Fiends

"I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing shall harm you."

In the pitch-black night, someone seemed to be whispering.

Press could barely make out the words. They came from the Gospel Book.

Before steam technology rose to prominence, the Holy Gospel Papal State ruled the Western world. In God's name, they sowed discord and war across the land. With the power of faith, the Templar Crusaders ranged across islands and continents, leaving ruined cities and the dead wherever their iron cavalry rode.

They carried out God's will and wielded divine authority until Inverwig emerged victorious in the Glorious War. The steam engine shattered all faith. The vast military divide between the conservative Holy Gospel Papal State and the nations with steam technology meant that faith could never again rule anyone.

Despite that, the Gospel Church still influenced the nations. After all, Old Dunling had originally been founded by the Romans, and most people still maintained their reverence and faith. They whispered together, their prayers gathering into a great flood.

At that moment, Officer Press was kneeling on the ground. He could no longer make sense of anything that had happened that night.

A few hours earlier, the chief had gathered all the manpower. Press didn't know what was going on, only that Suaran Hall hadn't mounted such a massive police deployment in years. He'd assumed it was some kind of secret operation and had even prepared himself to die in the line of duty. But when a large force of mounted police arrived, the Royal Guard was waiting for them.

Press rarely saw those soldiers in red cloaks. During the Glorious War, they had been Inverwig's trump card. Rumor had it their cloaks had once been black, but the blood of their enemies had stained them red. Their terrified foes called them the Redcoats.

Iron boots clattered against the ground, their sharp clangs echoing in everyone's ears. A resident who lived not far from the Lower District opened his window. He wanted to curse out the people who had woken him, but when he leaned out, he saw a darkness unlike anything he'd ever seen.

The red-cloaked Imperial Guards had sealed off the entire Underground Palace and the surrounding area. They raised their weapons into a wall of cannons. To keep anyone uninvolved from seeing what was happening—or getting caught in the crossfire—the Mechanical Institute had cut the power to the whole area minutes earlier. The lights went out, and the darkness completely hid the filthy secret from the people.

There was no resistance. There wasn't any point in resisting, either. Before the mounted police could even figure out what was happening, the Royal Guard had subdued them. The officers from Suaran Hall had all their weapons confiscated and were made to kneel in the cold night of Old Dunling.

Something must have happened tonight. The surroundings were utterly silent. Apart from the clatter of iron boots, all that could be heard was everyone's breathing and whispered prayers.

Suddenly, one of the mounted officers stood up. Several Imperial Guard soldiers immediately trained their guns on him. Press had never seen weapons like those before; they were probably some secret creation of the Mechanical Institute. But he didn't look too closely. He knew that the more you knew, the sooner you died.

"I'm Donas, chief of Suaran Hall. I have the right to see whoever's in charge!"

It was Chief Donas. He could no longer stand this treatment and shouted furiously, but the only response he got was a brutal blow from a rifle butt. The soldiers didn't care who he was.

"Chief Donas?"

Someone spoke tentatively in the darkness. Donas turned his head, and through the pain he saw a man emerging from the shadows.

The man wore clothes Donas had never seen before. The hem of his black cloak was embroidered with elaborate patterns, and his sword and gun were unfamiliar designs. Judging by their intricate workmanship, they were surely excellent weapons for killing.

A strange smell clung to him. It wasn't exactly unpleasant, but it was familiar and pungent. After thinking for a long while, Donas realized it was the smell of sulfur.

"Hello. I'm in charge here."

The man wore an exquisite mask, but in the darkness, Donas couldn't make out what it looked like.

"Do you know what you're doing?"

Chief Donas cursed at him. As a chief, he wasn't used to being treated this way. But his words clearly had no effect. Iron boots kicked him hard in the stomach, and Donas curled up on the ground in pain.

"I want you to understand two things, Chief."

The man pointed his black gun straight at the chief. He looked entirely at ease, as if he might fire at any moment.

"First, if there weren't so many of you mounted police, and we weren't worried about leaving Suaran Hall short on manpower, then according to protocol, you'd all have to die tonight."

The barrel pressed against Donas's head and twisted hard, drawing a pained groan from him. The other mounted officers wanted to act when they saw their chief treated this way, but the soldiers immediately turned their guns on them.

"Second, tonight we have the right to shoot anyone dead."

The man raised his gun and checked his watch. The time was almost right. He shouted, "Plug their ears and blindfold them. They're not allowed to see what comes next."

Press was moved without offering any resistance. The soldiers hadn't expected to encounter the mounted police tonight, so they could only herd them off to the other side of the darkness, blindfolding them and plugging their ears. But when they got to Press, the man suddenly called a halt and ordered a soldier to bring him over.

"What's your name, Officer?"

The man gazed toward the Outer District behind him, as if waiting for something.

"Press Lailana, sir."

Press didn't dare slight the man. If he could beat up his own superior without a second thought, he wouldn't think twice about doing the same to Press.

"My name is Kestrel."

Kestrel turned to him. His eyes, visible beneath the mask painted with red lacquer, studied Press. Press knew it was only a code name, but he didn't understand why the man had told him.

"Take this. Protect your colleagues."

It was a gun like the ones the Imperial Guard soldiers carried, heavy in his hands and unlike any other firearm Press had used.

"W-why me?"

Press had so many questions. For instance, with such powerful Imperial Guards here, what chance would he have to protect anyone? But when he tried to speak, all he could manage was this awkward question.

"Hmm... Maybe you look kind. Or maybe I just can't stand your chief. All right, don't just stand there. If you can, I'd like you to act as though you never saw what happens next, okay?"

Kestrel said this, then seemed to remember something and added, " 'Out of control' might happen to those mounted officers, too. If you can, I need you to kill your colleagues when necessary... or yourself."

"What... do you mean?"

Press didn't understand. He was even more confused now. At the same time, the sacred prayers grew louder, and a mysterious sense of religion covered every inch of the place.

"You have to pay a price to learn about these things. You're better off not knowing."

Kestrel didn't want to say more. It seemed that their conversation had only been a passing whim.

Before Press could ask anything else, the shrill whistle of a train rang out in the distance.

There shouldn't have been any Steam Trams running at this hour, but one had actually appeared. At the far end of the fog, a blazing light cut through the darkness.

It raced forward with a howl of wind. Press only caught a brief glimpse of the Steam Tram as it passed before him.

Its black exterior was clad in heavy armor, and it was far larger than any Steam Tram Press had ever seen. This was the true Iron Snake, hurtling past the defenses with murderous intent. More whistles sounded, and more came roaring out of the fog, their cries like a stampede of warhorses.

For a moment, Press had the strange impression that the Imperial Guards before him weren't the main players that night. The Iron Snakes he'd never seen before, advancing slowly through the darkness, were the real protagonists.

As they vanished into the darkness of the Lower District, cannon fire roared and flames erupted. The whole earth trembled, as if some enormous beast were fighting in the dark.

Like Shrike's Paradise, the Underground Palace had been built beneath a field of ruins. Press remembered that it had once been a tall, imposing building, but it hadn't escaped the enemy bombardment during the Glorious War, despite standing out in the wilderness.

Soldiers dressed like Kestrel's guarded every approach to the Underground Palace. They remained silent, their cold gun barrels pointed toward it.

Shrike had spent so long in the Lower District that he knew the place well. Somehow, he'd gotten hold of the Underground Palace's original blueprints. Troops had already been stationed at several exits. They formed the first line of defense, with soldiers scattered around them and the Imperial Guard stationed along the perimeter.

"So you're going in yourself? Your duty should be to command from outside. If anyone should go, it should be me."

Shrike opposed Galahad's proposal to enter the Underground Palace himself and search for Eve. The operation was about to begin. The two of them were at the main battlefield in front of the Underground Palace's entrance, which was expected to face the fiercest assault.

"No. We're running out of time. We have to launch the attack as soon as they arrive."

"So you're going to rescue her and get back out in that little time? You know our procedure. We'll kill you ourselves, and to ensure a complete purge, we might not even leave a body behind."

Shrike was full of distrust for Galahad's words.

"Then what do you think we should do?" Galahad asked angrily.

Silence was his answer. The truth was, Shrike didn't know what to do, either. That bastard Lorenzo was a very useful sword—the kind that would cut down the target cleanly as soon as you pointed him at it. But the same sword was also prone to going out of control. You never knew what kind of trouble he'd cause next, as he had now.

Fortunately, the terrible night had no intention of letting the two of them agonize over it any longer. A bone-deep chill swept over them.

It was hard to describe the feeling. It was like a biological instinct kicking in to protect them. Both their breathing grew heavy in an instant. Fear rose from deep within them. They exchanged a look, then a piercing alarm rang out through the night.

It was a rapid, high-pitched ticking coming from every person's body. As time passed, the ticks grew closer together, until they became a shrill, continuous wail.

It was the Geiger Counter, a complex mechanical device designed to detect radiation levels invisible to ordinary people. The rate of its warnings showed how close the source was. The readings climbed without pause, eventually breaching the critical threshold. Blood-red lights illuminated everything.

Everyone knew what it meant. There was no lengthy debate or discussion. They loaded their guns and readied the cannons, then unleashed a ceaseless barrage of shells over the entire surface of the Underground Palace. This was a purge. The Purification Agency didn't need any survivors. As for Eve, in their eyes, her life had ended the moment the alarms sounded.

That was the Purification Agency's iron rule, and the reason they had managed to fight Fiends with mortal bodies up to this day.

"Attention, all units. A reality distortion anomaly has appeared. Begin the operation. Tonight, no one but us is getting out alive!"

As Galahad's roar echoed over the comms, sacred light fell upon the ruins and illuminated everything. All darkness was driven away, making the land look as if it had been blessed by God. It was support from the night sky: the enormous Steel Whale drifted slowly through the clouds, its light like a sword cast down by a god.

A fetid stench of blood and ill omen seeped from the entrance before them. Galahad swept his arm up. Countless flames flared from the tips of flamethrowers. Rank upon rank of soldiers stood ready, clad in heavy fireproof suits that covered their entire bodies, leaving only a pair of lenses to see through. Heavy breathing came from behind their gas masks.

They were the Incinerators. When storming underground facilities, they were the most terrifying nightmare imaginable. The Mechanical Institute had modified their flamethrowers and given them large fuel packs, allowing them to sustain high-temperature flames for tens of minutes. Their scorching fire could consume all the air in an underground space, then roast the enemy to death like an oven.

More soldiers stood behind them with rifles raised. The Incinerators' only weaknesses were their slow movement and vulnerable defenses. Their fireproof suits were incredibly cumbersome, necessary to shield them from the heat. They needed the other soldiers' protection to ensure that no stragglers got close enough to kill them.

This was what a closely coordinated wall looked like: one small gap could cause the entire section to collapse.

"Did you hear that, Galahad?"

Shrike had already raised his strange, silver-white rifle, one finger resting lightly on the trigger. His gaze was grave and wary.

The sound came from the dark entrance before them: hurried footsteps and hoarse whispers. It seemed that a crowd was fleeing toward them in panic. They were about to escape the darkness underground, but what awaited them wasn't a new life in which they could make amends. It was a blaze that would destroy everything.

"Remember our plan. A fuel explosion in the Lower District caused the Underground Palace to collapse... no survivors."

Galahad's voice was cold, as mechanical as he carried out his orders. It was completely different from the heroic figure who had just tried to save Eve.

Countless twisted figures, reeking of rot, rushed out of the darkness. They no longer looked human. Their grotesquely mutated faces resembled the strange creatures described in ancient books. People back then had called them—

Fiends.

That was why the black Iron Snakes had traveled so far, racing in with howling winds. Their immense inertia sent blinding sparks flying where the wheels met the rails as they slowed to a halt. Then their heavy armor lifted one section at a time, and the solemn, distant prayers echoed through everyone's communicators.

"Be vigilant and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith."

The iron doors flew open. Scalding steam billowed out. Amid the endless white tide, a man murmured as he stepped onto the battlefield.