Thumbs Up, Level Up

Chapter 306(2) – Epilogue (Part 2)

Seong Kwang had no idea.

“Please get up. I am only His servant.”

“Oh… How blessed you are to speak such words…”

Little did he know that the God he served was a Great God, known across dimensions. Of course, Seong Kwang revered, admired, and was ready to give of himself to his God. But that was not because the God he followed was powerful. It was simply because they were the first God to reach out to him.

Seong Kwang, too, had a past, having lost his family in the Gate Incident and being left alone. That was how he had ended up serving his God.

He was who he was now thanks to his God.

Right now, he was in a chapel located on one side of his ranch. Standing in front of him were a number of beings belonging to a whole variety of races. Some looked like lobsters, while others had wiggly tentacles. There were also a couple of humans, some who called themselves Elves, and even races like Dwarves and Orcs.

They had all come here to see Seong Kwang.

Saint Seong Kwang!

“A Saint is a person of great distinction, someone who has the same authority as the Pope of a Church. We are truly honored to see you.”

“Indeed. You are the first Saint to appear in a thousand years, so please accept our blessings.”

There were so many beings that the chapel was full in spite of it being rather spacious, and there were at least as many people waiting outside. They came from many dimensions, and they were all here to get to know the first Saint to appear in a millennium.

And they were not just ordinary people: they were all Priests of his God. Some were even Bishops!

The universe was so vast that it was often referred to as the Infinite Three Thousand Great Celestial Worlds. Naturally, even if only the Priests of Seong Kwang’s God were counted, there were still tens of thousands of them throughout all these dimensions.

This put Seong Kwang in a very difficult situation. With so many people coming in, there was no time for personal matters!

“Everyone, be quiet!”

A loud voice rang out from Seong Kwang’s side. It was a tall woman with a well-proportioned, muscular body, who was wearing a business suit: Jung Ji-Byeok.

“Your actions are causing trouble to Seong Kwang.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Seong Kwang’s friend. We defeated the Demon King of the Apocalypse together. I am also the Jungjin director. We are the ones managing Seong Kwang’s schedule.”

At this point, the Priests realized they had overstepped and began to murmur among themselves and apologize.

“Oh, my God! We did not mean to bother you!”

“Ah! How dare we offend the Saint! I beg God’s forgiveness!”

They were speaking nonsense. Ji-Han frowned at the sight of it, but Seong Kwang stepped forward.

“Now, now, Brothers. You need to calm down.”

“Oh!! Our Saint!”

“The Saint speaks!”

By all accounts, these people were proper fanatics. Ji-Byeok did not even know what expression to make as she looked at the crowd of Priests.

“First, let’s pray to our God, Brothers. Praise God!”

‘All of the sudden?’?Ji-Byeok thought.

As she watched in disbelief, the service began and after hours of worship, with the help of Ji-Byeok and the staff of Jungjin, Seong Kwang finally got rid of the Priests, with a promise to attend the cathedral service once a week.

? ? ?

Adam Bronze had gotten into the business of interdimensional trade and new technology development. Working hand in hand with Bi-Ga, they were becoming a gigantic force that could control the planet with all manner of Arcane Engineered goods.

Bi-Ga and Adam were great partners, and at the same time, they helped Ji-Cheok and his company to make a lot of things to enrich the lives of people—starting with the now-famous hair growth product called [Goodbye, Alopecia!] They made all kinds of products, from an energy drink called [Get Back on Your Feet, Warrior] to AI androids whose intelligence was neigh-indistinguishable from that of humans.

Cancer had been conquered, dementia had been eradicated. Cures for incurable diseases like AIDS had been found, and more were on the way. Mankind was no longer plagued by disease, and with all the money he had made, Adam was ready to give some back to Ji-Cheok in return.

?Sky Warlord has arrived in the area of operations.?

“Good. Deploy the Dive Team immediately.”

?The Dive Team is being deployed.?

Africa was widely considered uninhabitable, having been Manaformed on a large scale after the Gate Incident. However, those in the field were well-aware that this was true of Southern Africa and much less so of Northern Africa.

Egypt and its neighboring countries were actually able to keep away the monsters from the Manaformed areas. However, these countries were not well organized, and security was generally poor. The survival of these nations was mostly due to the popularity of the Manaformed hunting grounds nearby.

There were many Hunters who would rather hunt in the field than in a dungeon, and the corpses and loot from monsters found in the Manaforming Forests of Southern Africa provided the revenue that sustained these countries.

This was not to say that the people of these Northern African nations had it easy. There were frequent coups, warlords coming to power, and subsequent civil wars. With Hunters added into that equation, the entire area was naturally chaotic.

Due to the harsh environment, there was no proper birth control, so the population was growing. At the same time, however, it was hard to count the number of people dying, so nobody had a good grasp of the population trends.

These nations suffered terrible damage during the Demon King Invasion. It did not help that the other countries decided not to intervene.

Someone else’s country, someone else’s business.

However, because of Ji-Cheok’s request, Adam had ended up meddling into the affairs here.

“As you know, the Morak regime recently blew up one of our company’s mines, and this is a legitimate process to recover the property. So… Let’s clear that land.”

Adam Bronze had a full view of the ground from the bridge, as many screens turned on around him. His private army of high-level Hunters was just parachuting into the presidential palace of the Morak government.

That nation had changed its name five times in as many years.

The army of the nation, now controlled by the Morak regime, seemed eager to go at it with the army descending upon them from above. However, everyone knew what they actually felt, and they only put up a brave front for mere moments before it crumbled. Most of them scattered away like ants, with no intention of defending their country.

This was what a corrupt country looked like, a nation crumbling like a sandcastle.

Shortly thereafter, Adam found himself looking a man straight in the eye: the leader of the Morak regime.

His gaze was reciprocated by a cold, deathly stare, but Adam was not bothered by it; there was a very good reason why the man was looking at him like that. Adam himself would have had the same look in his eyes had his head been fully separated from the body.

The sight of a head being delivered to him on a platter did not faze Adam in the slightest; he had seen too much of this already. In addition, there was no loss to humanity—the Morak regime’s leader had been a foul-mouthed scumbag who would shoot a child in front of their mother and then shoot the mother as well.

“May the magnificent [GodTube_superstar] bestow his blessings. Evil shall be purified!” Adam shrugged and went on with his business.

The country of Morak went through yet another coup that day, and a new head of state popped up, as it had happened many times in the past years. The people of Morak did not care that their leader had been swept aside, and they were just desperate for their own survival.

After a while, however, they realized that their country was quickly becoming a livable place, thanks to this new leader. As for the fact that Adam’s company had entered the country and benefitted a little from it, that was conveniently overlooked.

“Come on! For the sake of world peace, let’s do this!” Adam exclaimed with a grin.

? ? ?

It had been a year since Ji-Cheok had defeated the Demon King.

‘Wow… time flies.’

A lot had happened since then.

Adam was now the head of the proverbial Shadow Government. He was quite literally running the entire planet, and his top partner was Jung Bi-Ga.

Britain was eventually taken over by the Knights of the Round Table, who were now managing it. The Philippines had come so far in a year that it was not even considered a developing country anymore.

However, the most amazing thing was the amount of interdimensional interaction and trade that was going on.

Naturally, that meant there was a massive update on GodTube.

-See. Humans. I like.

-Human. God. Funny!. Very funny!

-Haha! Donation, give him!

-Kuku. Kieek. Kukikeek!

Some comments made some sense, some did not. Regardless of what he understood from it, however, the fact of the matter was that they all gave him a lot of Likes.

GodTube was attracting audiences from different dimensions!

It was amazing. Ji-Cheok used to be the number one streamer on Earth, but when he factored in the other dimensions, his ranking dropped even out of the top 1,000.

‘Who the hell are these guys ranked higher than me?’

As he looked into that, he realized something amazing. Not only were there plenty of beings above him, there were also plenty of Gods that were ranked lower than him. Much lower, too…like in the 10,000th place…

‘How the hell can a God be that low in the rankings?’

When he saw that even seeing a God livestreaming was not anything special, and mortal humans and other races were very much as active as GodTubers, he realized that this System was a bigger deal than he thought.

Awe was a combination of fear, wonder, and jealousy. It was similar to faith, and it became the power source for the Gods.

Of course, even without that, those beings were powerful, but still…

‘Come to think of it, I do not think those guys became Gods thanks to the System like me. So can they spend their Likes Points as efficiently as I can?’

“Reable, you are not able to spend the Likes the way I do, right?”

Turning away from the screen, he saw the Demon sprawled out on the couch in his broadcast room, giggling as he stared mesmerizingly at the gem in his hand.

Reable was a former God that was under contract to Ji-Cheok. He knew quite a bit about Reable now, including what worlds he ruled and who he actually was.

However, there was one thing he did not know.

‘What is he looking for?’

“At the end of the day, the Likes are just another way to measure faith. The most efficient use of that power varies from God to God. For instance, I can use despair more efficiently than you can.”

Reable chuckled and fiddled with the glowing gem he was holding. From a distance, it looked like a marble, but when he got up close, Ji-Cheok realized that it was in fact an irregular polyhedron with countless faces.

Also, the number of faces changed little by little. There could be five extra faces today and ten faces gone by tomorrow.

Even with Ji-Cheok’s Divine Eye skill, he could not tell what it was, which made that thing feel even stranger.

He had no idea what kind of gem that was. Reable had been happily chewing on it ever since he had defeated the Demon King.

“Hm… That’s just as scary as it sounds.”

“But in the grand scheme of things, I do not think there is anyone who can put their faith to better use than you, Mr. Umji. So you can rest assured!”

“Thanks for the good advice, but what the hell are you chewing on?”

“This?”

Reable held up the irregular polyhedron.

“This is a vault for the heart. It keeps people’s emotions alive.”

“What?”

‘It can preserve emotions?’’

“You can lock up a soul, so why not emotion? This is the kind of object that can do that. The object itself is hard to come by, but the emotion inside is priceless.”

‘Priceless, you say…’

“I don’t see how it is priceless,” Ji-Cheok said.

“This is a luxury for me.”

“A luxury?”

“Yes. I am fascinated by things like this. To a being like me, this is a priceless treasure. It makes me happy just to look at it, something like that?”

“What kind of emotion is inside that is making you happy just looking at it?”

“A will that is pure and strong, unbreakable by anything.”

Reable got up from the couch and sat down, smiling at him.

“You know,” Reable said. “I’ve lived a long life. Very long. And after living for such a long time, I finally found some things that really appeal to me!”

“And you’re saying that those things are emotions, right?”

“That’s correct. They say that emotions are invisible, but to a God like me, emotions are perfectly visible. They are beyond human comprehension, but I can easily keep track of them. Ah, this journey was really great. This time I have seen some of the most wonderful, beautiful emotions I have ever seen in thousands of years,” Reable giggled again.

“Your emotions are good, but Ji-Han’s emotions are something special~ Actually, Mu-Cheok was very good too. Hm… I did not realize there were so many good emotions in this little world!”

Reable looked ecstatic.

‘So that’s what he was looking for. So he went through all that trouble just to…’

“What were you going to do if there weren’t any?” Ji-Cheok asked.

“If there weren't any emotions that I liked?”

“Yes. If there was no one with the emotion that you wanted. What were you going to do then?”

“Well, just like it says in the Bible of Earth. Abraham said, ‘May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?’ Then the God answered, ‘For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it,’“ Reable said with a coy smile on his face. “I wasn’t going to destroy your world if there was even a single person that could provide me with what I wanted.”

“Were you going to destroy the world, if there wasn’t anyone?”

Reable smiled and did not answer. Ji-Cheok sighed and stood up from his seat.

“Where are you going~?”

“I am going to see Ji-Han.”

“Buy me some ice cream when you’re coming back~”

“Alright, alright.”

Ji-Cheok clicked his tongue and left the broadcasting room.

Ha-Na, Ji-Byeok, Seong Kwang, and Mu-Cheok…

One by one, he recalled his team members who worked together to defeat the Demon King. All of them were no longer on Earth. They were all busy, but he would see their faces soon enough.

They had made a pact to meet and dine together once a year.

?Director Ji-Han has arrived and is waiting in the room, Master.?

“Tell him I will be right there.”

Ji-Cheok immediately headed for the elevator, and a moment later, he entered the room.

There, a man sat on a chair, no expression visible on his face. One of his arms was missing, and he had an eye patch covering one of his eyes.

It was Ji-Han.

“You’re still not planning on getting a prosthetic arm?” Ji-Cheok asked.

“I don’t really need one. I have telekinesis to help me. Also, we have not seen each other in a while and the first thing you do is nag me.”

“Of course, I have to nag you. I heard that you haven’t been living by the clock since we defeated the Demon King.”

“Who is spreading such rumors?”

“I heard it from Bi-Ga.”

“Then I will have to have a word with Bi-Ga myself,” Ji-Han smirked.

Ji-Cheok sat down in front of him.

“I haven’t seen you in a while. What’s going on?”

“Nothing much. I just thought I would ask for some help.”

“Help?”

“Yes. I would like you to come with me to this place.”

Ji-Han pulled out a file and handed it to him.

[Time Labyrinth of the Cogwheel Clock]

That was what was written on the file. Ji-Cheok opened it and checked its content.

“This is…”

“This is the place that got me to where I am today. Can you help me?”

With his one remaining eye, he looked at Ji-Cheok.

Ji-Cheok still did not really know who this man actually was. However, that did nothing to change the fact that Ji-Han had helped him in many, many ways.

“Of course.”

‘A new dungeon… New adventures are always welcome. I can’t wait to get some Likes from the video!’

?The End?

Final words from the Author:

Sorry for being late again.

I had more and more things I wanted to write about that I ended up cramming all this stuff into one chapter.

It is all my fault. I apologize again.

I would like to thank the readers for waiting this far.

Thank you very much. Thanks to you, [Thumbs Up, Level up] could reach its final chapter safely.

Um Ji-Cheok will continue to protect Earth as a God and a GodTuber. And he will continue to collect Likes through his livestream!

I wish them a happy future.

Thank you!

I wish you all the best of luck!

-biglight.

1. Not sure how this happened, given that the Demon King and its minions never got to Earth.