Light burst.

Only this wasn’t the usual bright light. It was ink-black darkness.

My heart dropped.

Something had definitely gone wrong.

I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see a thing.

Thick darkness, a chill in the air, a dreadful silence closed in around me.

I snapped to attention.

Most of the gods I’d met so far had been simple, good-natured souls.

It felt like I was being punished for taking the gods lightly.

“Um, excuse me… is anyone there?”

I said it carefully.

I’d need to see something before I could come up with a plan, but there was no answer.

This had never happened before.

I didn’t even know how I could use force in the world of the gods.

I was still alive; I had no business picking a fight with gods.

Click.

Just then I heard the clear, sharp sound of a lighter.

It sounded like one of those famous Zippos.

Fwoosh.

A small flame flared about ten meters ahead.

And then a man’s silhouette came into view.

He was sitting in a chair, wearing a long black leather coat.

His legs were crossed, and I couldn’t see his face for his long hair.

I didn’t know what his deal was, but he had a certain style.

A cigar caught light.

The man drew on it long and slow, his face still hidden.

“Hooooo.”

He exhaled, long and slow.

My God!

The aroma that reached my nose was out of this world.

I don’t smoke, but it was an amazing smell.

The kind of scent you could never experience in the human world.

“Who are you?”

He was definitely a god.

I’d made a request, and an answer had definitely come.

But he wasn’t like the gods I knew.

The dim shape I could make out in the glow of the cigar looked like an assassin or a conspirator out of a movie.

Something about this place was seriously off.

For all I knew, even the world of the gods had its hit men.

I watched him, tense.

His face was definitely Western.

I couldn’t place him.

I’d definitely asked for a god who was good with computers, but the one who showed up was all atmosphere and no explanation.

Hiss.

The cigar burned down, and the light went out.

A long time passed in nothing but silence.

Goose bumps crawled all over me, and I tensed up.

I didn’t know how to get back to the human world on my own.

Until now, I’d always slipped out of the gods’ world on my own once a contract was done and both sides were satisfied.

But today I seemed to have met my match.

“Bushkov Vladimir Dmitrievich.”

Russian? Eastern European?

This immortal seemed to be a Slav of Russian stock.

The moment I asked who he was, he’d given me his name, quick as you like.

“Are… are you a god?”

My voice shook.

“Perhaps.”

Damn it! A god’s a god—what’s perhaps supposed to mean!

This wasn’t a hidden-picture puzzle; this god was full of secrets.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

And then he went on.

“For me?”

“I thought you’d have no choice but to call me.”

He seemed to have some unusual ability.

“I’m disappointed.”

There was a sneer in his voice.

“Wh-what about?”

“You were slower to gather points than I expected. Unlike the other humans.”

Other humans?

I started to suspect there were other traders besides me.

The secret conversation went on in the dark with a god whose face I couldn’t even see.

But there was something odd about what he was saying.

I’d been racking up plenty of karma points lately, and he was saying it wasn’t enough.

“It’s dark—could you turn on a light, please?”

Nobody would feel welcome in a place like this.

“…Put up with it. This is our first deal. I can’t trust you.”

There was something strange about this god.

I asked him to turn on a light, and he answered with nonsense.

“You’re an immortal, aren’t you? Doesn’t the world of the immortals need people to trust each other if it’s going to have a bright future?”

“A fool, then.”

Whoa! Now he was calling me a fool.

An open provocation.

“Who on earth are you!”

My voice rose a notch.

My nerve was growing, bit by bit.

“Bushkov Vladimir Dmitrievich.”

“Not your name—your affiliation! Did you come out of the Zeus Cup? Are you self-made? Or are you a day laborer?”

I threw in everything I knew.

He was a Western god, so I mentioned Zeus.

“Zeus… a name that brings bad luck. Heh heh.”

Someone who dared call Zeus bad luck.

Only then did it hit me.

The black light when I was summoned.

And that insult to a good god.

“A-an evil god!”

My heart pounded tight in my chest.

“An evil god… heh heh. Let me introduce myself properly. I am Vladimir, a god of darkness who loves dark karma points.”

“Ah!”

I trembled even as I gaped.

I’d been summoned to the realm of the evil gods, the one that even had loan sharks.

And I’d finally found a use for the dark karma points that had been bugging me.

“Don’t be scared. I’m not like the others who hunger for human souls.”

“H-hunger for souls?”

“The humans who kill like madmen or pull off massive frauds—most of them have sold their souls.”

Right—there are plenty of humans who aren’t human at all.

“I’ll give you a tip. People who’ve sold their souls have dead eyes.”

“What?”

“The ones your people call rotten-pollack eyes are mostly people who’ve sold their souls to their desires. Think of it as an evil god having come down into them. That’s how they earn karma points.”

“Ah! I see.”

It clicked right away.

I’d seen it on TV now and then: no light at all in the eyes of vicious criminals or pieces-of-shit politicians.

So it was true: a soul that’s awake shows first in the eyes.

“How much computer skill do you want?”

“Teach me whatever you’re able to. I’ll make it worth your while.”

The gods of darkness, the ones called evil gods, were after points too.

A merchant doesn’t pick his customers by their character.

Neither do I.

“Heh. A fearless human. Do you know what this contract means right now?”

“No idea.”

“Dark karma points are… a kind of deposit.”

“A deposit?”

The gods sure lived complicated lives.

Maybe because he was an evil god, he clearly didn’t trust anyone easily.

“Dark karma points are the first condition for summoning the gods of darkness.”

“If all I’ve got is the deposit, I can’t trade for abilities?”

“Heh heh. No. You’re overflowing with delicious points. The only problem was the deposit. But now you’ve met the deposit.”

I took that to mean I’d done a fair amount of bad stuff.

I heard someone swallow in the dark.

“Don’t we trade with dark karma points?”

“Those are low grade. Cheap stuff from humans who’ve sold their souls. Not pure.”

“Then…”

“You give me your karma points. Those fresh, shining points!”

This god of darkness was after my good karma points.

For the first time, his eyes glinted in the dark.

I could tell his breathing had gotten a little rough, too.

He was excited.

That god.

At the same moment, my heart went cold.

The fear and strange nerves I’d felt a minute ago dulled.

Heh. Now I’d caught him.

This wasn’t my first time doing business with gods, and he’d taken me for a sucker.

“I’ll decline. Politely.”

“Wh-what!”

Seeing the god thrown off balance, I felt a slow calm flow through my blood.

Yes, that’s the stuff.

Since when had I tiptoed around gods?

I’m Jang Tae-san, head of the Divine Realm’s Points Exchange!

“Didn’t you say my dark karma points were the deposit for making contracts with the gods of darkness?”

I dropped my voice low.

“That’s right! So make a contract with me. The FSB! At the Russian Federal Security Service, they called me the god of hackers. NASA, the NSA, GCHQ, the MSS—there wasn’t an internet defense among all the world’s secret services that I couldn’t crack! I even know the nuclear launch codes! Trust me. I’ll give you the power to rule the internet!”

So that’s why he’d laid the atmosphere on so thick.

The names of secret intelligence agencies from all over the world came pouring out.

The KGB was the predecessor of the Russian Federal Security Service.

I could tell he’d been a hotshot hacker there.

But the world had changed.

“With those skills?”

I fired off a challenge.

“What! My skills are still the best there are!”

“Do you know blockchain technology?”

“What? Blockchain?”

Vladimir’s voice wavered.

I could clearly picture my customer(?) getting flustered.

“Then how about Bitcoin?”

“…What’s that!”

“Do you know that AI discovers stars in space on its own? Can you build the driving software for a self-driving car?”

“What are you talking about! Nothing like that’s been developed yet! I’ve gone through every latest version, and there’s nothing!”

Right.

In 2008, the smartphone craze hasn’t even started yet.

The gods clearly didn’t know the future either.

I had the upper hand.

“Are you sure? Can you take responsibility for that? Or can you promise to give up being a god and be reborn as a dog?”

I pushed hard.

“…”

Vladimir, the god of darkness, shut his mouth.

I’d lived all the way to 2020.

Internet and computer know-how had advanced by the day since 2008.

It’s an age when phones even come with personal assistants.

With nothing but scraps of what I knew, I’d backed a genius hacker into a corner.

“Mind if I turn on a light?”

“H-how could you possibly!”

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

With the strong party and the weak party swapped, I had calm to spare.

Vladimir had underestimated me.

I’m the man who once jumped a tree into the gods’ world.

I focused my energy.

And, wishing hard, I summoned an object.

Fwaaash!

Suddenly light burst out.

The big glow-in-the-dark wizard’s crystal ball Team Leader Yu Se-ra had bought to decorate the office.

It came through with the summons and poured out blue light without holding back.

And then I could see the space and the person in it.

“Whoa? What is all this!”

I was completely stunned.

(End of Chapter 119)