Chapter 44
Chapter 44
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 44
Chapter Title: Fall of the False God
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"Your faith has been made manifest."
A holy wave swept across the land.
"Ugh... Ah..."
The frail masses drooled from their mouths, submitting to the god's omnipotence as tears of joy for their salvation streamed down their faces.
"Pretending to be a god when you're not even the real thing."
>
The essential requirement of a god is omniscience and omnipotence.
But if Horrifica truly possessed omnipotence, it wouldn't need to reveal itself in such a manner from the start.
That thing was nothing more than an incomplete god.
"First things first, let's deal with that."
The gaze of the blood pond and the lumps turned toward the Merchant.
"Kill the Merc—"
The Merchant kept his eyes fixed on the direction their fingers pointed, ready to dodge.
But the Merchant's tension proved unnecessary.
Boom!
The blood lump was crushed flat and vanished.
Horrifica's power had touched an entity that harmed humans.
"Hm... Guess we don't have to worry about that one anymore."
But he couldn't let his guard down.
Attacks directed at things that harmed humans—that is, tales—put the Merchant in the line of fire as a potential threat as well.
And sure enough, that worry soon materialized as an attack hurtling straight toward him.
"Tch."
The Merchant rolled his body to evade and bolted toward the opposite side of Horrifica.
He knew full well he couldn't take it down alone.
The Merchant flung open the door of the house where the ceiling had vanished.
"This was meant for after I'd wrapped everything up and come back."
And inside the door lay a familiar space.
How'd it go? Did you handle everything okay?
Man, things are getting pretty noisy out there.
The Merchant dangled the key he'd originally used to access the Backrooms, showing it to the Shop.
"No time to explain! From now on, I'm gonna make doors with this key—keep linking them to the Shop!"
The Merchant's shout was enough to convey the urgency of the situation to the Shop.
>...
Got it.
The Merchant stuffed a few Momentary Dreams into his pocket and dashed out the door.
Kaboom!
The god unleashed its power in a frenzied barrage.
Rumble—
A colossal pressure rent the earth, its shockwave uprooting trees by the roots.
The Tale Management Bureau hurled dozens, hundreds of missiles and their full arsenal of occult tech at Horrifica.
But attacks of that magnitude didn't even inflict a scratch.
'Can't kill it like that.'
In retaliation for their assault, the god made the tiniest motion toward the Bureau.
Horrifica's arm barely shifted a meter, but that movement birthed a massive storm barreling toward them.
Amid the explosions of modern weaponry fused with occult technology and the screams of the response teams, the storm that pierced it all closed in right up to the Merchant's nose.
Click.
The Merchant turned the key, creating a door.
It was a method he'd never tried before, but he had no doubts it wouldn't work.
'The Shop's got it connected properly!'
True to the Merchant's expectations, the Shop linked seamlessly to the door.
No need for fancy explanations with the Shop.
"To the bakery door on the other side!"
Confirmed.
The rusted sign jutting out told the Merchant leaping from the door that this was the [Bakery].
What might look like teleportation to an onlooker was enough to draw the god's attention.
"Merchant... so there you are. Still intent on getting in my way?"
The haughtier tone grated on the Merchant's nerves.
"Yeah... looks like it?"
Since Horrifica didn't rely on human senses like ears or eyes, the Merchant didn't need to shout up at the tale hovering high in the sky.
"You'll regret that choice."
As if that were Horrifica's final mercy, another attack came flying at the Merchant right away.
Click.
The key hung in midair, and the Merchant vanished into the door.
"Such petty tricks!"
The Merchant emerged from the door on the other side moments later.
Horrifica kept unleashing unprecedented power that melted the ground with heat and transmuted matter into other substances, but hitting a Merchant who kept vanishing with the turn of the key and reappearing elsewhere wasn't easy.
But Horrifica was a god.
Its omniscience soon predicted the Merchant's movements, unleashing a torrent of massive energy.
"Gah!"
Even diving through the door immediately, the Merchant couldn't fully evade—the attack took one of his arms.
"Now, surrender at last."
After a brief groan, the Merchant shoved a Momentary Dream into his mouth as if it were nothing.
His innate regenerative ability combined with the dream's healing power regrew the severed arm in mere seconds.
If Horrifica had a proper face, it would've been etched with bewilderment for sure.
"Hah..."
Sensing this battle wouldn't end as quickly as thought, the god let out a faint sigh, spreading the flames across the land.
The blazing crimson inferno engulfed buildings, incinerating every door they held into earthen ash.
The god had forcibly imposed a time limit.
Realizing he'd drawn too close to Horrifica, the Merchant halted his sprint and looked up at the sky.
He couldn't afford to drag this out any longer.
"Taaah!"
The Merchant wrapped a tentacle around a nearby unburnt door and hurled it high into the heavens.
As the door pierced the clouds.
Click.
The key's door opened.
The Merchant entered the key's door, reemerging at the lofty heights—from the very door he'd thrown.
"This is it, you bastard!"
"Foolish to come at me from the air!"
The god's full form loomed beneath the Merchant.
Its eyes—holy enough to almost call sacred—turned toward him.
"Don't interfere with me, Merchant!"
A wave containing everything the god possessed surged toward the Merchant.
It was a rational decision, predicated on the fact that evasion was impossible midair.
But just as the metaphysical energy warped space, twisted clouds, and tore them apart, reaching for the Merchant—his mouth was curled in a grin.
Horrifica's prophetic certainty of victory twisted into momentary doubt.
Only when its thousands of eyes scanned the Merchant did the god grasp the source of his confidence.
"What you're holding in your hand!"
Non-melting ice cream.
"It's a new product from our Shop!"
Its ability: unconditional defense against a single attack.
The downside was that eating more than two a day froze the body solid, but he'd saved it for this exact moment.
The ice cream melted upon touching the Merchant's lips, soon enveloping him in a shimmering blue barrier.
Clang—!
A sound like something shattering brushed past, letting the Merchant slip through Horrifica's attack unscathed.
"Impossible!"
The Merchant's body accelerated by gravity, hurtling toward Horrifica's core.
Whoosh—
Dozens of arms whizzed past the Merchant, hundreds of eyes upon them glaring at him.
The god's arms split apart, reaching for the Merchant it'd missed, but having expended most of its power, its authority could no longer muster its prior divinity—and the tentacles brushed them aside with ease.
"Begone! I said begone!"
The god's unyielding will even affected its followers.
The people's faith intensified under coercive external force, and Horrifica, absorbing that faith, regained some strength.
But it was too late.
To strike the Merchant now too close, the god sacrificed parts of its body in a barrage of attacks, but the Merchant's acrobatic maneuvers dodged nearly all, and the minor scratches were endured by his miraculous regenerative power.
"Merchant—!"
The god's voice shoved aside clouds and shook the world, but it failed to affect the Merchant.
An iron awl in the Merchant's hand, glowing red with absorbed sunlight.
He'd picked up a mundane awl embedded in the ground.
This hastily forged god had absorbed too many myths, and in turn gained countless weaknesses.
The Merchant recalled a verse from the Bible.
Judges 1:19
The Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.
God aided the tribe of Judah in conquering the hills, but couldn't dislodge the plains-dwellers armed with iron chariots.
The verse's precise symbolism didn't matter.
What mattered was that "iron" existed within it—a weakness against the tale fused from dozens of myths.
"No—!"
Its incomplete omniscience realized too late, screaming at the Merchant, but the commanding voice couldn't pursue him.
Piercing the god's flesh, white blood, entrails, and all—the awl speared toward its heart.
"My dream! Humanity's salvation!"
The moment the awl touched the heart.
Pssshhh...
A silence engulfed the world, as if the very concept of sound had vanished.
The sky warped, and like being sucked into a black hole, Horrifica's body condensed into a single point.
And when that form vanished entirely.
Boom!
A cheer announcing the event's conclusion dominated the ears of all humanity.