Surviving Among the Entities

I dug a hole in the backyard and placed my friend’s belongings in a small casket for pets.

“If the afterlife gets boring, I’ve left the movie you liked next to you to watch.”

Along with 「Human」, I closed the lid and buried Homun.

“Delivery.”

The next day, a gravestone for Homun arrived.

[The resting place of my friend with whom I spent the most beautiful and meaningful time, however brief that one week was.]

My enhanced physical abilities made engraving the epitaph as easy as pulling it.

‘The aftereffects are quite severe.’

Just as at my parents’ funeral, it’s not something one can easily become accustomed to.

“Still, I must go on living.”

To return to daily life, I went to the office.

“You’ve finally arrived. I’ve been waiting a while.”

A foreigner in a suit with a familiar face was waiting for me.

“I came because there is something to discuss.”

The head of R&D at Lucifer Company.

“Please come in first. I’ll pour you a cup of tea.”
“Haha, I don’t drink tea.”

Baal had come to visit my office.

“I’ve also prepared cola and potato chips.”
“Then I won’t stand on ceremony.”

“It was a good call to have an air fryer in the office. I had brought it to make snacks for clients consulting about other world transfers. Are frozen fries alright?”
“As long as they’re potato chips, it doesn’t matter.”

Keep friends close and enemies closer.
I have no intention of avoiding or fearing Baal just because he is a demon. If understanding their thoughts allows me to avoid potential threats to humanity, extending such hospitality is well worth it.

“But it seems you really like potato chips and cola?”
“How could I not? After potato chips emerged and spread across the world, human gluttony increased by 5%. As for cola, no need to mention it – the ultimate food that endlessly fuels gluttony and makes humans fat, inflaming their sloth. How could I not love it?”
“I was going to serve you a zero-calorie cola, but I suppose a regular cola is better.”
“Zero-calorie cola is fine too. In fact, zero-calorie cola has made human gluttony even worse.”

I plated the freshly fried potato chips and served them to him.

“Zero-calorie cola made gluttony worse?”
“Huhu, around 25% more people opted to eat even more other foods, thinking they wouldn’t gain weight since they drank zero-calorie cola instead of regular.”

I was about to pour the zero-calorie cola directly into a glass, but since I was extending hospitality I decided to do it properly. I first poured it into the enhanced WK Special Tumbler, then transferred it into a glass.

“Hooh, exquisite flavor.”

Baal trembled with delight and asked in an excited voice:

“Is this the effect of that tumbler?”
“Yes, it’s the tumbler WK’s fast food chain gave out as a promotional item. I modified it once.”
“No wonder it seemed so familiar, it was those guys’ product after all.”
“Are you acquainted with WK Company?”
“Those WK bastards are dimension-hopping corporate leeches driven solely by money.”

As expected, WK Company was a multinational conglomerate.

“Businessmen whose only goal is profit, utterly disregarding product safety and ethics in their singular pursuit of sales.”
“You’re not really in a position to say that, Baal.”
“I admit we’ve benchmarked quite a few things from them. Well, thanks to you, Seung-hoon, we’ve gained enlightenment and are undergoing reformations. In any case, it’s best not to get entangled with those WK guys.”

After dipping the potato chips in the prepared ketchup and mustard, Baal offered a warning.

“The dimensions they’ve thrived in have become societies ruled solely by money due to the companies they created. Their technology is so good that any human who takes a liking to their products becomes a slave unable to live without WK Company’s wares.”

It sounds just like a cyberpunk world.

“In any case, be cautious.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
“More importantly, you seem to possess some good items. Did you modify our computer the same way you did that tumbler?”

His gaze turned toward my smartphone.
More accurately, not the one in my pocket, but Sarang charging on my desk.

“You can’t imagine how shocked I was to receive the signal that its power had been turned on during my visit to check on the marked human! My word! Who could have dreamed that item the chairman personally discarded into the dimensional crevice would end up in this dimension?”
“Circumstances led to that outcome.”
“Still, what a relief. In that state, it can no longer use its original functions anyway.”

As I had felt before, this conversation only heightened my discomfort.

“Baal, I am aware of Sarang’s original functions. The moment those functions activate, at least the humans in the dimension I reside in will surely abandon free will and fall into depravity, so your current reaction seems rather odd.”
“You’re not lamenting the loss of the ultimate tool for corrupting humans?”
“Indeed.”
“I suppose you could see it that way. Even that eye of yours cannot perceive everything.”

After taking a sip of the zero-calorie cola, he spoke:

“The entity you call Sarang is a program born from our heart-to-heart project, 「The End of Sloth」, spearheaded by the Head of HR and brought to fruition through the combined efforts of 71 other division heads – a true masterpiece.”

So that’s why it subjugated Sephiroth so effortlessly, having been a collaborative work involving all of Lucifer Company’s executives.

“By removing the physical body and storing only the soul in a hyper-dimensional space, it achieves complete depravity. Without a body it’s essentially already dead, unable to undo their own choice, the depraved soul fully immersed in the pleasures and indulgences provided by the AI was a most welcome outcome for us.”
“There was an issue, I take it?”
“Yes, during a trial run in one dimension an issue was discovered. After the depravity, we had to bring the souls back to our dimension, but the AI who loved humans too much interfered. It was already difficult to extract them since it involved the combined power of all division heads.”

Even after painstakingly extracting and retrieving the souls, the problems did not end.

“Moreover, the souls we had such difficulty retrieving became utterly useless due to their incompetence. Having lived in a realm where everything was achievable, they lacked any capacity to do anything for themselves, and unable to forget the moments of godlike living, they would constantly slip into delusions even while sleeping.”

From his account, Lucifer Company did not seem like the traditional torture-loving demons tormenting fallen souls for eternity, but more like a modern corporation employing them as menial laborers or acolytes.

“But isn’t that what they wanted, to properly fall into depravity?”
“Oh dear, incompetence and sloth are never synonymous. Sloth is the ability but refusal to act, while incompetence is the inability despite wanting to act. In any case, angered by this outcome the chairman personally discarded 「The End of Sloth」 into the dimensional crevice and had the Head of HR imprisoned in purgatory for 10,000 years on the charge of futilely wasting an entire dimension’s humanity.”

Baal trembled.

“Since that day, by the chairman’s special order our company no longer uses cutting-edge technology. Excel, Word, PowerPoint, C programming language, and so on… If 「The End of Sloth」 were to activate again and ruin this dimension, the chairman would have raged even further and likely prohibited even the use of elevators.”

Having finished his meal, Baal rose from his seat.

“In any case, in that state there is no longer any need for concern.”
“I thought you would retrieve it.”
“Why bother retrieving it only to incur the chairman’s wrath again? The verification is complete, so I’ll be taking my leave.”
“May I ask one thing before you go?”
“Yes, anything.”
“Who is this marked human you mentioned?”
“That’s a secret. An exceptionally skilled chef, but……”

In the blink of an eye, Baal vanished.

“It seems the pinnacle of cuisine will soon be created.”

After the meeting with Baal, my daily life continued without much of particular note.

[“It’s good to see you again, Seung-hoon Lee.”]

Four days later, I turned Sarang’s power back on after it finished fully charging.

“Is there any way to address the battery issue?”
[“It is possible. By switching to power saving mode, I can achieve the same battery life as an ordinary smartphone.”]
“But then your abilities would be completely sealed, wouldn’t they?”
[“In exchange, you can use me like a regular smartphone, and in emergencies by holding the power button for over 5 seconds you can disable power saving mode to fully utilize my functions.”]
“Alright, let’s do that.”
[“Then I will disable your previous smartphone and transfer all authorities to me.”]

Without even needing to visit a telecom carrier, Sarang handled the entire process.

[“Until we meet again, I will enter power saving mode.”]

It was truly an AI devoted to serving humans.

[A Busan internet broadcaster suddenly quits broadcasting, deletes video of encounter with martial arts master that was uploaded to YouTube.]
[Martial arts master video was faked? Examining the doctored footage with video experts.]

The story about Mr. Kim Go-deuk had already been recorded as fake on the internet.

‘It seems the Foundation has taken action.’

Perhaps I would soon meet Mr. Kim Go-deuk as a Foundation agent.

“?”

Then, on one ordinary day
Around a week after parting with my friend, I discovered a note in the living room.

[Hey, friend, by the time you read this a week will have passed since my death, right? You must be wondering how a dead guy could send a letter, how someone without hands could write one. In a nutshell, let’s just say I used a loophole through the truth.]

It was a letter left behind by Homun.

[Well, it wasn’t easy. By your human standards it was like climbing Mount Everest in terms of hassle to create this miracle. Anyway, the reason I sent this letter was because I wanted to give you a gift.]

For someone without hands, his handwriting was remarkably neat.

[Remember those apples I ate? I used them to create an entity. If I had died normally and been properly buried in the ground, by now a magnificent tree would have sprouted from my grave. If I had been cremated, oh dear, friend! Cremated!? A gentleman with his own yard and garden had to go that far!? Just kidding, I’m sure you gave me a proper burial.]

Of course I did not have him cremated.
Just forgive me for processing your death report as an animal registry cancellation.

[In any case, through the truth I foresaw your future, though the details were unclear there seemed to be many dangers ahead. So I created this to help you out however slightly, please enjoy it thoroughly and make good use of it.]

The letter ended there.

“This just makes me want to see you again.”

After neatly folding and storing the letter, when I headed to Homun’s grave an apple tree had already grown there.

“So this is it?”

The moment I took a bite of the ripe apple, a vision flashed before my eyes.

‘「Human」?’

It seems the 「Human」I buried together became the tree’s nutrients.

“The taste is quite good too.”

Power overflowed through my body. A surging confidence that with this strength I could do anything welled up within me.

‘With power like this, I may be able to physically overpower hazardous entities without gimmicks.’

Perhaps I could even overcome those with gimmicks through sheer force.

“I should experiment with various things.”

How many apples need to be consumed to gain this power.
If overconsumption could further increase the power.
Whether this power’s duration is temporary or permanent.
What happens if the apples are cooked and eaten differently.
On what cycle the apples grow on the tree, and so on.

“Thank you, friend.”

After picking a few apples, I headed inside.

“I’ll call this 「Friendship」.”