"The unfortunate Baron Ebel had not received an invitation to the ball. Yet he bribed a guard and slipped inside all the same. Judging by the state of his finances, one could easily guess his intention—he hoped to meet a few wealthy men within those glittering halls and ease his crushing debts through the brief, fragile friendships of the night."
"Don't be surprised," Arthur added calmly. "There are many nobles like him. They failed to keep pace with the age, still living off the remnants of their fathers' fortunes. And beneath the weight of relentless taxes, they slowly wither away."
Arthur watched the man's retreating figure fade into the distance.
Baron Ebel stared blankly ahead, his eyes hollow, as though the soul within him had sealed itself away forever.
"He encountered a demon directly," Arthur continued. "The corruption invaded him violently. By the time we found him, he had already entered the second stage. His mind was completely shattered—mad, aggressive, and the corruption was still spreading through him. Demonization was only a matter of time."
"So you used… that procedure on him?"
Lloyd asked cautiously.
He did not fully understand the nature of the operation, but the sight of a human mind collapsing into something corpse-like was no less disturbing than the grotesque horrors of demons themselves.
"Yes," Arthur said. "Right here."
He tapped his own forehead. Beneath the firm bone lay the fragile flesh of the brain.
"We use a leucotomy needle. It is inserted through the upper orbital cavity above the eye, driven directly into the brain. Then the neural systems inside are rapidly destroyed—nerve fibers severed, tangled, and broken apart."
"The procedure is swift. It doesn't even require an operating room. The nerves we destroy are those responsible for higher cognition. In other words, after the operation, the human mind loses the very concepts of 'thinking' and 'reflection.'"
Arthur paused before continuing.
"If the corruption of demons could be imagined as a kind of numerical meter within the human mind… then this operation simply removes the meter entirely."
"Just as the blind do not fear blinding light," he said quietly, "a person who has lost the very concept of thought cannot be contaminated by that corruption."
"In truth, he is no longer human. Merely a corpse that still breathes."
The technique was cruel, steeped in shadow.
From Arthur's calm explanation alone, Lloyd could glimpse the sinister edge of it.
To prove the reliability of such a procedure… how many skulls must have been opened and studied?
"This is the best solution we currently have," Arthur said. "Otherwise, for people like Baron Ebel—those on the brink of demonization—our only option would be to destroy them completely."
"I understand," Lloyd replied quietly.
After the initial shock and fear faded, what remained was not outrage but a weary understanding.
They were all travelers walking across fragile ice.
To reach the ideal land on the far shore, one had no choice but to keep discarding the burdens one carried—lest the brittle surface beneath them shatter.
Emotion.
Humanity.
Morality.
Discard them all, piece by piece…
Until nothing remained—
Until at last they reached that distant land.
"Sometimes the most sinful decisions lead to the best outcomes," Arthur said softly. "In that case… it is better that we bear the sins ourselves."
Strangely, he spoke of something so heavy as though it were weightless.
"What about the others?" Lloyd asked again. "The members of the Cleansing Mechanism—your own people. If they lose control, will they undergo this procedure as well?"
"That depends," Arthur answered.
"Most soldiers carry warning devices. When their alarms begin to wail, they're expected to withdraw from the battlefield immediately. Of course, some inevitably push too far. Those missions are usually assigned to specially trained knights—they can withstand far greater levels of corruption."
"And accordingly, we have treatments designed for them."
He glanced toward the distant figure of the baron.
"For instance, this poor man still had a small chance of survival. But his personal value simply does not justify such an effort."
It was cold. Ruthlessly so.
Everything was weighed and priced with perfect clarity—
not a trace of sympathy, only the precise movement of a machine.
Lloyd looked at Arthur, then back at Joy behind him.
They had made this decision long ago.
"Mr. Holmes," Arthur said, gazing at Lloyd with quiet intensity, "this incident has clearly exceeded our control. I think there's no need for us to remain wary of each other anymore… wouldn't you agree?"
Neither man spoke the conclusion aloud.
Yet between them, an unspoken understanding had already formed.
"Joy, push faster," Arthur called back. "Mr. Holmes still has many things to see today."
Joy quickened the pace of the wheelchair.
Lloyd could only grit his teeth and follow, ignoring the sharp pain shooting through his leg.
"What exactly are you going to show me?" Lloyd asked.
"Many things," Arthur replied wearily. "All of them connected to Archbishop Lawrence."
"He left quite a legacy behind."
Arthur let out a tired breath.
"If information about demons could ever be made public, then Archbishop Lawrence would undoubtedly be remembered as the greatest terrorist in the history of Ingilveg since the Glorious War."
…
The air was thick with the smell of machine oil.
With the thunderous rumble of an engine, the entire carriage trembled faintly. The dim light swayed with every jolt of the train.
Lloyd gazed out the window.
Jets of steam burst along the tunnel walls, coating the stone in damp mist. In the gloom, slick rocks rushed past at terrifying speed, the scenery collapsing into a distant point as though the tunnel stretched into infinity.
They were now racing through the underground of Old Dunling—twenty meters beneath the surface.
It was Lloyd's first time riding this contraption known as the steam subway. It too was part of the Serpent of the Atrium system, though only a handful of its lines had ever been opened to the public.
But the route they were taking now was not listed on any timetable.
This hidden railway cut straight through Old Dunling.
Originally, the tunnels had been excavated for the construction of the Furnace Pillar system. Long rails were laid within them to haul away endless tons of soil as the earth beneath the city was hollowed out.
Later, the tunnels became maintenance passages.
And eventually they were transformed into this steam subway.
Thanks to it, Lloyd could bypass the crowded streets above and descend directly into depths unreachable by ordinary means.
"The Furnace Pillar system is incredibly complex," Arthur said, seated at the other end of the carriage. "Even today it continues to expand alongside Old Dunling itself… almost as if it were alive."
The carriage's interior was hardly comfortable.
There were no decorations, only rusted metal and exposed rivets—an atmosphere of decaying industry.
As the train thundered forward, the roar of the engine mingled with strange metallic scraping sounds, as if the carriage might tear itself apart at any moment under the strain.
"Because the system is so complicated—and built underground—these lines are often the only way for us to reach certain places," Arthur explained.
"Places normal methods can't reach."
"Maintenance tunnels?" Lloyd asked, leaning against the rusted wall as he stared into the darkness outside.
"Exactly," Arthur said. "They were originally passages used by workers during construction and repairs. Their entrances are hidden. Most people can't even find them, and after construction is finished, they're locked away."
"So?" Lloyd asked.
Arthur simply waited.
"You'll see when we arrive."
The train rushed deeper into the dark.
Far beneath the earth, the tunnel stretched endlessly ahead, like a journey across a boundless wasteland of shadow. No matter which direction one traveled, the scenery never changed—only the same dim corridor repeating again and again.
Perhaps the world after death was something like this.
No radiant light.
No devouring darkness.
No heaven.
No hell.
Only a dull gray twilight blanketing everything.
Struggle as you might, every effort becomes a futile resistance—
until, at last, you sink into that endless gray,
and the final fragment of reason quietly breaks.
窗体顶端
In the dimness, striking signs slid past the line of sight, each marked with a different number. Beneath them stood rows of rusted iron doors, as though even here, deep beneath the earth, there were residents. Behind every corroded door lay yet another apartment.
It was difficult to imagine that the city of Old Dunling could possess such depth. Vast structures stretched beneath the ground, as if the entire city had been turned upside down and buried below—its underground reflection clinging to the surface world like a shadow.
Several minutes later, the carriage slowed to a halt. With a hiss of surging steam, the doors creaked open.
Stale, damp air rushed forward. Lloyd could not help coughing a few times. Dust burst into the air, and in the faint light countless shattered particles drifted and swirled like ghostly motes.
"Please bear with it for a moment," Joey said as he pushed Arthur down from the carriage. "The ventilation system here hasn't been started in a long time. After all, it's not a place people visit every day."
Only then did Lloyd notice the distant whir of fans turning somewhere in the stillness of the deep underground.
They labored heavily, forcing fresh air into the depths below. Without them, the three of them would have already collapsed from lack of oxygen.
"So," Lloyd asked quietly, "what exactly did you want me to see?"
"There are many strange things in Bishop Lawrence's 'workshop.' As his… colleague, perhaps you can explain them to us."
At that moment, a dust-choked iron door set into the rock wall slowly opened. It was an old maintenance passage once used by workers. Red Falcon stood there with a miner's lamp strapped to his head. As the door swung wide, a thick wave of blood-scent poured outward.
It was as though beyond that door lay a hell of flesh and blood—a slaughterhouse for living things.
"You finally made it. I need a shift change."
Red Falcon's expression looked utterly wretched. Without offering any further greeting, he staggered aside and began retching.
"Come along, Mr. Holmes," Arthur said calmly. He seemed to have seen what lay behind the door before and appeared unfazed.
Lloyd said nothing. With steady composure, he stepped forward.
Then the red world unfolded before his eyes.
Beyond the door, the place resembled the nest of some grotesque creature. The ground and even the walls were coated in thick, congealed blood. Human skeletons and severed limbs lay scattered everywhere. Several operating tables stood among them, their corpses long since shriveled dry.
A sudden wave of nausea surged up from deep within Lloyd's throat, as if someone had seized his stomach and twisted it brutally. At once, a storm of nameless emotions followed, flooding through his nerves.
"There were demons here?" Lloyd's voice carried a note of pain.
Joey fared no better. After only a few steps, he retreated, handing the wheelchair over to Lloyd.
"Yes. Demons. Extremely powerful ones," Arthur answered, his own face pale with strain. "So powerful that their mere presence here caused severe levels of erosion."
Arthur himself looked pained, yet as a product of the Ranger Program his resistance to erosion far exceeded Joey's.
"After we discovered this place, we poured several tons of neutralizing solution through it in an attempt to reduce the erosion. The results were minimal."
He gestured ahead.
"Walk further in, Lloyd. This isn't even the worst of it."
Their shoes stepped across the sticky floor, pulling up countless threads of clotted filaments. Severed limbs and dark blood lay everywhere. The two of them felt as though they had wandered into the stomach of some enormous monster, slowly being digested by it with the passage of time.
Strange murmurs whispered faintly in Lloyd's ears.
It reminded him of the monks at the exhibition—those men who had muttered incomprehensible tongues. Yet now, it felt as though something beyond human understanding had spoken through them at that moment.
Deeper inside stretched a corridor. Countless footprints marked the viscous floor. The Purge Bureau had clearly already surveyed the place.
"What… exactly is this?" Lloyd's heart began to tremble faintly. Even during his years with the Demon Hunter Order, he had never witnessed a scene like this.
"A breeding ground," Arthur said. "A breeding ground for demons. I imagine those creatures all came from here."
At the end of the passage stood a raised platform.
A maze of steam pipes spread across the entire chamber. Beneath them, roaring machines churned endlessly. Yet none of that was the true focus.
The true focus was the crimson mass that enveloped everything—like the nest of some gigantic spider.
Sticky red threads stretched everywhere. Shattered fragments of white, hardened shells littered the ground. Among them lay several intact structures resembling eggs. Their tough outer layers had been split open, revealing thick liquid inside.
Within that liquid floated a corpse long since dead.
The clothes had not yet fully dissolved. From the uniform, the body appeared to belong to an ordinary laborer.
But this was merely a corner of the chamber.
White remnants like these covered the ground entirely, stretching far into the distance until they vanished from sight.
"This… this is…"
Shock surged through Lloyd like nothing he had ever experienced. Arthur no longer needed to explain anything. The moment Lloyd saw it, he understood.
"He's… raising demons."
Arthur nodded.
"And judging by the setup, the breeding technique is highly mature. When we captured the underground palace earlier, we found similar facilities there—but their scale was nowhere near this."
"But… your Observers," Lloyd pressed. "With breeding on this scale, how could your detectors fail to register anything?"
"That," Arthur said quietly, "is precisely the reason."
He pointed toward the surrounding walls.
"Mr. Holmes, did you know that Holy Silver can block the spread of demonic erosion?"
"What?"
Lloyd frowned. He knew Holy Silver was lethally effective against demons—but he had never heard such a thing.
"It seems you didn't know either," Arthur said. "That conclusion came from the Perpetual Pump. They dissected that demon hunter."
"You mean Ed?"
Lloyd's gaze turned dangerously cold. That meant the Purge Bureau had, at least to some extent, already obtained the Secret Blood.
"We conducted multiple experiments on the demon hunter's corpse," Arthur continued plainly, ignoring Lloyd's reaction. "The results showed that Holy Silver can partially block the spread of erosion."
Arthur gestured around the chamber.
"Bishop Lawrence clearly knew this as well. To prevent the erosion from spreading outward, he plated the entire breeding facility with a layer of Holy Silver. It was only after we increased the sensitivity of the Geiger instruments that we finally detected something abnormal here."
"That's impossible!" Lloyd immediately refuted. "There's nowhere near enough Holy Silver for something like this!"
Holy Silver had always been scarce. And after the Demon Hunter Order had been dissolved for so long, Bishop Lawrence should have had no means of replenishing it.
Wait…
The Revelation.
Yes—there was still that damned thing.
If Bishop Lawrence had stolen The Revelation, then he might also possess the knowledge required to manufacture Holy Silver.
But such a vast quantity…
Even when the entire nation had supported the Order as its logistical backbone, the production of Holy Silver had remained painfully low.
So how had he done it alone?
Or perhaps… he hadn't.
Even with the knowledge to create it, no single person could achieve this scale.
There had to be a massive team behind him.
"Enough with the secrecy," Lloyd said coldly. "Say everything at once."
His eyes had grown icy.
A vast organization… the lingering consequences of the Holy Advent Night were far more complex than he had ever imagined—by a thousandfold, perhaps even a hundred thousand.