"It is certain now. Someone has been investigating us from the shadows. But it is neither the Cleansing Agency nor the Su Yalan Bureau."
The Plague Doctor stepped forward and voiced his speculation regarding the ambush. Until now, everything had gone flawlessly. They had left no traces, made no mistakes—except this once. This one crucial mistake.
"The Su Yalan Bureau simply doesn't possess the means to uncover any of this. But by the same token, if the Cleansing Agency had truly discovered us, the attackers wouldn't have been ordinary officers. It would've been Old Century God-Armor descending from the heavens."
Just as Lloyd and the others had suspected, Lawrence was not alone. Around him, a hidden organization had gradually taken shape. It was not particularly powerful, but it was more than enough for Lawrence to command.
"We can set that matter aside for now. This is Old Dunling after all—the capital of Inervig. A reflection of the entire Western world. Nothing that happens here should come as a surprise."
Lawrence spoke with calm indifference, as though he had expected this all along—or perhaps simply did not care.
Having lived for so long, he understood a simple truth: no matter how meticulous the preparation, once events were set in motion, uncontrollable variables would always emerge. Preparation merely reduced the damage such variables could cause.
Like Lloyd still being alive.
Only at the end of that life-and-death struggle had Lawrence finally understood why.
He had not been the sole victor of the Night of Divine Descent.
"Lloyd Holmes..." Lawrence murmured. "He is a dangerous man. Extremely dangerous."
The Plague Doctor was puzzled. This was not his first encounter with the demon hunter. Lloyd had always seemed ordinary. Against Lawrence, he had even appeared somewhat weak.
He could not understand why Lawrence regarded him so highly.
"Dangerous how?" he asked.
"The danger lies within him. I've never understood how he managed to turn the tables against me within the Gap. But now, looking back, the answer is painfully obvious."
A trace of lingering fear surfaced in Lawrence's voice.
He had nearly died by Watson's hand.
So very nearly.
The Plague Doctor hesitated before asking the question that had long haunted him.
"Who exactly is Lloyd? Before he became Lloyd Holmes... who was he?"
Lawrence clearly knew something.
Some secret buried beneath dust and forgotten centuries.
Yet he merely raised a finger.
"Shh, Plague Doctor. Don't wake them."
His tone was playful, almost mysterious.
"He's still alive."
"Who is?" the Plague Doctor asked.
Lawrence offered no answer.
The Revelation remained in his possession, and with every passing day, more secrets unfolded before his eyes.
As a demon hunter, becoming a Cardinal had already been the pinnacle of Lawrence's status. Yet even then, the Church had never truly trusted him.
After all, in their eyes, he was nothing more than a weapon.
And weapons did not need to know secrets.
"It is forbidden knowledge. Touching it recklessly will drag us into the abyss. Besides, there are far more interesting matters at hand."
"Such as?"
"Cardinal Michael."
Lawrence studied the Plague Doctor, as though attempting to peer beneath the heavy mask and glimpse the face hidden underneath.
"The new Pope doesn't seem particularly friendly. Otherwise, someone as uncompromising as Michael wouldn't have been reduced to this state," Lawrence continued. "I know him well. Unlike the others, Michael is a true believer—a complete fanatic. During the debates over the Holy Grail, he stood firmly with the faction of faith."
The Plague Doctor listened quietly.
Most who had lived through that era were already dead.
To hear firsthand accounts of those mysterious days gave him a strange sense of privilege.
"When he heard the proposals of the war faction, he drew his sword in fury and denounced them as heretics. Had no one stopped him, there would have been a massacre on the spot."
"Sounds like the two of you would've gotten along quite well," the Plague Doctor remarked.
Oddly enough, despite never meeting the Cardinal, the description alone made him feel that Lawrence and Michael shared certain similarities.
"We're not alike. We only appear that way."
Lawrence shook his head.
"Both of us are radical. Both of us are mad. But Michael displays his madness for all to see."
A faint smile crept across his lips.
"I prefer to unleash my fury from within the darkness."
The Plague Doctor shuddered.
Of course.
This was Lawrence.
How had he forgotten?
No one truly knew what Lawrence desired. Yet as he himself admitted, he was as cunning as a venomous serpent.
While the Faith Faction and the War Faction endlessly argued, Lawrence had already begun plotting betrayal.
And in the end, he became the greatest winner of the Night of Divine Descent.
Even at death's door, he had found a way to seize new life through that uncanny power and awaken within another body.
The Plague Doctor studied him carefully.
The elderly bishop was gone.
In his place stood a young man.
Nothing about him was particularly remarkable, yet neither was he someone easily forgotten.
"Youth truly is wonderful," Lawrence said with genuine delight. "Even one's state of mind changes along with it."
Adapting to the new body had not been difficult.
The sensation was like escaping from a prison cell.
"What now?" the Plague Doctor asked. "I doubt the Fiorenza delegation consists only of those envoys."
More and more people were arriving.
All roads seemed to lead toward Old Dunling—the city of steam and machinery.
"Everyone is searching for us."
Lawrence paused.
"Or rather, searching for the Revelation."
That was what troubled the Plague Doctor most.
He was no weakling, but he had witnessed the descent of heavenly fire from afar. He harbored no illusions about surviving such overwhelming force.
"There's no need to worry," Lawrence replied. "We only need to watch from behind the curtain."
He turned toward the window.
The scenery beyond was magnificent.
"After all, Lawrence is dead. And humanity is greedy. That greed will slowly, inexorably drag reason into madness."
He smiled.
His thoughts drifted once more to Lloyd.
Lawrence had believed his victory flawless.
Yet the greatest winner had never been himself.
It had been Lloyd.
That man.
"You walked away with everything upon the table, great sir."
Lawrence raised an imaginary glass toward the void.
As though toasting a friend long since dead.
...
The smell of blood hung thick in the air, blending with the sweltering steam.
Sharp whistles echoed through the darkness.
Vapor drifted through the underground passageways, while shallow puddles rippled beneath Donas's boots.
Everything about this place filled him with unease.
Yet for the sake of bringing those damned smugglers to justice, he had descended into the tunnels.
Not entirely for justice, of course.
If he solved this case during martial law, a promotion might await him.
Preferably one involving a desk.
Far away from hellholes like this.
Preiss and Eve followed several paces behind.
The officers were nervous enough already, and before long the group had become dangerously spread out.
Visibility was poor.
An ambush could come at any moment.
After leaving the tunnel entrance, Donas kept one hand against the wall and moved carefully forward.
Years of steam exposure had coated the surface in tiny beads of moisture.
As his fingers brushed across them, droplets merged and trickled downward.
Then he felt something else.
Indentations.
Small craters.
Bullet impacts.
His years of experience told him exactly what that meant.
The gang must have turned on one another.
Then his fingers touched something different.
Cracks.
No—not cracks.
Scratches.
Long, jagged scars carved into the stone by something sharp.
His heartbeat quickened.
The marks continued endlessly beneath his hand.
Countless slashes.
As though a storm of blades had swept through the passage.
He did not understand why it frightened him so much.
Until liquid ran across his fingers.
Not water.
Something thicker.
Donas froze.
Slowly, he lifted his foot.
The puddles beneath his boots clung strangely to the soles.
This wasn't condensed moisture.
It was blood.
Pools upon pools of blood.
The nauseating stench flooded his nostrils.
Fear exploded within him.
He had seen corpses before.
He had touched blood before.
Yet nothing compared to this.
The demonic corruption amplified everything.
Behind him, the officers were succumbing as well.
Many had stopped moving entirely.
Some were already retreating into the darkness.
Donas turned, intending to say something.
Anything.
Because even though they had encountered nothing yet, the unnatural fear was devouring his sanity.
He opened his mouth.
Another sound interrupted him.
A breath.
Something was breathing in the darkness.
The exhalation carried a foul stench, drifting through the hot air.
Deep.
Slow.
Far too massive to belong to any human being.
In an instant, everything became still.
No one spoke.
Yet Donas could feel the silence.
Then heavy footsteps shattered it.
Something moved within the darkness.
The sharp screams of steam distorted the sound, making it impossible to determine where it was.
Donas drew a shaky breath.
Words abandoned him.
Then came the frantic sounds of retreat.
One officer finally broke.
Unable to endure the darkness and terror any longer, he screamed and fled toward the tunnel entrance.
His panic spread instantly.
Under the influence of corruption, ordinary minds were fragile things.
The officers scattered like startled birds.
Donas desperately wanted to shout.
To tell them not to run.
If something truly lurked in the darkness, then the steam and shrieking machinery concealed them.
Running only exposed them.
But it was already too late.
A piercing howl erupted from the shadows.
The sound tore at their ears.
Then came violent scraping.
Metal grinding against stone.
Something carving monstrous wounds into the walls.
At last, Donas ran as well.
Pure survival instinct seized control.
His thoughts vanished.
The corruption gnawed steadily at his sanity.
And when gunshots and screams erupted throughout the darkness, the collapse accelerated.
The officers could not see what hunted them.
Instinct drove them to fire.
For brief moments, muzzle flashes illuminated fragments of the abomination.
And each glimpse shattered another piece of their minds.
Then razor-sharp bone blades pierced their bodies and pinned them to the walls.
The sudden slaughter triggered even more gunfire.
In the flickering flashes, officers screamed in terror.
Eve, perhaps because she had seen too much already, recognized what was happening almost immediately.
The moment she heard the breathing, she understood.
But there was no time to explain.
No time to warn anyone.
This had all been a trap.
Someone intended to kill every person investigating the shipment.
"Stop shooting!" she shouted. "You can't kill that thing! Save the bullets for yourselves!"
She managed to grab Preiss.
To her surprise, he remained relatively composed.
Unlike the others, he had not surrendered completely to terror.
Some fragment of reason still remained.
Preiss found that strange himself.
For some reason, courage lingered within him.
Barely enough to keep standing.
Then the darkness trembled.
Dust and rubble rained from above.
The entire underground seemed on the verge of collapse.
"Run! Run now!"
Eve's voice cracked with urgency.
Though she could not see it, she knew exactly what it was.
A demon.
Only a demon could cause such devastation.
At that moment they were nothing more than unarmed mortals.
Even Eve, a captain of Inervig, remembered Arthur's desperate struggle.
Against such things, resistance was little more than delaying the inevitable.
There was only one choice.
Run.
The tunnel had become a nightmare.
The moment they entered, they had stepped beyond reality and into fear itself.
Direction meant nothing in the darkness.
Lost among the chaos and endless screams, Preiss suddenly noticed something.
Light.
"There!"
The glow seemed impossibly comforting.
Instinctively, he moved toward it.
Eve tried to stop him.
The only light within such darkness was far too obvious.
The closer he drew, the easier it would be for the monster to find him.
Darkness, paradoxically, was safer.
But like a moth drawn to flame, Preiss continued forward.
Then his pace slowed.
The closer he came, the more clearly he could see what stood beneath the light.
Fire.
Brilliant white radiance poured from the gaps between armored plates.
As though a miniature sun burned beneath the steel.
Pure destruction.
Pure death.
Preiss froze.
He had not prepared for this.
Had not prepared to meet death face to face.
But life was often like that.
Sudden.
Merciless.
Never granting time to prepare.
The gunshot stole his hearing.
Only a faint ringing remained.
Then white fire burst from the muzzle and tore through the darkness once more.
Lloyd tightened his grip upon the folding blade.
Without even glancing at Preiss, he rushed past him.
Pursuing the fleeing demon into the shadows.