Relying on perception magic, I teleported and landed before the opened main gate.
Beyond the gate, the cityscape of the capital spread out.
There were no traces of war; fine buildings spoke of a prosperous life.
However, there was something strange.
Not a single one of the people who should be in this city was in sight.
The streets were deserted, unnaturally devoid of signs of life.
As for the whereabouts of the populace, that was already known.
They seemed to have gathered in the central part of the capital.
Though what they were doing was unclear, miasma swirled there.
Despite a premonition of dread, I teleported there.
And I lost for words at the scene before me.
Hundreds of thousands of commoners were prostrate in unison.
They rubbed their foreheads against the ground, voicing their gratitude.
What the people surrounded and worshipped was a tower, radiant and golden.
It loomed as if to disturb the harmony of the capital.
I fixed my gaze on the golden tower.
On its surface, human faces and limbs rose to the surface.
Were they expressions of agony, or of pleasure?
Their features were twisted into expressions hard to discern.
At the front row of the tower, several commoners rose from their prostrate positions.
They clung to the tower as though drawn by some invisible force, and were swallowed whole.
Before long, they emerged on the tower's surface as part of it—incorporated, indistinguishable from the structure itself.
With the front ranks gone, the crowd edged forward little by little.
Then the new front ranks were devoured in exactly the same manner.
It was an endless, mechanical repetition.
Without so much as a glance in my direction, the people offered themselves up. There was no question they had lost their minds.
What in the world is this...?
I stood speechless at the nauseating spectacle.
The tower itself was the false god.
The otherworldly miasmic energy it radiated was unmistakably the same presence I had sensed before. The apex beast of the outer world had carried with it a divinity—a convincing majesty that commanded reverence. This was something else entirely.
I felt a gaze from the tower.
Its emotions were unreadable.
It was vague, detached—as though merely observing.
At the very least, I detected no hostility.
The false god intended to devour every last person here.
I had a rough idea why.
It was consuming the people's desires and worship as a whole. By absorbing them entirely, it aimed to achieve a state approaching spiritual unity with its flock.
Presently, the false god is an entity that could be called the collective consciousness of countless souls.
Conversely, that countless multitude could be interpreted as the false god itself.
The people absorbed into that tower seek their own tranquility.
For them, tranquility equates to the survival of the false god.
It was, in essence, synonymous with defeating the Demon King and seizing victory.
The prayers of those taken in functioned as the will of the world.
This resulted in an irrational strengthening of the false god.
Of course, countless others not present here also worshipped the false god, yearning for the Demon King's demise.
An unprecedentedly irrational force was actively at work.
It was a strategy born from a thorough understanding of how the world's will operates.
By hosting the source of power—people's prayers—within itself, it manipulated them for its own convenience.
It must have repeated this same process in the past.
The false god must have accumulated its strength this way.
(Perhaps it's no longer accurate to call it "false" anymore).
The opponent was on an entirely different dimension than before.
It felt as though the will of the world itself had bared its fangs.
The idea of confronting it as a mere individual like myself felt almost blasphemous.
It was, in truth, an act of rebellion against a god.
"—Even so, I will see this through."
I draw the heirloom sword hanging at my waist.
I pointed my blade at the Golden Tower.
The day I emerged from the Valley of the Dead, I had made my resolve.
For the sake of the world's peace, I would not choose my means.
If necessary, I would even slay a god.
Becoming an eternal evil was my solemn duty.
If left alone, the false god would eventually devour the world itself.
In other words, it was an existence that would lead peace to its end.
Here, it absolutely had to be destroyed.
Having steeled my resolve, I began my approach toward the Golden Tower.