In the plaza, Gaia moved her blade with nimble precision, continuously granting those lost souls around her a release from the despair of life.
But for some reason, that bloodlust she had rarely felt in a long time was reigniting now at several times its former intensity.
She had entered this fight with a heavy heart, intending to give these fallen innocents a merciful death.
But with every swing of her blade, a joy of slaughter born from the deepest part of her being began eroding her mind.
Her cerebral cortex started producing dopamine abnormally, and that strange sense of pleasure gradually began corrupting her thoughts.
Just after she cut down another one, Dushi's voice once again appeared in the part of her mind that had already been tinged with an unnatural crimson.
At first, Dushi's voice was drowned in static like a jammed radio signal, but as he kept adjusting, his urgent words finally came through.
"Damn it, those signal waves seem to have noticed me. They're deliberately interfering with communication between me and you."
"Listen, you're in danger. The air here is full of some kind of aerosolized drug and a powder-based catalyst."
"The effect is simple. It stimulates a person's latent potential, but the degree of stimulation is positively correlated with the subject's dopamine secretion levels."
"In moderation, this kind of stimulation would absolutely count as a good thing. But once it goes too far, you'll end up just like these people mutilating themselves, collapsing into total physical breakdown."
A poison whose trigger conditions were almost gentle in their design, one that would draw out hidden potential in small doses but destroy the body in excess, had a unique codename.
Its name was Desire.
Dushi's core trembled unconsciously inside Gaia's cloak.
Though he had no true desires in the human sense, that did not stop him from understanding the concept.
Just as his own self-iteration routines pushed his functions toward an ever more refined state, humans too instinctively pursued certain things.
Appetite and lust were part of their nature.
From his old friend, who had specialized in genetic technology at the end of his life, Dushi knew this deeply.
Desire was rooted in humanity's genes, engraved into humanity's soul, and inseparable from the existence of the species itself.
In some sense, it was desire that had created humanity.
And this poison was clearly exploiting that desire, using dopamine-driven positive feedback to force the human body into progressive overload, until the flesh it infected dissolved itself into a mass of self-destruction amid ultimate pleasure and unbearable agony.
And just as he had judged, many of the believers Gaia had cut down were now collapsing like melting ice, their bodies sloughing into heaps of flesh, exposing bone already stained a strange purple-black.
Seeing this, Gaia understood how dire the situation had become.
She had already felt the abnormal heat building in her body before this, and under the pleasure of slaughter constantly rising in her heart, her flesh had also been growing stronger at a rapid pace.
That alone had already felt strange to her.
Even with her Infinite Growth talent, there was no way she should have improved this quickly in such a short battle.
And as she had grown stronger, the rate of growth that once felt dramatic had already begun to level off.
Now, with Dushi's warning, Gaia understood that she first had to steady her own mind.
With fierce willpower, she resisted the waves of pleasure signals rolling through her brain, trying to clamp down on her urge to kill the way one might drag the brake on an overloaded truck rolling downhill.
But the longsword in her hand had no awareness of Gaia's dangerous state, or perhaps it simply did not care about the condition of its apparent master.
That strange single-edged blade continued sending out trembling waves that agitated Gaia's heart, trying to drive her into killing the purple-haired woman standing on the platform and watching everything like a spectator enjoying a performance.
Fortunately, Gaia's earlier dance of slaughter had forcefully suppressed the will of the remaining believers to keep fighting, making their primal fear, just as fundamental as desire, restore a trace of clarity to them. For a moment, they no longer dared charge forward.
Some of them even began to think.
There were only a few spots in Paradise anyway. Was it really worth risking their lives for it?
The Perfect Child, however, had already realized that Gaia was resisting the poison called Desire.
The interest that had briefly faded from her flared up again at once.
Watching Gaia struggle to suppress the desire to kill within herself, the woman lightly ran her tongue over her lips, and a teasing smile appeared on her ethereally beautiful face.
What a lovely little thing.
And deciding not to waste Gaia's efforts, she opened those alluring scarlet lips once more and addressed the believers who had already begun to retreat.
"Brave and loyal ones, do not fear the demon's brutality. The light of the Perfect Lord shines upon you."
"Look. Through your efforts, the demon is already exhausted."
"Do not be afraid. If you die in a battle of devotion, then your souls will rise into the beautiful lost paradise."
As soon as she finished speaking, she swept one hand toward the sky, and radiant light suddenly flared between heaven and earth.
The believers looked up and saw that beneath what had been the dark curtain of night, a dazzling gate of light had now appeared.
Soft golden radiance flowed from within it, and the figures of those believers they had just watched die flickered among crystal palaces and jade towers beyond the gate.
Was that not the very paradise of happiness they had longed for?
Bathing in the warm and gentle light like a spring breeze, the believers thought of their miserable lives up until now, and tears streamed from their eyes.
Had they not abandoned everything, scourged themselves, and served the Perfect Lord with all their strength precisely so they could enter that paradise now standing so close before them?
The Cult of the Perfect Lord had not lied to them. The lost paradise said to stand beyond the six rings behind the Golden Throne of the Master of Mankind truly existed.
The attackers who had already begun to hesitate, as well as the believers whose corruption had been shallower and who had remained farther away without joining the attack, were now filled with the same powerful desire.
Fight to the death, and then let the soul ascend to the lost paradise of the Perfect Lord.
Now utterly convinced that they could enter paradise, the lost souls no longer had any chance of rational thought left.
They screamed, their eyes blazing with torch-like violet-red light, while the desires in their hearts burned fiercer and fiercer.
Driven by their yearning for final happiness, their bodies were pushed to the absolute limit.
As their skin began to melt away, countless figures like fiends from hell, wrapped in sloughing flesh, hurled themselves madly at Gaia.
And now the Desire within her was trying to dissolve her, while the sword in her hand and the ecstasy in her mind were both feeding her urge to kill.
Gaia seemed to have been pushed into a dead end.
(End of Chapter)
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