Faranil’s Notes?
Ethan’s heart lurched.
His inventory held ten pages.
He forced his breathing steady as his mind raced.
That thing… it’s connected to the Mistship’s heart.
The Mistship was sunk by the Circle of Earth. The notes vanished. It thinks Panglos took them.
A gale slammed into the plaza, carrying dust and splinters.
The “shadow” arrived.
And under the gas lamps meant for tonight’s celebration, Ethan saw the truth:
It wasn’t a shadow at all.
It was a colossal malformed skeleton — bones mashed and fused into a grotesque upper body with head and arms.
Even without legs, it stood as tall as the city gate.
Humans beneath it looked like insects.
Paul’s voice went tight. “A demon.”
He pointed, eyes wide. “A real demon. The bones are a shell — its true body is underneath.”
A war horn sounded from the walls.
Hundreds of soldiers formed ranks behind Panglos, weapons trembling in their hands.
Panglos lifted his sword toward the monster.
“Sea-born filth,” he called. “You threaten mankind. Do you not fear the Seven Gods’ cleansing?”
The demon’s voice rolled out, deep and brutal.
“Panglos Fell. I know you. A Governor who slew a dragon through schemes –”
Panglos’s face flushed dark with rage. His sword flared brighter.
The demon continued, as if savoring every word.
“My younger brother infested a ship and never set foot on land. You murdered him. And you stole what was his — Faranil’s Notes.
“Tonight, I come for both debts.”
Black wind surged — filth and pressure and cold — rushing toward the Governor and the soldiers.
Panglos answered with sacred light, pushing the filth back in a blazing wave.
Ethan’s mind snapped connections together.
The Mistship’s grotesque heart — that thing that could command demonic minions — had been this demon’s “brother.”
When the Mistship went down, the brother died. The notes went missing.
So the demon climbed onto land for revenge.
But it had the wrong target.
Sinking the Mistship. Killing the heart. Taking the notes.
None of that had been Panglos.
Panglos shouted, furious and offended, “My family has served the God of Sacred Judgment for generations. I have never cared for a madman’s writings — never desired them. You seek the wrong man.”
Panglos wasn’t just angry — he was insulted.
The Circle of Earth sank the pirate ship. How did that connect to him?
The demon laughed, a sound like bone scraping bone.
“Liar. I know you’ve reached the Unbreakable Tier. You killed my brother and stole the notes for what they contain — the path beyond!”
Every word carried, crisp, to everyone present.
On the clock tower, dignitaries stiffened. Some went pale. Some exchanged looks. Some narrowed their eyes and recalculated the world.
Ethan’s breath caught.
So the notes didn’t just teach filth alchemy.
They contained a method to break the Unbreakable Tier — how to become half-divine.
Paul looked like he’d been punched. “No way… We thought the method was tied to troll history in the north. Have we been chasing the wrong thing this whole time?”
Ethan watched Panglos’s brief hesitation.
A single heartbeat.
And from that, Ethan guessed the truth:
Panglos probably hadn’t known either.
They all knew the name Faranil… but not the secret in his notes.
Ethan’s mind churned.
His ten pages weren’t continuous. They read like torn scraps from a larger work, disconnected and jagged.
Even now, with Quick Comprehension, he still struggled to follow them.
He leaned toward Paul. “Do you know anything about Faranil?”
Paul nodded, then shook his head. “A little. Not sure what’s true.”
He swallowed, then continued, eyes fixed on the demon.
“Legend says Faranil was a Hunter who specialized in hunting demons. I heard from someone qualified to enter the Huntress Goddess’s forest — an elder — Faranil forged a revolver that fires mithril rounds. Built specifically to kill demons.”
Ethan’s stomach dropped.
A mithril-bullet revolver.
Flint.
So Faranil wasn’t just an alchemist. Or maybe he was both.
The questions piled up too fast to grab.
The ground jolted again.
The demon and Panglos collided.
Filth-laced black wind clashed with holy flame.
Circle of Earth supernaturals joined. Windrest Keep’s elites joined.
The fight locked into a brutal stalemate.
Ethan gripped Flint and felt its hatred vibrate through the frame.
Now the obsession made sense.
Flint had been made to hate demons.
He popped the cylinder open and checked the mithril rounds again.
If things went bad, Flint could still matter.
A thunderous crack split the air.
The bone giant swung both arms and blasted a group of supernaturals aside like toys.
Panglos surged forward and, in a razor-thin moment, cleaved one of the demon’s skeletal arms clean off.
Bone fragments exploded outward — bone-rain falling across the plaza.
Panglos wiped blood at the corner of his mouth, eyes cold.
“I expected more from a demon,” he said. “If you believe a madman’s notes contain the path beyond the Unbreakable Tier… then even you are vermin crawling toward a throne you’ll never reach.”
The demon answered with a roar that rattled teeth.
Ethan frowned.
If Panglos was right — if demons couldn’t become gods either — then Susan’s belief that filth power was “true power” had been poison in her mind.
Someone had misled her.
But who?
He didn’t have time to chase the thought.
A new sound came from behind — dry snapping, grinding.
Ethan whirled.
Zombies.
Dead corpses that should’ve stayed dead were rising again in clusters, sprinting with broken, unnatural movements toward Ethan and Paul.
Paul drew his bow at once.
Ethan raised Flint.
The rooftop attackers were few.
Below, it was chaos.
The corpses Panglos had piled beneath his horse were reanimating en masse, flooding the plaza, trapping the supernaturals who’d come down to support him.
A burst of white light flared.
At its center stood Bishop Frey.
As a Dawncaller, Frey specialized in purification. Against filth and evil creatures, he was lethal.
His cleansing waves shredded through the renewed dead, and the tide began to turn.
—
A child’s voice cut through everything.
“Grandpa! Grandpa, save me!”
A small boy burst from the zombie mass, running toward Frey, sobbing and pleading.
Frey froze.
Even when the boy’s ribs opened to reveal a shark-like face — he still froze.
In the next instant, the boy reached Frey, lifted a thin arm —
And pushed it straight through Frey’s abdomen.
Ethan’s finger moved on instinct.
Flint barked.
The mithril bullet crossed the plaza in a blink.
The shark-faced boy collapsed.
Frey’s attendants snapped out of shock, caught him as blood poured, and dragged him back.
Benjamin and Jane surged into the gap, taking over the front line.
The demon turned, enraged, raising a massive bone-hand toward the retreating bishop.
Ethan couldn’t watch it happen.
He fired.
Mithril rounds slammed into the bone-hand.
Flame ignited across the bones — flame that didn’t gutter out like normal fire. It clung, hungry, persistent, as if it had found its natural prey.
Ethan fired again. And again.
The demon halted its strike on Frey.
It turned its horrific face toward Ethan.
“Flint,” it hissed. “You have Flint? Who are you?”
Ethan didn’t answer.
He just kept shooting.
The demon paused — just long enough.
Ethan emptied the cylinder, snapped it open, and ran while reloading.
A bone-hand smashed down behind him. A building collapsed into rubble.
Ethan Shadow Traversed through dust and shadow, changing position repeatedly, trying to reach the plaza — trying to get closer to stronger allies now that he’d drawn attention.
The demon’s voice chased him, furious.
“Hunter — what is your relationship to Faranil?”
Ethan almost laughed at the absurdity.
He wanted to know that too.
The demon abandoned the main battle and pursued Ethan with single-minded rage.
Buildings fell. Streets broke. The path to the plaza collapsed under rubble.
Ethan’s teeth clenched.
If he couldn’t regroup, he’d die alone.
He forced his mind into steel.
He seized on an option.
It was reckless.
It might not work.
But it was something.
He Shadow Traversed farther, putting distance between himself and the plaza. Dust and debris masked him from most eyes.
He pulled two items from his inventory.
The first —
A massive stone.
Two to three stories tall.
He’d once fished it up while trying to get mithril rounds and had never found a good place to get rid of it.
Now, it finally had a purpose.
Ethan climbed a rooftop, turned, and hurled the boulder down at the burning bone giant’s face.
The demon raised its arms to block, confident.
Even a mountain wouldn’t crush that skeletal shell.
But the demon forgot two things:
One arm had already been severed.
And the entire shell was burning under Flint’s demon-killing flame, its filth power compromised, its bones no longer unbreakable.
The stone slammed in.
The impact shattered rock into chunks —
And tore away huge sections of the bone shell.
Fire and bone fragments flew.
For the first time, the demon’s true body showed through.
Before it could even locate the Hunter who’d done this —
A round silver mirror spun through the air toward it.
The demon’s voice spiked with shock.
“The Tree Elf Mirror?! How–“