Meanwhile, Gunther was moving through the streets with a troubled expression.
He had been certain Luthien would begin acting without delay. Yet there were no visible signs of movement. Even the pair he had attached the Shadow Snakes to showed nothing suspicious. No unnecessary motion.
...Even the hierarchy member of Justice, from whom Gunther had expected open aggression, was behaving suspiciously quietly.
“Strange. By now, they should already have realized we found a way to resist the disease.”
The situation was becoming more and more unsettling. But contrary to his fears, the city had definitely begun to move.
“This way!”
The crowds enjoying the festival began to be brought under organized control. Tourists and locals alike obeyed the soldiers’ orders in confusion, and in the spaces that opened up, squads in armor polished to a mirror shine began appearing with weapons at the ready.
“Looks like Edad completed the report successfully.”
Seeing that, Gunther finally let out a small breath. Though he had resolved to “see the zombie apocalypse through,” he had no desire whatsoever to watch his comrades or innocent civilians turn into a rabid mass of dead. In the end, his purpose here was only observation and analysis.
How exactly the symptoms manifested. What the rate of spread was. And where the point of no return lay, beyond which nothing could be fixed.
With early isolation, treatment, and proper study, he would be able to learn a great deal. Then, after waiting for the right moment, he could either attack the hierarchy member of Justice or simply kill himself to roll back to the save point.
“My people went there for exactly that.”
However...
“......?”
It did not take long to realize everything was going wrong.
“...What is this?”
On the way to the Seventh Sector, where he was supposed to rendezvous with his platoon, Gunther noticed that the district’s borders had changed drastically.
“Seal it off!”
This did not resemble a temporary checkpoint.
It was a complete blockade of the entire sector.
Armed units stood at every exit, while heavy barricades were being erected.
...Gunther himself had insisted on the importance of isolating the infected. But what he was seeing now was fundamentally different from what he had meant by “isolation.”
Total confinement... severance.
A full lockdown designed around the use of force.
Edad’s words resurfaced in his mind:
“The criminals of the Seventh Sector... those who broke the code of honor, and their descendants. The Kingdom of Valloren will never spend its resources on them. The weak they are obligated to protect and save stop at the Sixth Sector.”
This wouldn’t do.
The disease had an incubation period.
There was still time.
This was the very “golden window” when every possible resource should be thrown into understanding the outbreak. And most importantly, his comrades were still inside. Knowing their personalities, there was no way they would abandon the patients.
Without hesitation, Gunther quickened his pace toward the cordon. The heat of the torches, the clatter of equipment, and furious shouting hammered at his ears. Even the armed soldiers themselves seemed deeply shaken by what was happening.
“Entry into the zone is prohibited. Fall back.”
An ordinary foot soldier stepped forward to block Gunther’s path. Several guards along the line immediately leveled their weapons at him.
“I repeat: fall back.”
When Gunther took another step, the tip of a spear lifted slightly. The soldiers’ fingers tightened around the hilts of their swords.
For Gunther, carving a path through here and now would not have been difficult. It would take only seconds to break through by force.
However—
“No, that would only make this worse.”
These were no longer just soldiers.
The knights had begun to move.
With the declaration of total lockdown, the response forces were being introduced in phases. If he used force now, he would instantly be branded an “external threat violating quarantine protocol.” That would not only harm Night Raven, but strip him of any chance of helping the comrades trapped inside.
“...Besides, I can’t beat them.”
The level of the incoming knights—and their numbers—far exceeded all expectations.
[Alphonse of Red Street grumbles that even for him, slipping unnoticed through a structure like this would be difficult]
[He says that due to the multilayered cordon, guard density, and absence of blind spots, finding a gap is practically impossible]
At that exact moment, doubt surfaced in Gunther’s mind.
The thought flared up suddenly, like a lamp being lit.
“Why is their plan this easy to break?”
He was thinking of Luthien’s plans.
Even if people became zombies, they would not suddenly learn to fly, nor would they become strong enough to withstand several knights. The starting point had been the bodies of weak children. If a cordon like this was established, then the result, however cruel, was obvious.
“The epidemic can be suppressed simply by sacrificing the Seventh Sector.”
That meant Valloren’s overall strength would remain practically untouched. Of course, if Gunther had not interfered, the “capital zombification” would have unfolded in a much more elaborate way...
But even so, for a plan that involved even Holy entities, there were far too many holes in it.
“There’s something else.”
His instincts told him so with almost perfect certainty.
But at that exact moment, a familiar voice sharply pulled him from his thoughts.
“No! What are you... right now!..”
The shouting came from a group of knights in uniform. Among them, a woman was arguing loudly about something. Gunther reflexively shouted her name.
“Seril!”
Seril flinched in surprise, turned, and the moment she noticed him, hurried over. Her usually flawless face was covered in sweat and dust, and her uniform was wrinkled in places.
“Sir Waning Moon! Where in the world have you been! I waited for you with lofty impatience!”
...She had probably meant “with anxious hope.”
“Seril,” Gunther immediately got to the point. “Is the platoon still inside?”
Seril’s face darkened.
“Yes. They established a temporary infirmary and are transporting and treating the sick. My task was to notify the Public Security Bureau, but...”
She hesitated for a moment, shaking her head in confusion.
“Before I even arrived, not only the Bureau forces but the capital troops had already begun moving. Even the Round Table families. I wanted to return, but the route is sealed now.”
“...What?”
Gunther’s face twisted.
“Was this Edad’s doing?”
But he discarded the thought immediately.
The timing didn’t fit.
For such a hierarchical Valloren to mobilize the capital’s entire military force from the report of a single rank-and-file Executive Division agent? And even the Round Table families?
That was impossible to explain.
“How were they able to decide on a blockade and begin acting this fast?”
Meanwhile, Seril continued with a guilty look.
“They say an absolute order came down from above: under no circumstances is the cordon to be opened.”
Her “above” meant the Round Table.
Being a straightforward person, she explained it exactly as it was.
“They said good citizens cannot be endangered for the sake of criminals who trampled knightly honor and caused harm to the state and public order.”
Gunther could not stop himself from asking:
“...And the children?”
Pain twisted Seril’s face.
“The epidemic is threatening the children. Those who have nothing to do with the sins of their parents...”
“...Yes, I know.”
[The King of Ninety-Nine Defeats closes his eyes in sorrow]
Gunther quietly exhaled as well. He had no intention of arguing with Seril or blaming her. ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) It was obvious she herself had just been protesting these measures. He simply realized once more how rotten the knightly honor Valloren praised so highly had become.
“This is the weakness of chivalry.”
A choice left to conscience rather than law.
The moment differences in interpretation begin, everyone becomes right in their own way. After all, everyone can define justice in whatever way is most convenient.
“No wonder no one has been able to draw the Holy Sword for over a hundred years...”
At that thought, Gunther suddenly froze.
“No, wait.”
All the clues, together with his intuition, snapped into a single picture.
Dominic falling into madness.
The hierarchy member of Justice personally appearing at the Holy Sword Festival trial for some reason.
Knightly honor being slowly but steadily defiled.
And the event that was supposed to become the final period at the end of all this.
“Those bastards... no way.”
Perhaps the zombie apocalypse had never been their final objective.
An icy chill ran down his spine.
Their real goal—
“Could something like that even be possible?”
Gunther’s gaze stretched into the distance, toward the Sword Hill that lay silently sleeping despite all this chaos.
***
“Eva!”
Edad woke with a violent gasp. The first thing to burst from his dry mouth was his daughter’s name.
“Khh—”
He tried to move, but his body would not obey. His wrists and ankles were tightly bound to the chair. His entire body ached.
“Haa... haa...”
As an experienced agent, Edad suppressed the rising fear and looked around.
He was met with a room drenched in dim light. Walls without a single decoration. A cold iron table and chair.
An interrogation room.
“Wait...”
Only a moment later did Edad realize someone was sitting in front of him.
His consciousness, only just returned, was still clouded, and the room was steeped in half-darkness, but...
he could never fail to recognize him.
“...Deputy Director Werner.”
Werner Camaril.
The legitimate heir of the Camaril family, the Fourth Family of the Round Table.
Deputy Director of the Public Security Bureau.
And his half-brother, five years younger than him.
Werner, flipping through documents, spoke.
“It’s been a long time since we met like this face to face, Edad.”
Werner did not use the word “brother.”
Ever since he had been harshly reprimanded at the age of ten for calling the bastard Edad his brother, that word had vanished from their conversations.
“I never thought our reunion would happen in an interrogation room.”
Those words dragged fragments of memory from before the blackout back to the surface.
The glass vial with the virus.
The warning from the Night Raven agent.
Eva’s body, burning like fire.
The moment he had been about to carry his daughter somewhere safe, the ominous creak of the door had sounded.
And then...
rough hands had descended on him.
“Eva.”
Edad’s gaze shook.
“Where... where is Eva?”
Werner fixed him with a heavy stare.
After a long sigh, he spoke.
“Brother.”
It was a familiar address, pulled from a distant past.
Yet all Edad felt in it was a premonition of disaster.
“You know the nature of this disease, don’t you? That terrible plague that turns people into the living dead...”
Edad’s face turned corpse-pale.
How the hell did Werner know about this new kind of plague—“zombies”?
About something Edad himself could never even have imagined until the Night Raven agent explained it.
“Oh, come on, why are you looking at me like that?” Werner smirked, as if the situation itself were absurd.
“You thought I colluded with Luthien? Not at all. I have my own ‘information network’ too. I simply happened to receive the key information at almost the same time as you.”
Then his face gradually hardened.
“To be honest...” Werner chose his words slowly. “I never could have imagined it.”
“...”
“You were always obsessed with merit and honor. The thing you wanted so badly was right in front of you, and yet you chose your illegitimate daughter... committed treason against the state. It was so unlike Edad.”
Edad only shook his head.
Merit?
Honor?
None of it mattered.
He pleaded.
“Deputy Director. Eva... where is Eva? Please tell me.”
“...Brother.”
Werner looked away.
Edad screamed, his voice tearing.
“...Werner!”
“...”
“She’s your niece. Your niece!”
Niece.
Werner murmured the word as if testing its taste, then let out a short sigh.
“That’s right. My niece, who carried within her a disease capable of wiping out tens of thousands of people in the capital.”
Hearing that cold, emotionless tone, Edad finally understood everything.
It felt as if all the blood drained from his body at once.
“Listen, brother,” Werner said, turning his back on him.
“You’ll go down in history as the man who first recognized the gravity of the situation and took measures faster than anyone. As a knight among knights who protected countless subjects... the innocent and the weak, by sacrificing even his own family.”
“...Werner, no...”
“This... is all I can do for you.”
Werner said nothing more.
As Deputy Director of the Bureau, under a threat to the state’s very existence, he had a mountain of work waiting for him.
More important than comforting the half-brother with whom his connection had long been severed.
More important than mourning the death of a single child.
There were simply too many things more important to him.
Bang!
Leaving Edad behind, Werner stepped out of the interrogation room.
“...”
He did not look back.
Bitterness ached in his chest, but that sorrow was not strong enough to make him doubt his choice.
This was right.
That was the conclusion he had reached.
His knightly honor had always pointed in only one direction.
To place the survival of the state above personal circumstances.
The decision that seemed cruel now would ultimately save far more lives.
“...”
As he walked down the corridor, he suddenly noticed that his head was hanging low.
As if he were a man trying to turn away from something.
Still, he kept walking forward.
“Damn it.”
He had a feeling this night was going to be very long.
.
.
.
Gunther let out a quiet breath.
Ding!
[Knightly honor is not a blade that proves victory, but the choice not to turn away from the abandoned.]
[An action corresponding to knightly honor has been detected]
[The decision to raise the fallen is being recorded as your conviction]
[Knightly honor level has increased to “1”]
Yes.
This had to be right.
