Chapter 88: A Mockery of a God is Still a Monster
Her colossal form convulsed violently.
A pair of fleshy wings erupted from her back, flapping with a desperate, clumsy rhythm that stirred only a gust of foul, stagnant air.
"Heh... heh..."
The Lady of the Castle's hissing was a garbled mess of syllables, a sound torn between a furious roar and a mournful wail.
A storm of cursed artifacts descended upon her, but they were like pebbles tossed into the sea, vanishing into her bulk without a trace.
The faces of the other players grew grim. They doubled down, pushing their cursed items to their absolute limits, but it was no use. Even when they managed to inflict a wound, the gash would seal and vanish before their very eyes.
Her bloated body was undergoing a horrifying metamorphosis.
Sheets of quivering fat sloughed off her frame like melting jelly, piling onto the floor in stinking, gelatinous heaps. The neck, which had once dragged limply behind her, retracted segment by segment. Finally, she reached down, gently lifting the severed head from the floor and cradling it in her arms as if it were a newborn child.
The fleshy appendages on her back had fully unfurled, transforming into a pair of magnificent, massive wings of blood and sinew.
She held her own head in her hands. Its human face was twisted into a mask of pure agony, and from its hollow eye sockets, two streams of blood-red tears trickled slowly down her cheeks.
Divine… no, that wasn't the right word. It was less divine and more deeply, fundamentally eerie.
The creature before them was still a monster. At a glance, one might mistake its winged silhouette for that of a deity or an angel, but a closer look revealed the truth: it was nothing more than a mockery of divinity, a blasphemous sculpture of flesh and sinew forcibly twisted into a holy shape.
If one had to give it a name, perhaps "Pseudo-God" was the most fitting.
Even so, no one dared to underestimate it. A false god was still a god, and far beyond the power of mere mortals to contend with.
Their only hope was the iron nail, a gift from the former butler. The very nail that the Stooped Old Man had just snatched away.
Clearly, their enemy understood the threat it posed. He had lurked in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
However, Haruto simply sighed, reached into the air beside him, and pulled the very same iron nail from an unseen Gap.
The Stooped Old Man's expression froze. He instinctively reached for the prize he'd just stolen, only to find his hand empty.
A wave of joyous relief washed over the other players.
A true powerhouse was a true powerhouse. He was reliable, no matter the situation.
"Telekinesis? Sleight of hand? No… that's not right." The Stooped Old Man's eyes narrowed into slits. "That isn't an ability from this world, and you are no human… It seems we are of the same kind."
"Pah! Pah!"
Haruto spat twice on the ground in theatrical disgust. "Don't you dare try to claim kinship with me!" he snapped. "I don't have any relatives as ugly, stupid, and foolish as you."
It was true that he had a wide circle of acquaintances, but they were at least normal people, or, failing that, normal youkai. He wanted nothing to do with dangerous fanatics like this one, who were always trying to defy fate. Besides, the old man's entire cultivation path was utterly repulsive; he looked like a patchwork monster stitched together from the corpses of ghosts.
Forget the fact that befriending such a creature would get him beaten into a foldable screen by Yukari; Kazami Yuuka would undoubtedly throw the old man into her Sunflower Field as fertilizer without a second thought.
"I meant that you—"
"Me what? You what?" Haruto cut him off. "Don't think acting all chummy now will make me go easy on you later."
Listening to Haruto's rapid-fire retorts, the other players felt their eyelids twitch.
This was just so… him.
Even in a moment of such dire crisis, he could single-handedly derail the tense atmosphere and turn it into something utterly absurd.
After weathering Haruto's verbal assault, the Stooped Old Man's face twisted in fury. He took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing himself calm. Taking a few light steps back, his gaze shifted to the transformed Lady of the Castle.
A strange light flickered in his eyes, the look of an artist admiring a masterpiece he had personally crafted.
"Do you have any idea how much I've sacrificed for this moment? How much I've given—"
"Don't want to know." Haruto interrupted him with a wave of his hand. "All this talking is just to buy time, right? You think we can't see through it? You can't actually control this monster yet, can you?"
He turned and tossed the iron nail to one of the other players. "Liu Haoran, find your opening! The rest of you, keep him busy!"
The words had barely left his mouth before the group sprang into action.
Wu Wenwen flicked her wrist, sending four playing cards fluttering through the air. They shimmered and transformed into four ghostly shadows that swirled around the Stooped Old Man.
The old man desperately shielded the Lady of the Castle, his protective stance confirming Haruto's guess. Facing the spectral assault, he merely waved a swollen arm. The shadows instantly dissipated, reverting to simple playing cards that drifted harmlessly to the ground.
The moment the old man raised his arm, Xie Lin had already unfurled a Ghostly Painting. The air around the Stooped Old Man warped, and his form began to flatten as if being pressed into two dimensions. But he reacted in a flash, his fingers sprouting sharp, gnarled nails that tore through the painting's restrictive power with a single swipe.
Seizing that split-second opening, Tong Yi lunged forward, a Ghostly Dagger in his hand aimed straight for the old man's head.
But the Stooped Old Man seemed to have anticipated it, casually blocking the blade with his own cursed nails.
"Everyone, step aside! I'll handle this!"
Seeing that the others couldn't pin their opponent down, Haruto cracked his knuckles, a grin spreading across his face. It was time to showcase the results of his "special training" under Kazami Yuuka.
Two minutes later—
"Switch! Switch! Kaguya, you're up! I can't beat this guy; he's way too tough!" Haruto yelped, diving for cover behind another girl who had stepped forward.
Despite his panicked cries, he had been the one overwhelming the Stooped Old Man for the entire two minutes.
The old man's expression was darker than ever. While he held the advantage in raw strength and speed, his opponent's combat skills were honed to a razor's edge, forged in countless life-or-death battles. The boy was annoyingly, impossibly cunning.
"Haruto, you're still too green. Can't even handle this kind of trash," Kaguya sighed, putting on the airs of a seasoned master.
The Stooped Old Man watched her warily as she cracked her knuckles, stretched her limbs, and gave him a provocative "come-hither" gesture with her finger.
The scene left the other players dumbfounded, yet none of them thought she was being overconfident. The fact that Haruto, who had just suppressed their formidable enemy, had willingly stepped aside was all the proof they needed of Kaguya's strength.
Without another word, Kaguya ripped a solid steel support column straight from the wall. With her bare hands, she squeezed and molded the metal into the rough shape of a baseball bat. She then pulled out a fountain pen engraved with a swallow and quickly drew several glowing runes along the length of her new weapon.
The battle that followed could no longer be called a fight. It was a one-sided beatdown.
If Haruto excelled in technique but lacked overwhelming power, Kaguya possessed both in spades. She even adopted a brutal strategy of trading blows, confident in her own resilience.
The ghostly claws that had easily blocked the Ghostly Dagger shattered like glass against her makeshift bat. More, the wounds she inflicted inexplicably refused to heal, as if some foreign power was actively hindering his regeneration. The terrifying discovery forced the Stooped Old Man onto the defensive, desperately avoiding a direct confrontation.
The moment Kaguya sent him flying with a powerful swing, Liu Haoran seized the chance and charged forward, nail at the ready, while the others moved to provide cover.
Seeing the imminent threat, the Stooped Old Man ignored Kaguya's pursuit. His face contorted in a pained snarl as he forcibly severed his own left hand at the wrist. In that same instant, Liu Haoran's left hand, which was holding the nail, fell clean off.
However, every attack—from Kaguya's beatdown to Liu Haoran's sacrificial feint—was merely a distraction. It was all to create one true opportunity for Yotsuya Miko.
Somehow, she had appeared directly behind the Lady of the Castle.
By the time the Stooped Old Man realized the deception and lunged forward with a furious roar, it was already too late.
Miko stepped forward, gripping the iron nail with both hands. With a final, desperate cry, she plunged it with all her might into the back of the head the creature was cradling.
The ceaseless flow of bloody tears abruptly stopped.
A moment later, two clear, crystalline tears traced the same path down the monstrous face and fell silently to the floor.
Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief, thinking the nightmare was finally over.
But the Stooped Old Man suddenly scrambled forward, pried open the mouth of the severed head, and began to forcibly crawl down its throat.
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