Infinity: Kill your way through the movie world.

“Then there’s nothing more to discuss.” Viper sheathed his dagger and stood up. “Please proceed, Your Excellency. However, without our help, you will need to be even more careful in this area.”

"The guild members have mastered the technology, and they have a keen sense of smell, while the madmen of Bartholomew have been reportedly quite active in this area recently."

This is a blatant threat.

Gadriel left the hotel, feeling as if he were walking through a swamp with every step.

They seem to be stuck in a vicious cycle.

Without making deals with these dark forces and rebels, it is difficult to obtain the resources and key intelligence needed for survival; but once a deal is made, one will inevitably be drawn into their crimes, provide them with convenience, or even become an accomplice.

And tragedy soon proved this in blood.

A week later, Pine Needle, a town in Idaho primarily engaged in logging and mining, was raided by a werewolf tribe on a dark and stormy night.

The attack went exceptionally smoothly. The makeshift early warning array on the outskirts of the town inexplicably failed prematurely. Several local hired men, though experienced, were precisely lured away or assassinated at the start of the attack.

Werewolves stormed into the town, wreaking havoc all night, causing 37 deaths, injuring hundreds, and looting a large amount of supplies.

Surviving townspeople tearfully recounted seeing "faintly glowing figures" moving about in the hills behind the town before the attack.

The same thing happened in a remote ranch community in Montana, where a rebellious Viper witcher squad raided the area at night, stealing the community's winter food and medicine supplies and killing seven residents who tried to resist.

Afterwards, residents who managed to escape reported to passing guild demon hunters that several hidden defensive rune points around the community had been targeted and destroyed, something that wouldn't have been done by those brutish rebels.

Not to mention those vampire families that received guidance from angels, found ways to weaken the effects of sunlight, or avoided certain methods of restraint, and began to operate more boldly at dusk or even during the day, attacking the outskirts of towns that they previously dared not approach, causing more disappearances and deaths.

The moderate angels huddled in their caves, abandoned mines, and deep forests, eating food they had traded for knowledge, using medicines they had acquired through trade, and reading the fragments of intelligence that were delivered to them.

They told themselves that this was just to survive, to find their way home, and they did not personally raise the butcher's knife.

But the knowledge, intelligence, and even just the unintentional revelations about the Witcher's setup or the weaknesses in human defenses they provide are like water dripping into a hot oil pan, exacerbating the chaos and suffering on earth.

Countless lives that could have been saved have been lost because of their transactions.

The Witcher Guild quickly noticed these anomalies.

While investigating the incidents in Pine Needle and Ranch communities, the experienced witcher sensed something unusual from the methods of sabotage and the attackers' unusual success.

As similar incidents increase, a chilling speculation has gradually emerged: some fallen angels are cooperating with dark forces in order to survive.

When the news spread, it aroused immense anger and utter disappointment, both within the guild and among the ordinary people who had miraculously survived and were still in shock.

"Even those seemingly gentle angels are in league with the monsters!"

"They traded our lives for their own food!"

"All angels are untrustworthy! They are all calamities!"

The last glimmer of hope for peaceful coexistence between humans and angels was extinguished completely in the blood and fire.

Humanity's trust in angels has vanished.

Whether it was Bartholomew's frenzied slaughter or the helpless 'transactions' of the Gadriers, in the eyes of mankind, they were just different forms of disaster brought by angels.

Inside the cave, Gadriel listened to Elisa's revelations about the outside world, including how she traded a portion of the ancient recipe for holy water to an information broker. Seeing the growing numbness on his companions' faces and the undisguised guilt in their eyes, he, for the first time, deeply wavered in his decision to 'survive and find his way home.'

Although they survived for the time being, the price they paid may have been heavier than death itself.

Behind the door they pushed open lay not salvation, but a deeper hell, not only for themselves, but also for countless innocent people.

The campfire still crackled, but it could no longer dispel the bone-chilling cold in the cave.

Falling is not the same punishment for all angels.

Those of high rank and unwavering will, such as Bartholomew and Gadriel, lost their power, wings, and homes in the fall, but at least retained their sanity and purpose.

They may be angry, fearful, or desperate, but they still know who they are and what they want to do.

But there is another kind of angel.

It is also the most numerous type.

They were low-ranking recorders, servants, gardeners, and choir members.

They had never experienced war, never faced choices, and never been required to think independently.

For thousands of years, they have been the smallest cogs in the great machine of Heaven, turning according to instructions and shining according to program.

When Metatron's spell shattered heaven like a hammer, these most vulnerable gears were crushed to dust.

They fell.

But it wasn't just the body that fell.

First came the wings, then the senses; the eternal, warm, all-soothing hum of heavenly light abruptly ceased.

Instead, there is the cold, biting gravity of human reality, the hunger, cold, and pain that only mortals experience, and the boundless emptiness and panic that comes after losing one's home.

Finally, there's the mind: fear, anger, confusion, resentment at being abandoned, shame at losing power, despair about the future...

These dark emotions, which were never allowed to exist in the pure consciousness of angels, poured into the depths of their souls like a flood, instantly breaching all the dams of reason.

They've gone mad, completely and irreversibly mentally broken!

Their remaining consciousness was torn into countless fragments, each carrying an extreme level of pain, colliding, overlapping, and exploding within their bodies.

So they became 'Crazy Angels'!
Lacking self-awareness, language ability, purpose, or plan; only suffering and, when the suffering becomes unbearable, an uncontrollable outpouring of destructive holy light energy.

Their very existence is a continuous and unpredictable natural disaster.

St. Luke's Children's Hospital, West Side, Chicago.

11:17 AM.

Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, casting dappled, warm patterns on the white floor of the corridor.

The phone at the nurses' station rang occasionally, and people were talking quietly in the family waiting area. In the oncology ward on the third floor, several children were leaning against the window, drawing clouds outside with crayons.

No one noticed a tiny, unstable blue dot in the sky.

The point of light plummeted rapidly, its trajectory erratic and unpredictable, like a moth with a broken wing. (End of Chapter)