Old Dunling looked as dreary as ever today. Pale mist seeped up from beneath the streets, while chimneys exhaled columns of gray-black smoke, one after another, holding apart the distance between heaven and earth. Machines turned slowly, driving miraculous creations, and among them airships drifted like great whales, roaming the skies like visions from another world.
For someone like Lloyd, who had lived in Old Dunling for years, all of this had long since become ordinary. This was the frontier of steam technology, where new inventions were born every day. But to travelers from distant lands, everything here was astonishingly strange.
Banners hung from the streetlamps, adding streaks of color to the gray world. Foreigners wandered the streets with excitement, craning their necks toward the dark silhouettes moving among the clouds.
The visiting delegation had brought an influx of travelers, most of them eager to tour the factories. Large-scale mechanical assembly lines were rare in their homelands, and somehow these industrial giants had become tourist attractions.
To maintain order, mounted police had multiplied throughout the city, making the streets crowded and lively. None of that concerned Lloyd. Beneath his coat were the weapons Joey had brought him, and he was busy—with solving cases, and with killing people.
The Purification Agency was occupied with searching for the Book of Revelation, so the other Knight Commanders had all been recalled to Old Dunling. That left the matter of the stowaways to Lloyd alone.
And just like the strange pull of fate itself, Lloyd had an uneasy feeling that this insignificant case would lead him into some vast and terrifying vortex.
It was easy to see that the districts bordering the Lower Quarter had been flooded with police presence. Slipping past the mounted patrols, Lloyd once again infiltrated the Lower Quarter. He needed to find the Rat King. That man had to know something.
Lloyd searched for traces of the gutter rats. Normally, vagrants like them were everywhere, drifting through the streets and not just confined to the Lower Quarter. Yet today, after wandering for a long time, he did not see a single one. It was as though they had vanished overnight.
His eyes grew wary. He lowered the brim of his hat, hiding his face completely in shadow. One hand remained in his pocket, just as before. The pocket was torn, allowing him to reach beneath his coat and wrap his fingers around the grip of his gun.
Something had happened here. The atmosphere in the Lower Quarter was wrong.
Chaotic and filthy as it was, the district had never felt this deathly silent. The deeper Lloyd went, the fewer signs of life he saw—until a rat suddenly darted across his path.
Rats were common enough, but a rat with a chain tied to its tail was not. Especially not one with the same police-yellow tag Lloyd had seen before.
He scanned the surroundings, trying to spot whoever was manipulating all of this from the shadows, but he found nothing. The rat, meanwhile, was already disappearing from view.
Without hesitation, Lloyd followed it. From his earlier pursuit through the Rat Nest, he had realized the yellow tag was a marker. The mysterious Rat King was trying to guide him somewhere.
It could be a trap. It could be a clue. Lloyd no longer cared. His coat was filled with weapons; this detective was armed to the teeth.
The rat eventually led him to a twisted building, one of countless dangerous ruins scattered through the Lower Quarter. The front door hung open, revealing only darkness inside. When Lloyd entered, he found little more than an empty room filled with a nauseating stench.
"I'm getting more and more curious about who you are…" he muttered.
After a moment, something occurred to him. He walked to the corner, flicked out his folding knife, and drove it hard into the floorboards. The blade pierced straight through a concealed wooden hatch.
Just like the first time he had entered the Rat Nest, it was as though the Rat King had anticipated every one of Lloyd's actions, leaving clues at exactly the right moments.
With a powerful slash, Lloyd tore open the hidden cover. A black opening yawned beneath him.
"You've got to be kidding me…"
The foul smell told him immediately where the tunnel led. But if he wanted the truth, he had no choice but to go down.
He jumped into the darkness. Tiny scratching sounds echoed around him. The rat was waiting below, and as soon as it saw him descend, it scurried forward again, guiding him through the maze-like tunnels.
Lloyd had no idea how long he walked. By the time he lost sight of the rat, a faint light had appeared at the end of the passage.
Before he could peer outside, however, a surge of steam blasted into the tunnel. The wet, high-temperature vapor nearly suffocated him. Fortunately, it seemed to have been venting for some time already, and the heat had dropped. Otherwise, the initial burst would have easily scalded a person alive.
Wiping the moisture from his face, Lloyd breathed heavily and moved toward the opening again. He thought he finally knew where he was.
He poked his head out. The outside was dim, illuminated only by weak lights overhead that flickered from years of neglect.
The great steel construct breathed steadily, as though asleep. Mechanical gears occasionally turned, sounding like the murmurs of a dream.
It slept peacefully in the darkness, silent for who knew how long. Then Lloyd saw it exhale again. Scalding steam erupted from the seams of the machinery like a tidal wave from a breached dam, flooding the entire space in an instant.
Lloyd immediately retreated into the tunnel, running several steps farther from the opening. Even so, the rushing heat wave caught up to him. He stumbled and fell, and the burning steam swept across his body. After the searing heat came biting cold.
The sudden contrast made him sneeze.
Outside was the Furnace Pillar—or rather, one of its exhaust sections. This had to be where the city's daily steam overflow was released before being channeled back to the surface through pipes.
Lloyd had not expected it to be so enormous. Or so deadly.
True to its name, the Furnace Pillar's main structure was cylindrical, like a colossal stone column driven deep beneath the earth. No one knew how far it extended, not even its creators. Rumor claimed the original blueprints numbered in the thousands, and when stacked together they weighed more than twenty tons.
And that was only the beginning. Over the years, countless technological upgrades and the wild imaginations of researchers had added new functions to it. The Furnace Pillar had grown alongside Old Dunling itself, expanding like some monstrous organism until it became what it was today.
Standing at the tunnel mouth, Lloyd peered into the darkness. The steel walls stretched beyond sight, their rusted surfaces riddled with exhaust vents. The air was damp and warm, with puddles scattered across the ground.
The venting seemed to have stopped for the moment. Lloyd cautiously jumped down onto the wet floor.
Near where he landed lay several corpses, dead for a long time. Rotting flesh and tattered clothing had fused together into a revolting mess. One skeletal arm was raised upward, frozen in the victim's final desperate gesture.
Lloyd could easily guess who they were and how they had died. They were probably gutter rats. Winters in Old Dunling were brutal, and they had tried to warm themselves here—only to be suffocated and cooked alive by the steam.
He looked away and pressed forward through the darkness. The Rat King had guided him here for a reason, and Lloyd searched anxiously for it.
He did not dare stray too far from the tunnel. He was a monster hunter and had survived all kinds of deadly situations, but he had never been boiled alive by steam before, and that thought genuinely unsettled him.
He had no idea when the next venting would happen. If he were too far from shelter, he would have nowhere to hide.
After walking for some time, the machinery began turning again. The searing gas was about to be released. At that moment, Lloyd spotted an escape route: a staircase built into the opposite wall, climbing toward the faint light above. It was a maintenance passage used by workers.
There was no time to think. Lloyd sprinted toward it, confident he could reach safety before the steam swallowed him.
He leapt upward, his boots striking the rusted iron ladder in rapid succession. Behind him, the superheated vapor began to erupt, and a howling wind filled the darkness.
Then his foot slipped.
Years of damp corrosion had weakened the ladder beyond repair, and under Lloyd's weight it finally snapped apart.
In one motion, he slashed his folding knife into the wall, using it to pull himself forward just as he had in the Rat Nest. The door lock ahead was rusted solid, but Lloyd's physique was well suited to violent lockpicking. He smashed the handle of the knife against the lock. With a shrill screech of metal, the door burst open. Lloyd threw himself inside and slammed it shut as the inferno-like steam crashed against it.
At last, he was in a safe space. The air was stale and sweltering, like the inside of a boiler.
Lloyd found himself growing even more curious about what awaited him deeper within. If he ever had the time, he thought, he would like to explore this mysterious underground world properly. No one knew what strange things lurked in these shadows untouched by light.
The passage stretched on endlessly. There were signs that someone had come through recently, so Lloyd continued deeper and deeper until, after an unknown length of time, he emerged into another open area.
Only this place was nothing like he had expected.
It was a vast underground chamber. At the end of the tunnel stood part of the Furnace Pillar's machinery, but someone had altered the place. Crude structures had been built onto the industrial framework, and in the distance Lloyd could see figures moving among them.
The sound of rushing water echoed through the cavern. Lloyd dropped low to the ground. His position was elevated, and the iron ladder leading here looked long since broken. The people below had no idea there was such a hidden entrance above them.
He concealed himself behind a massive pipe. The chamber was buried deep underground, lit only by a few floodlights mounted high above. Their limited reach left much of the area shrouded in darkness, allowing Lloyd to remain unseen.
"Are these people… scavenging trash?" he murmured.
Focusing his gaze, he realized this was likely one of the Furnace Pillar's water intake points. The boilers required water, so the Thames had been diverted into the pillar through several channels. This was probably one of them. But these people had erected a large net across the waterway to catch floating debris.
No—not merely debris. They were searching deliberately through the refuse, retrieving waterproofed crates one after another.
"Smuggling?"
Lloyd was genuinely surprised. Smuggling was common in the Lower Quarter. Some people swallowed small items, others hid goods in barrels attached beneath boats. But he had never seen anything like this.
They simply dumped the cargo into a fixed stretch of the Thames, and the current carried it straight here.
It was not exactly genius, but it was certainly creative.
So why had the Rat King led him here?
Lloyd moved closer in silence, blending into the shadows as he approached the underground dock. His hand tightened around his folding knife, his gaze cold and sharp.
"That's all the cargo?" someone asked.
"Yeah. Last crate," another replied.
A man pried open the box. Despite the waterproofing, some water had seeped inside, though it did not seem to matter. He looked down at the vials submerged within, their contents glowing with a strangely mesmerizing color.
"The inspections are getting stricter," another man said. "Most hallucinogen routes have been cut off. We're the only ones with supply now. This is our chance to make a fortune."
"A fortune's got nothing to do with us," the first man replied. "But getting a sip of the gravy is enough."
He reached into the crate and casually pulled out a vial.
"The shipment's in great condition. Hardly any damage… though the bosses do expect a certain amount of 'loss.'"
He looked around at the others, and grins spread across their faces. With a transport method like this, damaged goods were expected. Since this batch was too intact, they could always "damage" a few themselves. After all, only they were here. No one would know.
The man distributed the hallucinogens. One of them could not wait and injected himself immediately, his face relaxing into bliss as though he were ascending to heaven.
He staggered a few steps and collapsed, drawing laughter from the others.
None of them noticed the danger lurking in the dark.
Lloyd advanced slowly through the shadows, his expression icy as understanding suddenly struck him.
Even from this distance, even in such darkness, he had clearly sensed it the moment the man injected the drug.
The aura of a demon.
The fallen man climbed back to his feet, already trapped in hallucinations. His eyes drifted aimlessly—until something caught his attention in the darkness.
A burning white glow slowly rose from the shadows.
Perhaps it was only the illusion tormenting him, because when he rubbed his eyes, the glow vanished. He let out a foolish laugh and relaxed completely.