I broke into a sprint, accelerating instantly through a combination of wind magic and physical enhancement.
The tentacles lunged, seeking to impale me; they were throwing everything they had into stopping my advance.
(They are a threat, certainly, but it matters not.)
I channeled the miasma surging into me, radiating it outward as the Authority of the Demon King. Our powers clashed, but my miasma reigned supreme. The tentacles rotted from the tips down, liquefying into foul smoke. They couldn't touch me. I wove through the gaps between the decaying appendages and pressed on.
The Golden Tower shuddered, and a projectile launched from its surface at high speed. It was one of those semitransparent spheres. I met it with an upward arc of the Keepsake Sword, cleaving it in two. The halves sailed past me, striking the ground behind.
The impact site vanished in a burst of fine dust; the sphere clearly contained a potent destruction concept. Yet, it seemed such concepts were powerless against her swordsmanship. That realization was heartening, steadying my resolve.
The rotting tentacles swarmed me, indifferent to their own decay. Still, because so many were preoccupied with the pseudo-golem, their numbers were far fewer than before. I hacked through the mass, leaping through a spray of putrid fluid and treading over the writhing limbs as I surged forward.
A distant explosion reached my ears. The pseudo-golem had been ensnared by a mass of tentacles and was taking heavy damage. It seemed the chains of light and Henry’s suppressing fire were finally being overwhelmed. Despite its crumbling frame, the giant flailed in resistance, desperate to draw as much attention as possible to lighten my burden.
(I should help—no, that’s wrong.)
My task wasn't to rescue them. It was to move forward. I could not allow their sacrifice to be in vain.
I unleashed a torrent of black flames through forbidden magic, incinerating the path ahead. I raised a series of barriers to shove aside the remaining tentacles, anchoring them to maintain my corridor. Anything that managed to squirm through the gaps was met with my blade. When the way was blocked entirely, I used teleportation to force a breakthrough.
Soon, the world around me was nothing but a sea of rotting flesh. I could see nothing else. The air was thick with a turbulent miasma that assaulted my senses; the False God was trying to force a mental contamination. I resisted, shielded by the power flowing from the Valley of the Dead. I emptied my mind of distractions and focused solely on closing the distance.
Even a moment’s doubt or a flash of pain would lead to a fatal error. Amidst a struggle so fierce its end seemed unimaginable, I pushed on, my consciousness strained to the absolute limit. By the time I had lost all sense of time, I finally burst through the tentacles' final line of defense.
The Golden Tower loomed before me, the human faces embedded in its surface emitting a ceaseless, low groan. I used Visual Teleportation in rapid succession, sprinting vertically up the tower’s side. Dodging the spheres fired my way, I reached the summit in seconds. I raised the Keepsake Sword high and delivered my sentence to the tower.
"—It is over."
I set the blade against the structure and let myself fall, surrendering to the pull of gravity. The sword that had once slain the Demon King now carved through the miasma-choked Golden Tower. It felt like cutting through mere paper. The tower’s grandeur was nothing more than a facade; internally, it was pathetically brittle. This was its true nature.
As I touched down on the ground, I gave my sword a final flourish and sheathed it. Feeling the weight of a decisive strike, I looked up.
A line of light bled from the wound I had carved into the tower. The radiance expanded, and the massive structure began to tilt. It was splitting in two from the summit down. There was no stopping it now. The Beast of Hope and Worship buckled, peeling apart as it crashed toward the earth.