"What kind of joke is this..."

Staring at the scene in the distance—so saturated with blood it was hard to look at—even someone as hard to rattle as Viscount Donick froze for a moment. "The demonfolk are... killing each other?"

Or was this some new method of forcing the troops forward?

Even accounting for the demonfolk’s madness and brutality... this kind of “discipline” was still far too extreme.

"Donick." Lorne, who had been watching the whole thing with cold eyes, suddenly flicked a glance sideways and frowned.

"Y-yes... yes, sir!" Donick snapped upright at once, waiting for the Duke’s orders.

"Pass on my command. All resting troops are to enter combat readiness. Take everything out of the armory. All alchemical bombs, magic scrolls, healing supplies—anything that can help hold the walls—move it all up to the battlements. Any soldier who can fight takes a weapon as well."

The blood-soaked spectacle reflected in Lorne’s eyes. His expression didn’t change, but only he knew that even his body was tightening, strand by strand.

"The final wave is coming."

"The... final wave?" Donick blinked, then understood what the Duke meant.

Those low-ranking demonfolk—slaughtered for no reason, driven forward like cattle—even if they didn’t fear death, some instinct would still push them into charging the walls in an even more frenzied state.

For a wall that had been barely holding on, teetering at the edge of collapse... that would be a wave. A colossal wave. A towering, world-swallowing wave.

"Move!" Lorne barked.

"Yes, sir!"

Training pulled Donick back into focus. He spun and sprinted off, issuing orders with practiced calm as he ran, rallying the troops and steadying nerves.

Once Donick was gone, Lorne quickly turned his head toward Funal at his side.

"How is it? Can you still hold on?"

"Duke... I..."

With no one else around, Funal suddenly dropped to his knees. His whole body curled in on itself as if in agony.

He began to convulse. His limbs twisted at unnatural angles, like something was fighting him for control of his body. In his eyes, a scarlet glow flickered in and out—paired with a kind of madness that seemed ready to burst through.

That same crimson and that same madness... identical to the high-ranking demonfolk riding the behemoth.

"So you were affected after all."

With Lorne’s sharp senses, he had already noticed there was something wrong with the demonfolk. He didn’t know the cause, but he’d guessed Funal would be influenced as well.

As for why Funal would be influenced by the demonfolk...

"Looks like the demonfolk’s upper ranks pulled off something big again—something that affects the entire demonfolk."

Lorne set a hand on Funal’s shoulder. Powerful battle aura surged out, and at last Funal eased a little. The scarlet in his eyes sank back into hiding.

"Sorry, Duke..."

Funal drew in a ragged breath and forced a bitter smile. "I still can’t break free of this curse."

"There’s nothing to apologize for. This isn’t your fault."

"No. This is my fault... or rather, our fault. A mistake we made a thousand years ago."

"What do you mean?"

Lorne frowned, staring straight at the man who had served as his right-hand for years—strategist and friend, yet whose true identity was a high-ranking demonfolk.

From the moment Funal had joined his command, Lorne had trusted him without condition, never doubting him. Even knowing he hid secrets he couldn’t speak aloud. Even knowing he was demonfolk.

And Funal had lived up to that trust. As his deputy, as the finest subordinate under the Lion King Lorne Campbell, Funal had done everything he was supposed to do—and done it brilliantly.

But in this moment, Lorne felt something about Funal slipping out of his control.

"The ones at fault are the demonfolk. Shenyi the Grand Duke is at fault—not you, Funal. You stopped having anything to do with the demonfolk a long time ago!" Lorne stressed. "Isn’t that what you believed when you came to me in the first place?"

Lorne remembered a few years ago, when that reckless demonfolk had sought him out and introduced himself with the most proper human etiquette, every movement refined and graceful:

【Honored Lion King Muen Campbell, greetings. I am the demonfolk Funal. I know you hate the demonfolk and want to kill me, but I hope you will hear my request... before you do.】

"Have you forgotten, Funal? Have you forgotten why you took such a massive risk to stay at my side?"

"No, Duke. You misunderstand. What I’m talking about has nothing to do with that. It’s just... I suddenly remembered something. Something from a thousand years ago."

Funal replayed the blurred image that had flashed through his mind at the instant the demonfolk charged their own. He smiled—then, bizarrely, he started crying, and even his tears seemed red, tinged with blood.

"I get it. I finally understand. The entire demonfolk... are sinners. Of course that includes me."

"Funal!"

Lorne’s aura detonated outward. The power of the Crowned One locked Funal’s body in an instant, temporarily cutting him off from whatever was influencing him.

But it was still a step too late.

Because Funal had already shattered his own heart meridians. The decisiveness of that suicide left even a Crowned One powerless to stop it. All Lorne could do was forcefully maintain the last thread of his life.

Clatter.

At the same time, accompanied by a faint, indistinct sound—chains chiming—Lorne felt something being torn out of Funal’s body by brute force.

"Damn it!"

The Brilliant Crown descended. Lorne expanded his Domain in a heartbeat, and in a blood-red lion’s roar he finally saw it: the chain sunk deep into Funal’s soul.

Furious, he grabbed the chain, trying to rip it apart—but the instant he put strength into it, Funal let out a muffled cry of pain, as if what was being torn wasn’t just the chain, but his soul as well—already on the verge of shattering.

"It’s useless, Duke. The entire demonfolk have been bound by it for a thousand years... but it isn’t only bondage. It’s also support and protection..."

Funal’s breath grew thinner and thinner. Lorne didn’t dare use too much force. He could only hold the chain in place, refusing to let it drag Funal’s soul away.

Funal managed a weak smile at him.

"The thing I feared most... has started. In the end, we couldn’t escape it..."

"Look!"

A soldier running along the wall seemed to spot something horrifying. He pointed into the distance, voice full of terror.

More and more people turned that way.

Lorne rose, face like stone, and looked toward the battlefield.

There, the corpse of a demonfolk who had just died... suddenly floated up.

One at first.

Then two, three... ten... a hundred...

In the end, no one could even count them.

The world darkened. The light had never been bright to begin with, but now the corpses spreading across the sky blocked it out. And as more demonfolk died, the number of bodies in the sky kept growing.

Shattered. Blood-soaked. Newly dead.

As if hoisted by something from thin air, they hung in midair and swayed back and forth in the wind.

Even Lorne the Lion King felt his skin crawl at the sight.

But Lorne knew they weren’t suspended by nothing. What lifted them were chains—chains linked to their souls. As /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ the chains rose, the souls peeled away from the flesh, and the bodies gradually fell back to the ground.

Thousands upon thousands of corpses rose. Thousands upon thousands fell.

And on the ground, the slaughter continued.

Worse—this wasn’t just high-ranking demonfolk butchering low-ranking ones. The low-ranking demonfolk who had been charging the walls suddenly, for some unknown reason, began attacking their companions with insane ferocity.

Hemmed in by towering walls, in only a few minutes this place went from a battlefield...

...to a slaughterhouse.

"What are they doing...? Demonfolk—what is their goal?" Lorne muttered without thinking. His instincts screamed that something unimaginably terrifying was unfolding in this Abyss—something that might even be beyond his understanding.

"Don’t worry, Duke. At least for now, it seems the demonfolk... or rather, Shenyi the Grand Duke’s target isn’t the Empire. From the beginning, it never was."

Funal struggled to open his eyes, silently watching. The Lion King’s power still left him enough strength to speak, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Raw force couldn’t contend with that ancient relic, and it couldn’t contend with the sins the demonfolk had carried for a thousand years.

"What a pity... Duke, those punches you threw earlier—you should’ve hit harder."

Lorne jerked his head down. He looked like a lion on the verge of tearing something apart, yet he didn’t know where to vent his rage.

"You... you did it on purpose?"

"Cough... cough... more or less."

"Why? Muen didn’t do anything to you."

Lorne grabbed Funal by the collar, the same way he had back in that meeting when he learned Muen was heading into the Abyss.

Love for his child still outweighed his grief for a friend.

But he didn’t punch him again.

Because someone already dying can’t be made to die twice.

"Maybe it was... some kind of intuition." Funal thought for a moment, then said it.

"Intuition? That’s all it took?"

"Yeah. Weird, right?"

Using the last of his strength, Funal turned his head and looked past the vast horizon, to somewhere even farther.

His expression held a trace of nostalgia and a trace of confusion. Across countless cycles, most of his distant memories had been washed away, so he couldn’t even explain where that intuition came from.

But it was because of that inexplicable thing that he’d made a decision and taken an action so despicable—using grand-sounding reasons and excuses to push the Campbell family’s only son, who had shown him mountain-deep kindness, into the enormous fire pit that was Gutongs Castle.

"Some intuition I can’t even put into words made me feel like... if it was Young Master Muen, he could solve the problem there. But when I used to see who he was back then at the Duke’s residence, I never felt anything like that. Why?" Funal murmured, asking a question no one could answer.

...

"Move, move, move! Quit standing around—get to the wall!"

Inside the fortress, Donick was still barreling around, loudly driving the soldiers forward. For the moment, he hadn’t realized the battlefield had taken an even stranger turn.

But suddenly, he whipped around, eyes locking onto the wall behind him.

The wall was empty. Donick didn’t even know why he was staring at it.

"Fuck, what the hell is going on today? Am I losing it because I haven’t slept?"

He scratched his head and forced his attention back to the task at hand.

"I’ve gotta hurry, or Funal that bastard is gonna start yapping again—talking about how I’m stupid. Fuck that, I say Funal’s the stupidest one of all. Last time he even got his ass beat by the Duke."

Donick swaggered along, smugly bobbing his head. "This time I’m gonna do a better job—show the Duke how useless you are, get him to beat you again. Heh heh..."