Chapter 178: Gun Goddess

Across America, bystanders watch in dread as the Statue of Liberty's upper portion shatters, exposing a demonic figure clutching a rifle. Yoru orders the statue-weapon to fire, and its finger-shaped round travels across the globe to strike Pochita head-on, hurling him back through several buildings. Seeing the ruin she caused, Asa retakes control and grasps too late just how wicked Yoru is, while Yoru laughs on at the carnage. The Aging Devil steps toward Pochita, who is now just a head and torso.

The Aging Devil feeds blood between Pochita's lips and instructs him to consume their body upward from the feet, laying out the conditions of a contract struck with Japan's government. Calling the gesture romantic, they ask whether Pochita grasps the feeling. As they tell him to 'eat up', a mirror they hold reflects numerous children whom the Japanese government is gathering for execution.

The title is a pun: in Japanese the word 'Jiyū' for liberty and 'Jū' for gun are near-homophones, linking the Statue of Liberty, itself a depiction of the goddess Libertas, to the Gun Goddess. Pochita being restored by the Aging Devil's blood echoes Denji's revival by a mysterious figure back in Chapter 126. Because America leads global firearm manufacturing and the statue ranks among its top symbols, those facts are framed as the main reasons the Gun Goddess model exists.