Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious

The Great God roared, a sound that split the night and caused the very foundations of the valley to shudder.

As its massive, gelatinous form began to move down the mountain, it left behind a trail of thick, burning hot green sludge.

The fluid hissed as it touched the earth, emitting a foul, chemical stench and literally melting the stone and soil beneath it, turning the mountain path into a river of bubbling, corrosive acid.

Running behind it, Seijirou refused to let the distance grow, his heart hammered with a mixture of rage and adrenaline.

He raised his hands, channeling his silver-gold energy, and began throwing rapid-fire Ki attacks towards the beast’s flank.

The golden orbs of light detonated against the green mass, but the explosions merely splashed the sludge around without causing any structural damage.

It was like throwing pebbles into a swamp; the creature simply absorbed the impact and kept moving.

Realizing that mindless blasting was entirely useless, Seijirou immediately shifted his focus, his sharp eyes locked onto the motionless, parasitic figure of the High Priest protruding from the very top of the monster’s head.

“That’s the core,” he reasoned. “Or at least, the brain.”

He focused his energy, extending a sharp, crackling blade made of raw Ki from his right forearm.

With a burst of speed, he launched himself into the air, aiming a lethal, descending slash straight at the High Priest’s torso.

But at that exact microsecond, the Great God finally made its move.

Sensing the danger to its host, two massive, undulating tentacles whipped upward with blinding speed, intercepting the golden blade and blocking his attack with a dense, rubbery impact.

Seijirou clicked his tongue in frustration, the vibration traveling down his arm, but he didn’t retreat; instead, he hovered in the air for a fraction of a second, slashing a few more times in a frantic, cross-cutting pattern.

The Ki blade sliced into the tentacles, but the greenish sludge simply fused back together instantly, rendering his efforts completely ineffective.

Just then, the Great God came to a sudden, jarring halt as the countless nodules across its bubbling skin swelled, and a second later, it launched a barrage of sharp green spikes from its body, firing them in every direction like a biological claymore.

“Shit!” Seijirou twisted his body in midair, contorting himself to dodge the deadly projectiles.

He swung his Ki blade with precise, frantic arcs, parrying the stray spikes that came too close, the impacts sending sparks of gold and green into the night.

He hit the ground running, his boots skidding across the melted dirt as he landed safely.

But the monster didn’t turn to fight him.

Ignoring the boy’s presence, the Great God continued its relentless descent down the mountain, heading straight toward the helpless village below.

Seijirou took a deep breath, forcing the frantic rhythm of his heart to slow down as he locked his gaze on the shifting, grotesque mass and chased after it.

This time, however, he held back his attacks and decided to simply observe this creature that the local cult revered as a deity, analyzing its movements and its strange, alien biology.

The more he looked, the more a profound confusion began to take root in his mind.

’It doesn’t look like a fragment at all,’ he thought, his brows furrowing.

He had fought fragments before, and they always carried a specific, reality-glitching distortion—a sense that they didn’t belong to the fabric of this world.

But this creature felt different.

It felt anchored, ancient, and deeply connected to the mountain itself.

He remembered what Ryusui had mentioned that the High Priest has been in charge of the temple for over twenty years.

So it’s safe to assume that the temple’s strange, insular rituals and the systematic gathering of women had actually started more than twenty years ago.

Which means the timeline didn’t fit the recent supernatural anomalies in the city.

“So it probably really isn’t a fragment from the current breach,” Seijirou muttered as he ran. “Or maybe… is it one of the original, primordial fragments? One that has been dormant in these mountains, separate from the one that recently escaped from me?”

But even that theory left glaring holes in his logic.

It didn’t explain the specific dark-green coloration, the sludge-like consistency, or the strange, biological nature of its power.

The fragments he knew were entities of cosmic horror, not acidic mountain ooze.

’Is this thing really not a fragment at all? Is it just a localized, ancient monster that the ancestors found and began to worship as a god of fertility and harvest?’

He shook his head grimly. He wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case, after all, in a world where supernatural anomalies were becoming the norm, he had even met god and the creator of this world.

Just then, the situation changed.

When the Great God finally reached the absolute edge of the town, right where the dirt road transitioned into the paved streets of the village, it stopped.

It didn’t advance, it didn’t attack, and it didn’t move an inch.

It simply loomed over the first row of houses like a silent, pulsating wall of green rot.

This sudden hesitation thoroughly confused Seijirou as he skidded to a halt a few meters behind the beast, his Ki blade hummed softly as he kept his guard up.

“What the hell is it doing now?” he wondered, his eyes darting from the motionless High Priest to the vast mass of tentacles. “It devoured those women to gain the energy to descend, so why stop right at the border?”

Just then, a faint sound of running footsteps broke the heavy silence of the night.

“Seijirou-sama!”

Seijirou turned his head and saw a welcome sight.

Haruka was sprinting toward him, and behind her, Ryusui had his katana drawn, while Miyako and Yuko followed closely, their faces tight with exhaustion but filled with a fierce determination.

They had run all the way from the mansion to join him at the front line.

“What happened up there? What in the world is that thing?” Ryusui demanded, his voice tight as he gripped his ancestral katana.

He stared up at the towering, pulsating wall of dark-green sludge, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and profound revulsion.

Seijirou shook his head, “I don’t know the exact details yet. But it’s probably the very god that the temple has been worshiping all these years. The High Priest triggered an early awakening or something.”

Ryusui blinked, his jaw tightening in sheer disbelief. “That’s… that’s the Mountain God? That’s impossible! The guardian of our valley cannot be a creature of such pure depravity!”

“…Scanning complete,” Haruka suddenly announced, her voice a calm, clinical frequency that sliced through the heavy tension.

The blue floating screen in front of her flickered rapidly, reflecting data streams across her pale features as her fingers moved with blurred speed.

“This creature does possess a unique energy signature—one far more refined than standard human Ki or basic spirit energy. However, the data shows severe anomalies. It seems to have been deeply corrupted from the inside out.”

“Corrupted?” Ryusui stared at her, the realization landing heavily in his chest as he slowly nodded, his shoulders slumping just a fraction. “I see… I see. It’s probably that damn priest’s fault. The corruption must have started with the temple.”

Seijirou turned his sharp gaze toward the old patriarch, his hazel eyes narrowing. “Why do you think so?”

Ryusui let out a long, heavy sigh, the ancestral blade lowering slightly as he gathered his thoughts. “This is just a theory based on the old texts passed down through the Midorima line, so take it with a grain of salt. But looking at that monstrosity… the puzzle pieces fit together perfectly.”

He gestured vaguely toward the surrounding peaks. “Hundreds of years ago, long before this urban town came to be, it was just a small village. The god and the village existed in perfect balance back then, and worship was simple, sincere, and entirely clean. The people didn’t ask for much, and the offerings were fresh fruits, quiet prayers, and genuine gratitude. In return for that respect, the mountain gave us pure water, fertile soil, and absolute protection from external threats. The god’s ’body’ was the mountain itself. Its rivers were its veins, its vast forests were its flesh, and the mountain air was its very breath. It was a formless, benevolent guardian.”

The old man’s face darkened as he looked toward the neon signs of the resort district visible in the distance. “Then, the village became a prosperous town.”

“The people stopped seeing the mountain as a living god and started treating it merely as a resource to be exploited,” Ryusui continued, his voice laced with a deep bitterness. “Trees were cut down for expansion faster than they could ever regrow. Mines were dug deep into its ancient bones to extract metals and stones. Human waste and industrial runoff began to seep into its pure streams. The prayers didn’t stop, and if anything, they multiplied, but they became entirely hollow, transactional things. People no longer prayed for harmony; they prayed for personal wealth, commercial success, and urban expansion. No one ever asked what the mountain itself needed.”

“…But that alone wouldn’t have broken the god,” Seijirou noted, understanding the trajectory of the tale. “Gods can endure neglect and greed.”

“Exactly,” Ryusui agreed, his eyes flashing with sudden rage. “What truly destroyed it was surely that priest. The fat pig who took over the altar more than twenty years ago.”

Seijirou looked up at the high priest on top of the mountain god.

“That new priest understood only one thing: faith is raw, quantifiable power,” Ryusui explained, his fist clenching. “So, he surely twisted the old rituals to maximize that power. Instead of clean, symbolic offerings, he probably introduced blood sacrifices. Instead of gratitude, he taught the villagers desperation, making them fear poverty. Instead of living in harmony, he preached a doctrine of human dominance over nature, claiming it was done ’in the god’s name’ to bless the town’s industry.”

Seijirou thought of those girls he had seen in the temple, and nodded at that.

“The mountain god, once shaped by centuries of sincere, peaceful belief, probably began to physically and spiritually change under the weight of that corrupted worship. Faith doesn’t just empower a deity, boy, it completely defines its nature. As the temple’s rituals grew increasingly depraved, the god’s very essence followed. What was once a pure guardian spirit slowly became something closer to a parasite born of human suffering. The physical pollution damaged its body, and the corrupted rituals poisoned its mind.”

Ryusui pointed at the massive, pulsating wall of green sludge that sat completely motionless at the town’s border. “Now, that god feels only two things constantly, every single second of its existence.”

“First, intense physical agony from the polluted mountain—its rivers are choking with waste, its forests are stripped bare, and its spiritual core has been completely hollowed out by greed.”

“Second, mental corruption from the priest’s rituals—overwhelming urges for violence, blood, and domination that were never originally a part of its true nature.”

Silence permeated the group as the weight of the tragedy set in.

Yuko clutched her hands over her chest, looking at the creature with tears of profound pity in her eyes.

“It understands, in a fractured, maddened way, that the town standing right there is the direct source of both its physical pain and its mental depravity,” Ryusui concluded. “From its perspective, descending the mountain to destroy the town is not an act of malice or petty revenge—it is an act of ultimate mercy and self-preservation.”

“I see. So If the town is completely erased from the map, the equation changes,” Seijirou realized, his mind deconstructing the monster’s hesitation. “The physical pollution stops immediately. The corrupted faith and the depraved rituals end forever, and the god might finally be able to return to what it once was… or at the very least, it will be allowed to die cleanly, freed from the human rot.”

“Yes,” Ryusui nodded grimly. “So the ’good god’ hasn’t completely disappeared. It’s still in there, buried deep beneath layers of agony, malice, and distortion. And right now, at this very border, it is making one final, desperate decision.”

“Wipe out the town and everyone in it to save itself, or continue existing as a horrific monster it never wanted to become.”

Seijirou stared up at the motionless High Priest fused to the top of the sludge, realizing why the beast had stopped.

It was staring at the paved streets, frozen in the agonizing deadlock of its own fractured divinity.