"Oh? Then how exactly did I give myself away?"
On the shadow-drenched docks, the final gambit unfolded. A blow that was meant to kill without question—yet Lloyd evaded it once again. His opponent was genuinely surprised, never imagining Lloyd would still be on guard.
"Because I only just realized it myself,"
Lloyd said, slowly turning to face the twisted human shape before him.
"This underground fortress was designed to be a perfect Hot Gates—a place built to guard a secret without needing a single soldier. Those monsters alone would be enough to hold off the world."
His hand pressed against his wound. No blood spilled, yet the pain was all too real.
"But you left yourself a way out. Like you said—'No one leaves alive.' You claimed that included you. Yet this hidden river betrays your lie. You don't want to die. So that so-called 'death' before… merely a performance, wasn't it?"
Lloyd watched the creature that Sabo had become—clearly corrupted, yet somehow not a mindless beast. He still preserved his reason, even while trapped in a monstrous shell.
The short, stocky frame was gone. His limbs had grown unnaturally long and thin; his fingers thickened, built to grip a sword with more certainty. The once-weathered rapier in his hand now pulsed with tendon-like flesh, as though granted a grotesque form of life.
"Yes… I refuse to die. No one can kill me."
Sabo's voice was a ghastly rasp, distorted beyond humanity—yet his final thread of rationality endured.
"I was a defective Viking from birth. Odin abandoned me the moment I came into this world. My mother cast me into the wilds, believing death would claim me. But I survived."
His eyes were squeezed into a single pit by malignant growths, dark red veins crawling beneath the skin as he stared down Lloyd with a dim, stubborn glare.
"Mr. Holmes… I was born forsaken by the gods. But I was also born to defy them. The northern winter could not kill me. Nor could hunger and misery. I bartered three fingers just to buy passage to Ingervig.
Countless people tried to take my life, and all of them failed. I will live on—longer than anyone."
It was like listening to a nightmare sermon. Thick saliva seeped from between razor-edged teeth. His whole being radiated madness.
Sabo had lived for survival alone—life was his only wealth. How could he ever willingly die because some plague-doctor told him to?
"And to think—I was once a believer of the Holy Gospel…"
A ragged laugh escaped him as he recalled the past.
"You were once a priest, weren't you, Mr. Holmes? Tell me—did your god abandon you too?"
There was sorrow in that murky gaze—Lloyd was startled to find genuine sympathy flickering within this monster.
"I have never believed in gods. I was born in Florentia—a city with only two kinds of people: believers and priests."
His tone grew cold.
"Believers pay to worship. Priests show up only on Sundays—and when money runs dry, we simply help ourselves to the offering box. Quite a comfortable life, really."
Once a priest, even a knight of the sacred halls—and yet Lloyd harbored no reverence for any divine power.
"Then why did you leave?"
Sabo asked.
"As a lunatic, you're rather talkative."
Lloyd rejected him with icy impatience—and then moved with force completely unfitting his injuries.
The shotgun snapped up and roared. A cloud of blazing pellets tore forward, dripping with lethal venom. But the shots missed. Sabo's twisted body moved faster than a human shape ever could—he slipped aside effortlessly, his rapier slicing down in response.
"I only thought… we were alike."
Sabo drew back the blade slowly. Even such a swift strike had failed to kill Lloyd. The rapier shattered the dock's supporting planks, and what little footing they had left continued to crumble.
"You made me what I am. So I always wondered—where you truly came from. I tried everything to learn the truth. The only record says you arrived in Ingervig six years ago."
Standing at the edge of the dock, Sabo spoke with something like reverence.
"A foreigner drenched in blood. Everyone thought no one could survive wounds like that. But you did. Just like me—you fight to live. You came here for survival. To Ingervig. To Old Dunling!"
A rabid fan—his declaration was answered only by another gunshot. The agile monster twisted away, hooking the grotesque claws of his toes into the slick rock wall, hanging upside-down like a hooked beast.
"I am nothing like you, Sabo."
Lloyd's voice remained calm, untouched by fear.
"What's the difference? When you stare into the abyss—the abyss stares back. We are the same!"
Sabo roared. With a nauseating crackle, white bulges swelled from his arms and burst—new limbs unfurling like obscene blossoms.
"You carry the same scent as I do, Mr. Holmes. The same blood. The blood of the forbidden!"
He shrieked, thrusting one of the newborn arms deep into his own abdomen. With bones splintering under his grip, he tore free a pair of ribs—long and sharpened like drawn blades.
And in the very next breath, the raging horror fell from above.
Three monstrous swords descended like execution—
and the weakened planks beneath them finally gave way into ruin.
Lloyd slipped away from each strike with unsettling ease.
His chest had been pierced through—yet he moved as if untouched, darting across the slick wooden piles that jutted above the black water, occasionally turning back to fire a punishing shot.
"We're the same, Mr. Holmes," the monster snarled as it surged forward, "we are the same kind of creature—willing to do anything to stay alive… even if it means devouring Secret Blood!"
Their clash shattered the pier beneath them.
What remained were only scattered posts rising from the sea—just enough footing for two beasts locked in desperate combat.
Bone-blades screeched as they struck Lloyd's sword-staff.
A second blade lunged from the opposite side.
Lloyd tried to twist away—but Sabo's free arm caught him, and the bone-blades speared straight through the mortal frame.
"I'm an old man, you know… almost fifty.
But in this dwarfed body, no one sees it.
All my life I've fought just to survive—and now I'm trapped in this twisted shell.
My organs fail me… every breath weighs me down… I can't even raise a sail again."
Sabo's confession spilled out between each savage strike.
And in his warped view, he and Lloyd were the same—two starving wolves on a narrowing path, knowing only one would walk away.
Only Lloyd, he believed, could ever understand him.
"So that is why you drank the Secret Blood?"
Lloyd's voice was steady—no trace of pain on his face, though cold steel had impaled him.
Sabo's twisted features softened with a hollow sorrow.
"Yes. It was the only way left to live."
To him, living—no matter the cost—was enough.
"Oh, and one last task," he rasped, a manic grin twisting his jaw.
"If I kill you… and that girl who fled… no one will know I survived.
Then I can go somewhere new, just as I once came to Old Dunling—and begin again."
He cackled, madness bubbling through every word.
The Secret Blood had devoured his sanity along with his flesh; he was no longer merely transformed—he was eroding from within.
"You can't," Lloyd answered quietly.
"To begin anew, one must abandon the past.
Can you do that, Sabo?"
The question struck like mockery—
A thunderous burst from a shotgun roared at point-blank range.
Shrapnel tore through the monster's torso, and fire—pale, searing—licked out from the wounds.
Sacred flames spilled from the gaps in the bone-blades that pinned them together.
Like heretics condemned to the pyre, Lloyd held Sabo close as the holy fire bathed them both.
Sabo shrieked, wrenching himself free.
Blades carved away burning flesh; crimson skin blistered with boiling welts.
"Sabo," Lloyd murmured from the darkness beyond the dying fire,
"we may be alike… but from the beginning, we were never the same."
He stepped forward—one post at a time—sword-staff in one hand, gun in the other.
Something in the air changed.
It was as though Lloyd Holmes—the detective—had perished in that blaze…
and something long hidden in the abyss beneath his soul finally rose to take his place.
"You became a monster to survive…"
His voice cracked into a terrifying roar:
"I survived so I could slay monsters!"
His wounded body writhed as impossible healing surged through it.
A tattoo sprawling across his back awakened, slithering beneath bloodless skin like a living serpent.
[Secret Blood Awakening: 7% — Stability Threshold Breached.
Silver Bindings: Dissolution Initiated.]
A burning white radiance ignited within his gray-blue eyes.
Sabo saw only a streak—a sword stroke stretched into a line of light.
The man's stomp shattered the posts beneath him, water exploding upward in towering plumes.
It happened almost too fast to perceive.
When the monster realized what had changed—
the demon wearing Lloyd's form had already driven the sword-staff deep into its heart,
and white fire roared hungrily along the blade.