Into the Great Worship Hall
The followers recovered their reason with startling speed.
Minel had been feeding them electricity through the Shocker’s heart—stable, continuous, unwavering.
Until now they had lived in constant thirst, tasting lightning only during worship, clinging to those brief surges just to keep existing. Every hour they had swung between hell and heaven. That cycle was finished. No more ecstasy crashing through their bodies. No more limp, melting helplessness afterward. A peace they could not remember ever feeling seeped into them and softened everything it touched. A seed of faith took root: electricity would always be there, forever.
The first decision their restored reason made was simply to sleep.
“Snrrk. Snrrk. Snrrk.”
“Grrrrrl.”
“Pffhhh. Pffhhh.”
Each follower curled into some personal, ridiculous posture and sank into sleep, breathing in their own private rhythms—deep and absolute, like infants.
Minel cleared the Great Worship Hall of the Great Worship Leaders’ and technicians’ corpses. If they wanted the fourth floor, only one path remained.
“You two stay.”
He held the Shocker’s heart out to Hina. She did not look at it. She looked only at him.
“Are you really going?”
Minel took out the rosary he had taken from a Great Worship Leader and turned it over in his fingers.
“I need to find the way to the fourth floor.”
Chori’s face tightened with worry.
“What if they catch you?”
“Then they catch me.”
“…….”
Aisil, who had been reading the air between them, spoke carefully.
“There are more than a thousand Great Worship Leaders alone. During a Great Worship the numbers climb into the hundreds. As long as you don’t stand out, you’ll be fine.”
He held out the long, trailing coat the Great Worship Leader had worn. It was large enough to drape over a leather jacket without trouble.
“Give them only a moderate charge.”
“I know. I watched carefully how you did it earlier.”
“They turn in an instant. If anything goes wrong, run home.”
“Okay.”
“Watch out for the Sludge too.”
“I will.”
The Great Worship Leader’s clothes did not fit Minel perfectly, but they were wearable enough. Even after he put them into his inventory they retained that oversized cut; the design had simply been made that way. The deep hood was especially useful for hiding a face.
“You said tomorrow, right?”
Aisil nodded hard.
“Yes. If we leave now we can arrive just in time. I’ll guide you the whole way.”
“Will the rosary be enough?”
The Lightning Rosary could generate lightning, but it was nothing compared to the Shocker’s heart. Aisil glanced at the heart in Hina’s hands, squeezed his eyes shut, swallowed once, and answered.
“It will be fine. I can hold out.”
Believing an addict was one of the more foolish things a person could do. Minel’s voice flattened.
“If you can’t, don’t.”
“No. I can do it.”
“If you can’t, I’ll kill you.”
“What?”
“Accept that much.”
“…….”
“Or just stay behind.”
Having Aisil guide them was far more reliable than groping along on half-remembered words. But withdrawal could create problems. Best to use him for as long as he remained useful and deal with him the moment the symptoms appeared. Minel had simply asked the question out loud.
Aisil hesitated, then nodded.
“Understood. The moment you think I’m going wrong, you’re free to cut my throat.”
“…….”
“I mean it.”
Minel looked from Hina to Chori and gave a short nod.
“I’m going.”
“Be careful.”
“Come back. You have to.”
Aisil sprang forward between them and pointed.
“This way.”
“…….”
Minel followed. As on every floor of the Backrooms, the same environment stretched on without end. The rosary’s charge had limits. Right now, at the start of the journey, Aisil’s reason was working at its best.
Minel asked lightly,
“Is it revenge you want?”
“…….”
“Helping me this much.”
Aisil’s steps faltered for half a second, then resumed.
“The Great Worship Leader you killed was the one who baptized me. You have no idea how painful life under him was.”
To the followers, electricity was a drug. And because of the Backrooms’ Wildness, they never even died. An eternal hell of pain. Any mind that clawed its way back out of that had no choice but to burn with revenge.
Revenge burns with fear and guilt as its firewood. That may be the original purpose of revenge.
Remembering his father’s words, Minel spoke quietly.
“Don’t be too afraid.”
“…….”
“And don’t feel guilty either.”
“Excuse me?”
“About baptizing the new followers.”
“…….”
“You weren’t yourself then.”
It was a casual remark. Yet Aisil’s shoulders began to shake violently.
“Kh—kh… kuh… kh—”
The stifled sobs of a young man whose body alone had grown old were deeply unpleasant to hear. Minel waited expressionlessly. When the crying finally stopped, Aisil lifted his head. Tears still welled in his eyes as he looked at Minel with a pitiful gaze. He forced the words out.
“I-if it’s all right… c-could I have a little lightning…?”
“…….”
Minel took out the rosary and held it toward him. Lightning flared from the beads and struck Aisil’s body. He shuddered. His eyes cleared; a moment later his voice was bright and cheerful.
“This way! Let’s go!”
They walked for a full day under Aisil’s direction. Now and then they passed worship halls—power stations, really—and when no service was underway they simply walked through like ordinary corridors. Sludge appeared everywhere, but it was so slow that ordinary walking was enough to avoid it.
The real problem was Aisil. The power from the surrounding wires and the rosary’s lightning was no longer enough; his mind frayed steadily. Conversation remained possible, but the words he chose drifted further and further back toward the speech of a Worship Leader. Just as that fact began to worry Minel, they reached their destination.
At the end of a narrow iron corridor the view suddenly opened into a vast, dimly lit space. Minel put Silence and Noise into his inventory, along with his full gun kit and fear kit.
“W-we’re here! Th-the Great Worship Hall!”
“…….”
They stood inside a gigantic chimney. It rose so high it looked as though someone had built a skyscraper around its circumference.
Wuum.
Wuum.
A deep, roaring vibration traveled endlessly along the walls.
A cylindrical space tens—no, hundreds—of meters across. It felt like an altar of hell. From floor to walls it was packed with Worship Leaders and followers. The power plant’s internal structures had become seats and stairs; people had climbed onto machine heaps and rusty railings to sit. Every head was bowed, every mouth murmuring the same prayer; the voices leaked out and merged into one vast murmur that filled the entire chimney.
At the center stood a colossal electrode apparatus. Thick cables hung from the ceiling and connected to a turbine in the middle, as if ready to call down lightning. The turbine was already turning slowly; red-hot metal threw off an ominous heat laced with the stink of oil. The rites Minel had seen in the small worship halls looked like children’s games by comparison.
Only Worship Leaders who had consistently produced results were allowed to attend a Great Worship. The number of people here easily exceeded the ten thousand Aisil had mentioned. And there were said to be ten such Great Worship Halls. That would make the total number of Worship Leaders around one hundred and twenty thousand—exactly as claimed.
“The apostates shall vanish, and only the lightning of the god shall remain—!”
A thick voice rolled through the space like an echo. Thousands of heads lifted as one and roared back.
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
The stamping of feet shook the chimney; unstable cables and iron plates rattled as if they might tear free. The thermal generator sat on the brink of full ignition, its engine pulsing like a heart.
Aisil’s eyes trembled as though an earthquake had struck them. He raised both arms and, without realizing it, began to walk slowly forward. Sweat and tears shone on his face, but fear and rapture were tangled together underneath.
“Do you see it? The holy glory of Urare… we’ve finally arrived. The Great Worship Hall… if you take part in the sacred Great Worship held here… even you, Minel, might change your mind a little.”
His voice shook, yet a strange excitement threaded through the tremor. His chest hammered with the same pre-explosion rhythm as the turbine. Every Worship Leader present felt the same.
Minel did not.
His eyes took in the Worship Leaders filling the chimney and did not waver at all. The rhythmic vibration. The frantically moving lips. The eyes blinking with mad frequency. All of it was simply data for calculation. He was already coldly mapping how to cut a path through this place, in what order to sever what needed severing.
Aisil’s emotions rose like fire; Minel’s mind hardened into ice. Yet both of them felt the same thing: this entire space was about to awaken with explosive force.
“Where are the Great Worship Leaders?”
“Ah… aah… aah…”
“Aisil?”
Even when Minel spoke again, Aisil did not look at him. His eyes had already turned yellow; thick veins stood out on his forehead. His reason had reached its limit. Thanks to that, they had reached the Great Worship Hall without other complications.
“If I find a way, I’ll help you.”
Leaving those last words, Minel vanished into the crowd. Whether Minel disappeared or not, Aisil kept staring at the enormous turbine at the center, both arms raised high, murmuring the same prayer as everyone else.
Minel lowered his body slowly, surely, letting the noise of the chimney swallow him. He slipped past praying Worship Leaders, yet his gaze never stopped moving—up to the railings, the stairs, the central electrode apparatus.
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
The echoing roar became his camouflage. Even if someone walked through that din, no one would grow suspicious. Yet a few groups stood out. Their eyes were not those of prey, but of hunters. The Great Worship Leaders stood watch, managing the Worship Leaders with their rosaries while the service continued.
Minel buried himself among the bodies and observed them quietly. At regular intervals they conducted the Great Worship and moved back and forth along a narrow iron passage set into one wall of the chimney. An armed guard stood at the entrance; every time a Great Worship Leader entered, the rosary confirmed their identity.
There.
Minel’s gaze narrowed. Head bowed, never meeting anyone’s eyes, he approached the iron passage.
That was when it happened.
“O Urare… judgment… purification…”
The Worship Leader right beside him stopped praying and began staring straight into Minel’s face. The eyes were empty, yet they fixed on Minel’s lips for a long time. Starting with him, the Worship Leaders nearby also fell silent one after another and simply stared. The reaction spread so quickly that dozens of gazes locked onto him at once.
He had done nothing suspicious. Why were they doubting him?
Minel casually let the rosary show. Their expressions did not change. Had Aisil left something out? Was there a separate mark that identified a Great Worship Leader?
Farther away, a Great Worship Leader with a striking mismatched eye finally noticed him. In a space where everyone else murmured prayer, the silence around Minel stood out like a wound.
This was bad. The instant Minel flicked his fingers to open his inventory, the Great Worship Leader who had been watching him opened his mouth wide.