Before him stood the man's iron-walled silhouette.Blinding white light erupted from ignited blood, and the blade worked like a meat grinder, crushing the demons' advance so completely that they could not push forward even an inch.
In that instant, Red Falcon thought of many things—and perhaps nothing at all. A hollow white noise rang in his ears, as if thought itself had been stripped away. Clutching the incendiary charge, he simply broke into a long stride and charged forward.
He had never trusted this damned plan to begin with. When Lloyd talked about it, it sounded as casual as deciding what to eat for breakfast—reckless, improvised, unreliable. And yet, even so, when Lloyd's roar cut through the chaos, Red Falcon still moved on instinct, stepping into the sea of blazing white fire.
"That's more like a man!"
The detective shouted encouragement, decapitating demon after demon as they lunged in. The searing white flames caught their bodies, and in the pitch-black night, black snow of ash began to fall. It clumped together, settling on skin, carrying with it the last traces of warmth.
"Cover me!"
By the time Red Falcon truly realized what was happening, he was already outside the carriage, hauling himself upward with the incendiary in his arms, climbing toward the roof.
Lloyd held the demons at bay, swinging his sword in rapid succession, without any finesse to speak of. But in a battle on this scale, finesse no longer mattered. What Lloyd needed was efficiency—pure, relentless slaughter.
The fight only grew fiercer.
The frenzied blades whipped up blazing white fire, twisting like writhing serpents. Pure sanctified silver split filthy flesh with ease. Like red-hot iron plunged into water, pallid smoke billowed upward, mingled with ash still flecked with sparks.
This was the blackest of nights. The demons had descended, and all light had been erased. Yet just like in those distant ages long past—like those fire-bearers who once gave their lives—people refused to cower beneath fear, even when this dark forest teemed with monsters. They stubbornly ignited the flames in their hands and fought the creatures that came seeking the light.
Humanity should not live in fear.
And so the most dazzling, most arresting firework was unleashed above the high roof. The white-phosphorus incendiary rose like a false firmament, and upon reaching its apex, detonated in full. Shattered flames bloomed like flowers, and for a single heartbeat, the entire night was set ablaze.
It was a sight beyond words.
The tide of demons froze like statues, caught mid-surge. The sudden light stretched their shadows long across the ground—shadows that writhed and twisted, as though the souls trapped within those monstrous bodies were making one final, futile resistance.
"Lloyd Holmes!"
Red Falcon roared the detective's name.
In response, Lloyd leapt straight onto the roof in a streak of sword-light. With swift, decisive strikes, he cut down every demon climbing up from both sides of the carriages.
This was not swordsmanship meant for killing men. From beginning to end, what Lloyd wielded was a craft made solely for hunting demons.
Blazing white fire danced along the blade's edge, and with every swing, another demon was reduced to ash.
Red Falcon caught all this in the corner of his eye. Just that single glance was enough to chill him to the bone. This was power he had never witnessed before—something science could not explain.
Perhaps the demon-hunting order had been too thorough in sealing away its own secrets. Even the deaths of its members often became known only six years later.
That eerie white flame was a trait shared by every demon hunter. When the Order's secret blood was injected into the body, it altered the very nature of their blood. When that blood awakened within them, it became combustible.
Unlike ordinary flammable substances, it required no spark, no ignition source.
All it needed was a demon.
When a hunter's blood touched a demon—or even sensed the "corruption" they carried—it ignited into a flame beyond common sense. A fire known as the Cleansing Flame.
The Cleansing Flame roared. Lloyd looked like a god striding out of myth itself, dual blades in hand, unleashing torrents of searing white fire, severing a hundred demons from this world forever.
"Give me one!"
In a brief lull between slaughter, Lloyd turned and shouted at Red Falcon.
As the first incendiary soared skyward, the blinding light seemed to enrage the demons. They grew ever more frenzied, launching wave after wave of suicidal assaults against the roof, like a raging tide battering the shore, trying to drag the two living souls into the abyss of death.
To conserve ammunition, Red Falcon released an incendiary at fixed intervals, counting the seconds in his head while drawing his pistol to shoot down the demons that closed in.
He had thought that, as a high-ranking knight of the Purification Agency, he already possessed ample experience fighting demons. But compared to Lloyd's practiced, lightning-fast movements, he felt like a child who had only just learned how to hold a sword. With skill like that, within the Agency he would not merely qualify as a knight-captain—perhaps only Arthur himself could rival him.
"What?!"
Red Falcon shot another demon that lunged for him, replying in confusion to Lloyd's shout.
"The incendiary!"
Lloyd bellowed again.
Though Red Falcon had no idea what Lloyd intended, there was no doubt that in this brief span of time, Lloyd had earned his trust. At the very least, in terms of combat power, he had become the absolute ceiling of the entire train.
Red Falcon hurled a launcher loaded with incendiaries toward Lloyd.
Lloyd swung his sword and pinned it straight into the carriage beneath his feet. The roof was solid steel, entirely metal—but under Lloyd's strike, the blade sank into it by half an inch.
With his free hand, Lloyd brushed against the sword embedded in the carriage. The razor edge sliced his palm open, leaving a vivid crimson wound. Then, with that injured hand, he caught the launcher Red Falcon had thrown.
"What are you planning to do?"
For reasons he couldn't explain, Red Falcon felt a surge of dread. Even the endless tide of demons had never given him this sensation. Yet Lloyd's actions did—like something fundamental was about to shatter.
"Set off some fireworks!"
Under the weight of fear and pressure, the detective turned back toward Red Falcon and burst into wild, unrestrained laughter.
[Secret Blood Awakening: 21%]
The witch hunter's blood soaked into the steel in his hands, seeping along every seam and groove, flowing into each layer of structure, every inch of mechanism, until it became wholly one with the metal. Then, from those narrow fissures, a searing white fire burst forth.
Lloyd raised the burning launcher. From the carriage ahead of him, endless demons surged like a tide. In the heart of the night, he was the only light—the sole rope dangling out of hell.And so they fought for it, wave after wave, desperate to snuff out that single chance of escape.
It was a scene like an oil painting.
He lifted the gun, facing the legions pouring in from the abyss without a trace of fear.
He pulled the trigger.
Purifying flame boiled into life. The white phosphorus incendiary tore through the black sea of bodies, like a torrent smashing against reef and stone. Everything in its path was annihilated. It drove straight on, piercing through several carriages—and a few heartbeats later, boundless white fire erupted from within.
The incendiary carried the witch hunter's blood. As it burned, using flame itself as a medium, the purifying fire surged skyward in an instant. Every demon caught beneath its reach was reduced to ash in the split second of unbearable heat.
"Do you know why smoking is forbidden on trains?"
Lloyd turned back, looking at the frozen Red Falcon. He lightly stamped his foot against the floor, standing atop this train steeped in history, and asked calmly.
The steam engine of the Radiant Glory locomotive had been outdated for many years, yet it still stood as one of the finest achievements of Ingervig's steam engineering of its era. Even after all this time, it could still reach the astonishing speed of seventy kilometers per hour.
Perhaps stunned by the spectacle of fire, Red Falcon did not answer. He could only stare blankly at the blinding white that nearly filled his entire field of vision.
Lloyd turned away in mild disappointment. Sometimes, when someone fails to catch the line you throw them, it stings more than one would expect. He gazed at the carriages burning one after another and spoke softly, almost to himself.
"Because the wind feeds the fire."
Like a spell being completed, the moment the words fell, a howling gale rushed through the shattered windows into the blazing cars. Fresh oxygen flooded in, driving the inferno into madness. The demons screamed, but could not stop their bodies from charring, carbonizing—until at last they crumbled into ash and scattered with the wind.
Like a colossal serpent emerging from a sea of fire, it burned its way forward across the pitch-black, desolate land.