The chase had become a brutal contest of endurance. In the darkness, two monsters crashed against one another and tore at each other with relentless fury. The vast underground chamber shook madly with every clash, and as their struggle grew more violent, shattered stone and clouds of dust erupted through the air.
Vision had dissolved into chaos. As Baner moved, he destroyed everything around him. Steam pipes were carved apart again and again by his bone blades, and the air grew increasingly damp and suffocating. The visible range shrank with every passing moment. Even Lloyd, under these worsening conditions, could do little more than distinguish a shadow moving through the darkness; Baner himself remained impossible to see clearly.
The two creatures had reached a grotesque equilibrium. Lloyd could not get close enough to kill Baner, and Baner could not kill Lloyd. Drawing out his final Dragon's Breath shell, Lloyd pulled the trigger, and a stream of incandescent white fire tore through the dark.
The round could do little now beyond illuminating and frightening. The air was far too wet for the flames to fully take hold, but the sudden burst of light allowed Lloyd to pinpoint Baner's exact position once more.
They had been moving constantly, and true to the demon's aversion to light, Baner recoiled the instant he saw the blazing white torrent. He screamed in terror and drove his many arms with even greater desperation.
Lloyd almost laughed.
So even a demon that fed fear into others could feel fear itself. Perhaps it was only an animal instinct, but in that moment it seemed strangely pathetic.
This was a pursuit through a labyrinth. The underground complex sprawled endlessly, and Lloyd and Baner had hunted one another through it for a very long time. Beyond knowing that he was somewhere beneath the city, Lloyd had no idea where he truly was.
Unnatural sounds echoed through the sealed corridors. Lloyd caught up to Baner again and attacked.
The folding knife came down in a savage arc. Empowered by Lloyd's immense strength, it ceased to resemble a sharp blade and became more like a crude iron club. The strike shattered one of Baner's elongated arms outright.
Bone snapped, though strands of muscle still held the limb attached. Blood poured as Baner shrieked again. More bone blades descended. Lloyd raised the arm encased in black armor and absorbed the barrage. The impact was so powerful that numbness spread through his arm.
But he did not remain there to be beaten.
While enduring the attack, he surged forward again. This time Baner did not fling him away. Several bone blades thrust forward, piercing precisely into the seams of his armor and pinning him like bars of a cage.
Lloyd was genuinely surprised.
For the first time since the battle began, Baner had changed tactics. He was no longer merely fleeing; he was counterattacking. Before Lloyd could think further, tremendous force slammed into him. The bone blades drove him backward and hurled him into a nearby wall.
Stone exploded apart. Lloyd's body was buried halfway into the masonry. An ordinary man would have been pulverized, but the divine armor and a witch hunter's body reduced the impact to a deep, dull pain.
Then the structure itself gave way.
Chunks of rubble rained down, interrupting the assault Lloyd had been preparing. He struggled free just as massive stone blocks collapsed and buried the spot where he had been moments before.
The melee continued. Through the shrill scream of escaping steam, Lloyd heard the subtle crack of something breaking. Only then did he study his surroundings carefully. Though steam obscured most of his vision, he could still make out enough.
What he had smashed was not a wall.
It was a load-bearing pillar.
There was no time to think further. Baner burst from the darkness again, like a hunting wolf spider. The spread of bone blades stabbed downward from above. Lloyd twisted aside, avoiding several of them, but others struck home.
The sharp edges scraped down the breastplate of his armor, throwing off sparks.
A crack split the black armor, and pale white fire glowed beneath it.
Baner had never truly been running. His earlier retreat had merely lured Lloyd into a trap. This was the battlefield best suited to the demon.
Bone blades struck again and again, carving fresh fractures across the armor. White flame leaked through the cracks as Lloyd finally seized an opening and broke free from the relentless assault.
Blood seeped into the mechanism of his shotgun. Even as he was being struck, he aimed upward and fired.
Sacred fire blazed upon the shell, drawing a pure white spear of light through the darkness. The sudden shot punched through Baner's body and pierced the core hidden behind its arms.
Like a punctured vessel, torrents of blood burst from the swollen creature. It wailed and battered at Lloyd. Baner completely lost control. Bone blades lashed wildly in every direction like a storm sweeping through the chamber, and its frenzy accelerated the collapse around them.
Rubble fell without end.
Baner kept moving through the destruction. The brief exchange had proven that it was not Lloyd's equal. It could only run.
Lloyd was buried beneath falling stone and could not immediately escape. Baner noticed and fled toward the far end of the darkness in exhilaration.
Then another sound rose.
A metallic hook burst through the gloom, shooting out from dust and shattered rock. Its force could not penetrate the demon's body, but Baner's many arms formed a tangled forest that gave the hook purchase.
The cable wrapped around the limbs, and a heartbeat later Lloyd emerged, hauling himself forward.
The grappling gun had its limits, but it was enough.
The distance between hunter and prey closed rapidly, and the maddened demon had not yet realized it.
As Lloyd sprinted after it, he heard rushing water. A pale searchlight grew larger in his vision. Of all places, he had somehow returned here.
The underground complex twisted in countless directions, and with visibility so poor he had no idea where Baner was heading. The only thing he could do was stay directly behind the damned creature and never let it vanish from sight.
The cramped tunnel suddenly opened into a vast chamber. Lloyd burst through the steam and cold air flooded his lungs. After fighting in what had felt like a blackened furnace, the change was almost blissful.
There were no living humans left here. Earlier, Lloyd had killed every addict using the hallucinogenic compound.
"A new form of secret blood…?"
The chamber remained dim, but there was enough light now for Lloyd to study Baner properly.
This was not the crude formula he had seen before. Judging by Baner's strength, it was at least an enhanced version, and that realization filled him with dread.
Lawrence was dead, yet the lost Apocalypse was still producing secret blood, and whoever carried on the research was advancing terrifyingly fast.
Baner shrieked again. This environment was unfavorable for it, but Lloyd would not allow another escape. He would end the demon here.
The shotgun thundered repeatedly, pinning Baner down. Its many thin arms drew together in an attempt to shield its body, but another blast drove dense flechettes into its flesh, and burning agony followed.
Each dart was plated with a trace of holy silver. They struck like a scattered rain of arrows, embedding themselves across the demon's body.
And then Lloyd charged.
Dense black armor spread from his wrist. As before, the growing armor enveloped the folding knife and extended it by dozens of centimeters in an instant, transforming it into a dark longsword.
He brought it down with murderous force.
The arms raised in defense had already suffered too much damage. Lloyd's blow severed several of them at once, cutting through the tangled mass like a blade through a forest. Baner's torso lay exposed before him.
Baner reacted instantly, driving its remaining arms into the wall. Bone blades stabbed repeatedly into the stone as it climbed upward. Lloyd did not possess such a multitude of limbs. He should not have been able to follow.
But the demon, driven mad, had forgotten the grappling hook still embedded in its flesh.
The weapon had been custom-built for Lloyd. Though experimental, it had been designed for exactly this kind of brutal battle, and the cable was strong enough that the earlier fighting had not severed it.
Lloyd hauled himself upward along the rope with Baner.
Like a relentless executioner, he gripped the cable and ran up the wall in defiance of reason. When he reached Baner, he swung the blade and chopped away another cluster of supporting arms.
Baner lurched as its support vanished, but several bone blades drove deep into the wall and stabilized its body once more.
Only then did the demon realize that death had caught up with it.
It slashed at Lloyd, but Lloyd moved with astonishing agility. He yanked on the rope, ran across the opposite side of the wall, dodged the attack, and then kicked away from the stone, letting himself swing outward.
He traced a massive arc around Baner.
At the highest point, he released the rope and launched himself into the air.
Baner's clouded eyes watched the rising white glow, unable to understand what Lloyd intended. Then instinctive terror seized it.
Using the momentum of the swing, the witch hunter planted a foot against the wall once more, vaulted over Baner's head, and descended in a blaze of white fire.
Gravity and the hunter's low roar drew the sacred flame into a single dazzling line. From the top of Baner's skull, the white fire cut downward along the length of its spine, piercing straight through its body.
The radiant light divided life from death with merciless clarity.
Like the blade of an executioner's guillotine, Lloyd crashed down. The black knife drove deep into the ground, and the impact sent dust exploding outward.
A second later, he absorbed the force of the fall and rose slowly to his feet.
Baner dropped from above.
As it fell, the horrific wound split open along the glowing white line. Blood sprayed through the air, exposing shattered bone and torn flesh beneath.
High on the wall, every one of Baner's arms had been occupied with climbing. At that seemingly safe height, it had possessed no spare limbs to protect its vulnerable body.
The hunter had found the perfect killing blow.
The impact with the ground inflicted further devastation. Broken arms became deadly spears, driven back into Baner's own body until they burst from its back.
Lloyd had won.
Like a conqueror, he stepped through blood and dust toward the dying demon.
The chamber resembled a grotesque stage. The spill of a searchlight illuminated everything perfectly. Blood poured endlessly from Baner's wounds. Its heart hammered desperately, but each beat only forced more blood from its ruined body.
Beside that enormous mass, Lloyd looked almost frail.
He climbed onto the demon, raised the knife, and drove it through the pounding heart.
Baner's murky eyes locked onto him.
Lloyd tore the blade free. Blood surged out. His next strike would sever the creature's head.
Suddenly Baner moved.
With a final convulsion, it forced itself upright and attacked in mad desperation. Broken arms whipped through the air. Many had already snapped; shattered bones hung together only by flesh. Bone blades were ripped free from its own body, spilling what little blood remained, and lashed like whips.
This was the death throe.
Lloyd had expected it.
He leapt backward and fired. The shotgun blasted Baner's skull apart. Metal pellets stripped away bone, revealing crimson flesh beneath the shattered cranium.
Even that did not stop the frenzy.
Baner lunged forward and drove Lloyd into the canal behind them.
This was the intake channel of the Furnace Pillar. A tremendous current slammed into Lloyd, but Baner plunged in after him. In the rushing water, it forced him backward until he struck the iron grate at the far end—a narrow gap that led toward the Thames beyond.
Perhaps this was where Baner had meant to escape.
Though transformed into a demon, some final remnant of its dying will still lingered.
Bone blades embedded themselves in the walls, anchoring the creature against the current. It tried to drown Lloyd while other arms hacked apart the iron bars and shoved him through the opening.
Both monsters disappeared beneath the water.
Then, with another violent heave, Lloyd shattered.
Yes—shattered.
Baner felt the sharp bone blades tear effortlessly through the black armor. Lloyd's body seemed to rip apart like paper in the torrent.
It had won.
Or so it thought.
A moment later, the folding knife—now stripped of its armor—pierced through the back of its skull.
The blade was withdrawn.
It rose once more.
And in a single stroke, Baner's head was severed.
In the dark blue water, Lloyd swam past the demon's corpse. The instant he had been forced into the canal, he had shed the black armor. What Baner had been crushing was only the discarded shell.
He kicked toward the surface.
The dead demon was carried backward by the current, swept once more into the canal, and finally caught in the interception net among heaps of filthy debris.
Several seconds later Lloyd broke the surface. He drove the knife into the embankment and hauled himself out, then dropped to his knees and retched up river water.
He drew deep, ragged breaths. He had never expected this hunt to cost so much.
Before he could rest, footsteps approached.
Lloyd tightened his grip on the knife, ready to fight again, until a familiar face emerged from the darkness.
"Ka… Kamu?"
he said uncertainly.
Kamu was a vagrant, one of the Ratfolk. Yet the man standing before him was clean, well-dressed, utterly unlike a beggar.
Kamu smiled, as though Lloyd's reaction had been anticipated all along.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Lloyd Holmes," he said.
Before Lloyd could ask another question, Kamu spoke a single sentence that swept away every doubt.
"The Rat King wishes to see you."