"The point of a successful hunt is silence."

Above the massive bronze gargoyle, the ghost listened quietly to Karil's words.It was true that he was born knowing many things, but not the ones Karil was talking about.

He was still too young, too young to understand the norms that governed the workings of the world beneath his feet.To be born knowing would only bring him more doubts.

"As you can see, there are tens of thousands of gangs throughout the Quintus.Their territory is very carefully divided, even down to a certain inconspicuous alley.This means that if you don't keep quiet, the sound of the killing will be heard by the other gangs."

"Aren't they used to killing?" asked Spectre suspiciously."Do they care about the sounds coming from other gang territories?"

"Civilians and gangs make different noises when they die, Spectre."

Khalil grinned cruelly.

"Civilians die when they die, and there aren't many of them who feel attached to life at all, and there are quite a few suicides.Where do you think the body incinerator got so many bodies with little or no injuries, could it be that they all died of disease?"

"As for the gang members....Tell me, Spectre, what sound do they make when they die?"

"Curses."The apparition thought for a moment and said, "They cursed me and said someone would avenge them."

"More than that."

Caril waved his left hand a little, a smile growing on his pale face."And gunfire....They'll keep shooting, and if you can't cover the sounds like I can, you'd better keep quiet."

"Then why don't you cover the sounds for me?"

"Because this is your hunt alone."

Khalil flexed the muscles in his shoulders and neck and narrowed his eyes.

"Look, I'm going to die someday.I'm just a regular guy, I don't get to tear up armored vehicles with a wave of my hand like you do....And you, Spectre, you obviously share a common goal with me in some way." He said.

"That's why I'm going to teach you everything I know, so that even if I die, you can change this hellhole for the better.That way, even if I die, I'll be very happy."

The Spectre listened to his words quietly, his expression calm.

He kept nodding his head, but his expression clearly signaled the truth: he could not yet fully understand what Karil's words really meant.

Once again - Karyl Lohal felt an extreme sense of irony because of this naivety.

You naive little monster......Why did you have to show up on Nostramo at all?

Karil smiled and shook his head.

"Go on," he said. "A gang, kill them clean."

The Spectre came to the edge of the Gargoyles just as he was about to descend, but he suddenly stopped.

He turned his head and said to Khalil, "Killing won't solve the problem, Khalil, you told me that."

"Yes."

"Then why do we keep cleaning up these gangs?"

"Finish the mission, clean them up without the other gangs finding out, and I'll tell you the answer."

"Really?"

"I didn't lie to you."

Without hesitation, the ghost nodded and jumped from the top of the gargoyle.Khalil stared at him until the tall shadow had completely disappeared into the darkness before he sighed.

"Only eighteen months old......"He muttered to himself."What kind of sick psychopath would create such a monster and throw in Quintus for good measure?"

-----------------

"The coroner of the Skolewalks is dead," said a bald man.

He had no lips, and his face was marred by countless piercings that made it hard to see straight.

He was naked, with chains dug deep into his flesh, running from his wrists down to his waist, looking bizarre and terrifying.

The piercings didn't matter, a lot of gang members liked to add things to their faces to show that they were different, the same goes for flesh modifications; pain-hungry perverts are everywhere here.

But the severed lip was the problem.

It meant that he belonged to Trembling Tooth.

It meant that he belonged to an honorable family in the upper echelons of the Nestorian capital.

"I heard that this woman had a special metal arm that emitted so much power that she could smash the head of a sharp-toothed bull with one blow - how did she die?"

Asked another woman in the candle room.

She wore an extravagant white dress, layered; her waist was slender, and her exposed breast was soft and white, tentatively. It looked beautiful, but that breast carried a necklace of meticulously polished human bones.

The bald man gave her an impatient look and spoke in a harsh tone.

"You don't have anything to say, do you, Guvas?Everyone knows the Skolewalkers are rich as hell and can have anything if they're willing to work for them like a dog.Does it matter who killed her?What matters is where her body is!"

"Gee, I can't say, Conja, I'm really at a loss for words - but you'd better talk to me politely."

The woman laughed softly, her lips red with human blood slowly stretching.

"I've recently scored a shipment of psychedelics from the top....Show me some respect if you don't want to wake up one day to find yourself hung and ready to be skinned by your handlers."

The bald man known as Konja grunted coldly as he raised his right hand and stroked his exposed teeth, his free left hand continuing to pierce the bloody flesh of his thigh with sharp fingers.

He needed a little carnal pleasure to remind himself - to keep from losing his mind.

"Almost done."

Inside the hall, the other person who was always silent finally spoke, and compared to Gurvas' extravagant court dress and Conja's brutal style of flesh modification, he looked like the only normal person here, dressed in black.

He said blankly, "We have nothing to do with the Skolewalkers, it's not our turn to worry about such things."

"But the Skolewalkers have always been generous..." said Conja. "Are we really not getting a piece of the action?"

"Someone with the guts to murder the Skolewalker coroner on the eve of the Purge is not someone we can deal with."

Prey shook his head calmly.

"And even if we're lucky enough to find her body....What are we going to do about the next problem the Skolewalkers are going to throw at us? They're going to want to know who killed the coroner."

Conja nodded thoughtfully, a stark contrast to the grumpiness of his earlier conversation with Guvas.

"So, are we going to declare a curfew?" the gorgeous Guavas asked.

Her eyes narrowed, and as she spoke, she took a syringe-like device from her purse on the table.

Through the clear casing, the disorienting scarlet color inside was clearly visible.

"Don't for now - and inject sparingly, type 3 blood mixtures are just too addictive, you'll burn your brains out, look at your lips, you're already addicted to human blood, aren't you?"

Kuvas licked his lips, savoring the taste of the blood and nodded absentmindedly.

Just by looking at the syringe, her vision began to blur, even as her breath caught and her cheeks flushed a dizzying red.

Conja smiled.

That's what happened to addicts of Type III blood mixtures, they would suddenly fall into the frenzy of addiction at every unpredictable next second.

Without a painful drink of blood or an injection into a tube of Type III, the epileptic state would last for days.

Seeing this, Prey angrily picked up a gold-encrusted dinner plate from the long table and threw it, knocking the syringe out of Guvas' hand and onto the floor.

Instead of being annoyed, the woman's first reaction was to unconsciously pounce like a dog and keep pawing at the carpet, trying to retrieve the syringe.

Her behavior continued until a dark leather boot stepped on her right hand.

Gurvas looked up to see Prey's expressionless face.

"I never should have agreed to let you go into the psychedelic business..." Prey whispered as his left foot began to press harder, grinding against Gurvas' palm.

The bald konjar grinned as Gurvas turned pale with pain, but he didn't dare move.

"You have absolutely no self-control, and that's just fine....Weekday indulgences are irrelevant, but now that your life is on the line, you're thinking about a hit of LSD?"

Prey flew up with a hateful kick that sent the woman to the other side of the long table, and finally he couldn't hold back any longer and snapped.

"Let's not even talk about the deaths of the priest and Razor, not to mention the fact that that fucking vengeful murderous ghost was a private soldier set up by some fucking psycho family!They were dismantled and dumped in that fucking church and we even had to fucking clean it!"

"The cleansing is coming soon, Guvas!"

Prey rose from his chair and glared at the bleeding woman, whose first reaction was not to stop the bleeding, but to keep touching her bleeding nose with both hands, sending blood to her lips.

Her face was filled with a fascinated look.

Prey's face finally took on a look of blatant disappointment.

He looked at Gurvas and spoke again, ignoring a dark shadow that flickered outside the window of the room and the tiny sounds that kept coming through the rain.

Those sounds that sounded like flesh and blood being torn apart.

"Konja has teamed up with Trembling Tooth, which means we finally don't have to offer money to get through this purge.Instead, you're drowning in psychedelics and can't get over it......".

"Look at you, the black-lunged man in the factory dying of a disease is better than you..."

"......Prey?"

Conja blinked, not understanding why Prey had stopped.

Surely he was happy to see Gurvas punished and even stripped of his rights and kicked out of the gang, and he would be more than happy to teach that idiot in the psychedelic business a lesson.Prey's pause, however, stopped everything.

He turned his head and looked at Pre, then his eyes widened.

He didn't see Prey.

More precisely, he didn't see Prey's head.

A headless corpse just stood there, swaying in front of the window, the acid rain pouring in, and they hadn't even noticed when the window had been opened.

Conja staggered to his feet, drew his gun and tried to call out to the gang members waiting outside the door to come in and help.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

A long, pale arm had wrapped itself around his neck.

"Goodbye," Spectre said politely. "Besides, your windows open conveniently."

The next moment there was a dull thud, and the last thing Conja saw was a white bone stained with scarlet blood.

Half a second later, just as his consciousness was about to fade into darkness, he finally realized what the bone was.

It was a vertebra.

Whose was it......??

With that question in mind, he fell into an eternal dark slumber.

The Spectre threw down his head with a single vertebra and turned his head to look at the only Gurvas left in the room.

He had overheard the conversation between the three gang leaders from outside, and he knew her name and that she was addicted to blood.

Actually......The latter could be completely analyzed from her current behavior.

A normal person would not lie on the corpse of a companion and suck blood hungrily.

The apparition passed over without mercy.

Outside the window, the rain continued.