Gun of Ashes

Listening to his words, Lorenzo fell into silence.

It was indeed so. Human lifespans are so short; in the absence of resources and equipment, unable to rely on mechanical life-support, the only road left is Ascension—and that, in turn, carries an immense likelihood of awakening The Inexpressible.

Knowledge is cursed. They record it with the utmost caution, striving to bury the secrets of the past forever.

The Nation-Builders pass the torch from generation to generation; history that was once real becomes blurred and distorted under the soaking of time. In the end, their descendants may well believe it all to be mere delusion, able only to ignorantly carry out those ancient commands.

Just like Oscar. Just like Queen Victoria. Just like all the ignorance in this world.

The old man let out a rasping laugh.

”When all is said and done, humans are still far too fragile.

We have rebooted again and again, the resources in the shelters consumed again and again. We did establish new civilizations outside, and gained a certain capacity to resist the mutterings of The Inexpressible, but under this kind of consumption, all of it is no more than a vicious cycle.

Towers rise, then collapse; built anew upon the ruins, then collapse again.

Gradually, everyone fell into despair.”

Everything was futile; none of it had meaning.

”In my memory, this slow death dragged on for a very long time. Though no one spoke of it, everyone had realized humanity’s failure. Our efforts by now were only to prolong the existence of ’humanity’ a little further.

As for stepping into Ascension, becoming one of The Inexpressible?

There were those who proposed such a plan. We promptly took that fellow out and shot him. His corpse was fed into the circulation machine; the moisture was extracted and injected into the reservoirs, the pulverized remains turned into fertilizer and irrigated into the cultivation fields.

In this respect, I’m quite glad my colleagues shared my views. If you’re going to lose, at least lose with some backbone, right?”

”And then this place fell into absolute silence.

Until a few centuries ago, when a group of people knocked on the shelter’s door.”

”By then, the shelter had already reached a state of complete exhaustion—ammo spent, food depleted. All kinds of resources were critically scarce, and the artificial embryos were almost gone, barely enough to support one more reboot.

We woke from our long sleep, not entirely sure how they had managed to find us, but thinking it over, it made sense. No matter how thoroughly you erase your own existence, you will always leave a few threads behind.

The visitors muttered about miracles and faith, devout to the point of nearly kowtowing with every step. When they saw us, their eyes brimmed with tears; several of them were so overwhelmed they fainted on the spot… At the time, we looked at them the way you’d look at monkeys. It was hilarious.”

The old man swung his mechanical arm. He looked as though he wanted to sketch out their expressions for Lorenzo, but the fellow’s face was almost entirely covered by metal plating; Lorenzo could only see the electronic eye whirring nonstop.

”They shouted words like the name of God, and begged us for the power to fight Demons.

Only then did we learn how bad things had gotten outside—that Demons strode across the earth, and humanity shivered in the dark.

It seemed the Nation-Builders had failed yet again, but that was only to be expected. Time rots all things. The successors of those Nation-Builders probably could barely remember their original mission.

So I thought for a long time. Since it was already this bad, why not at least give it a try?”

The old man made a show of pondering. Through the glass shell, the light bands circling his brain tissue grew brighter and brighter; this was clearly tied to his brain’s activity. It looked like he really was thinking in earnest.

”I made a terrible decision.”

He emerged from his reverie, and Lorenzo had already guessed what choice he’d made.

”The world outside was already ruined; the shelter was on the verge of collapse; humanity was about to suffer a crushing defeat. Why not stake a final gamble? In truth, you could barely call it a ’final’ gamble. Once the shelter doors shut, none of it would have anything to do with me. I would go on bearing my duty, preserving humanity’s last spark, until I finally guttered out in the cold wind.

I handed over data on The Inexpressible in terms they were capable of understanding, and I even tossed in a few extra things as a bonus. For them, all of it was black-box technology: they knew that it worked, but had no grasp of why.

I’ve heard that later on they did manage to dismantle a few units. They still didn’t really understand them, but at least they derived a basic prototype. They called it ’Alchemy.’”

”And then… and then…”

The electronic eye stopped turning and stared straight at Lorenzo. His voice sounded out.

”They said it was God’s revelation. They waited for my instructions… the oracle.”

Lorenzo stepped up to stand before the old man, and continued his words.

”You commanded them to go to No. 13 Fortress, and they did indeed carry out your orders.

Using the knowledge gained from the shelter, they refined the Secret Blood, pried open the metal buried deep beneath the earth, and forged Nail Swords of Holy Silver. They defeated the age of darkness, and thus the Demon Hunting Order was founded upon a prison.”

Lorenzo’s voice trembled slightly. His fists clenched tight. He could not even sort out what his own emotions were now; he only felt a kind of calm—calm so deafening it roared in his ears.

”First… Roger Cruz once said that No. 13 Fortress ought to be forgotten by all.”

”Sadly, we failed to forget it, didn’t we?”

The old man stowed away all trace of playfulness. He was deadly serious as he began to speak of the past to Lorenzo.

”Several hundred more years passed after that. The few of us who remained felt that our time had come. No matter how much machinery replaced our bodies, we were still cowardly humans at heart, and it was time we greeted death.

So we incubated embryos. Roger Cruz was born. I regarded him as our successor, teaching him the knowledge of the past, and everything—everything—I understood. By my calculations, the shelter could keep running for quite a while this way. Strictly speaking, it had already collapsed, but it could still cling to life. Every extra second it endured was another victory for humanity.”

”Then… one day, someone knocked on the shelter’s door again.”

The old man lifted his head and looked toward the door behind Lorenzo and Watson. At this moment, it was slowly opening. In the dimness, a single beam of light speared through the crack and poured inside. In that blaze, a blurred human silhouette surfaced.

”He said…”

In the memory, the man shouldered a sword bag bristling with Nail Swords. He passed by Lorenzo and Watson, came to stand before the Secret Keeper, and in his eyes a searing white storm churned, like daylight burning through the night.

”I am Adren Levien, Pope of the Evangelical Church, Dean of the Demon Hunting Order.”