Chapter 107: Burning the Palace of Pleasure
After striking down Casios the Eternal, Hikigaya Hachiman's sword—ablaze with roaring golden flames—did not lose its momentum.
It locked directly onto the projection of the Evil God.
The golden fire erupted into searing lightning, grinding the surrounding pink dust into nothingness and purifying the filth in a brilliant conflagration.
Casios was cleaved in two from head to toe. His soul endured the ultimate agony as it was reduced to ash, twisting and deforming in the golden heat. This cleansing power extended to the [Mother God of Lust], causing the projected hands that had gripped Casios to crumble inch by inch.
Gojo Satoru glimpsed the true form hidden beneath the seductive, depraved power, and it was nauseating. The delicate hands, which moments ago looked like those of a young maiden, suddenly turned into withered, corpse-spotted claws before being severed. Instead of blood, a putrid, meat-like slurry oozed from the stumps.
Under the destructive influence of [Faith Energy], the enchanting dreamscape constructed by the deity's power collapsed.
The human harps and other horrors dissolved into illusions.
The seductive silhouette writhed in a torment even more severe than what Casios had suffered; because her essence was closer to the source of this "sinful" power, the [Faith Energy] reacted with even greater violence, multiplying the pain several-fold.
No deity, high or low, could withstand being roasted by refined Faith.
This wasn't just a minor skirmish.
Hachiman had tapped into the four captured statues within him, further extracting and refining Faith Energy. At his current output, he could sustain this high-intensity combat for at least five minutes—far longer than an Ultraman's timer.
The projection of the Master of Lust was completely blindsided.
Everything had defied its expectations: its favored pawn was truly dead, and more importantly, it realized it had been lured out into a trap.
Even the divine will hadn't imagined a mortal would dare defy it, let alone possess the power to wound it.
Panicked at becoming the hunted, the deity chose to self-detonate the projection. This would cost a significant portion of its core essence but was the only way to escape the unseen barriers that prevented these four "wills" from fully manifesting in the human world.
"This boy cannot be allowed to live!"
The projection abandoned its form, melting into a heap of terrifying, geometric flesh.
Its danger level spiked. If looking at the previous form threatened to blind Gojo's Six Eyes, this new horror made every hair on his body stand on end.
The tentacles of raw meat lunged toward Hachiman and Gojo, the air temperature skyrocketing toward 200°C.
"Don't even think about it!"
Hachiman saw through the move. The deity was willing to sacrifice a fragment of its essence to wipe them out while its true self remained safe in its own realm.
But Hachiman exploded with golden radiance, bathing the area in holy light. Under this sacred glow, the evil dissolved like snow in a furnace. The depravity of the Master of Lust vanished, replaced by a roaring fire in which no darkness could survive.
Hachiman reached out, catching the detonating fragments of evil energy. He crushed them together like a confectioner molding candy, freezing the essence into a crystalline purple marble.
This act completely nullified the suicide blast.
"If you want to chase Geto Suguru, go now. I have to handle this," Hachiman told Gojo.
Without Hachiman's psychic abilities and Faith Energy, even someone as strong as Gojo would struggle to permanently kill these entities.
In this world, much like the Warp, a daemon "killed" in reality isn't truly dead; it must be pursued to its source or burned away by the Emperor's Wrath.
Gojo watched as Hachiman used the purple marble as a tracking device. Hachiman found a quiet spot and crushed the stone. He didn't consume it to gain the deity's power—though he could have—because his goal was the total eradication of the four gods who had hidden away for a thousand years.
The crushed marble acted as a key. Hachiman tore open a rift in the pink mist, revealing a passage saturated with a fragrance so thick it was borderline toxic. He donned a psychic mask to filter the air and leaped in.
He didn't forget to seal the passage behind him.
He wasn't afraid of getting lost; he carried the honor of the Blood Angels and the sharpest edge of the Empire.
To see evil and not fight it was an insult to his glory.
Hachiman arrived in the Divine Realm of the Master of Lust. It was composed of three massive concentric rings, each glowing with different, garish colors.
The center was a concentrated core of depravity. Each ring was as vast as a continent, radiating a filth far more potent than what he had felt on Earth.
Hachiman looked down at the scenes within the rings. It was an eyesore of debauchery—the [Ring of Indulgence]. It reminded him of the pleasure palaces of Slaanesh in the Warp. The Master of Lust treated its realm like a playground open to all races, where no one could pass through without succumbing to greed or lust.
He saw thousands of followers engaged in a "shameless assembly," a literal "sweet" blasphemy that could break even a battle-hardened soldier. The other rings seemed to represent Greed and Vanity, fueled by the distilled desires of those trapped within.
These followers had known only pleasure for a thousand years. It was time they learned the meaning of pain.
Floating in the air, Hachiman raised both hands toward the three rings. Between his palms, a sphere of fire as bright as the sun began to coalesce.
"Now... I shall make you...
Feel pain!"
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