The process of gradually reclaiming control over the Black Angel was strangely mesmerizing. It felt like someone who had lost everything slowly recovering their senses—first came sight, then sound, then an arm capable of throwing a punch. Moments later, iron-forged legs answered its will, ready to leap once more.
Blood poured endlessly from the gaping wound in its chest. Had the Divine Armor hand cannon carried just a little more firepower, the blast might have annihilated the Black Angel outright. Charred flesh clung to glowing steel, twisting its silhouette into something warped and unsteady. It staggered, yet stubbornly forced itself upright, like a dying madman refusing to collapse.
Every blast door slammed shut. The lift rose to its highest position. Static roared inside Night Owl's headset, and he understood immediately what had happened.
So it had finally lost control.
Just as countless first-generation Divine Armor pilots had before. Even Demon Hunters could not escape that curse.
Yet Night Owl felt no fear. Instead, an almost absurd sense of duty welled up within him. The battle had already proven that the third-generation Divine Armor possessed dependable combat capability. It could never rival the overwhelming performance of the first generation, but with external armor and specialized weaponry, it could at least chase after its predecessor's shadow.
More importantly, it was stable.
That single advantage meant it could be mass-produced. Piloting Divine Armor would no longer remain the privilege of Knight Commanders alone. The Purification Agency's military strength would rise by an entirely new order of magnitude.
This battle was an honor.
A chance to prove it.
Calmly tightening his grip around the sword hilt, Sword Dancer rooted itself where it stood, just as before. As long as the Black Angel failed to breach its defense, Night Owl believed he could subdue the berserk machine.
Then a grotesque laugh echoed through the chamber.
It seemed to come from the Black Angel.
Yet at the same time, it rang directly inside his mind.
Night Owl froze for the briefest instant before slamming another switch. The remaining Florend serum was injected into his body, forcing his consciousness to remain clear against the encroaching corruption.
The next heartbeat—
The Black Angel erupted through a cloud of crimson mist.
Thunderous impacts rolled across the chamber as iron feet hammered against the metal floor. Every step carried terrifying force. Every exposed muscle contracted with savage power. Without skin to conceal them, the crimson fibers writhed and stretched in full view, twisting over one another like a nest of living serpents.
Sword Dancer had barely begun to raise its blade when the freed Black Angel was already upon it.
It was far faster than before.
No—
This was likely its true speed all along.
Before Sword Dancer could even react, razor-sharp iron feathers crashed down.
"...It's useless."
Night Owl muttered the words beneath his breath, almost as though convincing himself.
Their previous exchanges had already proven the point. Against demonic flesh, the iron feathers carved with terrifying efficiency. But against steel, they accomplished little more than scratching the armor's surface.
If Lloyd still possessed his reason, he would never waste energy on such futile attacks.
Now there could be no doubt.
The corruption had consumed him completely.
Even his fighting style had devolved into pure bestial savagery—violent, instinctive, devoid of even the faintest trace of strategy.
Sword Dancer's slower strike finally caught up.
The Black Angel made no effort to evade.
In its current state, taking a direct hit would surely destroy it.
Night Owl showed no mercy.
The proper way to deal with a berserk Divine Armor was simple.
Suppress it.
The massive blade screamed through the air, closing relentlessly upon the Black Angel. Only at the final moment did the corrupted machine sense the danger and begin to dodge.
Too late.
Steam engines roared.
Power surged through every piston.
The greatsword howled like a storm.
Then—
Just before impact...
the blade stopped.
Only for an instant.
But that single instant was enough.
The Black Angel stepped onto the halted sword, using it as a foothold, while another volley of iron feathers slashed downward.
A coincidence?
Even Night Owl found it difficult to believe.
During the previous exchange, one broken iron feather had slipped perfectly into a gap between Sword Dancer's armor plates, wedging itself deep inside a mechanical joint. That tiny obstruction had prevented the blade from completing its swing.
He had no time to dwell on it.
Another barrage descended.
The Black Angel moved like a serpent gliding across water, circling Sword Dancer with impossible agility, always one step ahead of every falling strike.
Steel rang against steel.
A storm of sparks burst into existence.
In a matter of seconds, the Black Angel struck so many times that even Night Owl lost count.
Then—
Silence.
Sword Dancer's delayed blade carved nothing but empty air.
Within the narrow field of vision behind his visor, the Black Angel had vanished.
Where...?
For the first time, panic tightened around Night Owl's heart.
Because of the overwhelming difference in speed, he had fought desperately to keep the Black Angel within sight.
Now it was gone.
A flash of steel erupted beneath him.
The Black Angel launched upward from below, its blade driving precisely into the seam between Sword Dancer's armor plates, carving into the few vulnerable points left exposed. Cracks spread violently across the armor until they reached the visor itself.
Cold air rushed through the fractured mask.
Sword Dancer swept its massive blade sideways, attempting to force the Black Angel back before retreating into a corner, pressing its back against the dead angle to eliminate any opening behind it.
Night Owl gasped for breath.
His mind still struggled to process what had happened.
Only when warm blood streamed into his eyes, dyeing his vision crimson, did he truly understand.
The slash had left a deep dent across the visor.
Had it penetrated only a little farther, the injury would have been far worse.
His nerves tightened instantly.
The Black Angel's strength had risen just as dramatically as its speed. Though the attack had failed to cleave through the armor itself, it possessed more than enough force to slice apart the flesh beneath.
Yet...
It did not continue the assault.
Just as before.
Every time the Black Angel landed a meaningful strike, it would simply stop, standing calmly where Sword Dancer could clearly see it.
Silent.
Motionless.
There was something almost regal about the gesture.
The pride—
and mercy—
of something that viewed itself as a superior being.
Even though its own body was riddled with wounds.
Whether it was the corruption or something else entirely, Night Owl could not tell.
But once he recognized the pattern, anger began to burn beneath his composure.
He forced himself to suppress it.
Only reason could triumph over horrors such as these.
Sword Dancer raised its blade once more.
At that very moment, rails suspended high above the chamber carried new equipment into position.
The experiment had already ceased to be an experiment.
It had become a suppression operation.
Communications had long since been severed by corruption, yet Night Owl understood exactly what needed to be done.
Without the slightest hesitation, the instant the massive steel container crashed onto the floor, Sword Dancer abandoned its defensive posture and charged.
He no longer cared what the berserk Black Angel might do.
He knew only one thing.
The newly delivered weapon was his only chance of victory.
The third-generation Divine Armor differed fundamentally from the first.
A first-generation unit drew its primary power from demonic flesh itself. Even if its steam engine failed completely, that monstrous body could continue fighting for a long time.
Sword Dancer possessed no such luxury.
Its every movement depended upon the steam engine.
The moment its energy reserves ran dry...
it would become nothing more than a steel corpse.
Continuous high-intensity combat, combined with the earlier trials, meant Sword Dancer had never begun this battle with a full reserve of power. Every disadvantage compounded another.
Its endurance was far inferior to the Black Angel's.
Everything had to end before the steam engine stopped.
The steel container slammed heavily against the floor.
Its four sides burst open, revealing a towering weapons rack hidden within.
Rows of Divine Armor weaponry gleamed beneath the harsh lights.
At the same instant, hoping to restrict the Black Angel's movements, Sword Dancer hurled away its massive sword.
The heavy blade tore through the air.
Its speed, however, was nowhere near enough.
The Black Angel merely tilted its body slightly, avoiding the projectile with effortless grace—a movement Sword Dancer could never hope to imitate.
The eerie laughter continued, as though delighting in tormenting its prey.
Fresh flesh spread across the wound in its chest, slowly sealing the injury.
It enveloped the steam engine entirely.
Beneath the living tissue, a faint radiance pulsed...
like a heart burning inside its body.
Sword Dancer lacked agility by design.
To squeeze every ounce of speed from the machine, Night Owl stripped every movement down to its bare essentials, wasting not a single motion.
The instant it reached the weapons rack, it attacked.
A Divine Armor electro-lance several meters long was lifted into firing position—
and unleashed directly at the Black Angel.
Only then did the Black Angel make its move.
It seemed almost disdainful of slaughtering prey too helpless to resist, waiting until the Sword Dancer had armed itself before launching the attack.
Long, slender steel spikes streaked through the air, crackling with arcs of electricity. They were suppression weapons Nicola had specially designed after the Black Angel's previous rampage. Each spike was built to punch through mechanical structures, while the current coursing through it would temporarily paralyze flesh, increasing the chance that the following volleys would find their mark.
Brilliant white lightning coiled around the flying steel like thunder-spears hurled by the gods themselves.
Yet against the Black Angel's impossible agility, they were still too slow.
Its movements were erratic, almost supernatural. With effortless grace it slipped past the first spike, allowing it to bury itself in the metal floor behind it. Even so, the spreading current raced across the conductive steel beneath its feet, brushing against its body.
Its motion faltered—only for an instant.
That heartbeat was enough.
More steel spikes rained down.
Night Owl steadied his breathing, forcing himself to remain calm. Every shot was deliberate, every burst carefully measured. Ammunition was limited, and every spike had to drive the Black Angel closer to the trap he was weaving.
The weapon rack held little: an electric spike launcher and a single Heatblade.
Those were the only functional weapons Merlin could deploy on such short notice. More reinforcements and equipment were already on the way—but given the Sword Dancer's endurance, there was every chance it would never survive long enough to see them arrive.
One by one, the descending steel spears narrowed the Black Angel's escape.
This was the difference between man and beast.
Mortals possessed fragile bodies, yet they forged tools and devised strategies capable of bringing down creatures infinitely stronger than themselves.
Night Owl drew another deep breath.
He could do this.
As long as he maintained the pressure, the electric shocks would continue disrupting the Black Angel's movements. The accuracy of the steel spikes would steadily improve until the monster was finally pinned beneath their weight...
Then—
A deafening crash shattered every thought in his mind.
And he saw it.
The Black Angel... dancing.
The entire workshop had been built as a vast vertical shaft, its walls curving inward with the gentle arc of an elongated cylinder.
Those slanted walls became its footholds.
It performed a maneuver no Divine Armor should have been capable of.
Leaping high into the air, its razor-edged iron feathers slashed across the Sword Dancer's exterior plating. They could not slice cleanly through the armor itself—but they didn't need to.
They merely carved tiny punctures into the steel.
Tiny footholds.
Enough for it to climb.
"Merlin! Pull back!"
Nicola roared.
The Black Angel had already proven it could scale upward.
Perhaps...
That had been its objective from the very beginning.
"No."
Merlin's voice remained steady.
"Not yet."
He stood upon the elevated platform, eyes never leaving the Black Angel.
Its iron feathers shrieked through the air like a train racing toward destruction, vibrating so violently they seemed ready to tear themselves apart.
The Sword Dancer answered with increasingly frantic gunfire.
Its sudden change of direction had already been alarming enough.
But what came next was beyond belief.
The Black Angel spread its wings.
Though impossibly heavy, it somehow glided through the air with eerie elegance.
It drifted overhead until its immense black silhouette swallowed the light.
With the blazing vault behind its back, the Sword Dancer could see nothing except darkness.
"What... is happening..."
Even Night Owl no longer understood.
He had assumed the berserk Black Angel intended to attack Merlin above.
Instead...
It abandoned that assault altogether and dove toward him.
Or perhaps...
That had always been its true intention.
There was no longer time to think.
The black shadow arrived in an instant.
Crimson blood mist exploded into the air, mingling with showers of blazing sparks.
At that moment the Black Angel folded its wings.
Like the Sword of Damocles falling from the heavens, countless blades crashed downward in one overwhelming strike. Every ounce of strength was poured into the attack.
Blood burst from the seams of the Sword Dancer's armor.
Harnessing the momentum of its descent, this became the Black Angel's ultimate blow.
Cold steel stretched into lines of death.
The impossible friction heated every blade until they glowed crimson.
The armor they tore apart glowed the same burning red.
No one knew how many iron feathers shattered in the collision.
The arm delivering the strike twisted grotesquely, bent as though every bone within it had snapped, while torrents of blood poured from the mangled limb.
In the instant between life and death, time itself seemed to slow.
Night Owl could see every droplet of blood suspended in the air...
Every fragment of shattered steel...
Every spark drifting through the darkness...
And the nightmare that stood only inches away.
The Black Angel's twisted arm writhed.
New flesh erupted around the broken limb.
Amid horrifying sounds of muscle grinding against fractured bone—and perhaps twisted metal—the grotesque mass forcibly dragged everything back into place.
Madness spilled from it without restraint.
This...
This was the Black Angel's insanity.
Its target had always been the Sword Dancer.
Night Owl jerked up the electric spike launcher.
At this distance, missing was nearly impossible.
But the Black Angel was faster.
An iron feather flashed.
The weapon split cleanly in two.
Then came an even more merciless storm of attacks.
With the chest armor gone, the Sword Dancer could only raise one arm to shield the cockpit while its other hand gripped the Heatblade.
It never had the chance to ignite the weapon.
A precise strike smashed into its wrist.
Every inch of its body was covered in heavy armor.
Even after unleashing everything it possessed, the Black Angel had managed to destroy only a single section.
But to preserve mobility, the wrist wore only ordinary plating.
The blow twisted it out of alignment.
The sword slipped free.
The Black Angel seized it.
Without hesitation, it drove the blade diagonally into the gap between the armor plates.
Every movement flowed seamlessly into the next.
As though rehearsed countless times.
And it still wasn't over.
The Black Angel pulled.
The frontal armor had been built to withstand unimaginable force.
But armor remained nothing more than pieces fastened onto a frame.
Once the structure was compromised...
It could be torn apart.
Steel screamed.
The Black Angel ripped plate after plate from the Sword Dancer's body.
No matter how desperately it struggled, resistance was meaningless.
Night Owl could only watch as the monster stripped the Divine Armor apart layer by layer.
The Sword Dancer wrapped both arms around its chest with every remaining ounce of strength, desperately protecting the cockpit.
It had already lost.
The moment the Black Angel descended from the sky...
The moment it breached the first layer of armor—
the final layer capable of keeping it out—
the outcome had already been decided.
Interlocked armor plates were nearly impregnable.
But once a single breach appeared...
Everything unraveled.
Night Owl's thoughts dissolved into emptiness.
Everything he did now served only one purpose—
to delay death by a few meaningless moments.
Black feathers became ravenous claws.
They carved blinding arcs through the air before crashing against the Sword Dancer like a torrential storm.
Metal shrieked endlessly.
The wounds widened again and again beneath that relentless assault until tangled cables and intricate machinery spilled naked into the open.
The Black Angel smiled.
Or perhaps...
Night Owl only imagined it.
For an instant he thought he saw it open its mouth.
Its diseased, twisted body carried out a slow execution upon the steel giant.
At last, the terror of death swallowed what remained of his reason.
Night Owl slammed every button he could reach.
He yanked every control lever.
He strained with every muscle in his body.
The Sword Dancer barely answered.
A razor-sharp steel feather pierced deep into the cockpit.
It sliced across his waist.
When it withdrew, blood mixed with engine oil as shattered gears and severed cables were ripped from the Divine Armor's body like torn organs.
The external armor no longer served any purpose.
The monster's claws peeled it away with terrifying ease.
The once-massive Sword Dancer grew thinner...
Smaller...
Like a fallen colossus surrounded by starving wolves.
It had lost every trace of strength.
All it could do was watch helplessly as the creature fed upon it until nothing remained.
Armor.
Machinery.
Cables.
An entire arm.
The Black Angel tore them away with savage brutality.
Half its body disappeared with them.
Through the ruined shell, Night Owl himself became visible.
Like a ghoul savoring a corpse that still breathed, the Black Angel lingered over its prey, tormenting the living knight until it finally ripped out the nearly motionless steam engine and casually flung it aside like a discarded piece of scrap.
Without its power source...
The Sword Dancer died.
Night Owl remained trapped inside its iron tomb.
He no longer possessed enough clarity to think.
Through the cracked remains of his visor, he could only stare upward at the demon crouching upon the corpse of his Divine Armor.
Then it began to rain.
Red rain.
Crimson mist drifted with it, slowly seeping into the steel grave and enveloping him.
Only now did Night Owl truly understand the gulf separating two generations of Divine Armor.
The fully armed Sword Dancer had already approached the absolute limits of what a third-generation Divine Armor could achieve.
But a first-generation Divine Armor...
It seemed to possess no limits at all.
Or perhaps, when it finally reached them...
The sight was one the Purification Bureau itself never wished to witness.
A razor-edged iron feather slowly descended.
Another inch, and it would effortlessly end Night Owl's life.
He stared blankly at the approaching blade.
Then—
It stopped.
One after another, the silver rivets embedded throughout the restraint apparatus bulged outward before slowly retracting into place.
As though its soul had suddenly vanished, the Black Angel froze where it stood like an ancient statue, the murderous frenzy draining from its body.
Flesh pulled against steel.
Cracks spread across its body one after another, beginning at the chest and running down toward the abdomen, opening like the jaws of some enormous beast.
The Geiger readings began to fall.
The crimson warning lights faded...
Replaced by a gentle emerald glow.
A man slowly climbed out from that nest of flesh.
Sticky strands of living tissue still clung stubbornly to him, but he tore them away with brute force.
Each strand he ripped free brought with it an indescribable sensation of separation, as though some unseen limb had been stripped from his own body.
Blood poured from the cockpit.
Warm drops landed softly upon Night Owl's face.
His gray-blue eyes were astonishingly clear.
Lloyd glanced at Night Owl, then at the Divine Armor that had been reduced to nothing more than twisted scrap.
He pondered the scene for a long moment before finally asking,
"...So... do you think you can climb out on your own?"