Coetzes has been in a good mood lately.

Not bad.

In the darkest corners of the Glorious Queen-class battleship, Midnight Wraith has built a new bloody lair for itself, in a discarded chamber with broken ventilation duct exits in the walls.

Everything about the new lair was modeled after his dispensable hideout in Nostramo, where the Midnight Wraith loved more than the tall palace of Quintus, and he even regretted that he had blindly obeyed the orders of the god-like man and left his Midnight Realm so quickly that he didn't even take one last look at his sanctuary.

But it didn't matter, he remembered everything there clearly, and it could be copied perfectly, except that the rows of air purifiers in the barbed wire fence could only be temporarily replaced by the newly harvested skulls of the guilty.

On the side walls, the half-rusted ventilation ducts were still spraying foul smell, which made Midnight Wraith even more satisfied, and this smell was indistinguishable from the barren land of Nostramo, which was the main reason for his love for this darkness.

He loved it, he enjoyed his dinner here, he rested, and the more important things like art and thinking: and now, he's doing that.

In the darkness, the artist and recycler from Nostramo hummed the song that no one could understand, slowly pushing open the door of the lair, his dirty robe trailing a cleaner-looking bag, indicating that his trip was rewarding.

Midnight Wraith didn't immediately celebrate, he first looked around his brand new lair until he was sure that everything was exactly the same as when he left, and then leaned against the wall in satisfaction, enveloping himself in darkness.

Unlike the crumbling shelter on Nostramo, this new home in the bottom of the ship didn't come from the thousands of lights of the distant hive, and was accompanied only by the terrifying roar of the ship's engine in the distance, and the dim light so thick that he couldn't see anything, but it wasn't an unacceptable and terrible condition for the Midnight Ghost, and he soon found his own pleasure.

The pale bowl made of skulls and phalanges was filled with viscous paint, a foul-smelling liquid that had been thoroughly crushed and fused with dried blood and various internal organs, and the Midnight Wraith dabbled his long, slender fingers with these colors, and then smeared the paintings on the human skin paper in front of him, which had not yet dried up and could not hold the dye perfectly, which made the Midnight Wraith feel momentarily distressed.

He bent down and repeated his creations over and over again, his slender limbs making him look like those ape-like monsters in mythology, and his stained fingers would occasionally stop, but soon a new round of creation would begin in the vivid memory of the original genome.

The Nostramo artist, apparently with plenty of patience, straightens up from time to time, puts his creative fingers in his mouth, licks the dried paint, examines his work critically from the perspective of a third party, mutters a vague critique of the creator, and when this nightmarish babble ends, he is stained with new colors and continues the delicate manual activity in front of him.

The space was silent, save for the muttering murmuring of the Midnight Wraith from time to time, and the occasional creaking of his spine clinging to the skin of his back disrupted the dead silence in the darkness, only to quickly disappear into the long, dull sound deep in the ventilation ducts.

"This piece belongs to the most important guilty man, I remember his taste."

Ten minutes later, the painting in front of Midnight Ghost was almost finished, but he stopped after the last stroke, because he smelled something familiar when he once again removed a piece of dye made up of shards of internal organs from the bowl.

He was silent for a few seconds, and then, in the darkness where mortals could not see anything, the Midnight Wraith picked up the crumb with his fingernails and looked at it earnestly and carefully, as if it were a living being: under this twisted solemnity, he began to speak, he began to speak to the cold, rotten flesh, in a tone so soft that it seemed to comfort a friend.

"I'm going to apologize to you, sir, oh, I remember they usually call you Director?"

"But in any case, please accept my apologies."

"I promised you that I would kill you before the fourth execution, and that your breath would end once and for all before the skin around your eyes was exposed to air: this is what I promised you, but I'm sorry I didn't fulfill all my promises."

"While your Adam's apple is completely exposed to cold, your cries are still disturbing the people in the fog of ignorance, keeping their children from sleeping: I found out, but I know it's not your fault, it's because my technique has regressed in the long reign."

"It's been a long time since I've tried to separate the skin from the flesh and bones, and I'm more used to letting them float together on the minaret, after all, separation is a painful thing."

"Please forgive me, I didn't mean to."

……

Midnight Ghost lied.

He knew this very well: because his heart was beating extremely hard.

From the outside, he seems to be trying to maintain his composure and composure, but his gaze is always reluctant to meet the person he is chatting with, as if he is deliberately dodging some kind of non-existent condemnation gaze.

Midnight Ghost knows something, he knows something enough to put his reputation to shame: his promise is true, and his skill is not regressive, it's just ......

As that little drop of warm, moist red dotted his face, and when he had to resist the urge to lick it, he realized that his hands had done too much that he shouldn't have done in the roar of the beast called the Midnight Ghost.

"Forgive me, okay?"

"Please."

"I assure you, I don't like it at all."

Even though he knew that no one would be able to respond to his words, Midnight Wraith's complaint was still so soft, as if in the next second, a terrifying thunderbolt would flash out of the darkness, completely tearing apart the desecrated pale body of Midnight Wraith.

If that's really the case...... How nice it should be.

He couldn't help but look forward to it.

Thinking of this, Koz showed a somewhat bitter smile, and he slowly kneaded the rotten flesh in his palm into the tiniest lump of mud, and then finished his work little by little.

"For some reason, I have to requisition a part of your body, Mr. Director, and I don't think you will be willing to do it, but as I just said: please forgive me."

"If you're able to meet your chef friends, please pass on my apology to them, I've requisitioned a portion of each of you, but a little more for you."

"Please don't doubt it, it's all for a very important thing, I need to draw a map, a map that encapsulates the darkness of this ship, I need them, but I don't have the right color materials."

"So, I had to trouble you again: I'm sorry."

In the darkness, Midnight Wraith sincerely apologized for his trepidation, and his fingers did not stop, and after smearing the last traces on the edges of the paper, he nodded in satisfaction, and sat up straight again, taking in the fruits of his hard-earned work.

"Thank you for your help, Director."

He turned his head and thanked the empty bowl, then looked at the map he had drawn: it was a diagram of the cabins on the ground floor within a radius of several kilometers centered on the Midnight Wraith's lair, both the transportation hub and the locations connected to the upper cabins.

Each corridor is depicted with dried blood, and a handful of visceral fragments mark the direction of the ventilation ducts, and together these two diametrically opposed dark reds weave a rather complex web of territory that Coetz has explored in the dark, and the general territory of each crew family is specially marked by a gray-white stream of brain spinal fluid.

The Midnight Wraith was satisfied with his work, and he could certainly be proud: even the shipbuilders' knowledge and memory of these regions were far less than those of the Nostramo man who had explored all night.

Koz's breathing with some excitement was like a hot, fishy mist, and after a brief moment of thought, he decided to reward himself for his hard work.

Pale claws searched through the pouch next to the genogen, and soon grabbed a few pieces of frozen rodent corpses, which Midnight Wraith grabbed in his hands, starting with the tail part, filling his stomach pouch with stinky hair and cold plasma, feeling the stiff claws creep from his throat to his stomach as they squirmed through his esophagus, until there were only a few shriveled heads in his palms.

"They're fatter and more flavorful than their counterparts in Nostramo."

The Midnight Ghost chewed the pieces of flesh in his mouth little by little, his voice as if he were talking to himself as if he were continuing the staccato conversation.

As he spoke, he placed several rat heads in various corners of the map, each representing a traffic gateway or a passage to the upper deck.

Then, after thinking about it again, he took out two shriveled eyeballs and placed them somewhere on the map: the one that marked the location of the Midnight Wraith's lair at this time.

"You know, it looks like those inner walls of Quintus."

Midnight Wraith laughed, his teeth glowing in the darkness filled with disgusting yellow stains, accompanied by a hoarse laugh coming from deep in his throat.

"Separated by a wall, two worlds, but there is no difference or difference between the people who live in them, and their fate is determined by nothing more than which belly they are reincarnated: it is ridiculous that I realized this simplest fact much later."

"They're no different."

"They're all beasts."

“……”

"Of course, so do I."

"Sometimes it is."

“…… Sometimes, I'm no different from them. ”

"I have bound them in chains of fear and death, transforming them from beasts into more civilized individuals, but I am also bound in the same way: if I become a beast like them, then I too shall be subjected to the countless trials that I have practiced with my own hands."

"Don't be surprised, it's a very fair thing to do, Mr. Director."

"I am higher than them, but that doesn't mean I'm a god, just because they're all sinful people, all of them contributing to this sinful society, and I'm a patheticly pure person who needs to bring the true gospel to them."

"It's that simple, it's so difficult."

"If I really become a guilty like them, or a guilty like you, then I deserve to die, because the guilty must die, because salvation is non-existent illusions, because no sin can be redeemed and forgiven, and so on are just the words of the guilty before they die."

"They will say that they will be able to be redeemed, they will say, they will try to get forgiveness from those victims, and of course, in more cases, they will say ......"

"Please."

"They always say things like that, and that's the second word I learned in Nostramo, but I never understood what it meant: by the way, the first word was the name they gave me, and I liked it a lot."

"But what's the use, such words can't stop the judgment."

"No one can interfere with all this, you can't do it, I can't do it, and God can't do it."

He was silent for a moment, then suddenly showed a slightly apologetic smile, and his blood-stained paws spared his long black hair with some guilt, but it was stuck to the sticky strands and tugged at it for a while.

"Ah, I'm sorry, Mr. Director, I accidentally digressed, forgive me for my mistake."

"It's a little more difficult than I thought it would be to change a living environment, and it's not as simple as moving a shack, so I can't concentrate all the time."

"Where did we just go?"

"Ah, yes, your crimes."

"Given that this is a somewhat long topic and story, and time is limited, let's talk while we eat: I have brought back a lot of good things for you, I don't know if they will suit your own appetite, but that's all."

"Speaking of which, the standard of living on this ship is much better than that of Nostramo, and your junkyard is like a banquet hall in Quintus, and even has food on both sides of the corridor: is this some peculiar custom among you?"

"You know, when I found the delicacies on both sides of the road, I was really surprised, and even thought it was some kind of extravagant show-off."

Midnight Wraith pouted, and carefully took out the precious delicacy he had dragged back from his bag: a huge mud pot was planted with a verdant plant, its rhizome thick and narrow as it went up, like a stack of overly slender triangular bodies, the better-than-nothing spikes on both sides did not stop the calluses on Midnight Wraith's fingers, and he skilfully broke off the best piece and placed it next to his eyeball.

"You're welcome, Mr. Director."

"You probably didn't know it yet: this plant is actually called aloe vera, and while it may not look like much, the flesh and juice inside are delicious, so be sure to try it."

"After all, we can't always eat pure meat, and a combination of meat and vegetables is necessary."

Midnight Ghost ended his explanation and persuasion in a gentle tone, and then he continued the solemn dining ceremony, two bone-like claws grasping the sides of the mud pot, and the verdant potted plant more than a meter high was held in Conrad's arms, and the rugged teeth bit directly into the juicy flesh, and in a few bites, he swallowed the branches and leaves and the rhizomes in the mud into his belly.

"They make me feel cool, a kind of nostramo-style coolness."

Midnight Spirit's speech is slurred.

"Perhaps, that's what healthy eating is all about: I'm just learning that today."

After settling the buffet in his arms in two bites, Midnight Ghost, still feeling hungry, pulled the bag to his side and rummaged through it for his next dish: the choice was more abundant than ever.

A kind of bamboo, which had never been seen before, was also planted on both sides of the corridor and became a luxury waste, but the difference was that it was not planted in the soil, but in glass bottles full of water.

I took a bite and the taste was bland.

A fungus, picked up from the damp edge outside his nest, had a very beautiful combination of black and dark gray, the flesh was white with distinctly fibrous gray patterns, and it seemed to be Amanita phalloides.

Ate a few and the taste was so-so.

A piece of beef that has just started to spoil: It's a good thing, and although I don't know who messed it up with a knife and fork, and got a few bites, Midnight Ghost never hates such a trivial matter.

Three or two bites, the taste is not bad.

And so, the Midnight Wraith leaned against the walls of the lair, placing all sorts of kitchen waste and dirt-stained plants between his hands, making him look like a great emperor picking and choosing at a feast, while the worms wriggling in the rotten dishes were flattering favorites, crappy court jesters, and he grabbed them, grinned sarcastically, and threw them into his stomach without hesitation.

"So, where do we start?"

Savoring the feast with relish, Midnight Ghost licked his fingers from time to time, recalling the taste of the rotten delicacies far more memorable than any meal he had ever eaten on the Nostramo, and even some unimaginable extravagance and erosion for his life so far.

In the rare good mood of a full meal, Midnight Ghost's words were much lighter, and he smiled at the non-existent guest, slowly planning the pace of his own storytelling in his mind.

"Actually, in general, Mr. Director, at the first moment I met you, I was at a point of a certain confusion: for I had never been tried for corruption."

"It's a bit of a guilt: corruption is a petty fight in every city in Nostramo, and I have to deal with more important crimes every day, so when I see how you record your crimes in your diary, I hesitate for a moment, because I don't have any experience with it."

"Just like you wrote in your diary: when you started the third year of taking charge of the logistics supply of all the mortals on this battleship, you began to unite some close subordinates to work together on the logistics supplies."

"Sometimes you'll cut five lemon slices next to the foie gras, sometimes you'll quietly deduct an olive or two from the bowl, and of course, your favorite trick is to take a little white from every egg a soldier needs for dinner and cut it off."

"Although from an individual point of view, such a deduction is irrelevant, but given the huge base of the logistics you are responsible for, so in just a few years, you have accumulated a considerable fortune, thousands of military fruits and the rest of the supplies disappeared so imperceptibly, they did not appear in the garbage dump, but in a warehouse that was never reported."

"Just as you quietly confessed to the emperor in your diary, you know very well that this is a kind of embezzlement that is no different from stealing, but it satisfies your strange kleptomanta, so when you give some of your money to your cronies in exchange for their help, you mail the rest of the money to the orphanage where you grew up, and you proudly watch it grow several times larger, and boast of your success and status to the lady who raised you with your own hands, but never explain where the money comes from."

"And all this, no doubt, is a crime, as you confess in front of the statue of the emperor in your room, it is a kind of embezzlement, and embezzlement itself is a kind of theft, and as for theft, there is no doubt that it is a crime."

"Worse still, your stolen money is sent to those who don't know it, and your deception and hypocrisy make them inadvertently become your accomplices, the ultimate beneficiaries of a theft: you think it's noble? On the contrary, it is a terrible stain. ”

"You know that, don't you: the orphanage raised you with the most pitiful kindness, but the only thing you can give back to them is malice and lies, and you get paid a lot of money, and you do give most of it to the orphanage, which is enough to keep them going, but you still have to give them more, give them your stolen money."

"You deceive yourself, you think it's so that they have more reserves for the future, but deep down you know very well what you're thinking: you just want to find a stranger, a stranger you trust enough but don't know anything, to relieve the sin in your heart, to release your stress."

"You say in your confession that you sent back a sum of money in a contradiction and anxiety that longed for them to be better, and for them to remain with you: but this is wrong, and your actions cannot be a mixture of good and evil: for this mixture itself is impossible, and there are only good and evil deeds in the world, and how can a guilty person like you, having borne original sin, do good deeds."

"Your hypocritical kindness, your love for the orphanage and their [love] is nothing but a deception, and you are not only deceiving them, but also deceiving yourself."

"This is the second sin: fraud."

"It's the same as stealing, it's the same as murder and rape."

"Because they are all sins."

"Because in this world, whether it's a murderer, a rapist, a thief or a fraudster like you, you all have the same name, the same crime: the guilty."

"You're no different."

"In my case, that's it, because there will only be one outcome of the trial."

"So, I came to you."

"I'm here for you."

"You feared, cried, begged for mercy, saw me as a death-seeking reaper, and sobbed and cried out the names of your nurturers until you took your last breath."

"This is the punishment you deserve as a guilty person, and I have achieved it."

"Your death is valuable: do you see what kind of light shines in the pupils of the natives in the lower cabins when they see your corpse?"

"That's fear."

"It is the root of order."

"It is the starting point of civilization."

"It is the gospel of salvation."

"You are the guilty, and your death is a well-deserved sentence, but with my efforts and skills, your death has become a benchmark to fundamentally stop countless crimes, so that more potential guilty people can put away their evil thoughts in fear, and from this point of view, your death has great value."

"Don't thank me, Mr. Director, because that's my calling."

"I've come here to come to this strange battleship, to continue my career in Nostramona, where I've been successful, and here, everything will be no different, even smoother and faster, after all, I have enough experience and strength to deal with it."

"You and your cronies are the first."

"I also sincerely hope that you will be the last."

……

He lied again.

Midnight Ghost closed his eyes, and he felt his heart speed up again, which annoyed him a little, and reminded him of some abandoned memories and thoughts.

In fact, from the first moment he boarded the ship, he already saw this place as the next Nostramo, a wasteland that he was about to bring order.

But he soon discovers a big problem: the humans on this ship are too cunning and hypocritical compared to his homeland, and under their self-packaging, Midnight Wraith can't find a reason to continue with a mass trial.

A situation similar to [Equivalent Exchange] pervades the decks of battleships, and everyone seems to be accustomed to being paid unbridled for their own efforts, and taking it as happiness, they only need to complete the work of their posts, and they can get everything they want, without the slightest chance of revealing their inner original sin.

It is precisely under such conditions that the [corruption] of the logistics director is seen by the Midnight Ghost: originally in Nostramo, he did not have time to spend on such trivial things, because Nostramo's deep-rooted aristocratic rule made it have no soil for bribery and corruption at all, and on this warship, among the rather common temporarily innocent, the corruption of the director has become particularly conspicuous.

As a result, he became the first person to be approached by the Midnight Ghost, and the more than two hundred lemons in his secret warehouse, his private diary, and his confession, which the Midnight Ghost had heard clearly, became unshakable guilt.

He couldn't argue with all this, because the Midnight Ghost had done nothing wrong, he was doing his duty, he was judging.

"That's ......"

Conrad whispered, the wailing soul in his ear seemed to be persuaded by the flawless logic, and it vanished: or never appeared.

The Midnight Ghost ignored it, picking up the shriveled eyeball from the map and casually tossing it into his mouth, munching on it mechanically, thinking about his next move.

Soon, however, his thoughts were interrupted by a sound: something from a ventilation duct, like a menacing predator rushing in the direction of the Midnight Wraith.

Koz turned his head, he was a little anticipating the identity of these uninvited guests, and his anticipation didn't last long, because almost the next moment, a silver-white figure jumped out of the ventilation duct.

It was a big cat, an amazingly big cat, its snow-white fur stained with a few traces of dust, but it could still tell the nobility and mystery of the bloodline, and I don't know which big man's pet it was.

But Koz could guess a little bit, and he could even guess what the creature meant.

The big cat stared at Midnight Ghost tightly, its ears swaying back, its arched body, and the snow-white hairs all over its body were bursting from it, especially the tail that stood up, and the hair on it had turned into a blooming flower of rage, its whiskers sticking forward, its pupils slender, and its teeth and claws making a distinct and audible hissing sound in the air.

Coates smiled, and he changed his sitting position slightly, and looked at the visitor, his straight waist once again seemed to reach its limit, and his hands were propped up on the cold ground, making him look like a crouching bat, facing the big cat silently.

"What you're looking for?"

Midnight Ghost grabbed a dried rat from the bag next to him, and there were dozens of more in his bag of delicacies like this, which was already a very serious provocation for the top predators in the original bottom cabin.

The big cat hissed angrily, he didn't seem to be afraid of humans at all, he seemed quite confident in his noble position on the battleship, and this unbridled arrogance caused Midnight Wraith to quickly lose patience to continue playing with this strange little creature.

"Okay, I'll give it to you."

He spoke softly, his voice as if it were a sincere apology, and the big cat seemed to understand, and it stopped its angry posture and sat cross-legged, the contempt in its eyes as if it was not surprised by the retreat of the humans in front of it.

The Midnight Ghost unhurriedly took out the dried carcasses of a dozen rodents and lined up in a neat line at his hand, which attracted the big cat's attention, only to see him slowly display the precious food, and then in front of the big cat's somewhat triumphant beard......

Throw them into your mouth.

“……”

For a moment, the consternation in the big cat's pupils and the overwhelm after being let down made the Midnight Ghost laugh, and he showed his sharp nails and swung it fiercely in front of the big cat, making the originally aggressive invader realize in an instant the power and terrifyingness of the person in front of him.

Unsurprisingly, in the next second, the big cat disappeared into the ventilation duct, coming and going in a hurry, leaving only a long series of angry screams, indicating that he would never let go of this hateful fellow.

Midnight Ghost sat still, swallowing a dozen pieces of meat in his mouth, and then continued with his rare little mood.

"Oh......"

"It looks like a war has begun."

“……”

"Huh?"

Suddenly, Coetzes stopped laughing.

For he heard another voice, one that was still very distant, but one that could never be ignored.

This time......

It's the sound of riding boots hitting the ground.

(End of chapter)