Having swallowed Chernobog, Reunion sets its next sights on Lungmen, the city-state of Higashi. Bursting out from every corner at once, they seize control of the city in an instant, even snatching away the Guard Department building — once a symbol of law and order — in its entirety.

The protagonist of this story is the blade that guards Lungmen — Special Inspection Team Leader Ch'en of the Guard Department. A cold, upright dragon.

But this time, Ch'en keeps swallowing something down — Director Wei's classified orders, the comrade she left behind, and a very old version of herself.

1. A Reunion That Begins with a Bucket of Water

Ch'en wakes up drenched in water. She'd been talking in her sleep, caught in a childhood nightmare. The one holding the cup is Swire, a young lady from a wealthy family — and this is a cabin aboard Rhodes Island.

Forty-five minutes earlier, Ch'en had been caught in an explosion, knocked unconscious, and led her team fleeing to this place. If not for Swire and Rhodes Island, the entire team would have fallen to Reunion.

Swire is itching to tear into Ch'en. The Guard Department has already fallen into Reunion's hands, and she pushes the blame entirely onto Ch'en for being away — demanding she step down at once and hand over the Special Inspection Team.

Ch'en doesn't back down either, snapping back that Swire doesn't have what it takes to lead the Special Inspection Team. Their argument turns ugly enough that Lungmen curses start flying.

But there's a wound on Swire's back that Ch'en has never seen before. While carrying the unconscious Ch'en into a bunker, a caster's Arts detonated just three meters away, blowing up the wall behind her entirely. For rivals, she risked her life to save Ch'en. Hoshiguma scolds Ch'en, telling her to be a little kinder sometimes — there's no need for the two of them to be at each other's throats every single day.

2. A Team Leader Playing a Role

Ch'en's longtime partner is the horned oni inspector Hoshiguma. After Swire leaves, Hoshiguma senses that something's been off with Ch'en lately.

To Ch'en, who coldly lays out Lungmen's losses in front of the Rhodes Island Operators, Hoshiguma quietly says one thing: that Ch'en isn't a politician.

You're a team leader and a commissioner, not a politician. This kind of act doesn't suit you.

— Hoshiguma

Ch'en only says it's all for Lungmen's sake. The operation followed orders, she says, and the contents of those orders are classified. Hoshiguma quickly realizes that the only person who could give the Guard Department such orders is Director Wei.

Above all, Ch'en left Amiya, the Doctor, and the others behind in that abandoned city. Hearing the circumstances, a Rhodes Island Operator grows furious, asking if the Guard Department always abandons comrades like that.

Ch'en says it's entirely her own responsibility — that protecting Lungmen was the top priority, and she judged she couldn't take on that risk. Still, Hoshiguma notices a corner of her heart that remains uneasy.

3. A Severed Transmission

Just then, a transmission comes in over a classified channel — news that Ch'en's informant, XR02, has been surrounded by Reunion.

Already hit by several shots and unable to hold out any longer, the informant says he'll leave the information on his own body. Ch'en shouts at him to survive, but the transmission cuts off just like that.

XR02! Don't you dare die! That's an order! Survive!

— Ch'en

Ch'en formally requests help from Rhodes Island. Punching through a breach, they head straight for the Mukwo warehouse.

4. Can a Thug with Oripathy Be a Good Person Too?

Hoshiguma already knew the informant's true identity — Apot, a friend of ten years. He used to be a bar owner polishing glasses, but Ch'en had secretly groomed him into an informant. She should have at least told me, Hoshiguma quietly resents.

Hoshiguma volunteers herself as bait. She charges alone into the ambush site and wipes out every last Reunion soldier in just two minutes and thirty seconds — enough to make the Guard Department troops shudder and say she's no different from a demon.

Deep inside the warehouse, Apot waits for Ch'en, blinded and pierced through by an arrow. He hands over the coordinates of the intel he obtained at the cost of his life, worrying to the very end only about the oni sister he calls Big Sis.

He asks her to stay by his side, so the rich don't get to look down on her for where she came from. Then he asks Ch'en — can someone like him be called a good person, even a thug with Oripathy?

Ch'en tells him to ask Lungmen itself. Then she answers on Lungmen's behalf.

"It doesn't care." Apot, you've always been a person of Lungmen, and you always will be, forever.

— Ch'en

Only then does Ch'en call over Hoshiguma, whom she'd brought along and kept standing behind them all this time. Held in her arms, Apot asks that his remains be buried with the others, even in their old, now-derelict hideout, as long as he's with them.

Big Sis... We were always afraid of you, but honestly... we were always rooting for you...

— Apot

5. The Empty House

The coordinates Apot left point to a Reunion stronghold in a wealthy residential district. But it looks like they aren't trying to build a solid base — they seem to be secretly searching for a 'high-value target.'

The mansion Reunion was trying to break into is, of all places, the home of Ch'en's birth father's family — a place once called the 'Ch'en household,' where she lived until she left to study abroad in Victoria.

Inside the house, the rules of her childhood rise up like walls — voices telling her to put her toys away neatly, never to leave the house, never to look an adult in the eye without permission.

Ch'en's room is still kept spotlessly clean. Was it left this way for her, or simply left untouched because she was seen as an ill omen? Ch'en laughs bitterly. And from beyond the wall, old words steeped in someone's hatred come drifting out.

You will never earn my love. Not even a scrap of it.

— Narration

Ch'en finds an old photograph. Then it suddenly dawns on her — could this be what they were looking for?

Ch'en quietly speaks to someone in the photo, promising she will surely help them. But why now, of all times — why here, of all places? Of course, the photo doesn't answer.

6. Decoy Operation

Along the road to the Guard Department stands Daigu Plaza. A Reunion caster there senses something is off — Lungmen is completely empty, and every expensive item has nothing left but its price tag.

It's as if someone cleared everything out beforehand. What's more, Reunion units in other districts are disappearing one by one, without a trace, their microphones still switched on.

Before that unease can fully take root, Ch'en's Guard Department rappels down from the rooftop and crashes through the windows. Ch'en orders them to blow up Reunion, cover and all — even knowing full well that Daigu Plaza belongs to Swire's family.

Swire blows up over the comm, and a piano worth 1.8 million Lungmen dollars gets used as cover and smashed to pieces. Ch'en's real goal lies elsewhere — she waits for the enemy to finish their report, letting word spread across all of Lungmen that 'the Guard Department is here.'

If you've finished your report, then your job here is done.

— Ch'en

7. Life and Death Together

Then explosives hidden on the third floor detonate right beneath Ch'en's feet. Hoshiguma shields her with her shield, and the two of them tumble down the stairs together.

With one arm broken, Hoshiguma bears the weight of two floors' worth of debris with just her shield. Then she pushes Ch'en up, saving her life once again.

But this time, Ch'en stubbornly refuses to leave Hoshiguma behind. The old Ch'en would have weighed the costs and put the team first — but not now.

For the first time, Ch'en lays her true feelings bare. She says Hoshiguma is no longer just Inspector Hoshiguma to her — she's Hoshiguma, her friend and partner.

Your shield has always held me up until now. Let me be your shield sometimes too. Hoshiguma.

— Ch'en

Hoshiguma laughs, saying Ch'en can deliver a line like that without even blushing. Then she gives Ch'en, who's heading for the Guard Department, just one warning — never get lost in some thought and act on stubbornness alone. Don't fight for anything other than who you are right now.

In place of the injured Hoshiguma, who drops out, Swire calls in over comms with some silly joke. She lightens the tense mood with talk of a sandwich from Lang Yam Restaurant, then leaves one last line — that life matters most, so don't go risking it over whatever's in front of you.

8. To Reclaim the Guard Department

In front of the Guard Department building, Ch'en stands before her officers. We are neither rioters nor criminals, she tells them — remember your obedience, your duty, your resolve.

As the Lungmen Guard Department, let's take back what's ours. That alone is enough.

— Ch'en

But the inside of the building is strangely quiet. There's not a single enemy on the lower floors, and while Reunion numbers grow the higher they go, there's no sign of an attack — as if they're all taking a nap. The command post sits on the rooftop, an obvious trap.

9. Devils

Waiting on the rooftop are Reunion's boy commander Mephisto and his quiet sniper Faust — a man who commands the Infected with the precision of chess pieces.

When Mephisto uses his Arts, Originium grows through the bodies of fallen Reunion soldiers, piercing through them. Their wounds heal and they feel no pain — remade into 'undying bodyguards.'

But Ch'en was prepared too. Four of the twenty-one Infected in the Guard Department are spies she planted, and one of them leaked Mephisto's entire plan to her. Even Mephisto's belief that he'd rescued Faust was part of Ch'en's setup from the start.

Mephisto tries to win Ch'en over, telling her she too will eventually be used up and discarded by Lungmen.

Do you know that you'll end up being used like a chess piece by those people, and then thrown away?

— Mephisto

10. The Sword That Won't Draw

Ch'en carries a sword lent to her by Director Wei — the Dragonslayer Sword, codename Crimsonnight. An extraordinary weapon, she'd been told never to let it exude killing intent except when it was truly worth drawing.

Ch'en tries to draw it, but Crimsonnight refuses to leave its sheath. Caught in Faust's crossfire, Ch'en can only draw the blade halfway, barely deflecting arrows to hold her ground.

Mephisto mocks Ch'en as a mere game piece, but Ch'en cuts him off flatly — she says she's nobody's pawn.

This kind of game board doesn't suit me. Kid, I'm not anyone's game piece — I'm Lungmen's blade.

— Ch'en

But Mephisto knows Ch'en's weakness precisely. He says the 'Leader' told him, seeing right through the fact that Ch'en can't draw her sword. In the end, Ch'en is thrown back by a shockwave, her ribs broken.

Mephisto's Originium Arts only work on the Infected. Yet seeing the dust clinging to Ch'en, he mutters something meaningful, as if he's noticed something. What exactly Ch'en is — the story never gives a clear answer.

11. Reinforcements from the Sky

Just as Ch'en braces herself even to die there, Rhodes Island's aircraft, the 'Bad Guys,' appears in the sky.

Fire-wielding Operator Blaze drops in, and Amiya uses her Arts to restore the erased emotions of Mephisto's bodyguards. The emotionless Infected suddenly begin to weep, silently, all at once.

Amiya declares to Mephisto that she won't back down. But she says he isn't her enemy — the only thing she means to destroy is his grudge and his cruelty.

Mephisto, the one standing alone on this battlefield right now — that's you!

— Amiya

Ch'en apologizes to Amiya. When Amiya plays dumb, saying the battlefield was too loud to hear anything, Ch'en once again swallows a sincere apology. This time, she decides to hand command over to the Doctor, saying she'll trust him, just once.

12. Be Dyed Crimson

Blaze catches Faust's invisible crossbowmen, the 'Phantom Crossbowmen.' With a technique that sprays her own blood and sets it alight, she burns away their air-refraction camouflage entirely, exposing them.

With the Doctor's command and Rhodes Island's covering fire, an opening finally appears. Ch'en doesn't miss the moment — she draws the Dragonslayer Sword and cuts down over a dozen bodyguards in a single stroke.

Be dyed crimson...

— Ch'en

Mephisto and Faust retreat under cover of the chain of explosions. To the very end, Mephisto can't understand it — why haven't the twenty squads and two battalions of Reunion he mustered shown up yet?

Betrayal? A leak? Mephisto tries to reassure himself that Big Sister Talulah couldn't possibly have orchestrated something like this. That name is the first hint, slipping out, of this night's true weight.

13. Targeted Treatment

Over the comm, the voices of Wei Yenwu and Kal'tsit overlap. And it's revealed that all of this was Wei Yenwu's plan from the very start.

Leaving Amiya in the abandoned city, deliberately isolating the Guard Department — all of it was bait to make Reunion let its guard down and draw out its full forces.

Herd the scattered Reunion forces into one place with a citywide blockade across Lungmen, then wipe them out entirely with elites lying in ambush. Cutting out only the diseased tissue from the wound that is the city — that's precisely 'targeted treatment.' This was the true identity of the classified order Ch'en had been swallowing all along.

Rhodes Island knows they were used. But evidence is lacking for now, and it's also true that Swire helped hold off the pursuers together with them, so Amiya swallows her anger. Wei says calmly that as long as the result is satisfactory, that's all that matters.

Lungmen's problems must be something Lungmen itself can resolve entirely on its own. That is what matters most of all.

— Wei Yenwu

Then he adds, speaking to the Doctor, that though they may not be friends, at least they aren't enemies yet. Their cooperation remains valid until Reunion is completely wiped out, he says — and so Rhodes Island and Lungmen's precarious partnership continues, teetering along.

Epilogue — A Night That Was Only the Beginning

In the Director's office, Wei Yenwu sits across from his longtime companion Fumizuki. Even though it's a night of victory, Wei's expression is dark.

This was clearly an all-out assault by Reunion — so why didn't their leader, Talulah, show up in Lungmen at all? A suspicious air hangs over the entire Ursus Empire. A feeling that all of this is merely the beginning of something.

Fumizuki brings up an old name. That battle twenty years ago that stopped Ursus's conquest — if they had lost then, the person sitting in Wei's seat right now would have been someone else. Duke Kashchey.

Fumizuki says she somehow senses that person's presence in Talulah. Wei's answer quietly lays down this night's final truth.

But he's already dead. Killed by Talulah's own hand.

— Wei Yenwu

Lungmen's cold-blooded blade abandoned a comrade and even cut through her own old home to drive Reunion into a perfect trap. But the one who drew up that perfect plan wasn't the one holding the sword — and the orders, the guilt, and the old wounds she had to swallow still remain inside Ch'en. And as Wei Yenwu sensed, this long night had only just begun.