Carrying the pitch-black case on his back, Lloyd did not return home until after sunset. Along the way, mist rose from the streets, and multicolored lights passed through countless beads of moisture, refracting into a hallucinatory glow that made the mind drift.
After exchanging a brief greeting with Madam Vanlud, Lloyd retreated to his room and locked the door behind him.
He took out the only piece of information he had obtained that night in the underground palace: a ledger. One of the main reasons Lloyd had saved Eve back then was precisely because of this book. It had left the catacombs together with Eve in that small boat, and for that reason it had been preserved intact—every line of ink still sharp and legible.
Human memory is unreliable. No matter how fiercely you try to remember something, you may still forget it in the end—and worse, you might never even realize that the forgetting has occurred.
That is why any organization, no matter what it is, needs a ledger: a detailed record of expenses. Even Sabo's criminal syndicates were no exception.
Lloyd let his fingers slide across the pages, flipping back and forth. The entries were chaotic. Whoever had kept the accounts was clearly no professional—expenses of all kinds were scribbled together without order, and some transactions, perhaps more important than others, were replaced by strange symbols.
He studied it for a long time and found no clues. After a moment's thought, he calmly took out a cigarette rolled with Wind-Cigar Leaf. Perhaps that uncanny spirit-vision could help him again. Yet Lloyd hesitated. His connection to the darkness had undoubtedly deepened, and he had no idea what might happen if he consumed the herb again.
But then again… what did it matter?
When in doubt, light a cigarette.
With that thought, Lloyd struck a flame. At the same time, he casually opened the case he had brought back from the graveyard. Inside was far more than he had expected—besides the blade, there were numerous small bottles and vials.
He picked up the reassuring blade. Its touch was like gripping cold frost. Drawing in a deep breath, he pulled the medium's herb into his lungs, fixed his gaze on the ledger—and then the entire world fell into darkness.
The familiar sound of ocean tides returned. Damp winds carried the scent of the sea as raging waves crashed against the shore, shattering into white spray upon the rocks.
Lloyd lowered his head, his expression unusually grave.
Beneath his feet was soft earth, where withered yellow grass had died.
The environment was vivid beyond belief—so real that, if his consciousness were not perfectly clear, he might have believed he had truly arrived in this unknown land.
The advantage was that spirit-vision allowed him to see more clues. The cost was that his bond with the darkness grew deeper.
A ghostly green light flared up not far ahead of him, like a burning emerald sun—or perhaps like a colossal eye gazing upon the world.
He raised his head.
It was the lighthouse he had seen time and again. Now it stood directly before him, its damp physical structure covered in moss and vines. At its summit glowed an ominous light. If nothing had changed, the mysterious Sacred Coffin should be stored within it.
This was the source of everything.
After a brief surge of excitement, Lloyd forced himself to calm down. He needed more clues. Ingervig was surrounded by coastline, and there were at least hundreds of such lighthouses. He had to find something that could distinguish this one from the rest.
But as he scanned his surroundings, a hoarse sound rose behind him. A pitch-black shadow engulfed him. The creature stood with its back to the green light; hot breath, like that of a massive bear, poured from its blood-soaked mouth.
Lloyd did not feel fear. He had entered spirit-vision many times before. Though what he saw was wrapped in fragments of reality, most of it remained illusory—nothing more than the effects of the herb and some unknown force.
By that logic, everything before him should have been false, with only the clues being real.
Yet at that very moment, the shadow attacked.
It moved as if testing him, like lazily swatting flies from the air—an effortless swing that came crashing down toward Lloyd.
Instinct screamed a warning. Without thinking, Lloyd raised his blade and struck the phantom shadow.
Warm blood splashed across his face.
The sensation was terrifyingly vivid—so real that every hair on Lloyd's body felt the blood brush past his cheek, every nerve flooding with electric shock.
This was… real?
The shadow roared. Immense force smashed against the blade, and sharp claws tore a bloody line across Lloyd's arm. There was no time to judge illusion from reality. He swung again—but this time the shadow dispersed beneath his strike like spilled ink.
The dark world collapsed, and the familiar room snapped back into view.
Lloyd was still frozen in the posture of a sword swing.
There was nothing before him.
At some point, the cigarette had burned out. The spirit-vision had ended.
Cold sweat drenched Lloyd as he slumped into the chair. He slowly set the blade on the desk. After a long pause, pain surged from his arm.
It was a shallow wound.
Absentmindedly, he wiped his face—and his palm came away smeared with crimson blood.
That was… real.
Everything he had seen in the spirit-vision had been real. Just moments ago, Lloyd had truly fought a monster within that vision.
This was no coincidence. Such a thing had never happened before.
He took a deep breath, and a terrifying possibility took shape in his mind.
His connection to the darkness had deepened—so deep that Lloyd could briefly, truly exist within that world during spirit-vision.
This was very bad news.
Just as he had told Eve: humans and creatures of darkness live in the same world, yet normally they cannot perceive one another. Now Lloyd could see them—and they could see him.
"Damn it…"
He cursed softly, then placed the blade beside him, hoping it might lend a shred of reassurance.
It was a standard weapon of the Demon Hunter Order, forged from alloy and plated with holy silver. To demons and monstrosities, it was a lethal instrument. Because its shape resembled an oversized spike, it was mockingly called a "nail sword."
One of the main reasons Lloyd had chosen a staff-sword in the first place was because its silhouette closely resembled this weapon. Aside from being heavier and far less effective against demons, it was similar in almost every other respect.
"Lloyd! What are you doing up there?!"
Madam Vanlud's sharp voice rang out from downstairs. Only then did Lloyd realize that his impulsive sword swing had knocked over the bookshelf. The noise had caught her attention.
"I tripped! I'm fine!"
Lloyd shouted back. At her age, it was better that Madam Vanlud had nothing to do with demons or such matters.
He propped the bookshelf back up and looked at the books scattered across the floor. He had no mood to tidy them. Sitting back down, his gaze suddenly fell upon the ledger.
Its thick pages had flipped to a new entry.
Fresh red blood stained the paper.
Lloyd sensed something and watched as the blood seeped into one particular transaction.
It was an address.
He immediately pulled out his map—but no matter how long he searched, he could not find the location listed in the transaction.
After a brief pause, Lloyd remembered Ingervig's astonishing rate of expansion. City-states within its territory changed almost daily. His map was outdated.
Realization struck.
Clutching the ledger, Lloyd rushed out of his room and down the stairs. Madam Vanlud was seated on the sofa, reading the newspaper. Seeing how flustered he looked, she removed her thick reading glasses.
"Did that fall knock the sense out of you?"
"No. I'm just looking for something."
Lloyd replied as he stepped into the center of the living room.
There hung a massive map.
On yellowed parchment of cured hide, mountains and cities were etched in ink. It meticulously recorded every detail of Ingervig's territory—even certain secrets were marked upon it in symbolic code.
It was a military map from the era of the War of Radiance. Compared with Lloyd's own charts, it recorded far more—so much so that, in terms of relevance, you could even find the emergency resources the Inglvig army had buried underground at the time. Cities that no longer existed were still carefully marked upon it.
This thing should have been sealed away in a military warehouse. Yet when Madam Vanlud retired, no one knew how she managed it—somehow she smuggled out a copy of this grand map and, without the slightest sense of restraint, hung it straight up in her living room.
She used to say that no medal of honor could commemorate her military life better than this. Whenever Lloyd sat with her in the living room, she would point to various stretches of land on the map and boast to him with open bravado,"See that? From here to here—this was all taken by me."
"What are you looking for?" she asked.
"An address."
Lloyd's gaze swept back and forth along the coastal regions marked on the map.
It was a transport deal. Sabo had arranged for a massive shipment of food to be delivered to a town called End. Inglvig had countless small towns, but in his clairvoyant visions Lloyd had seen a lighthouse. That narrowed it down to coastal settlements—yet even so, he still couldn't find it.
"It's not here…"
He had been staring at the map for a long while without success when Madam Vanlud walked over.
"End?"Wearing her thick reading glasses, she squinted at the map."You're looking for this town?"
"Yes. A coastal town. But it's not on the map…"
"Coastal? Of course it isn't."
The moment she heard the word "coastal," she answered without hesitation.
"It isn't? Why?"
Lloyd turned his head, genuinely confused by her certainty.
"Because of the War of Radiance. Between us and Gaulnalo lay the White Tide Strait. For a full century of war, the fleets of both sides clashed there countless times. The coastal towns either became military bases or were relocated inland long ago. It was only a little over ten years ago, after the war ended, that people gradually began returning to the coast."
Madam Vanlud was someone who had lived through the war. In matters like this, she understood far more than Lloyd ever could.
Her withered finger slid slowly across the map as she spoke."Military maps have to be read alongside a symbol codex. We used symbols and numbers to represent locations—so even if the map fell into enemy hands, without the codex they wouldn't understand a thing. Look at these triangular symbols. They mark places that were once towns."
There were no city names along the coast—only rows of triangles, each tagged with numerical suffixes.
Lloyd looked at her, thought for a moment, and then asked tentatively,"Madam… which of these towns do you think would need food supplied from outside?"
"You mean a supply line?"
"Something like that…"
According to the transaction records, Sabo had invested a huge sum to transport food directly from the Port of Rendona to this mysterious town of End—its exact location unknown.
"Hm… probably here."
Her finger pointed to the very edge of the map: the western side of Inglvig Island. The west remained largely undeveloped; there were barely any railways at all.
"Because of the war, Inglvig tightly controlled all points of contact with neighboring countries—except the north and the west. To the north lies the Northern Sea. Any enemy fleet would have to take a long detour, endure the drifting ice of the frozen seas, and deal with those Viking raiders. As for the west—there's nothing but open ocean. Our major cities are all inland. If they landed there, they'd have nothing to eat but dry grass."
"So it can only be this direction. Far from the major cities, no ports, not even fishing boats passing through. They can't sustain themselves—so they need outside supplies."
"Then why not the north?" Lloyd still wasn't fully convinced.
Madam Vanlud shot him a look."Honestly, kids raised in the new era—you've never known hardship. The north of Inglvig is covered in ice and snow year-round. Before modern steam engines, that permafrost couldn't be developed at all, let alone support a town. And with the recent expansion of the Port of Rendona, the north has zero development value."
Listening to her, Lloyd nodded. His gaze fixed on the western reaches of Inglvig. The triangular symbols there were sparse—just as she said. The farther west they went, the fewer they became, until they vanished entirely.
Then, suddenly, one symbol leapt into his sight.
A triangle beyond the landmass itself.A town built in the sea.
"Madam… do you know what this place is?"
It clearly bore the symbol of a town, yet it sat offshore. This was a military map—Lloyd didn't believe for a moment it was a drafting error.
"Hm… probably a town swallowed by the sea," she said after some thought. "That's fairly common along the coast. Sometimes the water level rises and floods low-lying land, and when the tide recedes it reappears. That's why the symbol's there."
"I see…"
It was a strange feeling. Before, Lloyd couldn't pinpoint the location of End at all. Yet after hearing Madam Vanlud's explanation, he became certain—this was it.
He suddenly remembered what Burrow had said to him at the very beginning.
Intuition.
The Sacred Coffin was luring him forward, tugging at his instincts, compelling him to seek it out.
"So," Madam Vanlud glanced at him curiously, "are you planning to go sightseeing? The west is basically a no-man's land."
"Something like that," Lloyd replied.
"Hm… then I recommend taking this route."
She pointed to a dashed line running across the western region—a railway.
"This was a military line. At the start, everyone thought we'd lose the War of Radiance. High command planned to retreat west after the southern coast fell and continue the resistance there. But you know how it ended—we drove the enemy out of Old Dunling and won the war. So construction on that railway was halted."
"In recent years, though, someone started some western tourism project and reopened the line. I think it'll come in handy for you."
She sat back down on the sofa and returned to her newspaper. After a moment's thought, she added,"Oh, Lloyd. There are still plenty of weapons in the basement. If they haven't gotten damp, feel free to take them. All military-grade—much better quality than what those crooks in the lower districts sell."
Lloyd had just stepped onto the stairs when he heard that and nearly stumbled.
"What… what are you talking about?"
"Hm? You think I believed your nonsense?"
Madam Vanlud looked up at him. Her cloudy eyes seemed to see straight through him.
"Sightseeing? You? Who would believe that! It was Burrow who introduced you to live here, wasn't it? If it's not sightseeing, then you're going to kill someone, aren't you?"
Lloyd had always thought he'd hidden himself well in front of her. He never imagined the sharp old woman had seen through him all along.
"No—wait—forget that—military weapons?"
He was stunned. Which meant he'd been living on top of an arms cache for six years without ever realizing it.
The atmosphere turned awkward as Madam Vanlud cursed under her breath."What? I've got enough medals to cover an entire wall, and my pension's still pathetic. What's wrong with skimming a few crates of weapons to sell?"
This old woman was far beyond merely fearless. Lloyd had seen people fleece the state before—but never with such righteous confidence.
"I thought I'd make a decent profit. But the moment they heard it was military gear, all those tough-looking thugs in the lower districts refused to touch it. So it's just been sitting there ever since."
Her eyes rolled slightly, and she added one last thing."Oh, right, Lloyd. Just so we're clear—if you die out there, I'm selling everything in your room to cover the rent."
Lloyd's face darkened.
That damned old woman.