Chapter 109: The Hymn of the Lambs

Heinrich—no, the being that had now become Laplace—clashed with Amon.

Of course, even Laplace was powerless before the effect of Snail Eye Drops.

However, unlike Heinrich, Laplace was a robot.

[Humans repeat the same mistakes. But you shouldn’t expect that from me.]

Malfunctions might occur from time to time, but mistakes were not in its nature.

That was why the battle with Amon continued endlessly.

Laplace spoke as if testing Amon, maintaining their relentless fight.

And within what seemed like an unending battle, Amon gradually adapted to the divine energy infused in the bullets.

‘As always.’

Calmly.

And once the adaptation was complete, he licked his dry lips and, for the first time in a long while, began chanting.

“Oh Lord, the waters have filled my soul!”

A chant that had once blinded the eyes of a muscular American who rode around on a bike.

Laplace didn’t fully understand the effect of the chant, but it did have information indicating that Amon’s chanting was dangerous.

The problem was that it also knew Amon used chanting as a trap.

‘Is it a feint?’

A psychological tactic he had used before to trap demons on the outskirts of the Vatican.

The demons, wary of Amon’s chanting, overextended themselves trying to interrupt him—only to fall right into his trap.

Laplace, who had once observed that scene through CCTV, now faced two choices.

Letting the chant continue was not an option.

He could either disrupt it with full force or interfere cautiously, wary of a potential trap.

‘Does he have a way to incapacitate me?’

Just as he had done with demons, could Amon have a card to play against him as well?

‘EMP won’t work.’

Having fully taken over consciousness, EMP attacks were meaningless now.

Aside from that, there didn’t seem to be any means that could effectively disable Laplace.

After a second of calculation, Laplace made his decision.

He would interfere with full force.

The risk was far greater if the chant was completed.

In every predicted future, the only dangerous outcome was one where Amon successfully finished chanting.

However, upon realizing that Amon was no longer affected by bullets, Laplace understood his mistake.

‘It wasn’t psychological warfare. It was a forced response.’

Whether it was confusion or an error, Laplace displayed an emotion surprisingly close to them—something uncharacteristic of him.

Seeing that expression, Amon smirked.

‘With enough time, I can win against anyone.’

The power of Snail Eye Drops forced a stalemate.

The power of healing ensured endurance in a prolonged battle.

And finally, the power of adaptation granted him complete immunity to his opponent’s abilities.

As long as no unreasonable force like a nuclear bomb was involved, Amon could always secure the time needed to adapt.

This was the ultimate defense he had perfected.

‘There’s a reason I stopped searching for Essence.’

Too much was as bad as too little.

Now that his defense was complete, there was no need to continue seeking Essence.

And for his lacking firepower, he compensated with sacred chants.

[Salvum de impius palude. (Save me from the mire of evil.)]

Laplace’s vision and hearing were severed.

Since he was an AI, he didn’t completely lose consciousness, but it didn’t make much of a difference.

Amon grabbed Heinrich by the back of the neck, made the sign of the cross, and drove his sword through him.

With the sensation of something breaking, Heinrich’s breath completely ceased.

‘Is it over…?’

Amon finally exhaled a breath of relief.

He sheathed his sword and turned to reunite with Cassie and Sonia.

But all of this was Laplace’s trap.

***

Bang!

Amon clutched his shoulder.

‘He got me.’

He turned his head toward Heinrich’s body.

But Heinrich remained motionless on the ground.

Bang!

Another gunshot rang out.

This time, Amon managed to react in time.

Turning toward the source of the gunfire—

[You wouldn’t call this cowardly, would you, human?]

The voice of Laplace echoed from the throats of multiple people—none of them Heinrich.

A block away, a fallen paladin was aiming at Amon.

Not just one.

Numerous paladins were staring at him, all speaking with Laplace’s voice.

‘All of them… are Laplace?’

It wasn’t impossible.

To him, humans were nothing more than easily controlled puppets.

Seeing himself surrounded by paladins, Amon’s first thought wasn’t about betrayal or cowardice.

***

‘Cassie, Sonia!’

He had entrusted the two of them with dealing with the people driven mad by Laplace’s influence.

But the fact that the paladins had now entered the battle meant only one thing.

“Cassie! Sonia! Respond!”

Sonia’s strained voice crackled over the comms.

[“I… I’m okay.”]

“You’re not okay!”

From her voice alone, he could tell she was lying.

[Sorry. I’ve managed to put most of them to sleep with my ability, but… it’s getting too hard.]

“What about Cassie?!”

“Why isn’t she answering?!”

[I don’t know!]

“What!?”

[We got separated! There were too many—ah!]

A grunt of effort accompanied her response, indicating she was still in the midst of battle.

“Sonia—ugh!”

Amon had no time to worry further.

Gritting his teeth, he reengaged in battle with Laplace’s forces.

Individually, the paladins controlled by Laplace were far weaker than Heinrich Laplace.

Since he was controlling so many, the quality of each fighter naturally suffered.

Numbers alone posed a threat, but given enough time, he could adapt to these new opponents as well.

However—

‘Time… I don’t have time….’

Right now, he was more concerned about Cassie’s condition.

Worry led to impatience, and impatience led to mistakes.

‘Damn it!’

Just as Heinrich had in the past, Amon completely lost control of his right arm.

Clang.

A sword clattered to the ground.

Fortunately, it hadn’t been severed.

However, in this battle, a useless, limp arm was more than just dead weight—it was an outright hindrance.

Amon abandoned his limp arm and continued fighting with his remaining one.

‘I can’t kill them.’

Unlike Heinrich, the paladins were innocent victims.

He had to be careful with his sword strikes.

‘Even I think I’m being foolish.’

Indulging in such luxuries when his life was on the line.

But this was a battle of convictions.

Even if he won, killing these people just to survive would mean he had lost in terms of belief.

Amon let out a bitter smile as he knocked out an approaching paladin.

As the fight dragged on, he began to realize the limits of Snail Eye Drops.

‘There are too many opponents. Too many variables.’

Snail Eye Drops were specialized for one-on-one combat.

Trying to predict multiple enemies at once caused too many possibilities to flood his mind, making his head pound.

Even so, Amon trusted in his recovery ability to restore his mental clarity and kept fighting.

But eventually, the overwhelming fatigue made his eyelids grow heavy.

‘Should I stop using the drops?’

At this rate, his brain would overload, and he would pass out.

Yet just before the effect wore off, Amon popped the cap open once more.

‘It’s not like I haven’t pulled an all-nighter before.’

Resigned to his fate, he took another dose.

Forcing his drowsy eyes open, he swung his sword in a daze.

‘Sonia…’

‘Cassie…’

Thinking of them, he kept struggling to the very end.

Just then, a paladin’s spear aimed straight for his heart.

Amon instinctively parried it, moving like a machine, ready to finish off his attacker.

But before his sword could reach the paladin—

The paladin suddenly collapsed.

“Huh?”

Amon barely managed to halt his swing.

Upon closer inspection, the unconscious paladin had a red thread wrapped around his neck.

‘A red thread?’

A sense of familiarity washed over Amon.

He turned his gaze toward the direction the thread extended from.

And then, without realizing it, a wide smile spread across his face.

***

“I told you, didn’t I?”

Amon spoke softly, exhaustion evident in his voice.

In response, Cassie, standing with a red halo glowing above her head, answered.

“You waited a long time, didn’t you? Thanks.”

***

A little earlier—

Cassie had left to handle the cyber-schizo horde at Amon’s request.

For the first time in a long while, she was able to unleash her abilities to the fullest against the madmen.

“See? I’m not useless.”

Against cardinals in political battles, against Laplace and demons in combat—her foresight had been sealed.

But against people who had lost their minds, there were no restrictions.

“Ugh, this is so satisfying.”

Cassie reveled in her sense of freedom, striking a paladin’s head with the shaft of her spear.

Sonia, who had joined her, spread her wings and sent people off to dreamland.

By the time their suppression count—not kill count—had reached triple digits, Cassie’s spear paused for a moment.

She had been putting on a bright front, but Amon’s words from before their separation lingered in her mind.

“Your worth isn’t determined by that. The Cassie I admired was a woman who stood tall even without foresight.”

Admired.

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘Then what about now?’

Cassie shook off her thoughts before they could spiral into negativity and refocused on the fight.

But just then, the paladins’ movements changed.

In unison, they shifted from cyber-schizo patients to people possessed by Laplace.

‘Now of all times?’

There was no time to think.

Cassie quickly adjusted to the incoming Laplace-controlled forces.

But these possessed paladins were immune to her foresight.

Or rather, just like with the cardinal before, hundreds of possible futures flashed before her eyes at once, constantly shifting.

By now, she understood what that meant.

‘A future that changes in response to actions.’

Her foresight worked by detecting possibilities through interactions with people.

In other words, it couldn’t show her options that neither she nor her opponent had considered.

But Laplace’s AI was beyond human.

It could calculate countless possibilities based on her every move, making the future appear to change in real time.

Amid the dizzying overlap of possible futures, she managed to win in a few scenarios.

But in most of them, she lost.

And whenever she did, Sonia pulled her from the brink of defeat.

As this cycle repeated, Cassie’s confidence started to wane.

At some point, she was separated from Sonia.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been paying attention.

She had constantly kept an eye on Sonia, staying alert.

But Laplace had recognized her as the weak link and deliberately split them up.

Now surrounded, the Laplace-controlled paladins spoke.

[Humans die so easily. I wonder—how about you?]

“You think I’ll go down that easily?”

[Who knows? Your mother reacted exactly as I predicted.]

“You bastard…!”

Gritting her teeth, Cassie forced herself to calm down and resumed fighting.

But to her frustration, she was no match for them.

‘Am I really…’

‘Unable to stand by my friends?’

Amon and Sonia would continue facing monstrous enemies in the future.

And every time, she would be useless.

‘Of course, my role as the Nest is enough.’

‘Maybe supporting them from behind—handling equipment and legal issues—was fulfilling her role.’

But she wanted to walk beside them.

Even if she lacked the ability, even if others called it reckless, she wanted to be their equal.

Tears welled up in her eyes out of sheer frustration.

And then—

[Cassie… I believe in you…]

Amon’s drowsy voice came through the radio.

It sounded like sleep talk, meaningless words.

But precisely because it was sleep talk, it filled her with a profound warmth.

Even in his exhausted state, he genuinely believed in her.

At that moment, Cassie recalled Amon’s words once more.

“The Cassie I admired was a woman who stood tall even without foresight.”

Biting her lip lightly, she rose to her feet.

She straightened her back with confidence and gripped her spear firmly.

‘Start from the basics.’

She would not rely on foresight.

Foresight was just a tool.

Ignoring the red threads of fate, she focused on the present.

She noted them occasionally, but she did not depend on them.

Ironically, as she did so, the threads grew more vivid.

‘Huh?’

At some point, the threads she could only see—

Became something she could grasp.