The icy wind of Old Dunling lashed against Lloyd's face. Perhaps the city's exhaust cycle had begun, for the fog thickened across the streets, surging and rolling like a restless tide. Countless shadowy figures emerged from within the haze before breaking through it one after another, hurrying down the roads with urgent, purposeful strides.
The instant Herkri finished speaking, every scattered clue in Lloyd's mind snapped into place. Cause and consequence. Every arrival. Every hidden motive. The tangled threads that had eluded him suddenly formed a complete picture.
He knew exactly what had happened in the North.
It was there that he had slain Lawrence, setting in motion the search for the Apocalypse. Naturally, the object had drawn far more than the Purge Bureau and the Gospel Church. The Exiles had also been lured by its promise.
Viewed from that angle, everything made perfect sense.
Shermans had never come to Old Dunling to flee.
He had come in search of the Apocalypse—the one opportunity that might allow his people to reclaim everything they had lost.
At that moment, Lloyd no longer cared about hunting Shermans down.
What mattered was warning the Purge Bureau.
The struggle over the Apocalypse did not belong solely to the forces already standing in the open. There were others, lurking patiently beneath the city's shadows.
His pace quickened.
He had to deliver the news to Arthur as quickly as possible.
Whether he trusted them or not was another matter entirely. In affairs like this, even Lloyd needed the immense machine that was the Purge Bureau.
Perhaps this was simply his fate.
It felt as though every day of his life was spent moving—from one destination to another, forever chasing the next crisis.
From beginning to end, Arthur had never revealed the Bureau's true headquarters. Lloyd had never paid much attention to that before, but under the current circumstances, he understood why.
Arthur had been guarding against him all along.
A demon hunter possessed terrifying capabilities. If someone like Lloyd ever discovered the Bureau's core stronghold, infiltrating it and wiping out everyone inside would be an alarmingly simple task.
Still, for the sake of their cooperation, Arthur had made certain concessions.
He had given Lloyd a designated contact point.
Although Lloyd preferred to call it what it really resembled—
an employee dormitory.
Bursting into the apartment building, he barely slowed his stride. The gatekeeper recognized him immediately and, following security protocol, opened the way without hesitation.
Relying on memory, Lloyd reached the correct room, drove his boot into the door, and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Joy!"
The crisp clatter of rifles being cocked answered him.
Several people instantly dove behind the sofa, using it as cover while raising their firearms toward the doorway. Fingers tightened around their triggers.
Only at the last possible second did they recognize the face standing there.
"Mr. Holmes?"
A few of them immediately lowered their guns in shock. Others let out long, lingering breaths, their expressions a mixture of lingering fear and helpless resentment.
"...Could you try knocking next time?"
These agents were permanently stationed here. The building itself was merely one of dozens of hidden Bureau safe houses scattered throughout Old Dunling.
Its disguise was flawless.
From the outside, it appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary apartment block.
Should some unfortunate burglar ever attempt to break in, however, chances were he would never even make it past the doorman downstairs.
Even so, Lloyd still thought of the place less as a safe house and more as staff housing.
Unless Joy had been assigned elsewhere, this was usually where he could be found.
The low hum of machinery echoed through the living room.
A massive steel column rose straight through its center, polished until its metal casing gleamed beneath the lights. Between the interlocking plates, gears rotated in endless succession while intricate mechanisms worked tirelessly beneath. Indicator lamps blinked rhythmically.
As Lloyd approached, the machine suddenly emitted a shrill warning tone.
It was an enormous Geiger counter.
Maintaining it and collecting its readings constituted one of the safe house's primary responsibilities. Desks crowded around its base, buried beneath stacks of reports, charts, and handwritten records.
Beyond the living room lay Joy's bedroom.
Many people would probably envy him.
From waking up to arriving at work required no more than a few steps.
That was precisely why Lloyd insisted on calling this place an employee dormitory.
For reasons unknown, Joy's relationship with his family seemed strained. Aside from returning home during the Feast of Divine Birth, he almost always lived here—sleeping where he worked, as though dedication to duty had become second nature.
Red Falcon had once lived in a similar dormitory.
These days, however, his workload had exploded. He spent every waking hour racing across Old Dunling, too busy to stay in one place for long.
"Where's Joy?"
The personnel stationed here were far removed from the Bureau's inner workings.
Lloyd needed someone who actually had access to sensitive information.
"He went out."
"Went out?" Lloyd frowned. "Emergency assignment?"
"Probably not." Another agent scratched his head. "Strictly speaking... today's his day off."
Since Lloyd was regarded as an ally—and technically someone above them in the chain of command—they answered without reservation.
"...A day off?"
Lloyd stared blankly.
"At a time like this?"
Hidden beneath Old Dunling's surface, chaos was already threatening to boil over.
In his imagination, everyone in the Bureau ought to have been surviving on dark circles, exhaustion, and the constant risk of collapsing dead at their desks.
Yet somehow...
they still had vacations?
He seriously wondered whether Joy had simply skipped work.
"...One day of rest isn't unreasonable."
The agents clearly failed to understand Lloyd's urgency.
The Purge Bureau maintained rigid information classifications. More often than not, personnel at the outermost layers of an operation had no idea what they were actually participating in.
It was an effective method for preventing corruption from spreading.
Just like this safe house.
These people knew only that they were responsible for recording the Geiger counter's readings.
Everything truly important remained beyond their clearance.
"Where did he go?"
Lloyd pressed again.
There it was.
The Bureau's most infuriating trait had resurfaced.
Without his contact, his only remaining option would be returning to the Lower District to find Shrike.
"...That... might involve his personal privacy."
Several agents exchanged uneasy glances.
"Huh?"
Lloyd blinked.
He could not imagine what kind of vacation involved personal privacy.
"...What? Is he on a date?"
…
"Honestly... it's still something that's difficult to talk about. I thought I'd hidden it well."
The middle-aged man laughed awkwardly.
"...Maybe not. Actually, I hid it terribly. Every time I came here, my friends assumed I was going on a date."
The room was warm and inviting.
People had gathered in a loose circle, sitting on mismatched chairs and worn sofas.
Joy sat quietly among them.
His gaze rested on the speaker—a father of two whose weathered face was lined with wrinkles. Even now, speaking of his past still brought an embarrassed smile to his lips.
The group was a strange mixture of ages, professions, and backgrounds.
Men and women.
Young and old.
Ordinarily, none of them would ever have crossed paths.
Yet here they sat together.
The man continued speaking about his recent life, the progress he had made, and the lessons he had learned.
Every so often, applause broke out around the room.
Encouragement.
Support.
Recognition.
"To be honest..."
Sig lowered his voice, overcoming his usual timidity.
"I never expected to see you here."
Joy turned toward him with mild surprise.
"I could say the same. How long have you been coming?"
He remembered Sig.
Lloyd's roommate.
They had met only a handful of times, but being the roommate of the infamous Lloyd Holmes made someone difficult to forget.
From Joy's perspective, anyone capable of living peacefully with Lloyd probably wasn't entirely normal.
"It's been a while," Sig replied. "I've just never run into you before. Do you rarely attend? Or is this your first meeting?"
Perhaps because they were both here for the same reason, Sig found it easier to speak with him.
"I've actually been coming for years," Joy answered softly.
"My doctor recommended it back then. He thought I needed to talk to more people."
"My condition improved later, and work became overwhelming, so I only come about once a month now."
"Maybe we just kept missing each other."
As he finished speaking, the man yielded his seat to a woman.
She stepped into the center of the circle with tears already streaming down her cheeks.
Between sobs, she spoke of her ruined life.
Of the hallucinogens that had destroyed it.
Of the people in this room who had become the family she thought she'd lost.
Here, they supported one another.
Here, they struggled forward together.
Here, they fought to leave those poisons behind.
The more she spoke, the more emotional she became.
Her flushed face suggested that, given another minute, she might enthusiastically drag everyone present into becoming sworn siblings on the spot.
Yet no one laughed.
Many in the room were much like her.
Having only recently escaped addiction, their minds had yet to settle completely.
Whenever joy overwhelmed them, they erupted into thunderous applause and piercing whistles without restraint.
Joy and Sig, however, had remained sober for years.
Among the crowd, their composure made them stand out immediately.
This was a support group for recovering hallucinogen addicts.
Everyone here had once been destroyed by those drugs.
Yet instead of surrendering to despair, they had chosen to fight—to quit, to rebuild, and to continue living.
Groups like this existed all across Old Dunling.
For many, addiction remained a source of unbearable shame.
Unable to speak openly with family or friends, they gathered instead among those who understood.
People who had survived the same darkness.
"You struggled with hallucinogens too?"
Sig asked cautiously.
He still had no idea what Joy actually did for a living.
Judging from Lloyd's connections, he had always assumed Joy belonged to the violent underworld of the Lower District.
Someone like that ought to have lived surrounded by drugs.
Why quit them?
Joy nodded.
"...It's a long story."
"A complicated one."
"I haven't touched them for years now—except when work absolutely requires it."
"But there are worries you simply can't tell ordinary people."
"So... I come here."
"...To find people like me."
People like Sig.
People who had been broken by the very same poison.
Human beings were peculiar creatures.
They instinctively sought others who shared their scars.
If you were the only person standing in a crowd without trousers, shame would crush you.
But if everyone else had lost theirs as well...
You might even whistle proudly.
Absurd as that sounded, Joy understood the feeling completely.
He rarely spoke about his past.
Even Red Falcon knew only fragments of it.
Only here could he lay everything on the table without fear of judgment.
Perhaps this, too, was simply another form of speaking differently to different audiences.
"What about you?"
Joy asked.
"My case was practically an occupational injury."
"So why did you start using them?"
Sig froze for a moment.
Then he smiled bitterly.
"...Just like everyone else."
His eyes drifted around the room.
People were laughing.
Cheering.
Smiling.
Yet beneath every expression lingered the same quiet numbness.
"It always starts with curiosity."
"Or maybe with, 'I'll just try it once.'"
"That's how it happens."
"So many people believe they're different. They trust their own self-control."
"'Just once,' they tell themselves."
"'After that, never again.'"
"But every step only drags them deeper into the swamp."
"The harder they struggle..."
"...the deeper they sink."
"Until they're no longer able to separate themselves from the filth."
Regret weighed heavily in every word.
"I suppose I was lucky."
"I woke up before it was too late."
Joy nodded.
He understood all too well.
Even as a senior knight of the Purge Bureau, his mind strengthened far beyond that of ordinary people, he had nearly lost himself within those intoxicating illusions.
"Because of my work..."
"I can't explain everything."
"But it was just as you said."
"I wasn't any different from anyone else here."
"I believed I was above it."
"And I fell into the mire."
Though many years had passed, the memory remained a constant warning.
The simple fact that he still returned here from time to time proved as much.
"...Your work?"
Sig hesitated.
"So... do you work with Lloyd?"
Perhaps because they shared the same burden, Sig no longer regarded Joy with suspicion.
Instead, he relaxed, chatting with him naturally.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere around them grew increasingly lively.
Several recovering addicts had embraced one another, sobbing openly while the rest of the room erupted into cheers and applause.
"...More or less."
Joy wasn't entirely sure how Lloyd had entered the conversation.
The two continued listening as confessions blended with laughter around them, exchanging quiet words between each speaker.
"...Actually..."
Sig suddenly murmured.
"I envy Lloyd."
Joy looked at him.
"...Do you really know him?"
"Know him?"
Joy couldn't help smiling wryly.
"I don't think anyone truly does."
Sig nodded.
"You've probably noticed..."
"I'm... not very outgoing."
"I've lived with Lloyd for so long."
"But the truth is..."
"I don't understand him at all."
"He's like a mystery."
Joy gave a helpless chuckle.
"...Trust me."
"He's no saint."
"The less you know about him, the better."
"I know."
Sig laughed quietly.
"You probably don't know this..."
"Sometimes he comes home covered in blood."
"So much blood that any normal person would've died several times over."
"But he acts as though nothing happened."
"He's almost... cheerful."
"...Of course."
"It's never his blood."
Without realizing it, Sig was speaking far more openly than usual.
Even his tone had changed.
"But people are strange, aren't they?"
Joy tilted his head.
"...What do you mean?"
"It's just like when we first touched hallucinogens."
"We knew they were filthy."
"We knew they were dangerous."
"...Yet we still reached for them."
"It's like standing on the edge of a skyscraper."
"You know the closer you move toward the ledge, the greater the chance you'll fall."
"But you still can't help yourself."
"You lean forward."
"You look down."
"You want to witness the grandeur beneath your feet."
He smiled faintly.
"That's humanity's flaw."
"It's more than curiosity."
"...It's the instinct to chase danger."