Stomach-Chewing Grass

"Fiends... Though we've struggled against them for countless ages, we still don't know what they really are, where they came from, what they are, or what they want...

"Perhaps someone knows, but they took their secrets to the grave. That's all I can tell you. But everything should have a name of its own, even those filthy monsters. So the saints named them after the mythological beings that opposed God."

Lorenzo murmured the ancient secret. Just hearing him tell the story put the girl under a strange pressure.

The girl breathed hard and stayed silent. She listened to Lorenzo, but didn't want to say much.

Just as Lorenzo had said, this was forbidden knowledge. Given Eve's current state, it was best for her not to learn too much.

"At last... is that the exit?"

At this moment of despair, the faint light ahead grew brighter. Eve was dazed as she trudged forward on weary legs.

As if she'd grasped a glimmer of hope, she regained a little strength and ran desperately toward it. She could feel it: that was the exit. Once she got out, she could leave these monsters behind, and this damned nightmare would be over. But when Eve was only a few steps from the light, Lorenzo grabbed her and shoved her down. She tried to say something, but he clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Don't make a sound. Something's wrong."

Lorenzo's voice was quiet, and the calm in his eyes still ruled his excited body.

Eve didn't struggle much. Held fast by Lorenzo, she heard his voice turn cold.

"When faced with madness, all you can do is stay rational. Completely rational. Do you understand?"

He reprimanded her sternly. Lorenzo had been through this many times. After enduring immense pressure in the dark, anyone could lose their reason upon seeing the light, like people who had lived underground for ages stepping onto the surface and embracing the sun with abandon.

But that wouldn't end well. The blazing sunlight would burn eyes accustomed to the dark in an instant. Once they left the darkness and entered the light, an even more terrifying monster might be waiting for Eve.

Under Lorenzo's control, they moved forward slowly. At last, she shifted her gaze beyond the light ahead.

There was nothing there that Lorenzo had been wary of. It was only a deep pit. The passage where Eve and Lorenzo stood ran above the enormous pit, connected to the bottom by a staircase that climbed along its wall.

Eve had thought the banquet hall was the largest underground space in the Underground Palace, but it was clear that this place was bigger.

A boundless light poured down from above, seemingly from powerful electric lamps. It was so bright that merely glancing upward made their eyes sting, leaving them unable to see anything.

The entire pit, at least dozens of meters deep, was brightly lit. Rows of torches had also been lit all around the walls, for no apparent reason. Below, the bottom of the pit was covered in blood-red mist, through which they could make out only a hazy patch of red.

"I guess this is a place of sacrifice."

Lorenzo looked down into the pit. Though the mist obscured the bottom, his past experience made him wary.

"So your job in Florence was... fighting things like this?"

Eve spoke slowly, but whenever Fiends came up, she instinctively avoided the subject. She had only seen one once, yet the impact it had made on her was still profound.

"Yes, but that's not the whole story. We usually have a well-established system for hunting them. We hunted people before they could completely transform into Fiends, rather than waiting until they had fully turned."

Like Wall, as long as someone hadn't completely transformed into a Fiend, they were still essentially human. A sword or gun could kill them easily. But once the transformation was complete, they became something inhuman, and it took inhuman means to deal with them.

"Is that why a priest like you knows swordsmanship?"

Eve suddenly felt that Lorenzo's life had been almost legendary.

"Bologna Swordsmanship is required training for every Temple Knight. And becoming a priest is a prerequisite for becoming a Temple Knight."

His voice was flat, but his concise words revealed plenty about his former identity. Eve was a little stunned. She remembered how people described Temple Knights: knights blessed by God, noble in character beneath their white armor, wielding swords wreathed in holy flames to defend order and peace.

She had no idea how someone with such a foul temper could be associated with the word "noble," but she was still curious.

"That sounds like a very prestigious position. So why come to Inverwig to work as a detective?"

Even though the Gospel Church no longer held the influence it once had, being a Temple Knight in the Holy Gospel Papal State was still an immensely prestigious role. To the faithful, the knights guarding the Seven Hills were practically angels descended to earth.

"It's simple. I had no purpose left there. Or, you could say... I was out of a job."

Lorenzo didn't seem eager to talk about his past, but he answered Eve's question anyway.

"The Fiends were exterminated long ago, so there was no reason for me to stay there... You might not believe this, but I, Lorenzo Holmes, had a dream."

As he spoke, he actually laughed.

"To become a detective?"

It was an absurdly inspirational story. In response to Eve's question, he nodded emphatically.

"Honestly, Florence is a terrible place to live. Unlike Old Dunling, with its progress and openness, it's like a dying saint. Rules and faith are everywhere."

Perhaps the memories had been stirred up. Though Lorenzo hated those things, he still rambled on about them.

"It's even worse in the capital of the Holy Gospel Papal State, the Seven Hills. Only the most devout believers are allowed to go there. They say it's the holiest place in the world, and Fiends can't set foot there. In reality, the Templar Crusaders are stationed there. Even an attack by Inverwig would take days to reach it."

A heavy, rancid stench drifted up from below. As they spoke, something fell from above.

A black shape plummeted down and slammed into the stairs before the exit. It was a corpse. The impact shattered parts of its body, and dark red blood slowly seeped from it.

"Of course, if I ever got the chance to go back, my greatest wish would be to cover the streets of the Seven Hills in cow dung... You know, the faithful consider it an honor to die in the Seven Hills. You could pour out a bucket of water at random, and there might be several cardinals buried beneath that spot."

As he spoke, Lorenzo strode out.

"But that can wait. Right now, I need to find out why the Fiends, who were supposed to be extinct, are still alive."

His voice lowered to a lion's growl. He kicked the corpse into the pit, putting all his frustration into the blow. It seemed he really was unhappy.

The corpse slid down and landed on the surface at the bottom of the pit. The impact stirred the thick red mist, dispersing it slightly. A horrifying ghostly face emerged from behind the haze.

"They're sacrifices... Someone's raising these things."

Lorenzo's voice had never sounded so cold. It was clear now that everything tonight was no accident. This was a plot long laid in the dark, and it was all connected to the mysterious object called the Sacred Coffin—and that mysterious object was connected to the Fiends.

This was only the tip of an iceberg breaking the surface. The deeper, colder, darker depths remained unknown.

Eve looked down into the pit. It was as if something had crawled up from her stomach. Unable to hold it back, she leaned over the edge and retched.

The ground below was covered in bones and flesh. Just like the red tide that had hunted them earlier, the stinking flesh was covered in fine fuzz.

After the corpse fell, the flesh seemed to come alive. Red fuzz, like silken threads, wrapped around the body layer by layer. Amid faint sounds of chewing, the corpse vanished in only a few breaths, leaving nothing but heaps of white bones.

"It's Stomach-Chewing Grass, a Fiend that resembles a plant. It can't move much, but it's dangerous because of its predatory nature. Once the tendrils, which look like fuzz, catch you, they'll pierce your skin and devour your body."

Lorenzo stood at the edge of the stairs. It felt awful to be back at his old job.

"Be careful. These things can't move, so, like living creatures that evolved to survive, they have symbiotic partners that work with them. For example, another group of mobile Fiends. They do the hunting, while the deadly nature of the Stomach-Chewing Grass shelters them."

Eve did her best to summon her courage. She was terrified, but just as Lorenzo had said, if she didn't want to die, she had to force herself to be brave.

"What do we do?"

Looking at it this way, there was no way for the two of them to go down. Other than going back the way they came, there was no other path.

Lorenzo didn't answer. He simply lowered his head and studied the terrain. Eve suddenly had a bad feeling. She asked cautiously,

"You're not thinking of killing it, are you?"

Eve asked fearfully. She had been terrified by the mental pressure of the thing called a Fiend after seeing it just once, let alone trying to swing a sword at it. And even if she had the courage to swing, what good would it do? Could something so bizarre and twisted really be killed with a sword or a gun?

That vast stretch of blood-red Fiend grass.

"Did you know? Most Fiends have a few traits in common. They hate light, fire, and silver."

That was knowledge the Gospel Church had accumulated over thousands of years. It was all in Lorenzo's mind now, but what good did knowing it do? There wasn't even any silver here, and the only fire came from those few torches.

"Eve, these things are being kept in a cage. Look around the bottom of the pit. They're churning and bubbling, but they haven't spilled over. You have to understand, even though they can't move, they spread incredibly quickly. The Church's records say that just one patch of Stomach-Chewing Grass swallowed an entire town. To contain it, the Church burned the whole town to the ground."

"Do you mean something is restricting its movement?"

Eve seemed to understand what Lorenzo meant. The detective really was observant. She would never have thought about fighting back; all she could think of was running away.

"Exactly. I think I know what's going to happen tonight."

The broken pieces fell into place in Lorenzo's mind. The detective gathered up the details of the night, one by one. At last, he understood what Sabo was planning.

"Tonight, Sabo is preparing to launch a carefully planned attack on all of Old Dunling."

The detective's face turned grim. How many people lived in Old Dunling? One million? Two million? Given enough flesh and blood, it would only be a matter of time before this Stomach-Chewing Grass covered the entire city.

"That's why he said no one would survive tonight. Forget the Underground Palace. Once these things get out, the entire Lower District will fall tonight."

Sabo's words echoed in his mind. He had done all this in accordance with that mysterious Mentor's instructions. The deaths, the promise that no one would survive tonight—all of it was connected to the mysterious Sacred Coffin, because the dead had all come into contact with it.

Lorenzo seemed to have seized on an important clue. He had it: the Sacred Coffin had once been here.

Sabo had destroyed the people connected to it, and now he planned to destroy this place too, simply because it was connected to the Sacred Coffin.

"Shrike... what exactly did you transport?"

Lorenzo murmured. If he could make it out alive tonight, perhaps he really would need to have a serious talk with Shrike.

Amid the eerie silence, another sound seemed to rise up: gears dragging chains, which squealed sharply, as if rusted by the damp.

Eve raised her head. The sound came from above. The powerful lights that had been shining when they first entered were already dimming, allowing Eve to see.

At the top of the pit was a funnel-shaped iron mesh. Above it was a dense array of fluorescent lights. Though the lights had dimmed, all she could see against their glow was a twisted shadow, with countless hands extending from its edges. It looked as if the darkness was made up of hundreds of people.

Suddenly, a drop of water fell from the shadow and landed on Eve's face. The liquid was warm. She wiped it away gently, only to find that her palm was stained red.

"I think I know what that is," Lorenzo suddenly said beside her.

"It's the shackles restraining this Fiend."

The dense array of fluorescent lights provided powerful illumination, restricting the Stomach-Chewing Grass's activity to some extent. Now the lights were going out, and the iron mesh was falling away. The things trapped inside came into view: countless corpses.

The one that had fallen earlier had dropped from among them. Now all of them were plunging into the pit below.

The next moment, the lights went out completely. Just as when they had encountered the Fiend in the hall, darkness swallowed everything around them.

Both of them began breathing heavily. Then came the countless sounds of chewing from the darkness: the Fiend feeding, enjoying a feast of unimaginable proportions.

"What's happening?"

The girl received no answer. Lorenzo remained silent and simply led her toward the passage behind them. He knew exactly what was happening. This was a feeding. Given the nature of the Stomach-Chewing Grass, it would spread after being fed, and now the powerful fluorescent lights restraining it had gone out.

Just as Sabo had said, the true "no survivors" was about to begin.