"James Moriarty…"
A voice came from behind Anthony. The name filled him with a strange mixture of delight and unease. Every time he heard it, he could not help thinking of those sly, venomous serpents.
"To be honest, I've always been curious. Where exactly did you find that… strange lunatic?"
Samuel came hobbling over with the aid of a cane. He looked utterly wretched, his body wrapped in bandages, his face deathly pale.
He had taken the full force of lacquer-antimony throwing knives and bullets laced with Cantarella. Fortunately, by then Samuel had already pushed the Authority of Yanar to its absolute limit. His entire body had begun to verge on demonization, and since the bullet had missed his heart, he had managed to survive the violent explosion and the deadly poison.
But survival had been little more than a desperate reprieve. When the Demon Hunters finally dug him out of the collapsed ruins, his body had been in a grotesque state, as though life and death had manifested upon the same flesh. Even as his wounds healed, the poison continued to rot his flesh from within.
Those brief moments had been nothing short of hell for Samuel.
Fortunately, with the aid of that formidable Authority, Samuel had ultimately survived. Though he was in a sorry state, the constitution of a Demon Hunter allowed his injuries to heal at an astonishing rate. In perhaps a few more days, he would be fit to return to the battlefield.
"I warned you. Lloyd Holmes is dangerous. Extremely dangerous. To this day, we still have no idea what the False Holy Grail within him is capable of. Attacking him recklessly will only force us to pay the price."
Anthony turned to look at his battered subordinate. He had always possessed an air of composed serenity, but there was a faint trace of anger in his voice now.
"We lost three Demon Hunters in this operation. Fortunately, they were pieces we had planted in advance. The Purification Bureau has no idea they exist."
After losing the Apocalypse, every active Demon Hunter had become extraordinarily precious. Their Secret Blood was the most valuable resource they possessed.
"That has nothing to do with us. We had no idea Lloyd would be there either. It was a damned chance encounter," Samuel said.
He had only just awakened from unconsciousness. He had come here precisely to report to Anthony about what had happened during the operation.
"A chance encounter?"
"Yes. We successfully infiltrated the station where Shelmans was staying. But when I found him, he was with Lloyd…"
"How did he find Shelmans?" Anthony asked.
"I don't know. But I suspect it had something to do with that letter." Samuel frowned thoughtfully. Though he had only recently regained consciousness, the more he thought about the encounter, the more he felt that everything had been governed by an unsettling chain of coincidences.
"We found Shelmans through that same letter, the one carrying Secret Blood. Perhaps we weren't the only ones who received it." Samuel paused before continuing. "But what exactly is so important about Shelmans? He's a Cardinal who has been in exile for years. Even back when he was in the Seven Hills, he was already standing at the fringes of power. Why have they suddenly begun paying so much attention to him?"
Anthony did not answer.
Instead, he felt a headache coming on.
The order had come directly from the new Pope. He needed Shelmans to confirm certain things. Although those questions had already received an affirmative answer from the former Pope, Lloyd's sudden contact with Shelmans had nevertheless awakened Anthony's suspicions.
Who had sent that letter?
The New Church still had no idea that the Purification Bureau had already established contact with Shelmans. Lloyd's sudden appearance had left Anthony somewhat unsettled. According to the new Pope's instructions, there was a very real possibility that Lloyd was actually Lloyd de Medici—that mysterious and terrifying old man who had, in the end, discovered a way to achieve immortality.
Perhaps everything they had encountered with Lloyd before, everything he had shown them, had merely been an elaborate disguise.
For a man who had once led the world into its Golden Age, Anthony felt an immense pressure simply thinking about him.
Just like the hazy curtain of rain, a fog of the unknown hung over Old Dunling. Hunters and monsters walked together through the streets of the city, waiting for the moment when they would meet—and tear each other apart.
"Our plan has already begun. Once you've recovered, new instructions will be delivered to you."
Anthony spoke to Samuel.
"Moriarty's plan?"
Samuel brought up that unsettling name once again.
"You actually agreed to let that lunatic do all this…"
Samuel knew his words could change nothing. They were little more than complaints spoken for the sake of speaking. He considered himself a rather pathological man, but compared to Moriarty, his illness was at least the sort that could still be treated.
That man was different.
"Moriarty can be uncontrollable at times," Anthony said slowly, "but at the very least, he truly has a talent for producing unexpected results."
"So where did he actually come from? When I was in the Templar Order, I never saw him. And his swordsmanship is terrible."
Samuel was genuinely curious. Most of the New Church's Demon Hunters had come from the Templar Order, but Moriarty was different.
"He was selected by His Holiness. Someone whom His Holiness found… interesting."
Anthony had not understood it at first either. He had wondered what qualifications a man like that could possibly possess to become a Demon Hunter, until Moriarty showed him that strange talent of his.
The talent for deception.
Father Anthony was one of the new Pope's most trusted men. To the exiles, it was his sudden defection that had caused the Templar Order, originally loyal to the Cardinals, to turn against them, allowing the new Pope to seize all power overnight and place that magnificent crown upon his head.
But Anthony knew very well that this was merely a comforting story the exiles told themselves.
He was not the key to everything.
Even if he had never rebelled, there would have been another Anthony who betrayed the Cardinals. The true reason was the terrifying Authority possessed by the new Pope.
As the Demon Hunter who had been given the name Raphael, he was the master of illusions. Everyone was nothing more than a puppet on strings, dancing within the palm of his hand.
Moriarty had been granted the same Authority as the new Pope.
That was not simply a matter of trust.
The new Pope believed that Moriarty could make perfect use of that power.
In a certain sense, they were the same kind of liar—one had deceived his way into possessing a holy crown, while the other deceived people into losing their minds.
"You don't seem to like Moriarty," Anthony observed. "Don't you often say that the two of you are quite similar?"
"Similar does not mean identical, Father."
Samuel spoke calmly, clearly unwilling to think too much about that lunatic.
"The more similar two people are, the more clearly they understand one another, don't they? It's like two people with the same tastes. We know exactly what would please the other. But what happens when the things that resemble each other are two monsters?"
Samuel watched Anthony's expression slowly change before continuing, finally revealing the reason he was so wary of Moriarty.
"If two monsters encounter each other on a narrow road, what would you think if you were me? Would you be overjoyed to finally meet one of your own kind and embrace it? Or would you be wary and afraid precisely because you are so similar, because you understand exactly what kind of terrifying monster stands before you?"
Samuel limped over to the side and lowered himself into a chair.
"Actually, either of those reactions would still be normal. But Moriarty is different. I admit that I'm not exactly normal either. I'm addicted to that damned sense of victory, that feeling of accomplishment. But I'm merely obsessive. I'm not insane."
"There is a difference between an obsessive man and a madman, Father."
"You seem to understand him better than I do," Anthony said.
"Of course. We're similar, but different. I can understand the parts of him that resemble me, but I can't see into the places where his madness lies."
Anthony fell silent for a moment.
The enormous study contained only the two of them, making the room seem strangely empty. Countless documents were piled across his desk.
"So you found Moriarty in an insane asylum?"
Samuel's voice rose again. He seemed genuinely fascinated by Moriarty's origins and continued pressing the matter.
"I don't know," Anthony replied.
"You don't know?"
There was a trace of agitation in Samuel's voice.
"He was brought here by His Holiness. What authority do you think I have to ask any further questions?"
There was a hint of helplessness in Anthony's gaze as he looked at Samuel, whose body was still wrapped in bandages.
"Still, he is certainly unsettling. Sometimes even I have no idea what he might do. But His Holiness thinks very highly of him. He said Moriarty is someone who can always bring people an 'unexpected delight.'"
"An unexpected delight simply means he's uncontrollable, doesn't it? I trained with him once. He severed a Demon Hunter's tendons simply because he thought it was amusing. Someone wanted to teach him a lesson, but he used his Authority to send that man straight into a mental ward. You know about that incident too, don't you?"
Samuel recalled those days of training.
At the time, the new Pope had desperately needed a force of Demon Hunters to fight for him. Secret Blood was extracted from the corpses of dead Demon Hunters and injected into carefully selected candidates, who were then subjected to trials that could only be described as hell.
And thus, the New Church had been born from the blood of the dead.
"And that," Samuel continued, "is precisely what makes Moriarty so strange, Father."
"What?"
Samuel carefully searched through his memories. Those had been among the few times he had interacted with Moriarty, and they were precisely the encounters that had left him utterly unable to understand the man.
"At first, I thought he was some kind of pervert. Someone who enjoyed watching others go mad, watching them suffer, someone who took pleasure in other people's misery. If that were the case, pleasing such a monster would have been easy. I found a few condemned criminals and gave them to him to play with. I simply hoped he wouldn't bother the other Demon Hunters anymore."
"But he refused."
"He did. He refused."
Samuel's voice trembled slightly. It was not fear that caused it, but incomprehension.
"I thought they would make perfect 'toys' for him. But he refused. He said torturing a group of condemned criminals was boring…"
"For him, it is true that he enjoys the suffering of others. But there is a prerequisite—the suffering must belong to someone he finds interesting."
"But he is a lunatic. A madman with grotesque and perverse tastes. So how are we supposed to predict what someone like that will find interesting?"
Everyone had their own purpose, their own direction in which they were moving.
Only Moriarty gave Samuel the impression of a venomous serpent slithering wherever it pleased. Gold and beautiful women could not tempt it, yet some bizarre and incomprehensible thing could suddenly fill it with boundless motivation.
"At least Moriarty knows the difference between his hobbies and his work," Anthony said. "His plan is quite good. It was only put into motion after receiving His Holiness's approval."
Anthony picked up his glass and took a sip. Even after hearing everything that had happened before, he remained as calm as ever.
"So what exactly is the plan?"
"Lloyd Holmes is suspected of being Lloyd de Medici. And we can confirm that he carries a False Holy Grail. He is an extremely dangerous man. If we openly wage war against him, the Purification Bureau will oppose us, and Lloyd himself is more than capable of attacking us."
"Drive a wedge between them? Make the Purification Bureau find a reason to abandon Lloyd?"
It was not a difficult puzzle. Samuel arrived at the answer almost immediately.
"Is that it?"
Anthony nodded.
The plan appeared to have already been set into motion in an orderly fashion.
"But that won't be enough."
Samuel recalled the figure he had seen wielding a sword in the wine cellar.
"Although I didn't spend much time with him, I certainly don't think that alone will be enough to defeat him. And that's without even considering the fact that he may actually be Lloyd de Medici."
As a native of Florence, Samuel knew Lloyd de Medici's history better than most. That old man had lost only to time itself.
And now, after all these years, he seemed to have returned in a young body, preparing to overturn the board at the very end of the game.
No.
He had not truly defeated time yet.
The New Church and the new Pope would never let him go so easily. Even the suspicion that he was Lloyd de Medici was enough to make him a target that could not be allowed to escape.
"That is why some plans can only be devised by someone as pathological as Moriarty."
Anthony spoke again.
There was something peculiar about his expression. He seemed to regard everything from the perspective of an observer, even though he was the Archpriest of the New Church and Florence's representative.
"Lloyd Holmes is a piece of hardened iron. But sometimes there is no need to destroy iron with brute force. All you need to do is create a crack within it."
"Can he really do it?"
Samuel remained deeply uneasy about the uncontrollable Moriarty. He was like a restless lamb forever preparing to turn around and knock its shepherd to the ground.
"I don't know. But isn't that why I'm here?"
Anthony smiled.
As his lips curved upward, the hideous scar across his face seemed to writhe, like a centipede clinging to the surface of his skin.
"We are all His Holiness's pieces, standing upon the chessboard known as Old Dunling. And those occupying different levels of the board see different things, Samuel."
This operation could be said to have been carried out almost entirely according to Moriarty's design. Anthony's presence seemed to have little meaning at all.
Samuel had realized this as well, but Anthony was, after all, the Archpriest. Samuel did not dare openly question him.
"You have only noticed the enemy standing before you," Anthony said. "But what about the ones hiding in the shadows?"
As he spoke, Anthony picked up the letter.
The very letter that had triggered the chain of events before.
Only Anthony had seen this version of the letter. It was after reading it that they had begun their pursuit of Shelmans.
But unlike the letter Lloyd had received, this one contained an additional line.
"Lloyd Holmes is suspected of being Lloyd de Medici."
Anthony could be certain that this letter had not come from the Purification Bureau.
Upon the chessboard known as Old Dunling, there was another player who had remained hidden until now.
A player everyone had overlooked.
He possessed Secret Blood.
He also knew the truth of Lloyd de Medici's "immortality."
After much painstaking thought, Anthony could arrive at only one conclusion.
The letter had come from the remnants of Lawrence.
"What are you planning to do as well?"
Anthony was the man overseeing all of this. He was the player the new Pope had entrusted to Old Dunling.
What he intended to hunt was not Lloyd Holmes.
It was the greatest prize the New Church could possibly obtain from Old Dunling.
That prize could be Lloyd Holmes and the False Holy Grail within him.
Or it could be the remnants of Lawrence.
The lost Apocalypse.
…
"So that lunatic has already begun?"
The Plague Doctor asked as he watched Lawrence awaken from the chair.
Lawrence had only just returned from traversing the [Interstice]. There was a faint trace of pain on his face, the lingering sensation of a consciousness torn apart. After taking a moment to steady himself, he nodded, a hint of admiration in his voice.
"I never expected the new Pope to find such a talent."
He paused.
"No. Such a lunatic."
"Looks like their plan is perfect. Perfect enough that even you think highly of it," the Plague Doctor said.
"Yes. Unfortunately, they have never realized that I have been watching them all along."
As Lawrence spoke, he recalled the face of that child.
Somewhat timid.
A little withdrawn.
Yet with a trace of madness buried deep within him.
Their encounter at Whitechapel had been deliberately arranged by Lawrence. He had intended to use Higg as the starting point, employing him as a means of restraining Lloyd.
Unfortunately, that piece had never found its place on the board.
But Lawrence was grateful for that.
Because now, that discarded piece had finally caught fire.
And with that flame burning brightly, Lawrence had found it remarkably easy to step into the game.