Impulse

A wry smile touched Herbert's lips as he looked at the astonished expressions on Qin Ran's and Pierre's faces.

"That 'weapon' works against Nightspawn, but it works even better against humans!"

"Anyone who uses that 'weapon' will destroy the Nightspawn, only to become a new Nightspawn themselves!"

"Simply put, all the Nightspawn we're facing now were once humans, and the very first Nightspawn was one of the former Guardians of Aesop Ancient City!"

"And according to the records on the stele..."

"That 'weapon' was originally created solely to fulfill the Nick Dynasty emperor's ambition of immortality. The Nightspawn were merely one of its insignificant by-products!"

As Herbert spoke, the wry smile on his lips deepened.

When he had read the words recorded on the stele by the ancient city's Guardians, he hadn't wanted to believe them either, but reason told him they were true.

But none of that mattered!

What mattered was that, beyond what he had told them, the stele contained something even more horrifying.

Although those horrifying records had vanished with the destruction of the stele, Herbert still shuddered whenever he recalled them.

How could a normal human being possibly have done such things?

The old scholar had asked himself that question more than once.

"They wanted immortality, and ended up creating monsters like the Nightspawn?"

"How is that possible?"

Pierre shook his head in disbelief.

"And they were only one of the by-products..."

"Did it describe the other by-products too?"

Qin Ran, however, seized on the crucial point in Herbert's words.

At the same time, the scene in the sleeper agent's room in Boer City surfaced in his mind.

The person who had laid the trap and the person drawn into it had known each other.

If both had been Guardians, that would explain it.

And that