It was just like the dream that had trapped him—the place that seemed to be called the [Gap].
Whether he moved forward or backward, the scenery before him remained an endless repetition of the same monotonous landscape, as though every struggle and every effort he made were utterly meaningless, leaving him to struggle for all eternity without ever finding an escape.
Pain tortured his body. His lucid consciousness was slowly sinking into chaos, while the invisible corruption felt like a sharp blade carving away at his mind.
It was agonizing.
And yet, in a strange way, it was worth being grateful for.
This was what it felt like to be alive.
His body was slowly changing, but Cole knew one thing with absolute certainty: he was still alive. He had not fallen into that strange dream. Yet even knowing that, when the dark corridor stretched onward until it seemed to have no end, doubt and panic still crept into his heart.
The stench of blood hung in the air. As the fiery rain continued to fall, the entire corridor began to shake violently. The dim lights flickered—some struggling to cast a feeble glow, others going dark forever. At the same time, a dense chorus of footsteps erupted from somewhere ahead. It sounded as though a crowd was running through the darkness.
"Come on!"
Cole roared and dragged his twisted body into a sprint, running alongside the torrent of footsteps.
The scenery within his vision began to blur and vanish on either side. His folding blade scraped against the walls, throwing off dazzling sparks. He screamed until his voice was hoarse, as though he were on the verge of death, yet at the same time, he felt as though he had somehow become young again.
His vicious blade came down like thunder, shattering the bodies of demons before him.
There were still so many things Cole wanted to say to Arthur. After all these years, were any of the friends they had once known still alive? How far had humanity's understanding of the demons progressed?
Unfortunately, this was hardly the right moment for reminiscing, and he no longer had the time to do so.
His mind was gradually being swallowed by darkness. Like a weary traveler overcome by sleep, Cole's slaughter slowly degenerated into meaningless frenzy. But soon afterward, his consciousness would clear for a moment, and his savage form would suddenly freeze. Confusion filled his eyes, like a child abruptly awakened from a nightmare.
A disturbance came from the other end of the darkness.
The grotesque figure slowly turned around, only to be greeted by a flash of steel.
Another demon.
It seemed to have been attacked earlier, for both of its arms had already been torn away. All that remained were twisted stumps, the flesh within them writhing and squirming.
It clenched its enormous, hideous jaws. As its body mutated, its teeth had become completely fused around the handle of a folding blade.
The demon charged forward with the knife clenched between its teeth, the sharp blade flashing past Cole's side.
Cole tried to raise his own folding blade to defend himself, but his thoughts had become unbearably sluggish. Had it been anyone else, he would have already completely transformed into a demon by now. But he was Mordred, a former Ranger. The various special modifications he had undergone had allowed him to hold on until the very end in this hell.
But he was still too slow.
A vicious wound split open along his arm.
At the same instant, the demon lurking in the shadows was split open as well. The folding blade savagely tore through its throat. The demon released the knife from its jaws, leaving it embedded in the wall, then lunged down and began tearing into the other demon with its teeth.
It was a struggle between beasts.
Before long, the demon could no longer make a sound. Its entire body was ripped apart beneath the savage biting, while great smears of filthy blood painted the walls.
Cole looked over.
And suddenly, beneath the layer of blood, he saw a familiar face.
The armless demon stopped after finishing its slaughter. It was difficult to imagine that such a grotesque demonic face could still display such conflicting emotions. It was tempted by the blood and flesh before it, yet some final lingering obsession made it hesitate.
Within its murky crimson eyes was reflected that equally monstrous face.
The next moment, the demon slammed itself against the handle of the knife embedded in the wall.
The tremendous force drove the handle into its chest, creating a deep depression over its heart. The blade burst out through its back, and blood sprayed everywhere.
It looked like an insect pinned to a wall.
Its remaining limbs twitched violently, yet it never once tried to pull the blade free. A muffled whimper escaped its throat. It could no longer speak.
After a brief pause, a sharp blade descended and ended its suffering.
Its head rolled into the filthy blood, its expression strangely peaceful.
"You're not a deserter anymore, Gavin."
Cole whispered the words, but because of his own mutation, his voice had become almost impossible to recognize, reduced to the same meaningless, guttural whimpering.
He did not look at the fallen head again.
Every sin of the past had been settled at the moment Gavin died. Whatever he had done would no longer be known by anyone. And at last, he had found the release he had been denied for so long.
The road ahead seemed extraordinarily long.
Endless darkness.
Mountains of corpses.
They lay scattered in the corners, broken and mutilated. Some were human. Others were demons.
But in truth, they were all Cole's kind.
No matter what they had once done, at their core, they had all been human beings—people driven mad by corruption.
"This is a civil war."
Suddenly, Cole seemed to understand something.
Throughout the entire conflict between humanity and the demons, it had always been human beings who were truly fighting one another.
It was a brutal civil war that had erupted within humanity itself.
And this strange civil war had no idea how many years it had endured. Even now, it continued, like a vicious curse hanging over the heads of everyone alive.
Cole's breathing grew heavy.
Perhaps the realization shocked him enough to clear his muddled consciousness for another moment. But immediately afterward, helplessness washed over him.
What difference did it make that he understood this now?
He no longer had the ability to pass the knowledge on.
He could only carry it with him into the grave.
Cold wind and rain battered his body as the demon emerged from the research district and stepped once more into the downpour.
No one could recognize the grotesque creature he had become.
And at the far end of his vision, beneath that somewhat ridiculous barricade, people were still holding their ground.
When they ran out of ammunition, they picked up their folding blades.
When even those blades grew dull, they used the wreckage of steel to smash the demons.
By the end, they looked almost like primitive men beating one another with stones.
They defended this desperate position beneath the torrential rain, their final line of defense.
The Old Era Divine Armors continued fighting without pause, weaving through the fiery rain as they slaughtered the demons.
The wounds they had inflicted continued to widen, and the armored demon had finally begun to show signs of collapse. All they needed now was enough force for a killing blow.
But they no longer possessed sufficient firepower to deliver it.
No…
There was still a chance.
Lancelot's grappling hook buried itself into the ceiling. His ghostly blue figure hung upside down like a bat, suspended high above the battlefield. With Percival keeping the armored demon occupied, it had no attention to spare for Lancelot's movements.
Above the leaden clouds, brilliant daylight poured down in great shafts.
And at that very moment, Lancelot leapt once again.
For the sake of mobility, his Divine Armor was the lightest among the First-Generation models. Swinging from the grappling hook, he moved like a swift darting beneath the rain, weaving through the deadly fire raining from the sky.
The armor, forged from both steel and flesh, moved with astonishing speed beneath his control. One seemingly impossible maneuver after another was executed perfectly. And when he finally reached the position he had calculated in advance, his bloodshot eyes locked onto everything that was about to happen.
The grappling hook fired again.
This time, it struck the fiery rain descending behind the curtain of water—a fragment of metal still burning furiously, not yet completely melted.
At the same time, another grappling hook struck the soft flesh of the demon beneath the armor.
Someone seemed to realize what Lancelot was attempting.
But they could only stare in disbelief.
It was a maneuver beyond anything they had anticipated, yet there it was, unfolding before their eyes.
In this desperate battlefield, something called a miracle had been born.
Lancelot understood their situation perfectly.
They had been driven into a dead end. Although they had finally broken through the demon's iron armor, they no longer possessed enough power to kill the creature containing the Secret Blood.
No.
They still had power.
The fire raining from the heavens was the deadliest blade of all.
And Lancelot's task was simply to guide that blade into the demon.
"Percival! Hold it!"
The slightly childish voice erupted like the roar of a lion.
Everything happened almost instantaneously.
Lancelot had calculated the trajectory of the rapidly descending fire, while the grappling hook buried within the demon's body began retracting at tremendous speed.
Mechanical components along his arm erupted with dazzling light. The steam engine was pushed beyond its limits.
The Divine Armor possessed terrifying strength, but changing the trajectory of the falling fire within such a short span was impossible.
All Lancelot could do was use the grappling hook to alter its trajectory, shifting the point of impact toward the demon's vulnerable position.
The cable tightened.
A low metallic groan came from somewhere near his ear as the steel began to strain.
Yet beneath the faceplate, Lancelot's eyes showed no trace of fear.
Then a brilliant streak of fire cut a deadly arc through the curtain of rain.
The blazing inferno swallowed everything.
A high-temperature explosion erupted from within the demon's body. Stripped of its iron armor, the creature was blown into countless pieces. The Old Era Divine Armors closest to it were also thrown aside by the blast.
A heat wave several meters high surged outward like a rising tide, flattening everything around it.
Even the falling rain seemed to freeze in midair.
Only after several moments did it descend again, washing away the deadly heat.
A colossal corpse stood amid the burning core.
Within the light that resembled a rising sun, bones and twisted iron armor formed a jagged sculpture, like the withered trunk of some grotesquely mutated tree.
Even in death, its hideous silhouette remained faintly visible.
Everything fell silent with the demon's death.
Then two Old Era Divine Armors helped one another to their feet, and a thunderous cheer erupted, drowning out the roars of the remaining demons.
The most dangerous demon had been slain.
Hope, bright and beautiful, continued to grow before everyone's eyes.
Cole stood motionless beneath the curtain of rain, seemingly unable to believe what he was seeing.
Then he suddenly began to laugh.
The sound was chilling, sharp and shrill, almost like the piercing cry of an infant.
And suddenly, Cole felt at peace.
Yes.
He could no longer pass this information on.
Throughout history, countless people like him had died carrying terrifying secrets into the grave.
And yet, even so, humanity had survived.
In the years that followed, those who came after them had continued walking along their footsteps, rediscovering those hidden fragments of knowledge.
Those who came later would do what they could not.
They would continue pushing forward the [Boundary] of humanity's understanding of this world, until one day they finally tore aside that hazy veil and truly saw the truth of the entire world.
Cole was no longer afraid.
He could die without regret.
He believed that someone, somewhere in the not-too-distant future, would eventually uncover all of this.
Someone would eradicate the demons.
Someone would bring an end to this hatred that had endured for countless ages.
There would be no more demons in this world.
No more of this cruelty.
He continued to laugh.
Once he thought of that future, even death no longer seemed frightening.
Just like the dead Gavin, the demon raised the folding blade and drove it through its own heart. It twisted the handle, completely shredding the organ, then pushed with all its remaining strength and fell backward, pinning itself firmly to the ground.
The impaled demon began convulsing violently.
It craved blood and flesh, yet the folding blade held it fast against the ground. It tried to pull the knife free, but the blade had pierced far too deeply. No matter how desperately it struggled, it could not escape.
Like a pathetic insect, it flailed its limbs again and again until its blood soaked into the puddles beneath it.
No one noticed the demon's death.
Everyone's attention had been consumed by the hope of survival.
They raised every weapon they could find and fought against the demons trying to break through the barricade.
When their folding blades broke, they seized scraps of metal.
When those scraps shattered, they used their fists.
When their arms were broken, they bit with their teeth.
And when nothing remained, they simply collapsed into the puddles, cursing this cruel world with their final breaths.
For a single moment, it seemed like a perfect reflection of humanity's struggle against the demons.
From fearing the darkness to illuminating it.
From fearing the demons to eradicating them.
Like primitive men swinging stones in their hands, humanity simply refused to live in fear any longer.
A sharp blade tore through the falling rain.
Joey leapt over the barricade, his heart pounding violently as it pumped scorching blood through every part of his body.
He was merely an Upper Knight who had undergone special modifications. His only unusual trait was that, when facing demons, he would not be corrupted as easily as an ordinary human.
Joey no longer knew how many demons he had killed.
His consciousness had long since been reduced to nothing but the simple instinct to slaughter.
But the fire blazing across the battlefield seemed to awaken something within him.
Reason once again seized control of his body, driving him to continue holding the defensive line.
Moriarty had corrupted him.
Combined with the intensity of the battle, that made Joey one of the Upper Knights most likely to transform into a demon.
Joey knew this perfectly well.
To give more people a chance to survive, he said nothing. He simply threw himself into the most terrifying slaughter.
And that was when a demon slammed into him.
Its vicious claws pierced through his abdomen.
Am I going to die?
The thought flashed through Joey's mind.
Perhaps dying would not be so bad.
Then he would no longer have to be tormented by the nightmares of his past. He would never again have the chance to commit so many terrible mistakes…
No.
I can't die yet.
With that thought, he dragged himself up from the puddle.
Yes.
He could die.
But he could not die this easily.
Joey's expression slowly twisted into something savage. In his blurred vision, one loathsome demon after another appeared before him.
Without realizing it, he had already fought so deep into the battlefield that he was completely surrounded.
He was going to die.
Unless a miracle happened.
No.
There were no miracles left.
There had already been enough miracles on this hellish battlefield.
No.
There was still one.
Wasn't a miracle merely a word invented by human beings?
It was something humanity had created.
It was not a gift bestowed by gods or devils.
Joey staggered to his feet, only to collapse onto the corpse of a demon.
The creature had been pinned to the puddle by a folding blade. Judging from its twisted face, there was something strangely familiar about it, as though Joey had seen it somewhere before…
It looked like one of the patients.
But there was no point worrying about that anymore.
Joey lowered himself.
Then a sound even more terrifying than the roar of the demons emerged beneath the curtain of rain.
A sound of chewing.
It was as though some monstrous creature were greedily devouring its meal in the darkness.
When Joey raised his head again, his pale face was smeared with blood, and crimson liquid still trickled from the corners of his mouth.
"Isn't Secret Blood refined from the blood of demons? If that's the case, does that make me a demon hunter now?"
Joey joked, but no one answered him.
He rose again, gripping the folding blade as forbidden, restless power surged through his body.
"Life is meaningless…"
He paused.
"No. Life does have some meaning."
He remembered that late-night meal he had once shared with Kestrel.
He could no longer remember what they had eaten.
It was precisely those ridiculous, insignificant little meanings that had supported every person and carried them this far.
"Life is fleeting…"
He whispered.
"Burn forever."
The folding blade cut through the curtain of rain, stirring the howling wind.
Its ringing song echoed across the battlefield like a hymn.