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The battle dragged on and on, but after wave after wave of attacks from the four of them, the man-faced mountain god finally went down. The bells hanging from its abdomen scattered across the ground, then dissolved into a sinister black mist and vanished.
"Fi… finally…!"
The moment the mountain god disappeared completely, Yotsuya Miko collapsed onto the grass. Her divine power and stamina had been drained dry, and all she could do was lie there gulping down air.
"Hah… I'm starving."
Hana Yurikawa sprawled out beside her, clutching her shriveled stomach. Her life force had sunk to its lowest ebb.
"But at least… we won."
Yukii Suou slumped to the ground too, all pretense of grace abandoned. Her last desperate projections had burned through what little divine energy she had left. Still, she was satisfied she'd been useful.
"Rosen, is the mountain god really dead?"
Mai Sakurajima reappeared from her "vanished" state, asking the question that was on everyone's mind. She'd used up the least stamina of the group, though her contribution was still huge.
"Not completely."
Rosen's calm reply carried the weight of a truth no one wanted to hear: the god's body might be gone, but it wasn't truly dead.
Sure enough—
"What?!" All four girls cried out at once.
If they had to fight another round, none of them had the strength left to do it.
"But if you destroy its goshintai, the mountain god will be gone for good."
The word goshintai made them pause.
In many shrines across the country, there are no statues of deities. Instead, tradition dictates that natural objects—trees, mirrors, stones—are revered as vessels for divine presence.
Those objects are the goshintai.
The mountain god had once been nothing more than a malicious spirit. But after villagers sacrificed a maiden to it, the girl's skull was enshrined as its goshintai.
In the original story, even powerful exorcists like Takeda Sae, the "Divine Mother," and the prodigy Naramoto couldn't lay a scratch on the god. In the end, it had taken Miko Yotsuya slipping into the shrine and shattering the skull to finally bring it down.
Rosen swung open the shrine's heavy doors, taller than a man.
Inside the narrow chamber, ceremonial tools were scattered everywhere. On the altar sat a human skull, pale and brittle, draped with a piece of red cloth.
Rosen picked it up and smashed it.
In that instant, they all heard a furious wail—resentful, unwilling, and yet terrified—before it broke apart into nothingness.
Then, before Rosen and the four girls, a woman appeared. She wore a shrine maiden's robes, her face covered by a sheet of white paper. Long black hair framed her.
"Thank you."
She bowed deeply, pressing her body to the floor in gratitude.
"Go on," Rosen said softly.
The woman's spirit began to fade.
But just as she was about to disappear completely, restless souls stirred nearby. Sensing the mountain god's death, they crawled out from the shadows, faces twisted, limbs flailing like monstrous tentacles, eyes locked hungrily on the woman.
To them, the former goshintai was a delicacy beyond compare.
But the next moment, holy light engulfed them, melting them away.
The woman's spirit passed on in peace.
The girls' expressions, however, were heavy.
The thought that she had been sacrificed alive, then used as the mountain god's anchor for hundreds of years after death, made sympathy unavoidable.
At least now… she was free.
"May your soul rest in peace."
The words didn't come from Rosen.
They came from Yotsuya Miko.
The other three girls joined her, hands pressed together in silent prayer for the woman.
After a while, Miko turned to Rosen, her voice hesitant.
"Lord Rosen… what happens to good people after they die? Is there really such a thing as an afterlife in our world?"
It was a difficult question. Rosen could hardly offer the formulaic answer about heaven and hell. In this world, he himself held the Tree of Life as the true cross of the faith. If even he couldn't sense those realms, then paradise and hell likely didn't exist.
As for an underworld like Yomi… Rosen felt nothing there either. Most likely it didn't exist—or, if it did, something prevented it from fulfilling its role.
After all, if such a realm were real, it wouldn't allow so many wandering spirits to roam the earth unchecked.
Rosen shook his head.
If there was no afterlife… then he would just have to build one.
Meanwhile—
Inside the chat group, everyone was buzzing after seeing the mountain god defeated and the truth revealed.
[Blizzard of Hell]: "All I can say is… feudal superstition ruins lives."
[Busujima]: "Though back in that era, could you really call it superstition? Spirits were a real thing."
[Old Mage]: "Come to think of it, are spirits really that common where Rosen is?"
[Shepherd]: "Pretty common. Like rats in a city."
[I Don't Want to Eat Monsters]: "That's bleak. Must be hell for regular people living there."
[Shepherd]: "It's fine. Spirits can't harm you if they don't realize you can see them. So for most people, it's still relatively safe."
[Bad Woman]: "But if spirits are everywhere, doesn't that mean Rosen's world has no functioning hell or underworld? Or maybe… such a place never existed in the first place."
[Shut-In Angel]: "Kinda absurd. Ghosts running rampant, but no heaven above. No wonder even evil spirits can roam around in broad daylight."
[Shut-In Angel]: "And if more gods like that mountain one pop up, even if ordinary people can't see them, they'll still get affected."
[I Don't Want to Eat Monsters]: "Yeah… Rosen's world sounds like constant misery."
[Shepherd]: "Why do I feel like you're all pitying me? You think I'm scared of these things with my strength? Please. shrug.jpg"
Just as the words left the chat, the livestream showed more spirits appearing, drawn to the spot by the mountain god's demise. Instinct drove them to swarm here for scraps of lingering power.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
All of a sudden, the ground itself began to quake.
At first the girls thought it was an earthquake. Their faces tensed—then froze completely as they saw what emerged from the deep mountains.
A colossal monster, its size rivaling that of entire hills, lumbered into view.
And when Rosen laid eyes on it, the truth clicked into place.
The mountain god hadn't only been worshiped for bringing rain.
It had also been enshrined to seal away evil.
""..."
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