A good day began the moment he opened his eyes and saw the ceiling plastered with posters.
For the man lying in bed, the sight of those strange posters was always reassuring. It meant he had woken up at home rather than in some bizarre place he couldn't remember falling asleep in.
Lloyd was awake.
For a Witch Hunter, fatigue could be chased away with only a few hours of rest, but Lloyd still preferred sleeping like an ordinary person—closing his eyes at night and waking with the dawn. During that peculiar period of idyllic countryside living, he had once slept for an entire day without interruption.
He enjoyed that kind of laziness.
Even the road to death seemed slower and more leisurely when walked at such a pace.
"Good morning! Good morning!"
The detective greeted everyone in high spirits.
Though, in truth, the house contained only a landlady and two tenants.
Perhaps it was because of the Divine Birth Festival. After that night, everyone seemed to get along a little better. Even Sig would now respond when Lloyd greeted him. The young man was still visibly uncomfortable around him, but it was a considerable improvement over the cold silence he had maintained before.
As usual, Madam Vanrode sat upon the sofa reading a book.
For safety reasons, the mountain of ammunition crates that had once cluttered the house had already been removed by people sent by Seriu. It was one of those moments when the influence of the great aristocratic families revealed itself in full. When the workers carried those crates away, nearly every passerby on the street stopped to stare. Some even suspected that terrorists had been hiding inside the house.
Fortunately, Seriu's status had smoothed things over.
Madam Vanrode received nothing more than a stern warning. Ingelvig authorities generally cared little about private firearm ownership, but even by their standards, the quantity involved had been somewhat excessive.
The most embarrassed person had been a military officer who stood in the living room staring at the enormous map hanging on the wall. Its wartime markings had never been removed and remained proudly displayed for all to see. He had attempted to confiscate it, only to be verbally demolished by Madam Vanrode for nearly half an hour.
According to her, it was merely a decorative piece.
"How's the job search going?"
Whether it was kindness or simply the end of a dreadful menopause, Madam Vanrode had recently begun preparing breakfast for both tenants.
At the breakfast table, Lloyd glanced toward Sig and asked casually.
Sig kept his head down while eating.
"Still looking," he muttered through a mouthful of food.
Madam Vanrode's expression softened with approval. She seemed genuinely pleased by Sig's efforts to rebuild his life.
His secret had not remained hidden for long.
Everyone had learned about his addiction to hallucinogens and the dismissal that followed. Fortunately, Sig had managed to pull himself free before sinking completely. He attended support groups and regularly met with a therapist. With encouragement, guidance, and care from many directions, his life had gradually begun returning to normal.
Perhaps because he had once died and returned, Lloyd found himself feeling more emotions than before. Sometimes he even worried about his roommate.
Though said roommate still seemed incapable of accepting Lloyd's overwhelming presence.
Then came a sudden knock at the door.
All three looked toward the entrance with mild confusion.
Living under the same roof had revealed something oddly amusing. Despite their enormous differences in age, background, and social status, they shared one peculiar trait.
None of them had many friends.
Lloyd rarely saw Madam Vanrode leave the house, nor did anyone ever come to visit her. She seemed content to slowly decay within those walls. Sometimes Lloyd suspected that her decision to rent rooms stemmed from a simple fear—that one day she might die alone and remain undiscovered.
Sig, meanwhile, was painfully withdrawn.
At least, Lloyd thought so.
He knew little about the young man's past, only that since arriving in Old Dunling, Sig had never once returned home. Before losing his job due to drug abuse, his life had consisted solely of work and home, repeated endlessly in a bleak two-point routine.
As for Lloyd?
That was simple.
Most of the people he had known were dead.
And he deliberately kept ordinary people at a distance to prevent them from being dragged into the vortex of demons and monsters that followed him everywhere.
Their confusion lasted only briefly.
The door opened.
A familiar figure stepped inside.
"Good morning, everyone."
Joey had visited often enough to become a familiar face. He carried a heavy iron case in one hand, and whatever lay inside clearly possessed considerable weight.
He had come for Lloyd.
Sig didn't even bother looking. He knew Lloyd was a mysterious man, and he had no desire to become involved in any of Lloyd's troubles.
Lloyd shoveled down the remainder of his breakfast and quickly led Joey upstairs toward his room.
If his guess was correct, whatever was inside that case was not something suitable for display in the living room.
"You people are getting efficient," Lloyd remarked as they climbed the stairs.
"Old Dunling is under lockdown now," Joey replied.
"The delegation of the new Pope, the fugitives connected to Cardinal Michael, foreign envoys from half a dozen nations... and more importantly, the lost Book of Revelation."
Though it was still morning, Joey looked utterly exhausted.
"Lloyd, the entire city is sitting at the center of a whirlpool now. The only question is when everything finally erupts."
His face was lined with worry.
More and more people were arriving in Old Dunling, bringing trouble and chaos in their wake.
"I think the Purification Agency can handle it."
Lloyd sounded completely confident.
Not because he believed they could.
Because they had to.
If the Purification Agency could not keep things under control, then there was little point in its existence.
"We can," Joey said with a nod.
"The pressure is enormous, but it's still manageable. We've begun consolidating our forces. Manpower is stretched thin, so several Knight Commanders, including Gawain, have been recalled from other regions."
Knight Commanders.
After spending so much time around the organization, Lloyd had developed a rough understanding of its hierarchy.
Following the cancellation of the Ranger Program, Arthur had become the final Ranger. The technology itself had not vanished, however. Instead, it had evolved into a more specialized form. Those enhanced through the process gained greater resistance to corruption.
Among them, those bearing the names of legendary knights possessed the highest resistance of all.
In a way, it reminded Lloyd of how the Witch Hunter Order bestowed names.
That thought led to an unsettling image.
"If things really go wrong," Lloyd said suddenly, "we're not going to see several Old Century Divine Armors fighting in the middle of the streets, are we?"
The Knight Commanders were also the pilots of those ancient war machines.
The Divine Armors represented the Purification Agency's primary weapon against demonic threats.
"The Purification Agency will make certain that never happens," Joey answered.
"Divine Armors are still classified military assets."
To the outside world, neither the Purification Agency nor the Divine Armors officially existed.
Lloyd thought of something deeper.
Like Witch Hunters, they were ultimately weapons.
And weapons could kill humans just as easily as monsters.
But he chose not to voice the thought.
Instead, his gaze drifted toward the iron case.
"So what did you bring me?"
"What you asked for."
Joey opened the case.
Lloyd leaned forward expectantly.
The sight he wanted most failed to appear.
Instead, he found something that brought a sharp ache to his chest.
"Unfortunately, your beloved Winchester really was blown to pieces."
Joey lifted a charred fragment from the case.
"We only recovered part of the wooden stock. Want me to find a craftsman and turn it into a keepsake?"
It was the grip.
Blackened by fire.
Scorched by heat.
Yet faint lettering remained visible across its surface.
The words of a poem Lloyd had always loved.
"...Damn."
A thousand emotions became a single sigh.
The shotgun had accompanied him longer than almost anything else in his life. It had followed him through the Witch Hunter Order and through Old Dunling alike.
At some point it had ceased being merely a weapon.
It had become a memory.
A connection to the past.
"Well," Lloyd said quietly, "looks like you followed your owner into death after all."
"Your owner?"
Joey blinked in surprise.
"The owner wasn't you?"
"It belonged to a friend of mine."
Lloyd shrugged.
"He died. The gun felt good in my hands, so I just kept using it."
The old grief no longer held enough strength to wound him deeply.
"The poem carved on it was his."
Joey studied the faded words.
"Do not go gentle into that good night."
He had heard Lloyd recite it before.
"That's the one."
"Did he write it himself?"
Joey asked.
"I've never heard anything like it."
Lloyd snorted.
"Not a chance. He wasn't that talented."
"This came from the blessing of the Divine Baptism."
"Just like your enhancement procedures increase resistance to corruption, that ritual does the same for us. But it also fills our dreams with strange things. Fragments of images. Snatches of words. Poems like this."
The mysterious ritual.
Lloyd still did not know whether he would ever uncover its truth.
But he knew one thing.
To find answers, he would eventually have to return to where everything began.
The Temple of Stagnation.
"My friend said the poem was written by a son for his father."
Lloyd traced the charred wood with his fingers, feeling the shallow grooves left by the carving.
"The father was dying of illness. He'd lived too long and suffered too much. He was tired and ready to surrender himself to death. But his son refused to accept that. So he wrote this poem to awaken his fighting spirit."
Those had been Medanzo's words.
After all these years, Lloyd found himself repeating them once more.
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Do not surrender so easily to death..."
Joey murmured.
At last, he understood.
"This is a poem that curses death," Lloyd said.
Joey froze.
Several moments passed before he let out a strained laugh.
"How terrifying."
"To curse death itself..."
Was it ignorance?
Or courage?
When matters rose to the level of life and death, of mankind and divinity, even the smallest act carried an extraordinary sense of grandeur.
"These are the weapons prepared for you."
Joey opened the second compartment of the case.
Inside rested a shotgun remarkably similar to the Winchester.
The craftsmen had clearly gone to great lengths to reproduce it.
"Shotguns suit you," Joey said, lifting it carefully.
"Different shells. Different situations."
"It looks brand new."
"But it isn't the same gun."
Lloyd accepted it.
Several details had changed.
Most notably, the old lever-action mechanism had been replaced by a pump-action design.
"Custom-built by the Perpetual Pump," Joey said proudly.
"Compared to your antique relic, this is cutting-edge equipment. Try being grateful."
Then he opened the third compartment.
Inside lay Lloyd's familiar folding knife, along with several replacement blades.
"But most importantly..."
Joey produced a crude-looking pistol.
It was larger than expected, wrapped in layers of rope and fitted with a small compressed-air canister where a magazine would normally sit.
"This is the real prize."
"I hear you keep losing suspects during pursuits. The Perpetual Pump had an experimental weapon lying around. One of the prototypes."
A grin spread across his face.
"Since Witch Hunters are notoriously difficult to kill through falling, we figured you could test it."
Lloyd accepted the strange weapon with caution.
Products from the Perpetual Pump were usually excellent.
Experimental products, however, were another matter entirely.
He still remembered the Divine Armor firearms.
"Grappling gun," Joey explained.
"Effective range: twenty meters. Because of technical limitations, it takes time to retract the cable after firing. And once it hits, you'll still need to do part of the climbing yourself."
Lloyd recognized it immediately.
He had seen a larger version mounted on Lancelot's Divine Armor.
That machine's mobility bordered on absurd.
Of course, the armor had powerful motors to handle retraction.
A handheld version lacked such luxuries.
"So it's basically a one-shot weapon?"
Joey raised an eyebrow.
"Is one chance not enough for you?"
A smile spread slowly across Lloyd's face.
There was a faint cruelty in it.
"Oh, one chance is plenty."
"More than enough."
Once the delivery was complete, Joey departed.
Left alone in his room, Lloyd examined his new arsenal.
Having government backing really was convenient.
No more buying his own guns.
That alone would save him a considerable amount of money.
Sometimes, when he thought about it, the arrangement almost sounded noble.
Every bounty he collected from killing someone eventually became food for some orphan somewhere.
Those children would eat well.
Grow up healthy.
Live happier lives.
Viewed from that angle, everything he did could practically be called justice.
A ridiculous piece of logic.
Yet Lloyd found himself laughing anyway.
Until his eyes fell upon the charred fragment.
The smile faded.
He picked it up once more.
"Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.