Synopsis
The Praying Hand that Riko and Nanachi were following wanders off aimlessly. Reg's communicator no longer seems to be working, but Nanachi has faith in him. Meinya suddenly appears and licks Riko's face, then runs through the base. Riko thinks they should follow, and Meinya leads them to what Nanachi calls the processing room. Nanachi reveals the awful process: from the selected children, the inside of the head, the upper half of the spine, and any organs needed to sustain life are preserved. Everything else is scraped away while they still live. What remains is stuffed into a cartridge, and manipulated by drugs that stimulate ecstasy and terror. These cartridges are carried by Bondrewd, and they take the brunt of the curse in his place. Nanachi admits that she carried out some of these operations herself, and is disgusted that she did so.
Bondrewd suddenly enters the room and invites Nanachi to return to him. Nanachi guesses that Bondrewd plans to turn Prushka into a cartridge, and Riko begs him not to. Bondrewd assures her that Prushka is sleeping and will be released, and says that the raw materials for the Life-Reverberating Stones that White Whistles are cut from, are humans. Before the Idofront was rebuilt, it was a ritual site used for such sacrifices, as the only way to reach the 6th Layer, is to essentially yield to the Abyss. The stones can only be made from someone with a firm resolve to give all for the intended user. Riko determines that Bondrewd used his original body to make his own White Whistle, which he confirms. Riko angrily tells him to use himself as cartridges instead of others, but Bondrewd says that since he sacrificed his body, he judged himself to no longer be human. Reg bursts into the room violently, but is barely recognizable and seems more like a wild animal. He ignores Nanachi's warnings and attacks Bondrewd head-on. Meinya runs off, and Riko follows it. Bondrewd recognizes that Reg has absorbed the power plant's reserves, and desires to see the true strength of an Abyss treasure. Bondrewd uses Gangway, which fires a multiple beams of light from his helmet, but Reg deflects the beams. Bondrewd then uses Sparagmos and pierces Reg, but Reg keeps moving and damages Bondrewd's mask. Bondrewd regrets having cut off Reg's arm, because now he desires Reg's body intact.
Character Appearances
Referbacks
references to previous chapters