The next morning, the hospital still maintained a facade of peace.
The nurses who had fainted simply assumed they had fallen asleep from exhaustion. After tidying themselves up, they went back to work. The casualties brought in last night filled the wards, and the night-shift doctors completed their handovers one after another.
The entire building remained a scene of busy order. No one knew that just a few hours ago, a clash between extraordinary beings had taken place right here.
A doctor walked over and froze when he saw the melted lock. Pushing the door open, he found that nearly half of the office had been destroyed.
The bookcase had collapsed.
Desks and chairs were splintered.
The walls were covered in cracks left by impacts.
And in the center of the room, the night-shift doctor lay quietly, his flesh twisted, eyes wide open. The expression on his face was still frozen in the sheer terror of his final moment of life.
The middle-aged doctor did not scream or shrink back. He simply closed the door in silence and then quickly left the office.
In less than five minutes.
Four people wearing white lab coats entered the room one after another.
They temporarily cordoned off the entire floor under the pretext of quarantine and disinfection, sending away all the ordinary doctors and nurses.
Only after confirming that there were no ordinary people around did one of them slowly squat down and press his hand against the corpse's forehead.
A moment later.
His expression gradually changed.
“The Grail... has vanished.”
The room fell into an instant silence.
Another spoke slowly.
“It was extracted by someone.”
The third person looked down to examine the corpse, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper.
The old man beside them slowly stood up.
“He had two aspects. The Moth aspect polluted him.”
After he spoke, the entire room fell so silent that a pin drop could be heard.
There were very few who could achieve this while also seizing the aspect residue of a Grail disciple.
One of them suddenly spoke up.
“That young man from the archive is not simple.”
The old man did not answer.
Another's expression turned ugly.
“How is that possible?”
The old man remained silent for a long time before slowly speaking.
“Right now, he might be even madder than us.”
The room fell quiet once more.
Someone whispered:
“Lantern... and Moth have merged?”
“How did he do it?”
The old man slowly looked out the window.
“I do not know.”
With that, he slowly withdrew his gaze.
“Notify the people below.”
“Do not make any moves on the hospital for now.”
“In addition...”
“Go check the morgue.”
Upon hearing this, the faces of the others changed in unison.
They immediately realized.
If the other party had truly seized a portion of his memories...
Then the thing hidden beneath the hospital was very likely already exposed.
...
When Ryan walked out of his ward, the morning at the hospital was still very quiet.
The corridor held only the sound of rolling wheels and the echoes of nurses whispering in the distance. The residual heat from the coal stoves was slowly dispersing, and the air grew colder bit by bit.
He ate a simple breakfast.
The flavors of bread, butter, and oatmeal were clearly distinguished by his senses, but he did not care about these details, simply accepting the changes naturally.
Right now, he was stable—almost excessively so.
The nurse only briefly confirmed his condition during her rounds.
“You are recovering well. You can engage in some light activity today.”
Ryan nodded, saying nothing more.
After the door closed, the ward fell quiet again. He felt The Glory filling his body.
He sat for a moment and then stood up. The exact instant he pushed the door open, he paused. There was someone at the end of the corridor—a man in a dark coat, slowly walking over from the other side.
He looked like an ordinary visitor, but a gentle warmth flared in Ryan's left eye.
The Glory automatically surfaced.
The world was “polished.”
In the next second, he saw it. The man bore the traces of an aspect.
It was not scattered, but a widespread blanket of residue, structurally similar to the one on the Grail disciple he had killed earlier.
They belonged to the same kind.
The man did not linger, heading straight toward the rear of the hospital.
His direction was—the morgue.
Ryan said nothing, only following behind.
The man did not even look back to check as he went downstairs, appearing extremely familiar with the route.
Ryan followed in the shadows, watching the figure disappear into the stairwell.
He paused for a second, then walked to the edge of the stairs.
The air grew colder.
Ryan followed him down the stairs. The walls gradually turned into cold, damp stone bricks, and the smell of disinfectant in the air vanished completely.
Replacing it was a deeper, frigid chill, like the stagnant breath settled in a space closed off for a long time.
The man in the dark coat stood by the entrance of the morgue.
His movements were slightly stiff, clearly not yet fully adapted to the sensory changes brought by the extraordinary. His entire aspect structure was also very thin, indicating someone who had only just crossed the threshold.
The iron door was half-ajar, a freezing draft seeping from within.
The moment the man prepared to push the door open, Ryan stopped.
In the next second, the glow of The Glory in Ryan's left eye suddenly contracted, and a mental blast pressed down directly from a very short distance.
The man's body stiffened violently, his movements forcibly interrupted. It was as if his train of thought had been cut for a beat; his raised hand froze in midair, then trembled slightly as if losing all support.
He slowly turned his head. The moment he saw Ryan, a clear look of terror finally appeared in his eyes for the first time.
But it was already too late.
Ryan did not maintain his distance; instead, he took a step forward and pressed his hand onto the man's head.
The instant his fingertips made contact, The Glory spread from his palm, penetrating the other's skull like a reverse-flowing structure.
A series of ragged gasps escaped the man's throat. A portion of his consciousness was forcibly stripped away, causing him to collapse rapidly as if some supporting structure had been pulled out.
Ryan did not hesitate, continuing to press down with The Glory, drawing out the newly formed “light” from within the other's body bit by bit.
The man's body quickly lost the strength to struggle. He could only slide down against the iron door, his eyes gradually losing focus, as if his capacity to comprehend the world had been completely hollowed out.
By the time Ryan released his grip, the man could barely stand.
He simply watched calmly as the extracted aspect residue's light slowly settled within his own consciousness.
He felt The Glory growing inside him. He had never felt anything like this before—the sensation was even more exhilarating than laudanum.
A few seconds later, once he recovered his senses, his vision shifted slightly.
The internal structure of the morgue began to reveal a “second outline.”
Beneath the cold space, dense ritual residues spread out like spiderwebs, extending underground to form a sort of hidden network.
Something was active within it. Ryan narrowed his eyes slightly.
He saw them. Deep within the morgue's structure, more than one abnormal entity was hidden.
Those were the traces of ghouls.
And there were quite a few of them.
He let out a soft breath. Without looking back at the now-unconscious man, he muttered to himself in a low voice.
“So this is what lies beneath the entrance.”
Then, he raised his gaze to look at the half-open iron door and stepped forward once more.
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