“I guess this is the place.”

Despite all of Blake’s misgivings, Kara’s directions turned out to be correct in the end, as the Cleaners soon found themselves standing at the doorstep of an empty, but more fortunately still standing town.

Unlike Edelweiss, which had impressively kept up its uncommon Victorian-era styled architecture and streets even until recently, the ghost town was filled with past remnants of mild prosperity and happiness that were all left to ruins by its inescapable decline and subsequent abandonment.

The flat-roofed houses, all tightly packed together in rows and almost all the same in height and design, had been cleared out in a hurry, while the multi-coloured triangular flags tied along the balconies had come loose and were now freely flapping in the wind if they were not already gone.

Tattered and faded banners advertising some sort of festival were loosely hanging on the rusty lampposts, with some having already dropped down and swept away until they were wrapped around other random fixed things.

And regarding the said festival itself, it appeared that the town had been at the end of it before their departure, as the streets and main square had not been cleaned up at all. Piles of trash at almost every corner, there was confetti littered on the ground, and tents of many different sizes occupied a significant portion of the streets.

“…”

The first immediate thought that came into all of their minds was pure and utter chaos. The whole scene to them looked less like a bustling and vibrant hub of festivities, and more like a desperate attempt to be as extravagant as possible before it was all over.

“Are you… okay with this, Mister Blake?” Anten nervously asked, her eyes cautiously following the young man as he walked slowly down the filthy street, carefully watching his step to make sure he did not trip over any trash pile.

“Well… it sure as hell is a lot better than staying outside. I’d take anything at this point,” Blake nonchalantly replied, although the heavy look of disgust on his face was already showing his true feelings about the town in general.

“Mister Dauma? Miss Yuu?”

Hearing no response, she turned back to see that they had also walked off on their own, and it took a few moments of searching before she finally saw them again, closely observing separate things in different areas of the town.

Without anyone noticing, Dauma had already ripped off a poster from one of the houses’ walls and was at the moment staring intensely at it, frowning as he looked at its written contents.

“Wish for a better world… come join us in Paradise…” reading what was written on it under his breath before tilting his head back up and looking around, he instantly spotted a lot more posters, all with the same design and messages, pasted on various other houses and tentage.

He could not miss them for a single second even if he had not paid attention while walking down the street, that was how eye-catching they were, and he was not surprised by that fact once he finally saw them in detail.

Similar to what he had seen in the Silver Foxes’ temporary mansion hideout, what had been pasted everywhere in the town was nothing but blatant and pure propaganda, except this one was orchestrated by Paradise itself.

Numerous depictions and promises of their leader’s qualities, the benefits of the promised land, and a guarantee of a better life in general were all spread out and displayed prominently, reaching even the darkest, deepest corners of the settlement, which had likely rendered most of the townspeople simply incapable of escaping their attractive influence.

As a former mayor had once said, no one could deny the allure of Paradise, especially if they were desperate, and it was therefore not a surprise at all for the town to have been easily abandoned and left to rot if that was the case.

“Mm…”

At the same time, Yuu was walking around the main square in the middle of the town, where aside from the tents and trash, there was a simple yet slightly off-putting sculpture in the very centre that towered on a pedestal over the streets.

It was merely a large throne made of white marble, decorated with ornate features that made it appear as though it was fit only for a royal and no one else, but that was it.

There was no plaque to describe what it was, no beautifully-crafted man or woman with a handsome, self-entitled face sitting on it or any other sculpture of the sort that had once sat on it but had since fallen down and crumbled beside it. It was, for all intents and purposes, just a throne.

“… very strange…”

If she could hazard a guess, the most obvious answer that came to her mind was that it was designed to be that way, but a grimmer, but also quite likely theory was that it had been left incomplete during the inevitable end, when it could no longer be finished, and its original appearance and purpose was eventually lost to time.

As it remained in the town, empty and neglected, it cast an ominous, albeit poetic air for anyone who saw it, including her, so much so that she quickly chose to walk away from it, aiming to get as much distance between them as she could.

“Alright, so?”

Once everyone had finished walking around the ghost town and gathered back together, Anten cleared her throat and attempted to start discussing their next actionable plan, but she was quickly interrupted by a loud response.

“Well, first things first, I want to have a good night’s sleep,” Blake had immediately declared with conviction, “we’ve been walking for days, and I don’t give a shit how shady this place looks, I’m going to find a house with a good bed, and I’m going to fucking sleep my ass off.”

“Um…”

“Good night!!”

Before any of them could object or stop him, he had already marched off on his own and towards one of the houses before unhesitatingly kicking the door down and going in, leaving the other three speechless.

“… you want me to get him back?” Dauma asked after a moment of silent staring at the busted-open entrance of the house, but Anten weakly smiled and shook her head in response.

“It’s fine,” she remarked, “to be fair, we have been going non-stop with not much rest, and Mister Blake’s been through a lot, especially after what happened with Miss Kara. I think we should let him do what he wants to do this time without bothering.”

“If you say so.”

“We should also probably get some rest as well. We might be staying here for quite a while, so we should make ourselves comfortable at least,” she added as she turned her eyes back to look at him and Yuu.

“Sounds like a plan then. Do you want to stay in the same house?”

“… I don’t mind anything…”

“Well, we have streets full of them all to ourselves, so…”

**********************

After a quick agreement, the rest of the Cleaners, sans Blake, decided to lodge in separate houses of their own, though to make sure they could all respond in time if one of them got into trouble, the chosen houses were all right next to each other, including Blake’s.

“See you guys in the morning!” Anten loudly shouted to confirm before the three of them all went into their respective lodgings, “be safe, and don’t hesitate to call the others for help if needed!”

“You too.”

“… yeah…”

Now left alone in the house he chose for himself, Dauma did not waste any time in trying to find a room within it that he could take a rest in, but it quickly turned out to be much harder than he expected.

While the house’s appearance did not seem to look too bad from the outside, its rooms were a whole different story, having been taken over by age and deterioration in the time that it had been nonchalantly abandoned.

The first floor was a complete disaster, with all of the rooms, aside from the main hallway, either blocked off and left to ruins by collapsed ceilings or overrun from the ceiling to the walls by a strange brown moss-like substance that reeked of decaying flesh.

The second floor was not that much better off either, considering that many of the rooms on that floor were the ones that had their floors cave in on top of the others below, leaving behind only gaping holes and piles of rubble.

In the end, the only room that had not been affected by any of those factors was what appeared to be a children’s bedroom overlooking the main street. Although its condition was not the best either, with dust and filth occupying every corner, it still appeared to be the safest out of all the other choices, so he had no choice but to settle down there.

Sitting down beside the broken small bed, he looked around the space, taking in its unique details, from its peeling blue star wallpaper, to the rotten wooden shelves that used to hold toys and books, but that had since dropped them to the floor where they were all spread out, untouched and yellowing with age.

“…”

Picking up a teddy bear close to him, he silently gazed at its half torn-off head, making a casual note of the multiple rips in its artificial fur, its singular eye, and its stitched smile that had somehow morphed into a sinister grin with the help of the extensive damage around its face.

As he had expected, the plush toy also smelled incredibly musty, and the texture he felt from rubbing it was gritty and flaky. However, despite those repulsive attributes, he still continued to hold it, continuing to stare directly into its beady black eye and not saying a single thing.

“Who’s your friend?”

“Huh?” he did not know how long it had been, but he quickly snapped out of his trance as someone suddenly interrupted his focus, causing him to clumsily drop the bear on the floor.

“You two look like you’ve had a fun time,” Anten, who had sneakily entered the room without his knowledge, had a playful smirk on her face as she watched him react in slight shock before recovering his composure again.

“What are you doing here? I thought your house was beside Yuu’s.”

“I just want to hang out with you for a bit, Dauma. The night’s still young after all,” she remarked as she automatically plopped herself down beside him without any hesitation before reaching over and picking up the teddy bear herself.

“Uhh…”

“Unless you think I’m being annoying, in which case I’ll leave you alone.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he shook his head, prompting her smile to widen, and her tone to become more lively and excited.

“Perfect!”

“…”

The two of them sat in silence for a while as she fiddled around with the bear, throwing it in the air and using her hands to make it move, before she opened her mouth and spoke again.

“Are you alright, Dauma?”

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“… hm? What makes you ask that?” he quickly replied as he turned his blank gaze away from the splintered cabinets and back towards her.

“No particular reason,” she replied as she waved the bear’s paw, “it’s just that you seem a little tense, especially after we bumped into Miss Kara, and you and her had that little… talk.”

“That? It wasn’t a big deal, just her being herself as usual.”

“So something did happen.”

“Yeah, I guess…”

He went silent again for a moment before turning the conversation around, springing his own question onto her now before she could get him to elaborate on his vague answer.

“Anten. I’m sure you want to find out what you were like in your past, right?”

“Huh? My past?” she suddenly stopped playing with the bear and asked in confusion, caught off guard by his sudden query.

“Before the Apocalypse Cleaners. Before you were an angel. Michael was the one who told us that we were humans before all of this, remember that?”

“Yeah?”

“So, what do you think happened in your past? Don’t you want to find out? Aren’t you even a little bit curious about it?”

“Mm…”

Lifting her head up to the ceiling before rubbing her chin in thought, she began to mumble to herself, seemingly going through the can of worms he had just opened up for her. After a while, appearing to have come to a decision, she turned back towards him and gave her reply.

“… no.”

“No? Seriously?”

“Well, look,” she shrugged her shoulders and solemnly remarked, “of course I’m curious to know who I was and why I was chosen to be an angel, I will always be. But… I still have to accept it. After all, what’s the point of learning about it now? Even if I didn’t like it, what could I even do?”

“… I don’t know. Learn from it?” Dauma snapped back with slight irritation at her indifferent answer.

“And what would I need to learn if I find out I did something bad or unforgivable? I always want to do better, and that wouldn’t change anything. Also, what if learning about my past only brings me more pain, and when I try to fix it, it only causes more problems? Would that still be a good idea for me in that case? Would it? Huh?”

“…”

Dauma slowly ruminated on her words. There was a certain truth in them that he had to admit, but he could also sense a charged emotion to it. It was the feeling of repressed frustration, almost as though she did not want to say them, or as though she had been forced to reveal something she had not wanted to disclose to him or anyone else.

“Anten…”

“W-what?”

“Do you actually… know something?”

“N-no! Of course not!” she stammered as she hurriedly looked away in response, “w-why would you even come to that conclusion? I n-never said anything along those lines! Get off my back!”

“…”

It was an obvious lie, and the both of them knew it. As Dauma hit her with a questioning stare, she continued to avoid making eye contact with him, hoping for the very unlikely chance that he could simply forget about it and move on.

The heavy atmosphere had only become much heavier from her failed deception, and like so many times before, she was choking on it, struggling to breathe with the nervousness and tension that had been relentlessly heaped onto her.

Damn it, why is this always so hard for me? Why can’t he back off? Why can’t I be left in peace—

As her thoughts ran wild trying to come up with the right response to him, she abruptly stopped before she forced herself to calm down and think about the dilemma more carefully.

No, this is not working. I don’t want to lie to him. I shouldn’t. In that case… I might need to take a page out of Sister Renare’s book. She always gave her answers logically, right? Maybe that’s what I need to do.

“… I think I went too far, sorry. You don’t have to answer me, if it’s too much pressure for you.”

“No, Dauma… you’re right. I guess I have to tell you then.”

Taking a deep breath, she decided to adopt a different approach to address the current situation. It was not the best decision she intended to make, but it was the one that she felt she needed to get used to as soon as possible, to avoid any complications in the relationships she had.

“I don’t know if it is even accurate or not, and the answer might… I don’t know, you might not like it.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Alright,” she began to recount with a shaky voice, “I… when I was in the Church of Enlightenment, I learnt something from a book that was lent to me. There was a picture inside… and… and it was…"

“Yeah?”

“It was—"

“AWKH!”

A sudden screech rudely interrupted her confession, and almost instantly, the both of them dropped whatever they were saying before turning their attention towards the open window, where something was sitting on the ledge.

“What the…”

Curiously staring at them with unusual yellow eyes and impassively ruffling its feathers was a white crow that they had never seen before, but that seemed to trigger a strange sense of déjà vu, a certain familiarity inside them as soon as they laid their eyes on it.

“AWKH!” it loudly screeched once again, its fierce call heavily disturbing the both of them as they both grew incredibly dubious of its unexpected appearance right in front of them.

Its fixed gaze gave off the idea that it was watching them very closely and carefully, observing their every move and waiting. But as for what exactly it was waiting for, both of them were not so sure.

“Is that what I think it is, Anten?” Dauma slowly muttered, narrowing his eyes in suspicion as he quickly attempted to come up with a rational explanation inside his head for the oddity.

“No idea…”

BA-DUMP.

Then, they both felt it at the same time. The feeling of dread that could raise goosebumps, the sudden but unmistakable presence of another Particle, and the threat of imminent danger that was about to befall them.

They did not have enough time to look at each other, they did not even have any time to say anything. All that they had in both of their minds was one singular instinct, a desperate thought driven by panic.

Get down!!!

In an instant, the air above them was split into two.

Going down as low as they could to the bedroom floor, they could both hear a loud crack and a whoosh, before a rough blast of wind hit them. They did not have the opportunity to see what had just passed by them, only a quick flash of bright blue, but they knew it came from one side of the room to the other, going horizontally through like someone slicing a fish open.

“Eek!” Anten shrieked uncontrollably as she lay down with her hands to both her neck and head, unsure of what had just happened.

While they had just barely avoided the brunt of the attack as far as they knew, the room they were in was not so lucky, having been divided perfectly into two halves.

The sheer force of the mysterious strike had carved out a thick cut in its walls, causing the top half to fall onto the bottom half rapidly and violently, showering the both of them in debris from the roof.

By some miracle, the floor below them did not give way to the combined weights of its sudden load, but nevertheless, they were still quickly buried in concrete. With the rubble above them, both of them knew they had to push their way out to escape, and that they had to do so as quickly as possible.

“You ok?”

“Ghk…”

“If you can move, on the count of three, we push!” Dauma hissed from beside Anten, the falling debris having left a small but nasty gash on his forehead.

With blood pooling in her mouth from her accidentally bitten tongue preventing her from responding normally, the angel simply nodded in acknowledgement before getting ready herself.

One… two… three!

Despite not knowing who their attacker was or where the next attack was coming from, they took their chances and, with support from their hands pushing against the floor, they launched themselves upwards in unison, smashing their way out of the fallen roof and back into the open sky.

As they did so, they continued to feel the strong presence of cold eyes on them, though it was not the same feeling that the white crow gave. Someone else was now watching them, and as they looked down, they could now clearly see who that person was.

“… no…”

He was floating a few inches off the street, carrying something in his hand that seemed to resemble a whip, and his strange outfit consisted of a salmon pink suit with a black dress shirt inside and long pants, but it was his real appearance that made them freeze with shock.

Only the combed-back grey hair and his dignified clothes were the most normal parts about him. On the other hand, he was levitating using his long wings of bone with claws at both ends, he had eyes with blood-red pupils, there were curled horns on his head that seemed to resemble the ones on a mountain ram, and he had four clawed arms extended outwards, all clenched up and ready to strike.

“No… no… why? Why is it you? WHY?!” Anten shouted in pure horror as she stared, pieced all the features together, and realized who he was.

“…”

Dauma said nothing, but he gritted his teeth in anger as he glared at the mysterious attacker, who seemed to be looking specifically at him instead of Anten.

If he was really who they believed he was, they were in trouble. It was not only because they knew what he was fully capable of, but given his violent introduction, they knew he was surely not keen to talk or go peacefully either.

As Dauma landed on the destroyed house, with Anten stopping her descent with her wings before she did, the inhuman devilish being critically raised his eyebrow at the both of them before swiftly swinging the whip-like weapon in his hand backwards.

“!!!”

Upon closer observation, the whip in his hand was actually a long flexible sword with a blade that shone with bright blue flames. It curled and waved in the air like a gymnastics ribbon, before abruptly straightening and tightening with a crack as its user reached the maximum distance that he could stretch backwards, and he yelled as he quickly swung it back around towards his prey.

This time, he aimed it much higher than his previous strike, targeting the both of them, and as the weapon cut through the air, they were forced to react and get away from it as quickly as possible.

“…”

Meanwhile, the devil who used blue fire smirked cruelly without needing to say a word, letting his sword cut through the rubble pile with no difficulty, all while he gleefully watched as his targets scurried to the sides, trying their best to find a way to launch their own counterattack.

“Damn it, you bastard!”

Flipping and twirling herself in the air as the attack passed by her, Anten desperately cursed as she created her bow in the middle of her evasion and proceeded to fire arrows towards him, hoping against all odds that they would land.

At the same time, Dauma had lowered his body before the sword reached him, going down to a sprinter’s position, before quickly shooting himself towards him, creating and drawing his sword close to his chest, ready to cut through his body using his own speed and momentum.

“…”

In spite of the incoming enemies, the blue fire devil was not fazed. Instead, he promptly stopped his wide swing and swiftly moved his arm backwards, causing his weapon to curl and bend in irregular waves once again as it quickly headed back towards its user.

“What the—agh!" Dauma yelled as he was all of a sudden caught in the path of the weapon once again, but this time he could not respond fast enough to avoid it.

The blue sword hit and slashed his back brutally, creating several burning cuts and causing him a great deal of pain, much more than he had anticipated, but he endured it and made his move as he reached him, quickly thrusting his own blade forward in a surprisingly synchronised time with Anten’s arrows.

“CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!”

However, he could not do it, and the arrows did not hit their mark. Nothing touched the pink-suited devil who was simply floating over the ground, and who had not used his whip sword to defend himself from the attacks either.

It was not that the both of them had actually missed, or had purposely intended to do so, it was almost as if they were supposed to, as with several loud clangs, both Dauma’s sword and the arrows stopped in mid-air as though they had hit a metal wall, and they could not go any further towards their target, rendering him completely fine.

Damn it…

This was not like the situation with Simon Bailey, in which he was fast enough to block attacks with his own tools, neither was it like Blake’s, in which his body’s resistance prevented most normal weapons from penetrating his skin. It was more like an invisible force field, blocking any and all threats against its user and protecting him from any kind of harm.

Damn it, damn it!!!

They had failed. Both he and Anten already knew about the blue fire devil’s name, his capabilities, and what he could do, but now that their worst fear about him was confirmed, their speculations about what they could actually do to him was rapidly growing.

“Ghk!”

In utter agony from the cuts on his back, Dauma suddenly felt a hand wrap around his neck before it squeezed tightly with fierce and intense strength. As he began to choke from the pressure, he could feel himself getting lifted up, higher and higher over the devil’s head, with his feet helplessly dangling in the air.

“Let him go!” Anten shouted in a panic as she loaded her bow again, descending lower down to get a clearer shot, though she still kept her distance from him. The fact that her arrows appeared to have done nothing did not make her back down at all as she continued to stare down the seemingly unbeatable opponent.

“…”

“What… what do you want?!”

“This town…”

At last, the blue fire devil finally spoke, his voice coming out in a sultry and alluring tone, but as he addressed Dauma, it was also filled with a contemptuous poison, as though he was hurling razor-sharp thorns out at him as fast and as much as he could.

“The ground you step on… the light you see… the sounds you hear… and even the very air you breathe in…”

His vice-like grip around Dauma’s neck continued to tighten with every word that he flung towards him, all while his eyes widened and slightly bulged with pure hatred the longer he glared at the struggling devil.

“Ghk… ghh…”

“CLANG! CLANG!”

Dauma tried to hit him over and over again while his consciousness was still present, but he remained impenetrable, somehow even up to the hand that was currently squeezing him.

“… you… and so many others…” the devil continued to snarl, “you are all vermin, leeches and traitors, disrespecting and mocking the mistress and the miracles she has done for this forsaken world!”

“M-mistress?”

In response to Dauma’s strained question, the devil used one of his free arms to point down the street, back towards the main town square, and his grip loosened just a little to allow him to slowly turn his head and see what he was pointing at, with Anten quickly glancing over as well.

“…”

They had not even noticed her at all, the person casually lounging on the empty throne sculpture in the middle of the square, but as soon as they did, an strongly overpowering presence engulfed and swallowed them. It was almost as though just noticing her alone was an incredibly difficult task to perform.

“…”

The lady in question was the one that they were absolutely sure would have shown up someday but did not expect this early. She had her silvery hair tied up in a cylindrical bun at the top of her head, grey wings that were splayed over the back of the chair, and though her eyes were covered in shadow, the smile on her face was filled with amusement.

It was her, the angel who had betrayed the god Michael, in the flesh, watching them the whole time as they fought without stepping in.

“AGH!!!”

Almost immediately, Anten turned her bow away from the blue fire devil and towards her, her face contorted with fear and rage.

She could not believe it at all, but she knew that they were already in hot water as soon as they realized her presence. Her devil companion was already bad enough on his own, but if she was here too, that was not good for any of them.

In fact, just the mere casual attitude of the two meant that they did not see them as big of a threat as they were supposed to be at all. There was the sinking feeling that they were only treating it as a minor annoyance that both her and Dauma had been forced into, and the realization deeply troubled her even further.

“… damn it…” she bit her lip as her bow unsteadily trembled, and even though she had a clear shot, she did not fire. Seeing this display with his own two eyes, the blue fire devil finally dropped his frown and lightly smirked.

“Good choice. You should—”

“BANG! BANG! BANG!”

“CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!”

Three loud gunshots, and the bullets bounced off him without any question, but his surprise at the sudden attack interrupted his flow and made his grip loosen a little further, giving Dauma, who was still conscious enough, the unexpected opportunity to push himself away from him and escape to the side.

“… tsk. More insects have joined. How disgusting,” he clicked his tongue and spat out as he turned his head to look at the shooter in irritation.

“Listen, you fuck.”

Having appeared from the house that he had chosen for himself, standing close and pointing a gun directly at him without giving any attention to the smug angel behind him, Blake was royally pissed off.

“I don’t care who the fuck you are, I don’t care what you can do, but no one, I repeat NO ONE, fucking messes with my sleep!!!”

“… angel lady… what’s happening…”

Right behind him was Yuu, who had also come out of her house to assess the situation. She had not yet transformed into her Reaper form, so she was still currently vulnerable and exposed to the menacing enemies both in front of and behind her.

“You little…”

As he glared at the newcomers even further, the blue fire devil’s grimace only deepened, and he quickly drew back his sword as he got prepared to take them on as well.

“… inferior vermin… you all shall pay for desecrating her influence!!!”