[Effect: Pulsing Appetite]

Developed at the [Rhyme Street Intersection], both sides were engraved with [Lamsand Language] symbols that hopped back and forth like cheerful chicken feet. The [Birdsong Tube] glowed faintly, transmitting Veronica's questioning to the other side without a single word lost.

The steel carapace trembled slightly. Relying on the surging life force of [Blood] contained within its shell, the monster beneath her feet struggled to lift its head once more. Granulations squirmed at the severed edges, attempting to stitch its two halves back together.

"Bang."

A light, swift hand-blade struck the restless monster's head, causing its skull to shudder and echo with a hollow, muffled thud.

Tucking in the corner of her coat, she hopped off her restless, makeshift seat. Ignoring the monster behind her that was slowly splitting apart, Veronica scratched her long golden hair and continued to ask, looking somewhat frantic.

"Aren't you lot at the [Monastery of the Fifth Cup] supposed to be 'Never Speak, Never Steal'?"

"Then what about this blood-thirst plague in Birmingham that bears the traces of [Beelzebub]? Don't tell me it grew legs and walked off on its own. What kind of mess have you all created with your constant Apophatic Theology?"

"Don't be impatient, Miss Cessno, please, take it easy."

On the other end of the [Birdsong Tube], a male voice with a thick Georgian accent responded helplessly, still as gentle as an elder, as rich and mellow as autumn wine.

"'Feasting on wine is better than hoarding wealth. Give and be rich, hoard and be lost.' That is also our motto; generosity with knowledge is a nature we find difficult to overcome."

"Back when Saliba had yet to join the [Blood Cup Cult] and was still working as a cook and breeder at the Fermier Monastery deep in the forest, he already possessed an astonishing appetite."

"Of course, the Fermier Monastery, which held the tradition of sacrificing to the [Cup of Insatiable], has now been wiped off the map. You understand what that means, Miss Cessno."

"On any map."

Having once belonged to the [Gate Legion], Veronica had personally erased more frontiers than some apprentices had ever heard of. She certainly knew what "wiped off the map" meant in the man's words.

It meant total abandonment; birds on their long journeys would not stop there, and not even maggots would have any interest in visiting.

Under the covenant of the Tree of the Night Watcher, most of the knowledge inherited by the [Monastery of the Fifth Cup]—one of the nine great libraries—was either brewed into wine, sealed beneath triple-locked cellars, or stored within the skulls of their brethren.

Even though they had united with the [Labyrinth of Lions] and [Alexander of Ashes]—two other libraries that also inherited the Arts of the Day—under the name of the [Lighthouse Society], the [Monastery of the Fifth Cup] still maintained considerable independence. They had always upheld the tradition of speaking "never twice in the Lydian tongue," remaining low-key and respected.

Inside the [Birdsong Tube], the man continued his account.

"To be precise, the birth of the [Beelzebub] mark was merely an accident, a failed deconstruction of Apophatic Theology."

"Unfortunately, by the time we realized our mistake, Saliba, who had come into contact with this unsealed error too deeply, had already defected to the [Blood Cup Cult]. If you ask me, he understands blood, but he never understood birth. He couldn't walk steadily on the principles of [Blood]..."

"Sigh, never mind. What happened after that is what you already know."

Listening to the drunkard on the other side suddenly begin his sharp critique, Veronica recalled the dossiers kept within the Prevention and Suppression Bureau and fell silent.

From the Fermier Massacre when he was just starting out, to the City of Disease incident, even the several border riots handled by the [Gate Legion] had his fingerprints lurking in the background. Thanks to the recent buzz surrounding his suspected return, he had even managed to squeeze into the top hundred of the Prevention and Suppression Bureau's Seal Designation leaderboard.

As the only high priest of the [Blood Cup Cult] still alive, Saliba's record was truly illustrious. The number of red names on his head was countless.

"If the blood-thirst plague is indeed something he orchestrated from behind the scenes, Ms. Veronica, you must be careful."

"Our [Monastery of the Fifth Cup]'s unique brewing technique, the [Wine of God], can brew memories into more lasting echoes. 'ChaCha' is extracted from the residue after pressing. The techniques Saliba learned were derived from this, but they are far more aggressive."

The man explained with good intentions.

"Compared to the original, it is more akin to a consumable, or a convenient tool. The alienation of the host is merely a superficial phenomenon; its true purpose is to serve as a vessel."

--That is, living alchemy.

"Through this method, he can turn the human body into a brewing apparatus. Whether it is blood, spirituality, or life, everything the host consumes is transformed into wine, eventually returning to his main body. Haha, much like the 'Cordyceps Technique' of the [Jade Immortal Garden]. As long as it is supplemented with the proper usage, gathering a massive amount of [Blood] spirituality in a short time is no difficult task."

"He aspires to immortality; the mere Fifth Mark is not enough to fill his stomach. Whatever you intend to do, Madam, you had best be quick, even quicker..."

But the golden-haired girl's attention was no longer on the [Birdsong Tube].

Putting away the [Birdsong Tube], Veronica looked toward the city center with a grave expression.

In her deep purple vertical pupils, she saw blood-red light spots, woven like threads and spreading wantonly like spores, drifting with the wind under her spiritual vision.

And this was merely the prelude.

The vertical pupils, which had opened like a door, split further. Purple-gold light leaked from the very depths, and a deeper, more profound field of vision pierced through the veil of wakefulness, straight into a broader realm.

Veronica saw it.

Emerging from the narrow, ambiguous zone between the present world and the myriad frontiers that were like sand in the sea, a tumor-like, deformed boundary burst open and bloomed, casting an ominous shadow over the location corresponding to Birmingham.

Then, like a virus invading a cell, under the command of a single will, the deformed boundary tore apart a large portion of its own body without hesitation. Fragments falling from the core descended like a scarlet rain, landing on the skin of the present world and splashing ripples of waves.

Adsorption, invasion, molting, biosynthetic assembly, and release.

This was the way of a virus's survival, and it was the path Saliba had chosen.

--The Rite of Ascension!

Under this generous gift, even the skin of the world found it hard to refuse. Instead of repelling the invading foreign objects as it usually would, it tacitly allowed these fragments to fall into the interval of non-existence, where they were dissolved, absorbed, and strengthened as nutrients.

Having exhausted the ten years of accumulation and all the foundations of the [Blood Cup Cult], this heavy sacrifice was exchanged for a fleeting opportunity.

Its name is the [Right of Flesh Passage]!

The most difficult step of adsorption had been completed. Under the unsparing irrigation of the flowing scarlet blood, the boundary carrying [Beelzebub] embedded itself onto the present world like a true tumor, overlapping rigidly with Birmingham.

So ugly.

Invasion, complete.

Amidst this overlapping, by way of the scarlet cup-shaped emblems that were triggered one after another within the city—completely disregarding concealment and wantonly flaunting their own existence—a massive shadow loomed over the clouds.

Molting, had begun.

The most intense and widespread crimson radiance was located at—

Sacred Heart Hospital!

In the interrogation room of the police station downtown, Emma wearily closed her eyes, feeling the candle flame she visualized in her mind flicker and fade, which helped her spirit recover slightly.

For a hundred years, the Moore Family had inherited techniques their ancestors had learned from the Labyrinth of Lions. Although most of them had been discarded or sealed away today because they were too cumbersome, too profound, or too outdated, every one of those that remained after generations of revision and improvement was the cream of the crop.

Take, for instance, the grotesque ritual recorded in the Secret Vigil Scripture, which might be called the Sorrow of the Night Watcher.

This ritual would evoke what a great existence had lost, requiring an artifact imbued with mana to seize the offering: precious knowledge existing at the root of one's thoughts. An assistant must be present to chant words that could stabilize the mind, as this might be the only way to avoid the worst possible outcome.

(Light is before it, shadow is behind it. You must never let It see you—a sincere annotation.)

Emma's elder, Arthur Moore, had extracted the elements from this ritual's process and simplified them to create the extraordinary technique known as Soul Manifestation.

By utilizing the light emitted from the depths of her pupils, Emma had just excavated a crucial clue from the chaotic fragments of consciousness within the mind of the frenzied Turner Miller.

She couldn't help but be struck by a sudden realization.

A realization that the most impossible scenario had come to pass.

"Ahhhhh! Why did you have to let me know such a deadly piece of information?"

Clutching her head, Emma shrieked without a shred of ladylike decorum, feeling for the first time that knowing too much might not be a good thing.

"Don't do this to me, I'm still a rookie, don't mess with me. If this is true, we're in deep trouble this time. Think, how can I solve this? Oh, right, at least I have to tell Veronica. Only she can stop this in time..."

Muttering to herself, Emma anxiously threw on her uniform jacket, her boot heels clicking against the floor as she prepared to push the door open.

But at the very moment she opened the door, something changed.

"Roar—"

Behind Emma, Miller's wide-open mouth was still dripping with viscous saliva, but in his eyes—which should have been devoid of consciousness and unfocused—dense bloodshot veins crawled across the eyeballs. With every blink, the chaos of bestiality was reignited.

It was as if some formless entity was using its connection to this body to wantonly manifest its own existence.

From the laughter of ecstasy, it surged and grew until it covered the sky, shrouding the entire city in shadow.

With a vision filtered through a layer of crimson, Emma didn't hesitate for a second; she drew the standard-issue Browning M1900 Semi-automatic Pistol of the Prevention and Suppression Bureau from her waist, aligning the sights with Miller's frantically struggling head. Emma sighed, kept her eyes open, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

"Bang."

The Restlessness subsided slightly, flesh and blood scattered, and the space around her cleared.

Without sparing a second glance at the corpse whose head had exploded like a rotten watermelon, Emma, who had been heading for the police station entrance, changed direction and walked quickly toward the armory she remembered being inside the station.

At the very least, with an anomaly of this magnitude, there was no need to worry about the issue of notification.

All that remained was to do one's best.

And await destiny.

A moment earlier.

In a spacious ward at Sacred Heart Hospital.

Dragged from a dreamless sleep by an inexplicable palpitation, Horn opened his sleepy eyes. Under the blood-red sunset outside the window, he stretched comfortably.

Expanding his chest, flexing his muscles, stretching his neck and arms, lifting his elbows above his chest, and tilting his head back in an exaggerated arc. A standard movement of gymnastic difficulty was performed fluidly, without the slightest hitch.

It was as if his old joints had been renewed and lubricated. Horn was pleasantly surprised to feel that every movement of his body was so smooth and comfortable, completely unlike the half-dead state he had been in before falling asleep.

Not only had his previous hidden injuries been swept away, but even his skin, which usually appeared dry from constant contact with alchemy reagents, seemed ten years younger—supple and smooth, making Horn want to pinch it just to test the texture.

It was as if he had been reborn.

"Self-healing power alone couldn't do this... Is this massage therapy really that effective? I have to ask the nurse what brand of ointment she used."

Clenching his fingers tentatively and looking at his hands, which seemed a bit fairer and more delicate, Horn muttered to himself.

Rolling out of bed, Horn glanced at the door to ensure no one was about to walk in, then neatly took off his classic blue-and-white striped hospital gown. He changed into his alchemy apprentice uniform, which had been cleaned and neatly folded in the laundry basket at the head of the bed.

When his palm touched the cold piece of iron in his pocket, a look of pleasant surprise appeared on his face.

Battle-hardened Browning M1900 Semi-automatic Pistol, get da☆ze!

He took out the magazine, weighed it, and felt the sense of security that only a full load could provide with his palm. Horn happily tucked away his spoils.

Since his injuries were mostly healed, there was no need to continue occupying medical resources. Returning to the Alchemy Academy early to continue studying alchemy under Mentor Olive and earning his official Alchemist certificate as soon as possible was the right path.

Clenching his fist, Horn secretly made up his mind.

As for the extraordinary? It was better to heed advice and stay away from dangerous things. Besides, if the sky fell, there were taller people to hold it up, right~

Just like that, suppressing his sense of Restlessness, Horn wanted to push open the window to get some air and clear out the scent of incense that had become too thick in the room, lest the smell of burning spices make his appetite grow.

"Creak—"

The window was obediently pushed open, reflecting the world outside into the boy's eyes without reservation.

Horn saw it.

A dilapidated sunset hung on the horizon, no longer its former self, as if eclipsed. Only the edges held a dim golden light, barely signaling its own existence, while the center was a void of darkness, like a bottomless cup.

All around, a thick and deep blood-red hue painted the entire sky into something unrecognizable, casting everything beneath it under a dim, crimson filter.

Stripped of its original color.

Clouds floated in the firmament like rotting chunks of meat, plump and dripping; they twisted and churned within the oppressive blood-red expanse, and as they collided, a fine rain resembling blood threads began to fall. Scarlet spirituality hitched a ride on the rain like a parasite, burrowing into the bodies of every creature exposed beneath it, thriving and growing.

Ignoring the impending blood rain, Horn stretched his neck as far as he could to look out the window. On the street that was usually bustling with people and heavy traffic, abandoned vehicles were strewn haphazardly, blocking the road, their driver's seats completely empty.

The bustling city center was devoid of a single soul.

It was as if he were in another world.

It felt as though an invisible veil had been lifted, and a wave of nausea washed over him; Horn retched violently, his consciousness, dizzy from staring at the sky, suddenly snapping into clarity.

Only then did he finally notice the light-curtain pop-up that was practically pressed against his face.

[Effect Recorded: Pulsing Appetite!]

[Pulsing Appetite: All senses are heightened, all emotions are deepened, appetite surges, difficult to control.]

[Aspect—Effect: A certain echo, resonance, harmony; it will soon fade away.]

[Aspect—Blood 4: Eating, desire, nature; those who drown in it shall never return.]

[Aspect—Heart 4: To protect the skin of the world we know, the unceasing heart continues to beat.]

A cloying, bloody scent drifted through the air, accompanied by the faint, muffled rumble of thunder; the characteristics of the "Domain" shrouding the entire city center were simplified into a few lines of text, floating before him.

On the desktop, a card intertwined with pink and red emerged, its vibration pulling at Horn's heartbeat.

"Thump, thump, thump."

Horn had never possessed such a clear realization.

--The sky is falling, and it will crush everyone's head with perfect equality.