Massive clouds churned above Old Dunling, as though the entire sky had become an inverted funnel, drawing every cloud and drop of rain into its swirling depths. From time to time, lightning tore through the vortex, and for an instant it seemed as though a blinding white sun had risen above the clouds.
The Riesenbach was like a lone whale separated from its pod, helplessly navigating the roaring sea of clouds. After enduring Lloyd's succession of schemes, several explosions had already left the civilian airship damaged. Its hull was tilted slightly to one side, but fortunately, the enormous gas envelope remained intact, allowing it to drift through the storm like a fallen leaf carried by the wind.
Inside the burning ballroom, the inferno continued to rage without end. The blazing flames climbed upward along the crude oil pouring across the floor, igniting the pipes hidden within the ceiling. Wooden structures blackened and collapsed, exposing the glowing-red framework beneath. And still the fire spread, seemingly without limit.
The demon hunters screamed in agony. The raging flames could not kill men who had awakened their Secret Blood, but the searing pain was still more than enough to torment them. Their skin dried, cracked, blackened, and peeled away beneath the flames, only for the powerful vitality of the Secret Blood to regenerate fresh flesh over their bodies. The cycle repeated again and again.
Within that sea of fire, Lloyd advanced like a demon from hell itself. Distracted by the flames and the unbearable pain, the demon hunters had failed to stop him in the first moments, allowing him to continue his slaughter unchecked.
The nail sword fell, rose, and fell again. One figure after another disappeared into the sea of fire, never to make another sound.
This was a slaughterhouse built for the New Order. As a demon hunter of the Old Order, Lloyd was far more insane than they had ever imagined.
But that suppression did not last long. The forbidden power of the Secret Blood was not something that mere flames could burn away. Dense iron armor burst through the inferno, and a Medanzo demon hunter raised his nail sword high before bringing it crashing down toward Lloyd's head.
Lloyd was not surprised by the sudden attack. He had never expected such a simple tactic to kill all the demon hunters. But he knew very well that he had to be swift—he absolutely could not become entangled with these hunters. The moment they managed to hold him in place, the advantage created by his initial surprise attack would disappear.
Lloyd drew a deep breath. Scalding air rushed into his lungs, bringing waves of burning pain. He turned his body aside and narrowly avoided the strike.
The Medanzo demon hunter did not pursue him after missing. In that brief exchange, he had already recognized the difference between their strength. He could not attack recklessly. Rather than trying to kill Lloyd, his priority was to hold him back.
Boiling flames rose between them. A violent gust of wind swept through from somewhere, carrying countless sparks into the air. They scattered like stars across the heavens.
For a fleeting moment, it felt as though they truly stood within hell itself, fighting among the dead who had returned from beyond the grave. Illuminated by the flames, both the Medanzo demon hunter and Lloyd looked equally monstrous. Neither side had anywhere left to retreat.
The nail swords dipped.
It was a familiar stance. Both men made the same movement at almost the same moment, and then their rising blades dragged arcs of fire through the air.
This was a battlefield beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. The sword flashes were so fast that they became distorted streaks of white. Sparks were swept up by the currents generated by their movements. All that could be seen was the air itself twisting beneath the combined force of heat and steel, while countless cries of metal and bursts of starlike light erupted from nowhere.
At the final clash, Lloyd and the Medanzo demon hunter simultaneously withdrew their blades and stepped back—not in retreat, but in preparation for an even more vicious attack.
They raised their battered nail swords.
Without the slightest hesitation, they thrust toward one another.
Both blades found their targets.
And both were stopped by dense iron armor.
A swarm of snakes coiled around Lloyd's body. Their crimson eyes closed as their bodies hardened into iron, forming a protective shell around him. The same phenomenon occurred upon the body of the Medanzo demon hunter.
It seemed the two would become locked in a stalemate.
But then the situation changed.
Instead of gathering strength for his next attack, Lloyd stepped forward. He shortened the distance between himself and the Medanzo demon hunter, then struck again with his nail sword. When the attack failed to penetrate, his opponent caught the blade with his bare hand.
The next instant, Lloyd swung the hilt of the sword hard into the hunter's reinforced faceplate.
"Dirty bastard!"
Lloyd was ecstatic.
The blow itself could not injure the Medanzo demon hunter, but that sturdy divine armor could not withstand the force of the impact.
In an age before firearms had appeared, iron armor and warhorses still dominated the battlefield. Against those heavy suits of divine armor, even the sharpest swords struggled to penetrate the defenses. Thus, when faced with an iron wall like this, the best weapon was always something blunt.
Under Lloyd's brutal strength, the faceplate was smashed inward, a deep dent appearing in the metal. Countless cracks spread outward from the impact, while pure white flames rose through the gaps.
A thunderous impact reverberated inside the Medanzo demon hunter's ears. His entire field of vision shook violently.
Lloyd had seized the advantage once more.
The flames and the smell of blood stimulated his nerves, and his smile grew increasingly savage.
His face twisted into something hateful and monstrous in the eyes of the Medanzo demon hunter.
Lloyd tightened his grip, raised the nail sword once more, and brought it down with the force of a collapsing mountain.
Amid the metallic shriek, the nail sword shattered into countless fragments. The Medanzo demon hunter tried to raise his own weapon to block the strike, but before the enraged Lloyd, the defense was pitifully weak. The blade was cleaved apart with ease.
Yet the killing blow never landed.
Several identical nail swords suddenly thrust through the sea of fire, crossing in front of the Medanzo demon hunter and blocking Lloyd's attack.
And that was not all.
More nail swords broke through the flames and pierced Lloyd's joints. Others stabbed into his back, with several coming dangerously close to piercing his heart.
Like a knight at the end of his road, Lloyd was impaled by sword after sword.
The Medanzo demon hunter had succeeded.
He had held Lloyd back and bought the other demon hunters precious time to recover.
To maximize his speed, Lloyd had not covered his entire body in divine armor. Instead, he had allowed it to grow only around his vital points. The demon hunters knew this as well. During their previous battles, they had already discovered how proficient Lloyd was with his Authority. As long as he had enough time to anticipate an attack, he could reinforce the point of impact with divine armor before being wounded.
But this attack had come from different angles and at different moments. Lloyd had also been completely absorbed in his battle with the Medanzo demon hunter.
They had finally found their opening.
Lloyd's expression froze.
Even the furious flames seemed to pause for an instant.
Then he smiled.
Perhaps one of the nail swords had pierced his windpipe, because the sound that emerged from his throat was strange—an indescribable noise that barely resembled laughter.
Lloyd was dead.
At least, that was what the demon hunters believed.
They tightened their grips on their nail swords. All they needed was another strike, and they could carve the damned detective before them into pieces.
The demon hunters had caught Lloyd.
But Lloyd had caught them as well.
"So this… is what a true demon hunter looks like…"
White flames surged from the gaps in Lloyd's divine armor as he whispered the words.
The swarm of snakes wrapped around his body, hardening along with his flesh and the nail swords embedded within him. The demon hunters tried to pull their weapons free, only to discover that the blades had already been fused tightly into the divine armor.
Then they could no longer hold the hilts.
Lloyd had noticed it himself.
After returning from the dead, something else had become mixed into his body—the flesh of the Holy Grail.
Or rather…
The flesh of the Silent.
That strange and terrifying power had been lying dormant inside him all along, and until now, Lloyd had been completely unaware of it.
But now he understood.
He was a demon hunter.
Yet he was something more than a demon hunter.
Just as Lawrence had once made Lloyd feel an overwhelming despair, Lloyd had unknowingly climbed into the same realm that Lawrence had occupied—a realm of power that was pathological, monstrous, and terrifying.
Lloyd moved.
The nail swords embedded in his body moved with him.
The sheer force that surpassed an ordinary demon hunter made it impossible for them to hold onto their weapons. They could no longer restrain his movements.
At the same time, every one of them felt something deeply unnatural.
It was as though something were squeezing their hearts.
As though a cold, enormous hand were reaching down their throats, crawling deeper and deeper until it finally burst through their bodies.
Every demon hunter froze.
They began to retch uncontrollably.
Corruption.
A strange and terrifying corruption descended upon their minds in an instant.
A Threshold Breakthrough.
Just as Lawrence had once done to Lloyd, Lawrence too had implanted the flesh of the Silent within himself. It strengthened him directly at the physical level, just as it was now strengthening Lloyd.
Lloyd tore himself free.
Within his eyes rolled the brilliance of a crimson-white sun.
He raised his nail sword once more and brought it crashing down upon the dent he had created earlier.
The Medanzo demon hunter had no time to defend himself.
For an instant, he too tried to initiate a Threshold Breakthrough, to step into that strange state of demonic transformation.
But he could not.
Whether it was fear or the interference of the corruption, his mind went blank for the briefest moment.
That hesitation sealed his fate.
The nail sword descended.
It shattered the already-fractured faceplate completely. Countless fragments drove into the space beneath the helmet, while the passing blade left a shallow scar across his face.
Authority—Medanzo.
Pain snapped him back to his senses.
The swarm of snakes greedily bit into his head, constantly rebuilding and reinforcing the faceplate.
But the blade that had fallen did not rise again.
No.
This was not the end.
Borrowing the momentum of the strike, Lloyd leapt into the air with the full weight of his divine armor, twisted his body, and swung the weapon in his other hand directly toward the Medanzo demon hunter's head.
With a low explosion, the force of the impact drove the armor-breaking hammer through the faceplate and into the skull beneath, shattering both.
And still, it did not end.
Like a monster advancing upon its prey, Lloyd brutally tore apart his victim, manipulating the poor corpse like a grotesque puppet.
Skull.
Maxilla.
Mandible.
Sternoclavicular joint…
The hammer fell.
Tiny, densely packed cracks erupted with every blow. Within this burning hell, each sound was unnaturally clear, carrying straight into the ears of every demon hunter.
Their bodies began to tremble.
Their hearts began to fill with fear.
Ribs.
Shoulder blades.
Spine…
Everything that held the human body together shattered beneath the hammer.
With their heightened hearing, the demon hunters could no longer tell whether they were listening to the shriek of iron armor breaking apart or the lament of bones being crushed.
At last, the sharp head of the hammer pierced the heart, smashing the entire chest cavity into a mass of blood and flesh.
The headless corpse, still clad in heavy divine armor, slowly sank to its knees.
Lloyd planted one foot upon its shoulder and wrenched his arm free from the corpse.
Blood flowed down the jagged divine armor and dripped onto the floor. Other drops evaporated beneath the heat, rising as crimson mist.
The demon hunters stopped.
They had prepared countless tactics.
Yet at this moment, they no longer possessed even the courage to raise their swords.
Fear of Lloyd had been planted deep within their minds.
They could only stand there in a daze, staring at the iron-clad figure before them. Sharp nail swords protruded from every part of his body, making him look like some hunted monster.
He was at the end of his road.
No.
They were the ones at the end of the road.
The New Order was.
Only now did they realize how ridiculous their actions had been.
They were not the hunters.
They were the prey.
They had been lured into a trap by a hunter who had deliberately exposed his weakness, and they had foolishly believed that victory was within their grasp.
"Next."
The monster whispered.
He stood in the middle of the sea of fire, yet the demon hunters felt an unbearable cold spreading through them.
Lloyd turned toward them and slowly released his grip.
The battered nail sword fell from his hand.
Then he reached behind himself.
Several nail swords had pierced into his body during the earlier assault, but now they were all firmly trapped within the hardened divine armor.
His hand brushed lightly across them.
It was almost as casual as removing a weapon from a rack of Old Era Divine Armor.
Lloyd simply selected one of the nail swords that had pierced straight through his body, pulled it free, and gripped it in his hand.
"Next!"
He shouted again, anger burning in his voice.
But no one answered.
Only fear remained in the eyes of the demon hunters.
They slowly backed away.
Yet when they reached the edge of the flames, they realized that they had nowhere left to retreat.
This was the Riesenbach, an airship drifting high above the earth.
There was nowhere to run.
Either they killed Lloyd and stopped this damned airship, or Lloyd would slaughter every last one of them.
"Well done, as expected of you, Lloyd Holmes."
A sudden voice came from the other side of the flames.
A man who had remained silent until now slowly emerged from the inferno.
Moriarty walked forward, applauding as he went.
"I always thought these demon hunters could never be your opponents. At most, they could barely hold you back. But now it seems they cannot even do that. They are simply being slaughtered for nothing."
Moriarty held a wineglass in one hand and leaned against a raised platform that had not yet been consumed by the flames.
It seemed the man had been hiding in the darkness all this time, watching the battle from the shadows.
And apparently, he had even taken the opportunity to pour himself a glass of wine from the bar.
"This is better. Why bother with all the preliminaries when we can simply get straight to the point?"
Lloyd turned toward Moriarty.
"I won't kill you, Moriarty. First, I'll gouge out your eyes. Then I'll break your spine. After that, I'll take my time torturing you. Don't worry. With a demon hunter's physical resilience, you'll live for a very long time. After all, injecting an enemy with Secret Blood to strengthen their body before subjecting them to torture is something every demon hunter needs to learn."
He spoke of cruelty as casually as if discussing the weather and strode forward.
"Then I'm truly honored."
Moriarty carried no weapon.
He had never been skilled at combat. Before becoming a demon hunter, he had merely been a madman confined to a hospital ward.
But the more deranged the madman, the more adept he was at dragging others into madness with him.
A searing white storm began to churn within Moriarty's eyes.
Yet this time, Authority—Raphael failed to affect Lloyd.
Lloyd raised his head.
The faceplate sealed itself completely, leaving not even the slightest opening through which he could observe the outside world.
As long as he avoided meeting Moriarty's gaze, he could escape the influence of Authority—Raphael.
And given Lloyd's current state, he could simply follow the trajectory of Moriarty's voice and kill him.
"Surprised?" Lloyd asked.
"No."
Moriarty smiled.
"Instead, I want to ask you something. Are you surprised?"
At the same time, Lloyd sensed that something was wrong.
He was not the target of Authority—Raphael.
Lloyd turned his head.
The frightened demon hunters had begun moving again.
Their eyes were empty.
Only endless flames burned within them.