"But I've actually been curious about this for a long time."
"Whether we should really think of you, Dante, as a 'human'."
Hong Lu?
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean... what Dante is saying... might not be Dante, but that clock over there, right?"
"What? We were really taking orders from some actual clock?"
...In a way, it was a pretty chilling guess, but if you looked at it closely, Hong Lu's words were, fortunately, nothing more than nonsense.
If the clock were directly giving us orders, that would mean it was an advanced machine capable of perfectly imitating human thought.
There was an organization in the City that despised advanced machines that were that close to humans.
The Head.
The company that stood as the City's true ruler and king.
If Dante really were a machine that close to human beings, and it were giving us orders, that insane group would never let it slide.
Because their eyes were everywhere in the City.
If that had really been the case, Limbus Company would already have ceased to exist.
After all, their force had never once been publicly disclosed in any exact terms.
But everyone who needed to know knew that an awful lot of death lay in their wake.
"Oh, honestly... what stupid things to say. I don't even feel like rebutting them."
Mr. Ishmael, one of the few sane people among the prisoners, must have realized that as well, because she let out an exasperated sigh.
"Still, I like Dante with the clock head as they are now."
"Same here. Couldn't you just keep that head forever and never get your original one back?"
"That probably won't happen, but what if Dante gets their real head back and turns out to be a total bastard?"
"Well, there's only one person among us who might know anything about the manager's past."
"Though I imagine the answer will be the same as always."
Our eyes naturally turned to Faust.
"...That's classified. Top-level security, in fact."
"...And it's probably something even I wouldn't be able to access."
That was only natural.
If Dante could learn about the past that easily, they wouldn't be standing there with that vacant expression right now.
And with Vergilius's assurance that they were, in a sense, a big shot... or something like that, it only made more sense.
"I don't know. If I really find my head, maybe I should just hang this clock on a wall."
Dante's evasive remark drew a reproachful look from Ishmael, but Dante brushed it off with a shrug.
Honestly... compared to the past that suggested they were some kind of big shot, they were awfully lighthearted.
Which was nice, in a way.
"Now then, what should we do? If we move quietly from here, we should be able to get through without the other inquisitors noticing."
Given the size of the village, the heretic inquisitors weren't exactly scattered everywhere.
Of course, quite a few had gathered because of the commotion from the fighting, but we were somewhat hidden for now.
If we tried, slipping by unnoticed wasn't impossible.
"Dante... I... I'm sorry in advance."
"As you know... I don't have as much combat experience as the others..."
What are you talking about, Sinclair? I was a regular person not that long ago too.
Wait, no.
...Could it be that I've already crossed the line into being too far gone to call myself an ordinary person unrelated to fighting?
"So I might end up getting my heart pierced by those bastards again and again..."
"Still... can you endure it?"
Sinclair still hadn't escaped the fear of death, and his face had gone pale blue as he trembled.
Was his refusal to say anything weak despite that a desperate effort to overcome his fear?
Sinclair had not exactly been spared death up to now.
Each time, Dante had dutifully brought him back to life, and Sinclair had never asked for forgiveness then.
Rather, if he thought he'd become a burden, he'd held himself back a little.
For him to ask for understanding like this now—was it because he intended to keep standing in front of them even if he died over and over?
His desire for revenge seemed stronger than I'd thought.
Or maybe I'd underestimated him too much.
"Are you scared, Sinclair?"
"...!"
Sinclair, who had been slowly turning his head aside, suddenly snapped it around and stared at Dante with an expression of utter disbelief.
"Hm? Did I say something wrong?"
"No... it just reminded me of a friend who asked me the same thing a long time ago."
...
After a brief silence, Sinclair slowly opened his mouth.
"...I agree with Heathcliff."
"Even if Dante had a prosthetic head, it wouldn't have changed who Dante is."
"And the same would have been true for my family."
"Thank you, Sinclair."
"...Hah."
"No need. From here on out, I'm going to die so often you'll get sick of it, so if you thank me too much, it gets awkward. Haha."
With that, Sinclair was the first to sprint forward.
So he hadn't wanted to avoid fighting after all.
It was an inefficient method, so I could understand why he wouldn't like it.
He couldn't just stand by and do nothing while those bastardly freaks were slaughtering his neighbors.
I immediately ran after Sinclair.
I wasn't exactly fond of combat, but there was no reason not to go along with this much.
**
The first charge with Sinclair at the front turned out to be unexpectedly effective.
Aside from Sinclair dying a few times, we didn't suffer much damage.
At that pace, we broke through the village in no time and quickly reached Sinclair's house.
It was the most luxurious and largest mansion in the deepest part of the village... or rather, it had been...
"This is really... awful..."
Ishmael, no, all the prisoners were staring at the sight in shock.
The yard, which had once looked like a spacious garden, was now packed full of towering nails.
If that had been all, I might have just brushed it off as ordinary terrorism.
But various prosthetic bodies had been impaled on those nails, and the grand, imposing mansion was burning to the ground in vain.
While everyone's attention was stolen by the nails, Sinclair looked somewhere else from us.
"The graves... have been dug up...?"
That one line struck like a hammer to the head, and when I shifted my gaze, three graves that had apparently been in a corner of the yard had been torn open in a chaotic mess.
Sinclair was staring at them with an expression of extraordinary shock.
Seeing that expression... even the most oblivious of the prisoners would have realized at once whose graves they were.
"...Desecrating the dead. There's no devil quite like that."
Probably his father, mother, and older sister.
The graves of the family members Sinclair had once mentioned.
"Wait... one hostile figure, front."
Whiiist—
"A whistling sound..."
Against the backdrop of that soft whistle, the suspicious human finally revealed herself.
"Heh, ngh, no matter how I think about it, it's just too funny."
Click, click.
Walking slowly out of the burning house, she let out a vile smile that could only be called evil and said,
"Carefully burying bodies that don't even rot... right?"
Then she started spouting that kind of bullshit.
"Kromer..."
So that was Kromer.
Her silver hair, with yellow streaks scattered here and there, looked a little different from Faust's, and her eyes were sharp and white.
As befitted the leader of those fanatics who exalted purity, she was dressed from head to toe in white.
If not for the openly malicious grin and that trash she kept spewing from her mouth, she might have made a decent impression.
"If you listen to me properly, I might even tell you where they are..."
"How about it? Sinclair. You came all the way here, so you must've gotten pretty brave."
"You did work up the courage to look at corpses, right?"
As much as I wanted to rush out and shove something down her throat right then and there, unfortunately I didn't get the chance.
She kept a fairly safe distance, true to her cunning nature, and spoke to us from there.
"Why... why are you... like this..."
Sinclair couldn't even force out a proper sentence in front of her.
"Where did the before-team go? If they'd come this far, they should've shown themselves by now..."
...Come to think of it, where had Epi and Sword gone?
Please, let that crazy bitch not know where they were.
"Ah~ Sinclair's friends!"
"Looking for the other rats that sneaked in with you?"
Oh, please. Seriously.
Isn't that a little too much?
As if betraying my desperate inner plea, she sentenced us to death.
"Good, good. Watch closely. I'll turn on the lights, so keep your eyes wide open!"
Flash!
"Ta-da!"
"Ghk, kgh..."
There was Epi.
With prosthetics that hadn't existed before forcibly attached to his body.
Impaled and pinned in place by those sharp nails.
My expectation that we would meet again while worrying about each other was there, in the worst possible form.