It resembled some profane rite.
Suspended high above by iron chains and mechanical cranes, the jet-black aberrant egg hung in silence. Countless floodlights converged upon it, stripping away every shadow so that each steel feather, every razor-edged contour, was laid bare before the eyes of all who stood beneath it.
Lloyd lifted his gaze toward the statue-like entity.
Under his unwavering stare, he could feel it.
It was alive.
As time passed, the layers of steel feathers rose and fell ever so faintly, like the measured rhythm of breathing.
"When we recovered the Black Angel, we performed every examination imaginable," Merlin said, his own eyes fixed upon the black cocoon with reverence bordering on worship. "Every reading came back normal. Yet we never discovered what caused it to lose control."
"...It's still alive," Lloyd murmured as he stepped across the pools of an unfamiliar crimson liquid, drawing closer to the slumbering construct. "It's breathing."
"It is." Merlin nodded. "The Holy Grail Flesh didn't merely fuse with you. It also merged with this forbidden relic of the Old Era."
"Steel... and flesh."
Scarlet muscle crept beneath the obsidian feathers, weaving itself through every gear, piston, and joint. Layer upon layer, living tissue embraced cold machinery, shielding the steam engine buried at its core, along with the demon's heart that had been processed by the Perpetual Pump.
This was an Old Era Divine Armor.
A blasphemous union of machine and demon.
The Perpetual Pump had excised the creature's brain, preserving only the heart that drove its flesh. In truth, it was nothing more than a living corpse, incapable of moving without a human will to command it.
And yet...
On the day the Heavenly Fire fell, it had awakened.
Without a pilot.
Without a mind.
The corpse had begun to move on its own.
"You could say," Merlin continued quietly, "that this is the most terrifying Old Era Divine Armor we have ever created. After absorbing the Holy Grail Flesh, its strength surpassed every other armor in existence."
"But the price..."
"...was equally unimaginable."
"We conducted countless tests. The moment a pilot activated the Black Angel, the Geiger Index immediately surged to its maximum. Most remained lucid for only a few dozen seconds before descending into violent hallucinations."
"Within minutes..."
"They were completely consumed."
"They became demons."
Only minutes.
No corruption ever documented by the Purging Agency had ever progressed so quickly. It was death that allowed no resistance, no struggle, no chance to fight back.
"And after that?" Lloyd asked. "Did it lose control?"
He understood Old Era Divine Armors well enough. They resembled Demon Hunters in many ways—once they succumbed to corruption, devastation inevitably followed.
With corruption of this magnitude, the Perpetual Pump must have paid dearly to restrain it.
"No."
Merlin slowly shook his head.
"And that... is precisely what makes it so extraordinary."
His hollow eyes remained fixed upon the black figure illuminated beneath the blazing lights.
As an alchemist, Merlin had spent a lifetime surrounded by impossible things.
Yet never...
Never had he encountered something that defied understanding so completely.
Every inch of it was an unanswered question.
"You know," Merlin said after a long silence, "when I was a child and saw a demon for the first time, my world shattered."
"I lived in fear of those loathsome creatures."
"But after spending decades among them..."
"I became accustomed to them."
Lloyd gave a faint smile.
"It's like living beside a tiger every day. Eventually you stop seeing a monster."
"You just see... a very dangerous cat."
"Exactly."
Merlin nodded.
"A great deal of what we call common sense is simply habit."
"The sun rises in the east every morning, so we call that common sense."
"But then..."
"One mist-covered dawn..."
"Something called a demon entered our world."
"And everything we believed about reality was broken."
He slowly turned toward Lloyd.
For perhaps the first time since they had met, emotion appeared upon his rigid face.
Lloyd recognized it instantly.
Fear.
Reverence.
And something perilously close to awe.
It made Lloyd tense without realizing why.
What kind of existence...
...could frighten a man like Merlin?
"Mr. Holmes," Merlin asked softly, "do demons still frighten you?"
"Or do you still find their existence... astonishing?"
Lloyd frowned, unable to grasp the meaning behind the question.
"I'm not sure I understand."
"If a demon appears..."
"...we hunt it."
"Isn't that all there is to it?"
"Yes."
Merlin laughed bitterly.
"Just as our ancestors once hunted beasts with torches and spears."
"But don't you see?"
"Without realizing it..."
"We've grown accustomed to living in a world where demons exist."
His voice grew heavier.
"We have lived alongside horror for so long that horror itself has become ordinary."
"The abnormal..."
"...became normal."
"And eventually..."
"It became common sense."
He pointed quietly at himself.
"A kind of common sense shared only by people like us."
Lloyd fell silent.
Merlin was right.
The years had stretched on for so long that humanity's terror had gradually dulled into numb acceptance.
"The first time our common sense was shattered..."
"...was when demons appeared."
"But the Black Angel..."
"...has shattered it for a second time."
"I've read every alchemical journal until the pages nearly fell apart."
"I have never seen anything like this."
"This is..."
"...an anomaly beyond anomaly."
Merlin abruptly turned and strode away.
Lloyd followed.
Around them, machinery shrieked as gears engaged. Brilliant sparks rained from the ceiling alongside streams of crimson liquid—not blood, but some alchemical solution repeatedly washing across the Black Angel's armored surface.
"So what exactly happened?"
Lloyd's eyes never left the silent black angel.
After all...
It had saved his life.
Merlin climbed an iron staircase into an observation chamber suspended above the workshop. From a cluttered desk he retrieved several reports, along with a handful of grainy black-and-white photographs.
"Take a look."
"These are from the previous activation tests."
"We had fully prepared for a catastrophic loss of control. We deployed overwhelming firepower."
"But..."
"It never happened."
He handed Lloyd the reports.
"The pilots remained conscious only briefly before corruption consumed them."
"They began transforming into demons..."
"...inside the armor."
Lloyd studied the photographs.
"It looks..."
"...normal."
"Just like every other victim of corruption."
The words left his mouth before he froze.
A chill crawled down his spine.
Merlin had been right.
He had unconsciously begun accepting the abnormal as ordinary.
"No."
Merlin shook his head firmly.
"It wasn't normal."
"I participated in the earliest development of the Old Era Divine Armors."
"I've studied countless loss-of-control incidents."
"This..."
"...was completely different."
"When a pilot mutates into a demon, the armor itself usually loses control."
"Because the human brain compensates for what the armor lacks."
"They have no consciousness of their own," Lloyd said quietly.
"They borrow the pilot's will."
"Exactly."
Merlin nodded.
"When the pilot is consumed, flesh proliferates and fuses with the armor's own flesh."
"The pilot's mind is replaced by madness."
"The demon is completed."
Images flashed through Lloyd's memory.
Galahad.
His shattered body.
His grotesquely transformed back fused seamlessly into the Black Angel's living flesh.
Merlin and the others had not rescued him.
They had carved him out.
"As we understood it," Merlin continued, searching through another stack of documents, "the pilot's brain would become the demon's brain."
"Swollen flesh would fill every hollow within the armor."
"At that point..."
"The armor itself had become a demon."
"To be honest..."
"...calling it a demon wearing mechanical armor isn't inaccurate."
At last he found the photograph he had been searching for.
"Now look at this."
"This was taken after the Black Angel lost control."
"We expected carnage."
"Instead..."
"Everything remained perfectly quiet."
"The pilot was simply..."
"...decomposed."
"In the most literal sense."
"Like a corpse buried beneath a tree."
"Every nutrient."
"Every fragment."
"Everything he was..."
"...was consumed."
"When we opened the cockpit..."
"...there was nothing left."
"He had completely merged with the armor."
"And the armor..."
"...stood perfectly still."
Lloyd accepted the photograph.
The image was blurred by the limitations of early photography.
Even so...
He could make out the aftermath.
It looked as though some monstrous predator had feasted inside the cramped cockpit.
It had eaten with terrifying precision.
Only tiny scraps of flesh remained clinging to the corners.
"This..."
Merlin whispered, his hollow eyes glowing with excitement,
"...is unique."
"A phenomenon no one has ever recorded."
"It's as though one morning you wake up..."
"...and discover that one plus one no longer equals two."
"It equals three."
Lloyd immediately realized where this conversation was heading.
He threw up both hands and shouted,
"No."
"No, no, no."
"Merlin."
"Don't even think about it."
"I'm not getting inside that thing."
"You'd be sacrificing yourself for science!" Merlin seized Lloyd before he could flee. "You Demon Hunters may be strong, but in fifty years—or five hundred—you'll still become nothing more than bones."
"But knowledge..."
"Knowledge endures forever."
That was the nature of alchemists.
Merlin pursued truth with the obsession of a madman.
Ordinarily he appeared perfectly rational, only because the truth he sought remained impossibly distant, like a mountain hidden behind clouds.
When the summit lies beyond reach...
There is no urgency.
But now...
He had found a path.
The Black Angel.
A Divine Armor unlike any other.
A mystery that defied every law they knew.
Perhaps...
The breakthrough he had spent his life pursuing.
Faced with such temptation, even the most detached alchemist would surrender to madness.
To them...
No treasure in the world rivaled knowledge yet to be discovered.
"Lloyd!"
Merlin shouted while dragging him back.
"You survived because of this armor!"
"It's entirely possible..."
"...that it lost control because of you!"
Merlin was no match for Lloyd in strength.
Just as Lloyd reached the observation room's exit, those words stopped him cold.
He slowly turned around.
"Because..."
"...of me?"
"That's the only explanation."
"Old Era Divine Armors cannot activate themselves."
"Something must have influenced it."
"Something gave it consciousness."
"Or at least..."
"...the ability to act with intention."
"Think back to that battlefield, Lloyd."
"The Black Angel moved with purpose."
"It knew exactly what it wanted."
Merlin poured out every deduction he had reached.
"Think about the chain of cause and effect."
"It was pursuing something."
Lloyd stood motionless.
After that battle, he had avoided recalling what happened whenever possible.
Perhaps because of his severe injuries.
Perhaps because he had lost consciousness.
"...Pursuing what?"
Merlin looked him directly in the eye.
"You."
"Its purpose..."
"...was you."
Perhaps prolonged exposure to demons left everyone carrying a trace of madness.
Merlin had entirely forgotten Lloyd's attempted escape.
Now he was consumed by analysis.
"An Old Era Divine Armor cannot think."
"It is nothing more than living armor."
"But that day..."
"It acted."
"It made decisions."
"It even demonstrated intelligence."
"Lloyd."
"Did your Demon Hunter Order ever consider using Holy Grail Flesh to save someone on the brink of death?"
At those words, Watson's face surfaced in Lloyd's mind.
The woman who had vanished like a dream after the failed assassination of Lawrence.
"...No."
"We never did."
"Exactly."
Merlin spread his hands.
"That is intelligence."
"Or at least judgment."
"We built the Black Angel ourselves."
"I know every bolt inside it."
"If we had created something that intelligent..."
"We would have marched straight to the gates of Florence long ago."
Though peace had long since arrived, Merlin clearly hadn't forgiven the Gospel Church for the wars of the past.
"There had to be another variable on that battlefield."
"An unknown variable."
"Something altered the course of everything."
He frowned, still unable to grasp it.
"And your survival..."
"...was the result."
Lloyd remained silent for a long while before asking,
"So..."
"...what exactly is the problem?"
"There is a problem."
Merlin pointed directly at him.
"But the problem isn't me."
"It's you."
"You are the anomaly, Lloyd."
"Think carefully."
"It needed you alive."
"The Black Angel's rampage."
"The hunt for the Holy Grail Flesh."
"Everything..."
"...was done for your sake."
"So here's the question, Mr. Holmes."
Merlin stepped before the doorway, blocking every possible escape.
"What makes you worthy..."
"...of returning from the dead?"