The long night finally came to an end. After Lloyd finished telling the story that had left such a profound scar upon him, the brief gathering dissolved soon after. Originally, everyone had intended to tell a story of their own, yet after listening to Lloyd's half-mad ramblings, no one had the heart for it anymore.
What was meant to be a relaxing pastime had somehow turned into something closer to a ghost story by the end. One by one, the listeners staggered back toward their rooms, Lloyd's murmuring voice still echoing endlessly inside their minds. Sometimes that demon hunter resembled a monster more than the creatures he hunted; a few careless words from him were enough to drag a person's thoughts toward madness.
Needless to say, nobody slept well. When dawn arrived, everyone looked utterly drained. Yet when they pushed open Lloyd's door, they discovered the hunter sleeping soundly, even letting out pig-like snorts in his sleep.
Standing there at the doorway, they found themselves struck by complicated emotions. Perhaps it was admiration for Lloyd's absurdly resilient mentality… or perhaps something else entirely. Then again, he was a weapon forged to battle monsters. If his mind had not been twisted enough, he would have gone insane long ago.
Lloyd himself seemed completely unaware of all this. Every day he continued spewing nonsense, taking particular delight in tormenting Red Falcon. Perhaps because everyone had become overly wary of his deranged conversations, they all did their best to avoid speaking to him whenever possible.
Sometimes, out of sheer boredom, Lloyd would simply mutter to himself.
Which was even more terrifying.
And so, from time to time, everyone found themselves curious about Lloyd's past. What sort of bizarre adventures could possibly twist a demon hunter into… this? At this point, he hardly seemed like a demon hunter anymore, but some kind of defective demon himself.
Thankfully, this damned countryside retreat was finally coming to an end. After a full week of quarantine and observation, Lloyd showed no signs of abnormality. The blood samples sent to the Eternal Pump had also been analyzed, confirming that the secret blood within him remained stable.
For now, he was still human.
And so, the brief vacation came to its conclusion.
"You all look terrible."
The train came to a temporary halt at a station that technically did not even exist. Waiting beyond the carriage doors stood Blue Emerald.
Her gaze swept across the group. Aside from the unusually refreshed Lloyd, everyone else looked as though they had endured unimaginable torment.
"It's a long story."
Joey was the first to board the train.
"Don't talk to him."
Red Falcon followed immediately behind, warning Blue Emerald with deadly seriousness.
Blue Emerald blinked in confusion. When Robin boarded, the devout believer wore an utterly lost expression, his spirit visibly shaken. Upon seeing her, he froze for a moment, then merely let out a long sigh before stepping past her in silence.
…What exactly happened here?
Blue Emerald stared blankly at the group, who looked less like people returning from vacation and more like survivors walking away from an execution ground.
At last, Lloyd stepped aboard. He remembered this woman; she handled a folding blade rather well.
"Oh! Good morning!"
Perhaps because he was finally escaping this boring hellhole, Lloyd appeared exceptionally cheerful.
The excessive enthusiasm made Blue Emerald instinctively step back, her expression turning awkward.
"G-Good morning…"
Wait. Why was she even greeting him? They were not close at all.
Before she could process the thought, Lloyd had already brushed past her and wandered deeper into the carriage, visibly delighted.
Truthfully, Lloyd was not the sort of man capable of sitting still. Vacations sounded wonderful in theory, but once they dragged on too long, they became unbearable. Like factory workers cursing their exhausting jobs every day, only to become restless after staying home too long, desperately wishing the factory would reopen so they could have something to do again.
Humans were like that.
One gear after another.
And only when the gears turned did their existence gain meaning.
Though he could not hunt monsters here, Lloyd still deeply missed the days of wandering through Old Dunling. The tension, the danger, the thrill—it was infinitely more exciting than this so-called peaceful retreat.
The train slowly began to move, releasing cheerful whistles alongside heavy clouds of steam and scattering sparks as it rolled down the tracks. Outside the windows, the scenery swept backward in a blur. The once-clear sky gradually darkened beneath gathering clouds.
Lloyd stared toward the horizon ahead.
At the edge of the world, a gray iron curtain slowly rose.
Beneath that leaden sky stood the city of steel—a colossal metropolis of roaring machinery and ceaseless industry.
"Mr. Lloyd Holmes."
Someone called out, pulling Lloyd away from the scenery beyond the window.
Blue Emerald had taken the seat opposite him, a thick stack of documents resting in her hands.
The atmosphere felt strangely uncomfortable. From the corner of her eye, Blue Emerald noticed that Red Falcon and the others were all deliberately keeping their distance from Lloyd, treating him like some unstable hazard.
Part of the Cleansing Agency's reasoning for arranging this entire trip had been to encourage their active personnel to grow familiar with Lloyd. After all, the value he displayed now was far too great for the Agency to simply abandon. They needed him bound to the same war machine as themselves.
Unfortunately, Blue Emerald had no time to figure out what exactly had happened during the vacation. Before Lloyd returned to Old Dunling, there were still several matters she needed to confirm.
"Mr. Holmes… do you remember anything about the process of your resurrection?"
Blue Emerald asked carefully.
Truthfully, she herself was unfamiliar with much of this. She had not participated in the assassination operation against Bishop Lawrence. While the others had been risking their lives, she had been monitoring the Geiger Index throughout all of Old Dunling.
Now she had rotated back to the front lines once more.
"No."
Lloyd shook his head.
He was telling the truth.
At least, part of it.
He still remembered Watson's words spoken during that hazy moment between life and death. At the time, Lloyd had assumed Watson was merely helping him make peace with death, offering a final confession before the end. After all, Watson had once been a priest.
Yet somehow, he had not died.
When Lloyd regained consciousness, he found himself standing naked amidst the smoke-covered battlefield, his entire body sticky with blood and filth while bone-chilling winds swept across his skin.
He remembered little beyond that. Soon after, overwhelming dizziness consumed him once more, until his eventual awakening later.
Blue Emerald nodded. According to previous records, Lloyd had already stated that he remembered nothing. Her questioning now was simply a final attempt to see whether this period of rest had stirred any forgotten memories.
"Then… do you understand anything about the berserk state of the Old Era Divine Armor?"
Her gaze sharpened.
This was the true purpose of the conversation.
After the battle ended, the Black Angel—having absorbed the flesh and blood of the Holy Grail—stood upon the battlefield like a massive tombstone. Inside the cockpit, grotesquely overgrown flesh had entirely consumed the interior. The original mechanical framework had become horribly twisted, while the restraint systems had been completely destroyed.
The fear inspired by that monstrous Divine Armor had rivaled even the terror brought by Bishop Lawrence himself. It had clearly ceased functioning. The demonic flesh fused within it had also fallen dormant.
Yet anyone who stood before it could immediately sense that something about it was profoundly wrong.
Old Era Divine Armor was, by nature, biological armor.
A living weapon.
Yet one without a will of its own—merely a walking corpse.
And still, when you stood before it in awe, observing it closely, there came a fleeting illusion… as though it truly lived. Not the lifeless existence of rotting flesh, but something with a soul.
As though an ancient spirit that had crossed through centuries was hiding within the shadows of the armor itself, silently watching the world.
Merlin had arrived in time. Fascinated by the bizarre phenomenon, he ordered the Black Angel transported back to the Eternal Pump for deeper analysis.
"No idea. I only touched that thing once, and it immediately went berserk."
Lloyd recalled the time he piloted the Weaponsmith. Truthfully, he had never been particularly interested in such terrifying machinery. Sure, things like that embodied every man's fantasy—but functionally speaking, demon hunters already overlapped heavily with Old Era Divine Armor. Under normal circumstances, a hunter had little need for such equipment.
Extreme environments excluded, of course.
"No. It was your second time."
Blue Emerald corrected him.
"I know. But like I said, I don't remember any of it. When I woke up, I was already lying inside the workshop, surrounded by all of you pointing heavy weapons at me."
Lloyd answered casually, continuing to conceal Watson's existence.
His greatest secret.
Blue Emerald stared deeply into his face, searching for even the slightest flicker of panic—some subtle detail that might betray him.
Unfortunately, she was clearly not Lloyd's equal in this regard.
He wore the expression of a dead pig unafraid of boiling water.
"One final question."
Blue Emerald's tone turned solemn.
"Can you confirm Bishop Lawrence's death?"
Lloyd's eyes sharpened instantly.
"Yes."
He nodded with absolute certainty.
"That bastard is definitely dead. I stabbed him several times… then bit his head clean off."
As he spoke, Lloyd even flashed his remarkably well-maintained teeth.
"Decapitation. Then the explosion ignited the fuel reserves. Extreme heat, endless detonations…"
"That bastard was burned completely to death."
Lloyd sounded utterly certain.
"And besides, didn't your people already conclude it yourselves? The berserk Black Angel destroyed the last remaining flesh of the Holy Grail. There's no way he survived."
Blue Emerald's expression darkened.
"Are you certain?"
"I'm certain. Nothing could survive an explosion like that."
"But you did."
Lloyd paused.
Then he shrugged.
"Maybe I'm an exception. Even you people can't explain it, right?"
"…Fine. Fill these forms out. Once that's done, your quarantine will officially end."
Blue Emerald handed him the documents.
Lloyd immediately began writing while muttering to himself.
"I thought you'd keep me locked up longer."
"It just happens to be the holidays. We're releasing you early."
"Holidays?"
Lloyd stopped writing and looked up at her.
Blue Emerald frowned slightly, finding his reaction strangely bizarre.
"…You didn't notice the calendar?"
Truthfully, despite how dull the countryside retreat had been, the slow and peaceful rhythm of life there had blurred the passage of time itself. The comfort of that gentle monotony had even caused someone like Lloyd to lose track of the days.
"Today is God's Birthday. Maybe you don't celebrate it, but the others still need to return home. Vacations like this are rare for the Cleansing Agency."
Only then did realization dawn upon Lloyd.
"God's Birthday…?"
He looked genuinely stunned.
He began retracing the past several weeks in his mind. In his memory, the holiday that had supposedly still been "a month away" had somehow already arrived.
For a moment, Lloyd could no longer tell whether time itself had passed too quickly… or whether he had simply neglected too much of ordinary life.
A strange feeling suddenly welled up within him.
Leaning back in his chair, he found himself staring blankly ahead. He had experienced this holiday countless times before, yet now it somehow felt different.
Only slightly.
But undeniably different.
"It's already… God's Birthday, huh."
Lloyd let out a long sigh.
No one present could possibly understand the thoughts drifting through his mind.
He looked once more toward the steel city growing larger beyond the train windows—a city buried beneath dark clouds, roaring factories, and icy winds weaving endlessly through its streets and alleys.
It was a cold city.
Yet it was also the city where he had lived for years.
Every day he wandered its streets carrying a Winchester rifle, greeting people warmly while roaming alleyways with his cane sword in hand.
Blades flashing.
Guns roaring.
Like dancing through life itself.
And just like that, another year was already drawing to its end.
This was Lloyd's seventh year in Old Dunling.
His hand instinctively reached into his coat, searching for a cigarette case that was no longer there. His fingers closed around empty air instead.
A distant look clouded his eyes.
Even demon hunters could not help but stand in awe before the power of time.
"How fast it all goes…"