Chapter 203: It's What Must Be Done

The remaining work to patch the seal took three full hours.

Mr. Hutton was severely drained, but he insisted on completely recreating and patching the sixth through ninth rings, even adding an extra node to guard against reverse infiltration.

Throughout the process, Mrs. MacNeil handled the activations, while Ms. Maud and Mr. Spence filled the gaps with wax and smeared silver powder.

Wentworth and Lieutenant Colonel Ord stood guard on the outer perimeter, watching for any further incidents at the bottom of the pit.

Richard kept his camera raised, photographing every step of the procedure.

Once the patching was complete, all nine stone rings lit up once more, forming a "manhole cover" even tighter than the one before.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord inspected it.

"This year's wave was fiercer than in previous years."

The cavern fell silent for a moment.

"Pack it up. Bring everyone up."

The post-battle cleanup began.

The corpse of the Chief Responder contained quite a few things that could be processed.

The severed responder groups had also left behind puddles of residue woven from death-sounds on the stone slabs, which Ms. Maud scraped up bit by bit with a silver spoon and sealed in a porcelain jar.

But the biggest surprise was that one of the "echoes" from a responder group had actually been captured alive.

The Group One Leader escorted the captive over.

He was a man of indeterminate age, his miner's overalls covered in coal dust, his high cheekbones propping up a layer of sallow skin.

His hands were bound behind his back. His knees buckled and he collapsed onto the stone slab, his posture excessively submissive.

He neither struggled nor trembled; even his breathing was as steady as if he were asleep.

Wentworth dragged the man to the brightest patch of light.

The inspector squad leader looked terrible.

The period of weakness from that injection of [Moon Nail: Reflection] hadn't passed yet, and that flanking knife strike had squeezed out his very last drop of burst energy.

But none of this was the real reason he looked so grim.

The body of the Group Two Leader had just been carried onto the iron elevator cage, his face covered by a teammate's jacket.

From the moment the body was covered until now, Wentworth hadn't said a single word.

He simply walked over and crouched in front of the captive, leaning in extremely close.

"Who sent you?"

The echo raised his head. His eyes lingered on Wentworth's face for a second before his lips parted.

"Who sent you."

He was repeating the question.

But what made the hairs on the back of Richard's neck stand on end was the voice.

When the echo spoke, he used Wentworth's exact voice.

Just as deep, just as cold, yet laced with the exact same fury.

Even the slight, hoarse tremor at the end of the sentence—born of exhaustion—had been perfectly replicated.

It was as if Wentworth were interrogating himself through another face.

"What is your motive?" Mrs. MacNeil tried a different approach from the side.

The echo turned to look at her.

"It's what must be done."

This time, he used Mrs. MacNeil's voice.

"Why must it be done?"

"It's what must be done."

"Do you even know what you're doing?"

The echo smiled.

Smiling, he tossed the exact phrase back at her.

"Do you even know what you're doing?"

Wentworth clamped a hand onto the echo's shoulder, his five fingers digging straight into the flesh.

The skin and muscle contorted under his grip, joints popping and grinding.

But the man's expression didn't shift at all; he didn't even blink.

"I'll ask one more time." Wentworth squeezed with his entire hand. "What are you trying to nail into the Pit Core!"

The echo didn't answer.

His head slowly tilted to the side.

He looked toward Pony, who was still crouching on the ground a short distance away, looking absolutely devastated.

"Pony, stay close to me!"

It was the Group Two Leader's voice.

Pony's head snapped up, the tear tracks on his face still wet.

"Leader..."

"Shut up!"

The Group One Leader lunged forward, clapping a hand over Pony's mouth and dragging him several steps back by his shoulders.

"Don't answer!" she hissed, the old scar on her brow bone twitching.

"That's not him! He's dead! Do you hear me? He's dead!"

Pony froze in place, clutching the scrap of cloth torn from the Group Two Leader's jacket as tears suddenly spilled down his cheeks.

Richard stood in the innermost circle, his chest unbearably tight.

The Group Two Leader hadn't even been dead for half a day. His death-echoes had yet to dissipate and were still drifting through the cavern.

And this echo had seized upon the unprocessed grief in everyone's hearts.

He had picked up the dead man's voice and turned it into the bluntest, most ruthless blade imaginable.

He didn't even need to understand what sorrow was; he simply traced its shape and reflected it back at them.

Mrs. MacNeil reached out and restrained Wentworth.

"If you keep interrogating him like this, you won't get anything out of him even if you ask until dawn."

"Let me try."

She crouched in front of the echo, drew a pinch of salt from her suitcase, and sprinkled it onto the stone slab by the man's knees.

She then took out a sharply pointed piece of charcoal and drew a sealing rune over the salt.

"I'll try asking a different way."

The medium didn't use her voice to ask.

Extending her right hand, she hovered it an inch from the echo's forehead and closed her eyes.

Richard looked over using Spirit Vision.

Mrs. MacNeil's ether was searching for his true name.

A person's true name was the nail that pinned them to their own being.

An ordinary medium only needed to brush against the very edges of a person's true name.

From there, they could trace it back and unravel that person's origins, thoughts, and hidden secrets, layer by layer.

But Mrs. MacNeil's fingers circled within the rune once, then again.

Her brows slowly knit together.

"Nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing?" Wentworth asked.

"His true name has been scooped out," the medium said, opening her eyes.

"Scooped perfectly clean. Not even a jagged edge remains. This is the work of the Echo Society, though I don't know what level of operative is orchestrating things behind the scenes."

She closed her eyes again. This time, she tried to call out to him.

She called out one of the most common men's names.

The echo grunted in response, answering to it.

She called out another completely unrelated name, and he answered again.

She rapidly fired off five or six wildly different names, and the man answered to every single one.

Mrs. MacNeil's fingers shifted lower, stopping right over the echo's heart.

"There's something in here."

She asked Ms. Maud to pass her a Silver Dagger, then pricked the pad of the echo's left index finger.

Blood flowed out.

Yet the blood didn't act like a living person's, turning dark and thick upon hitting the cold air.

It remained an overly vivid red, dribbling through his fingers and pooling on the salt rune, refusing to clot.

Mrs. MacNeil stared at the pool of blood for a long time.

"A blood pact. It's the exact same kind found on the Chief Responder."

"Is he an anchor point too?"

"He's half of one." The medium covered the puddle of blood with salt.

"The Chief Responder was the core anchor. He was the backup.

If anything had gone wrong before the Chief Responder could nail himself into the Pit Core, it would have been his turn to step up."

She stood up, looking down at the echo who was still kneeling on the ground, his face perfectly serene.

"From the day the Echo Society picked him up, he has been turning himself into an object.

Even if we didn't touch him today, he would have surrendered himself entirely in a few more days."

Wentworth was still unwilling to give up.

He circled behind the echo, leaned down, and roared right into the man's ear:

"What's your goal here? You people hollow yourselves out, but for what!"

The echo didn't answer with Wentworth's voice.

Nor did he use Mrs. MacNeil's or the Group Two Leader's.

This time, he used a dry, calm voice that no one had ever heard before.

It was likely the very last shred of the man's original voice.

"It's what must be done."

"Why must it?"

"It's what must be done."

"Who told you it must be?"

Richard quickly lost count of how many times the question was repeated.

The faint smile on the man's face never faded, not even once.

"It's no use." Mrs. MacNeil finally called a halt to the interrogation.

"He only knows how to echo now. He can no longer speak first."

"Interrogating someone from the Echo Society is like interrogating a tape recorder."

"You'll spend your whole life trying, and you still won't hear an echo speak its own words."

"I know, but I had to ask."

Wentworth stood up, his knees popping softly.

Only then did Richard finally understand.

He had never expected to get any answers from his relentless questioning; he was just going through the motions.

The Group Two Leader's corpse was lying right there. As the inspector squad leader, he had to put on this display for everyone present, especially the newcomers.

Even if it meant merely acting out the interrogation routine from start to finish.

The cleanup finished.

The ascent in the shaft was a mirror of their descent.

The iron cage rose, section by section.

This time, there were no voices calling out to them.

The thing at the bottom of the pit had just been suppressed by Lieutenant Colonel Ord using a Virtuoso's power, rendering it temporarily silent.

But everyone inside the cage maintained their posture, keeping the salt tucked under their tongues.

No one dared to open their mouths early.

Holding a fresh pinch of salt under his tongue, Richard watched the silver flakes on the shaft walls retreat section by section as they ascended.

It was perfectly quiet inside the cage, save for the creaking of the chains and pulleys.

When the cage reached the top, Lieutenant Colonel Ord was the first to step out. The sky outside had already gone completely dark.

Almost in perfect sync, everyone inside the cage spat out the salt from under their tongues.

The air outside the shaft was cold and damp.

Over in the Western Suburbs mining area, thicker smoke than usual was billowing into the sky—the result of burning buildings.

The mining district riot had already been crushed with an iron fist.

Police officers and hired militiamen had used clubs and rifle butts to beat back the thousands of chanting workers.

The streets were littered with fresh corpses.

Standing at the mouth of the shaft, Richard gazed into the distance toward the rising smoke.

He remembered the surface scene Mrs. MacNeil had spirit-woven just before the battle.

Above and below were two separate battlefields, and both had ended in a violent, overwhelming crushing.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord's squad loaded the Group Two Leader's body into a vehicle.

Pony trailed behind them, looking like he'd lost his soul.

The female Group One Leader with the scarred brow helped Pony into the vehicle.

"Stop clutching that cloth," she said.

Richard watched the vehicle carrying the Group Two Leader's body slowly drive away from the shaft.

Wentworth walked over.

"Let's talk," he said.

The two men walked a short distance down the abandoned dirt road outside the shaft.

Once they reached a spot where no one else could hear them, Wentworth stopped.

"Thanks for the injection down in the shaft."