lightning>.

When I took my finger back and looked at the screen, the character who had been floating the speech bubble began to move.

And at the same time she started to move, a new message emerged from the bottom of the screen.

—[Euthenia] has acquired the <Cultist> trait.

—Karma has increased by 1.

I looked at the screen with a suspicious look on my face at the newly floated message.

This time it was because, despite not killing any characters, my karma had increased by one.

The message window said that I had gained the <Cultist> trait with it.

Euthenia.

I don’t know in detail whose name that is.

However, there was one character or so that I could guess.

“Euthenia… Could it be the name of this girl?”

I see a character left alone on the screen.

A gray-haired female character who slowly began to climb the mountain.

Her name was Euthenia.

This character had acquired the <Cultist> trait and I began to gain additional karma.

So you can gain karma without having to defeat a character.

This was the first time I had learned this information through Euthenia.

“Still, hunting would probably go up even faster.”

Of course, it was still only one karma.

Regardless of how many characters may end up acquiring the traits of a <Cultist>, this cannot be repeated all the time.

No matter how much I think about it, character hunting is the most efficient.

So I immediately started moving the screen in search of my next prey.