"Eve! Move!"
Lloyd roared as he retreated toward the rear carriage, finger squeezing the trigger again and again. In the cramped confines of the train, the shotgun revealed its true purpose—devastation at point-blank range. Shattered pellets tore through the onrushing demons, bodies bursting, blood spraying across steel and glass. And yet, in the next heartbeat, even more poured forward, clawing over one another as if some overwhelming temptation waited just beyond.
Petals scattered through the air.
With one hand, Lloyd grabbed his suitcase and hurled it toward Eve. The sudden weight made her stumble, nearly sending her sprawling, but she forced herself upright and bolted through the iron door toward the rear.
She didn't get far.
Moments later, Eve turned back, her face drained of all color.
"What are you doing?!" Lloyd shouted.
Her answer came fast, almost choked.
"It's demons back there too!"
"…What?"
Blowing apart a grotesquely twisted head with a single shot, Lloyd strode straight to her, seized her arm, and dragged her out between the carriages. He jammed the door shut behind them. On the other side of the glass, countless blood-smeared hands slammed against it, pounding furiously, spiderweb cracks racing across the surface.
Grabbing the shoulder strap of the suitcase, Lloyd swung it onto his back, let it hang at his side—and drew from it a nail-sword gleaming with cold light.
"Demons in front too?"
For a rare moment, Lloyd felt genuinely stunned. This density of demonic outbreak meant one thing: the train had been infested from the very beginning. Which raised an obvious question.
Why this train?
And why did it have anything to do with him?
His thoughts flickered to his own boundary-breaking clairvoyance—and to Eve's awakening as well. A rough conclusion formed. Perhaps their connection to the darkness had gone too deep, deep enough to be noticed. They had been seen. And so the demons had come, drawn from the shadows.
But… why now?
The nail-sword plunged through the thick iron door, impaling both metal and the demon behind it in one brutal stroke. Demon blood coated the sanctified silver plating, hissing and bubbling like acid.
"Climb up!" Lloyd shouted.
Eve yelled back in the same instant. The silver deathbell in her hands boomed dully, each blast like a hand-cannon. Iron doors ruptured under the force, punched full of black holes from which blood gushed freely.
These were only the lowest of demons—mindless husks driven by the scent of blood alone. Still, Lloyd refused to relax. Somewhere among them, there could be something like Sabo—an elite, hiding its fangs.
They reached the coupling between carriages. Lloyd hoisted Eve up in one clean motion, setting her atop the next car, then pulled himself up after her. The wind on the roof was savage, pressing his eyes shut; he drove the nail-sword into the metal to anchor himself.
"Forward, Eve! We have to reach the engine!"
That was the plan. Fight their way to the front, sever the hooked conduits—and say goodbye to this cursed swarm.
"Why are there demons here at all?" Eve cried.
That instant of darkness had terrified her. One moment, there were whispers among passengers. The next—silence. Then the sound of hungry breathing. People who had been human seconds ago became monsters in the blink of an eye.
"Two possibilities," Lloyd said, hauling her along like a mountaineer scaling an icy cliff, driving the nail-sword in and ripping it free again and again. Beneath their feet came constant noise; sometimes, when he pulled the blade out, it dragged a streak of crimson with it.
"First, our connection to the darkness is already within arm's reach. But if it were truly that deep, based on my professional experience, these trash mobs wouldn't be what came for us."
He snorted.
"So there's only one answer. The demons were already on this train from the start. Which still leaves the question—why this train? Some damned resonance? People tied to darkness attracting darkness? That's absurd."
Lloyd had one bad habit: when things got dire, his thoughts tended to run off the rails. At that moment, he found himself thinking that in the East, this kind of mystical nonsense was apparently called fate.
What am I even thinking?!
Glass exploded. Steel warped. Hideous arms burst from both sides of a carriage, packed so densely they looked like wildly overgrown flesh-plants.
Gunfire roared, carving a path through blood.
"And there's another problem!"
Lloyd grabbed the panicking Eve, tucking her under his arm like cargo. Then he leapt—clearing the mass of demons in one explosive bound and landing atop the next carriage.
This was training refined by the Demon-Hunting Order. Even without awakening secret blood, demon hunters possessed physical ability, perception, and instinct that utterly eclipsed ordinary humans.
And yet, they were still human.
Humans who could die easily.
"Are these things really just here for us?"
Lloyd didn't put Eve down. This carriage was packed with demons, compressed like sardines in a net, crushing against each other as they clawed for an exit—desperate to tear into warm flesh.
There were too many to kill.
Perhaps Lloyd could slaughter them all—but then he'd have nothing left to protect Eve.
Secret blood was a technology meant to fight demons by becoming something like them. Lloyd's own secret blood was the product of countless experiments—a perfected strain. And his willpower was strong enough to keep the corruption at bay.
Eve was different.
That idiot girl didn't even know how she'd obtained secret blood, let alone what it did. And her willpower… if she awakened it, she'd maybe last a minute or two before being completely devoured and turned into a demon herself.
"If we get out of this alive," Lloyd shouted while sprinting across the roof, "I'm putting you through proper training! You're seriously dragging me down!"
Eve's face was paper-white. She couldn't answer—but her hands didn't stop, firing backward whenever demons clawed their way onto the roof.
Secret blood was the core technology of the Demon-Hunting Order. It granted humans demonic power—at the cost of demonic erosion. Unlike natural corruption, this erosion was controllable. As long as one stayed below the critical threshold, the demon within was like a beast in a cage, obedient to the hunter's will.
Cross that threshold—and the cage cracked.
In that sense, it was no different from the old-era divine armors powered by perpetual engines: all combat fought on the razor's edge. The difference was that under secret blood, the hunter themselves became the ultimate weapon.
"Lloyd! We're almost there!"
Eve twisted around with difficulty. Ahead, the steam-belching engine loomed—four or five carriages away.
"I know!"
He leapt again, landing cleanly on the next car. Behind them, the demons followed, shrieking hoarsely, claws scraping steel as they chased like predators after a feather drifting in the wind.
Almost there. Three carriages left.
That was when Lloyd finally saw the first carriage clearly.
It wasn't a model he recognized.
Pitch-black steel sealed it completely. Calling it a carriage felt wrong—it looked more like a massive iron coffin, sealing away something profoundly ill-omened.
Perhaps…
Perhaps that was the true source of the chaos.
With that thought, Lloyd charged forward, Eve still under his arm—until a sudden surge of blazing fire erupted between them and their path.
And cut them off.
…
"What the hell is going on?!"
Gunfire erupted from the rear, and Red Falcon's nerves snapped taut at once.
Then the shrill wail of alarms swallowed the cramped carriage whole. On every soldier's chest, harsh red lights began to flash—the Geiger counters. They were screaming now, their sound like blades, carving straight into the nerves of everyone present.
A demon had appeared.
On this train.
No further words were needed. Every soldier tightened their grip on their weapons. Two moved toward the first carriage to secure the weapons from Berhans. The rest stayed behind with Red Falcon in the mobile command car—so long as they held this position, the initiative was theirs.
"Send a message to Shrike. Tell him to meet us at the station!"
Red Falcon roared the order. If they could just hold out until the abandoned stop, reinforcements would be waiting. But the reply came back almost immediately.
"There's interference!"
The voice crackled, warped by faint distortions. They were cut off. Some unknown force had sealed the area, choking every signal before it could escape.
The night outside was utterly black. Only the blazing headlights of the Glory's engine remained, like a lone island in a sea of darkness—and now the tide was rising, eager to drown it.
Gunfire thundered like a storm. Muzzles spat flames several feet long, metal rounds tearing free and pouring out like rain.
The lights were gone.
Whenever demons descended, light vanished for one reason or another. Clear skies curdled into clouds. Lamps short-circuited without warning. In the end, darkness always won.
Lamps mounted on domed steel helmets flickered to life, throwing beams that danced in counterpoint to the muzzle flashes, sweeping back and forth as if prying open corners of the dark.
"We need to cut the coupling!"
A soldier shouted. At this rate, they'd be bled dry. If the cars were separated, the demon would never keep up with the train's speed.
Everyone understood the logic. Everyone also knew how close to impossible it was.
The carriages were tightly linked. Anyone who went out to sever the coupling would be trapped in that narrow space—between the gun barrels and the demon. Stop firing, and the creature would surge forward. Keep firing, and the one cutting the link would be killed by friendly fire without question.
Someone had to die.
"Hold this position! I'll cut the coupling!"
After a brief hesitation, Red Falcon shouted the words. As the only high-ranking knight here with effective resistance to demonic corruption, there was no one else who could do it.
"That's suicide!" a soldier cried.
"I have a way."
Red Falcon sounded utterly confident—whether to steady the men or because he truly believed it, no one could tell.
Suppressive fire continued. Spent casings carpeted the floor in a thin layer, glinting in the bursts of light.
"Clear out!"
Red Falcon plunged into the deeper darkness, then roared as he fired his weapon.
This was the Berhans weapons carriage—a rolling arsenal. Even without touching the classified weapon at its rear, the stock of firearms and ammunition alone was lethally excessive.
The shot became a sliding streak of fire, carving a burning arc through the air before slamming into the unnatural black ahead. In the next instant, a greater blaze erupted, like a miniature sun igniting. Raging flames illuminated everything. Within them, the demon's form writhed, twisted like a sinner struggling in the rivers of hellfire.
A white-phosphorus incendiary grenade—Berhans Military Industries.
The hand gripping the launcher trembled slightly. Had Red Falcon's aim been off by even a fraction, the entire carriage would already have become a blazing inferno.
No time to freeze.
He snarled and sprinted forward, straight into the scorching air.
The sea of fire would restrain the demon for now. This was his window. He had to sever the coupling—but when Red Falcon burst out of the carriage, he saw the heavy mechanism already cloaked in flames, impossible to grasp.
Damn it. Damn it!
He cursed aloud without hesitation, plunging both hands directly into the fire. No matter what, the link had to be cut—
—and then he heard it. A sharp rush of wind.
Red Falcon looked up.
What he saw was a blade of light cleaving straight through the firestorm.
"Just my fucking luck!"
A man burst out of the flames, cursing, a bewildered girl tucked under one arm. A suitcase and a Winchester hung at his waist, and in his hand he still held a blood-stained sword.
It was brilliance splitting the darkness—loud, unstoppable, absurdly dazzling. A peerless brute of a man, tearing through the entire carriage.
Everyone stood frozen, stunned by the sheer madness of it.
A second-rate detective had arrived in style—Winchester in hand.