Marbas regained consciousness.
Amon tortured him with a dagger soaked in divine power.
“In the name of the Holy Mother, the Saint, and the Holy Spirit! Speak, demon!”
“At least ask me what you want first, aaaargh!!!”
As Marbas screamed at the top of his lungs, Amon belatedly asked his question.
“Tell me what’s happening in the Holy City.”
“Why would I know that? I never even made a deal….”
Clink.
Amon struck his daggers together, making them ring like a bell.
The answer followed immediately.
“I don’t know everything… All I remember is that Heinrich stole my knowledge more than ten years ago.”
“What kind of knowledge?”
“I told you, he took it from me. That bastard threatened me just like you are now, and I gave him my knowledge.”
“So you don’t want to talk, huh?”
Amon began sharpening his blade.
Terrified, Marbas spoke with a desperate, almost pleading tone.
“You think I gave him lessons or something? He stole it! Of course, I don’t remember what it was!”
Marbas shouted in frustration, breathing heavily.
“You wanted to know the secret of what’s happening in the Holy City, right? Well, I don’t know. That bastard tied me to this city, so I can’t find out.”
Seeing no more information to extract, Amon raised his sword.
Before he could finish the job, Marbas spat curses at him.
“You damn Crusader bastard… And you call yourself a man of faith?”
“It’s perfectly fine to use violence against heretics and monsters.”
And since demons were both, Amon was guiltless.
“See you in Hell.”
“When do you want me to send you back?”
“Wait, hey, hey!”
Like with any other demon, Amon cleanly erased Marbas from existence.
“All that effort, and I didn’t gain much from it.”
Of course, that wasn’t entirely true.
Through his ‘conversation’ with Marbas, Amon learned a few things about Heinrich’s past:
- Heinrich had extracted some kind of knowledge from a demon.
- Despite his appearance, Heinrich was strong enough to handle Marbas.
- He had bound the demon to this city.
The information was valuable.
But it still didn’t explain what Heinrich was hiding.
That was when a voice from Amon’s communicator disagreed.
[That’s not entirely true.]
As soon as Marbas spoke, the priest had begun searching the records.
[It just so happens that there are records of a location the Cardinal frequently visited during the time that demon mentioned.]
They had found a useful clue.
“Where is it?”
[The Necropolis.]
“The one beneath the Vatican?”
[Yes.]
Amon tilted his head.
“Why there?”
[I’m not sure. But wouldn’t it be relevant? Perhaps he was trying to resurrect a saint…]
Amon’s expression hardened.
Resurrection of the dead.
One of the most severe acts of blasphemy.
Yet, for some reason, he doubted Heinrich would do such a thing.
“I’ll head there for now. What about the Conclave?”
[It’s about to begin.]
“Then we need to hurry.”
Amon prepared to leave the City of Water.
There were three days left until the Conclave.
***
Back in the Vatican, Amon and his group headed straight for the Necropolis.
The City of the Dead.
It lay deep below the tombs of past popes and saints—a vast catacomb.
Some said the first pope’s body was buried there.
Others claimed that was a lie, that he was buried elsewhere.
But only the Goddess knew the truth.
Vmmm.
As Amon explained, Sonia nodded in understanding.
“So, what exactly are we looking for here?”
“Not sure.”
Though they had come all this way, even Amon didn’t know.
“There are no records of what Heinrich did here, so…”
Finding evidence seemed impossible.
It had been over ten years.
There was no way physical traces remained.
Looking around, all they could see were stone statues and coffins.
And it wasn’t as if they could just start opening caskets in search of clues.
Yet, despite the lack of evidence, Amon somehow had a feeling about who to look for.
“This… doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”
Amon pointed to an old man in a wheelchair.
Cassie recognized him too.
Which made sense—he was the owner of the mercenary brokerage where Amon and Cassie first met.
And he was also Amon’s personal broker.
Amon approached the man and made his presence known.
“Sir, it’s been a while.”
“Well, look who’s alive.”
“What kind of reaction is that?”
“A guy who used to take requests like clockwork every month suddenly disappears for a year. What else was I supposed to think? Of course, I figured you were dead.”
“Haha…”
Since Amon had gone into hiding while operating in Europe, the misunderstanding wasn’t unreasonable.
“So, why are you guys here?”
“Well…”
Instead of answering, Amon gestured toward Sonia.
She smiled sweetly and wrapped her arms around him.
That alone was enough for the old man to understand.
“Huh. So you’re in love with a saint.”
“This is your first time meeting Sonia, isn’t it?”
“I always thought Cassie was your girl.”
Crack.
For some reason, there was a sound like bones twisting in Amon’s arm.
But his expression remained unchanged as the conversation continued.
“And what brings you here, sir?”
“I’m involved in the Conclave.”
“You’re a Cardinal?”
“No. Just think of me as… the descendant of a saint or something.”
“So it really wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Are you investigating the chaos happening in the Holy City right now?”
“Yes. And you, sir?”
“Rather than investigating, I’m here to confirm something.”
The old man stared at Amon’s face as he murmured to himself.
After a brief silence, the broker spoke again.
“Follow me. There’s something I need to show you.”
Amon and his group obediently followed the old man’s electric wheelchair.
After passing a sign that read “Restricted Area”, the old man stopped in a hallway and swiped a card against the wall.
Clang.
The door unlocked, and the old man entered without hesitation.
Inside, they encountered a coffin unlike any of the stone sarcophagi they had seen before.
In fact, it was hard to call it a coffin at all.
A man lay asleep inside a glass capsule, similar to something out of a laboratory.
Suspended in what appeared to be a freezing cold liquid, the man seemed both dead and asleep.
He wore a headgear connected to a monitor, which continuously displayed strings of incomprehensible text.
“This is…”
As Amon stared in confusion, the old man introduced the figure.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?”
Amon silently agreed.
After all, despite having no heartbeat or breathing, the man’s brain was visibly active, operating with intense activity.
The old man gazed at him with an expression of nostalgia, tinged with reverence.
Without looking away, he continued.
“You once said you’d become a mercenary as great as the legendary Mercenary King.”
“No way…”
“Let me introduce him. The one who saved the world, restored freedom to cyberspace, and chose to protect it for eternity…”
“The poor entity.”
***
Fifty years ago.
During what Amon would call the Punk City 3 era.
The internet was anything but free.
Mad super AIs drifted through cyberspace, and humanity was forced to retreat, building digital fortresses known as firewalls to keep them at bay.
Inside those firewalls, citizens lived under the constant surveillance of corporations.
That was when the Mercenary King appeared.
He destroyed super AIs that could fry human brains and ultimately reclaimed cyberspace for humanity.
That was how the world remembered him.
‘But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.’
Amon nearly scoffed at the oversimplified version of events.
In the original story’s true ending, the Mercenary King had faced foes far beyond mere super AIs.
AIs that designed monsters beyond biological limits.
AIs that could calculate futures at a molecular level and make them inevitable.
AIs that defied the laws of thermodynamics with their equations.
AIs that manipulated human cognition itself.
The worst of them controlled the world from the shadows, treating humanity as livestock.
And the Mercenary King had sealed them all—inside his own brain.
After that, his whereabouts became unknown.
Once he had liberated humanity from the AIs, he cut himself off from the internet entirely.
And now, that very figure was lying dormant beneath the Vatican.
“I don’t know how, but afterward, he became an entity.”
Even after all these decades, the old man still called him mister.
“The Vatican acknowledged his deeds and canonized him as a saint, granting him this place.”
He stroked the glass coffin with a sorrowful expression.
“Multiple cases of cyber-schizo phenomena have been reported in the Vatican just this month. You might not realize it, but to me and this man, it’s a familiar sight.”
Amon nodded.
A mass hysteria scene, something only seen during the final battle of the true ending.
The current situation bore an uncanny resemblance to that event.
The only reason they hadn’t considered the super AIs as a suspect was because they knew they had been wiped out.
Seeing Amon’s reaction, the old man gestured toward the monitor.
“I don’t know what’s happening right now. But I do know what I must do. Try talking to him. He didn’t respond when the priests or I attempted, but maybe you’ll have better luck.”
Following the old man’s suggestion, Amon approached the monitor.
He tapped on the keyboard installed below it.
<Hello, world.>
No response.
“The programmers already tried that.”
Hearing that, Amon attempted different commands.
<Hey.>
<Let there be coding.>
<System encoding command.>
“Try ‘burn print’ or ‘console log.'”
His companions chimed in with suggestions, but none worked.
After repeated failures, Amon paused to think.
Then, he began typing again.
As Amon pressed enter, the two women beside him stiffened.
But the old man burst into laughter.
“Hah! That’s exactly what he used to say! A good attempt, but—huh?”
He suddenly froze, staring blankly at the screen.
Then, tears welled up in his eyes.
On the monitor, familiar words appeared:
(SYSTEM): “It’s time for Sodom and Gomorrah.”