Darkness swallowed Lloyd's vision.
Yet unlike the first time he had stepped into the Weaponsmith, there was no icy embrace of cold steel waiting for him. Instead, something strangely warm welcomed him—as though he had been drawn into the arms of a living creature.
As Lloyd settled deeper into the Black Angel, the inner walls tightened around his body. Perhaps because of the Holy Grail flesh woven into its frame, the proportion of demonic tissue inside this ancient armor far exceeded that of the previous model. Before the activation sequence had even begun, he could already feel countless masses of flesh stirring against his skin, pulsing with slow, deliberate life.
A faint current coursed through his body, sharpening his mind. The Florend serum injected beforehand began taking effect as well. His senses cleared one after another, until every sound, every vibration, every breath became unnervingly vivid.
"Begin preheating."
The cold command echoed beside his ear.
Outside, Merlin pulled down the main valve. Fuel flooded into the system.
At the same moment, the familiar agony erupted along Lloyd's spine. Slender electrodes pierced beneath his skin, binding his nervous system directly to the Old Era Divine Armor.
"How do you feel, Lloyd?"
Merlin's voice came again.
"I'm fine... Begin."
Receiving the reply, Merlin gave a silent nod to the others.
Commands were entered.
Seconds later—
Lightning tore across the darkness.
The frozen metal was illuminated for a fleeting instant before torrents of electricity poured into the twisted Divine Armor.
Every indicator ignited at once, bathing the chamber in blinding white.
The flesh convulsed violently.
Iron feathers rooted within the living tissue shuddered to life, scraping against one another like thousands of swords clashing in preparation for flight.
Dense white vapor poured from every seam of the armor.
It was not steam from overheated machinery.
It was breath.
Living flesh had awakened.
Blood surged through channels carved into steel. A colossal heart thundered somewhere deep within the frame, each beat stronger than the last, while coarse, monstrous breathing echoed through the chamber.
Merlin's heart climbed into his throat.
High above, crimson lights flashed across the restraints. As the Black Angel awakened, the rivets driven into its body were slowly forced outward by endlessly proliferating flesh, as though they would burst free at any second.
Around the laboratory, every Geiger Index screamed simultaneously.
The alarms merged into a single deafening chorus—
A magnificent symphony rising ever higher.
"Oh, Merlin... Do you remember the last time I piloted the Weaponsmith?"
Inside the armor, Lloyd suddenly spoke.
"I wasn't actually out of control."
The words arrived just before everything slipped beyond certainty.
The sensation was already becoming unbearable.
The Black Angel continued awakening.
Heat climbed relentlessly until Lloyd felt as though he had been sealed inside a furnace. Flesh proliferated from every crack in the steel, overflowing until it wrapped itself around him completely.
"You lost consciousness."
"No."
Lloyd's breathing had already become strained.
"I reached... the Gap."
"This Old Era Divine Armor... it's like an amplifier. Through it, I can reach places that should be beyond me."
"Maybe... this time... I'll get there again."
"If I appear unconscious..."
"...don't stop the experiment."
Unknown fluid seeped from the growing flesh, gradually filling the cockpit.
Soon his entire body floated weightlessly within it, like an unborn child suspended inside a womb.
Merlin froze.
Then realization struck.
"You never told me any of this!"
He roared into the communicator.
"We need to discuss this again!"
"No time."
Lloyd cut him off.
"It's awake."
The proliferating flesh swallowed the electrodes, then extended along them until it merged directly with Lloyd's own body.
An indescribable sensation spread through him.
It was as though his body no longer ended at his skin.
He tried to breathe—
Only to inhale thick, metallic-smelling fluid.
The corruption intensified with every heartbeat of the awakening Black Angel, pressing down upon him like entire mountain ranges.
Hallucinations.
Fragments of memory.
Countless voices.
They crashed into his consciousness one after another, tearing through his nerves with unbearable pain.
The corruption had arrived.
Communication failed instantly.
Around the chamber, every Geiger Index exceeded its measurable limit.
No instrument could calculate the intensity anymore.
Every heart in the laboratory stopped.
If the corruption wasn't reversed within minutes, it would spread across the entire testing ground.
At that point...
The experiment would already have failed.
Security teams tightened their grips on their weapons. Every emergency protocol had been prepared. Though the experiment had been assembled with astonishing haste, every possible precaution had still been made.
Yet the truth remained—
No one knew what would happen after the Black Angel awakened.
Everything beyond this point lay within absolute uncertainty.
Life.
Death.
No one could say.
Time crawled forward.
Then—
Without warning—
The crimson warning light flickered once...
...and became a tranquil emerald green.
"It... it worked?"
Even Merlin could scarcely believe it.
Yet the steadily falling Geiger readings confirmed the impossible.
The Black Angel's outward corruption was stabilizing.
Lloyd...
...was beginning to master it.
"Lloyd! Are you still conscious?"
Corruption still distorted every transmission. Merlin shouted directly toward the towering armor.
No answer came.
Steam engines continued their rhythmic pulse.
The iron feathers rose and fell with the breathing of the living flesh.
Silence.
So profound that even time itself seemed to stand still.
...
Darkness consumed Lloyd once more.
Every trace of light receded.
Layer after layer of warm flesh enveloped him, biting into his own before slowly fusing with it. Ignoring the crude electrodes altogether, the living tissue seized control directly through flesh alone.
Time lost meaning.
Perhaps centuries passed.
Perhaps only seconds.
Human perception dissolved inside that endless darkness.
Then—
The ground vanished beneath him.
A dreadful sensation of weightlessness overtook him before gravity seized his body and dragged him downward.
He fell.
And fell.
And continued falling forever—
Toward the deepest abyss beneath all darkness.
Then...
Water.
A crystal-clear splash shattered eternity's silence.
All at once, every sound returned.
Countless forgotten melodies erupted together, as though they had been accumulating for ages.
Color flowed back into existence.
Before him stretched a dark sapphire world.
Frigid seawater flooded his lungs.
The unimaginable cold forced consciousness back into his numb mind.
Somewhere within the endless blue, enormous silhouettes drifted through the abyss beneath distant, ancient chants.
And then—
Lloyd understood.
He had never been falling.
He had been rising.
Rising without end.
Ascending toward the highest place imaginable.
The frozen surface exploded apart.
Within the raging sea of shattered ice, Lloyd clawed desperately at floating slabs, fighting like a drowning man until, soaked and gasping, he finally dragged himself onto solid ground.
Not far away...
The familiar bench remained exactly where he remembered it.
Once again—
He had arrived inside the Gap.
A barren, frozen world.
As though every living thing had perished long ago, leaving only endless cold behind.
"So..."
"So I was right..."
Every visit had been miserable.
Yet Lloyd smiled.
He had proven his theory.
Through the Old Era Divine Armor, he could deliberately enter the Gap.
"Metatron!"
His voice thundered across the frozen wilderness, echoing toward the edge of the world.
Only his own distant voice returned.
No one answered.
Unease tightened around his heart.
"Watson?"
"Metatron!"
He shouted with all his strength.
Silence.
Nothing but silence.
He was alone.
Entirely alone.
In this endless frozen world...
There was only one living soul.
Lloyd stumbled forward before collapsing onto the bench, lowering his head as his thoughts spiraled.
"No..."
"This shouldn't be possible..."
By all logic, Watson and Metatron should both have been here.
Yet neither answered.
Had his worst fear come true?
Had Watson abandoned him?
Then...
What about Metatron?
He had always been the final safeguard.
He would never have remained silent.
Unless...
He, too, had been corrupted.
Of course.
Metatron had died long ago.
What remained was only lingering consciousness...
A wandering ghost.
How could such a thing resist the corruption of the False Holy Grail?
But...
Why had it happened without leaving behind even the slightest trace?
Lloyd's breathing became ragged.
His eyes darted across the frozen wasteland with mounting paranoia.
"So you've been here all along?"
"You've been hiding beneath the ice..."
"Watching me."
"Waiting for me to doubt myself."
"Waiting for me to break."
It was exactly the sort of trick demons favored.
Just like the Valley of Horrors.
Before hunters ever encountered the monsters themselves, fear alone had already driven countless minds into chaos.
Lloyd stared into the endless ice.
Then...
He laughed.
He was a demon hunter.
And a detective.
If no one would answer—
Then he would uncover the truth himself.
Fragments of past conversations with Metatron surged through his memory like a tidal wave.
"Passive connection..."
"Active control..."
A realization surfaced.
The very first time Lloyd had entered the Gap of his own will, Metatron had already revealed something dangerous.
He had wanted to cooperate with Watson.
He had even shown Lloyd that impossible vision.
"...Did you let her leave?"
The contradiction refused to resolve itself.
Then another memory surfaced.
A familiar voice whispered through his mind.
"Would you... like to go home?"
If Metatron had spoken the truth...
Then perhaps...
He could do it too.
A terrifying thought took root.
Once, Lloyd would never have dared entertain such an idea.
But too many impossible things had already happened.
Sometimes...
Even he no longer knew himself.
Was he truly governed by cold reason?
Or had madness already reached such perfection that it merely wore reason's face?
Perhaps no one possessed the answer.
Perhaps only he could decide.
Slowly, his trembling hand rose.
"This is a spiritual world connected to every one of us..."
"An invisible bond..."
"...binding us together."
This is our Gap. A world shaped by our will.
His hand drifted gently downward.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
Long moments passed.
Lloyd suddenly burst into laughter.
Of course.
It had all been false.
Watson's deception.
A carefully crafted lie.
The world had not changed.
Reality remained intact.
Metatron's words had been nothing but nonsense.
His common sense had survived.
And yet...
A strange disappointment settled quietly inside him.
Some part of him had wanted reality to break.
Just as priests secretly wandered into gambling halls—
Human beings were forever drawn toward danger.
Toward forbidden joy.
Then...
A breeze stirred.
Snow rose against the wind.
Countless curtains of drifting white unfurled across the wasteland.
Lloyd turned toward the direction his hand had traced.
By now, he found himself almost too exhausted to be surprised.
"...You're kidding."
A black fissure had opened before him.
It tore through matter itself, slicing open the frozen world.
Beyond the impossible crack...
An ocean of stars shimmered.
"So..."
"Another one of your tricks?"
No one answered.
Just as before.
This time...
Lloyd smiled.
Step by step, he approached the fracture.
He remembered the first time he had seen it.
He remembered every constellation beyond it.
"...Home."
He cast one final glance across the silent frozen wilderness.
Then, without looking back—
He stepped into the stars.
...
"Lloyd!"
"Lloyd!"
Merlin shouted toward the Black Angel again and again.
Still...
No response.
It was as though Lloyd had lost consciousness the very instant the Divine Armor awakened, his mind slipping once more into the Gap.
That damned fool had used Merlin.
The alchemist could think only of what might come next.
If the Black Angel truly lost control...
The security force assembled here would be hopelessly insufficient.
Then—
The armor moved.
The silent Old Era Divine Armor finally stirred.
Its twisted wings folded inward, layer after layer, enclosing its own body like overlapping shields until it once again resembled the enormous black cocoon from which it had emerged.
But the transformation did not end there.
Flesh burst from beneath the iron feathers.
It proliferated wildly, binding itself to the restraints and surrounding machinery alike.
Veins of crimson tissue spread like an endless web.
Within moments—
Everything suspended in the chamber had been swallowed.
Merlin unconsciously swallowed.
Even an alchemist of his experience had no idea what would happen next.
Then...
He felt it.
No—
Everyone present felt it.
Corruption surged outward in invisible tides, wave after wave washing across every soul within reach.
Massive Geiger Index arrays hidden throughout the city registered simultaneous disturbances.
The readings continued climbing.
In moments, the influence spread across all of Old Dunling...
Then across the whole of Ingelvig.
It was not overwhelming.
To ordinary citizens, it amounted to little more than a brief wave of nausea.
But those who understood...
Those who knew the truth...
Their faces drained of color.
"My God..."
Merlin already regretted allowing this experiment to proceed.
Yet the Black Angel continued to pulse.
It was not merely spreading corruption.
It was calling.
Much like the alchemical matrices Lawrence once employed, the Black Angel expanded the reach of its corruption farther and farther—
Until even across impossible distances...
Lloyd could still find his way there.
Beyond countless mountain ranges...
Beneath the distant Holy Capital...
At the birthplace of everything.
The Still Sanctum.