"I was just thinking, why? Why should other people have to suffer just because he suffered? Even if they were the ’bad guys’ he claimed they were, does that give him the right to arbitrarily decide who lives and dies?"

Jack said, "I was pissed off. I felt like letting him go was getting off too easy, so I beat him up to feel better."

’If only the Prole Court was as reasonable as you are,’ Baron thought grimly. ’Then they wouldn’t have given me the Time Death Judgment without a second thought.’

Jack, who was driving, spoke up again. "I noticed you grabbed something from the bedroom in that villa. Was it some kind of valuable treasure?"

’Damn, you’ve got sharp eyes,’ Baron thought, but he still took the photo frame he had grabbed from his Gentiana Pattern.

Jack took the frame and examined it closely. It was a photo of a family of five.

A mother, a father, a daughter, and a set of grandparents.

After a moment of silence, Jack scratched his head. "Was Lankao a stepfather, or did he have plastic surgery? He looks nothing like the man in this photo. He can’t possibly go through life always wearing a mask, can he?"

Baron didn’t answer. Instead, he handed Jack two newspapers.

Jack pulled the car over, took the newspapers, and glanced at them. He realized they were news reports about two different car accidents on the Outer Side.

He looked at Baron, confused. Baron said flatly, "Look at the dates and the photos."

Jack placed the two newspapers side-by-side to compare. After a moment of silence, he muttered, "Holy shit."

The two articles, from different dates, reported on two car accidents that were the same, yet different.

What was the same: in both cases, a drunk taxi driver had accidentally struck and killed a family of three.

What was different: the driver in the first accident was the man from the photo frame Baron was holding.

And the driver in the second accident... looked a bit like the disguise Lankao had been wearing. Furthermore, the article included a picture of a victim’s crying family member—Lady Eleanor.

This is...

"It’s exactly what you’re thinking," Baron said grimly. "Lankao was the victim in the first accident. The driver was Eleanor’s husband."

Jack was completely floored, but still couldn’t grasp one thing:

"But then why did he make that request earlier? There’s no way he could have faked that sorrowful expression... It can’t be..."

Jack trailed off, and Baron confirmed his suspicion.

"The bodies of Eleanor’s family contain the spirits of Lankao’s family. He wasn’t wrong—the blood was used to sustain those spirits. The only thing is, the three spirits weren’t Eleanor’s family. They were his own."

He said flatly, "Revenge. It was all for revenge."

"After his family died in the car crash, he killed Eleanor’s family using the exact same method as an act of revenge... The news said the driver was never caught, but I don’t think there’s any mystery as to who the killer was."

"Besides being an act of revenge, it was also an experiment. The only difference was that the test subjects included his own family."

Baron said, "He placed his family’s spirits into the bodies of Eleanor’s family. What is that, if not a parasite of the soul?"

’A parasite of the soul...’ Jack shuddered. He suddenly understood why Baron had said what he did to Lankao as they were leaving.

But Baron continued, "So you see, you have no idea how powerful a person’s hatred can be. To people like him, there’s no difference between love and evil. To them, revenge might as well be justice."

"The reason he begged us to let him see Eleanor one last time wasn’t because of family or responsibility. It was because of hatred.

Only hatred could give him that kind of drive—to kill so many people and spill so much blood, all just to make one person suffer."

He murmured grimly, "Revenge... Heh. There’s a certain logic to it. If everyone else gets to be happy, then who’s left to bear the pain?"

Jack flinched, but this time it wasn’t because of Lankao. It was because of the look on the Dragon Knight’s face as he spoke.

So indifferent, so serene. It was like a placid sheet of ice suddenly cracking to reveal the cold, bloody depths beneath.

—