The devotee—now possessing a pair of pristine, completely optimized legs down to the tips of his toes—stood straight up out of his wheelchair, unleashing a manic, booming roar of pure ecstasy.
Thick streams of tears were hemorrhaging down his face as he wept in absolute religious delirium, his tongue extended far past his lips as his entire vessel vibrated with an intense, unhinged surge of pure euphoria.
Gi Junghyuk found himself fundamentally incapable of tearing his gaze away from the grotesque, deeply unsettling, yet undeniably real footage.
To categorize an anomaly of this caliber as a mere cinematic fabrication was an insult to his own tactical intellect; the raw, unvarnished texture of the video data lacked any markers of digital alteration.
Furthermore, the chaotic, organic nature of the hidden surveillance footage strongly verified its empirical authenticity.
‘No…… wait. This is incorrect.’
His corporate logic re-anchored itself, frantically constructing a defensive hypothesis to neutralize the shock.
It was entirely within the realm of probability that the Exalted Church organization had deliberately engineered this specific ‘leaked footage’ script—utilizing advanced, military-grade digital alteration tools to manufacture an artificial miracle—before systematically distributing the asset through restricted channels to entice high-value Espers into their perimeter.
It was a standard, high-efficiency psychological gambit designed to accelerate recruitment.
Yes. That was the singular logical explanation that preserved the laws of nature.
The organization had explicitly fabricated the miracle to deploy it as a strategic recruitment tool.
There was no room for debate.
Just as a wave of intense irritation flared up in his chest over the transparent deception, the video file cut sharply, the perspective switching to an entirely alternate data log.
[It is too…… it is too excruciating, Cult Leader. Please…… please, I beg of you…… grant me salvation…… deliver me from the fire…….]
The alternate file path initialized immediately.
This time, the visual array captured an entirely different initiate—one whose physical frame was structurally intact, yet visibly undergoing a profound biological crisis.
The skin covering the man’s exposed face, throat, and wrists was violently mapped with a network of bulging, dark-crimson and deep-violet veins that pulsed erratically against his flesh.
It was a classic, undisputed clinical marker: an Esper whose internal metrics were accelerating into a terminal, pre-blowout threshold.
The Cult Leader remained predictably non-verbal.
He merely looked down at the agonizing target for a fraction of a second before extending both arms.
His pale, impeccably smooth hands smoothly bypassed the target’s perimeter, pulling the thrashing devotee entirely into his personal space.
He locked the man into a total, unyielding embrace—resembling a benevolent sovereign physically cradling a dying citizen.
And at that exact coordinate, the anomaly struck.
The highly volatile, dark veins tracing the initiate’s skin began to systematically dissolve into nothingness, as if the underlying cellular corruption were being wiped clean by an invisible eraser.
The violent, bloodshot hue saturating his corneas instantly receded, his fractured, hyper-ventilating respiratory pattern smoothly aligning back to an optimized, healthy baseline.
The moment his physical metrics achieved absolute stabilization, the cured Esper stared blankly down at his own hands, letting out a sudden, high-pitched laugh that rapidly devolved into pure, unhinged mania.
Shaking with ecstatic relief, he dropped his frame onto the floor, pressing his forehead hard against the marble as he screamed ragged prayers of worship toward his savior.
As if triggered by a binary command, the remaining congregation instantly mirrored the gesture, the entire hall dissolving into a wave of absolute, terrifying religious hysteria.
It was a flawless visual study in crowd psychology—a chilling display of a collective consciousness entirely consumed by fanatical madness.
Before Gi Junghyuk could formulate an analytical counter-hypothesis, the video data hit its terminal line and abruptly terminated, leaving the screen completely blank.
Staring fixedly at the dark reflection of his own visage in the unlit glass, Gi Junghyuk let out a long, controlled breath.
A microscopic twitch near the corner of his eye was the singular indicator that the visual payload had successfully compromised his psychological defenses.
He systematically regulated his respiration, forcing his heartbeat back to corporate parameters.
‘Allowing myself to be emotionally manipulated by a thoroughly orchestrated religious fraud would be an absolute failure of intellect. I merely intercepted an incredibly unpleasant, highly fabricated asset; erasing the data line from my cognitive cache is the only logical response.’
He manipulated the manual toggle, cutting the power to the secondary electronic tablet before aggressively pushing the hardware into the furthest corner of his massive marble desk.
His features instantly relapsed into their standard, unreadable corporate mask as he pulled a fresh stack of contracts into his field of vision, refocusing his cognitive bandwidth entirely on business analytics.
Exactly thirty minutes passed in absolute silence.
Midway through auditing a high-priority financial balance sheet, Gi Junghyuk’s eyes completely independent of his conscious will drifted back to the absolute perimeter of his desk—locking directly onto the dark, dormant tablet.
“…….”
If the visual data were a mathematically verified fabrication, why did his optical receptors refuse to maintain their detachment?
He found himself entirely unable to parse his own biological reactions.
For an S-rank corporate operator who had never once permitted his emotional baseline to fluctuate throughout his career, dedicating precious cognitive cycles to a low-grade cult asset was an absurd breakdown of protocol.
It was a thoroughly ridiculous, pathetic display.
He let out a sharp, derisive scoff at his own expense, yet his eyes remained rigidly anchored to the device.
As the silence stretched on, the battle of wills reached its inevitable conclusion—and Gi Junghyuk was the one who sustained the absolute defeat.
Reaching across the desk, his hand reclaimed the tablet, his features twisting into an expression of profound self-disgust as his finger manually initialized the file once more.
The opening sequence flared back into existence.
He watched the data play out, entirely entranced, cycling the video file on a continuous, uninterrupted loop.
During the initial rotations, his conscious mind remained fixated on the raw, empirical terror of the consecutive miracles.
But as the footage looped for the tenth time, a jarring realization crystallized within his consciousness: his focus had completely decoupled from the cured devotees.
He was staring exclusively at the Cult Leader.
More specifically, he was hyper-fixating on a target whose face remained entirely obscured by the camera angle.
The individual within the vestments had not uttered a single syllable throughout the entire recording, yet he possessed an almost magnetic structural pull that made look away an excruciating task.
It wasn’t merely the tactical utility of his miraculous output that commanded attention; it was a profound, unquantifiable aura of absolute sanctity that radiated from his very silhouette.
Though there were no visible energetic emissions caught by the lens, the intrinsic weight of his presence felt entirely non-human.
Gi Junghyuk’s eyes pinned themselves to the singular piece of bare skin exposed to the camera: the Cult Leader’s hand.
It was a completely flawless, unblemished hand, completely devoid of a single scar, blemish, or cellular defect.
The smooth, elegant curve of the metacarpal bone transitioned into long, perfectly straight fingers that radiated a level of pristine structural beauty that was borderline offensive.
A sudden, unprecedented impulse tore through his mind—an intense, near-violent curiosity to uncover the exact facial features hidden beneath that hood.
“Completely unhinged.”
Gi Junghyuk’s jaw clenched, his features tightening into a harsh, deeply irritated mask.
To harbor a desperate, hyper-fixated curiosity regarding the face of a common, extremist cult leader was proof of absolute psychological degradation. His prolonged exposure to S-rank psychic corruption had finally succeeded in inducing a severe, structural breakdown of his sanity.
There was no alternate explanation.
