“Wait! Where are you taking Eil?”

Miss Julian still hadn’t grasped the situation, her confusion clinging like mist.

“On the list of ‘46,620,009’ names, neither of you appears. If you’re uneasy, you may come along, Miss Julian.”

Vega eased to the doorway and, as when she arrived, gave a flawless bow, smooth as a swan’s neck.

To be fair, this story is like most in the world—it fails to move anyone, a leaf drifting past closed hearts.

Actors who know too much and warriors who know nothing play a thin plot, caught in a clockwork grand design with no hope of upheaval, ending as parts not worth mention.

“The term ‘occupational disease’—in the common tongue—roots in ‘habit’ and ‘persona.’ Humans bend to fit their weather. But the weather shifts, and a persona altered can’t be mended. On the battlefield, kill on sight becomes instinct. Back home, such people can’t fit a quiet life, like blades left out in rain.”

The head maid folded her hands and let them rest at her belly, every gesture measured. She led them through a zone once marked forbidden, calm as a river at dusk.

Qing An pretended to study the terrain, to record it like a map sketched in wind. The head maid didn’t even show a spark of anger.

“You face the same issue. This area runs rules opposite to your habits. Once inside, abandon all hostile instincts. My master shelters visitors, but for fairness, if you provoke first, your death will be justified. Mr. Eil, Miss Julian, if you can’t trust yourselves, you may leave your swords with me.”

“Uh…”

“I won’t force you. Honestly, I’d prefer you anger another Demon King. That saves the Demon King Army daily costs without staining our name, like shifting a storm to a different shore.”

This head maid was thoroughly unfriendly, her words cold as iron.

She didn’t bother to hide seeing others as burden and trash, a carrion wind over the road.

Yet neither Julian nor Qing An had the mind—or the strength—to refute her venom. Weariness pooled like lead.

The surroundings seized all their attention, a tide dragging the gaze toward a dark horizon.

Only after stepping into the Demon King Army’s true inner ring did the strangeness dawn. Underground, yet no rock wall; up, down, all around stretched a deep black like ink. From that bottomless abyss rose colossal screws, staggered and crisscrossed, arched into bridges like ribcages of giants.

In this secret realm of no fire and no lantern, light came only from the steel beneath their feet, a soft glow like frost. It seemed a wandering solid, quietly flooding a wide span, the lone comfort in a place that nurses fear of the dark.

Useless gears hung in the far half-sky and turned slow as winter suns. Only their lower halves caught the ghostly glow. From them came a faint clack of teeth meshing. No one knew what their hidden halves bit into, and no one wished to know.

Further on, past the screw-bridges, stood a clocktower twisted and magnified a millionfold, a mountain of time.

Countless gears were pierced by massive spears with filigreed tails, moving irregularly. Others hung from bronze chains, and some spun on nothing, like stars without a sky.

Steel thorns coiled upward, guarding the central, colossal clock like a crown of iron.

Vast patterns and unreadable script sprawled across the dial, carved like sunlight on stone, a sun-face etched with meanings beyond men.

The hour, minute, and second hands ran backward, as if time itself had chosen to swim upstream. It lodged in memory like a thorn.

Lead-gray, silver-white, rust-red—everything breathed metal, a mix of cold and heat. Fluorescence tangled with reflections across the endless dark, blurring true and false like twin moons on water.

Everything looked dreamlike, yet the reality bit back, sharp as steel needles waking a sleeper with pain.

“Welcome to Endless City.” The maid bowed and showed the city she was proud of, her voice gleaming like tempered steel. “Welcome to our realm.”

“So this is Endless City…”

“Its two city lords are my master, Savior Demon King Andor, and the Queen of Infinite Radiance, Eternal God Feriel.”

“I’ve never heard of that goddess.”

“If you’d like to take photos, this is the best vantage—if you don’t plan to enter.” She added it lightly, yet sidestepped the question like a dancer. “This city has its own law. Once you step in, it applies to everyone without exception. I suggest you understand it fully before you decide.”

“Can we still choose not to go in?”

“Can you let me finish the tour script first? It’s routine, and it helps you grasp where you’re heading.”

“All right. I figured. Go on.”

She called it playback, yet Vega drew out no device. She simply led them onward and explained, her words ticking like gears.

Qing An guessed this “playback” touched memory or soul, a record etched on inner bone. But Vega was crafted by her father’s hand, a demon of a different make. Qing An held back from certain judgment.

“If you’re too lazy to learn the law, stay near the guide as much as possible. Otherwise, when your soul ends up on a shop shelf, the travel company won’t buy it back.”

“A place like this has shops?”

“Not yet. In time it will. The city’s law is co-written by both lords. Once issued, residents who refuse get a month’s protection to move out. The law changes every ten years. It does change, but when unchanged, it’s executed utterly and completely. So avoid capital punishment or worse, or your insurer will ache like a cracked bell.”

“Is this the Demon Realm? And we’re talking survival rates?”

“No. This is a utopia. Keep the law, and you’ll have a happy garden—an iron-forged utopia.”

Rarely, the iron-faced head maid let emotion show, a flare under armor.

Fervor—she felt the kind you give to a beloved treasure, hot enough to forbid any slander.

They kept climbing along gears and rivets, ever upward, the path twisted as a serpent. In this giant clocktower, without a guide you’d be swallowed by turns.

At last, they reached a door on black ground, carved in silver-white with dragons and flame, a constellation in steel.

For no clear reason, the visitors thought of Swordgate, that doorway to the Demon Realm, a memory like wind over old stone.

Gears turned, and the door opened. Sunlight burst in, abrupt and harsh as a trumpet.

The room was circular; half its wall was floor-to-ceiling windows. Morning sun blazed. On the sun’s far side, the owner alone held up an impenetrable Shadow with their body, a night-shroud within day.

“My master, the two guests have arrived.”

“Mm. Thank you, Vega.”