Chapter 15

53

"Knock, knock, knock."

Outside a detached villa in Cherwood Borough, Richard Ernst bent his fingers and gently knocked on the door, a suitcase in his hand.

There was no response from inside, nor any sound of footsteps, but Richard was in no hurry. As he waited, he heard footsteps behind him. Turning around, he saw two unfamiliar women approaching together, one tall and one short. They stood outside the garden's black railings, studying him curiously.

"Hello, we're here to visit Mr. Vaughn." The taller woman offered a polite smile. "Has he come back yet?"

"He went out?" Richard froze for a moment. He had arrived in such a hurry that only now did he notice how utterly quiet the house was, without even a trace of anyone's presence. The Temperance Angel, who had assumed the Lord was deliberately ignoring his knocks because He did not want to see him, puzzled over this for two seconds. Then he turned, removed his top hat, and asked the two women cordially, "I'm his student. May I ask what happened?"

The two women exchanged a glance.

"Well... it's because we happened to run into Qilingus while we were out." The shorter woman answered. She looked young; judging by her height as well, she seemed to be no more than a girl. "Do you know about Vice Admiral Hurricane sneaking into the duke's ball, sir?"

"I'm very familiar with it," answered the angel involved.

"Mr. Vaughn encountered Qilingus with us, and we nearly lost our lives (Richard: ! Thank you, Lord, for leaving the bounty to me.). Mr. Vaughn left to seek refuge that very night. We temporarily moved out too, staying at a nearby church until news of Qilingus's death reached us. Only then did we dare go home."

After speaking, they pointed at the mailbox by the entrance. A letter from three days ago lay inside, still uncollected.

"I see..."

Richard nodded. The Lord certainly would not have left simply to seek refuge; He must have had His reasons. Perhaps the Aurora Order knew the truth, but Richard did not want to get too close to those excessively fanatical "companions." That would endanger his comrades in the Foundation and the Cult.

The Temperance Angel felt a brief pang of regret. It seemed he could not report to the Lord today and would have to head straight to East Borough to inspect the situation. He was busy, always too busy to linger. Within the next two days, he had to complete the formalities for traveling to Feynapotter, and afterward he still had to correspond with his distant collaborators in Intis. The merciful Earth Mother's church particularly approved of his work helping children. As a rule, they held a charity gala whenever he scheduled a visit, and he could not miss it.

"If Mr. Vaughn hadn't protected us, we might have been killed that day." The woman with brown curls sighed softly. "But news of Qilingus being killed has already spread across the country. Mr. Vaughn should return soon once he sees the papers."

"Yes." Richard nodded with heartfelt agreement. "He's a very gentle person... but I have urgent business to attend to. I'll be leaving Backlund tonight or tomorrow morning. If he returns, please give him my regards."

54

The pale sun hanging in the sky had been completely devoured by the red moon. Peaceful starlight and crimson moonlight shrouded the entire city. Chaos sank into silence, and darkness swallowed the flames. This was the grandest requiem ritual bestowed by a deity. Both the souls of the recently deceased and the people who had been led astray by the Devil received the blessing of tranquility. They no longer produced the negative emotions the evil god needed. Instead, they closed their eyes in unison, quietly collapsed, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep filled with the fragrance of moon flowers.

"...If the Evernight Goddess descended in person, or sent her divine servant, I'd probably quit while I was ahead and continue somewhere else."

Edward narrowed his eyes and looked straight at the crimson full moon above. There was no longer any need to hide. The Nightmare's body, long since stripped of its soul, toppled stiffly backward like a puppet whose strings had been cut. This place had already overlapped with the simulated "Abyss." When the Evernight Goddess's power reached the small city and put everyone to sleep, it naturally drew both him and the "Abyss" into this collective dream as well-perhaps the divine servant Arianna was already on her way, preparing to attack his physical body exposed in the real world.

Edward swiftly assessed the situation. A black chasm split open beneath his feet, and spectral blue flames erupted with a roar. Without hesitation, he revealed his Mythical Creature Form! Hideously twisted, blade-like black exoskeleton burst through his skin. As the torn skin healed, it became harder than steel, and his winding streams of blood turned into thin threads of fire coiling around his body.

"But if you think a mere projection of power from afar can make me retreat, Evernight Goddess-you underestimate a Devil."

The stench of sulfur grew as intense as a hundred volcanoes erupting at once, and half the dream city instantly became a sea of fire. Curved goat horns extended from the Devil's head, and lava flowed between his fingers. His body shot up to dozens of meters tall, bursting apart the small building around him. When his enormous black bat wings spread fully, they obscured most of the night sky. The Devil swept his flaming eyes disdainfully over the low buildings. As he turned, several houses collapsed in succession, and a low roar rose from his throat:

"Death!"

The Language of Foulness descended, heavier than a thousand pounds; death arrived, lighter than a feather.

The command to seize life spread through the city. A faint wisp of bluish-green aura, imperceptible to the naked eye, quietly mingled with the thick, surging black fog. Within this vast dream, those close to death, those nearing the end of their years, those who had lost all hope for the future... all heard seductive whispers in their ears.

"Your life of suffering can end now..."

"Perhaps you've never known happiness, or perhaps hope was snatched away just as your life began to improve. It doesn't matter. Living is a painful journey to begin with."

"If, at the end of this painful journey, there is eternal peace, the people you long to see again, delicious food, warm bedding, a healthy body, the child you lost long ago... then wouldn't death be something to look forward to?"

"Your life has no value. You're even a burden to others."

"Life is worse than death. To find salvation, you must abandon it."

"The world after death will have neither cold nor scorching heat, neither worry nor sorrow, nor any pain." The Devil's whispers echoed through the dreams of every unfortunate soul. With his authority, he selected those who had fallen so far that they had given up on themselves, those who had already entered "decay" and needed only one final push. Then he guided them to bring their own lives to an end.

"Give them to me, for the gods will not save you."

Die, die. So said the Devil who walked the earth. You are no different from dust and weeds; even if you die, no one will care.

A frail girl, tormented by illness, whose expensive treatment had drained her family's savings, who had watched her parents grow older day after day, shed tears in her dream. Guilt made her surrender her life. A destitute man who had failed to find work for three days, yet could not bear to eat even the moldy bread tucked against his chest, curled up in a filthy corner and breathed his last. A gray rat looked left and right, then carried the bread away from his hand. A mother unable to support her child finally gave up on herself, worn down by exhaustion and the despair of a future she could not see. She left her child, still ignorant of sorrow and death, wailing and drawing on the last trace of warmth in her embrace.

Countless lives, a thousand kinds of sorrow.

"Of course, I will grant you salvation. The world is so cruel, and life so insignificant. Better to place yourselves in my hands. I will make good use of every one of you. You are precious, and I won't waste a thing."

And so, one pair of vacant, lifeless eyes after another shed tears before closing forever. They gave up their lives in their dreams and would die just as silently in reality. This was the most peaceful death. In their dreams were a red moon and a black sky, hands that gently took theirs and helped them escape their heavy shells, and messengers who watched them mercifully and led them into a deep, lightless black sea. Even as they entered eternal sleep, they knew nothing, and naturally felt not the slightest pain.

The resentment they had accumulated, their final anguish and sorrow before death, gathered into gray currents. As these surged, faces surfaced within them, each different yet equally sorrowful, converging on the Nighthawks' small building in the dream version of Tingen.

Under the power of tranquility, the mother-Megose-had long since lost her will to fight. She had been a believer in Steam while alive; now, after death, she received Evernight's gaze. The evil god's offspring was still struggling, tenaciously absorbing the gray aura and attempting to drive his useless mother out of this place. But she merely gazed blankly at the sky. Beneath her empty eye sockets lay two long, dried trails of blood. In the crimson moonlight, she looked as though she were weeping.

The next second, the Devil crushed her.

Edward tore off the roof, grasped the fully formed offspring, and stripped away the mother's remains. His eyes, burning with spectral blue flames, swept casually over the Seer trembling all over with his eyes tightly closed inside the building, and the Midnight Poet, who likewise clenched his fists and kept his eyes firmly shut under the Worm of Time's instructions. They had received the most direct protection and resisted "death," but that was all. The Worm of Time was doing everything he could to preserve the Midnight Poet's sanity and life. He really had weakened to the point that he could not bear to lose even this feeble vessel... What a shame. I'd hoped to tempt the Midnight Poet into suicide, then kill the Worm of Time for the ritual once he exposed his true form...

According to his original plan, he would sacrifice the entire city in blood, helping his ally achieve the Descent of the True Creator while completing the Sixth Slaughter, then seize the momentum to advance to Sequence One. He would act fast enough to finish the ritual and leave before the churches of Storm and Evernight could react. But plans almost never kept pace with change. If the Worm of Time's appearance counted as a pleasant surprise, the Evernight Goddess's attention could only force him to abandon this attempt at advancement.

"..." Ah, right. There's still one thing to do.

Sufficient death and hatred finally turned the vessel in his hand from illusory to corporeal. The moment he had been waiting for had arrived.

The bluish-green aura, difficult to perceive with the naked eye, silently gathered once more. It mingled with the resentment the evil god's offspring was greedily consuming and was swallowed in great gulps by the child eager to grow. With the apocalypse approaching, he could hardly keep earnestly playing allies and house with the gods on Earth forever. The Outer Deity, the Monarch of Decay, naturally hoped Earth's gods would continue scheming against and restraining one another. Ideally, no new true gods would emerge, and those who had gone mad would stay mad.

The True Creator was far more cautious than Roselle. Even over a thousand years of Edward's obedient compliance, combined with the True Creator's own prolonged madness and intermittent lucidity, had not made Him completely lower His guard.

Edward had never been able to find a safe opportunity to corrupt Him, and this Descent of the True Creator was undoubtedly a good chance—the "Decay" Pathway was utterly unfamiliar to Earth's gods. With the Evernight Goddess projecting her power at precisely this moment, he could disguise his corruption and curses as the effects of "calamity." High-level authorities always had some overlap, and "decay" happened to encompass certain aspects of death. Who could accurately distinguish which deity it had come from?

"The ritual is complete." His voice rumbled. "Are you still not going to act?"

Good fortune and favor at the level of a King of Angels descended. A silver-white giant snake suddenly swam out of a corner of the dream world. His scarlet eyes met the red moon in the sky. His enormous body encircled the entire city, and his vast mouth caught his tail, forming a closed loop of fate.-"Reboot!"

The stars stopped twinkling for an instant, and the curtain of night that had descended from the sky slowly returned above. The Language of Foulness receded, tranquility once again ruled the quiet city, and everything returned to its original state-except for the lives already lost.

The Devil opened his eyes amid the ruins. He still looked human, and even his posture had not changed. The only difference was the pitch-black thing now in his hand.

Edward glanced at his pocket watch. From the moment he began until his successful escape from the dream, the second hand had completed one revolution. Tingen's fate had undergone a tremendous reversal within thirty seconds. If not for the meddlesome attention of that annoying Seer and the Evernight Goddess, then, according to his original plan, he would have successfully amplified desires and malicious thoughts, inciting everyone to slaughter one another. By now, there should not have been a single intact person left breathing.

He swiftly sank into the Spirit World.

55

Ince Zangwill finally brought his trembling hands under control.

He remembered this presence. He dared not forget it, because he had once solemnly sworn beneath the Goddess's sacred emblem never to betray the church or the people he was meant to protect. Then he had received His Holiness the Pope's encouragement and attempted to advance to Sequence 4.

Then... then he had failed.

Ince Zangwill dug his fingers deep into the wall. He had failed. He had already failed once, so this time he absolutely had to succeed. This was not what he wanted, but there was no turning back! His talent was insufficient, and his achievements were only average. All his years of effort had finally earned him enough merit to receive a chance to become a demigod.

But I failed. I actually nearly lost control during the advancement! A complete failure! I'll never get a second chance! No! No! You can't do this to me! I work harder than anyone! You can't deny everything I've done because of one failure! I still have a chance. I'm still worth nurturing! I'm loyal to the church and the Goddess, I-damn it! No one listened to the failure's hysterical howling. The opportunity for advancement that had originally belonged to him was given to Leah, and that woman... successfully advanced! She even received the glorious title "Eye of the Goddess"! That position should have been mine! That glory should have been mine!

He gasped for breath, his mind more agitated than ever. His remaining sighted eye was bloodshot, so red it seemed about to drip blood.

0-08 slid merrily across his notebook, as though dancing:

"Upon sensing the Evernight Goddess's presence, Ince Zangwill was utterly terrified. But he discovered that the Goddess had not noticed him at all. Perhaps, probably, the Evernight Goddess could not even be bothered to kill him in passing!"

"Poor Ince Zangwill. He finally realized how worthless he was, and this filled him with determination."

"Ince Zangwill entered the Blackthorn Security Company-or rather, its ruins. Everyone was still asleep. No one was awake. This was the perfect opportunity to take the sacred relic. But something strange happened. How had a Nighthawk awakened? Still, Dunn was already dead, and this weakling, merely a Sequence 8, could not possibly stop an emotionally agitated Sequence 5."

"The Nighthawk died. Ince Zangwill took the Urn. Rejoice! You finally secured your second chance at advancement!"

56

On a mountain peak in the Forsaken Land of the Gods, deep within the eternal darkness, the Angel of Fate Ouroboros suddenly opened his eyes while kneeling in prayer and looked around in bewilderment. Countless chaotic symbols flowed through his eyes, finally converging into silver-white symbols linked head to tail. The good fortune he had accumulated in this lifetime melted like snow in sunlight at an unimaginably rapid pace. Twelve pairs of pale wings unfurled. The light left Ouroboros's eyes, and he closed them, falling forward with a peaceful expression.

His flawless wings and feathers covered his body. Losing too much luck at once was an ill omen. To prevent it from affecting the Lord and what was to come, he decisively began his next course of fate.

This body of the Angel of Fate Ouroboros rapidly lost its vitality, becoming one of countless beautiful shed snake skins.

TBC

*Without realizing it, Ouroboros protected the True Creator from Edward's corruption (though He was still corrupted), but everyone would assume it was because he had obstructed the Goddess.

*There is nothing in the world harder to write than a battle scene.