This is a very quiet place. The air is filled with the faint fragrance of flowers. Someone deliberately used perfume to try to cover up the blood smell and the strong smell of disinfectant in the room.
Neat beds were arranged in a row, but only the middle bed was occupied by people. There were various books piled beside the bed, which seemed to be used by the patient to relieve his boredom.
Lorenzo stared at the ceiling blankly, lying on the soft bed. His left foot was covered with bandages. The bracket wrapped it and then raised it high. His other hand was casually placed on the side, covered with medicine.
Pinhole after injection.
A week has passed since the night when Reverend Lawrence appeared. The chaotic fight finally ended with Reverend Lawrence's escape. According to reports from people outside the scene, Reverend Lawrence seemed to have tried to kill the man who was incapacitated due to erosion in the end.
Lorenzo, but just when he was about to take action, the war airship in the night sky fell out of control, burying everything on the battlefield.
They found Lorenzo in the wreckage of the airship. His whole body was covered in blood and flesh, and was penetrated by steel. His left foot was the most serious, with a large number of metal fragments cut into it.
So when Lorenzo woke up again, he had been here. This was a mental hospital secretly controlled by the purge agency, where corrupted soldiers would receive recuperation.
During this period, Arthur came once. This super soldier didn't look so super. He was wearing a cane and was covered with bandages. Dean Lawrence's sword almost killed him. At that time, he was completely for Eve on the battlefield.
Only then did he withstand it, otherwise he would have passed out long ago.
Lorenzo lost this battle, and so did the purge mechanism. According to post-war inspection and analysis, when Reverend Lawrence activated the secret blood, it brought about erosion beyond imagination, and the scope was very wide. A low-altitude flying ship
The war airship was also affected, and most of the crew were unconscious. Then the airship lost control and crashed directly. Fortunately, it only carried a small amount of ammunition, otherwise there would probably be no survivors in the second explosion.
Already.
And even though a week has passed, the post-war treatment has not ended. The influence left by Dean Lawrence is still eroding the surrounding areas. According to the survey, residents within a few kilometers of the vicinity have recently begun to have nightmares, and some have suffered from serious illnesses.
Due to mental illness, the psychiatric hospital in old Dunling was almost overcrowded.
The interior of the battlefield was handled by tightly protected scavenger troops. The entire Salicado Manor had been completely destroyed. Fortunately, Lorenzo held back most of the demons and Dean Lawrence during the battle, and some nobles were able to be transferred at that time.
Going out, the casualties are not that shocking.
After dealing with these, there were questions from the people. Most residents watched the war airship fall, and the fire lit up the entire night sky.
Due to erosion and panic, the security of the entire old Dunling was a bit chaotic. Fortunately, this group of scavengers were quite skilled in handling this kind of thing. Various gas explosion airship operation errors were reported, and they also hired a few
A writer wrote several conspiracy theories, adding fuel to the fire and muddying the waters.
This feeling was not good. The moment he fell, Lorenzo had a familiar feeling, as if at that moment he had returned to that night again, the night of the Holy Advent.
All efforts are in vain, many things are already doomed.
With a creaking sound, the iron door was slowly opened, and the doctor walked in pushing a trolley filled with medical equipment.
"How does it feel?"
"not bad."
Lorenzo stared at the ceiling.
"Well... let me check."
As the doctor spoke, he lifted Lorenzo's foot off the stent. This was the doctor who performed the operation on Lorenzo. He should be a medical staff member of the cleanup agency. While performing the operation on Lorenzo, he tried to
Picking out the fragments that were broken into the flesh, Lorenzo's body continued to heal itself, which greatly hindered his operation.
This doctor saw a human being with such strong vitality for the first time. If someone hadn't reminded him that Lorenzo's blood was mixed with secret blood, which was poisonous and fatal to ordinary people, he would have given up collecting it from Lorenzo.
Sample ideas.
"You really have the vitality of a monster. I thought you were dead, but it only took a few days for you to recover."
The doctor said and asked Lorenzo to walk around.
Lorenzo said nothing and stood up slowly. Except for some pain when he stepped forward, there was no abnormal reaction.
"You look like you're walking free now."
"Probably...can I be discharged from the hospital?"
Lorenzo looked at the door of the ward. Since he woke up, Lorenzo seemed to have changed. In other words, he had returned to his previous appearance. There was a cold look in his eyes. No one knew what he was thinking.
"I'm afraid that's not enough, Mr. Holmes."
A voice came from outside the door, and Arthur's somewhat haggard face appeared in view.
The old guy has been having a hard time these past few days. Not to mention his physical injuries, the aftermath of the incident needs to be dealt with by him. Even the platinum palace, which has always been silent, summoned Arthur again.
This was the incident with the largest casualties in Old Dunling since the Glorious War, and its impact was far-reaching and bad.
Lorenzo walked out without saying anything, with Arthur sitting in a wheelchair and Joey pushing the wheelchair behind him.
This time, these high-ranking knights were not injured. They were located on the periphery of the battlefield and successfully avoided the airship's fall zone.
But Joey was a little unlucky. He was hit by falling debris and was in a coma in the hospital for a few days. Lorenzo was the one lying on the bed next to him at first.
Eve and Seleu were not seriously injured under the protection of the soldiers, but Lancelot, who fell in the core area with Lorenzo, seemed to have been taken away by the Perpetual Pump, and the Original Sin Armor protected him. Although
The injuries were serious but not fatal.
"How's it going?"
"It's a mess. Fortunately, we haven't reduced the scavenger force due to the decrease in demon operations in recent years. Otherwise, I would really be busy to death."
"In order to speed up the erosion, we injected all the neutralizing liquid in stock into the furnace pillar, and the main steam outlet was set at Salicado Manor."
Neutralizing fluid is also an alchemical potion produced by the Perpetual Pump. Its only effect is to speed up the elimination of erosion and pollution in the area. It is usually injected into the furnace pillar and diffuses along with the water vapor in the affected area.
"Then came the destruction of several large Geiger indexers. The high intensity at that moment destroyed these observation equipment. Now the surrounding area is no longer under the surveillance of the Peeper system, but we have increased our patrol strength."
Exchanging information, the two of them were already on the same front unknowingly.
"We need to raise strength as soon as possible. Dean Lawrence is carrying something very dangerous. Once that thing completely spreads within Old Dunling...then we can only hope that the Evangelical Church will still be able to organize an Eastern Expedition."
The Eastern March is a religious term that belongs exclusively to the Evangelical Church. On the surface, it is the largest religious war in recorded history. But in fact, it refers to the all-out war of the Demon Hunter Order. All the Demon Hunters came out in force.
All actions of the Papal State of the Holy Gospel serve them first.
In Lorenzo's memory, the Demon Hunting Order conducted an Eastern Expedition hundreds of years ago, and the result of that expedition was that the demons disappeared from the world for a time.
"There's something on him."
"A [Messiah]-level containment object containing the "Revelations" with secret blood technology."
Lorenzo had nothing to hide. He knew very well that he could no longer kill Dean Lawrence with his own strength. He needed allies.
"It sounds like a very troublesome thing."
Arthur had a headache. He was a little envious of the previous Arthurs. When those old immortals were in office, when the demons were most active, they were only as strong as during the Ende Town operation. When it came to him, everything turned directly into hell mode.
"Arthur, do you have any ideas? This is Old Dunling, your home ground."
Lorenzo asked.
"Please give me some time to think. As I said before, the problem now is not only within the old Dunling. The new pope also hopes to unite with us, but I don't know if he really thinks so. The situation is far worse than it seems.
It’s so complicated.”
The re-establishment of the Demon Hunting Order, the appearance of the new Pope, and then the return of these monsters that had died in history.
It felt like the end of the world was about to happen. Everyone came out to sing and dance happily, with rising fire and lamentations.
Arthur was extremely tired, as if he had agreed in advance, all the chaos was triggered at the same time.
The three of them were silent for a short time, and a lingering cloud hung over the old Dun Ling.
But suddenly an expressionless face flashed in front of Lorenzo's eyes. Lorenzo remembered him, the Baron Abel, but now this playboy had a look of dementia, his eyes were empty, and his head was drooping.
On the other hand, he seemed to have lost his soul, sitting in a wheelchair and letting the doctor push him away.
"what happened to him?"
Lorenzo asked subconsciously. He would not have cared about people like Baron Abel, but when he saw those empty and dull eyes, he felt as if he was being stared at by something weird, and felt a chill.
.
"He just turned into a fool."
Arthur said slowly.
"What's the meaning?"
"Let me tell you slowly, okay? That Reverend Lawrence almost cut my trachea. I don't dare to cough now."
Arthur clutched his chest, his face slightly distorted every time he spoke.
"This is one of the results of the early discovery by the cleanup agency."
In the empty corridor, Joey pushed his wheelchair, and the three of them strolled and talked.
"We have discovered several stages of demonic erosion. The first stage is to feel a variety of continuously amplified negative emotions. The second stage is to start to have hallucinations, confusion, and even madness. The third stage is demonization."
Arthur's voice seemed a bit long. He did not say where the information came from. There is no need to expose such things that abandon humanity to the sun.
The experimenter and the demon were locked in the same cage, but there were iron bars between them. They witnessed the experimenter's despair and madness, and finally turned into the same monster as the demon.
And this kind of experiment happened more than once. Sometimes in order to save humanity, we have to abandon humanity first.
"We discovered a very interesting phenomenon. The key to demonic erosion lies in the third stage. As long as the third stage is not entered, normal people will only become madmen, not demons."
"So we conducted many experiments, and we even said that we once used up all the death row prisoners in Old Dunling.
We discovered a theorem that when the demon cannot be observed, erosion will stagnate."
"What's the meaning?"
"To understand it this way, Mr. Holmes, what is your way of observing the world?"
Arthur saw Lorenzo's confusion and guided him to think, but he didn't give Lorenzo a chance to answer, and he continued.
"We use vision, touch, hearing, taste, and other sensory organs. It is precisely because we can perceive the existence of the world with these sensory organs. So to change the way of thinking, if we can't perceive anything, then does the world correspond to
Doesn't exist?"
"Existence or not depends on our observation, right? A few hundred years ago, people like you would have been considered heretics and burned at the stake, or it would have been the kind of execution carried out by Michael the Witcher, where they would have been burned until no ashes were left.
."
Lorenzo couldn't help but look solemn. Arthur's words were like the theorem of a madman, but this theorem was filled with absurdity and strange truth.
"So your Demon Hunting Order is unwilling to welcome the new era and blame everything on God. We are different. What we believe in is science and technology. It is something that can be formulated. It does not originate from anyone's gift. It only comes from
Belong to ourselves.”
Arthur continued.
"These observed data will eventually be transmitted to our brains. If we accept normal information, we will not have abnormalities. But what if the information we receive is corrupted by demons? That is extremely polluting and difficult to understand.
It serves as a vehicle for absurd and unacceptable forces to invade our brains."
"After several dissections, we can prove this. All demonization starts from the brain. If you open the skull, you will find their diseased brain."
The empty corridor seemed so quiet, so quiet that you could hear everyone's breathing and heartbeat.
"so what?"
Lorenzo looked at Arthur. Just as he had guessed before, the purification agency knew much more than what appeared on the surface, but he did not expect to be so shocked.
"So, what if we cut off all information transmission before the brain is damaged, before the third stage of erosion begins?"
Arthur raised his head, looked at Lorenzo, and said blasphemous words.
"As long as the bridge that connects with the outside world is cut off, and you can't see, hear, or smell... and refuse to accept all information, then does it mean that the demon's erosion will not be able to continue to deepen, or in the eyes of the person involved?
The monster no longer exists, or even the whole world no longer exists?"
"Seal the entire brain..."
Arthur said with a smile.
"Let me introduce to you one of the cruelest surgeries in human history, prefrontal lobe resection."