.

Sitting in the deepest darkness before dawn, Ed with one hand on the steering wheel, looks like a lifeless statue of a thinker in a different thinking position in an exhibition hall, but in fact the heart is far less peaceful than he seems. Beneath the surface of the lake, which is like a stagnant water without a trace of waves, is a turbulent undercurrent that connects to the abyss of the sea.

What kind of place is this? Well, by the way, it's outside the door of a decent industrial clubhouse under Don Free's command. Does this place have anything to do with him? It shouldn't have had anything to do with it, and he probably wouldn't have come here to give it a good look in his life, let alone at this time. So why now, why did he finally come, and at this abnormal, damn time, like a thief about to do something bad?

Ah, yes, it's because of that thing - because he's really just about to do something bad, he's about to do something bad like a thief that would normally send himself into cold storage again. He was about to sneak in and steal something. If it really doesn't work, you can also use the robber.

Old Duroc is in it. I don't know exactly where, but now Ed has been identified, and it has taken a short, short time to determine, and the bearded detective is right in it, in some unknown shadowy corner of this criminal fortress that sits on the street. He is here now to find him, to get him out there.

But why, why is that damn old detective here? Let Ed think about it—yes, remember, because he still had himself, they had been defeated, and they had been kicked like dogs by an older fellow who was older than both of them, and even a decade older than the old detective, and they screamed, and they were bleeding from the heads, and they had no power to fight back.

He was lucky enough to escape because of a special relationship, and old Duroc, his poor companion, was relatively not so lucky.

There seems nothing wrong with the whole thing. They had an invincible opponent, they were defeated, and then that's how it was. It's natural, it's normal, it's in line with the normal rules of the universe. But is that really the case...... No, something was wrong, something was wrong, something was wrong from the beginning, it was just that he didn't see it.

But why didn't he see it?

Carl - that old monster, the devil raised by the Donfrie family, the best thing in his life besides killing people is to wear a dress and blood to smile at their corpses after killing people, and say goodbye and goodnight. He is a guy who cannot be understood and speculated by the common sense of the world during the previous civilization period of the earth, and Adele, who is the son of the Netherworld, is even more so. They are the inevitable and distorted products of the combination of the will of human life and the times, and God knows how many and how many kinds of them there are in the universe. People don't need them, but they need them, and their appearance itself represents not only a mockery of humanity itself, but also a warning and silence that cannot be laughed at.

You look in the mirror and you see your own ugliness. And then what do you need to do – you need to accept it and move on.

Of course Ed can't beat them, of course they can use their hands to tear Ed to shreds like a piece of paper, but that doesn't justify Eddard's failure, never. If he had found a similar, almost similar excuse for every failure, a perfect reason that sounded like he didn't have any responsibility at all, then he would have died long ago, died in the starry sky, and died back and forth I don't know how many times.

On more than one occasion, Ed has fought and won against enemies who are stronger than him in all sorts of ways for various reasons, and the simple phrase "he's stronger than me, I can't win" doesn't help him. It's a very simple truth, Ed doesn't want to die, he wants to live - so first of all, he can't give himself any excuse to lose, any way to escape. There had never been a second option in front of him.

So that's the problem, and it's not the problem with the monsters. Ed had seen monsters, some of them far more terrifying than Carl and Adele. The child of the Netherworld, who let him die nine times back then, would not even think of her if it weren't for the sudden appearance of her kind next to him.

Different from the monsters that were "artificially created" like that guy, and unlike their special individuals who were forced to break through the limits of the human body at the cost of blood in special methods, in the solar system of the Star Era, at the limit of the coverage of human civilization today, and within and outside the nine regimes of the Oort Nebula, there have long been some guys with extraordinary talents and qualifications who have taken a step beyond human beings in different ways just by virtue of their own training and opportunities. Reaching a realm where the children of the Nether have experienced immense suffering, they have only a 3 in 1,000 chance of being able to step into.

These people are everywhere in the universe. Particularly smart people, particularly strong people, particularly tough people, especially good at a certain field of games - in their respective worlds, each of them is like a "child of the nether", and relying on their own natural aptitude. This has made them human beings and supported the progress and development of human civilization.

And in Eddard's realm, the figures of the kind of people that can be encountered in the interstellar battlefield, in a broad sense, basically all have the strength to tear him to pieces, and each of them is more terrifying than the children of the Nether.

Nether children are just weapons, and no one is afraid of them. The fear is on the back of the weapon - the finger that pulls the trigger.

In the past fifteen years of life as an interstellar mercenary soaked in death and blood, Ed has dealt with this type of person several times, sometimes as a friend, sometimes as an enemy. Both have benefited Eddard enormously, especially in the latter case. Provided, of course, that is, after he survives. His poor and ridiculous companions, who had died in the process, had nothing to gain, nothing to talk about.

Thankfully, their numbers were well below three per thousand. If three out of every thousand people were the ones who had taken a step beyond humanity, Eddard's flesh and bones would have turned into powder. Funnily enough, although the experience of dealing with those people made Ed feel terrible, now, many years later, they are indeed the ones that Ed remembers most often and have the greatest influence on him. He misses the days he spent with them, and he misses the times he fought them.

Compared to them, whether it's Carl or Adele - they are just barely able to make it to the middle. So they're not the problem, the problem is not with them, it's with Ed, the problem is not what's wrong with them, it's what's wrong with Ed.

The strength of the enemy brings out your weakness. For Ed, it's not that the enemy has become stronger, but that he himself has become weaker.

A lot has happened in the last day and night, many, many things. A lot happens during the day and more at night. And now, at this quiet dawn, Ed finally stopped, stopped and sat in the deepest and deepest darkness of the day, and took a good look at his heart, to examine what was wrong with him.

I don't know when he started to slowly stop being the same as before. He became docile, careless, sluggish, and civilized. Maybe it was because he had left the sinful starry sky and come to this city, to another dark forest that he had watched from afar before, but had never known deeply and was not familiar with at all, or perhaps because he had whispered in his ear more than once that the war was over, that the battlefield had collapsed, that his past was gone, that he could start a new life with a different way of life and a different face and attitude.

As a result, nothing has changed until now. Once upon a time, he was a wild wolf that roamed the wilderness, chasing down prey with his fangs and claws, disemboweling them and drinking blood. He thought he didn't have to do that anymore, he thought he could throw away everything he wanted and start all over again. He closed his mouth, licked the blood from his teeth, retracted his claws, and tried to wag his hard tail, pretending that he could fit into that beautiful, bubble-like civilization.

And then now he finds out that he was wrong, outrageously wrong, ridiculously wrong. He forgot the creed that their kind of people had taken for their lives, and that had enabled him to survive countless dangers and bloodsheds until now, and let his guard go, and plugged his ears. He shouldn't have had any hope that even a phantom didn't exist. He paid the price for his stupidity and forgot who he really was.

So now, once again, start over, he's with the city — it's time for the wolf to come back.