Morning mist spread across the clear river. The sun had not yet risen, and at this time of year, the mornings already carried a slight chill. Then a gust of cold wind blew in from the opposite bank...

...making the awkward atmosphere seem to freeze on the spot.

After all, anyone hearing the words durian, a ton, and kneeling all put together would instinctively have their brain short-circuit for a moment.

“Seriously, that damn woman. I told her I’d kneel after the job was done, after the job was done, but she just wouldn’t listen. She insisted I kneel first. No sense of the bigger picture at all!”

Even though what he was saying was deeply humiliating, Pink Bear somehow said it with the unshakable authority of a man whose dignity as head of the household could not be challenged. He slapped both hands against the ground and hauled himself back to his feet.

“Later I’m definitely going to have a proper talk with her! I’ll make her understand one truth very deeply... whether you kneel early or kneel late, it makes no difference!”

“...”

After a brief silence, Gert finally came back to himself. He stared suspiciously at the ridiculous pink mascot bear in front of him and began wondering whether the aura he had sensed before had just been a hallucination caused by being too tense.

“Y-you... who are you?”

Gert cautiously tugged his overcoat tighter around himself. He was not actually cold, but only that gave him even the slightest scrap of security.

He felt strange.

He did not know why he was here. His memory still lingered on last night, on exchanging good-night greetings with the landlord’s daughter before returning to that little shed... It seemed he had slept, then wandered here in a daze, but the process in between was blurry.

Gert glanced at the river for no reason at all. His reflection in the water was still himself, stubbled and disheveled.

“Who I am isn’t important. What matters is who you are.”

Pink Bear let out a sigh, then fished something out with his furry hand and lit it with practiced ease. But if one looked closely, it was not a cigar at all. It was just a rolled paper cigarette.

Pink Bear smoked that paper cigarette with the bearing of a man enjoying a fine cigar. Smoke seeped out through the holes of the whole costume and gradually mixed into the morning mist.

“The dignified heir of the Wonard family, the son of a tycoon with assets worth over a hundred million, reduced to this state. Pitiful, lamentable, tragic... But really, why bother? You had more than enough other choices, yet step by step your obsession dragged you down to where you are now.”

“You—” 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Gert’s pupils contracted.

The moment this ridiculous mascot bear started talking, he understood that there were no secrets left in his life.

He could vaguely guess why this person had come.

“I don’t know who you are, but I have other things to do. I don’t feel like wasting time with you!”

Gert turned and walked away. In the river, his reflection also left behind only a receding back.

“Wait.”

Pink Bear called after him.

“I have something to say to you.”

“And why should I listen to you? Ridiculous.”

Gert shook his head in disdain, having no intention of talking to this absurd thing.

But before he had taken more than two steps, he suddenly slammed into something.

Gert raised his hands in alarm and felt around, only to discover that an invisible barrier had already sealed off every path of retreat. Looking up, he saw that the barrier stretched all the way to the horizon, as though the entire little town still wrapped in sleep had been enclosed with it.

“...I understand now.”

Gert turned back and stared at Pink Bear. The cowering disguise he had put on vanished in an instant, and his face twisted viciously.

“I know who you are now. You’re one of those useless constables too, aren’t you? You parasites! Because of pressure from nobles, you refused to investigate that case. If not for your incompetence, my wife—my Marjorie—wouldn’t still be missing! You came to arrest me, didn’t you? Fine, then do it! Arrest me! Arrest this poor wretch who has nothing left!”

Gert threw open his coat.

As the pampered son of a wealthy tycoon, he had once been fairly capable. But the body beneath the coat was now so gaunt and withered it looked like a little tree that might be blown over by the wind at any moment.

Gert believed his condition came from longing for his wife.

But Pink Bear could tell at a glance...

...that this weakness did not come only from heartache.

Something really was stealing away his life bit by bit, invisibly.

“Relax. I’m not here to arrest ‘you.’ At least, not the you called Gert Wonard.”

Pink Bear’s expression was calm.

“I already know everything you just said. That’s exactly why I’m here.”

He pulled a file from somewhere, then held it up for Gert to see across the not especially wide river.

“What is that?”

“A full investigation report on that case.”

Pink Bear said,

“The officials who neglected their duties in Miss Marjorie’s disappearance case, as well as in many later missing-person cases, have all already been arrested. They really did protect that criminal who kept abducting women and let him roam Belrand freely... But according to our investigation, they were not acting under pressure from any noble.”

Pink Bear paused.

“After all, after the previous events in the royal capital, any noble who dared pull that sort of thing is already dead.”

“You mean... I slandered them?”

Gert’s eyes turned red, and his emotions rapidly spiraled out of control. He was like a snarling beast.

“They weren’t at fault, so does that mean I was? What did I do wrong? I only wanted to get my wife back! If you people wouldn’t help me, then I could only—”

“No.”

Pink Bear cut him off.

“What I mean is that you weren’t wrong, and they weren’t wrong either. Although your obsession, and those people’s passive dereliction of duty, have already caused consequences that cannot be undone, neither you nor they had yet actively harmed anyone else. You are still victims.

“The one truly at fault is the thing hidden deep in your consciousness, hidden inside your soul.”

“My soul?”

Gert froze.

He stared blankly at Pink Bear. Just moments ago this ridiculous creature had seemed imposing, but now he looked as though he were wrapped in a layer of holy light. Under that holy glow, Gert felt his heart gradually growing warm...

...and at the same time that warmth spread through him, terrifying images began surfacing faintly in his mind.

“In this incident, according to the Silent Bureau’s examination, those officials were affected by a certain kind of mental influence. Its range was very broad, and it was extremely covert. Even now, most of those officials don’t remember ever handling those cases at all... and you are the same. You’ve already been affected by that mental influence.

“And in your case... it’s worse.”

Pink Bear tossed the cigarette butt he had only taken two drags from onto the ground and crushed it underfoot.

“So what I wanted to say is... I’m sorry. I came too late.”

“...”

Gert opened his mouth as if to say something.

But he had no time to get a word out.

His lips remained parted as he let out two hollow breaths, and then a dreadful coldness surged up from somewhere even deeper than the bottom of his heart, swallowing his soul whole in an instant.

Yes.

This ridiculous bear was right.

He really had come too late...

There was already no road back for him.

“That’s exactly why I hate this kind of damn mess the most.”

Watching as Gert’s aura suddenly underwent a complete, earthshaking change, Pink Bear scratched his head in annoyance and helplessness.

“But what can you do? Celicia isn’t here. Someone has to keep an eye on this city for her, right?”

“Human...”

Gert raised his head.

The shrinking cowardice and rage from before were gone. All emotion had vanished from his face, leaving only pure indifference in his eyes.

“How did you... discover me?”

“How? Heh. I really am being underestimated as always.”

Pink Bear quietly stuffed the Church cross-emblem he had just used to release Holy Light and play the warmhearted nice guy back where it belonged, then said with a rare solemnity:

“Always tricking pitiful people whose hearts were broken seems to have made you forget... the humans you look down on are nowhere near as weak as you imagine, Love God!”

“...”

Love God lowered Its gaze.

There was no need for words. Only terrifying fury burst forth.

Muen Campbell was one thing, but what was this bear supposed to be?

If It had been allowed to leave, then fine—but how dared he tangle with It like this?

Love God could not endure being toyed with again by these lowly insects, and so power from a higher level descended with a roar.

A flower of flesh bloomed once more. Countless twisted tentacles spread out in a dense web, surging toward Pink Bear from all sides and leaving him nowhere to flee.

“A pity. The one caught in the net isn’t me.”

Pink Bear showed not the slightest trace of panic. He merely took out his spiked club at his leisure.

At the same time, the tide-like roar of a surging sea of blood faintly echoed across the morning wilderness, somehow drowning out the hissing cries of the many mouths opening and closing within that writhing, malformed flesh.

So what if it was power from a higher level?

Talking about toxicity without talking about dosage was just playing dirty.

If Love God had the guts, It could come down in Its true body the way those other Evil Gods did. Everyone was separated by a world barrier anyway—there was still plenty of room to sit down and have a nice heart-to-heart.

But since It couldn’t...

“That’s why I said—”

Pink Bear strode forward to meet the twisted believer head-on and sneered,

“the moment you were forced to show yourself in front of us, the moment you were dragged out into the sunlight... it was already over.”

...

...

“Mr. Gert still isn’t back?”

Winnie sat by the little window, watching the dawn rise over the horizon, then looking again at the empty road outside the door. A strange feeling gradually began to spread through her heart.

For some reason, she was more concerned about Mr. Gert today than ever before.

Even though she knew that every time Mr. Gert went out, he stayed gone for a long time, and that there was no way he would come back in less than half an hour, she still wanted to wait here.

Just a little longer. Just a little longer. What if Mr. Gert came back? What if Mr. Gert came back and no one was here to tell him good morning?

“That’s right—I’ll wait in Mr. Gert’s room and surprise him!”

The thought suddenly sprang into Winnie’s mind.

She was usually the sort of person who did everything slowly, so much so that even the neighbors liked to joke and call her Slow Winnie. But this time she acted with remarkable decisiveness. She did not even stop to think the idea through before she had already begun moving.

She went to the little shed, took out the spare key she had somehow already made at some point, and smoothly opened the door.

A wave of heavy sweat-stink and stale air hit her head-on.

But Winnie did not feel even the slightest disgust. On the contrary, she was thrilled, because this was the first time she had ever entered Mr. Gert’s room!

Winnie turned in circles inside the shed, feeling that everything here was somehow delightful. Even that crude little bed thrown together from straw and woven mats made her unable to stop imagining how soft and comfortable it would feel lying there together with Mr. Gert—especially while holding Mr. Gert’s naked body...

“Oh my, how can I be this shameless?”

Winnie touched her burning cheeks and kept shaking her head.

She had always been a reserved person. So why was she feeling so bold today?

She must just miss Mr. Gert too much!

“That’s right, that’s right, I’m supposed to surprise Mr. Gert. Where should I hide?”

Winnie looked left and right, but there was nowhere in the little shed she could hide, which disappointed her a little.

Then, as if guided by something, her gaze suddenly fell on the space beneath the three-legged table in the middle of the shed.

She blinked, walked over, moved the table aside, and began feeling around on the ground.

Very quickly, she actually found a hidden door.

“H-how is there a cellar here? Did Mr. Gert secretly dig it himself?”

Winnie brushed the dirt off the hidden door. It never even occurred to her that there was anything strange about a stranger digging a mysterious cellar beneath her family’s shed. Instead, she felt delighted.

This was perfect. Now she finally had a place to hide and surprise Mr. Gert!

Winnie grabbed the ring.

A chill kept seeping from the crack in the hidden door, but she noticed nothing at all. Instead, she was convinced that the cellar on the other side must be full of Mr. Gert’s scent. It had to be the place where he usually worked!

Even though she had no idea when Gert would come back, Winnie had already sunk into beautiful fantasies. Yes, as long as she surprised Mr. Gert, she could grow closer to him; and as long as she grew closer to him, she and Mr. Gert could do this and that together...

Ah, was this love?

Love really was wonderful.

In just another moment, she would go and touch what belonged to her—

“Hey, little miss.”

Suddenly, the dim light in the shed became bright and warm at some unknown moment. The foul air was purified as well, taking on a faint fragrance. A slender, beautiful hand wrapped in a white silk glove reached over and caught Winnie by the arm, stopping what she was about to do.

“You can’t go down there. It’s dangerous.”

“Huh?”

Warmth flowed from that soft palm into Winnie’s body, and she jolted all over.

“Huh?”

Winnie blinked in confusion.

“How did I get here?”

“You were affected by a kind of mental pollution, but fortunately it hadn’t gone too deep. It can still be dealt with.”

The gentle voice sounded like a spring breeze.

Winnie instinctively turned her head to look. And the moment she saw that figure, she froze.

What a beautiful figure.

Long golden hair shimmered with light. A pure white dress fluttered softly in the air. Silk gloves wrapped those graceful hands. When she lightly lifted one hand to brush a few strands of hair back behind her ear, the gentle smile at the corner of her lips seemed capable of melting a person’s soul.

Most importantly...

That face.

That breathtakingly beautiful face.

Winnie knew it far too well. There was even a statue of her in Winnie’s room.

“Y-you...”

Winnie’s eyes lit up.

She was a devout follower of the Life Goddess, so she recognized almost at once that the woman before her was—

“I’m just someone who got dragged back into work because there aren’t enough hands. I’m not anything special anymore.”

The former Saintess rubbed Winnie’s head.

“I still have a few things to deal with, so could I ask you to go outside first? There are nuns from the Church waiting outside. Go have them check you over—and your father and mother need to be checked too.”

“Okay!”

Winnie nodded hard, thinking that this truly was just like the former Saintess. Even though she had already retired, that gentleness and holiness were still enough to make people swoon.

“I’ll go right away!”

“Such a good girl.”

The trace of pollution that had attached itself to Winnie at some unknown point, faint enough to be almost undetectable, was casually crushed away by Latina. Once Winnie had gone outside, Latina turned to the person beside her.

“Has all the isolation work been completed?”

“Don’t worry, Lady Latina. The entire town has already been sealed inside the barrier.”

“Good.”

Latina nodded, a hint of helplessness appearing in her beautiful eyes.

“Who would have thought that even after retiring, I’d still have to come do this kind of work... Honestly. But when a certain old thing can’t be relied on, what else can I do?”

As she spoke, Latina took out a pair of cold iron knuckle-dusters and fitted them onto hands as supple as willow branches. Her fingers cracked one by one, and her entire aura changed sharply.

“If the old thing isn’t reliable, then I’ll just have to be reliable myself.”

...

...

Before dawn arrived, who knew how many undercurrents surged through all of Belrand once more.

From the upper city, now much emptier than before, to the calm waters of the Glein River; from the Lower District still asleep, to this little town shrouded in mist—within a world the ordinary people knew nothing about, bloodshed and the uncanny were happening every moment, only to be completely snuffed out before they could ever enter the public eye.

“Seventh squad, cleanup complete.”

“Ninth squad, cleanup complete.”

“Thirteenth and Fifteenth squads, cleanup complete.”

“Fourth squad, cleanup complete.”

As report after report came in from specially bred white pigeons whose movements could not be traced, the rigid square face of Jinze finally relaxed a little.

This was the first time he had been in command of an anti–Evil God operation on such a large scale.

Especially now, with the Silent Bureau’s Swordbearer having gone to the front lines with the Emperor of the Empire, the pressure of all Belrand could be said to be resting squarely on his shoulders.

Fortunately, both the imperial administration and the Church of Life were strongly cooperating with this operation. One particular imperial relative had even personally stepped in and pulled off an especially elegant fishing operation, which was how they had managed to draw out these followers of Love God who had been hiding deep in Belrand one by one.

The only mystery was what exactly that person had used as bait. It had worked absurdly well. One casual cast and it was like jabbing a stick into Love God’s nest—heretics came crawling out one after another like razor clams showered with salt. It was bizarre.

He would definitely have to ask later. If they could get something that useful into the Silent Bureau, it would be incredible.

“Report: cleanup complete for second squad. No traces of Evil God pollution remain within the barrier.”

The white pigeon spoke again, bringing back yet another piece of good news.

“Excellent!”

Jinze clenched a fist, invigorated.

“If even second squad is finished, then there’s nothing left to worry about!”

Jinze spread out the map and began marking over the zones where signs of Evil God activity had been detected. Every time he crossed out another area, he felt his heart drop a little lower into place.

It looked as though this mission of his was really going to proceed smoothly—

“Alert! Alert!”

At that moment, however, the white pigeon suddenly flapped its wings and started screaming as though it had gone mad.

“First squad is requesting backup! First squad is requesting backup!”

“First squad?”

Jinze shot to his feet.

“That’s our elite squad. How could they have failed?”

“There’s a mole! Stop the operation! There’s a mole! Stop the operation!”

The pigeon flapped wildly by Jinze’s ear.

“There’s a mole—”

“Enough!”

Jinze grabbed the pigeon in one hand. His square face had already crumpled into a miserable knot.

The moment he heard the words mole, Jinze had a rough idea of what must have happened on first squad’s side.

Nothing more than one of the squad members, after prolonged fighting against heretics, becoming contaminated without anyone noticing—or else being deceived by the whispers and mutterings of an Evil God, only for it all to erupt at a critical moment and deal the squad a fatal blow.

This sort of thing was not uncommon in the Silent Bureau.

No matter how strict their pollution inspection system was, accidents like this still happened sometimes.

They were the front line against the Evil Gods.

And they were also the people closest to the uncanny.

From the moment each of them chose this path, they had already prepared themselves for an ending like this.

So what mattered now was not grief.

What mattered was figuring out a remedy as quickly as possible.

“Send in reserve sixth and eighth squads?”

Jinze paced back and forth, muttering to himself as he thought.

“No. First squad is responsible for the most important zone. It’s the gateway of the barrier, and it’s also where the believers are attacking the hardest. That’s why I put first squad there in the first place. Sixth and eighth squads aren’t enough. They’re too young. That place still needs someone capable of holding it down.”

“But that person... damn it, if the Swordbearer were here, this wouldn’t be such a headache!”

Jinze slammed a fist down onto the table, starting to hate his own lack of ability.

But in the end, the reason for all this was simple: with the Empire and the Kingdom at war, far too much manpower had been pulled out of Belrand. Otherwise, this problem would never have fallen to him to worry over.

“At a time like this... do I really have to call on that one?”

Jinze began weighing the final option.

From the standpoint of caution, it was undoubtedly the best choice. But the moment he thought of that person’s temper... Jinze felt a chill run through him.

“Forget it. I’ll take the brunt of that person’s anger. Stabilizing the situation comes first...”

Afraid or not, Jinze still made his decision quickly. He was just about to take out the transmission stone—

“No need...”

The white pigeon clenched in his hand suddenly said.

“Huh?”

Jinze raised a brow and released the pigeon.

“What did you say?”

“No need to save us...”

After escaping Jinze’s iron grip, the pigeon did not fly off. Instead, it staggered around a few steps like a drunk, then flopped over onto the ground.

“No need to come save us. We’ve already been saved...”

“Already been saved?”

Jinze asked, “Who saved you?”

“...Coo. Coo. Coo.”

The pigeon did not answer.

But at the very last moment, Jinze vaguely seemed to hear two words from the other side.

“So beautiful...”

...

...

“So beautiful...”

It was the holiest radiance in the world, a presence warmer than the sun itself.

The captain of the Silent Bureau’s First Special Pollution Response Squad stared blankly at that descending light, and his whole being could not help sinking into it.

All around him were his badly wounded team members. Every one of them was entranced by that Holy Light. Several corpses lay at their feet—companions who had once been their most solid and dependable allies, only to become enemies who stabbed them in /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ the back at some unknown moment.

“Thank goodness.”

An utterly ordinary carriage stood blocking the exit of the barrier. Every heretic who had tried to break through there had been turned to ash beneath the overwhelming Holy Light.

The curtain of the carriage was lifted, revealing an exquisitely lovely face.

“Looks like I arrived at exactly the right time.”