Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

Hearing the name, Shiller had no emotional reaction, he even felt like laughing,

Such a small game script turned out to be full of hidden talents; Dagon always arrived on time, Othuum and Nya came just right, and Ipo wasn't idle either.

Busy, everyone is busy, it's good to be busy.

How had he never noticed before that the God of Stories liked to stack up so much material? Might as well have a full family gathering of Outer Gods!

Despite complaining in his heart, Shiller still asked, "Does that so-called wanderer have anything to do with you?"

Gad nodded and said, "That is me, to be precise, a split of Him."

"You said it's your blood."

"Yes, whenever I see Him in my dreams, my blood is driven by Him, leaving my body and wandering in a distant place. When I wake from the dream, the wanderer returns."

"But..." Gad made an ugly face and said, "Somehow, after the wanderer left a few days ago, it never returned, which led to me being captured by the Pope..."

Shiller understood, don't ask, it was greed's doing.

That tied the whole matter together.

Initially, Gad was an ordinary investigator, who, after getting involved in the hotel incident, came into contact with the Outer God Ipo and was tempted to become his follower and also a vessel for his split.

Since he became a follower of an Outer God, he became immortal. The Pope also wanted to live forever like him and tried to get the method from him, but Gad had strong backing, and the Pope probably couldn't truly do anything to him; he could only use him as a public figure for the Church.

Despite enjoying the status as the Great Prophet, Gad hadn't completely fallen out with the Pope; the two maintained a balance.

But with the Pope nearing the end of his life, he became desperate. Absolutely at the wrong time, the wanderer was captured by greed and didn't return to Gad's body in time.

This definitely affected Gad, breaking the long-standing balance, and he fell into the Pope's trap, being controlled by him.

"For years, I have been plagued by nightmares, almost ignoring the church's affairs. The Pope manipulated the believers in my name, and the one you met on the Ghost Ship was probably his man."

"That guy looked like a cultist."

"He is a cultist, and so is the Pope," Gad sighed. "In his desperation for a longer life, he's become unscrupulous, and he wants to sacrifice the whole of Faralines."

"You say he wants to sacrifice, so there must be an object of sacrifice, right? Which god does he worship?"

"Truthfully, I don't know." Gad shook his head and said, "Logically speaking, if he worshipped the same god as me, then he should also have gained eternal life like me, but he hasn't. He suffers terribly and continues to age."

"You said he suffers terribly?"

"He… I don't know how to describe it, you'll understand when you see him," Gad's expression grew complicated.

"Where is he now?"

"At the top of the Lighthouse."

"Why Faralines? And why the Lighthouse?" Batman finally spoke, asking a question that had long piqued his interest. "What's so special about this remote little village?"

Gad shook his head, but then added, "Perhaps you can ask your god."

Shiller silently asked Nya, "So why is it?"

"This place was once a fishing village," Nya said. "Nearly every household was fishermen, and the fish they caught are the ones you saw in the Dark River."

"Is there anything special about those fish?"

"They are gifts from the Fish God."

"Fish God?"

"That's Dagon; the villagers of the fishing village were followers of Dagon. They obtained their catch by worshipping the Fish God Dagon; the fish drifted out from the deep whirlpools by the ocean currents into their stomachs."

"And then?"

"What would be the consequences of eating fish that lived alongside the Old Day Dominator?"

"Uh, mutation?"

"That is the Old Day Dominator, not a biological entity," Nya said. "Though it also counts as mutation, it's more of a mental one; they become abundantly inspired, much crazier, as do their descendants."

Shiller understood, the characters the players were role-playing, who were lured here, must naturally have an inspiration physique.

And the residents of Faralines, because their ancestors once worshipped the Old Day Dominator and ate the fish sent by the Old Day Dominator, ended up becoming inspiration physiques.

"This Lighthouse was a place where the villagers used to worship Dagon," Nya continued. "By lighting the Lighthouse in a special way, completing the worship ceremony, the fish catch would continuously appear in this sea area."

"But what does this have to do with the Pope?"

"It's an easily discoverable piece of history."

With that explanation, Shiller understood, the Pope probably learned this history previously, found it quite credible, and now probably thought of it as a last resort; thinking he didn't have long to live, he decided to go big, intending to sacrifice the entire village to see if he could borrow another five hundred years from heaven.

But there was still one problem: Who was the existence that accepted the Pope's sacrifice and gave the Pope his life before?

Shiller had some guesses in his mind, but he still decided to meet the Pope in person, so he said to Gad, "I want to go up and meet the Pope, do you want to come with me or stay here?"

"You're going up? I must remind you, the Pope's personal guard isn't easy to deal with; you, an imposter, definitely can't beat the real deal."

"Why do you think I am an imposter?"

"Could it be that you are a defector?" Gad asked somewhat doubtfully, "I've indeed heard that some members of the personal guard defected from the organization after learning the truth, but most of them died in the Court's pursuit. Are you the survivor?"

In his heart, Shiller said he actually didn't know who he was, as Arrogant had not set such a complicated backstory for himself. Clearly, the Transcendent had added something more.

As long as he went up to meet the Pope and saw his attitude, all questions would be resolved.

But Shiller felt things weren't so simple; something seemed off.

Still, he decided to go upstairs, and as he passed by the window, he saw that it was snowing again in Faralines.

This remote small village, when it started to snow, didn't seem conscious of its serenity and desolation, but rather seemed determined to snow endlessly until the end of time. Even without mountains, castles, and Giant Dragons, the flying snow and the buried village evoked a sense of an epic world about to tilt and collapse here.

The pale knight, clutching his continuously bleeding chest, fell in the snow, seeing the blood stain the snow in front of him red. With his last strength, he gripped the gun tightly.

When that figure appeared, he pulled the trigger—only a very faint sound ensued.

Between brows that always bore elegance and pride, a twist of pain and annoyance suddenly crunched in, and beneath the eyelashes, pupils reflected a glaring red until they gradually dimmed.

One Hand picked up the gun, ejected an empty cartridge from it, and threw the metal down where it sank into the snow, soon to be covered by the snowflakes falling from the sky. The body was similarly concealed.

There was only one room at the top of the Lighthouse. Shiller followed the staircase up, rounded the semi-circular passage, and pushed open the door.

An old man in a wheelchair sat facing away from the door by the window, and Shiller slowly walked in, but when the old man turned around, Shiller was also stunned.

The Pope's body was covered with densely clustered human heads.

His head, neck, chest, abdomen, and limbs were covered with head-like protrusions resembling tumors, seemingly about to burst out from within him. Some had already pushed out most of their skulls, while others merely outlined facial features.

Men and women, old and young...

Shiller found few familiar faces among them.

Doug, Madeline, Jeff...

They had not yet formed tangible facial features and appeared like tattoos wedged into the gaps of those tumor-like heads, with grotesque expressions as if desperately jockeying for a spot here.

Now Shiller understood what Gad meant.

The Pope had completely transformed into a conglomerate of tumor-like heads—there were at least four or five heads where his head should be, and Shiller could not tell which, if any, was his original head.

Upon seeing him, Shiller's vision blurred abruptly, and he felt a sharp pain in his head, with ringing in his ears that was deafening.

He staggered to the nearest table, took a while to recover, and had to use a Soothing Skill on himself to barely stabilize his mental state.

Really enough to intrigue one's curiosity, Shiller thought disdainfully, turning his head away from the disgusting monster. He had already guessed whose handiwork this was.

Shiller took out the novel Nyarla had given him, flipped through the initial parts, and went straight to the ending.

"...What a horrific scene it is. Those victims who contributed their lifespans live forever within him, yet they seem unwilling merely to offer sacrifices, preferring to enjoy the fruits.

This made Lodoff realize, the entity dealing with the Pope did not accept his sacrifice. It was the Pope himself who truly accepted the sacrifices, incorporating the offerers into his body, giving them a chance to contend for the pontifical position.

The truly willing sacrificer was none other than the Pope himself.

Lodoff believed the Pope must have said something to that entity, perhaps that they should unconditionally offer their lives to him because he was more noble.

God granted his wish—in a manner so humorous and cruel, transforming the Pope into what he claimed to be, a sacrificer.

Lodoff astonishingly felt the eerie resonance of their struggles, trembling as if he were touching a stick thrust into an anthill with a tentacle, or feeling the steam of boiling water poured into an ant hole on his belly.

It made him feel cornered, with nowhere to escape.

Should he fight this monster to death? But Lodoff found it meaningless, for he felt the eye that had appeared above the Dueling Field was watching with interest, eagerly anticipating these events.

Lodoff felt this entity had observed such scenes countless times before, above Doug's, Madeline's, and Jeff's heads...

He watched them continuously struggle and dodge, using their barely detectable short toes to write what seemed like a great legend to the Human race, yet to an exalted Star-dwelling being, such was but an insignificance that could easily be swept into an unsightly pile of waste.

This was not an opponent; it was a warning, showing him the fate of a failure.

The real opponent, on the other hand, emerged from a hidden door behind the bookshelf."

Shiller lifted his eyes from the book, suddenly turned, and looked behind at the bookshelf.

Bruce emerged from the shadows, wearing a golden patterned robe identical to his own.

"Long time no see, teacher,"

The novel turned to the next page, revealing another article in italics.

"Lodoff recognized his former student—Matthew—before his defection; he was his pride.

This brilliant prodigy had never concealed his thirst for knowledge, and no one had ever attained a double degree in Psychology and Sociology from Miskatonic University so quickly.

But by the time Lodoff realized what his student was truly studying, it was already too late.

On a snowy night, he heard ancient spells coming from Matthew's room, indicating that he was contacting some terrifying entity.

Among all the silent, empty cosmos, he had drawn a pair of eyes to his own anthill, hearing him refer to it as—'Nyarlathotep'."