Reason

His eyes held that pure white fire, warm and searing.

A story from a distant memory suddenly came back to him, along with thunder and torrential rain.

He remembered that those Vikings had never intended to take him to Inverwig. They'd only wanted his money. He'd fought them on the ship for a long time, but in the end they'd still thrown him into the sea. He'd thought he was going to die just like that, but when he awoke on the shore, the land of Inverwig lay beneath his feet.

That had truly been the moment his dream came true. When he awoke on the beach, the sun before him had been just as warm and searing.

Fireworks lit up the dark space. Lorenzo gripped his Cane Sword, its blade already halfway through. If he drove it all the way in, he could pierce Sabo's heart. But at the last moment, Sabo had braced the blade. Four arms pinned the Cane Sword from different angles. Lorenzo could only set Sabo's chest alight; he couldn't burn his organs to ash.

"Mr. Holmes, did you consume Secret Blood to kill people like me?"

Lorenzo's snarling face was reflected in Sabo's eyes. Black tattoos writhed across his skin like a mass of intertwined snakes, and his gray-blue eyes glinted.

"So you don't mind becoming a Fiend yourself, just so you can fight Fiends?"

Sabo gave an ugly smile, then used all four arms to fling Lorenzo away. The hooked tips of his limbs raced along the rock wall before he vanished into the darkness. Lorenzo landed on a wooden post, gripping his sword and gun.

"Then, Mr. Holmes, will you kill yourself one day?"

His mocking voice came from the darkness all around. With hollows riddling the rock walls, Lorenzo couldn't tell where it was coming from.

"A doctor gave me the Secret Blood. He said it came from the Order's technology."

The Plague Doctor's image gradually formed in Lorenzo's mind—a figure like that mysterious Mentor, strange and terrifying.

"The Order was among the first to fight the Fiends. They hunted the monsters in the darkness in the name of God, guided by their noble ideals. Even in death, they would drive weapons forged from holy silver into a monster's heart. Truly devout followers. I could almost cry..."

A sharp bone blade shot from a corner of the darkness. Lorenzo immediately swung his Cane Sword and cut it in two with ease. His gaze swept back and forth through the dark, vigilant.

"So what? Sabo, Secret Blood has been gone for a long time. Who was that doctor?"

Lorenzo demanded sharply. He clearly knew far more than Sabo did, and for once, anger showed in his voice.

People were greedy. Fishermen hunted whales and extracted combustible oil from them. The Order, too, had refined something that should never have existed from Fiend bodies. It was the source of all evil. Those who fought monsters had, in the end, become monsters themselves.

"That was the Order's mistake. That's a power you can't control!"

"So you can control it, then?"

As Sabo's shrill roar rang out, a mottled rapier dropped from the darkness above Lorenzo. Lorenzo kicked off hard. The rapier split the wooden post beneath him in two, sending water spraying everywhere. Then the pellets, set off by gunpowder, tore through the curtain of water and struck Sabo.

It was a blinding white flame. In the darkness, it did more than wound; it also let Lorenzo see where Sabo was.

The twisted Fiend came tearing through the water, trailing flames. His fully transformed body stepped from post to post as he closed in, swinging his rapier and bone blades. Steel clashed against steel. Like meteors streaking through the dark, they gave off brief flashes of light.

"You have no idea what you're doing. That's Pandora's Box, and it holds nothing but calamity!"

In the brief pause between sword strikes, the Shotgun fired again. As the pellets scattered, Lorenzo used their spread to halt his body strangely in midair, then brought his blade down in a savage slash. A streak of light struck Sabo in the abdomen, cutting through flesh and bone and tearing open a massive wound.

"But isn't there still a sliver of hope amid that endless calamity?"

Sabo's voice was thick and rough. His blade slashed down across Lorenzo's chest, spraying blood. It was a brutal exchange of wounds, each strike brimming with murderous intent.

The Shotgun fired again and again, keeping Sabo at bay as the two men steadily widened the distance between them, until there was a safe stretch of space.

"Mr. Holmes, I thought you would understand me."

A mucus-smeared, scarred hand gently brushed the gaping wound in his abdomen. There were no organs inside, only a mass of writhing flesh. Even now, it was healing... or perhaps growing wildly, multiplying without restraint.

Sabo gazed sadly at Lorenzo in the distance. His twisted voice rose from his throat.

"Mr. Holmes, ever since I was born, I've had nothing. I'm nothing but a desperado. No one loves me, and no unknowable god watches over me. I have no past and no future. All I have is what I can take for myself in the present."

His words grew indistinct. The eyeballs, squeezed by the flesh, disappeared completely beneath the contortion. Then fresh red blood welled from the gaps, like tears from weeping eyes.

"So, for a desperado who has nothing, does it matter what's in the box?"

The Fiend challenged the Fiend Hunter. One stood in darkness; the other blazed with brilliant light.

After a brief silence, a voice spoke.

"It doesn't matter at all, Mr. Holmes."

It seemed to laugh. A bone-chilling crack rang out as a new bone blade was pulled from its chest, slick with mucus and blood.

"Endless calamity and a sliver of hope. It's like a traveler freezing to death who suddenly sees a sea of flames before him. Then... if he can have even a little warmth, what does it matter if he dies in that sea of fire?"

The words echoed in his ears like a curse. Even the most fearless heart would feel some unease and confusion. It seemed to be asking Lorenzo, and perhaps itself, too. Then an ugly smile spread across its hideous face.

"None of it matters anymore, does it?"

It laughed at itself.

Lorenzo gazed deeply at Sabo on the other side. A faint smile appeared on his usually cold face.

"Yeah. For a desperado, none of it matters anymore."

The answer didn't matter. What mattered was that only those who survived could decide what was right and wrong. There was nothing left to say. Swordlight and thunder struck at once.

Four blades came at him head-on. Lorenzo did his best to fend them off, searching for a chance to counterattack. His blood sprayed everywhere, falling on Sabo and igniting into blazing flames.

The two fought beneath the white fire, like moths flying into a flame.

A bone blade crashed down, but Lorenzo caught it with one hand. He gripped it tightly and yanked it up, then brought down his Cane Sword, breaking the bone as if it were steel. But another bone blade fell at that moment, leaving a string of wounds across Lorenzo's body.

Lorenzo didn't care. The black tattoos grew hot, and strange changes began within him. But Sabo suddenly raised his leg and kicked Lorenzo in the chest. The man was sent crashing backward. Before he could stop, a bone blade shot forward like a spike, pierced his shoulder, and pinned him firmly to the rock wall.

In an instant, Sabo attacked again. Two bone blades crossed like the falling blades of a guillotine.

A deafening shriek echoed through the dark space. Sabo's now-unrecognizable face drew close to Lorenzo's. The Cane Sword shattered under the blow, and the remaining two bone blades pinned Lorenzo to the rock wall like spikes.

"That's why we're the same, Mr. Holmes."

The final rapier descended slowly, like an execution blade. It pierced Lorenzo's chest and sliced downward, leaving a dreadful wound. But beneath it lay bones of silver. They were soaked in blood, yet beneath the firelight, holy words could be seen written across their surface. Flesh writhed inside them, healing even as it was wounded.

"You're a desperado, too. If you weren't, why would you consume Secret Blood?"

That so-called Secret Blood was protecting Lorenzo. He hated it even as he became it. Sabo laughed triumphantly. In the end, Lorenzo was no different from him. Sabo laughed heartily.

"There's always a reason."

Lorenzo remained as cold as ever, as if nothing could disturb him.

Sabo froze for a moment, then brought down his sharp rapier as though to prove something.

The rapier grew larger and larger in Lorenzo's eyes. If nothing went wrong, Sabo was aiming for Lorenzo's heart. Fiends, humans, and all other creatures had such fatal weak points in their otherwise frail bodies: the heart and the brain.

Lorenzo raised the Shotgun with all his strength, but the bone blade had locked his joint. With no other choice, he pulled the trigger, but even that couldn't stop the Fiend's strength.

The rapier fell, piercing his chest—his heart.

After a brief flash of pain, it was all over. His vision blurred. Sabo leaned close to his ear and asked hoarsely,

"Then why did you consume Secret Blood?"

Distant memories swept over Lorenzo like a tide.

Though he'd claimed they were different, as death approached, he found himself wondering what his own reason was. Sabo's reason was to survive, nothing more. He longed to live. Life was the only thing he possessed, and the most precious. What about him?

The Fiend's malice gnawed at his nerves. It was as if millions were weeping and wailing by his ears. Phantom pain wracked his body, while countless maggots devoured his flesh, reducing him to a heap of white bones.

His will was crumbling, but through it all, Lorenzo suddenly remembered.

He had been in Old Dunling for six years. It wasn't a long time, but it wasn't short, either—long enough to build a new life, and long enough to forget the old one.

He remembered.

[Secret Blood awakening: 9.7%. Stability threshold exceeded. Silver-Binding Bolt beginning to melt.]

His gaze was rimed with frost, as if anger were brewing and about to burst through a barrier.

The chaotic wailing vanished. The maggots were all burned to ash.

His muscles pulled against his bones, wrenching themselves off the bone blade in a gruesome, living motion. Blood and fire streamed from him as Lorenzo grabbed the rapier and gripped it tightly.

"To live."

Lorenzo snarled at Sabo. Then he tore himself free of the bone blades. His body ripped apart, but it was already mending. The Fiend's power poured from his blood, twisted and hateful. He became something just like Sabo.

"Only, I'm living for someone else, Sabo."

The burning light in his gray-blue eyes grew ever brighter. His black tattoos spread across his entire body like armor, and dense plates grew from beneath his skin, layering over one another. At the slightest movement, they rang out with the shrill scrape of steel against steel.

Like wings.

[Secret Blood awakening: 9.9%. Stability threshold exceeded. Silver-Binding Bolt beginning to melt.]

[Connecting to Stasis Temple.]

[Connection failed.]

It was as though countless believers surrounded him. Faint murmurs of prayer filled his ears.

Sabo had never believed in any god. Even when he had joined the Gospel Church, it was only so he could eat the free Communion bread on Sundays. But here, deep beneath the ground, in an abyss untouched by light, he saw a miracle.

What was called steel began to be reforged. Metal grew over the broken Cane Sword, burning like the flaming sword that guarded Heaven in the Gospel Book.

The sword of heavenly fire descended into the mortal world, purging all evil.