"Soldiers! Advance! Soldiers! The enemy fortress is right there! Take it!"
Old Cole seemed to have run himself ragged. He stood where he was, panting heavily, then raised a finger and pointed toward an empty patch of grass. At his command, the patients who had been running around with him began charging toward the spot, waving their arms wildly. Yet their faces had taken on a grim and solemn air, as though an actual enemy fortress truly stood before them.
"Dig faster! Gavin! You deserter, keep digging!"
Having finished commanding the others, Old Cole turned his attention to Gavin, who was endlessly digging at the earth. Gavin said nothing. He simply kept working at the ground, carving out the trench he imagined was there.
Soil and grass were torn up beneath his hands, along with the occasional wriggling insect. Mud had packed itself beneath Gavin's fingernails, and after all that frantic digging, his fingers were beginning to show small abrasions. The nurses, however, made no attempt to stop him.
Every time they prevented Gavin from doing this, the seemingly quiet patient would suddenly become violent and unhinged, turning extremely aggressive. Since digging the earth did little real harm to him, the nurses had eventually decided it was better to leave him alone. If it made him happy, then so be it.
"You really have no sense of propriety. No one will ever marry you like that."
Though he wore exactly the same patient's uniform as everyone else, whenever Sir Derren walked, one somehow got the impression that he was dressed in magnificent finery. Perhaps that was simply the power of etiquette. Among all the patients, his manners were by far the most refined, and he considered himself a true gentleman.
At present, that gentleman was watching Eve struggle to pull William to his feet. The old man had been chewing on the grass and stubbornly refused to get up.
"Utterly vulgar."
Derren looked at Eve with undisguised disdain. He turned away, then swept his contemptuous gaze across every patient in the activity area.
In his eyes, they were all crude savages, completely ignorant of manners, dignity, and shame.
He rolled up the sleeves that did not exist, took hold of a phantom cane, and began strolling around the area with measured, dignified steps. Eventually, he came before William, who was still chewing grass, and extended a hand with impeccable grace.
"Would you care for some assistance, sir?"
What greeted him was a mud-covered slap.
Derren was knocked flat on his back.
William was finally dragged to his feet by Eve. The old man claimed to be an alchemist, and the clearest manifestation of his illness was that he wanted to take a bite out of everything he saw, as though every object might contain some kind of mystical elixir he had spent his entire life pursuing.
He was also one of the more difficult patients to communicate with. He rarely spoke of his own accord. After Eve pulled him upright, he merely sat down on the grass and stared blankly at the patch he had just chewed away.
His long hair drifted in the breeze as he sat cross-legged.
William looked almost as though he had entered a state of deep meditation. Not long afterward, he began muttering something under his breath, the words sounding almost like an incantation.
Eve paid little attention. The old man was always mumbling about something… No, that was wrong. Everyone in the severe ward was like that. They were patients, after all—patients whose illnesses could not be cured.
The nurses regularly injected them with sedatives. But the prolonged and frequent use of those drugs had destroyed what little sanity they possessed to begin with. Eve had once overheard the nurses discussing it in private.
At first, these patients had all been rather lively. But as they spent more and more time here, their already-fractured wills gradually withered away, until they became like those patients sitting on the benches—vacant-eyed, shambling about like walking corpses.
Eve's "friends" would not escape that fate either.
She did not know what they had been through, nor what had caused them to become this way. She only knew that what awaited them was a slow death, a gradual fading into the darkness of oblivion.
The thought left her somewhat melancholy. After all, she had actually gotten along rather well with these friends of hers over the past few days.
Then, without warning, several of the patients stopped what they were doing.
Their eyes turned warily toward another direction.
It was not a sign of reason or consciousness.
It was instinct.
A nurse pushed a wheelchair across the puddles, a young boy sitting quietly in it.
Eve had seen him many times before. She also knew that there was something unusual about him… though she could not say exactly what.
She only had the vague feeling that, like herself, the boy was still in possession of his reason. He remained here because of some special circumstance.
What truly intrigued Eve, however, was what the other patients said about him.
"That barbaric thug."
The refined Derren spoke those words with disgust, casting the boy a disdainful glance before walking away.
"How did he ever enlist in the army? Has the war become so desperate that they've started using child soldiers?"
Old Cole sounded genuinely perplexed as he said this. But his pitifully diminished mind could no longer sustain the thought for long. He lowered his head and resumed shouting at Gavin for digging his trench.
Gavin showed little reaction. Every now and then, however, he would glance toward the boy. Sometimes his mud-covered hand seemed as though it wanted to rise in salute, but each time, Old Cole would interrupt him before he could do so.
William showed no reaction at all. After Eve stopped him from eating any more grass, he simply sat cross-legged where he was, apparently lost in thought.
The boy was young, looking several years younger than Eve herself. His hair was fine and soft, a pale golden color, while his cheeks possessed an unhealthy, almost sickly pallor. He sat upright and composed in the wheelchair, his gaze fixed straight ahead into the void, never once turning aside.
At first glance, he looked just like the other vacant patients.
But Eve had seen it before.
Behind those empty eyes, there was a trace of awareness and reason.
He simply could not be bothered to show it.
The nurse pushed him into a corner and left him there alone. None of the other patients dared approach him.
The place resembled a pen filled with docile sheep, while the boy was a ferocious tiger that had somehow wandered into their midst. He had shown no intention of attacking them.
He simply was not hungry at the moment.
Of course, he was not the only oddity in the sheepfold.
There was also the troublesome Eve.
"You intend to associate with that thug? You are bringing shame upon your family's honor!" Derren shouted angrily.
"You want to enlist as well? But my regiment has never accepted female soldiers before," Old Cole said, uttering yet another strange remark.
Gavin looked as though he wanted to say something, but every time he opened his mouth, Old Cole would stomp down on him, forcing him back to his work. So Gavin could only continue digging his trench.
William remained exactly as before, sitting cross-legged in silent meditation.
Eve wore an awkward smile.
Over the past few days, she had begun to feel as though she were living in a kindergarten, looking after a group of mentally deficient children.
Even if some of those children were old enough to be her grandfather.
But Eve was perfectly normal.
She needed to talk to someone normal.
Ignoring all the warnings from her fellow patients, Eve quietly crept toward the boy.
The boy noticed her approach. His gaze slowly shifted toward her.
Only when she came this close did Eve get a proper look at him.
He looked like someone suffering from a serious illness. There were unmistakable needle marks scattered across his exposed wrists, evidence of repeated injections.
His entire body looked somewhat malnourished, leaving him frighteningly thin and frail.
"You… You're normal here, right?"
Perhaps spending too much time around lunatics had affected her as well. Eve raised a finger and pointed at her own head as she asked the boy the question.
She tilted her head to one side, looking rather like a dim-witted penguin.
The boy stared at her.
His brow furrowed slightly, and his expression seemed to say that he was looking at an idiot.
But after a moment, he finally spoke.
Perhaps he had not spoken to anyone in a very long time. His voice sounded strangely unfamiliar, as though he had forgotten how to use it.
"Eve Phinisc?"
He asked the name uncertainly.
Eve was startled. She had not expected this boy to know who she was.
"You know me?"
After she received confirmation, the boy smiled faintly.
He said nothing.
"Then who are you?"
Curious about his identity, Eve pressed him for an answer.
The boy hesitated.
Then he lowered his head and looked at his wrist, covered in countless needle marks.
He sighed, as though he had finally given up on something.
A faint, almost sickly smile appeared on his face.
"Ovis."
He spoke his own name as though accepting everything that had happened to him.
"My name is Ovis Victoria."
...
The air inside the carriage was hot and stifling. Above their heads, the dim yellow lamp swayed gently with the movement of the iron serpent, casting two blurred shadows beneath it.
They sat there like two demons, silently staring at one another.
This was a specially modified iron serpent. Unlike the armored iron serpents used for warfare and suppression, this heavy machine was designed to transport prisoners.
Of course, these so-called prisoners were not the sort of criminals people usually imagined.
They were anomalous individuals connected to demons.
Under normal circumstances, the prisoner sitting opposite Arthur should have been bound hand and foot, with two heavily built guards constantly keeping their rifles pointed at his head.
But Arthur knew that none of that would have made any difference.
The Purification Bureau currently had no means of containing him.
The only person capable of containing him was the man himself.
Lloyd Holmes.
His own will was the only thing keeping him here.
Lloyd sat at the opposite end of the carriage, his expression dark and gloomy.
He seemed to have changed.
He had become even more withdrawn, more somber, almost mechanical, as though every trace of emotion had been stripped away.
Once, Arthur could at least sense that peculiar, slightly idiotic quality about Lloyd.
But that lunatic was gone.
The man sitting before him now was something far colder—a calm monster.
Human beings were social creatures, and even a loner like Lloyd was no exception.
Countless threads had intertwined his fate with the fates of others, binding him to them.
The Purification Bureau had not truly captured him.
Rather, Lloyd had willingly walked into this trap to guard against whatever Moriarty intended to do next.
He had been on the defensive from the very beginning.
He had already fallen into the New Order's scheme, and he had no idea what they intended to do next.
But Lloyd knew one thing.
He would make them pay.
Within a script that had been written long before he ever realized he was part of it, Lloyd had to find an opportunity to turn the tables.
"Your next destination is Black Mountain Hospital. It is a psychiatric research institution under the authority of the Purification Bureau. They will investigate the False Holy Grail inside you."
Arthur spoke slowly.
By order of Queen Victoria, the Purification Bureau had now been forced into opposition with Lloyd.
Arthur found himself in a difficult position.
And he hated it.
"What about the New Order?"
After a long silence, Lloyd finally spoke.
His voice was low.
The New Order had finally driven him into their trap. Lloyd did not believe they would simply let him go so easily.
"Cooperation. In truth, everything still depends on your willingness to cooperate. We have decided to work together and study the False Holy Grail within you. Of course, the Purification Bureau will take the lead. The New Order will have little room to interfere."
Perhaps hoping to put Lloyd at ease, Arthur explained it this way.
But Lloyd did not look reassured.
He knew perfectly well that the New Order was plotting something.
Their willingness to relinquish power at this moment was merely the beginning of a far greater conspiracy.
"Then who will interfere with all of this?" Lloyd asked.
Arthur hesitated.
But after looking at the man before him—a person of extraordinary danger to society—he finally gave him the answer.
"Queen Victoria."
...
Queen Victoria.
She was the ruler standing at the very pinnacle of Ingilwig's vast hierarchy of power.
Yet unlike many monarchs, she rarely appeared in public. The entire Victoria royal family was much the same.
They were shrouded in mystery.
The only thing people knew for certain was that the Queen resided within the Platinum Palace, protected by soldiers.
Beyond that, almost nothing was known.
The people were familiar with the existence of their Queen.
But they knew almost nothing about her.
If you stopped a random citizen on the street and asked them, they might not even remember which number Queen Victoria she was.
There was only that venerable title—
Queen Victoria.
It echoed endlessly through their minds.
"The Queen… These decisions were made by the Queen. Otherwise, the Purification Bureau would never have chosen to forcibly contain you," Arthur said.
"In other words, the one directing all of this isn't the New Order."
A faint glimmer appeared in Lloyd's gloomy eyes.
After all these years in Old Dunling, he was finally beginning to notice the questions hidden beneath the fog.
"It was the New Order and the Queen who reached an agreement. An agreement important enough to make us willing to risk becoming your enemy."
"What agreement?"
"That is a royal secret, Lloyd. You have no right to know."
Arthur said nothing more.
He merely sighed wearily.
"But we have done everything we can to show our goodwill. Otherwise, the New Order would be more than happy to take over your containment. Be careful of them. They carry a toxin known as Canterella. Anthony originally suggested that we use it against you. At a low enough dosage, it won't kill a Witch Hunter. It will only leave you extremely weak."
Lloyd was slightly moved by those words.
He had experienced the power of Canterella firsthand.
It was a deadly poison originating from the House of Borgia, one that had later been taken up and utilized by the Gospel Church.
Lloyd suddenly laughed.
He looked at Arthur and spoke with a trace of mockery in his voice.
"Arthur, I always thought you were a hard man. A man of iron, an uncompromising dictator. I never expected you to be this slippery."
The meaning behind Arthur's words was obvious.
He had no reason to tell Lloyd any of this.
Yet he had told him anyway.
It was a warning.
The New Order possessed a means of keeping Lloyd in check.
Perhaps Arthur's actions could still be justified before.
But now Lloyd and the Purification Bureau had effectively become opposing forces.
Arthur wanted to control him.
Yet at the same time, he wanted to appease him.
There was something almost laughable about it.
But the man sitting before him seemed completely unconcerned.
"I'm not like you, Lloyd. You are alone. You can hate whoever you want and kill whoever you want. You have no ties holding you back. Because you're alone, there is nothing left for you to lose."
Arthur stared directly at him, his expression solemn.
"But I am different. My decisions affect the lives of many people. I am responsible for them. I have to fight for the greatest possible benefit for everyone."
"This isn't being slippery."
"It is simply the cunning of old men."
"Are you betting on me?"
"Only a desperate man would place all his chips on a single person."
Lloyd stared deeply into Arthur's eyes.
Although the New Order and the Purification Bureau were now cooperating, Arthur knew perfectly well that their alliance was temporary.
The two organizations were ultimately irreconcilable enemies.
The cooperation had only just begun, yet Arthur had already started preparing for the day he would have to confront this new ally.
"You don't trust the New Order either?"
"You want to use me?"
"There are no absolute allies, only absolute interests. And when those interests diverge, we become enemies."
Arthur's voice was slow and heavy, like a lesson passed down from one generation to the next.
"Aren't we proof of that, Lloyd?"
"I thought our cooperation would be magnificent. Together, we could have explored the origins of demons."
"But in the end…"
Arthur paused.
"Forget it. There is nothing left to say."
The iron serpent slowly came to a halt.
They had reached their destination.
The carriage door opened, and cold, damp air poured inside.
The moment Lloyd stepped down, guards surrounded him.
They had received their orders beforehand. They knew exactly what kind of patient they were receiving.
Strange-looking weapons were gripped tightly in their hands, as though the slightest sign of resistance from Lloyd would be met with immediate violence.
"Be courteous to Mr. Holmes."
Arthur stepped out of the carriage as well and came to stand beside Lloyd.
"You're coming with me?"
Lloyd glanced at him.
"There are still some things I need to take care of here."
Arthur raised his head and looked toward the enormous iron gates.
They appeared almost entirely untended, their surface covered in rust and crawling vines.
Beyond them stretched a succession of black silhouettes, rising one after another into the darkness.
Lights glimmered among them.
Yet from this distance, they resembled the glowing eyes of some enormous monster.
"It has begun."
Lloyd spoke softly.
Arthur did not hear him clearly.
He turned toward Lloyd.
"What did you say?"
The Witch Hunter smiled.
For an instant, it seemed as though he had become that amiable, slightly foolish detective once again.
But unfortunately, Lloyd had not truly returned.
His voice was cold and vicious, carrying a faint undertone of murderous intent.
"The game has begun, Arthur."