The Tutorial Is Too Hard

[You know that you shouldn’t use explosions here right?]

“Kea-ek!”

Before I knew it, Ahbooboo and the frog approached me to question my decision. Well, I didn’t really mean to use an explosion here either.

[I know.]

Who do you think I am? I already knew that the enemy should be obliterated with no collateral damage to spectators.

Huge, scaled monsters rushed towards the tower, their drool splattering all over. From a distance, it looked like a fast-paced herd of moving cattle. Very fast-paced. I would be able to block the door, but I didn’t have enough time to climb the tower and attack.

Thinking about how to get rid of them, I condensed a ball of mana over the head of the first monster.

Bang!

The monster roared as its body got flattened into a sheet. Hm, this was nice. Let’s just use this method.

“Ahbooboo.”

[What am I supposed to say? In this case, it’s better to be quiet than to say something witty. Please turn back to the field.]

I heeded his advice silently. As I stared at the burning corpses, the people began to start talking in hushed voices.

[Okay, that’s enough. Now go up to the fifth floor without saying anything.]

“Right away?”

[Yes.]

“Without saying anything? But wouldn’t it be a good idea to say something? ‘Now you can rest assured, you can be safe, or you can take this opportunity to give me more faith.’”

[Belief is what you get when someone trusts you unconditionally. Come on, move.]

For now, I heeded Ahbooboo’s words and headed back to the steps of the towers. While climbing the stairs, I questioned Ahbooboo again about whether it was a good idea to leave the scene.

[Oh, it’s fine. Warrior, do you remember the doctrine of our sect? It’s universal equality. However, you’re above the others as the founder and chief of the sect.]

Ahbooboo went on.

[You can afford to take your superiority for granted. You have similar features to humans, but you don’t have to act like humans.]

After arriving on the fifth floor, I looked out the window. The people below looked flabbergasted.

If they’d seen me in combat, perhaps they would’ve looked at me with disgust rather than admiration.

[Degree of Faith: 47]

Luckily, the degree of faith soared. Before the monsters appeared, it was only 17 and I’d felt dumbfounded that all my hard work could only get me 17 followers.

[I’ll be the one who comforts, motivates and inspires people, so you can stay on the fifth floor.]

“Okay.” I agreed to Ahbooboo’s plan. And that’s how I got trapped on the fifth floor.

* * * * * *

[Degree of Faith: 161]

I was bored to death. For the past few days, I’d been sitting idly on the fifth floor. Even though I played with magic, time still didn’t pass any faster. I was beginning to lose my sanity.

Looking at the faith count, I lamented over the long road to 500 followers and the fact that I’d be stuck here for a few more days. If it weren’t for monsters coming every evening, I would’ve been stuck in this room for the whole day.

Ahbooboo had requested that I show my face as little as possible, so, when I was dealing with monsters, I was forced to defeat them as fast as possible before getting sent back to the fifth floor.

It definitely isn’t easy to imitate God. Come to think of it, what god would meet their own sect to socialize with them? With nothing to do all day, I’d imagine that the daily lives of gods were unimaginably dull.

Rolling around on the floor, I realized that I wasn’t bored because I couldn’t meet people often, but rather because I had nothing to do. I mean, it wasn’t like that I wasn’t used to being isolated from the rest of society; the waiting room did just that.

In order to maintain my reputation with the people, Ahbooboo asked me to reduce my presence as much as possible. Thanks to this, I was stuck in a situation where I couldn’t make any noise or appear in front of people.

Naturally, I wasn’t allowed to train either; this was the reason for my boredom. I hated having nothing to do.

While the other people were living happily, I was miserably stuck in the fifth floor like Rapunzel. The hours where I was allowed to leave my lonely tower were far and few.

An opportunity to go out came when the food in the tower gradually began to decrease. A new forest had spawned outside the tower, so I went in with Ahbooboo and the frog to get meat and fruit. As we moved ahead, I became increasingly immersed in the doctrines Ahbooboo recited.

[Warrior.] Ahbooboo called out.

“Yeah?”

[I heard it from passers-by on the way here. There are some other towers a little ways from here.]

“Other towers?”

[Yes, similar to a pagoda. There are seven towers in total. The other towers have approximately the same number of people as us. Above all, they have one common belief.]

“What belief?”

[That an apostle will come down and take care of them.]

Ah, the method to clear this stage suddenly became obvious.

“I think we should preach our sect’s doctrines to other towers.”

If we were lucky, the degree of faith that was obtainable from each other tower ranged from 200 to 300. In order to get 500 believers, I would have to gain faith from people at other towers. I wasn’t sure if this was the right way to approach things, but it seemed better than doing nothing all day.

Fuck, this was going to be difficult, and it made me annoyed. We’d have to grapple with other sects over believers in other towers. Although we looked like a real sect with the help of Ahbooboo, our opponents were still real apostles. I wished this could’ve been a stage where I only had to defeat seven other apostles in combat.

[Let’s focus on our tower for now.]

Perhaps I was wrong. It might be better to avoid the wrath of apostles.

[Why don’t you try getting more believers from somewhere else? If there are more people, there will naturally be more religious people.]

“No,” I answered. While Ahbooboo’s plan was enticing, it wouldn’t work.

[Why?]

“There’s no one else on this planet besides those who are inside these towers.”

The planet was strangely small. I was unsure if there were any reasons for this, or if there were only a limited number of people because it was a stage.

[You sound as if you’ve looked around the entire planet.]

“I haven’t, but I can feel it.”

[What?]

“I can feel it. There aren’t that many people.”

[Huh?]

“Nevermind. It’s nothing,” I said and ignored Ahbooboo’s onslaught of questions.

The feeling I was talking about was so faint that it was hard to be sure. Having been trapped in a narrow place for so long, I’d initially thought I had a problem with a sense, but now, I’m unsure. It was a strange mix of power and alertness.

As the degree of faith increased, the clearer this strange force felt. Did the rising religious faith of the sect affect me, the founder? Or was it because of the people’s faith in me that I gained this power to deal with monsters faster?

The force was a challenge to describe, and I wasn’t quite sure of how to use it. It made my chest feel stuffy and gave me the urge to go and hunt down a monster. I decided that I would catch a monster alive and try to use my power tomorrow. I thought it’d be a good idea to use sleeping pills to calm the monster.

* * * * * *

[Degree of Faith: 340]

Fortunately, the degree of faith rose to 340. For now, it seemed like there wouldn’t be any issue reaching 400.

“Grr….” a monster growled from the corner of the tower. Its mouth was muzzled with a rope preventing it from making too much sight.

I found it to be quite an amusing sight. Ah, was I possibly a sadist? I felt schadenfreude looking at the pitiful monster groaning in panic and struggling to escape.

I took a sleeping potion out of my inventory and poured it down the monster’s throat. Well, I attempted to anyway. The monster put up quite the struggle and from the amount of potion that spilled onto the floor, I was unsure whether the sleeping potion would take effect.

Luckily, the monster’s struggles gradually died down, and when it stopped moving, I picked it up and moved it to the center of the room.

I prayed that I would achieve significant results from my experiment. This divine power I felt was becoming clearer by the day. The more people looked up to me, the powerful it became. But, Ahbooboo and the frog didn’t feel such power at all, even though they were also worshipped by the people. I didn’t know if this was because I was the founder of the sect, and hence, gained strength, or for some other reason.

The greater this power gets, the more familiar it feels.

It’s the power I felt at the last moment when I was fighting the apostles who had made replicas of me on the tournament stage.

I lifted the monster’s arm.

<Infringement of control>

The power allowed me to manipulate other organism’s bodies and power. Thanks to that power, I’d be able to win in combat against apostles, but I couldn’t figure out much more about my ability. I didn’t know what kind of power it was, and I didn’t know how to use it. It was just something I happened to find in a moment of crisis.

I tore off the monster’s arm. The strong force makes a huge rip, but the sleeping monster remained unresponsive.

Even after repeated practice attempts of trying to use my newly found power, I wasn’t able to make much progress, and in the end, gave up.

I defined the force as a power that I wasn’t able to fully understand or use yet, but I was determined that there’d be a day when I could fully control this power.

The monster’s muscles were visible through the torn skin. My eyes shifted to the spot where blood was spurting out from. I lit a fire inside the arm, and the body was soon engulfed in flames. I focused, controlling the fire so as to not let it spread to the rest of the room.

This power, which was supposed to be a kind of divine force obtained through faith, had the ability to violate control.

Was this the supreme ability of the gods?