"How are you feeling, Arthur?"
Abigail carefully unwound the bandages and peeled them away, one layer at a time. Perhaps it was a consequence of his years as a Ranger, but despite his age, Arthur's constitution remained far stronger than that of an ordinary man. The ghastly wound had already healed considerably, leaving only a faint white scar beneath his weathered skin.
"Not bad…" Arthur replied. As he recalled everything he had endured, he couldn't help letting out a sigh. "Being alive feels damn good."
Arthur rarely suffered nightmares anymore, but ever since regaining consciousness, he had kept dreaming of that final stretch of the journey.
That impossibly long journey.
In a corridor stained with rust and blood, whether he moved forward or turned back, there was nothing but an impenetrable darkness. He ran like a madman, desperately trying to reach the end, yet no matter how hard he pushed himself, it remained forever out of reach. All he could do was watch his will slowly erode amid that endless despair.
He had trampled through viscous pools of blood, breathed in the suffocating stench of decay, and witnessed the corpses of one familiar face after another…
"You were lucky. You escaped without any truly life-threatening injuries. The only wound that needs particular attention is the one on your shoulder."
Abigail picked up a pair of scissors and an alcohol swab, then continued tending to Arthur's injuries.
"That fellow really did seem to have lost his mind. By then, I barely had the strength to move. I was trapped in the same room with him, and somehow, after surviving the demons, I nearly got my throat torn out by that bastard's teeth instead."
Arthur gave a bitter smile and glanced toward the other side of the ward. A patient was strapped to an iron bed there: William, the former Chief Technical Director of the Perpetual Motion Pump.
He clearly wasn't enjoying his current circumstances. Every so often, he let out a low, plaintive growl and strained against his restraints like a caged beast.
Ever since the Perpetual Motion Pump disaster more than a decade ago, William had succumbed to madness under the effects of severe Corruption. He had become a patient who tried to bite anything that came within reach. During the storm half a month ago, if the rescue team hadn't arrived in time, the unconscious Arthur would almost certainly have had his throat bitten through by him.
"It seems this incident has affected you more deeply than I expected," Abigail remarked, studying his expression.
"What would a young girl like you know about it?" Arthur attempted to retort.
Compared with Arthur, Abigail really was little more than a girl. She and Nicola belonged to the Cleanse Bureau's new generation of scholars. Having spent years working in the underground research district, her skin had taken on a somewhat unhealthy pallor, making her look even younger than she was.
"I just…" Arthur paused. "I think I understand other people a little better now."
"In what way?"
"For example, what it means to be alive. What it means to be afraid of dying?" By the time he finished speaking, even Arthur couldn't help laughing at himself.
He had never been a man who feared death. As the commander responsible for leading the Cleanse Bureau forward, he could be ruthless and merciless, sacrificing others without hesitation—and himself just as readily.
But this time, he had been afraid.
In that unfathomably deep darkness, he had been terrified of death. He had even found himself yearning to beg the Reaper for mercy.
"I can't die yet. At the very least, I can't die with all that information still in my possession. Cole went to such lengths to place the torch in my hands. How could I let its flame go out while I'm still holding it?"
Arthur's gaze drifted toward the floor, his expression distant, as though he had forgotten Abigail was there.
"Then what did you discover?"
Curiosity crept into Abigail's voice. Arthur had yet to tell anyone what he had learned in that darkness, and she wanted to know what he had seen.
"Clues. Clues that will lead us to the truth."
Arthur raised his head and looked at Abigail. In his aged eyes, a fierce light began to burn.
"According to Cole's intelligence, even after he was corrupted, his consciousness remained somewhat intact. His mind had been trapped somewhere strange."
He paused, searching for the right words.
"Somewhere he knew intimately. It was like an unusual spiritual world, or perhaps… the [Gap]."
Abigail froze. She knew a little about the [Gap]. In the eyes of alchemists, it was regarded as the end of darkness—a deeper plane of mental space that existed, yet was reached by almost no one.
"Do you understand what this means, Abigail?"
"What?"
Arthur drew a deep breath. Throughout the past half month of treatment, he had been turning the same questions over and over in his mind. What connected demons and humanity? What, in essence, were demons?
"Perhaps those who have been transformed into demons haven't actually lost their minds at all. Perhaps they're still alive. Their consciousness has simply been separated from their completely transformed bodies, imprisoned somewhere they cannot escape. Their minds are trapped inside a prison called the [Gap]."
Abigail's pupils contracted to pinpoints. A chilling draft seemed to sweep across her back in the sealed room.
Seeing her subtle reaction, Arthur gave a hoarse chuckle.
"Interesting, isn't it? Of course, it's only a hypothesis for now. To determine whether there's any truth to it, I'll need Black Mountain Hospital to give this everything it has."
"Something like that…" Abigail still found the idea difficult to believe.
"Don't panic. You're still too young. Isn't this exactly what we in the Cleanse Bureau do? No—what humanity does? We face the unknown, make deductions about it, then test those deductions using whatever methods we can understand. We turn the unknown into the known."
Arthur continued to revisit those memories, recalling everything Cole had entrusted to him before his death.
"For some reason, Cole managed to escape from the [Gap]. If that's possible, perhaps we can find a way to bring him back to consciousness as well."
His gaze settled on William.
"That man is hiding plenty of secrets himself, Abigail."
Abigail followed his gaze. After Arthur's explanation, she now understood who the man on the bed really was: the previous Merlin, the former Chief Technical Director of the Perpetual Motion Pump.
"More than a decade ago, an accident occurred at the Perpetual Motion Pump. It was later named the Red Signal Incident. That disaster caused demons to run rampant throughout Old Dunling for a time. Eve herself may even have been affected by its aftermath…"
Arthur stopped himself, deciding not to pursue that particular thread.
"William appeared to have been conducting some kind of experiment at the time. But according to the information Cole gave me, William seems to have discovered what he called the [Truth]. Then, as far as our observations went, an overwhelming wave of Corruption descended upon the Perpetual Motion Pump in an instant, and we lost all contact with the facility."
He paused, his expression darkening.
"Even now, we still have no idea what happened inside the Perpetual Motion Pump that day. When our Rangers stormed the facility, all we found were demons that had appeared out of nowhere and corpses scattered everywhere. Every record had been deliberately destroyed by some unknown force, and all the personnel had been driven mad by Corruption."
Arthur's gaze grew increasingly grave.
"Mordred… that is, Cole—and William. Both of them descended into madness during the Red Signal Incident."
He fell silent for a moment.
"No. Something about this isn't right…"
The more Arthur recalled the past, the more discrepancies he began to notice. No, they weren't merely discrepancies. After all these years, armed with the information he had only recently acquired, he was finally revising his understanding of the Red Signal Incident. What had once seemed inexplicable was beginning to fall into place.
Then he felt a cold hand brush against his neck.
A sudden, indescribable unease washed over him.
He had the faint sensation that something was standing between him and the truth, obstructing his path like a wall.
"This is so familiar…"
"What did you say?" Abigail asked. She hadn't quite caught his words.
"It's too similar…" Arthur murmured in a voice too quiet for her to hear. "It's just like another Night of the Advent."
Looking back now, Arthur couldn't help wondering whether fate truly existed in this world. For years, their understanding of demons had advanced at a painfully slow pace. Yet in recent years, everything had suddenly accelerated: divine armor technology, the Holy Grail and the False Holy Grail, the decline and resurgence of the demon-hunting orders…
One extraordinary event after another had erupted within such a short span of years, as though someone had deliberately accelerated the course of history.
"Lloyd Holmes…"
He couldn't help murmuring that familiar yet strangely distant name.
Arthur rubbed his temples vigorously. In the past, his Ranger-hardened constitution had made him indifferent to things like maintaining his health. But perhaps it was time to start taking better care of himself. After all, he had to keep living—at least long enough to learn the truth behind everything.
"Where is Merlin?"
"He should be at his castle," Abigail replied. "Black Mountain Hospital has been reduced to ruins, and many of the patients have nowhere else to go. He offered up his own old castle, the one that's been gathering dust for years."
"I see…"
Arthur considered this for a moment before asking another question.
"Have you found any trace of Lloyd?"
"I'm not sure. But according to their assessment, there's a very good chance he's dead. We just haven't found his body yet."
Half a month ago, during the storm, Gareth had ordered the Dawnward-bound airship to open fire on the Riesenbach in order to destroy the extraordinarily powerful source of contamination. The bombardment had completely obliterated the flesh-covered airship.
Lloyd had been aboard the Riesenbach at the time. Although someone had seen him escape the doomed vessel alongside the Black Angel, that hardly meant he had survived. They had been at an altitude of ten thousand meters, and the Black Angel was far too heavy to fly. At best, it could glide. At such a height, gliding would do little more than delay the inevitable. The impact of landing would still be more than enough to kill him.
"The Black Angel went berserk again in that strange way of his. But we'll have to ask Merlin for the details. According to the operational records aboard the Dawnward, Merlin himself opened the hatch and deployed the Black Angel."
As she spoke, Abigail picked up a report from the table beside her.
"This arrived early this morning. It contains the findings from the investigation of the Riesenbach's crash site."
Arthur took the report. Several black-and-white photographs were tucked inside.
The wreckage of the Riesenbach had come down along a mountain ridge. The resulting blaze had spread into the surrounding forest, leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. An examination of the wreckage had uncovered numerous demon corpses. Based on the readings recorded by the Geiger counters at the time, as well as comparisons with the demon remains recovered from Black Mountain Hospital, the investigators had concluded that the bodies belonged to demon hunters who had undergone complete transformation.
The Black Angel had also been found several kilometers away from the main crash site. The Old Era Divine Armor had been smashed almost beyond recognition, carving a trail hundreds of meters long through the ground where it had plowed into the earth.
But there was no sign of Lloyd's body.
"Do you think he's dead?" Arthur asked.
"Probably. After a fall from that height, perhaps the violent winds carried him somewhere else. In any case, the area has already been sealed off by the scavengers. If he's dead, we'll find his body sooner or later."
As she spoke, Abigail seemed to remember something and continued.
"Oh, right. The New Order has left. More accurately, they've fled."
"What?"
Arthur's head snapped up. He fixed his eyes on Abigail.
"That's exactly what I mean. There's a report about it on the table, too."
She pointed toward the small table beside them, where a mountain of documents had accumulated.
"We can be certain that the New Order interfered in the fighting at Black Mountain Hospital. But they had clearly prepared an escape plan long in advance."
"So they're denying everything?"
"Yes. The demon hunters belonging to their diplomatic mission remained inside the consulate throughout the incident. The ones who took part in the operation must have infiltrated the city in secret. As long as the New Order refuses to acknowledge their involvement, there's very little we can do directly."
She paused before continuing.
"While you were unconscious, the scavengers launched an operation of their own. But the other side consisted of demon hunters, after all, and we ended up exchanging fire. They weren't interested in prolonging the fight, so we suffered no casualties. Unfortunately, we couldn't stop them either. We tracked them as far as the harbor, then lost them completely."
As one of the key figures involved in the incident, Abigail had been among the luckiest. Shrike had gotten her out of the combat zone at the first opportunity, which left her free to take charge of much of the subsequent investigation and cleanup.
"I see. But they're demon hunters, after all. Without the Old Era Divine Armor on our side, we're still at a disadvantage against those humanoid monsters."
Arthur's face darkened with anger. He could hardly believe the enemy had escaped so easily. But the circumstances had worked against them. The Cleanse Bureau's attention had been focused almost entirely on Black Mountain Hospital, and even if they had wanted to prioritize the New Order, they would have struggled to pursue demon hunters of that caliber.
"What does the Queen have to say about this?"
"Platinum Palace hasn't issued any response yet."
Arthur let out a long, weary sigh.
"So we lost this war? We were defeated by the New Order?"
"No. To be precise, we all lost." Abigail hesitated, but in the end, she forced herself to say it. "We all lost to the remnants of Lawrence's faction."
"According to the survivors' accounts, combined with everything we've pieced together so far, I believe we were all manipulated by that man called the Plague Doctor."
"The Plague Doctor…"
Remembering that bizarre figure, Arthur fell silent.
Too many factions had become entangled in this localized war. He would need more time to untangle the whole affair and understand what had truly happened.
But just then, someone knocked on the door.
It swung open, and several soldiers entered, carrying weapons and escorting two captives—one tall, one short.
It was an amusing combination. They looked like a grandfather accompanying his granddaughter, or perhaps a shady merchant trying to con a child.
"At last. Lloyd's dear friends have finally arrived."
Arthur looked at the two newcomers and composed himself. Just as he had suspected, far too many people had been drawn into this incident. Even he had been surprised when he followed the trail of clues and discovered these two were involved.
"Duke Stuart was reasonably cooperative," one of the soldiers reported. "As for Mr. Oscar Wilde… we found him trying to escape by train."
Lloyd's rescue squad had finally made its entrance, though Hercule was conspicuously absent. Perhaps it was only natural for the Rat King's keeper to have an exceptionally keen nose. The moment Hercule realized the Riesenbach was heading somewhere it shouldn't, he had packed his things and run.
The other two had been a little slower to react, making them easy targets. With the Cleanse Bureau's control over Old Dunling, it had only been a matter of time before they were caught.
Cecilia remained as impassive as ever. Oscar, on the other hand, wore an utterly shameless grin.
"Ah! At last, someone who'll listen! I've been wanting to report Lloyd's crimes for ages! He threatened us into doing everything! That's right, the shameless bastard forced us to help him! We were accomplices at most!"
Oscar struck a pose of righteous indignation. The sudden outburst caught Arthur off guard, but the old commander quickly recovered.
"Threatened you, did he? So, under threat from a third-rate detective, the honorable Duke Stuart and the North Dero family decided to mobilize their resources and help him carry out all this? You even managed to lose an entire Riesenbach in the process?"
"To be precise, it was our resources! We funded the operation together."
Oscar spoke with unmistakable pride, even patting Cecilia on the shoulder as he did so. To Arthur's surprise, Cecilia actually nodded in agreement.
For a moment, Arthur found himself at a loss between laughter and exasperation. But the next instant, the calm on his face gave way to murderous intent. He raised his gun and aimed it directly at Oscar.
Oscar froze, apparently never having expected Arthur to be so direct. Cecilia's expression turned serious as well. She had known the consequences of being discovered would be severe, but she hadn't expected Arthur to give them absolutely no room to negotiate.
As Cecilia considered their next move, Oscar suddenly turned toward her. Grief filled his aged face.
"I'm sorry, child. This is reality. It seems our revolutionary friendship ends here."
Cecilia: "?"
"All right, all right! I'll confess everything! It was that lunatic Lloyd who wanted to flee Old Dunling. We agreed to help him work out an escape route, that's all! How was I supposed to know the bastard had no intention of escaping in the first place?!"
Ignoring Cecilia's curses and attempts to beat him into silence, Oscar turned back toward Arthur and shouted his confession without the slightest reservation.