Outside Belrand, in a small town on the outskirts.

Night was deepening, and a few dim oil lamps were faintly beginning to glow along ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) the street.

In a place even more remote than Belrand’s Lower District, oil lamps were not exactly luxury goods, but most ordinary residents still saved wherever they could and went to bed at sunset.

So no matter how dim an oil lamp was, once it drifted along the town streets, it stood out all the same.

“Mr. Gert, you’re only just getting back at this hour?”

On the second floor of a two-story building, a wooden window facing the street stood half open, and behind it a young, slightly flushed face appeared and disappeared from view. Even under the night sky, it lost none of its radiance.

The girl blinked. She thought she had hidden those feelings of hers very well, but a few traces of intimacy and shyness still slipped unconsciously into her voice.

“Yeah, I had something to take care of.”

The man smiled and nodded.

The oil lamp swayed with the motion, lighting up his pale profile. He looked rather scruffy with the stubble from not grooming for so long, but with his high nose bridge and sharply defined features, it was still easy to tell that he was far more handsome than average.

If he were ten years younger, the girls who liked him would probably be able to line up from one end of the town all the way to the river on the other side.

The girl cupped her cheeks and could not help thinking that shyly.

Fortunately, only she had noticed how handsome he was. In everyone else’s eyes, Mr. Gert was merely a down-and-out merchant who had once seen better days. Now he even had to rent a room in her house, and sometimes when he delayed the rent, her bad-tempered mother would point at his nose and curse him out.

“I see...”

The girl said gently,

“If there’s anything you need, you can call for me. I’m not asleep yet either.”

“All right. Thank you.”

Gert pushed open the door, but just as he was about to go inside, he suddenly remembered something. He took off his fraying hat and gave the girl an elegant bow.

“Good night, Miss Winnie.”

“Mhm, good night!”

Winnie’s heart sank into drunken delight once again. She truly wished she could show those clueless people in town that in a backwater place like this, only Mr. Gert would say good night to her with the elegance of a real nobleman.

After saying farewell, Gert paid no more attention to the lovestruck girl. He pushed open the outer door, but instead of entering the little two-story house, he suddenly turned and walked toward the corner of the narrow yard.

There stood a battered old shed that had originally been used to store odds and ends. That was the place he had rented for two hundred Aimier, and where he was now living.

With a click, Gert unlocked the door. But when he pushed it open, he was extremely careful, because he knew that if the creaking of that ancient broken door woke the mistress of the house, then the torrent of abuse from her—enough to drill into the ears like demonic noise—would keep half the town awake.

“Another completely fruitless day.”

The moment he stepped inside, Gert lost every trace of the elegance and politeness he had shown outside. He collapsed straight onto the simple bed in the shed, little different from a dog’s nest, made of straw and a bamboo mat.

Perhaps through the filter of a young girl’s gaze, there really was still a bit of handsomeness left in him. But the majority of the town had not been wrong. At this moment, Gert looked miserable, dispirited, pathetic... His coat was tattered, the legs of his pants were spattered with mud, and his leather shoes had split open at the seams. No one knew what wilderness he had just crawled out of. His appearance was scarcely any better than a beggar’s.

Only that oil lamp looked as though it might be worth a little money, but in truth he had merely swiped it from the cemetery keeper.

“Marjorie, my Marjorie, where exactly are you?”

Gert paid no attention to how disheveled he was. Even though he had once been the sort of refined man who bathed three times a day, now he still lay down fully clothed on the only bed he had.

Gert muttered blankly for a while, then picked up the picture frame beside him, his face full of dazed yearning.

In this utterly chaotic, dust-choked shed, only that frame remained as clean as ever. Just like the bride in the photo wearing a pure white wedding dress, that spotless smile was enough to sweep away all filth.

“Marjorie...”

Gert gently stroked the frame and could not help thinking of who she had once been.

He and she should have had a happy family. But all of that had changed because of the arrival of a madman.

That madman—he was going to... he had to...

“Hm?”

Gert suddenly sat bolt upright. After listening closely to something, his eyes lit up, and a faint excitement came over his face.

Moving hastily, he went to the very center of the shed, dragged aside the three-legged wooden table, then lifted the filthy rug beneath it, exposing the entrance to a cellar.

It was an extremely well-hidden entrance. Most likely, even Winnie’s family, the owners of the place, had no idea there was a cellar under the shed.

Because Gert had dug it himself, without anyone noticing.

The crack of the entrance was hidden in the dirt and hard to detect. Gert brushed away the soil he had used to conceal it, skillfully found the recessed ring, pulled open the small cellar door, and lightly jumped down.

The cellar was pitch-black. Gert lit the old oil lamp again, and the flickering light illuminated the surroundings. Newspaper after newspaper, photograph after photograph, all cast long ghostly shadows beneath the lamplight. Red strings threaded through those shadows, connecting every newspaper and photo together before finally converging on the deliberately enlarged photograph at the very center... like a memorial portrait.

And the person in that photograph was...

Parls.

The handsome middle-aged man in the photo had lost not a trace of his bearing. Many ignorant young girls might have fallen in love with him from this picture alone... But now that photograph was pinned to the wall by a dagger, the blade driven straight through the center of his forehead, as though proclaiming a hatred that not even death could dissolve.

“Parls—”

The moment he looked at the man in the photo, Gert’s eyes turned bloodshot. Time had rotted his hatred, yet it had not faded in the slightest.

Gert still remembered that day... This madman had arrived with an entire cart of flowers, saying that he and his wife Marjorie were in love with each other. But his wife had not known him at all!

That day, his smile had been just like the one in the photograph. Revolting.

He should have killed him that day instead of merely driving him off. If he had, then what followed would never have happened, and he would not have had to endure all the regret that came after.

“Marjorie... I will find you. I swear I will...”

Gert dropped to his knees, but he was not kneeling before the photograph of Parls. He was kneeling in the exact opposite direction, where a faint incense drifted through the air. Upon a crude little altar stood a small statue.

The statue was exquisite and beautiful, lifelike, depicting a lovely young girl holding her own heart in both hands, as though offering it generously to all the people in the world.

“My Lord... You said You found Parls’s trail. Is that true?”

Gert clasped his hands together nervously. After Marjorie disappeared—no, after she was abducted by that madman—every moment of his life thereafter had been devoted to finding his wife. For that, he had not hesitated to squander his entire fortune, let his aged parents be driven into hardship, and reduce himself to this state.

But he had to find Marjorie. He had to... Marjorie was still waiting for him.

As long as it was to get his wife back, he was willing to pay any price.

“My Lord, please answer me. Have You really found that madman?”

Before the statue, blue incense smoke rose in curling threads, gradually gathering into a vague, strange outline.

That outline drew close to Gert, as though pressing itself to his ear, softly saying something.

“You found him? Really? Wonderful, that’s wonderful!”

Gert’s face lit with excitement. In his mind, he could already see himself finding his beautiful wife and returning with her to the happy life they once had. Of course, Parls had already died miserably in the flames of his wrath, after suffering the cruelest torture this world could offer.

“Please, please tell me where Parls is, my Lord, and grant me the price I need to kill him. For that... for that I can pay a price. Any price!” Gert prayed devoutly again. After begging for so long, he had finally received a response, and he could no longer suppress the excitement in his heart.

【Anything at all?】

It seemed as though a voice asked that.

“I...”

Gert went dazed for a moment. He vaguely sensed that something was wrong, and his instincts were also telling him there was something deeply abnormal here... But as the blue incense smoke swayed, Gert quickly sank once more into the excitement of finding his wife.

“That’s right. Anything at all!”

【Very good.】

The young girl statue Gert had enshrined suddenly cracked open. Some nauseating, malformed flesh rapidly forced its way out from within. Bulging tumors turned over, and a ferocious, grotesque eyeball opened, staring coldly at Gert.

“W-what is this?”

Gert jumped in fright and staggered backward.

“Y-you... what are you?”

【I am your Lord.】

“Lies! My Lord isn’t something like this. My Lord is the one who bestows the gospel of love upon the world...”

Gert muttered in terror, as though utterly unable to believe the scene before him, unable to believe that the Lord he had worshiped for so long was something like this. Amid the panic, one of his hands quietly reached behind him and gripped the dagger.

And then...

...

...

“Mr. Gert, are you heading out again?”

In the morning, before dawn had even broken, the newly awakened Winnie once again saw Gert preparing to leave from her window.

“Yes.”

Gert lifted his head and said expressionlessly,

“I have something to do. I need to go out.”

“Oh, you really are busy!”

Winnie waved a hand. “Then be careful on the way, and stay safe. I heard there’ve been some outsiders around town lately. No one knows what they’re here for.”

“All right.”

After giving that cold reply, Gert strode away, leaving Winnie with nothing but his back.

Looking at that retreating figure, Winnie puffed out her lips and muttered,

“This time Mr. Gert didn’t say good morning.”

...

...

“Another failure.”

After striding out of the town, Gert suddenly stopped.

There was nothing unusual about him, but in the river beside him, that reflection wore an expressionless face, and in those cold pupils surged a rage no ordinary person could comprehend.

“If Ariel Bugaard is this world’s self-defense mechanism, then Muen Campbell... what exactly are you?”

The reflection muttered, growled, counting one by one the failures and humiliations It had suffered during this time.

Failure and humiliation meant nothing by themselves.

But when all those failures and humiliations came from the same person, how could It possibly accept that?

“It isn’t over yet...”

Gert raised his head and gazed toward the brilliant crystal palace in the distance.

What had been killed was only one of Its avatars. This time, in order to deal with Muen Campbell, It had made full preparations, mobilizing more than half the believers It had hidden throughout Belrand. The destruction of a single avatar was far from enough...

“My, my, although interrupting someone’s good mood is a very bad habit.”

The morning mist stirred. A deep voice suddenly sounded from the other side of the river, and at the same time, a powerful, imposing figure gradually approached. Its aura was so overwhelming that even the river’s surface began to tremble.

“But I still have to tell you... it’s already over.”

“Who’s there?!”

Gert’s gaze sharpened at once, and his reflection also became fully alert, sensing that the newcomer was no simple figure.

“Heh, in order to lure you people out, I really paid an enormous price this time...”

That tall, imposing figure finally stepped out of the morning mist. Those solemn footsteps seemed to tread directly on the heart itself. With each step closer, Gert already felt it becoming hard to breathe...

Thump.

And then that figure dropped to his knees in front of Gert.

Gert: ???

Reflection: ???

“...Haha, sorry about that.”

The two thick eyebrows above Pink Bear’s beady black eyes were practically knotted together. He sucked in breath through his teeth in pain while awkwardly scratching his head.

“I just finished kneeling on a ton of durians, so walking’s a little rough right now... Can we redo that entrance from the start?”