Embers of Embers

Chapter 132 Information Virus
This is a very quiet place, the air is filled with a faint scent of flowers, someone deliberately used perfume, trying to cover up the smell of blood and the strong smell of disinfectant in the room.
Neat beds were arranged in a row, but only the middle bed was occupied by people. There were various books piled beside the bed, which seemed to be used by the patient to relieve his boredom.
Lorenzo stared at the ceiling blankly, lying on the soft bed. His left foot was covered with bandages. The bracket wrapped it and then raised it high. His other hand was casually placed on the side, covered with medicine. Pinhole after injection.
It has been a week since the night that Dean Lawrence appeared. The chaotic fight ended with the escape of Dean Lawrence. According to the report from the off-site personnel, Dean Lawrence seemed to try to kill the man who lost his mobility due to erosion at the end. Lorenzo, but just when he was about to take action, the war airship in the night sky fell out of control, burying everything on the battlefield.
They found Lorenzo in the wreckage of the airship. His whole body was covered in blood and flesh, and was penetrated by steel. His left foot was the most serious, with a large number of metal fragments cut into it.
So when Lorenzo woke up again, he had been here. This was a mental hospital secretly controlled by the purge agency, where corrupted soldiers would receive treatment.
During this period, Arthur came once. This super soldier didn't look so super. He was wearing a cane and was covered with bandages. Dean Lawrence's sword almost killed him. At that time, he was completely for Eve on the battlefield. Only then could he withstand it, otherwise he would have passed out long ago.
Lorenzo lost this battle, and so did the purification mechanism. According to post-war inspection and analysis, when Reverend Lawrence activated the secret blood, it brought about erosion beyond imagination, and the scope was very wide. A low-altitude flying ship The war airship was also affected, and most of the crew fell unconscious. Then the airship lost control and crashed directly. Fortunately, it only carried a small amount of ammunition. Otherwise, there would probably be no survivors in the second explosion. .
And even after a week has passed, the post-war treatment has not yet ended, and the influence left by Dean Lawrence is still eroding the surrounding area. According to the survey, the residents within a few kilometers nearby have recently started to have nightmares, and some have serious symptoms. Mental illness, the psychiatric hospital in Old Dunling is almost overcrowded.
The interior of the battlefield was handled by tightly protected scavenger troops. The entire Salicado Manor had been completely destroyed. Fortunately, Lorenzo held back most of the demons and Dean Lawrence during the battle, and some nobles were able to be transferred at that time. Going out, the casualties are not that shocking.
After dealing with these, there were questions from the people. Most residents watched the fall of the war airship, and the fire lit up the entire night sky.
Due to erosion and panic, the security of the entire old Dunling was a bit chaotic. Fortunately, this group of scavengers were quite skilled in handling this kind of thing. All kinds of gas explosion airship operation errors were reported, and they also invited a few A writer has written several conspiracy theories, adding fuel to the fire and muddying the waters.
This feeling was not good. At the moment when he fell down, Lorenzo had a familiar feeling, as if at that moment he returned to that night, the night of Holy Advent.
All efforts are in vain, many things are already doomed.
With a squeaking sound, the iron door was slowly opened, and the doctor walked in pushing a trolley filled with medical equipment.
"How does it feel?"
"not bad."
Lorenzo stared at the ceiling.
"Well... let me check it out."
As the doctor spoke, he lifted Lorenzo's foot off the stent. This was the doctor who performed the operation on Lorenzo. He should be a medical staff member of the purification agency. While operating on Lorenzo, he tried to Picking out the fragments that were broken into the flesh, Lorenzo's body continued to heal itself, which greatly hindered his operation.
This doctor saw a human being with such strong vitality for the first time. If someone hadn't reminded him that Lorenzo's blood was mixed with secret blood, which was poisonous and fatal to ordinary people, he would have given up collecting it from Lorenzo. Sample ideas.
"You really have the vitality of a monster. I thought you were dead, but it only took a few days for you to recover."
The doctor said and asked Lorenzo to walk around.
Lorenzo said nothing and stood up slowly. There was no abnormal reaction except that there was some pain when he stepped.
"You seem to be able to walk freely."
"Probably... can I be discharged from the hospital?"
Lorenzo looked at the door of the ward. Since he woke up, Lorenzo seemed to be a different person, or in other words, changed back to his previous appearance, with indifference in his eyes, and no one knew what he was thinking.
"I'm afraid that's not enough, Mr. Holmes."
A voice came from outside the door, and Arthur's somewhat haggard face appeared in view.
The old guy has been having a hard time these past few days. Not to mention the physical injuries, the aftermath of the incident needs to be dealt with by him. Even the platinum palace, which has always been silent, summoned Arthur again.
This was the deadliest incident in Old Dunling since the Glorious War, and its impact was far-reaching and bad.
Lorenzo walked out without saying anything, Arthur was sitting in a wheelchair, and Joey was pushing the wheelchair behind him.
This time, these high-ranking knights were not injured. They were located on the periphery of the battlefield and successfully avoided the airship's fall zone.
But Joey was a little unlucky. He was hit by falling debris and was in a coma in the hospital for a few days. Lorenzo was the one lying on the bed next to him at first.
Eve and Seleu were not seriously injured under the protection of the soldiers, but Lancelot, who fell in the core area with Lorenzo, seemed to have been taken away by the Perpetual Pump. The Original Sin Armor protected him, although Seriously injured but not fatal.
"How's it going?"
"It's a mess. Fortunately, we haven't reduced the scavenger force due to the decrease in demon operations in recent years. Otherwise, I would really be busy to death."
"In order to speed up the erosion, we injected all the neutralizing liquid in stock into the furnace pillar, and the main steam outlet was set at Salicado Manor."
The neutralizing liquid is also an alchemy agent produced by the perpetual pump. Its only effect is to speed up the erosion and pollution of the area. It is usually injected into the pillar of the furnace and diffuses in the affected area along with the water vapor.
"Then came the destruction of several large Geiger indexers. The high intensity at that moment destroyed these observation equipment. Now the surrounding area is no longer under the surveillance of the Peeper system, but we have increased our patrol strength."
Exchanging information, the two of them were on the same front unknowingly.
"We need to raise strength as soon as possible. Dean Lawrence carries something very dangerous. Once that thing completely spreads inside Old Dunling...then we can only hope that the Evangelical Church will still be able to organize an Eastern Expedition."
The Eastern March is a religious term that belongs exclusively to the Evangelical Church. On the surface, it is the largest religious war in recorded history. But in fact, it refers to the all-out war of the Demon Hunter Order, with all the Demon Hunters coming out. All actions of the Holy Evangelical Papal States serve them first.
In Lorenzo's memory, the Demon Hunting Order conducted an Eastern Expedition hundreds of years ago, and the result of that expedition was that the demons disappeared from the world for a time.
"There's something about him."
"A [Messiah]-level containment object containing the "Revelations" with secret blood technology."
Lorenzo had nothing to hide. He knew very well that he could no longer kill Dean Lawrence with his own strength. He needed allies.
"It sounds like a very troublesome thing."
Arthur had a headache. He was a little envious of the previous Arthurs. When those old immortals were in office, when the demons were most active, they were only as strong as during the Ende Town operation. When it came to him, everything turned directly into hell mode.
"Arthur, do you have any ideas? This is Old Dunling, your home ground."
Lorenzo asked.
"Please give me some time to think. As I said before, the problem is not only within the old Dunling. The new pope also hopes to unite with us, but I don't know if he really thinks so. The situation is far more complicated than it seems. It’s complicated.”
The Demon Hunting Order was rebuilt, the new Pope appeared, and then the monsters that had died in history returned.
It felt like the world was about to end, and everyone came out to sing and dance happily, with rising fire and lamentations.
Arthur was exhausted, as if by appointment, all the chaos was triggered at the same time.
The three of them were silent for a short time, and a lingering cloud hung over the old Dun Ling.
But suddenly an expressionless face flashed in front of Lorenzo's eyes. Lorenzo remembered him, the Baron Abel, but now the playboy had a look of dementia, his eyes were empty, and his head was drooping. On the other hand, he seemed to have lost his soul, sitting in a wheelchair and letting the doctor push him away.
"what happened to him?"
Lorenzo asked subconsciously. He would not have cared about people like Baron Abel, but when he saw those empty and lifeless eyes, he felt as if he was being stared at by something weird, and he felt chills. .
"He just turned into a fool."
Arthur said slowly.
"What do you mean?"
"Let me tell you slowly, okay? That Reverend Lawrence almost cut my trachea. I don't dare to cough now."
Arthur clutched his chest, his face slightly distorted every time he spoke.
"This is one of the results of the early discovery by the cleanup agency."
In the empty corridor, Joey pushed his wheelchair, and the three of them just strolled and talked.
"We have discovered several stages of demonic erosion. The first stage is to feel various amplified negative emotions. The second stage is to start to have hallucinations, confusion, and even madness. The third stage is demonization."
Arthur's voice seemed a bit long. He did not say where the information came from. There is no need to expose such things that abandon humanity to the sun.
The experimenter and the demon were locked in the same cage, but there were iron bars between them. They witnessed the experimenter's despair and madness, and finally turned into the same monster as the demon.
And this kind of experiment happened more than once. Sometimes in order to save humanity, we have to abandon humanity first.
"We discovered a very interesting phenomenon. The key to demonic erosion lies in the third stage. As long as the third stage is not entered, normal people will only become madmen, not demons."
“So we conducted many experiments, and we even said that we once used up all the death row prisoners in Old Dunling.
We discovered a theorem that when the demon cannot be observed, erosion will stagnate. "
"What do you mean?"
"To understand it this way, Mr. Holmes, how do you observe the world?"
Arthur saw Lorenzo's confusion and guided him to think, but he didn't give Lorenzo a chance to answer, and he continued.
"It is the sense organs of sight, touch, hearing, taste, etc. It is precisely because we can perceive the existence of the world with these sense organs. So to change the way of thinking, if we can't perceive anything, then does the world correspond to Doesn't exist?"
"Whether it exists or not depends on our observation, right? A few hundred years ago, people like you would have been considered heretics and burned at the stake, or it would have been the kind of execution carried out by Michael the Witcher, where they would have been burned until no ashes were left. .”
Lorenzo couldn't help but look solemn. Arthur's words were like the theorem of a madman, but this theorem contained absurd and weird truth.
"So your Demon Hunting Order is unwilling to welcome the new era and blame everything on God. We are different. What we believe in is science and technology. It is something that can be formulated. It does not originate from anyone's gift. It only comes from anyone's gift. Our own.”
Arthur continued.
"These observed data will eventually be transmitted to our brains. If we accept normal information, nothing will happen to us. But what if the information we receive is corrupted by demons? That is extremely polluting and difficult to understand. It serves as a vector for absurd and unacceptable forces to invade our brains.”
"After several autopsies, we can prove this. All demonization starts in the brain. When you open the skull, you will find their diseased brain."
The empty corridor seemed so quiet, so quiet that you could hear everyone's breathing and heartbeat.
"so what?"
Lorenzo looked at Arthur. Just as he had guessed before, the purification agency knew much more than what appeared on the surface, but he did not expect to be so shocked.
"So, what if we cut off all information transmission before the brain is damaged, before the third stage of erosion begins?"
Arthur raised his head, looked at Lorenzo, and said blasphemous words.
"As long as the bridge that connects with the outside world is cut off, and you can't see, hear, or smell... and refuse to accept all information, then does it mean that the demon's erosion will not be able to go deeper, or in the eyes of the person involved? The demon no longer exists, or even the entire world no longer exists?"
"Seal the entire brain..."
Arthur said with a smile.
"If it can't be observed, then it doesn't exist."
"Let me introduce to you, one of the cruelest surgeries in human history, prefrontal lobotomy."
　Due to the setting, it would be boring to expand it all at once, so take your time.
　
(End of this chapter)