As the wings slowly unfurled, a fourth guest entered the Temple of Stasis—an ominous guest.
Its androgynous face was rigid, utterly devoid of emotion. Its skin was an immaculate white, smooth and flawless like a sculpture carved from jade. As consciousness gradually took command of the body, a series of deep, muffled cracks echoed from within. Bone locked against bone, then began to stretch and realign, until the wings, their edges tinged with grey-white, were finally spread in their entirety.
It was the image described in the Gospel as an angel.
Yet everyone present knew perfectly well that the thing before them could never be an angel. Beneath that pristine exterior lurked something forbidden—something profane, twisted, and rotten.
Lawrence drew a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. The strange corruption had already begun to spread. His will could resist it, but this frail mortal vessel was beginning to show signs of decay. Beneath the skin of his temporary body, the veins that had once been red were darkening, turning a deep crimson like the gnarled branches of a dead tree, writhing beneath the flesh like grasping claws.
It was a scene that overturned everything they had previously believed.
The so-called [Holy Grail] was the very form standing before them.
But it was dead.
Or rather, its flesh was dead. Its will had vanished without a trace.
Then what was this angel-like existence before them?
Was it the lost [Holy Grail] that had escaped on the Night of Advent?
Or was it...
another [Holy Grail]?
Fine threads of blood spread across Lawrence's eyes. His heart hammered violently, forcing blood toward his brain. He clenched the weapon in his hand so tightly that his fingers ached. Corruption and terror battered his will with relentless force, yet he refused to look away.
He simply stared at it.
As though he meant to carve that sacred yet profane face forever into his eyes.
They were close.
Lawrence was getting closer and closer to the so-called [Truth].
So was everyone else present.
The New Pope was already engaged in battle with the angel. His nail-sword swept out a curtain of incandescent white flame. Clearly, the New Pope had no idea that the interior of the Sacred Coffin contained the very angel he was fighting. Nor did he know that the grotesque creature he had repeatedly slain, only to see return again and again, was the very [Holy Grail] feared by the Gospel Church.
The grey-white wings appeared soft, yet were as hard as steel. They moved like shields, bearing the New Pope's attacks head-on. But the New Pope did not throw himself into the assault recklessly. He knew all too well how terrifying this thing was.
The wings were impossibly hard, while their edges were sharp as blades. With every sweep, they were not merely shields capable of blocking attacks—they were thousands upon thousands of swords.
The angel did not move.
It had been "born" less than a minute ago, and the will residing within it had yet to fully take control of its newborn body.
When his strike failed, the New Pope leapt backward, putting a safe distance between them. His gaze then shifted toward Lawrence and the woman hiding in the shadows.
The New Pope did not know what else to call the creature, so for the moment he named it according to its sacred appearance.
Angel.
The angels were like this.
At first, they seemed to exist as formless spirits, much like the woman nearby. And as the woman herself had said, an incorporeal will could not interfere with reality. Thus, they created these angelic bodies from nothing—or something close enough to nothing—to fight on their behalf.
The New Pope did not understand how any of this worked.
But he knew this much: as he dug deeper into the Church's forgotten history, into the mysteries of demons, and eventually into the mysteries of the entire world, he had encountered these angels that appeared from nowhere.
Like Shellmans before him, the New Pope had touched the boundary of the unknown.
He had attempted to glimpse the true face of the gods hidden beyond the veil.
And so divine punishment descended.
Shellmans had failed to withstand that bizarre punishment.
But the New Pope had endured.
Not merely endured it—
he was fighting back.
"Alchemy... an equivalent exchange."
The woman's voice drifted through the chamber.
She possessed no visible form. Her position could only be inferred from the paths traced by falling dust.
Like Lawrence, ever since the angel appeared, her gaze had remained fixed upon it. It seemed that this was precisely the purpose of her journey here. She wanted to observe this unknown existence at close range, to uncover from it the secret that had been deliberately concealed.
Part of the floor had been annihilated by the arc of light, leaving behind a semicircular depression.
But in the woman's eyes, that was not annihilation.
It was exchange.
From a rational perspective, matter could not appear from nothing. The bizarre angel before them was no exception. Within that brief distortion of light, matter had been extracted and exchanged from the floor. The angel had used those vanished materials as a foundation, creating a body capable of movement and using it to interfere with reality.
"Are we withdrawing?"
It was a man's voice.
The fifth guest of the day.
And yet, in another sense, there was no such guest at all.
His voice seemed audible only to the woman. No one knew where the man was. He seemed to be everywhere, and yet somehow right beside her. Perhaps their figures overlapped, making it impossible to distinguish one from the other.
"No. I need to see more."
The woman refused.
Every additional second she could remain within the Temple of Stasis brought her one step closer to the secret someone had deliberately buried.
The gaze hidden within the void remained locked upon the angel, as though she intended to dissect it piece by piece.
The battle suddenly came to a halt.
Once the New Pope stopped attacking, the angel remained where it stood.
Beneath its jade-like skin, scarlet blood could be seen surging through its body, flowing along delicate veins from its heart and spreading into every corner of its flesh.
The process was still continuing.
It had already covered most of the body.
Once the corruption—or perhaps awakening—spread throughout its entire form, the angel would presumably gain the ability to move of its own accord.
"You've seen this thing before, haven't you?"
The New Pope stared at Lawrence's terrified face.
His eyes were completely bloodshot, scarlet and feral, like those of a beast.
"How interesting. You should be of the same kind as them, yet you're afraid of them?"
His mind worked quickly, piecing together the fragments of broken clues.
Seni Lothair had never been a fool.
Quite the opposite.
He was exceptionally cautious and seasoned—a demon hunter once known by the name Raphael. Like Lawrence, he was a terrifying man who had spent years weaving his own web in the darkness.
The Night of Advent had destroyed everything he possessed.
So he had used power and cunning to destroy the Gospel Church and seize its sacred crown.
He wanted to know why.
And so he had exhausted every means at his disposal in pursuit of an answer that, perhaps, had never existed.
He carefully studied Lawrence's expression.
Though this was not Lawrence's true body, the emotions generated by his will were being perfectly expressed through this fragile vessel. Lawrence desperately wanted to conceal his reaction, but as the angel continued to awaken, the terrible corruption exerted ever greater pressure upon him.
Lawrence was like the angel.
He too existed in the form of a spirit.
Yet he knew nothing about this power, nor did he understand the existence of the angels.
At this moment, Lawrence was like a newborn child who had awakened in a world without anyone to teach him its rules. He could only dig slowly into the truth on his own.
In the shadows, the woman fell silent.
But the New Pope could still feel her gaze.
The angels were not united.
That was the conclusion the New Pope reached in an instant.
There were dissenters among the angels. There were also those who knew nothing of the greater picture.
Like Lawrence.
From his reaction, it was clear that he knew of the angels' existence—and that they frightened him.
But inside Lawrence's mind, entirely different thoughts were taking shape.
Was this the [Holy Grail] that had escaped from the Sacred Coffin?
Or perhaps the so-called [Holy Grail] existed in plural form.
Perhaps there was more than one [Holy Grail] in this world.
Perhaps they were countless, gnashing their teeth and drinking blood, as numerous as grains of sand upon the sea.
If that were true, then what had the day of celebration actually meant?
The day that had proclaimed victory in the war against the demons.
The Demon Hunters had captured the final demon—the so-called [Holy Grail]—and believed they had finally defeated the demons...
Then why had the Gospel Church reached such a conclusion?
Lawrence's thoughts descended into chaos.
He suddenly realized that when it came to that day of celebration, the grand festival that had marked their supposed victory, all he could remember was a single brief passage of words.
It was as though he had deliberately forgotten everything else.
That couldn't be right.
He would never forget something like that.
His fingernails dug into his flesh. His scarlet eyes seemed almost ready to shed blood.
Yes.
When the [Holy Grail] had been captured, he had been serving as the Grand Master of the Demon Hunters.
So why hadn't he taken part in it?
This world was far too twisted.
It was as though the hand of a god were casually manipulating everything, arranging and rearranging the pieces at will, hiding the [Truth] everyone desperately sought behind layer upon layer of veils.
Everything within the Temple of Stasis had become just like its name.
Absolute silence.
Absolute stillness.
Nearly every sound had vanished, while those who still breathed seemed to have transformed into statues, forgetting even the act of drawing breath.
Thoughts surged through their minds.
The New Pope.
Lawrence.
And the woman who had remained an observer from the shadows.
They desperately tried to organize the information they had gathered, each wanting to pry more knowledge from the others while remaining wary of one another.
Until, at last, the jade-like body moved.
The angel slowly began to act.
And with that single movement, the fragile peace was shattered.
At present, only the New Pope possessed the direct ability to fight. He temporarily put aside his thoughts and once again tightened his grip around the nail-sword.
Lawrence, however, did nothing.
The New Pope's gaze had not escaped him. Lawrence knew that the mysterious man had read far too much from his reaction.
He did not want to reveal anything more to this mysterious existence.
So, like the woman in the shadows, he merely watched with cold indifference.
He wanted to see how the New Pope would kill this angel.
How he would kill this profane creature.
For a fleeting instant, Lawrence felt an absurd sensation, as though he had suddenly stepped into a nightmare.
He found the world almost laughable.
It was filled with lies and deception.
Seni Lothair wore the sacred crown.
As the New Pope of the Gospel Church, he should have been the person most devoted to upholding the gods.
Yet now he had taken up a nail-sword and was attempting to kill the angel before him.
And judging from his words, this was far from the first time he had done so.
The most faithful of believers was now attempting to slay a servant of the divine.
A shrill metallic shriek swept through the chamber.
It was the sound of wings grinding against one another.
Thousands upon thousands of blades intertwined and collided with every movement, throwing off dazzling sparks as they struck at the enemy before them.
The angel's pure face remained utterly expressionless, like a mask.
It was a difficult battle.
It always was.
But the New Pope had grown accustomed to it.
There was a reason the Temple of Stasis—and even the Cathedral of Saint Naro—was so empty.
Once the New Pope realized that these spirits could seize and occupy other people's bodies, he had done everything possible to drive people away, leaving behind only the minimum number of personnel necessary to keep everything functioning normally.
As for himself, he had remained here.
Guarding this place.
A fierce sword pierced through layer after layer of wings, carrying with it a bone-chilling cold as it struck the angel.
The angel could bleed.
And the scarlet blood flowing from its body was painfully conspicuous against its pristine white skin.
Yet even then, the angel showed no expression.
It had always been this way.
It never spoke.
It possessed no discernible emotion.
It was like a flesh-and-blood machine faithfully carrying out its orders.
Then the intensity of the corruption surged once more.
The sudden pressure slowed the New Pope's sword by a fraction.
In that instant, blinding white light erupted.
The air itself seemed to tear apart with the howl of a wounded beast.
No one could doubt the force behind that strike.
The angel did not roar.
It did not become enraged.
The blade carried nothing but cold judgment, as though a lofty judge had passed sentence and condemned the guilty to death.
At the final moment, the New Pope managed to intercept the devastating blow.
But what descended upon him was not a wing.
It was a blade.
More precisely, a weapon shaped like a blade.
Its form resembled a nail-sword—long, slender, and incredibly hard. A faint white radiance shimmered along its surface, which was carved with spiral markings and stained with blood.
But the New Pope himself was unharmed.
The blood belonged to the angel.
A slender silver spike protruded from the angel's palm, as though a length of sacred silver bone had continued growing outward along the structure of its hand.
Another violent assault erupted.
Wings and two blades crossed and slashed through the air.
The New Pope struggled to defend himself. Yet even as he parried, the descending wings varied in length. Some were caught and deflected by his nail-sword. Others extended past his defenses and pierced directly into flesh.
Thin wisps of heat rose from the wounds.
It was not merely the warmth of fresh blood.
It was the searing pain of flesh being scorched by flame.
The edges of the wings were plated with sacred silver.
This was not something crafted by artisans after the fact.
It had been born alongside the angel itself.
None of this escaped the eyes of the others.
Lawrence and the woman both used the battle between the New Pope and the angel to analyze the nature of this strange existence.
In this twisted and incomprehensible world, information was everything.
It could guide a person toward the ultimate [Truth].
And it could strip an enemy bare, until not a single secret remained hidden from your eyes.
The New Pope felt the pressure mounting.
Under normal circumstances, he would never have been forced into such a passive position.
With his Authority—[Raphael]—he could contend with the angel far more effectively.
But his Authority was his greatest secret.
And now, he had already exposed himself before these people.
These watching spirits were clearly not on the same side as the angel. His identity as a demon hunter had already been revealed to them.
He was unwilling to expose his Authority as well.
In this world, there were no absolute allies.
And at this moment, the New Pope had no idea what these people truly wanted.
Then, from within the shadows, the woman who had been watching suddenly stopped observing.
She stepped out of the darkness.
A man's voice sounded.
"What are you trying to do?"
016—
or rather, Watson—
fixed her gaze upon the sacred angel.
She spoke aloud both her doubts and her purpose.
"The will of the void has taken physical form... Which means that there is a mysterious will controlling this body right now. Correct?"
"What are you trying to do?"
"I want to see who is truly controlling everything behind this divinity, 047."
Watson answered the voice.
"I intend to invade..."
"Its [Gap]."