The Hall of Stasis remained as silent and desolate as ever. Ancient dust drifted down from the darkness overhead, settling evenly into every corner, as though this were a world that had long since died. Apart from the New Pope, there was no one to be seen. And yet, if one listened carefully, faint breaths and the subtle beating of hearts could still be heard within the silence, as though unseen lives lurked somewhere beyond the reach of sight.
Beneath the steel mask, a pair of cold eyes stared at the words written across the paper.
After days of gathering records, reviewing accounts of the past, and interrogating those who had once been involved… after countless acts of violence, the New Pope had finally pieced together what he needed. It was not the complete truth, but it was a highly credible conjecture. And now, he needed someone to confirm it.
With that thought, crimson flame rose from his hand, consuming the paper until nothing remained. The blackened ashes drifted aimlessly through the air, only to be seized by some inexplicable force. They were pulled into an invisible vortex and swept into the enormous hollow before him.
Seni Lothair stared coldly at the thing before him.
A black well.
It was darkness in its purest form. The depths below seemed to descend into an endless abyss, so profound that even light itself was swallowed the instant it entered.
The Well of Ascension.
Back when the alchemists still walked the world, this place had served as an altar for rituals. Through methods the New Pope himself did not fully understand, they had extracted the mysterious Blood of Secrets from this well.
If the Hall of Stasis was the source of the Demon Hunters, then this was the source of the Blood of Secrets.
Though it had been abandoned for countless years, standing at the edge of the Well of Ascension, the New Pope could still smell the thick, rancid stench rising from the darkness below. It was as though countless corpses had been piled up somewhere in those depths.
"Strip away the impurities and make the substance purer. The beautiful rises upward, while the filthy falls below…"
The New Pope murmured softly.
It was the very essence of the alchemical concept known as Ascension.
It was the miracle every alchemist had pursued. They believed that by repeatedly refining and ascending a substance, they could eventually obtain its "soul." And when countless such "souls" were gathered together, they could crystallize into something known as a "Miracle."
"The Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Immortality…"
The New Pope recalled the names of those legendary miracles. All of them were products of alchemical ascension. Yet the substance used in the process determined the nature of the resulting miracle. When the source was a demon, for instance, the miracle born from its ascension was known as the Miracle of the Blood of Secrets.
The Well of Ascension was a place built for large-scale alchemical ascension. The beautiful was drawn upward from it, while the filthy sank into the black abyss below. The Gospel Church had refined the Blood of Secrets here for nearly a thousand years, and during that time, an immeasurable amount of refuse had been discarded into the depths.
Yet after all those centuries, the well had still not been filled.
It was said to be a bottomless pit. Anyone unfortunate enough to fall into it would simply starve to death during the descent, never reaching the bottom.
But that was only a legend.
The New Pope knew what truly lay below.
As he waited, the sound of machinery turning finally broke the silence. Ancient mechanisms stirred once more, sending clouds of dust into the air. Amid the shrill grinding of rusted metal, a series of protrusions slowly extended from the inner wall of the well, forming something resembling stairs. They spiraled downward, disappearing into the darkness far below, with no end in sight.
The New Pope did not linger.
He lifted his bright lantern and stepped onto the ancient staircase, descending into the darkness.
He did not know how long he had been walking.
Once he had completely entered the darkness, it felt as though all his senses had been stripped away. He could no longer tell how much time had passed. Perhaps only a few minutes. Perhaps ten. Perhaps several hours.
Eventually, he stopped and looked upward.
He had already descended far too deep.
The point of light above had become so faint that it was almost impossible to see. Aside from the lantern in his hand, there was nothing but absolute darkness surrounding him. And that darkness seemed almost alive. It writhed slowly around him, and no matter how brightly the candle burned, its light could illuminate no more than three steps ahead.
The New Pope proceeded with caution.
There were no railings. After the staircase had been built, no one had ever maintained it. Perhaps its original builders had never imagined that anyone would actually attempt to reach this place.
Even these stairs had been constructed at some later point in history. Every step beneath his feet was nearly a thousand years old. Why the people of that distant age had gone to such lengths to build a path into the depths of the well was a purpose that had long since vanished into the passage of time.
The New Pope stopped from time to time, reaching out to wipe the dust from the walls. Once the compacted layer of dust was cleared away, the lantern revealed a strange material beneath it—a silvery metal that seemed to glow faintly in the darkness.
An ordinary person might not have recognized it.
But the New Pope knew exactly what it was.
Holy Silver.
The lantern continued to cast its light across the walls, revealing bizarre symbols and intricate patterns engraved into the surface of the Holy Silver. They were recognized as alchemical symbols. Similar markings could be found around the visible portion of the well above, woven together as though they formed a colossal mural.
But what truly inspired terror lay even deeper.
The New Pope had descended at least several hundred meters. Along the way, he had continued to stop at regular intervals and examine the walls.
They were solid.
The entire structure had been cast from pure Holy Silver.
The sheer quantity was beyond imagination. Compared to the Holy Silver currently stored by the Church, the amount contained within the Well of Ascension was like a lake compared to an ocean.
And from everything the New Pope had observed, there were no seams anywhere along the walls.
It was as though, apart from the stairs extending outward, the entire structure had been formed as one seamless whole.
This was architecture far beyond the limits of human technology.
The New Pope could not imagine who had built such a thing.
Indeed, it was entirely possible that the well had existed naturally, and humanity had merely altered what they found.
He continued downward.
Then, an uncomfortable sensation began to rise within his heart.
The endless darkness was testing his mind. Countless negative emotions seemed to breed within the shadows, interfering with his thoughts little by little, until strange whimpering finally drifted up from the darkness below.
Something was making a low, guttural sound somewhere beneath him.
Then came another.
And another.
They had smelled the presence of the living.
One after another, creatures stirred from their long slumber, awakening to the scent of blood and hunger, uttering desperate, bloodthirsty pleas.
The New Pope could hear them.
It was like an unholy symphony.
Ruined organs and maggots squirmed and scraped against one another. Carrion-eating creatures sucked greedily at blood.
At last, the staircase reached its end.
There were no more steps.
On the final one lay a mottled chain stained dark with blood.
The New Pope grasped the chain with one hand.
Then he looked down.
There was nothing below but a mass of darkness that even the lantern could not illuminate.
An unknown realm that no one knew existed.
"Every time I come here, it's a test…"
The New Pope could not help but whisper.
Even he hesitated at that moment.
Then, after gathering his courage, he stepped into the darkness.
The fall was not long.
Only a brief instant.
The drop was perhaps three or four meters at most.
Yet that tiny distance was enough to make the New Pope feel fear.
Between the worlds of life and death lay a gray overlap—the boundary between the two. This long descent had been a journey along the very edge of hell.
And with that single leap, crossing those few short meters, the New Pope entered Hell.
The same invisible darkness surrounded him.
The air was thick with the stench of blood and decay, while the temperature was bitterly cold, like the polar wastes of the far north. Every breath condensed into a crystalline mist before his face.
The ground beneath his feet was soft and viscous.
Then he stepped into what felt like a pool of water.
Despite the freezing temperature, the liquid had not frozen.
Only when the lantern illuminated it did he realize what it truly was.
Blood.
Crimson blood stretched across his entire field of vision, flowing toward the endless darkness. It was as though thousands upon thousands of people had died here, and their blood had never dried.
The New Pope seemed unsurprised by any of this.
He had been here before.
He raised his voice.
"I'm here!"
No one answered.
Instead, the strange, fragmented noises within the darkness grew denser.
The New Pope understood.
He was simply sleeping too deeply.
So deeply that waking him had become difficult.
A blinding white light flared beneath the steel mask.
The New Pope drew the Nail Sword from his waist and gently cut open his own wrist.
Blood flowed freely into the pool beneath his feet.
As the Blood of Secrets poured forth, Purifying Flame ignited around him.
The pale fire illuminated this filthy world.
Repulsive organs and chunks of flesh floated within the crimson blood. Some still gave off faint warmth, twitching slowly as though life yet lingered within them.
And there was far more.
Twisted and deformed bodies.
Severed limbs.
Skulls.
And farther away, buried within the vague darkness, the outlines of things far larger could just barely be distinguished.
They were so enormous that even the flames could not illuminate them completely.
This was the bottom of the Well of Ascension.
The Gospel Church had no proper name for this place.
Perhaps it had once possessed one.
Perhaps someone had deliberately erased it from history.
The beautiful rose upward.
The filthy fell below.
Here, all the accumulated filth of nearly a thousand years of the Gospel Church had gathered. These things had been forgotten here, abandoned to the darkness.
Yet after all this time, they had still not truly died.
The arrival of a living being awakened more and more of the strange creatures.
Something moved beneath the blood.
Slowly, they crawled upward.
One vaguely humanoid shape after another emerged from the crimson mire.
They appeared to be human.
They tried to stand, but the flesh of their bodies had already fused with the ground.
No.
That was not the ground.
It was flesh as well.
The entire bottom of the well seemed to have been filled by some gigantic mass of living flesh, and the place where the New Pope stood was more like a section of its digestive tract.
They struggled desperately.
Though they had long since died, their flesh remained unnaturally alive.
Countless hands waved through the darkness like the participants of some abhorrent ritual.
The New Pope paid them no attention.
He continued forward.
Within the darkness, he was the only source of light.
Countless eyes watched him.
Perhaps the moment the flames went out, those monstrous things would swarm him.
Endless voices echoed through the abyss.
The New Pope could not understand the strange whimpering with his ears, yet somehow, he understood their meaning.
[A living one… A living one…]
[Fresh blood… Fresh flesh…]
[How long has it been? How long since we last fed…]
[Light! Light!]
[Too bright… Too beautiful…]
The New Pope drew a deep breath.
The corrosive influence of the bottom of the well had already reached a level that was almost unbearable. Perhaps in the next moment, he would lose his sanity.
Yet he gritted his teeth and endured.
His hand tightened around the chain.
In this darkness that could not be illuminated, it was his only proof that a path back to the surface still existed.
"You've come…"
A voice suddenly emerged from the darkness ahead.
A real human voice.
The New Pope knew exactly who it belonged to.
He immediately strode forward.
The wound on his wrist continued to bleed. The Blood of Secrets ignited into Purifying Flame, burning away the darkness inch by inch.
The shadows were driven back.
And the figure within them was finally revealed.
It could barely be called a human being.
The flesh of his upper body had withered almost completely. His skin was cracked like ancient bark, stretched tightly over his bones. His arms were thin as branches. After so many years of flesh wasting away, his bones had gradually petrified and fused together.
The New Pope was not surprised to see what he had become.
He stared at that horrifying head.
It looked like a gaunt skull covered by a thin layer of human skin. The eye sockets had sunk deeply into the skull, revealing nothing but darkness within.
"How have you been all these years?"
The New Pope spoke as casually as though addressing an old friend.
The man answered with equal calm.
"How do you think? I can't die, and I can't truly live…"
He seemed to laugh.
The sound was hoarse and broken, dragged from somewhere deep within his ruined body.
"That makes me very happy."
The New Pope sounded genuinely pleased.
He raised his hand and let his blood fall onto the ground.
Fresh blood.
Powerful blood.
The tranquility shattered instantly.
The man dropped to his knees and greedily lapped up the New Pope's blood, as though he were consuming some divine delicacy.
The New Pope shook his head at the pathetic sight, then stopped the bleeding and removed his mask.
"To be honest, you're the only one I can face without reservation. The only one before whom I can take off this mask."
He lit a cigarette.
Its tiny flame illuminated the face that had remained hidden behind the mask.
It was a face that only a demon from a nightmare could possess.
The flesh around his nose and lips had completely withered and shriveled. Beneath that dead exterior, however, hideous crimson flesh slowly writhed. His gums and teeth were completely exposed.
And the same grotesque union of life and death continued downward along his neck, spreading all the way to his chest.
Within that rotting wood-like flesh, a heart beat like a war drum.
Yet amidst all that abomination, a pair of clear eyes were embedded within the twisted flesh.
Faint white light shimmered within them.
There was no discernible emotion.
The cigarette was soon finished.
The blood on the ground had already been licked clean.
The two men remained locked in an eerie silence.
At last, the other man raised his head and looked at that hateful face.
"What is it you want?"
"Information. Information about Lloyd de Medici."
The New Pope dropped the cigarette butt and looked down at him.
"He's dead, isn't he?" the man said. "What information could a dead man possibly have?"
"But what if he isn't dead, Your Holiness?" the New Pope replied.
The moment he heard the words "Your Holiness," the man's body suddenly froze.
Then it began to tremble violently.
The submissiveness from moments before vanished completely.
He seemed to go mad.
He laughed and wept at the same time, roaring from within his shriveled body.
"How dare you!"
The Nail Sword was his answer.
The New Pope drove the blade down through the man's withered chest, then pinned the sword into the ground beneath him, forcing him to bow before the New Pope.
"How pathetic…"
The New Pope laughed as he spoke.
He enjoyed this kind of torment.
After living at the bottom of the well for so many years, physical pain could no longer reach this man.
But humiliation of the spirit could still make him angry.
And that was good.
"I'm in a hurry. So tell me—what exactly is Lloyd de Medici trying to do?"
The New Pope stared at the man who had once been the Pope.
The old Pope.
The man who had done nothing on the Night of Holy Descent.
Under Seni Lothair's questioning, the former Pope laughed and wept like a madman.
"I don't know…"
The old Pope muttered to himself.
No matter how Seni Lothair twisted the sword, no matter how much pain the blade inflicted upon him, the man merely repeated the same words.
"I don't know."
Just as he had done many years ago, when Seni Lothair had questioned him.
Again and again, he repeated the same sentence.
"I don't know."