Shadow Garden

"We are Shadow Garden. We lurk in the darkness and hunt down from the shadows. That's the only reason we exist and live for..."

- Shadow's ideal creed for Shadow Garden

Shadow Garden (シャドウガーデン) is a mysterious hidden underground organization founded by Cid Kagenō also known as Shadow. Its primary goal was to eliminate the Cult of Diablos and prevent them from resurrecting the ancient demon, Diablos. However, during the course of their successful mission accomplishments, they also learn about the truth that actually happened between the Three Heroes which have been manipulated behind the scenes, as well as the Cult's origins and true purpose which has caused many misdeed that have swept throughout the world to fulfill their own ambitious desires.

Through the revelations, Shadow Garden's plan is to uncover the truth about the Three Heroes and working in the shadows to save the world from the Cult of Diablos by exposing their crimes in order to avenge their suffering on the oppression they received from the Cult's injustice due to their Demon Possession symptoms, even they mercilessly cut down anyone that belongs to the Cult.

As a relatively unknown organization, they became such a threat to the other nations in the Other World that even the Cult of Diablos fears them, because Shadow Garden is the only force in the world that bravely opposes the Cult directly and seeks to destroy it. In response, the Cult works their public connections to defame and incriminate Shadow Garden for their own evils. Nevertheless, Shadow Garden has thwarted all of the Cult's schemes by trying to eliminate their influence despite being labeled as criminals, until the achievements they had made so far overwhelmed the Cult in dealing with their actions.

Furthermore, an extremist faction within the organization that is solely loyal under one of the Seven Shadows, Zeta who diverges from Shadow Garden's original purpose by disregarding any orders from behind the organization's leadership and covertly leads her rogue division to perform her own mission, which unofficially operates in carrying out her personal agenda to make Shadow the god of the new world by reviving the Demon Diablos in order to gain immortality.

Overview
Shadow Garden's ultimate objective is to fight against the Cult of Diablos's perpetual reign over the world by defying their rule and overthrowing the Cult's evil machinations in all countries, to thwart their schemes by dismantling all the Cult's operations and eliminating their influence.

Having originally operated as a small organization, Shadow Garden muster their forces by finding and recruiting all the girls who have been persecuted due to symptoms of Demon Possession by healing them and then training them into powerful warriors with abilities that surpass those from the Cult, thus building up its military strength.

To combat the Cult's reign over the world, Shadow Garden build their influence in the Midgar Kingdom by creating their hidden persona as an esteemed public figure with incredible talent, to forge connections with society and gather resources to establish their public front Mitsugoshi Company, in order to amass wealth for funding their mission.

History
The origins of Shadow Garden date back to the boyhood of Cid Kagenō, who was determined to fulfill his dream of becoming an "Eminence in the Shadows". To accomplish this, Cid routinely snuck out of his home to fight against bandits within his vicinity. During one such outing, he discovered a rotting but surprisingly alive body, heavily mutated by Demon Possession. Originally aiming to relieve it of its suffering, Cid noticed it possessed an abundance of magic power and gleefully took it for testing his own limits. He performed multiple experiments on the body and accidentally restored the girl to her true self after a month's work.

Thinking she might be useful to his cause, Cid fabricated a story and convinced the elf girl that she was the descendant of one of the Three Heroes who defeated the demon Diabolos, the one responsible for cursing her bloodline with Demon Possession. Adding that the Cult of Diablos, who worshipped the ancient demon, which are responsible for the demonic possession that happened to her and the other descendants, even had been planning to resurrect Diablos. The enraged girl then swore loyalty to her new master, Cid who later declared his name as Shadow, changing the girl's name after renamed her Alpha and the two would co-found Shadow Garden. Ironically, Cid's fabrication was actually true to every detail, unbeknownst to him, and everyone else in Shadow Garden knows this truth, having investigated thoroughly, while he believes it to be role-play.

Together, Shadow and Alpha formed the organization Shadow Garden, which the duo later recruited six more girls within their first year, each possessing the same affliction as Alpha and cured just as similarly. They spent their time training and learning under their leader, studying subjects such as swordsmanship, martial arts, R&D, business, economics, the arts, and literature. Furthermore, Cid's stories from his previous life inspired them to use those concepts to expand their influence, creating public personas that garnered acclaim and prestige by monetizing the knowledge he gifted them.

Already feeling indebted to having been saved from their plight, the girls have dedicated their own lives to Cid after being freed from their possession by training their powers and mastering their respective abilities as well as being granted his vast otherworldly knowledge known as "Shadow Wisdom" when being under his expert tutelage, which resulted these seven girls have become Shadow's trusted subordinates and given the names known as the Seven Shadows.

According to Beta and the members of Shadow Garden, Cid, in his childhood, displayed extraordinary intellect and was able to uncover the truth of the world. He dedicated himself to training and acquiring immense power and combat skills. While others were enjoying their lives, Cid prepared himself to fight against the entire world in order to save the victims of demon possessions. While the rest of the world hunted these girls, Cid stood as their protector, safeguarding them from the cult of Diablos and the world itself. Beta marvels at the sacrifices Cid must have made to bring happiness to these girls and provide them with a place they can call home and a family.

The members of Shadow Garden also realize that now that they have overcome the possessions, they are even more sought after by the cult, who seek to use them for their experiments. As expressed by Nelson, obtaining Alpha's blood would greatly advance their research. Consequently, even though the members of Shadow Garden have been fully cured, they can never return to their original homes, countries, or families. Their only option is to remain within Shadow Garden and continue their fight against the cult.

Organization Strength and Influence
Shadow Garden is an extremely formidable organization with power and influence equivalent to the Cult of Diablos. By integrating "Shadow Wisdom" knowledge, Shadow Garden was able to expanding the organization influence and provided the necessary resource, also recruit many members into their ranks. Despite being newly formed, the organization structure was well-organized and effective enough to smoothly carry out full-scale operations so elusive that even the Cult's most ambitious intelligence agency had difficulty comprehending that which could not estimate Shadow Garden's strength.

From their hard work efforts which resulted in developing the organization for two years, Shadow Garden possesses a well-trained army with skilled abilities, claimed the long-lost ancient capital Alexandria as their permanent headquarters, and have an information network of sources using public connections everywhere. In addition, they also have considerable amount of resources and wealth thanks to their public front, the Mitsugoshi Company and even established a covert coded communications network across the continent that incorporated designs and flair from the modern day by making a "Numbers Station", to which utilizing a Morse Code machine station through a Telegraph Key for the wireless telegraphy method, aiding Shadow Garden's intelligence operatives that are stealthily operating in the foreign countries.

Although currently it only has 666 members and is still growing, Shadow Garden's overall military might is immense. A mere Numbers team was capable to defeat the entire group of First Children, despite feeling exhausted. Not only were they disciplined when fighting as a group, but each individual soldier was considerably skilled by having an hidden potential and possessed an exceptional fighting spirit using high-quality equipment. Shadow Garden also managed to recruit former Saint Victoria giving them extraordinarily more power.

Moreover, Shadow Garden even seems to have an vast information network as the organization has operatives agents which specializing in espionage, infiltration, and reconnaissance. The operatives agents used their intelligence-gathering capabilities to infiltrate circles of influence and gather information, even Shadow Garden built a wide network of informants using many influential contacts through their public identities which gave them access to archives containing important information.

Membership
Shadow Garden was initially established with only seven members and their strength that had been trained directly by Shadow who is the organization founder managing to end to take down the strongest members of the Cult, along with several of their important facilities, and several of the oldest and strongest members, of the "Knights of Rounds", along with their candidates, in just 3 years.

After the Seven Shadows decide to leave their master in order to expand the organization, Shadow Garden now has grown to power with their hidden headquarters Alexandria with the protection of the Mist Dragon making their base look like a natural fortress, the Mitsugoshi Company as an important fundraising base that creates innovative products which based from "Shadow Wisdom" to funding and administering their operations missions, also their organization membership has now grown to have over 600 members in just 2 years and still increasing because of the artifact device called “Locator of Possess” developed by Eta based on the "Shadow Wisdom" allowing Shadow Garden to locate the possessed girls all over the world.

Shadow Garden's members have shown far greater power and skill compared to the Cult of Diablos and other nation forces, despite being a relatively new organization. This is a combination of the fact that all of the Shadow Garden's members are young women who were cured of Demon Possession, which in turn increased their magical power and being given far superior training by the Shadow, and later the Seven Shadows for newer members. Since the membership scale became huge, Seven Shadows and the upper members of Numbers have been based in a mansion built on the roof of Mitsugoshi Company in the capital, while some of the lower members have gathered in Alexandria to practice their skills and cultivate cacao and coffee trees in large plantations.

Shadow Garden is sovereignly led by Shadow himself as a founder and Alpha as a second-in-command who oversees all Shadow Garden operations and activities, which she had direct authority to almost everyone within the organization, as well as leading the Seven Shadows who are Shadow's special personal bodyguards. The Seven Shadows hold the greatest authority to exert command over the organization with their unmatched powers in charge of their respective field with Named Numbers as the Numbers highest ranking members, served as their direct subordinates due to their exemplary fighting prowess and talent skill. Beneath these elite positions, there are the Numbers who are divided into members to running divisions that each specializing in a certain aspect for missions based on their most skilled capabilities.

Cid holds absolute authority as the ruler and leader of the Shadow Garden. He has complete control over the seven shades and all the subsidiaries and affiliates under its umbrella. This grants him the power to make decisions that supersede those of any other member, rendering their commands ineffective. Despite believing that the Shadow Garden consists solely of the seven shadows pursuing their own dreams, Cid remains unaware of the true extent of the organization. It has evolved into a vast global entity, created by chance or circumstance.

While Alpha effectively leads the organization, Cid possesses the ability to make decisions that all members must blindly follow, overriding any other directives. A prime example is when Cid whimsically ordered Delta to hunt the Juggernaut, rendering the current mission assigned by Alpha ineffective during the Great Commerce Alliance conflict. When Alpha discovered Cid's betrayal and his intent to destroy the Mitsugoshi Company and the Shadow Garden, she chose to respect his wishes. Determined to bring about his desired outcome, she and the other members of the Shadow Garden are willing to do anything to ensure its downfall.

Seven Shadows
The Seven Shadows (七陰しちかげ) are the first seven original members recruited and granted power directly by Shadow himself, who having treated demonic possession symptoms in each girl which now will become Shadow's most direct confidants also the seven executives within Shadow Garden. They spent three years with Shadow in studying and received all of his martial arts and magic training, so it can be said that they are each Shadow's childhood friends and disciples. With Shadow's guidance in providing training and valuable knowledge to the Seven Shadows has solidified their positional role in Shadow Garden's hierarchal structure becoming unshakable.

As Shadow's earliest subordinates, Seven Shadows stand in a league of their own within Shadow Garden being as the most powerful and/or skilled with exceptional abilities. Part of that blessing is due to Shadow, who bestowed upon them part of his own magical energy. The other part is his direct teachings in swordsmanship, martial arts, warfare, and other practices which contribute to the covert organization. Each of them mastering their respective fields be it in combat, espionage, science, or economics.

Seven Shadows are considered as Shadow Garden's elite members who serve to protect Shadow or simply accompany him in battle with each of their abilities are extremely powerful & formidable because they have been fervently trained hard thanks to Shadow's personal training under his tutelage. Due to their potential prowess, Seven Shadows' abnormal strength is unbelievably frightening as they on a completely different level from the rest of other regular members which makes them the foundational pillars in the organization and Seven Shadows (except for Delta possibly due to her nature) have the highest authority in holding the leadership to govern Shadow Garden, overruled only by Shadow himself.

Interestingly, the Seven Shadows' capability had far exceeded all the other members as each of them possessed different talents and fighting styles to the point where they outperformed the strongest knights and warriors in all countries in the world, especially the Cult's most powerful members including from Named Children. In fact, the overall strength and skills of the Seven Shadows is already surpassed those of the Knights of Rounds members that has been revealed thus far. Each of Seven Shadows' combat abilities cannot be measured and compared when dealing with members of the Rounds who have faced them before, such as Nelson and Mordred, especially in the special Cult facility called Sanctuary where they can still fight even though their magic has been absorbed.

With their immense and remarkable strength, Seven Shadows are a mighty force to be reckoned with, which even everyone in the world trembles in fear with their extraordinary abilities and greatly overshadowed any opponents they faced. From Rose Oriana's estimation when she felt a truly overwhelming amount of magic from Alpha herself who is the leader of the Seven Shadows and Shadow's right-hand woman, as well as Shadow Garden's Second-in-Command alone could cause Rose's spine to shiver and noted that the Seven Shadows' enormous natural power could be detrimental, even incurring massive losses to a nation if they tried to do so, to the point where the nation itself will have to expend considerable amount of resources just to subdue one of them.

Due of their significant prowess and tremendous magical energy capacity, the Seven Shadows' capabilities were impressively outstanding and their astonishing reputation is widely feared by the whole world, even the Cult of Diablos itself became extremely fearful of their true caliber of monstrous power. Alexia Midgar herself said that each of them has great power that is equal or even greater than Iris Midgar, who is considered the strongest warrior in the world, even Aurora who was known as the strongest witch in her time could become very nervous after seeing Zeta in person for the first time which shocked her when she felt her dreaded presence, so Aurora had to warn Claire Kagenō to be vigilant of her and careful to approach her cautiously. So far, there are only two members other than the Seven Shadows who received the privilege of being granted power directly from Shadow himself, considered to be the highest honor for the organization: Victoria and Rose Oriana.

According to Epsilon, they planned to make a second "Seven Shadows" with powers on par with the original first Seven, and so far, Victoria is the only known candidate. While Rose qualified having received her power from Shadow himself, she publicly became the new Queen of Oriana Kingdom and wouldn't be a consideration due to conflict of responsibilities.

Numbers
The Numbers (ナンバーズ) is a class tier of members who were originally girls that have recovered from Demon Possession symptoms and already discarding their former identities with each of their members is given numbers in the order they were recruited. Seven Shadows gathered nearly 600 people before Cid enrolled in Midgar Academy, with the bulk of their recruitment happening within the first month of his enrollment. Thanks to their training in the organization, all members have shown great prowess, talents, ingenuity and other skills that have resulted in them acquiring, or even increasing their own incredible abilities.

Among the Numbers, there are several prominent members that hold exclusive commanding positions called "Named Numbers" who are immediate personal subordinates to Seven Shadows and occupy the upper echelon rank within Shadow Garden as field commander, which contains the finest Numbers members from 8 to 24 and receive a Greek letter for a name which commensurately equivalent to their commendable efforts. If there were Numbers members who are nearly the same level in ability and strength as their superiors, their potential capability would be greatly recognized by the Seven Shadows until they become quite capable to earning their respective Named rank.

By having this special privilege from the esteemed position, the Seven Shadows roughly select available "Named Numbers" as their confidants from their highly experience finesse, such as Gamma with Nu or Epsilon with Kai and Omega. Numbers members will be carefully selected by judging their rare unique skills, advance expertise and from their notable major distinguished contributions to Shadow Garden, until they are chosen even worthy of being named according to the order of "numbers" that has assigned by Seven Shadows based on their level of ability. Regardless of their high standings, all members unequivocally answer to Shadow and Alpha. In the anime, the "Named Numbers" members wear gold decorated uniforms manifested their slime suits, from jackets and scarfs to hats and eye patches.

Currently, the Numbers members are regimented among 600+ agents, possibly divided into different roles based on strengths and focused capabilities. Such as soldiers, squad leaders, researchers, spies, scientists, and whatever role they need for the missions. With Lambda's intensive training in practicing magic and swordsmanship from a tender age, each Numbers member's strength approximately matches at the first-rate dark knight standard for Spellswords. Most of the Numbers members also ostensibly work as staff of Mitsugoshi Company, allowing them to grow civilian personas while operating as an independent espionage outfit.

Numbers apparently refer to themselves strictly to the order in which they joined, not a ranking system like recruit or lieutenant. Despite Shadow Garden's members are being given numbers as their new identities, the number isn't an indicator of power but rather the order in which individual members joined the organization. However, each set of 100 tends to be a good deal stronger than the next, so the numbers end up being a decent measure anyway. They have their own functions to fulfill as well and possess a certain amount of authority to give orders to other members. For instance, no.100 has seniority and higher authority than no.200, and other lower members are prohibited to give their names and are distinguished by their 'number'.

Every member with a double and triple-digit "number name" holds such titles from when they originally joined the organization in their numerical enlistment. They have a chance to climb into the higher ranks, but the requirement is to qualify each member's ability that the newer members must challenge the older members, no matter how wide the numerical gap and then earn the right to challenge a high-ranking "Named Numbers" member. If the challenger number earns the opportunity, they can replace an established Named Numbers after Seven Shadows would commendably admire at their potential and place a number name according to their predetermined level. Such may be the case with Nu who joined when Cid began his first year at Midgar Academy and quickly rose to Named Number status. It is unclear if the "Nu" name was vacant or supplanted. And as in the case of No. 559, who challenged No. 89 in a match for the right to challenge the Named numbers, which surprisingly ended with No. 559 winning when considering she had just joined the organization recently, before Nu with the difference in numbers was more than four hundred spaces. Although her victory was also possible since she received power from her savior Shadow.

After graduating from basic training, Numbers member are allowed to personalize the appearance of their slime bodysuit so long as it remains predominantly black, with gold livery, and purple for decorative accessories. But the body suits cannot be too much as they should hold a conservative design to not be mistaken for a ranked agent.

Zeta's Branch Division
These branch divisions are secretly founded by Zeta, one of the Seven Shadows within the organization that which share the same goal of destroying the Cult of Diablos. However, this division is created which served as a faction to work with a further goal, namely taking over the world and installing Shadow as its god to the new world after he attained immortality by reviving the Demon Diablos through Claire Kagenō who had become Aurora's vessel. Due to the extreme nature of this faction, they worked hiddenly in executing their tasks without the leadership's knowledge, from both behind and outside the main organization's back to avoid suspicions from being discovered.

The rogue faction are consist of Numbers members who are selectively handpicked by Zeta herself who unofficially run their clandestine operations, but are still allowed to act on behalf of their organization in a way that legitimizes their actions in carrying out a given tasks. They discreetly continue their covert activities in furthering their ulterior motives by carry out any assignments as a cover, while simultaneously collaborating on the actual mission to achieve the factions primary objective without arousing suspicion from their superior.

Not only Numbers members, but Zeta has also recruited outsiders who are not affiliated with Shadow Garden to work outside of the organization's boundaries. Unlike Numbers, they are allowed to move freely on their own and act as they please, meaning they can take on unauthorized high-risk missions from the Shadow Garden that are otherwise forbidden or would require prior clearance from the higher-ups.

Inception
After Shadow and Alpha founded Shadow Garden, they trained and tried to find and rescue the possessed victims. While they search for the possessed, the two of them had destroyed the branch Cult bases and killed several Cult members, including members of Rounds over the last three years.

Shadow and Alpha then found 6 girls, which they rescue and bring them to the Shadow Garden who would later be named Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta and Eta. Then, Shadow trained them in swordsmanship, magic use and control and taught them the knowledge called "Shadow Wisdom" that came from his previous life.

First Assault on the Cult
Three years after Cid and Alpha first met, Shadow Garden learns that Shadow's older sister, Claire Kagenō has been abducted on the day before her departure to the capital to attend the Midgar Royal Spellsword Academy which they confirmed the abductor to be from the Cult of Diablos. Shadow Garden assumed that Claire is possibly a heroes descendant as the Cult want to examined her blood and Seven Shadows immediately search for clues in finding the location of the base where Claire is being held captive.

From the results of their investigation, the Seven Shadows know that the Cult has few known hideouts, but have not confirmed where Claire is being kept. With the help of Cid's random luck when he randomly pinpoints a place on the map that pure chance is the real Cult's secret hideout, Shadow Garden then immediately mobilizes in attacking the hideout at night. Due to being successfully able on finding the hidden secret base where Claire was locked up thanks to Cid's serendipitous help, Shadow Garden separated from their master and began to launched a full assault by managed to killing all guards and aiming to capture the culprit, Viscount Grease.

Intending to extract information about the Cult of Diablos, Grease managed to escape from their grasp but didn't get that far as Shadow intercepted him and the two begin to face each other. Although Grease consumed more the red pills for increasing his strength to bridge the gap in technique with pure power, Shadow eventually killed him in a brief one-sided fight. Subsequently after all the Cult members alongside Grease inside the base were already been dealt with, Shadow Garden manages to rescued Claire by liberating her from captivity and allow her to return home on her own since Shadow along with Seven Shadows had also left the Cult's hideout earlier in order to conceal their involvement.

Soon afterward, however, the seven members of Shadow Garden confronted their master and claimed that in order to keep up with the Cult's movements, it would be best for them to split up and expand their influence. Not knowing that the Cult actually existed, Shadow assumed that the others had simply grown tired of their "role-playing" and wanted to live their own lives, which he allowed. As such, each of the seven went out into the world, leaving only one person to stay with Shadow on a rotation basis while the rest will focus on their mission to build Shadow Garden organization into the combat force for their decisive war against the Cult of Diablos.

Recruitment and Expansion
Due to being a relatively new organization compared to the millennia-old Cult of Diablos, Shadow Garden was outmatched in terms of personnel, resource, political power, and societal influence, also especially the most important, intelligence information. This forced the "Seven Shadows" to rapidly expand Shadow Garden's membership as they each went on a very aggressive recruitment spree of finding and taking in other demon-possessed girls, in order to strengthen their numbers for their ultimate showdown against the Cult of Diablos.

They accomplished this while concurrently investigate and covertly sabotaging the Cult at various opportunities whilst increasing their own power, all in hopes of toppling the Cult at some point in the future, as well establishing public personas to allow them access with various avenues of society and gaining new privileges to hunt for the Cult's leaders.

Searching for a New Base
When Shadow brought together his first seven, they lived in a small house made from recreated construction knowledge from Cid's past life. This was their home while they hid and served Shadow in his youth and it was situated in a small abandoned village with no traffic, save for the occasional bandit and smuggler until the Seven Shadows decided to destroy the house so as not to arouse suspicion following their separation from Shadow.

They eventually used an abandoned village and refurbished the place into a secret base to conduct operations, also sheltering the demon-possessed girls in order to train their abilities by Lambda. Although Shadow Garden had used the abandoned village as their base for years, it did not last forever when the number of members reached a capacity that made the village become a proper livable place and it was difficult to function as a "hideout" due to overpopulation. So, Alpha and the others realized that they could no longer stay and were forced to abandon the village.

Zeta was tasked in finding a new base of operations and succeeded by revealing an ancient city once abandoned long ago, Alexandria, located east of the Sacred Land Lindwurm, beyond the Abyss Woods. The Seven Shadows (save for Eta), entered while the rest of Shadow Garden brought by Lambda remained behind until Alpha asked Lambda to report back to Shadow in case they didn't return within three days by the time they entered the forest deeper. Inside the ancient city, Seven Shadows encountered the Mist Dragon and were nearly killed until Shadow appeared and brought the dragon down to submission. Impressed, the Mist Dragon formed a pact and allowed Shadow Garden to use Alexandria as their new home.

After relocating the base to Alexandria, Shadow Garden will carry out follow-up actions such as improving urban functions, training members, securing logistics, and build their war chest.

Ascension of "Shadow Wisdom" Revolution
In order to increase Shadow Garden's strength and influence, four of the "Seven Shadows" had established public personas and exercised their skills based on the knowledge of the "Shadow Wisdom" that their master, Shadow had taught them as concepts until their expertise had become prominently known to the world.

For this task, Beta became a talented and prominent writer under her "Natsume Kafka" persona, who printed unique stories in various genres. Then followed by Epsilon became a famous award-winning pianist and composer going by the name "Shiron" who played very classy musical compositions with elegant and exclusive works, earning her access to numerous venues with access to nobility and the royalty of other nations.

Subsequently, Gamma became a renowned entrepreneur named "Luna" who manufactured innovative products which later traded the merchandise for established the Mitsugoshi Company as an economic powerhouse until it became one of the largest trading companies in the world; and also serves as the vanguard of Shadow Garden. Finally, Eta became a genius architect known as "Eta Lloyd Wright" whose work was able to won the Architecture of the Year award by having implemented the architectural knowledge through scientific and mathematical principles.

Emerging Threats: Templars and "Saint"
Beta, Epsilon, and Zeta go on an investigative mission at the Cult's secret base in Lindwurm after Beta obtains information about the Cult of Diablos from the MNA, conducting an information-gathering/extermination/rescue mission for the possessed. Beta separated with Epsilon and Zeta to find and cure the possessed girl while she searches the base for a lot of information, until Beta was surprised by the appearance of a Paladin from the Church with a different appearance and very high fighting ability. Beta was too overwhelmed fighting against the Paladin until she defeated him thanks to her master Shadow's teachings in focusing her magic to attack her opponent at a certain point. Since the Paladin was dead and unable to be interrogated, Shadow Garden decided to conduct an investigation of the unknown Paladin first to uncover their origins and motives before following up against them.

Following the mission, Beta asked Eta to recreate the Paladin's method of manipulating magic to become a formidable defense on the Golem, all for practicing the single-point piercing magical attack method which was essential to fight an opponent with skillful defensive ability. Beta tried to search any top-secret document and various other resources to identify the mysterious Paladin in the MNA information archive, but she wasn't able to obtain any decisive intel, even within the Knight Order. Due to lack of intel, Shadow Garden was unable to identify the mysterious Paladin connected to the Church, whether the Cult's secret force or a separate organization cleverly hidden from the public.

So, Alpha led a mission which decided to build a trap on Lindwurm's hideout by bringing Delta and Epsilon in order to attract attention of the Cult, including the mysterious Paladin, in order to acquire any intel and confirm if the Paladin's organization was an ally or enemy to the Cult. Alpha's plan worked, as Zeta brought news from Lambda that the Cult were approaching the hideout and the Church had dispatched their personnel from the Holy State of Orum. The Cult's dozen men had arrived from the hideout, but they were mostly eliminated, with one survivor alive for questioning about the Cult's purposes with the possessed. He answered they needed the possessed for an "ingredient" and clarified the mysterious Paladin's identity and their faction were known as the Templars, set under a different chain of command as they only answered to the Church. The Cult member was silenced by three Templars that already arrived, in order to prevent the leak on their information. Three of the Seven Shadows attempted to apprehended a Templar for interrogation, but he committed suicide by self-detonation to prevent intel leaking. Alpha, Delta and Epsilon were only able to search their corpse for any clues. Knowing their origin and also their method of silencing leaks, the Templars were considered a powerful force within the Church and proved to be a formidable foe for Shadow Garden.

On Epsilon investigation report regarding the Templars which are believed to be a part of the Church armed faction, she couldn't find any identifiable clues on the three Templars corpse killed in combat at the Lindwurm's hideout. However, Epsilon notice that the Templars carrying suicide pills which she asked Beta to trace the contents and Eta to run a composition analysis, which according to Eta that the suicide pills is a potent drug that uses magic as a trigger that takes time to refined it. It is confirmed that the suicide pills are a ritualistic poison to bestow death for acts of heresy recognize by the Church that only used by the royals, nobles, and those in high-ranking position that become a dark knowledge which have been passed down by the Church to eradicate any disgraceful impurities in the world. Upon hearing the report, Shadow Garden understands that the Templars are a secret sub-organization of the Church formed to brainwash its members with radical teachings.

Although Shadow Garden had gathered a lot of information, including about all the Cult operation and structure four names' faction in Midgar Kingdom, they had yet to get any information about the Templars' organization, not even Zeta got any clues about them. Because they want to get information, Beta and Epsilon who are looking for clues by asking people who know the organization of the Templars until they find a clue that there is a holy knight who is training in secret in the Jugang Ruins which is located in The City - State Alliance and decide to go there by following the sightseeing tour plan from MNA as their cover to carry out an investigation with the help of Gamma and the Mitsugoshi Company as MNA project sponsors.

Upon arrive at the City-State, Beta and Epsilon decide to investigate the Jugang Ruins at night. When they infiltrate the ruin, Epsilon will on the lookout while Beta searching any valuable intel until she saw the Church stone tablet scripture which contain a templar secret that has been deciphering into some kind of a magic code that matches a key to a corresponding phrase. But Beta and Epsilon have been found by the Templars leader due to the former have scream loudly. They decide to escape their capture by using the Ebony Swirl which is their first time to used against the Templars group until the shockwave effect of the attack making the Jugang Ruins collapsed. Two of them have escape the ruins, with Beta acquiring the tablet which is possibly a vital intel on the Templars.

Even after the success of their mission to obtain a lot of useful intel about the Templars, the information itself is not important enough as the ancient tablets only showing that the Templars is a hidden organization that secretly working out of the Church with their ongoing history and deeds to root out and punish heretics since ancient times. Realized that the Templars are trickier opponent than they expected which even cannot confirm that the organization are connected to the Cult as they are under a different chain of command, Shadow Garden assumed that there are factions working together through the Holy Church. Alpha herself think that the Templars would be easier to deal with if they were from the same organization and can't be sure to use them as their allies, even assumed that the Templars have discovered Shadow Garden's existence. Knowing the uncertainty of the true relationship between the Templars and the Cult, as well as not being sure that the two sides wouldn't work together, which hypothetically think about the worse situation that if the two organizations will fight against Shadow Garden.

Therefore, Alpha ordered Zeta who had rested yesterday after returning from her mission for a very risky mission, namely infiltrating the cathedral in the Holy State of Orum to investigate the Church's secret unit, including to looking for material on Templars activity and document on relationship with the Cult. Arriving in Orum, Zeta heads to the cathedral at the start of a sacred sermon delivered by the Saint, Victoria. Zeta also listened to Victoria's lecture, even though she had a feeling that the Saint had noticed her, but she ignored it. After the sermon time was over, Zeta decided to infiltrate the cathedral at night.

Zeta managed to enter the cathedral by sneaking few Paladin guards and evading many magic detecting traps that lay all over the place by sneak in through the gaps in the trap network, even she thinks that the Orum Cathedral is much more tightly guarded than the Lindwurm Cathedral. Zeta enters at the guest reception room and finds a hidden door in the fireplace and tries to open it with his experience at Lindwurm and the key unlock code that she memorized on the tablet that Beta and Epsilon brought on their previous mission that contains ciphers that correspond to Church scripture.

After the door opened, Zeta entered the secret passage and manages to avoid the hidden traps that place there, which she realized that the Templars must already know that their tablet is gone. When Zeta saw the door room that connected from the passage, she entered through the door which led to a rather large chamber with the smell of a perfumed oil, ash and charcoal from the fireplace to masking the quite strong smell of fairly old blood. However, there was no signs about the smell of death as there was no stink of rotting flesh which gave the air room with an odd and unpleasant feel like a torture room. As she searched the whole room, Zeta finds all the detailed records of the Templars' activities showing the places, times and people involved in the Cult gathering up the possessed, even have future entries in their records. It was then Zeta surprise as she saw a record that tagged "under investigation", which she thought that the Templars are investigating a third party that involved in their activity and Zeta concluded that the Templars and the Cult are working completely independently.

All of the records contain a schedule which indicates that the Templars are gathering Cult's intel to get to those possessed before the Cult does. Realizing this, Zeta intends to look for records in Lindwurm that she thinks the Shadow Garden's activities possibly have been noticed by the Templars. Reading at the records, Zeta saw that the Templars are demanding the Cult to handed over the possessed that they are keeping in the Cult's hideout at Sacred Land. When Zeta founds reference to another document appended to the archive which are relatively new that contains about the Templars encounter "a mysterious interfering organization", which she believes that organization to be Shadow Garden and accidently met them by pure coincidence. However, the Templars haven't written any concrete plan to dealing with Shadow Garden yet and knew that the Shadow Garden's current situation to conflict with the Templars was inevitable.

While Zeta was still investigating every single record, she realized that the document is much older and shocked to see that there is a document that contained about the "Possession Inquisition Act" which Zeta feel that this document describing about many Templars ways to execute the possessed symptoms. With the evidence of this information, Zeta confirms that the Templars and the Cult are different organizations as the Cult of Diablos are gathering up the possessed for some kind of experiments, but the Templars are executing the possessed as heretics against the Goddess on sight.

However, Zeta thinks that the Cult is gathering the possessed with the Church's cooperation as they are working together to bring every possessed symptom to the nearest church, who are never seen again. It was then that Zeta wondered about the reason of Church own group, the Templars for taking the Cult's targets first. On Zeta's perspective outside view, she saw that the Templars, under Church authority is in conflict with the Cult, which is working with the Church. Learning this, Zeta guesses that this chamber was made for the Inquisition which are used to place a heretics brand on the possessed.

By the time Zeta has concluded her thoughts on the Templars origin, she has been spotted by the Paladin in charge as the head guard and intends to capture her. However, Zeta manages to escape from the cathedral then disguises herself as a civilian and prepares to leave Orum. However, Zeta encounters the Saint, Victoria who suddenly appears before her, even Zeta herself doesn't sense her presence and knows that she is masking herself to sneak up on her. When Victoria found out that Zeta was joining her sermon, she thought that this Saint wasn't ordinary person because she had combat training that surpassed Paladin and could see that Zeta was an intruder.

Just then, a Paladin arrives to capture Zeta while protecting the Saints, until Victoria orders him to leave the two alone, which he complies. After the Paladin leaves, Zeta asks Victoria what she plans to do, but she replies that she has nothing planned and says that the moment of their meeting is by the will of the Goddess, though Zeta doesn't believe her words. Even when Zeta told the Saint that she would attempt to kill her if it was within the will of the Goddess, Victoria told her that she would never hurt her and that she could not do so, despite there were many opportunities that she had as Victoria considering Zeta as "friend".

Zeta tried to attack Victoria because she didn't accept what she said, but she suddenly reflexively backed away and Zeta also realized after feeling what she was capable of following Paladin are obeying the Saint's order. The two talk a bit about their respective beliefs until Victoria decides to let her go by saying they'll see each other again, which makes Zeta feel humiliated by her behavior. After returning to the Shadow Garden base, Zeta provides an explanation of the intel she found and clarifies the whereabouts of the Saints.

It was during this time that the Seven Shadows convened a meeting to summarize the intelligence they had gathered about the Templars. The results of a general analysis of the investigation of the Jugang Ruins and additional intel from the Orum Cathedral indicated that the Templars were an organization within the Church in charge of the Inquisition based out of Orum with quite evident that details of their work differ from the Cult's, despite their resemblances on gathering the possessed symptoms. In other word, the Templars served as an de facto execution squad that kills anyone labeled a heretic, including to eliminated those possessed in the name of Goddess Beatrix.

However, their approach is different from the Cult as they gather the possessed from the Church and uses them as internal experimental subject, which makes the Templars stand in the way of the work the Church and Cult are doing. The Seven Shadows came to knowing that within the larger Church organization, there is a conflict between the Templars and the faction working with the Cult. Also, this conflict manifest in logistics as each side seeks to stop the other from being able to intercept their own flow of supplies and the possessed, which means that their relationship between the Cult and Templars is kept within the Church, but is still incredibly dangerous as the Cult seeks to manipulate the world from the shadows and the Templars has value as a tool, but is also a thorn in its side as they think the Cult of Diablos that keeps the possessed alive is essentially a heretical organization.

Which meant Shadow Garden think that they had an opportunity to take advantage of the two organizations' relationship by luring each side out with the promise of intel on their opponent. But Seven Shadows must choose one organization that needs to destroy which posed a greater threat because Shadow Garden current strength is not enough to take on both organizations simultaneously. Seven Shadows viewing the Templars are the Cult's subordinate despite their working relationship on the Church, as the Cult has been gathering the possessed under Church order and then the Templars came along and interfered, even on the Cult's perspective, the Templars are like a reckless group which likely cause damage in any place and situation.

Seven Shadows tried to think about start taking out the Templars, although they didn't even intend to unintentionally help their enemy because there is a possibility that it would become benefit for the Cults as they want the Templars' right of Inquisition. Even Seven Shadows barely imagine about if the Cult took over the Church's inquisition, the Cult would be able to abuse that right to be invoked against a nation that it could make the whole world an enemy of the Church. In other words, the Church's right of inquisition is represented as a huge power to keeps balance between the Cult and the Templars.

Whatever decision will be made, it could not change their assumption if destroying the Templars could lead the Cult's power growing stronger and are able to earn the right of inquisition which can be used against nations government because there is no other power to stand in the Cult's way for the inquisition right that already has no claimant, even Beta herself note that the Templars might becoming the welcome force for Shadow Garden to keeping the Cult in check if they weren't killing the possessed. Despite the fact that the Templars keep the Cult in check, that doesn't change the view of Shadow Garden organization's motto to save the possessed because they can't ignore those that afflicted with possession symptoms who are continuously killed by the Templars.

Thus, Seven Shadows considers the Templars to be their greater threat for executing the possessed-on sight that possibly are able for they want to save, which is important to preserve their fellow comrade's life who bear the blood of heroes as Shadow Garden's purpose for being work from the shadows is to counter the Cult's agenda and save the world from secret domination. Hence, it's decided that Shadow Garden will destroy the Templars by strike them from the shadows to save the possessed from future danger. Even if Shadow Garden will be helping their sworn enemies, the Cult of Diablos, at least they would still be adamant about the act against the Cult as well.

Seven Shadows reckons that the Templars which considered as a major Church organization that stand in the way of the Cult's dark deeds, since it is working under Church authority and although as the Cult's influence in the Church grows, their overall action against the possessed seems to be slowing. So, Shadow Garden will be eliminating the Templars once and for all, to which they then devised a plan against the Templars and the Cult by taking advantages on both organizations' relationship against each other, in order to weaken them at the same time and Shadow Garden gain an advantage without further casualties, as well as spreading out random existences to maintain their secrecy.

To weaken the Templars' power first, the Seven Shadows aims to divert their attention to Shadow Garden and eliminated any Templars members they could, in order to slow down their work from discovering and killing any more possessed. For the plan, the Seven Shadows started to organize their mission operations by preparing everything to use the abandoned village that used to be their first hideout as their battleground.

Gamma to check the main merchants' shipping records for the capital to verify events and make sure no innocent bystanders get in the way on the decided day, also monitoring on the streets to guide people. Beta and Zeta set up a network of sources to send out false information through top secret Cult routes contains the presence traces of a possessed in the village with the preparing trap, which is the same like at Lindwurm mission as the Church will start to make their move secretly after learning the intel they received.

In addition, Eta already succeed to created that she had been experimenting as a prototype with the slime react to sound and place them all on the surrounding village and Epsilon will activate the slime remotely like time bomb which requires her precise in magic control until slime will produce flame from the results of the magic that has been flowing and the Templars have no escape after get caught on the slime blast wave, even finishing the initial operation training at the Headquarters. Also, Delta is already working on her strength after pushing her training to the limit. With their perfect preparations, Shadow Garden mobilize to start their operation.

On the night at the full moon, the Cult of Diablos had sent in their forces to investigate the abandoned village regarding on the false information they received about the possessed trace whereabouts and the possessed carriage that never arrived as they saw it has been destroyed. It was then the Seven Shadows began their ambush on the Cult's forces that had many of the troops and included their back up have been exterminated, leaving only a portion of the Cult's members to use as bait to wait for luring the help from the Cult or the Church to come scurrying to their rescue first, especially the Church's inquisitors, the Templars.

Then, the Templars had come, and the Seven Shadows had killed most of those who had been trapped in the village that had been prepared for a trap. By the time the Templars' reinforcements arrived, Alpha attacked a female individual dressed like a pilgrim as she slashed her neck, but she managed to dodge the attack until Alpha herself said her abilities were almost as strong as her. Zeta who was accompanying Alpha then realized that the opponent in front of them was the Saint, Victoria that she had previously reported.

When Victoria asked Alpha about the attack reason, with Alpha replying that Victoria should have asked herself that the Templars had done so much evil in executing those who were possessed. Victoria also replied that purifying those who were possessed was the will of the Goddess Beatrix, until Alpha retorted to her statement as she told her that she and the Templars only killed on the basis of purification. Zeta then realized that Victoria is the leader of the Templars, as Victoria also realized that Zeta was a member of Shadow Garden as she thought. Knowing that their plan to maintain Shadow Garden's existence secrecy have been backfired, Zeta asks Alpha to let her fight Victoria & Alpha against the other Templars member. Victoria tells Zeta that she can't kill her, and she can't kill Zeta either, as she mentions that their reunion is the will of her Goddess.

With only a few Templars left, Alpha and the other Seven Shadows intend to finish them off before they escape. Zeta and Victoria are still fighting while talking, especially Victoria knows that Shadow Garden contains people who have been cured of possession symptoms from Zeta, but she doesn't know who the master Zeta serves. When Alpha arrives to help Zeta, Victoria becomes cover for the Templars who want to escape from behind until she decides to withdraw before telling Zeta that they'll meet again.

Learning from this battle, Alpha stated that the Templars are an assassination organization under the Church led by Victoria and now clearly identify them as Shadow Garden's enemy that must be cast down. With the Saint leading a murderous group hidden in church dogma, the Seven Shadows will need to be more careful about what Mitsugoshi Company does in future to dealing with the Church as now they become to wage war against Shadow Garden from the shadows.

Despite the failure attempt to eliminate the Saint, Shadow Garden have achieved the operation's main objective; to exposed Victoria as the Templars leader and stamped out a threat to Shadow Garden's organization. With their battle against the Templars is already begun, the Seven Shadows decide to return to the Shadow Garden's secret base; ancient city, Alexandria to rewrite their plans towards the Templars. With this event, the Templars have become aware of Shadow Garden's existence.

"Human Possessed" First Recovery Mission
As the time of direct confrontation with the Templars has passed unexpectedly brought about an significant changes on how Shadow Garden operates, following the recent battle with the Templars who have become aware of their existence. In fact, due to the leader of Templars, Saint Victoria personally knew Zeta as a member of Shadow Garden. By now the Templars had declared Shadow Garden as a heretical organization and perhaps they would cooperate with the Cult of Diablos despite their differences in dealing with possession since the two organizations shared the mutual interest in the fact that Shadow Garden's presence would be a hindrance for both sides.

If the Templars move to hunt down Shadow Garden, they will inevitably trace Zeta footsteps which raises the possibility that they may share intel about Zeta with the Cult. However, Shadow Garden cannot afford to halt their intel-gathering activities. Thus, Zeta who feels guilty for her own failure because the enemy knows her face decided to take the blame for her failure which she request to placing a significant distance between her future intel activities for Shadow Garden operations by ceasing her regular report and would irregularly return to Alexandria if necessary to be contacted only when required, after she could confirm its safe around her presence in order to guard Shadow Garden's secrets more carefully.

After leaving, Zeta have been distance herself from Alexandria and Mitsugoshi Company even though her works is essentially the same as she currently undertook the investigative task of sneaking into a pharmacy in the capital to find any clues about the drug being used by the Templars based on the intel provided by Eta after analyzing the drug which is made from a chemical compound that completely erased all magic traces, so this drug not very popular and regularly sold over the counter at a high expensive price.

Zeta was shocked having just heard of the drug's effects and despite understanding how it was used, it would be difficult to use it to be used for erase evidence of a crime in a place that would seem unnatural to know that any traces of magic were vanish completely and make it evident that something had occurred. However, Eta said if the drug could narrowed down its uses, it could be pretty effective as for clean up the rooms of mansions belonging to aristocrats and luxury hotels on the market.

Also, it can be used overtly for Templars by using the drug to erase all magic traces from an attack, including possessions. There are some aristocrats might consider using this drug if a possessed showed up among their own. Zeta feels that the Templars' desire to go so far such length to render a possessed as if they had never existed is truly irredeemable. But, the premise is that, as a rule, "possession" doesn't occur in humans in the first place because Shadow Garden has sheltered more than eighty possessed girls who were either elves or therianthrope in the past 6 months with the only human possessed being their master's older sister, Claire Kagenō who is an exception to the rule.

Despite the fact that the Zeta's intel provided by Eta about the drug which removes the magic traces is not widely available, so it could potentially lead somewhere until Zeta finally started investigating the pharmacy. From her result, there was nothing suspicious on the pharmacy but the inventory of the drug has shifted drastically in the past 2 weeks after the Midgar Kingdom's aristocrat family, the Marquez Family has purchased the drug in large quantities with an intent to erases evidence of an affair. Zeta suspect that the Marquez Family used the drug between the statement or the family has recently become backers for Templars activities in Midgar Kingdom. Feeling suspicious at the sudden oddity of the family that they possibly be doing this intentionally to throw off any indications of any ties to the Church, Zeta intends to head to the Marquess Marquez Family's household to uncover about what the family has been hiding.

Upon arrival there, Zeta is shocked because she never expected the daughter of the Marquez Family, Nicoletta Marquez was possessed and imprisoned in the mansion's basement which means the reason for an aristocratic family purchased the drugs in large quantities is to cover the traces of possession and save face. Even the Cult's security for the current situation is unrivaled compared to any possessed they have rescued before, as the Cult of Diablos usually let mercenaries who know nothing about the situation to handle the transport for the possessed.

Whilst there, Zeta eavesdrops on the conversation of two Cult members in order to get information about why this possession must be so heavily guarded and to her surprise, the Cult leader in charge of security says that the Templars are attempting to take the human possessed for themselves and the Cult want to defend this possessed from the Templars to the death until the convoy is ready. Regarding the situation, it appears that the Marquez Family has settled everything on this matter at hand.

Moments later after finished gathering enough information, Zeta felt that Marquess Marquez's daughter is an extremely rare human possessed to which the Cult considered this case as a vital fact and giving her the VIP treatment, coupled with the special factor on the Templars who trying to snatch the Marquez's daughter by force. Understanding the information she gathered, Zeta thinks that human possession are crucial for both organizations to the extent that resulting such an dark conflicts. Zeta also recalled the time when the Cult had once kidnapped her master's sister, Claire Kagenō, which made her think whether possessed humans could possibly be cured just like elf and therianthrope. Knowing she is unable to handling this task by herself due to the gravity of the situation, Zeta decide to return to Alexandria and inform everything she learned on her report.

Arriving in Alexandria, Zeta meets with Gamma as she gives credit to her for creating a good environment for cultivation when Gamma wants to grow a cacao tree plant by using the growth-promoting effects of magic to produce cacao seeds in a year, knowing that growing cacao naturally takes another three years, with no guarantee it will bear fruit when using it. Considering the information to be conveyed is very important, Zeta asks Gamma to gather all the Seven Shadows for a meeting.

When the meeting had started, Zeta told the Seven Shadows that she discovered a human possessed to which everyone was surprised to hear that because this was the first time Shadow Garden had encountered a situation of human possession which was considered very highly rare as all the members of Shadow Garden who had been found and cured were only elves and therianthrope, although their master's older sister, Claire was also a human who had symptoms of possession until she was healed by Shadow himself. That's why Zeta couldn't decide on her own by rescue her in order to handle the situation as usual, so this is certainly an issue that requires careful consideration.

Also, the additional circumstance where the Cult of Diablos and the Templars are in a standoff over the human possessed. Knowing Templars, they have always had a tendency to try and snatch up the Cult's possessed. But, Zeta stated that it appears to be a different matter for the Templars regarding human possessed as they are handling the case with "respect" and want to secure the human possessed at all costs.

Hearing this, the Seven Shadows were curious about how valuable human possession was because when the Cult kidnapped Lady Claire, they didn't immediately hand her over to the Church but instead imprisoned her in their hideout and became wondered at the time why the Cult were taking so long to act without demanding a ransom, until realized that it makes sense if the human possessed may have hold some secret or value that Shadow Garden are unaware of.

In studying the immediate issue they faced was that despite being able to save an human possessed from the hands of Cult and Templars, the powers they have were not yet certainly able to cure her of her symptoms. It was at that time that Delta suggested learning from their master in order to provide input to be able to learn a technique so that it could be refined to cure the symptoms of possession in humans, until Alpha appreciated her suggestion and would intend to meet Cid Kagenō for receive the proper instructions from him about how to cure the human possessed. With that decision in the meantime, Seven Shadows made plans to prepare for the rescue mission against the Cult of Diablos and the Templars.

Subsequent to the decision, Zeta share the intel that she compiled by revealing the name of the possessed person is Nicoletta Marquez, the daughter of Marquess Marquez who is a noble of the Midgar Kingdom from the Marquez Family, which is one of Midgar's most prestigious aristocratic families who has produced gifted dark knights generation after generation who are particularly well-known in the fields of interrogation and espionage.

After obtaining this intel, Zeta tried to dig up any similar tale centered around a significant noble Midgar family, but couldn't find anything related to possession which no doubt they were quickly covered up and leaving no trace. Even Zeta informed about the Marquez's Family had being handled the condition of Marquess' daughter with by officially declaring her died suddenly from an illness and her fake funeral was already been held 2 days before she obtained this intel, making the reactions and responses to possession are the same for the elven and human aristocrats.

During on the meeting, Epsilon had recalled the Marquez's daughter name somewhere before until she was surprised by Gamma to realize that she had met Nicoletta at a noble's party where during Epsilon debut became a pianist as one of the invited attendees and an apprentice dark knight from the Marquez Family. Alpha asked Epsilon to produce documents containing the Marquez Family. Based on documents about the Marquez Family, it appears Marquess Marquez often makes outings to Oriana Kingdom for the purpose of purchasing artwork as the family is not only an aristocratic family of dark knights but also one which made their fortune in trading fine art. In other words, the Marquez Family have more financial resources than other marquesses which thought that the family action have been able to hide the possessed matter from the public. Zeta stated that it is become possible as the relationship between aristocrat are so flimsy that if there's even the slightest opportunity, they will immediately try to oust each other. But, Zeta haven't seen any such movements which she guess that the Cult has a handle on things in this instance.

Learning the information, Alpha want to know where the Marquez Family imports and sells art from Oriana Kingdom because the family could be using the Cult's transport route to escort the possessed to their destination under the guise of transporting artwork. As Gamma answer that the route is mainly connects to Midgar Kingdom and Lindwurm, all of them are realized that it's a convenient route for bringing in the possessed if Lindwurm is an option due to the hideout that Shadow Garden was previously raided before was a place to bring in the possessed, which means that it become a worthy route to keep an eye on. All that's left is the Templars' response as just Seven Shadows are predicting the Cult's movement, Templars must be preparing to raid the possesses' transport.

Alpha thought that it would be convenient to hit them all together because in carrying out such an attack, Shadow Garden can intervene at the ideal moment of the Templars' raid. With the Templars now aware of Shadow Garden's existence, there was no need for them to use tricks and going to hit them head-on, which is will be the quickest and most effective solution. Zeta now will uncover the Cult's convoy route and from considering the Templars' movements there, Shadow Garden can narrow down their potential options to pick the ideal location for the raid. Alpha ordered Gamma to make a detailed strategy plan with the help of Beta and Epsilon.

After the meeting, Alpha went to Cid's house to give news about the discovery of a human possessed and currently the Seven Shadows are planning an operation to save a human possessed from Cult of Diablos and Templars. Alpha asks Cid about the method of healing possessed humans like when Cid healed his older sister, Claire, because Alpha and Epsilon have no experience in healing a human possessed. Cid only provides input on the method of healing and the rest depends on Alpha's own efforts.

At night, Beta will team up with Delta at Gamma's request knowing that Delta would ruining the plans if she attacked the Cult of Diablos's main convoy with her unnecessary strength, which instead to use the full extent of Delta's violence to hit the decoy unit prepared by the Cult, which is separate from their main convoy for transporting the possessed with the objective to instill fear in them toward Shadow Garden by completely overrunning the trap designed by the Cult, as well as the Templars while waiting on the moment of the Templars attack the Cult's decoy.

Once the Templars had made their move, the two of them prepared to strike after Beta will stir chaos as soon as both forces engage in battle by discreetly firing arrow at them as she striking a few of them from their blind spot while being careful not to kill them. By the time the Cult and Templars are in disarray as they think the other is launching an ambush until both forces become disoriented and the battle will descend further into chaos, Delta will quickly attack them simultaneously.

However, Beta purposely avoids a vital area when aiming in order to stoke further confusion between the Cult and the Templars, instead making an mistake by accidentally killing a Templars member with one strike until the Cult becomes alert to keep an lookout on the surrounding area while they deal with the Templars, which led Delta to attack so blindly that both armies were obliterated.

Following the incident, Zeta met Gamma to present the results of her report on the current status of the Cult's decoy unit as she confirm that after they clash with the Templars' ambush unit, Beta and Delta intervened immediately and engage in combat, which the answer shocked Gamma as she instructed Beta to exhaust both sides and take them out simultaneously only when the time was right.

When Zeta tells the truth that it was Beta who made Gamma's plan to deal with the two troops fall apart because she killed a member of the Templars until Delta charged at the enemy with all her strength and throwing the entire battlefield into disarray, making Gamma couldn't believe it after hearing her explanation.

Despite that, Zeta assures Gamma that even the plan was produce unexpectedly result, it still perfectly winnable because Alpha want Gamma to take command of the entire operation for this mission to go well until Gamma steady her composure with all progress on the plan is within the scope of their anticipated course of action, although they ran into an unforeseen circumstances. Knowing that it should be the time for Eta and Lambda to cut off the main Cult convoy's retreat, Zeta was ready to make her action the moment she left Gamma because if the Saint had appeared, then she must be finished.

With the Templars' threat vanished, Eta and Lambda prepared to cut off the main Cult convoy's route as planned by setting up the pitfalls when they pass the designated position at a narrow ravine at the end of the road and triggering the trap of slime mimic on the ground, resulting the road become vast areas collapsing upon its release without a trace as the breach size is vast and deep when the road into like a massive pit, in order to blocking the Cult's retreat path.

In response, the Cult's convoy decided to continue their advance with speed and caution by make haste through the ravine as swiftly as possible. As the Cult decide to proceed, Lambda then give the signal on the unit waiting at the cliff will use the falling rocks to separate the escort convoy from the caged possessed.

After dividing the Cult's convoy which already moving in a hurry by blocking their way with dropped rocks in order to keep them away from the caged possessed carriages and has spreading thin of their forces, Alpha and Epsilon had finished off all the Cult's escort who had failed to anticipate the situation of the attack even though they were fully aware that this bottleneck was the most precarious point on the Cult's transport route.

When the Cult's convoy leader suspects that their objective is the human possessed, Alpha said that was part of the reason why they were here along with another equally important reason, which is to eradicate the Cult of Diablos until the Cult's convoy leader realized they were from the Shadow Garden that Fenrir had spoke of which the convoy leader thought they are not actually exist. At the time when the Cult's convoy leader is dying for failing to carry out his mission, he said something that there are also other parties who are aiming for possession until Alpha reveals that they have already taken the appropriate measures to handle the Templars which shocks the Cult's convoy leader by thinking about how much their organization knew before his death.

From the Cult's convoy leader last word, Shadow Garden understood that it seemed the Cult had anticipated the attack from the Templars which allowed Gamma to perfectly predict the Cult's anticipation along with the other parties movements. After eliminating the Cult's troop, Alpha and Epsilon save the human possessed while Zeta is distracts the Templars' attention.

While during a moment in the midst of a rescue, Zeta encounters Victoria again knowing that she and the Templars will be rushing here for the sole purpose of eliminating the possessed. Even their target is currently a possessed human to the point of making Zeta guess that killing her hold significant meaning to the Templars itself.

By the time Zeta notices that the Templars' movements and maneuvers have been oddly sluggish lately compared to their previous battle at the abandoned village as Gamma anticipated, she tries to provoke Victoria by saying that a Saint like her are making her own soldier who revere her throw away their lives which hardly the saintly act of a holy woman. While waiting for a response from her, Victoria wanted to ask something to confirm whether the symptoms of possession could really be cured, then Zeta agreed to the answer but did not provide details on the certainty.

As her "friend", Zeta warns Victoria not to act like suddenly wish to understand the suffering of those she has wronged and abused, unless she prepared to discard everything that she believe in and stand for, then questioned the world she had seen now. Regardless of what she may think right now, Zeta stated that Victoria are the oppressors and only the blood of the Cult of Diablos and her Templars can atone for her sins, even Zeta declared that Shadow Garden are the one who lurk in the darkness to resist their tyranny and hunt them down from the shadows until she started her fight with Victoria to die along with her false faith.

During their clash, Zeta recognizes that Victoria's current movement are sluggish and lacks any sense of leadership while mulling to herself about how quite clever Gamma to predict this turn of events to the point of ensuring that she alone is able to dealt with the Templars' main army, confirming her guess that Victoria is unable to kill her. In other words, having Zeta to handle the Templars on her own significantly weakens their main unit led by Victoria, which their response is far different from their previous battle at the time when Alpha was accompanying her.

At that time, Victoria seems to be wondering if Shadow Garden can cure possessed with Zeta replying that the human possessed which currently are being rescue will be cured because Shadow Garden is an organization that lurks in the darkness and hunts down from the shadows to destroy the Cult of Diablos, and also protect and cure the possessed with giving them a new way of life by join their fight in becoming soldiers for the organization or enjoying their life for those who don't desire to fight.

Though in any case, Zeta have no way for intending to prove anything to Victoria because it was not like her that she can report about anything from what had just been said during their conversation at this time to the Church higher-ups. Hearing her response, Victoria looked agitated until Zeta realized that she didn't wish to kill the possessed if their symptoms could be cured as Zeta trying took advantage of the situation along with the Saint' strange fondness for her. Because of this, Zeta personally telling Victoria to leave because it seems that the Saint had no interest in senseless killing and as long as she didn't try to kill the possession, then she really not an Shadow Garden's enemy.

That way, the higher ups of the Church would look upon Victoria suspiciously because she fails to complete her mission at the cost of her subordinates' lives and returned unscathed, then they will question Victoria if she is conspiring with the enemy in order to accumulating distrust that would weaken the Templars' organization from within. Suddenly, Zeta sees a signal to withdraw which means that the rescue mission has been successfully completed.

In Alexandria, Alpha and Epsilon had succeeded in able to curing the possessed symptoms on the human after taking the healing method for over 4 hours instead of the usual 5 minutes for cure. Eventually after having a human race for the first time, Alpha plans to make Nicoletta a symbol of human existence in Shadow Garden and inducted Nicoletta Marquez into their member by giving her unassigned Numbers' title for a while as 93. Until Nicoletta decides on her chosen path, her number title will be suspended and she would be the first human to be trained by Lambda.

Named First Children's Defection Reveals Cult Secrets Intel
The next day, Eta invites Gamma to join her on an expedition to search for oil fields after she gave Cid Kagenō the success report of yesterday's operational mission when he had told her a story about the natural resources. If they managed to find oil, it would transform industrial energy which would became the key to developing the world's civilization so that it didn't rely on magic anymore and became a vital resource for Shadow Garden. Therefore, Eta who had determined a location where it might be possible to find oil brought Gamma on an expedition trip heading towards their destination, which was Madlid City which was a remote town in the border region of the Velgalta Empire.

Upon arriving, Gamma was shocked after seeing the state of Madlid City is barely functioning and sparsely populated that made this central town more desolate than a mountain village in the Midgar Kingdom to the point where there is not a single shop was open which mistook this place for a ghost town. By looking at the situation in the Madlid City, Gamma guessed that the surrounding villages and settlements have already fallen into ruin. Gamma and Eta are try getting a proper grasp of the city before starts looking for an oil fields, which was essential for their expedition's research on the surrounding environment and geology around Madlid region by doing investigation on the town hall.

After writing field notes on the state of Madlid City, Gamma felt that the town is severely depopulated and lack any developed means of transportation due to the steep mountain roads that encompassed from the mountains all over the region, which made the situation of Madlid City undeveloped at all. Even if there were an oil fields around the designated area, it would take a tough time figuring out how to actually transport the oil.

Meanwhile, Eta was intrigued by many old buildings in the city that had an architectural style she had never seen before and the streets were incredibly old-fashioned, which made Gamma wonder that there are so many of these old buildings line the main street in the supposedly remote town that requires significant building materials, supplies and manpower to construct all these buildings.

In other words that bringing goods and materials to Madlid on the city current transport conditions should be absolutely impossible, meaning that Madlid City was not deserted before with roads leading to the city were easier to navigate and suspect that the town was ruined by some fatal transport barrier. So, Gamma decide to do little more research on the region before start looking for potential oil fields sites and requesting Eta to gather more intel based on her professional viewpoint as an genius architect.

Gamma and Eta were currently heading to the Nyle River which was used as a transport route for goods and human resources to Madlid City who then carried out a perceptive investigation of the river. Based on their respective field notes, it was revealed that the coastline that was supposed to be a docking area had been made a monster territory for a formidable monster known as Malak for about a century ago, which disrupted the city's transportation routes until it was finally closed and the central authorities of the Velgalta Empire decided to abandoned Madlid City because their inability to vanquish Malak had caused a decline in the city's finances to the point of accelerating the depopulation of the city.

Although they both already knows the root of the problem, Madlid City has already no value anymore which makes it not going to change the city's situation for the better if Malak is killed because the unreclaiming any resources or value within Madlid's area. Even if they discovered an oil fields in the region, it would require a development plans at the regional level such as extending the route to the Nyle River to connect directly to the Madlid City and establishing a canal for fleets to travel between the archipelagos.

Due to the circumstances, the current judgment is whether they should invest time and research expenses in Madlid and given the nature of the region along with the Nyle River's current transport capacity isn't sufficient to handle the potential demand generated by the oil fields. In fact, Shadow Garden can't afford to heavily invest Mitsugoshi's assets so long as there is certainty to be able to find oil and even if they were to set up a branch shop in Velgalta Empire, it would be the capital that would take priority instead of Madlid. Thus, Gamma tells Eta that they will continue their assumed long term plans while carrying out their investigation.

Next, Gamma and Eta were heading to the coastal area where the place became Malak's territory until when they got there they saw the creature which was probably almost like a dragon that made Eta feel like she want to do research on Malak after she able to defeat it and study the dragon's ecology by dissect the creature.

Filled with curiosity, Eta secretly observes Malak by using slime to move silently and making slime to imitate objects according to the environment around her, which surprises Gamma with her ability which is almost the same as Zeta who moves without making a sound. After Eta finished making her observations, she asked Gamma to fight Malak which she refused to do as she thought that the creature's raw strength might be on par with the Mist Dragon. But if the territory occupied by Malak could have oil fields, then either way they have to make the creature move from there.

With no options to decide, Gamma then prepared to fight Malak after being encouraged by Eta when he heard her talk about the Dragon Slayer title which only their master Shadow among Shadow Garden can get it and if for example Gamma manages to kill Malak, then she will be the second person to get the epithet. Dazzled by hearing the title of Dragon Slayer, Gamma fought against Malak with most of her abilities. However, none of her attacks succeeded in injuring the creature until Eta thought that the creature's body endurance was similar to that of the Mist Dragon and their fight continued until the night.

As she feel unable to beat the creature, Gamma intends to retreat due to her inability and thanks to Eta who has finished observing their fight all day decides to help her by using slime to make a copy of Gamma as bait to lure Malak away from the territory. Even though the creature been lured out, Malak will probably come back once the slime's effects will wear off and Gamma told Eta to leave the area for now as there also might be another location that worth considering to start digging for oil.

By the time Malak returned to its habitat, Eta spent a whole day observing the beast to understand the dragon's daily activities. From the results of her observations, Malak never moved at all ever since returning from chasing the Gamma's slimes clone which Eta thought that the beasts were sleeping with their eyes open and hunting for food on certain days to storing the food inside the beasts stomachs for days.

Later, Gamma going check on Eta during her observation as she wants to take the dragon for further study by capturing it, much to her disagree because it requires preparation in transporting Malak which is more challenging, even though they ask all Seven Shadows to work together to handle it. When Eta want to harvest the beast cell and cultivate them, Gamma telling her that she will need Alpha's permission for any risky experiment due to her monstrous research experiments have already cause enough trouble in Alexandria.

When Eta asked about the results of her search, Gamma replied that she found a clearing in the nearby forest large enough to drill for oil. Gamma isn't sure whether they can digging oil deep under that clearing when she tried checking for any seeping oil or gas being generated as Eta taught her, to which according to Cid Kagenō that the probability of finding oil would still be about 1 in 100 under a suitable location where they need to dig in. Even if they bring Delta to detect the oil by smelling the scent, it will only increase their number of attempts and won't necessarily lead to any progress on discovery which is an incredible daunting task considering the cost, time, and effort involved in the drilling process.

Although their task is quite risky, this oil will become an energy revolution through the distribution of "gasoline" and "kerosene" refined using the distillation technology that is currently under research, along with further development of transportation networks accompanied by successful expedition's search to find oil fields and came the expansion of related development project such as road infrastructure. If they successfully could refine oil to turn it into a bountiful resource, Shadow Garden's finances and Mitsugoshi Company's operations will reach a whole new levels.

A few moments later, Gamma and Eta were heading to the designated clearing site that had been marked in the forest on the afternoon to avoid being seen. But in the middle of the journey, they hid because they saw a group of Knight Order from Velgalta about 20 people which made them both wonder what the knights were doing in a remote place in this region until Gamma recognized one of the individuals leading the group who is a member of the Velgalta's Seven Blades, Sergey Gorman much to Eta's amazed with her knowledge because Gamma had done some research in advance before visiting the Empire and they saw an elf girl who had possessed symptoms.

While Gamma intends to save her because she is being hunted by the Knight Order, Eta holds her attempt because she feels there is a reason why their actions are still being carried out even to this border region until they both decide to eavesdrop on them in order to find out the reason with Eta using slime to probe underground and locate the voice, which she actually created a telephone that applied from "Shadow Wisdom" as she can't wait to make the actual telephone.

Eavesdropping on the situation of their conversation, Gamma realized that the elven girl is actually Karen von Herzog who is also a member of the Seven Blades, which is revealed that both members of the Seven Blades of the Velgalta Empire were the Cult's high ranking members and Gamma felt that there seemed to be a rift between the two of them.

Knowing the eventual outcome because Karen's current situation has already cornered, they both decide on helping her with Gamma thinking that possessed Cult member seems to know a lot about the Cult of Diablos, while Eta who couldn't take Malak on her research want to use enemy possessed as a test subject in case if she would defy against Shadow Garden after being saved and healed.

It was then that Gamma and Eta made their appearance by calling themselves Shadow Garden and immediately demanded to release the possessed individual, which made Sergey aware of their organization's name as he never expected it to be real even assuming that the name was just the rambling of a senile old man (possibly from Fenrir) and telling Karen that Shadow Garden is a mysterious organization that's been active recently causing skirmishes on Midgar Kingdom's outskirts.

Eta had given first aid to Karen which made her possession progress temporarily slow and restrained her while she finished off the Cult group with her slime techniques, to the point Sergey perceive saw that their unfamiliar fighting style using slimes was completely different from the Cult's Children which already been mentioned in the report and he thought that Karen had in cohorts with Shadow Garden as Sergey figured that she was communicating with the Cult's enemies which made his decision to purging her along with the Herzog Family become clearly ascertain, much to Karen denial.

Gamma then tried to attack Sergey, but none of her attacks were able to hit him and Sergey managed to discern her inability with a swords at a glance and noticed that Gamma fundamentally lacks ample of combat experience to gauge her opponent's abilities. Even though Gamma managed to land her attack that was originally taught by her master, the attack didn't work to injure Sergey because it didn't have the slightest effect until he tried to finish off Gamma by slashing her from the head until she split into two. However, his slash attack only had a small bump on her head much to everyone's surprise (except Eta), to which Sergey never witnessed an individual that can't handle magic properly at all are able to possessed an incredibly high physical defense.

Looking at how their fight will proceeds, Eta already understood that Gamma that was still trying to keep attacking would die if she continuing this battle, plus Karen said that Sergey's swordsmanship has an precision strike that can break any robust magic defenses. Eta also tries to attack with her slime abilities to help Gamma, only the slime to be cut down as Sergey is able to read her move along with his ability to predictably sense magic is really good as well. With their predicament situation already become quite precarious, Eta brings Gamma back to her place and tells her on following her decision to escape along with the possessed Karen because their abilities can't beat Sergey.

Using her slime abilities, Eta takes Gamma and Karen withdraw to the Nyle River while Sergey chases after them. Even after they have arrived, they were eventually get caught up by Sergey when he tried to attack them but Karen shielded Gamma and Eta from his attacks until she lost consciousness. Eta quickly made a boat out of the slime as she kept the slime under control and asked Gamma to row the boat to the archipelago, which they managed to escape Sergey's pursuit and successfully out from Madlid's territory to outside the borders of the Velgalta Empire to reach The City - State Alliance.

After escaping the chase, they both decided to return while Alpha ultimately instructed Gamma to bring Karen to Alexandria for her recovery after being healed by Epsilon whereupon the Seven Shadows held a meeting regarding the possessed Cult leader with Gamma ordering Lambda to the laboratory to checked on Karen who is currently guarded by Eta. During the meeting, Epsilon said that Karen's condition has stabilized with her right leg having recovered back to normal but could not heal her right eye wound which she thought was not a symptom of Demon Possession which made Epsilon feel a lack in her abilities and hoped that Shadow would come and also be able to healed her old wounds, but Alpha told Epsilon that she also couldn't heal without leaving any marks especially deep scar after hearing a report from Gamma that Karen uses her infected right leg as a shield to protect Gamma from attacks that aimed at her and is considered safe as long as her leg carries no residual effects.

When Beta gave her opinion about being able to extract information from the possessed Cult leader and take precautions so as not to reveal Shadow Garden's secret, Gamma felt that she did not agree with her because she thought Beta's opinion was to killing Karen without a second thought after her actions that had defended and saved her life from life-or-death situation. But Beta clarifies that she never said to finish off Karen to Gamma who still feels unsure whether the possessed Cult's leader is indeed their enemy and only gave her hypothetical suggestion to consider another scenario because Sergey already knows Shadow Garden to the point of thinking that this is the Cult's plan to send a spy into their organization for an infiltration mission under the pretense of a falling out.

Until Alpha stopped their argument and informed them of her decision to bring Karen to Alexandria for the specific reason that if she is indeed a leader abandoned by the Cult for becoming possessed, then Shadow Garden would present themselves openly and provide her with a choice to the point where they obtain secret intel on the Cult along with a competent subordinates as a result should the Cult of Diablos not tolerate the possessed under any circumstances, then it will further clarify their organizational position and carries a great significance for Shadow Garden to show the opposite path. But it would be Karen's decision whether to follow the path shown to her by Shadow Garden with Alpha prepared to take responsibility and dispose of her with her own hands if necessary.

In the middle of the meeting, Lambda returned from checking the possessed Cult leader's condition who at that time was almost made Eta's test subject and gave an urgent report regarding her identity, Karen von Herzog, who is the heiress to the Herzog Family, which is one of the oldest and most prestigious aristocratic families in territory of Velgalta Empire since ancient times, and is also one of the Seven Blades. When Alpha asked Lambda from her perspective as a former soldier of the Velgalta Empire about what she knew regarding Karen and the Herzog Family and wanted to hear her opinion on what they are up against, Lambda did not expect to the point she could not believe that Karen and Sergey Gorman of the Velgalta's Seven Blades were both leaders within the Cult although Gamma has not confirmed this, but at the very least Sergey already knew about Shadow Garden when he tried to kill Karen, who herself seemed unable to accept the fact that she had been abandoned by the Cult after becoming possessed.

Alpha also tried to ask Lambda again about what special aspects of the Herzog Family's conduct were highly regarded even though she understood their origins comes from a prestigious and longstanding noble lineage within the Empire known for their virtue and fairness, Lambda gave an explanation that the governance of the territories by the aristocratic nobles who were vassals of the Empire varied significantly from region to region. However, the Herzog Family has maintained stability over their governed lands as they are proactive in addressing the petitions of their residents and their army is highly disciplined although small in size, plus each of their successors has been a skilled warriors like Karen von Herzog who is chosen as one of the Seven Blades because of her skill not only with the sword but also with the spear, which makes Gamma think that the Herzog Family externally seems like exemplary rulers in both war and peace with Beta thought her opinion on the family is such admirable rulers, even though their people are unwittingly being controlled by the Cult behind the scenes. Because the explanation was still not enough, they decided to get more details directly from Karen, including the truth of the matter.

In the laboratory, a conscious Karen wants to ask why she wasn't killed yet which Eta wants to protest and suggest making her a test subject, which Beta and Alpha refuse her. Karen even found out that there are so many things she didn't understand about their place and all those who had saved her from death, especially cannot believing that her possession symptoms have actually been cured. Alpha then gives two paths that lie before Karen if she is truly the Cult leader, namely to tell all the knowledge she knows about the Cult of Diablos and leave everything behind to join Shadow Garden or to give them everything on the Cult from here now and then her life that has been saved from possession will be ended by her sword.

When Karen told Alpha that she haven't considered herself choosing the third path where she became a martyr for the Cult by taking her own life, Alpha noted that she had also fleeing from the Cult's pursuers who were after her life even though she was injured, coupled with her symptoms of possession and responded that she wants to survive by rebelling against her fate which makes Alpha think it is impossible for her to do so, even willing to lend her a spear to stab herself with, much to Karen's frustration that Lambda advised her not to underestimate Alpha despite her childlike appearance which made Karen realize that she was a Velgalta soldier after seeing her stance until Lambda revealed that she was also a former possessed who had lost everything besides her life, just like her.

Gamma also tells Karen, who doesn't believe that she is evil after realizing that her actions to protect her from their previous situation isn't something anyone could do even if they wanted to, and Gamma feels that Karen has a sense of duty and pride towards her positions as an aristocrat despite working for the Cult. When Gamma wanted Karen to be able to give an explanation about who she is and her role in the Cult as Karen thought that she would be tortured or given drugs, which made Gamma stated in making that as the final resort and told Karen she intended to have a positive encounter for all of us until may have a long relationship in the future, although it would be that of a superior and a subordinate with Beta and Epsilon amazed at Alpha and Gamma's approach efforts to be able to carry out negotiations with Karen through their own ways until Karen has followed Gamma's persuasion for there is nothing left for her anymore and thought that it was worth relinquishing everything, pride and all.

However, Gamma said to Karen that there must always be something left that exists by responding to their presence being here just like her, which made Karen realize that everyone in front of her had experienced possession before and then Alpha confirmed her guess and later explained that Shadow Garden operates all across the world with a mission to save the possessed and aim to destroy the Cult when they do. Hearing this, Karen finally decided to comply with their request in providing all she had in her knowledge regarding the Cult and then after that resigned to what they would do with her life, other than turn down the request from Eta who wanted to make her as her test subject which made her felt an incredibly bad feeling if she agrees to her offer.

Some time later, Karen is ushered into a meeting room which includes four members of the "Seven Shadows" along with Lambda and asks Alpha to briefly tell her everything she knows about the Cult in detail, so that she wouldn't have to reiterate what Shadow Garden already knew during their organization's founding. Alpha provides a fairly understandable explanation by saying that the Cult of Diablos control the world from the shadows that have been abduct those who are having Demon Possession symptoms and use them as test subjects to serve some purpose by having deep ties with the Church as well as having tenuous relationship to the Church's inquisitors, the Templars until she said the most important thing to Karen that the Cult's structural powers are so vast that even their subordinates cannot obtain satisfactory intel on its workings, which made Karen felt amazed by the detailed information their organization had gathered so far after hearing her impressive explanation to the point of thinking that Shadow Garden is evidently much more knowledgeable than any other outsiders concerning the Cult, even more so than those of the aristocracy themselves who had been deeply infiltrated by the Cult to the point as Karen herself who feel wondered that she wanted to ask about who had told them all of this, but decided to keep quiet after Alpha point her slime sword at her.

Feeling she wouldn't get an answer to her question, Karen went descriptive in her explanation that the Cult of Diablos has been active in the shadows of history since ancient times, even played an significant role in the formation of the Velgalta Empire. Beta also knew the empire's history that before unification, many local lords were vying for power and there were frequent skirmishes between lords throughout the continent, until there were no hidden details have been recorded in the history that was passed down amongst the people, which made Alpha emphasize in providing the fact that aristocrats like the Herzog Family played an important role after becoming pawns of the Cult.

Karen also explains that everyone was exhausted from the wars that raged across the continent until the land was finally unified under the Velgalta Empire where most of the lords lacked ambition were willing to serve any ruler so long as they were guaranteed autonomy, at which point the Cult effortlessly infiltrated the aristocrats' inner circle and the Herzog Family were one of the aristocratic families that accepted the Cult's power and submitted to them, which led Alpha to concluded that Karen as the head of a noble family was born a member of the Cult with Karen responding that control works best when undetected. Moreover when war breaks out, it was the common people who suffered the most which made her ancestors understood what needed to be done to avoid unnecessary bloodshed to the extent that this is the reason why the Herzog Family has long played their part in maintaining peace within the Velgalta Empire, restraining those brash individuals who only seek conflict, and protecting the lives of their people.

After hearing the explanation, the two of them argued over their respective ideals with Alpha concluding to Karen that thinking is the arrogant mentality typical of people dominating others that had taken away the opportunities of those Karen claimed to protect in walking on their own two feet and grow. When Karen stated to Alpha that her words were nothing more than idealistic notion because not everyone can possess power and lead the lives they desire, which made Alpha retorted that Karen is denying people the opportunity to fail and of course that was an example of "controlling" them to which Karen herself being "controlled" by acting in accordance with the Cult's will, even explaining again that Karen is genuinely believe that her thoughts were correct despite being fully aware of what is happening until Alpha remarks that Karen had turned her back on her beliefs and boast about the shackles that bind her, urging others to wear them as well, which makes Karen a slave to power much to her frustration by saying that her family believes that their actions are the best way and they have fulfilled their duties as the Herzog Family until now.

However, Gamma replied that their duties no longer existed after hearing that the entire Herzog Family had been annihilated by Sergey, which made Epsilon ask Karen who Sergey really is and wanted to know if the Seven Blades itself is an organization that affiliated with the Cult. Karen tries to confirm Epsilon's assumption by clarifying that the Velgalta's Seven Blades is a title given to knights who are highly regarded in the Empire for their pure martial prowess and ability to utilize them, even telling that Sergey Gorman is a knight who duel against a previous member of the Seven Blades which is also coincidentally a Cult's "Children" member by wagering the title in a match until Sergey eventually defeated his contender after claiming that position along with his opponent's life, earning him both titles.

Hearing that title name after Gamma had heard that Karen referred to Sergey by that term before, it is certain that it was only natural for a large organization to have words indicating position within its hierarchal structure as Alpha being blunt by asking who is at the head of the Cult, which made Karen reveals that there are individuals in charge of determining the Cult's policies and governing its central operations through the "Round Table Committee" as its members known as the Knights of Rounds or simply the "Rounds" which makes Alpha never expected that the Cult of Diablos is controlled by a collective, not an individual.

Despite knowing the Knights of Rounds' title name, Karen and even her long-standing aristocratic family had lack knowledge about who they are, how many of them, or the details of their hierarchal structure in the Rounds, which Beta thought that the Cult is a secret organization where even aristocrats are treated as underlings. However, Karen stated that the Herzog Family only recognized the names of four known Rounds members, namely Fenrir, Loki, Hel, and Jormungandr which then revealed that it seemed that each of them hold a specific rank, but she only aware Fenrir's position rank is "Sixth" in the Round Table until Beta answered that the four names mentioned by Karen are all matched the Cult's name factions in Midgar Kingdom and she assumed that perhaps because of conflicts between the Cult's factions in Midgar, even many of their subordinates know their names.

When Epsilon wants to ask what the name "Children" means, which she thinks is a title within the Cult, Karen confirms that people who possess power and serve the Cult like herself are generally called the Children of Diablos which she are giving an elaborates details explanation regarding on the Children's distinctions between First, Second, and Third. Karen explains that those below the "Third" are treated as ordinary members or foot soldiers of the Cult, as she reveals that those who were born and raised Children like herself or those who joined and became Children like Sergey, are rare cases to which she gives the general understanding that the Cult finds orphans with no relatives or children of poor commoner with high aptitude, then abducts them from their homes and raising them in special facilities to be brainwashed into undergo rigorous combat training, educated as members of the Cult, and administered drugs to enhance them.

Although Karen says that the Herzog Family were not like other aristocratic families and subordinate organizations because they merely offers a means of escape from poverty by becoming Children, Alpha explains that all the acts done out of kindness are basically just wanting to save those who are gifted with lives to be saved based on practical conditions before even considering whether they want to be saved, which makes Karen feel uncomfortable with her accusation by saying that humans aren't that intelligent until Gamma breaks up their argument and asks Karen to explain again about the different ranks for the Children mean.

Later, Karen provided detailed information that "Third" is an general term for Children whose minds could not withstand enhancement to which they are solely used for basic combat, which led Lambda to think that these mentally broken members had no risk of leaking information until Karen added that they possess fighting abilities far surpassed any standard knight. Then Karen explained that "Second" are those with stable mental states and certify that most of the Cult's leaders were belong into this rank, until finally Karen confirmed that the "First" distinguishes Children like herself are possess undeniable strength.

When Beta curiously asks if there are any individuals among the Children who become members of the Rounds, Karen answers her question by saying that Children who show promise or make significant contributions to the Cult are given two titles and such individuals are referred to as "Named Children" which most of them are "First", but there are some members who are from "Second" because becoming Named within the Cult is said to be a gateway to joining the Knights of Rounds.

After learning what their arch enemy organization's chain of command system was like, Seven Shadows completely deduces that the Cult of Diablos are using the methods to which precisely imposed by those in control, by training Children while dangling the position of power known as the Rounds. Also, Alpha wanted to ask Karen if her upbringing in an environment that raised her had blinded her to the contradictions inherent in such actions or perhaps knew how distorted their hierarchical structure was but turned blind eye in order to reap its benefits.

Sensing that Shadow Garden has already gained a definitive understanding on the Cult's secret inner structure, Alpha gives Karen time to reflect on herself and helps convince her to understand the reality that the Cult's domination of the world is built on lies and deception after her experience as a possessed, even if Karen is willing to discard everything that has made her up to now, then they are ready to welcome her as a member of Shadow Garden. Alpha then told Lambda to treat Karen accordingly while she remains their guest in Alexandria by giving her a bedroom to be a place for her to think, as a token of appreciation for sharing actionable intel with Shadow Garden.

Following the conversation, Lambda reports to Alpha that there have been no significant movements from Karen as she has been wandering around Alexandria and there are no sign of any internal reconnaissance and Lambda is closely monitoring on Karen during she usually spend her time on Eta's experiments to ensure Karen doesn't lose her life on one of her experiments, which made Alpha know Eta's reason for doing so that is because she would not be able to use Karen as her test subject so openly when she had became an ally of Shadow Garden.

When Alpha wants to know if her approach to Karen has been effective enough in informing her of the organization's interests and efforts to deny her way of life up to that point, Lambda convinces Alpha that her actions at that time were the right ones because showing kindness and compassion really isn't necessary to appease their enemies by adding Gamma's actions are currently guarding Karen until Lambda says that the harsher Alpha is at her words, the gentle Gamma's words will be more effective which makes Alpha understand Lambda's intentions by looking at Karen's point of view that Gamma and her approach were like carrot and stick, plus the fact that Karen already understands it logically after knowing her current situation proves Alpha's words. However, if Karen is unsure of how to cast off her past self, then Alpha will help her in a way that is appropriate to her position.

At the same time, Eta is still asked Karen to do one of her experiments as she is pedaling the bicycle that her movement efforts will generate power to the machine she made which Karen thought felt that she had already become her test subject because it made no difference in doing what Eta told her, even though she denied it until finally Gamma entered the laboratory and ordered Eta to stop her experiments on their guest while checking on Karen's condition and taking her outside to get some fresh air.

Once outside, Karen wants to know the reason for having her as a guest even though she herself is their enemy, which Gamma then tells Karen that she has lost everything she has besides her life after becoming possessed as Gamma replied although Shadow Garden's objective is to destroy the Cult, their efforts to rescuing and protecting the possessed is an equally important mission. When Karen says that she will gather intel and bring it back to the Cult, Gamma responds that if Karen is planning to do that then she shouldn't be crazy enough to go along with Eta's experiments after Gamma realizes that Karen doesn't seem to really care about her own well-being and also she wants to change herself, to which is the reason why Karen have gone along to accept Eta's dangerous invitation without a second thought until Gamma discovered Karen's desire to survive after seeing her involved in Eta's experiments.

Knowing her behavior was being noticed, Karen confessed to Gamma that she didn't know what to do because she felt resentment and sadness over her fate, along with a sense of retribution for the Herzog Family turning a blind eye to reality but more than anything, her heart felt empty as Gamma advise that she can rise again and start anew after learning Karen's realization until she told Karen to live, even ask her to witness how the future of their world unfolds and the pivotal role that Shadow Garden will play, to which would be best to join and served Shadow Garden until Karen gets enlightened from Gamma's explanation.

In order to determine her chosen path, Karen asked Alpha for a challenge to a duel in a spear fight while in her prime condition with Alpha agreeing to Karen's heartfelt request and telling her that if she can defeat her in spear skills until she feels she has truly lost everything, then Karen will pledge her loyalty to Shadow Garden.

Even though Karen's level as a former Named First Children are strong that which far beyond the level of an ordinary swordsman or knight with her having mastered exceptional techniques and having a combat instinct that allowed her to wield those techniques with precision which made her strength became recognized to the point where she earned the title of one of the Velgalta's Seven Blades, Alpha eventually defeats Karen in a close combat with hand-to-hand martial arts after intentionally giving an sudden strike by hitting on her right eye.

Gamma and Eta also saw their great fight, even Lambda herself praised the abilities of the two combatants that Karen anticipated Alpha would throw her sword and followed it up with a melee attack due to knowing slime sword properties. But, Alpha instantly picked up on Karen's response as she closed their distance past the sword's range and countered with a close-quarter physical attack like Delta when under pressure by using force to overpower her opponent.

Seeing Karen who was already feeling herself powerless after her defeat, Alpha stated to her that she won't be able to defeat her, the other Seven Shadows, or even the Numbers in Shadow Garden as long as she still "Karen" as Alpha trying to make her face reality after noticing the disparity in skills, even their slime swords and slime suits.

Then, Alpha proclaims that the Shadow Garden swordsmanship utilized not just blades, but also fists, kicks, elbows, and knees as part of a comprehensive attack, plus their organization even has the power to heal the Demon Possession symptoms as they did to her because all of these are from the "Shadow Wisdom" that was bestowed upon them by the leader of Shadow Garden, Shadow to which also reveal that Shadow Garden exists to carry out his will by destroying the Cult of Diablos and restoring the world to its natural form.

Later on after that, Alpha asks Karen once again to discard her name to join Shadow Garden and pledge her allegiance to Shadow, because there is nothing left of what made her who she is until Karen finally cries as she has truly lost everything. But the act of doing so is for the best when Gamma tells Lambda if there's something inside of them that they just can't let go of and it's hindering them from progressing, then having someone else sever that connection they're clinging to can allow them to move forward.

Eventually, Alpha handed over Karen's training to Lambda who at the same time Karen von Herzog defected to Shadow Garden after joining the organization by being giving her the Numbers title as 111 and she would be trained by Lambda personally, as well as aims to destroy the Cult of Diablos that was had betrayed her to pay for their betrayal for the annihilation of the Herzog Family who had served them for generations.

Contradictions Beliefs within Organization
At some point possibly before or after Victoria joined Shadow Garden, Zeta forms her own faction within Shadow Garden because her disagreement with Alpha's leadership and she fears that after the complete collapse of the Cult of Diablos, Shadow Garden would have no purpose anymore and disband.

Zeta created this faction served to perform tasks behind the organization's back with the further objective which contradicts Shadow Garden's original mission as she wants to resurrecting Demon Diablos after collecting the demon's body parts for monetizing its power to make Shadow immortal and becoming the god of the new world in order to taking over the world, also Zeta intends to create a new religion so that it can replace the Holy Church of Divine Teachings and declare Goddess Beatrix as a False Goddess.

The only member of her own faction is Victoria and the unofficial Shadow Garden's member Nina, who's in keeping eye on Claire Kagenō by entering the Midgar Academy.

Princess Alexia's Kidnapping
When Cid has reached 15 years old, Shadow Garden learned that their master had enrolled the Midgar Royal Spellsword Academy for two months (seven in the anime). Currently, Shadow Garden had been infiltrating every hidden base under the Midgar Kingdom's capital in search of any information they could find. However, Shadow Garden receives news that their master Cid Kagenō has been framed for the kidnapping of Second Princess Alexia Midgar until he is indicted as the main suspect and being apprehended by the Knight Order.

Hearing this, Shadow Garden actively helped their master in exploring the situation he had experienced by studying the case and conduct an investigative search for Princess Alexia through Delta's olfactory ability to speed up finding her whereabouts by tracking her scent. After being investigated, it turned out that the act was a ploy by the Cult of Diablos which made Shadow Garden indicate their purpose in kidnapping the princess was to take her blood for experiments and frame Cid as the culprit to make him a scapegoat before executing him.

In response, Shadow Garden is accordingly making an meticulous preparations while plotting an synchronized attack on all the Cult facilities' bases that scattered throughout the capital in retaliation for their despicable action against their master after locating the magic traces where Princess Alexia was being held captive and prioritize her rescue.

Two days later when Cid was released from his detention after undergoing torture for 5 consecutive days, Shadow Garden then began to mobilized their forces which were capable of mustering 114 members in carrying out the plan to initiate a night raid operation to uncover and simultaneously destroy their enemies' hideouts which belonged to the main Fenrir's Sect Faction in the royal capital.

Amidst the chaos, Alpha encounters the First Princess Iris Midgar who has dealt with a rampaging monster created by the Cult that has been wreaking havoc on the city and Alpha easily defeats the creature by the time she swiftly attack a monster out of mercy until it returns to her original form of a young human girl and reveals that the girl is Millia, the daughter of Grease that Shadow killed two years ago during a previous mission to save her master's sister Claire Kagenō from the Cult, then warns Iris not to get in Shadow Garden's way.

Meanwhile, Shadow reaches the location where Alexia Midgar is being held intending to save the princess and has a one-sided fight with the real culprit who is the ringleader of the princess' kidnapping, Zenon Griffey, a swordsmanship instructor at the Academy and a high-ranking member of the Fenrir's Sect as Shadow overpowered him when he effortlessly parries all of his attacks, despite he uses the red pills to strengthen his powers until Shadow decide to finishes off Zenon by obliterating him and the location using his ultimate attack, "I Am Atomic".

Sometime after that incident, Cid has been acquitted after his name have already been cleared on all suspicion as he is free from his charges on the kidnapping case that being publicly resolved with Zenon proven to be the perpetrator mastermind. Even though Shadow Garden's effort had successfully managed to save the Second Princess Alexia and was able to weaken Fenrir's Sect Faction, at least their operation main objective in exposing the Cult to the public along with their debut had been achieved. Afterwards, the world learned of the existence of Shadow Garden and the Cult of Diablos.

Midgar Academy Terrorist Attack
Seven Shadows were currently holding a management meeting to discuss matter about the Shadow Garden's internal developments and the external expedition of Zeta's exploration investigation report, after the success of their operation in exposing the Cult of Diablos existence to the world. However, the previous operations had made their organization's existence also undeniable to the public, causing a serious problem to occur when they learned that there was a group of people pretending to be from Shadow Garden and using their name to serially massacre the citizens to deliver a "death judgment" on their killing spree.

Even if the traces of their movement were well covered, it was absolutely impossible for the perpetrators to escape from Shadow Garden's watch. Due to this incident, the Seven Shadows have mobilized all of their subordinates to investigate a series of serial murders targeting the citizens by individuals publicly believed to be Shadow Garden and capture these pretenders for their foul deeds will not go unpunished.

Next day, their master Shadow pays a visit to Mitsugoshi Company as Cid and then he is surprised to finds out that the company is run by Gamma by telling her master about how smoothly their company's thriving business is running that has expanded beyond Midgar Kingdom, even to remote areas with using the mail order system to obtain enormous wealth which makes Cid jealous of her achievements by using his knowledge to get many profits.

It was at that time that Gamma gave an incident report about the appearance of an assassin in the capital who murdered citizens, even members of the Knight Order by wearing black hooded clothes and claimed to be Shadow Garden so until now they are still continuing their investigation for looking the assailants who has not been caught yet which are lurking somewhere around the capital by finding traces of the assailants' whereabouts that are difficult to find, which makes Cid have a clue as to who the culprit is that he intends to investigate on his own until Gamma introducing Nu whose abilities have been acknowledged by Alpha herself to support him during the search.

On the search, both of them went out searching for these pretenders and manage to find them after Shadow saves Princess Alexia Midgar. Thanks to Shadow's assistance in eliminating 2 of the imposters, Nu successfully captured one of them for interrogation, learning by assumed that the Cult of Diablos sent out Third Children with the purpose of luring out the real Shadow Garden and starts to draw their attention. Also during their investigation, Shadow Garden confirming that a "Named" First Children, The Game of Betrayal Rex had been seen in the royal capital.

Their major confrontation came barely a week later when the Cult took over Midgar Academy by using a magic blocking field from an artifact, in order to incriminate Shadow Garden. With Gamma the only one of the "Seven Shadows" in the capital at the time to taking command, Shadow Garden had infiltrated the Academy and awaited orders. Meanwhile, Shadow had already slaughtered most of the Cult members, including Rex when he was looking for a way to remove the effects of the "Eye of Avarice" artifact with the help of Sherry Barnett until Cid saw Nu who was in the research room with the fallen Crimson Order members, namely the deceased Glen and Marco Granger who unconscious.

Presently, Nu also gave a report to Shadow about the current state of the Academy after carrying out her reconnaissance during her infiltration with the Knight Order surrounding the Academy led by Princess Iris Midgar and Shadow Garden who were currently on standby awaiting further orders as they were unable to attack, due to the magic blocking field still active with the Cult still focused on defending. Then, Shadow asked Nu to find materials in tuning the "Eye of Avarice" artifact so that the magic blocking field could be deactivated and told Nu to start the rescue at sunset.

While the standoff was active, Shadow Garden collected intel and research articles on the real perpetrators of this terrorist act. When the magic blocking field was disabled till the students begin to put up resistance led by Student Council President Rose Oriana, Shadow gave the signal for Nu along with a squadron of Shadow Garden members to finished off the rest of the Cult and rescue the students who were held hostage before the Academy is set ablaze by the Cult's leader to cover their tracks and add to Shadow Garden's infamy.

Sometime later, Shadow had killed the leader of the terrorist group who was the true mastermind behind of all events that recently happen, Lutheran Barnett who wanted to escape after covering his tracks and Shadow Garden managed to recover the remains of the "Eye of Avarice" artifact that has been destroyed for further research.

After the incident, Shadow and his organization were labelled as wanted criminals by the kingdom, due to Lutheran Barnett's actions to ensuring they served as scapegoat for the attack. Despite being branded criminals, this did not impede Shadow Garden's mission with all members are vowing to continue their leader's resolve. Thus, Alpha ordered Gamma to assemble all of the available "Seven Shadows" to discuss their next move.

Sanctuary Infiltration
For their next operation which located in Lindwurm, Shadow Garden has formed an investigation team with a purpose to infiltrate the Sanctuary in find out about the truth behind the history of the Three Heroes, Demon Diablos, and the Cult of Diablos true objective. At that time, Alpha sent a letter to Shadow who was having his summer vacation started early because the Academy had been half destroyed to visit the Sacred Land. Later, Cid Kagenō received passage to Lindwurm from Princess Rose Oriana and unexpectedly met Beta, posing as her public persona, Miss "Natsume Kafka". Beta signs a book and gives it to him which contains all the details of the mission, while Cid feels disappointed with her because she adopt stories from many different authors by plagiarized them to became interesting and highly inventive from the diversity with the view of many genre plots and then selling her work wholesale to make money until she gained quite a reputation, but he let it slide.

Meanwhile, Shadow Garden is targeting the Archbishop Drake who was in charge of the sacred ministry within the cathedral hoping to get answers from him. However, he was suddenly executed by the Cult to silence him, so they decided to wait for the Sanctuary's door to open. During the night, Epsilon is looking for their target's killer and manages to kill the executors men until she reunites with his master Shadow after crossing paths with him. When Cid wants to know the plan proceeding, Epsilon explains that there will be a change of plans because their target has been slain by the Cult's executors who have eluded their pursuit even though they have eradicated his henchmen.

When Cid was watching the Goddess's Trial event that was about to end, his name was suddenly called out of the blue until he is forced to appear on the trial as Shadow. Just then, Shadow appearance at the arena have surprised everyone in attendance as when Beta gave signal for Shadow Garden to follow Shadow's plan. Later, he summoned the Witch of Calamity, Aurora, and the two of them were pleased as they smiled upon facing each other. As they fought, they both enjoyed themselves as he initially analyzed and evaded her attacks.

Despite enjoying their bout however, Shadow saw through that Aurora was unable to use her full strength and lamented upon the match until Shadow avoid her limitless magic attack with ease and stroke Aurora down for the victory, as well wishing to fight her in her full strength. All entire audience were speechless that Shadow won the battle after defeating the summoned ancient warrior in a duel.

Upon Shadow's victory when he was about to leave after defeating Aurora, the Sanctuary door suddenly appeared in the arena. It was around this time that Shadow Garden made themselves known, with Alpha joined by Delta and Epsilon, who moved to capture Acting Archbishop Jack Nelson by forcibly taking him to serve as their escort for questioning before he calls Venom to kill Epsilon only to find that Venom is already dead. After that, Epsilon bring Nelson heading into the Sanctuary along with Beta, unaware that Princess Alexia Midgar and Princess Rose Oriana were followed them as the princesses also enter the Sanctuary.

Sometime after Cid quickly escapes from the area and out of the city, he is unexpectedly summoned to the Sanctuary where he meets an imprisoned Aurora again. After liberating her, Cid accompanies Aurora as they wanders around inside the Sanctuary until the two travel through her memories and fight their way to lead her towards the Center.

Inside the Sanctuary, Alpha explained to the princesses about the truth behind the Three Heroes and Demon Possession, from which the Cult wanted to maintain under their control. Alpha and Shadow Garden even suspected that the Cult's goal wasn't just reviving the demon, thus they proceeded to see for themselves by exploring the Hero Olivier's memories.

After the group explored enough and arrived at the Sanctuary center, they learned the Cult's true objective was to create Tears of Diablos. The memories revealed that the Tears grant extraordinary strength and conditional immortality, needing to be taken annually, with the main ingredient of "Diablos Cells" cultivated from the demon's body and the blood of the heroes' descendants. Alpha then exposed Nelson's true affiliation as a 11th Seat Knight of Rounds, which he confirms by revealing himself as Nelson the Avaricious and separating them.

During Alpha and Delta's fight against Nelson and his deluge of copies in the Sanctuary defense system, Epsilon leads the investigative group along with her personal subordinates Kai and Omega to gathered all information they needed from the Cult's archives by using instant cameras to store intel and research articles about the Demon Possession to expand their hypothesis. After getting the required information and learning about the Sanctuary defenses work and power source, Shadow Garden conclude their business and leave, just after Nelson called a memory of Olivier.

Concurrently, Shadow was with Aurora and they met Nelson, fighting against practically unlimited Olivier copies until Shadow used his ultimate spell "I Am the All-Range Atomic", which unnerved Aurora by the amount of magic he had, in order to destroyed all Oliviers, Nelson and everything else inside the Sanctuary.

By the time the Shadow Garden investigation team was already outside and saw Shadow wipe out the Sanctuary from existence, Epsilon reported that everything inside the Sanctuary had been obliterated, which Alpha noted that it was the simplest and most effective solution. Beta relayed to Alpha that she was working with princesses Alexia and Rose to learn more about the Cult, using her "Natsume Kafka" identity to infiltrate their inner circle. They also confirmed their theory that Aurora had another name, that she was the true identity of the Demon Diablos.

The aftermath of this event regarding the news about the Sanctuary being obliterated had spread far and wide, causing the Midgar Kingdom's government to place more notoriety upon Shadow Garden.

Laugus's Origins Research Investigation Discoveries
On the day after Shadow Garden returned from their mission in Lindwurm, the team had brought back all of the materials during the Sanctuary investigation and are delivered to Eta, who begins her analytical investigation.

Currently, Eta is making an investigation report about the Tears of Diablos is a red liquid created from Diablos Cells, to which anyone those who ingest this liquid will gain vast power and an eternally youthful body. Although it have no side effects, the Tears required periodical inoculations and can only be produced in limited quantities. After finishing the answers to her investigative report, Eta felt disappointed because the data about the Tears of Diablos that was brought over was data that had just recently been deduced even with modern technology as she still couldn't understand why the Cult of Diablos had been continuing to use the Tears all along, even though they were imperfect.

Thinking about that, Eta was irritated that what the Cult was doing is an desecration of science to the point where she had to eat caloric food to put on the mood until she was suddenly surprised by Zeta who came into her lab to put a report on her desk which was currently still there are reports that have not been concluded. When Zeta asks if the report brought by the Sanctuary investigation team makes her uneasy, Eta says that there wasn't much new information to find and more like a complication of the previous findings, especially the report about the Tears of Diablos which is a problem in her mind which makes Zeta guess that Eta feel irked because of the Tears' imperfections.

Knowing that Eta's face had shown an extremely irritated expression at the mere mention of the topic, Zeta asked if Eta intended to make a perfect version of the Tears of Diablos, to which Eta replied that she don't know about it but formulating an elixir for eternal youth makes doesn't sound so bad for her. Zeta felt that making the Tears was out of the question due to the need for royal blood and Diablos cells, plus Eta's research is meant to serve Shadow Garden and Gamma had funds her research using her earnings from the Mitsugoshi Company.

That said, its possible the Cult of Diablos had their own set of trouble like with resources or interpersonal relationship and considering there were 12 members in the Knights of Rounds, Zeta thought that making a miracle youth pill that satisfies the greed of many power-hungry opportunistic members at once was a pipe dream for them.

Finished explaining, Eta then asked Zeta if there are any bases that haven't been investigated, which she replied there are several locations that she uncovered during on infiltration ops and haven't reported some of them, making Eta assumed that Zeta are concealing information. However, Zeta denied the accusation of concealing anything as she just convey any intel on a need-to-know basis which is all the better, since dubious info could sow chaos in Shadow Garden.

Sensing a great passion, Eta wants Zeta to provide any leads for any base she knows because she wants to do a search for finding research in Tears, making Zeta never thought that Eta will be interested in the Cult. While Eta's expression remains uncharacteristically serious as she still waiting for an answer, Zeta tries to to recall some relevant information until she remember that there was a place which seemed like an old research facility in the city kinda far from here.

Zeta had recon the base and was no doubt it being used for some kind of research, but didn't see any signs of recent activity which made her feel that it might belong to one of the Cults and they must have abandoned it for some reason. When Eta asked about the name of a city kinda far from here on the facility they were going to, Zeta replied that it was an academic city, Laugus.

Hearing that answer, Eta didn't expect the Cult's reach to be extends that far, although Zeta assumed from what have learned in Sanctuary that she thinks that almost nowhere is free from the Cult's influence and even if it had to treat a place that looked suspiciously related to the Cult of Diablos. Besides, it'd be even more strange to not suspect anything with so many researchers and scientists in a place that should rarely be occupied and not seen by the public.

When Zeta wanted to make a request to Alpha in forming a team to investigate the old facility, suddenly Eta wanted to go alone to the facility and forcibly persuaded Zeta to guide her to the location until Zeta finally agreed to Eta's coercion after finishing some basic preparations. Since Zeta makes ready for the distant investigation mission along with Eta that are dissatisfied with the results of the Tears of Diablos research, the two then decided to set off for the supposed research facility in Laugus.

After several days of travel, Zeta and Eta arrive at the edge of the archipelago where Laugus is located as they continue along the shoreline for a bit, until eventually reaching an open entrance where an abandoned facility is located. When Eta notices the facility's door has been forced open which she says can be seen by the traces of the explosion, Zeta replies that it was like this by the time she was here before and it probably happened when the Cult ditched the place.

Inside the facility with Zeta taking the lead in proceed down the dark passageways, Eta observe the surroundings along the way as she saw that the exterior wall had collapsed which was probably caused by the explosion that there were even documents and items blown everywhere in the blast until everything was scorched for inspection.

Once near the exit, Zeta and Eta were surprise to discover that they come upon a large strange door sealed with magical power. Zeta didn't know this door existed even though she had been here before, but with a few things confirmed after seeing the Sanctuary's reports and seeing the crest door which means it can be assumed that this facility has some connection to the Sanctuary.

Even Zeta found it odd that this huge door is completely unscathed while everything around it has blown to smithereens, as Eta deduce that perhaps the door is protected with powerful protective magic and decide to inspect the area. Then, Eta saw an apparatus that Zeta thinks is an artifact making Eta think that this is a device to open the doors and needs something to unlock it.

Suddenly, Eta senses magic power emanating from the ground as she stepped onto the floor, where the magic amassed an taking on shape of a door. Seeing that the door was secretly hidden, Zeta thought that maybe there might be a clue on how to open the big door and able to found the key. To find out, Zeta and Eta decide to enter the door even though Zeta thinks that this facility has something similar with Sanctuary.

A while later when the two of them passing through the hidden door, Zeta and Eta behold a familiar sight that according to Eta this is an Sanctuary, but Zeta denies it because this place is something entirely different from the Sanctuary that Alpha and the others had explored which likely should no longer exist. Although the interior does look almost identical, it maybe this place is another Sanctuary based off the original.

Remembering the report from Epsilon that Sanctuary is designed to drain a large amount of magic as when nears its core, Zeta and Eta thought that the report was crucial info considering how much reliance on relying the magic was. So they tried to amassing their magic, only to find that their control over it is become unstable and decided to not wearing slime suits then change into comfortable clothes.

Looking at the scenery around them it was like the city of the Midgar Kingdom which looked very older compared than the city they know even though there were a few spots to recognize, Zeta decide to investigate the particular store which the place look suspicious on her because the architectural style isn't from Midgar and from her observation that the store business is different from the present. By the time Zeta and Eta approach the shop when the moment they touch the door, they have been teleported again into some kind of warehouse.

Once Zeta understands how it works, she tells Eta that the Sanctuary is made only for intelligent people, like a maze for a battle of wits and for any fool who relies on strength will be stuck wandering this place forever, just like a certain someone they think of. When they wanted to search the documents that worth finding, several monster suddenly appeared who it appears to be the guardian of this place. While Zeta takes care of all the monsters, Eta is looking for an some choice data and gathers any important materials.

Eta efficiently collect dozens of folders in such a short time as all of the important file have been accumulate around in one place. At times when reading folders that have already been collected, Zeta and Eta discover information about the Tears of Diablos which the data's date is from a thousand years ago and contains an overview of the Tears which Eta stated that the overall concept of Tears of Diablos at that time was nearly complete. However, Jack Nelson who was a scientist in developing the manufacturing method has carried out production in adhered to this design without change, to which Eta thought that the Cult scientist was even more incompetent than she imagined. That said, it's still possible that this file contains something about someone who came up with the Tears' manufacturing method, so Zeta and Eta divide up the files and begin to read through them.

While Zeta hasn't found anything in the file she's still reading, Eta finds a file that may have something inside it entitled "The College Town Plan". The file contains the origins city of Laugus, which originally was the second laboratory of a certain esteemed scientist that so inquisitive to the point of insanity. Though a so-called "mad-scientist", his abilities were undeniable which make any other brilliant minds began to gather around him, and then technology advanced until grew into a city which began to take shape that known as the college town, Laugus.

Interestingly, the name of this esteemed scientist was Lord Laugus that apparently was the first chancellor of the college town that shares his name for the town. Learning from this suspicious files that which certainly gives them more leads, Zeta and Eta begin to haphazardly search for more information on Laugus by keep digging into the data they read and see what things they could find.

From the conclusion they came up with after knowing the information they had learned, Lord Laugus was a mad scientist who was known for his brilliance, as well as publicly being the first chancellor of the academic city. However, Lord Laugus who felt himself to be a scientific genius was the type of person who would do anything to satisfy his own curiosity to which even the Cult of Diablos want to recruited him as they took a liking to him.

The fact is that Lord Laugus in turn became like a lunatic who had been fascinated with their study of immortality, which caused him stray down a dark path when he secretly collaborating with the Cult by lent his talent to the Cult's research and took the initiative in researching the Tears of Diablos until eventually the Cult have too much favored him which led to him being promoted as the eleventh member in the Knights of Rounds by occupying the seat of "Avarice" that later held by Nelson. Also, this second Sanctuary was Laugus's secret hideout which is a place to house all the things his laboratory no longer around.

Still, it remains a mystery why Lord Laugus never perfected the Tears because if he really was as skilled as the Cult's thought, he should have done it sooner. Since there were no more records exist on the documents after a certain point, Zeta and Eta suspect that something might have happened to Lord Laugus and the key to the big door remains an unknown as well. After combed the warehouse pretty thoroughly, Zeta and Eta then depart to somewhere else in search of information on Laugus and the key to the big door.

Then, Zeta and Eta again continued on their hunt for fresh data as the duo traverse the dark cavern by make their way through the gap in the wall, until eventually coming upon a slightly more open scape where the cavern splits into two paths. In the middle of the two branches, there are 2 wall art marked with a red cat and a blue dog, both of which have the same text below the frame, namely "Seek ye the path of the powerful" that which is most likely a hint to choose the right path.

When Eta already understood the answer she had thought of, Zeta confirmed that the answer was the red cat's path by giving unclear reasons while Eta conspicuously stared at her until in the end Zeta was honest about not wanting to take the blue dog's path because of self-esteem issues. However, Eta instead follows the path that Zeta chose to be able to cheer her up. By the time they take the path they were following, it turned out to be a trap when Eta almost fell into a hole even though she was saved thanks to a slime that she quickly created and latterly saved by Zeta. Since the path is dangerous to explore further, Zeta, guilt-ridden for endangering Eta, decides to return to the previous place before.

Made it back to place where they started, Eta explains to Zeta that the right answer to choose the right path is to understand the warning signs, because Eta remembers that Master Shadow once said that red means "stop" and blue means "go". Because Zeta feels aware of Eta's side because she has never carried out a joint mission with her, Zeta decides to follow Eta's logical thinking.

After traversing the right path, Zeta and Eta see another wall art that depicts a single minecart and a set of tracks with a fork branching off, which proceeding along the track leads to five people, while at the end of the fork there is one person, makes Eta feel that this is a puzzles. Although Eta already understood the answer, she wanted to hear from Zeta which she thought of doing nothing and just let fate run its course based on her intuitive thinking. Eta feels Zeta's answer is not bad and tells him that the answer to this riddle is based on "quality" because Eta feels Lord Laugus has share a few things in common with her.

Eta also tells Zeta about her views on great knowledge and ability that are of value to the world over life and states that even if her life were supposed to be weighed against that of Master Shadow, she believes that she would be obligated to forfeit her existence without hesitation. Hearing Eta's determination, Zeta feels like she has a liking on her and wants to make Eta as her underlings, which Eta thought sound annoying to her.

Just as they were about to choose an answer, a sudden burst of light shallows the pair up and once in the grip of the dazzlingly strong light, Zeta and Eta are warped into a certain library. After being teleported, both of them thought that their intent which had the same mindset as Lord Laugus was the key to the answer for teleporting.

Inside the chamber, Zeta noticed that this place was different from the previous one because during the search, all the archive documents were very specific which contained detailed data on Lord Laugus' conclusions. Even Eta herself thought that everything in this place were kind of strange as the files was carefully selected, also the ratio of data on topics like the Tears of Diablos and royal blood has decreased.

Noticing this, Zeta think maybe Lord Laugus has lost interest, which could that have something to do with his disappearance. Furthermore, Eta saw the files data on things like origins of magic and the genesis of monster, makes Eta thought that Lord Laugus's curiosity shifted elsewhere until she found a well-worn book which is was Lord Laugus' journal. When they checked the contents in the journal, Zeta and Eta realize that Lord Laugus is no longer interested in the Tears of Diablos and decides to research something far more grand than the Tears, even inform them about "something" behind the big door by telling them about the key to open it, namely "I am a seeker of truth. A pursuer of boundless knowledge".

As Zeta and Eta wondered what it was that made Lord Laugus want to research something that caught greatly interest for him than the Tears, they learned that the Cult has been issuing more orders lately due to them seem displeased that Lord Laugus have ceased his research on the Tears, which that he could readily create Tears of a higher quality if he were continuing the research.

However, Lord Laugus have already perfected the basic theory, though the power of eternal youth itself has undeniable appeal. As it happens, the remaining scientists are more than capable of handling the rest when he thinks no doubt about someone in charge will lose a few more hairs due to the stress, which both of them guess that it is his successor, Jack Nelson when they heard about his baldness. After obtaining the key to the sealed door from Laugus's journal, Zeta and Eta retrace their steps until they return to the facility area, also Zeta draw a conclusion about the place based on any info they gather to this point.

Understanding what they had learned so far, Zeta believed that this old facility that had been exploded was caused by the Cult of Diablos after Lord Laugus absconded, due to Lord Laugus has parted ways with the Cult long ago and made his escape. The Cult then become frenzy in order to perfect the Tears, so they would have wanted the leftover scientist to finish it as quickly as possible.

But, perfecting the Tears of Diablos was too tall an order for them as there had been no progress at all, even though they still been working on it for a thousand years. Most likely, the Cult continued for conducting research in this facility after taking it over until there was a huge explosion and then deserted it before a panic ensued in Laugus, leaving only Lord Laugus's impassable door.

Finishing the conclusion of their investigative observations, Zeta and Eta move in unison toward the large sealed door as they saying the key by recite the words from Laugus's journal, to which at the same time the door slowly opens and then enter the chamber to find out what something that Lord Laugus was kept inside.

Beyond the large door, Zeta and Eta senses an overpowering presence that leaves the two shuffle their feet and both of them are inside a spacious laboratory until the duo are rendered speechless by the sight that leaps into their eyes as they shocked to see a black dragon that sleeps inside the culture fluid glass.

Stumble upon this revelations, Zeta and Eta are never expected that their investigation on the Tears of Diablos would discover something bigger than they expected and found Lord Laugus to be far more insane than they thought. Zeta then found a book that look like Laugus's journal from the library just moment ago, which contains about his theory of his success in creating an artificial aperture to a world in another dimension.

Learning about this new discoveries, Zeta try to read the journal more with full of similar unusual terminology that based on the research about level of magic that flowing through this world, Lord Laugus presume that it is not a higher realm of much magnitude.

Nevertheless, this research will undoubtedly the first step toward a revolution as that it is there are possible existence of multiple such worlds and rulers of these world that is truly important, as lastly Lord Laugus succeeded in capturing one of these otherworldly kings with the sacrifice of all his colleagues in the process and leaving it as a gift for someone as keen minded as him that one day will become his equal.

Lord Laugus have named these other-dimensional worlds coursing with magic "realms", with the land where the black dragon dwelt being the "12th Realm" and for the king of that land, Lord Laugus dub him Nidhogg. After saying the dragon's name, suddenly she heard Eta sound as when Zeta check on her until saw that the dragon's eyes are open. When Zeta asked Eta what did she do, Eta said its nothing until she tell Zeta that she press a few of button while inspecting.

Due to Eta's accident, Nidhogg has been released from the seal, so Zeta and Eta have to fight against the black dragon. Cornered by Nidhogg, Zeta and Eta find themselves in a desperate situation as they tried to attack the black dragon's body but their attacks couldn't hurt Nidhogg at all, while Nidhogg's attacks dealt enormous damage despite being recently awakened, making Zeta and Eta overwhelmed.

Suddenly Nidhogg smashing through the wall as he waited for a moment when their attack falter and the dragon tried to wreak havoc on the outside. Even though Nidhogg isn't that far away, Zeta and Eta are still trying to stop the black dragon from reaching Laugus but are unable to until both of them prepare to accept their fate.

At that moment, an ebony blade flashes tear through Nidhogg as when Shadow who is on his way to the capital after leaving the Sanctuary suddenly arrives and manages to injure the black dragon. As Shadow thinks that Nidhogg's appearance is a bonus from the sacred area event he is playing, he is also surprised to see Zeta and Eta in that place. Shadow uses "I Am Atomic" to kill Nidhogg and it also causes the research facility to be destroyed.

Impressed on their lord strength as he able to defeat Nidhogg with relatively ease, the three of them travel together towards the capital despite being left behind by their master, Shadow due to the approaching Bushin Festival.

Upon arriving at the capital, Zeta and Eta presented their investigative report to the Seven Shadows regarding the discovery of the existence of realms and rulers that the Cult of Diablos had researched. Hearing the report, they were all shocked by what Zeta and Eta reported. However, because this discovery was still only recently discovered, Shadow Garden decided to seek answers in understanding worlds in other dimensions by finding information on the Cult, and even having to interrogate a member of the Knights of Rounds in able to confirm their facts for answer the truth about the existence of a world other than the world they live in.

Bushin Festival Tournament
After successfully completing the Sanctuary mission, all Shadow Garden team decide to rest until Alpha receives news from Gamma, who is come back on her negotiation business from Velgalta Empire outskirt as the Mitsugoshi Company influences had reached their imperial capital, that the Royal Chancellor Perv Asshat from the Oriana Kingdom will be visiting the Royal Capital of Midgar with the King Raphael Oriana. Hearing the news, Shadow Garden immediately started planning an operation to investigate the Oriana Kingdom, suspecting it was the Cult of Diablos' next target.

Next day, The Bushin Festival is starting and strong warriors all over the world start gathering. Seeing them, Cid decides to participate in the tournament by asked Gamma to help him with a disguise and enter the Bushin Festival. Cid now disguise his appearance and adopts the identity of an unremarkable swordsman, Mundane Mann, with Gamma and Nu's help using their cosmetic prowess in order to enter the tournament as a dark horse contestant. Before registering into the qualifying match competition, he catches the attention of veteran competitor Quinton and former member of the Velgalta's Seven Blades, Annerose Nichtsehen.

Following the encounters, Cid easily passes through the preliminaries before briefly encountering a conflicted Princess Rose Oriana over her family situation about her engagements on Perv Asshat which had been arranged by her father. But the next day, he would later learn the news that Rose is branded as fugitive in an attempted for attacking her fianceé, Duke Perv Asshat much to his confusion. Noticing the news, Beta decides to track down Rose's location and giving Princess Alexia Midgar more intel on Perv Asshat, which will keep her occupied so as not to do something to get into trouble.

Before Cid's turn to enter the arena, he met Beatrix, who is revealed to have a possible family connection with Alpha and decide to test him to confirm his abilities. Even Cid trying to trick her in his Mob character, Beatrix be able to know his strength as he also tells that she quite strong. Nevertheless, Cid would continue to proceed through the Bushin tournament as he fakes his abilities in his 'Mundane' persona and defeating notable participants, such as "Victorious Golden Dragon" Goldoh Kinmeki and later Quinton with ease to reach the quarterfinals.

Prior to the qualifying final rounds as Cid continue his planned, he then decides to search Rose in order to avoid meeting with his sister, Claire as she also a participant of the competition. During his search, Cid shockingly met Epsilon who is revealed to have become a prominent pianist composer who has played several pieces of music that she duplicate from all the famous composers in modern and historical works, which afford her music composition to winning various awards and gaining popularity among the aristocratic class, as well as being able to develop a number of powerful connections by building relationships with influential people much to his chagrin.

However, Cid decides not to bother it knowing that Epsilon likes his "Moonlight Sonata", even he received info about Rose's whereabouts which currently hiding in the tunnels under the Royal Capital after Epsilon conveyed her mission to infiltrate Oriana Kingdom when she is invited to come as a newcomer composer. Regardless, Cid in his Shadow persona successfully reunites with Rose Oriana who is escape captured by the Cult's pursuers and offering his magic to support her goals, which the princess accepts.

Then at the same time, Beta alongside Alexia who is in the capital's underground tunnel looking for Rose after having caught wind about her location notices a burst of powerful magic and they eventually find Rose, but Alexia wants answer from her by fighting her until Rose defeat her as she decides to leave before Beta saying that she not gonna stop her and hope we will meet again as she wonders that this is her Lord Shadow decision.

Even though he managed to giving some time, Cid is still caught by Claire despite his efforts when she insists him to take the Bushin ticket and observes her compete as the Midgar Academy's representative replacing the disqualified Student Council President Rose due to her sensitive issues from a special seating section, to which Cid accepts knowing that he lack of choice before continuing his final preparations for the upcoming match.

In preparation for the start of the final set of rounds, Cid enter the special seating from the ticket and follows through on the special viewing where he meets Princess Iris Midgar and she also apologized for Zenon incident. Cid then felt excited when he tells the princess about Mundane Mann and his perfect reputation, even he got to know about Beatrix that he knew she was strong is a famous elf who become the first Bushin Festival champion that haven't showed her face in public for over a decade. Remind that his match against Annerose Nichtsehen will begin, Cid decide to sneak away from his seat and start heading to the participant's room for change his appearance using 'Mundane' identity.

Shortly after exiting the VIP room, Cid is reunited with Beatrix again who wonders if he ignored her before she asks him if he met an elf that looks like her after their first meeting, but Cid refutes her assumption and still gives the same answer as before. Beatrix thought that the person she was looking for would appear in this tournament because many people came to the festival hoping that she would find her niece. At that moment, Beatrix brought too many burgers and gave one to Cid. To return the favor, Cid gives him one of his burgers. After the exchange, Cid decides to leave Beatrix before he is late for his match.

When the match has already started, Annerose Nichtsehen tried to strike first, but Mundane quickly overpowers her in both speed and power until Annerose decide to use counterattack. But, Mundane outsmart her attempt to anticipate his movement and then slashes her, winning to the final round as Cid easily outduels her with his skills, earning the swordswoman's respect.

Later at the time before or during the Bushin match between Mundane and Iris Midgar, Beta and other Shadow Garden Numbers appear in front of Rose and tells her that she can proceed and fulfil her mission as they already clear her way by killing cult members that stationed in the arena and subduing civilians.

On the final match, Cid in his "Mundane Mann" persona competes against the tournament favorite Iris, but their bout ended as Cid effortlessly dominates the battle to claim the victory and the audience are shocked on their match. Upon the outcome of the unforeseen conclusion, Rose Oriana suddenly revealed herself in public to confront her fianceé Perv Asshat, only to unexpectedly assassinated her own father, King Raphael Oriana before attempting suicide.

But at that moment, it was then Mundane decide to save and protect Rose from the Cult's capture when he discarding his disguise to revealing himself as Shadow, convinces her to continue fighting and allows the princess fugitive to escape. By the time Perv wants to capture her, all of his men are already defeated by other Shadow Garden members.

Afterwards, Rose was running away from the arena stadium until she was met by Alpha, who convinced her to seek the justice she wanted and offered her a chance to join Shadow Garden in order to save Oriana Kingdom from the Cult of Diablos, to which Rose agreed to join.

Novel/Manga
While protecting Rose Oriana's exit, Beatrix decides to battling Shadow in the rain where the two of them fight at the stadium long enough until Shadow decides to draw out his true "sword", which Beatrix struggles to withstand his strike. Suddenly, Princess Iris Midgar decided to help Beatrix in defeating Shadow, but in the end he easily defeated them both in front of an entire audience.

Although Shadow demonstrated his superior prowess, both demanded to know why he didn't finish them, and he tells them that Shadow Garden only kill their enemies. Before an ostentatious exit, Shadow reminds them to remember who their "true enemy" is.

Anime/Game
As a result of his actions to protect Princess Rose Oriana by letting her escape, Beatrix decides to fight by clash swords with Shadow as Perv Asshat uses this chance to escape and running back straight to the Oriana Kingdom.

Under the rain, Shadow is fighting Beatrix; however, he starts getting easy overwhelming her while she barely manages to defend herself. Then, Iris Midgar shows up and states she wants to join the fight to confront Shadow as she draws an artifact mithril blade with ancient runes, surprising him but also amusing him that she would resort to what he sees as a clutch, which annoyed her and turns the blade into a large fire magic from the sword and swings at Shadow.

But Shadow easily dodges and states that it has good visuals and is more fit for a festival spectacular as he blocks Beatrix attacks and continuing their fight, with Iris joining Beatrix to fight Shadow as their fight continues through the city and the two manage to push him towards a construction on a building. It was then Shadow takes two crowbars and blocks both Iris and Beatrix attacks, noting that crowbars indeed have potential, and they are kept on fighting on top of a train and on the water until reached the clock tower.

On the tower, Shadow congratulates Beatrix on her swordsmanship that are almost equal, but her use of magic isn't as good before Iris suddenly attack him, only Shadow to blocks her attack with his fist, stating that he can't be defeated with borrowed power. Shadow then hearing their both plans, but he tells them to show their worth as Iris attacks Shadow by swinging her sword until she lets it go and attempts immobilize Shadow by grab him. However, Shadow kicks her chin with his knee, which at the same time Beatrix already finishes charging her attack technique to strike in that moment to take him down when she knocks Shadow's sword, but he dodges her attack as he grabs and slams her over Iris until he stomps both of them. Shadow decide to leave after he skillfully overwhelms both of them, but the girls manage to stand up until Iris tells him that by now every knight from the Knight Order in the capital city should have been mobilized as Shadow has turned the whole kingdom into his enemy and there isn't a place he can run to. However to their shock, Shadow starts laughing maniacally and then states he ain't running as there is no reason to, until he displaying his formidable strength by activates his magic power that its ranges the entire capital of the kingdom of Midgar, and states that the playtime is over. Seeing his mighty power, the girls are left stunned, and Shadow starts casting his "I Am Atomic" attack but stops before the end and disappear clearing with him, all the weather of rain and thunder of the capital, by the expansive force of his magic.

After the ruined festival, Midgar Kingdom are looking for Shadow. Shadow Garden guessed that it was their lord's plan to keep the Kingdom occupied with himself as a bait, in order to not get involved with the things happening in Oriana Kingdom. Since Shadow is actively involving himself, they decide to hurry up and tie up the loose ends by sending more personnel to investigate the Lawless City, as well as keep a close eye on the Major Corporate Alliance.

"Demon Possession" Origin Blood Source and Lawless City Abnormal Causes Survey
TBA

Red Moon Incident
During Cid Kagenō is thinking about his older sister, Claire's invitation to join her for entering a team in the Magic Swordsmen Association to take down the Blood Queen, Elisabeth at the Lawless City, Beta came to report that after his master's prevention to stop the international conflict situation between the two kingdoms after the end of the Bushin Festival, Perv Asshat has been struggle to maintain the Oriana Kingdom internal affairs, which is now become a civil war after Princess Rose Oriana publicly murdered the King Raphael Oriana, making Epsilon’s job considerably easier to infiltrate inside their inner circle and Shadow Garden currently continues to grow at a satisfactory rate, as well as the laboratory at Alexandria has begun development on the steam engine.

While making his choice to come along without hearing from Beta's report, Cid decides to go to Lawless City while he informs Beta about the currently appearing Red Moon phenomenon which makes Beta suddenly realize about the legend of the Red Moon and understand about the Blood Queen who is one of the three monarchs of Lawless City, which is currently Shadow Garden has dispatched personnel to conduct an investigation into the city. Knowing that a Red Moon will soon occur, Beta got ready to make preparations because she knew the threat from the Blood Queen posed if she wanted to cause chaos which would later become the same tragedy in the past. However, Lord Shadow says that he intends to do it himself, not knowing that he is aiming for the wealth that the Monarch has earned and sensing an opportunity to gather more money, as well as participate in the upcoming legendary Red Moon event.

When Cid is traveling with Claire to Lawless City, Shadow Garden decides to take action due to the Blood Queen event's dark history by sending a squad led by Beta herself consisting of 664, 665, and Rose Oriana who is the newest recruit under the codename 666 to infiltrate the Red Tower in Lawless City, in order to collect information inside the tower and obtain the blood of the Blood Queen, Elisabeth who is known as the powerful Vampire's Progenitor for Eta's theory research on the Vampire Progenitor's blood and the relation with the Demon Possession.

Arriving at the Lawless City, Cid and Claire explored the city first before arriving at their destination at the Association headquarters. When Cid was looking at the conditions in the city, he happened to see two magic swordsmen he had fought before during Bushin Festival who had become slaves before they had been bought by someone. While Cid is outside waiting for his sister who is taking part in a strategy meeting to attack on the Red Tower, he then pickpocketing people's money while watching the realistic scenes of violence that are a hallmark of the Lawless City. While initially observing the chaos when suddenly Ghouls attack the inhabitants under the influence of the Red Moon, he briefly encounters Vampire Hunter Mary saying that a "Rampage" is near.

Hearing this, Cid decides to join the "Rampage" event as Shadow by single-handedly decimate entire Ghouls and Vampire who had been wreaking havoc in the city in the process, while at the same time Cid gave the same warning about a near "Rampage" when he had rescued Marie along with some prostitutes in the red-light district and a task force from Magic Swordsmen Association led by Claudia who was almost annihilate before he heads to the Red Tower.

On his way to the Red Tower, Shadow encounters two of Lawless City's Monarchs, Yukime the Enchantress and Juggernaut the Tyrant who are fighting until he stops their bickering and they decide to enter the Red Tower and face the Blood Queen. When Shadow arrived at the Red Tower, he was intercepted by the White Demon who guard the tower, which in the end Shadow disposes him after he cut him in half as when the two Monarchs entered the tower first and Shadow climbed the outer structure building of the tower until he saw the room that he was about to enter which contained abundant treasures.

During the time when Lawless City was originally still in turmoil due to the riotous actions of Ghouls and Vampire on the eve of the Red Moon, Beta had already infiltrated the Red Tower with 664 squad to collect information from the tower's library to study further of Eta theory's research of Demon Possession relation on the Vampire Progenitor's blood. Unexpectedly however, they are suddenly interrupted by the arrival of their master's older sister, Claire and the Vampire Hunter Mary who are attempting to rescue her brother from being sacrificed to revive the Blood Queen. Despite being suspicious of one another's motivations, both parties agree to leave each other alone and resume their original goals.

Claiming the Red Tower Monarch's fortune into his possession, Shadow then leaves the treasury to face the Blood Queen early. But on the way, Shadow had managed to saved his sister Claire and the person who he had met before Mary who almost died from Juggernaut's deadly attack by swiftly kicking him, causing him to smash into a wall leading to the outside which made him fall to the bottom of the tower while Juggernaut cursing Shadow for his disturbance. A moment after that, Shadow then left the two of them behind.

Despite the setback, Shadow had timely reached the top of the Red Tower as he entered the room until he was confronted by the vampire guarding the coffin and was also the real instigator on the "Rampage" that is currently taking place in Lawless City, Crimson by slashing at him relentlessly which kept him from recovering quickly with his regeneration abilities until Shadow defeating Crimson with ease when he stabbed his heart and turns him into a pile of ash.

As a result of his expectations being too high, Shadow was unable to meet the Vampire Progenitors because the coffin that might have belonged to Elisabeth turned out to be empty and in the room there was only himself and the corpse which was actually a sacrifice used as a medium when Crimson was performing a ritual in reviving the Vampire Progenitors. Shadow ponders that by the time he saved his sister, he was too late for his fight event against the Blood Queen. However, since there is no one in the room, Shadow temporarily decided to return to the treasury to collect all the wealth he could carry.

In that moment, Beta and her squad had finished gathering the information they needed and their only goal now was to recover the sample of the Vampire Progenitor's blood. Unfortunately, Beta sees that her master's sister, Claire Kagenō is seriously injured by the attack of the awakened Blood Queen, Elisabeth as she was about to destroy the world, forcing Beta and her squad to intervene against the Blood Queen and protect and save Claire. However, the Progenitor's power was too strong even with the two of Lawless City's Monarchs, Yukime and Juggernaut present to help being unable to defeat her.

Luckily, they were still able to buy time with Claire suddenly finding herself on par with Elisabeth until Shadow arrives in time to rescue his sister and allies till he duels the Progenitor himself. Subsequently, the two phenomenons battle against one another, however, Shadow is initially unable to counterattack against the Progenitor's onslaught due to the extra load of of the gold coins that had been gathered within his bodysuit. Nevertheless, after finally unloading the weight, Shadow decided to get serious until he finally realizes Elisabeth's true wish before unleashing his ultimate technique, "I Am Recovery Atomic" which had destroyed the Red Tower along with the Blood Queen's fortune that should have been his is already evaporate.

Despite the loss of the wealth he should have earned, Cid's experience was at least the joy of finally being able to fight Vampire Progenitors. Even Cid discovers that Claire appears to have acquired a mysterious power, although he believes this to be her latest interest. After stopping the Blood Queen's rampage and putting to an end the tragedy on the Red Moon again, the two siblings leave Lawless City after bidding farewell to their vampire friends.

Following the incident, news about Shadow single-handedly took down the Red Tower Monarch, Elisabeth the Blood Queen had spread throughout the surrounding neighboring countries, including Midgar Kingdom.

Great Trading Company Conflict
Shadow Garden continued to grow in power through the Mitsugoshi Company, because of their innovative product and introducing banking notes to the world, which they learned about from Shadow's previous life, that would become very popular among the kingdom's citizens. However, this ended up drawing the envy of many of their competitors, especially the Major Corporate Alliance, who subsequently attempted to sabotage them by attacking their supply lines and even send their best mercenaries, the Clovers to disrupt Mitsugoshi's business progress on the market. Fortunately, the meager mercenaries hired by them were no match for Shadow Garden's well-trained forces and supplies kept running smoothly.

Around the same time, Shadow receives an invitation from Yukime to come and he returns to Lawless City to visit her White Tower following the cessation of Elisabeth's rampage and the Crimson Tower destruction. Shadow was approached by Yukime when she informed him about the detail situation regarding Mitsugoshi Company and the Major Corporate Alliance have currently been engage in a covert trade war, then tells him that a confrontation between the two major trading company firms is a lucrative business proposal for them. The reason Yukime invited Shadow was to build a cooperation business with a partnership offer in requesting his help to carry out her plan of destroying both trading faction simultaneously and hoard the whole market for herself.

Realizing Mitsugoshi's situation that are currently faced after learning the information, Shadow concluded that he had lost control of his organization. Although the members remained blindly loyal to him and believed that he could easily see through his plans, they had, in fact, completely cut him out of the decision-making process. In addition, he was not receiving any share of the profits made by them. But if Yukime also plans to join the conflict, then her plan will be affected on Mitsugoshi as well. Left with little choice, Shadow planned to decides on destroying the current Mitsugoshi Company and form a new company, one that would be completely owned by him. Thus, Shadow accepts Yukime's offer with the condition of working under a different persona for the time being and giving him a new outfit as a disguise.

By the time when Cid was shopping with his friends on his day off before carrying out the plan with Yukime, he realized that the paper money being spent were the Alliance's bill. Knowing this, Cid is surprised that the paper money that he has been using all this time comes from Mitsugoshi Bank. Cid then studies the differences between the two banknote designs to which he finds that the MCA bill is too flashy and less detailed than Mitsugoshi's.

Only by understanding the lack in Alliance's bill to be the weakness of banknotes, Cid intends to create counterfeit notes in order to raise enough money to help the Mitsugoshi Company. Wanting his plan to work, Shadow tries to convince Yukime to manufacture counterfeits in order to inflate the banknotes' value; which will eventually bankrupt both companies if they are unable to exchange all of them. Although the plan is differs from the original plan, Yukime agrees to Shadow's plan after she understands how the credit creation system works.

While waiting for Yukime to produce a counterfeits, Cid is reunited with Delta who joins him on a bandit hunt where the two eliminate several assassins from the Alliance by chance. One of them was revealed to be Delta's brother, which she ruthlessly killed her former sibling when he pleading for his life in exchange for her return to her original family and try suggested her to become a lovers for the legendary "Great Wolf", Gettan. But Delta's actions had led the MCA to send all of the Clovers members to infiltrate at their Mitsugoshi Ltd's Headquarters along with Garter's private army and their rear guard. However, Shadow Garden had succeeded in thwarting an attempt of the Clovers' mission raid by killing all of them along with their support from behind.

Upon Cid being informed by Natsu and Kana from the Snow Fox Corporation, which is a company owned by Yukime that the counterfeit notes is finally completed and ready to be distributed into the circulation. It was at this time that Yukime's underlings began to put a plan into action by spreading counterfeits cash to the citizens and bringing the stolen gold from the capital to the Lawless City, to avoid investigation before being taken to a secure hidden base that Shadow recommended which was once a secret facility where his older sister, Claire Kagenō was held has been transformed into a counterfeit money printing factory with Yukime handling the money by organize them in a vault, while Shadow is tasked with protecting the carriage transport line of counterfeits’ distribution chain.

Adopting the alias "John Smith", Shadow stole the Mitsugoshi Company's entire stock of banking notes by replaced them with counterfeits cash and slowly distributed them until he surmises that Shadow Garden will be the one to detect their schemes first. As he expected, Shadow Garden received bad news that counterfeits had entered circulation several days after the Clovers' attack while they still undermine the Major Corporate Alliance's aggression.

Faced with a potential financial collapse, Gamma has been spreading rumors about counterfeits and sending a Numbers team to start an investigation to find the location where the Alliance's counterfeits cash are coming from. After narrowing down the list of suspicious trade routes, the Numbers team led by 664 along with 665 and Rose Oriana managed to locate the carriage that carrying the gold coins and followed the carriage's directions to the place where the gold will be kept. However, 664 squad has been intercepted by a mysterious guard named "John Smith" (without knowing that he was their lord, Shadow) immediately ordered the team to turn back till the team refused his order and decide to attack him, but one by one they were defeated and immobilized by John Smith.

Not wanting the truth of his mission to be known, Cid in his John Smith persona assigned to protect the carriages is forced to drive the squad away by pretending to fight them until they become immobilized by using his magical steel threads. However, Cid let the team go and warns them not to get involved. Realizing the difference in strength, 664 then orders her team to withdrawing to Mitsugoshi and will report about the failure that occurred in their mission by providing information about the appearance of John Smith.

After Gamma and Alpha heard the report from 664 team about their failure mission when the team had encountered a mysterious person guarding the carriage that carrying counterfeits cash named "John Smith", they learn that John Smith is from another organization because his description is not from a Cult with his abilities estimated to be on par with the Seven Shadows, so they both decided to send Delta in dealing with John Smith.

Few days later, Cid sensed Delta's presence and luckily he was already takes precautions attempt by masking his scent after he take a bath and wearing perfume so his identity would not be known as when he started preparing to confront her. But unexpectedly, Delta quickly recognized his identity and Cid is forced to use his authority because he did not want his "confidential secret mission" to be exposed by sending her to Lawless City on a mission to eliminate Juggernaut which will keep her busy for a while, in return for obeying one of her requests.

Although Cid was able to get Delta to leave by sending her to Lawless City so as not to become a troublesome factor that could leak his mission, Cid's actions caused unrest within Shadow Garden because Delta had disappeared during her tracking on "John Smith" and found strands of her hair that had been forcefully pulled out at the scene. Gamma and Alpha had been so worried about Delta's sudden disappearance that they both considered the worst possibility that John Smith had killed her.

Due to Delta's alleged death and Rose's warning about his capabilities, Shadow Garden had taken "John Smith's" threat seriously and Alpha realized that the spread of counterfeits was his doing from the start because he took advantage of the conflict situation between Mitsugoshi and the Alliance that were currently still fighting against each other throat, aims to sowing his seed from the shadows so he can trigger a credit crisis.

A moment later, Beta would provide her report to her lord Shadow regarding Mitsugoshi's dire situation which has recently been threatened by the circulation of counterfeits cash that continues to rise lately, as well as Delta's disappearance after a confrontation with the enigmatic John Smith. Although Shadow is unable to provide assistance in dealing with "John Smith", Beta has been given a notepad from her master which contains an ciphered memos that which already have been encoded in 5 different languages and will be sent to the lab at once to get it analyzed by Eta for decryption.

In order to retrieve the stolen money despite knowing that John Smith is quite a formidable opponent, Alpha personally intends to face this new adversary alone until she is shocked upon learning of his true identity to discover that "John Smith" is actually Shadow. Heartbroken by the revelation, Alpha demanded an explanation from Shadow by attempting to subdue him to force an answer out of him. However, Shadow easily overpowers Alpha then leaves when he knocks her unconscious before saying that later she will realize that this is the best choice when everything is over.

Time has passed since the event, Shadow celebrates the success of his plan together with Yukime after having finished storing all the gold coins that have been collected so far and no one can find a clue that will be linking to the location of their hidden facility because all the investigation teams from the Alliance can only get as far as Lawless City, although his disguise identity has been discovered by Shadow Garden. The only thing that needed to be done in order to complete the now almost successful plan was to liquidate the real MCA bills that Yukime had prepared and it was only a matter of waiting for the credit crisis to start after the liquidation process is over. That way, the Alliance would not have enough funds to make exchanges, so they will be run out of reserves until the Major Corporate Alliance would eventually fall. Then Shadow will give all the money he has gathered so far to Shadow Garden, according to his plan after Mitsugoshi Company goes bankrupt.

Following Alpha's confrontation against Shadow, the rest of the Seven Shadows learnt about their master's "supposed" betrayal but decided to keep the secret on John Smith's true identity just to themselves, not wanting the truth to severely cripple Shadow Garden's morale. As the credit crisis grew worse with both Mitsugoshi and the MCA suffering backlash by the public who demanded their gold, Gamma considered to give away what remained of their funds to placate them for a while. Just when all hope seemed lost, Nu arrived to inform Gamma and Alpha that the secret leader of the Major Corporate Alliance, Gettan was in league with the Cult of Diablos who has planned to cause a credit crisis by introducing counterfeits money in order to cripple Mitsugoshi and even having to use the Alliance as a sacrificial pawn for their plan.

Then, Beta arrived to present an encrypted message by Shadow which Eta helped in translating its contents. The message revealed about Shadow's alliance with a partner and how the two started to instigated a credit crisis be secretly gathering all the gold and placing it in a secure location they know of, which is where his sister was held captive. Due to the precise timing of the message being sent and the discovery of Gettan's connection with the Cult for their involvement, Shadow Garden believed that Shadow was actually helping Mitsugoshi to overcome the credit crisis but had to change his identity to ensure their company's identity as a Shadow Garden front would not be exposed. When Delta finally returned to Mitsugoshi after completing her mission given to her by Shadow, the reinvigorated members headed out to acquire the gold, under the assumption that was Shadow's plan as well.

It was then that Shadow Garden then proceeded to their designated location where they are able to find and collect the stash before infiltrating Gettan's residence, discovering a letter addressed to his former fiancé, Yukime, the White Tower Monarch of Lawless City and Shadow's collaborator. Later, Cid discovers that the enormous cache of funds the two had accumulated has disappeared much to his shock and anger. Although Cid feels that it is impossible for Yukime to take all the money without his knowledge, he assumes that Shadow Garden took the money as he arrogantly gave them an encrypted message that revealing the location of the money, allowing them to retrieve it and causing them to believe that this was his plan all along. In fact, Cid was certainly believe that they couldn't have possibly decoded the message so soon.

When hearing the news from the Monarch servants that Yukime has been captured by Gettan, Shadow assumed that he's the culprit behind the theft. Locating the former lovers, Shadow in his "John" outfit confronts Gettan as he intends to kill Yukime while demanding the location of his spoils before the two of them start a fierce duel until Shadow subsequently beat the Alliance leader to death despite the beastkin's use of supplements. Misinterpreting his adversary's final request to protect Yukime, Cid assumes the stockpile had been buried under snow and begins digging after rescuing the latter when he healed her past wounds.

Then when Yukime will allocate the money kept in the vault at the hideout, Alpha approaches her by telling her that all the gold coins that was in the vault had been taken as she gives Gettan's letter to her till Yukime learns that the real perpetrator who is the only one responsible for the misfortune she has experienced all this time and forced Gettan's actions that had ruined her life were the Cult of Diablos.

In the end, Alpha also revealing Shadow's connection with the Mitsugoshi Company as Shadow Garden's public front and surmised to Yukime that all the course of events which transpired so far had been according to Shadow's prediction whose already played out exactly how he wanted it to from the very beginning when he setting his plan into motion by leveraging her partnership in collaborating to raise money aimed to incite a credit crisis while at the same time Shadow helps Mitsugoshi and Yukime to avoid from being destroyed and fall into ruin. Despite the revelation, Yukime who is grateful that her life had been saved twice by Shadow, tells Alpha that she has decided to work with Shadow Garden until the two are agreed to form an alliance against the Cult of Diablos and departed together to discuss their plans.

When the credit collapse time had begun, Shadow Garden used all the gold coins that already accumulated to replenish their reserves with their master help to raise money and will be given to the citizens, which is where Mitsugoshi are able to ride out the credit crisis. Thanks to Shadow's efforts, Mitsugoshi Company has survived from the verge of bankruptcy because they are successfully regained the people's trust in banknotes after adequately conducting the money transactions on their gold coins.

Since Mitsugoshi had maintained the citizens trust to the point when they are able to improved their company's social standing in the public eye, then the final outcome was already been decided during the credit crisis that plunged the MCA into ruin. Knowing the Alliance's swift fall, Mitsugoshi bought all of their assets and becoming the winner in the regional trade war.

Not only winning the commercial trade war, Mitsugoshi took advantage of the Major Corporate Alliance's downfall to eliminate their competitors and gain monopoly rights to fully control the market, also further increasing their trust on the consumers, as well as elevate their position until it become so powerful that even the kingdom's government could not risk defying them and was financially dependent on the commercial monopoly.

Afterward, Mitsugoshi Company's position is now arguably more powerful than ever with the elimination of all of its competitors, who wielded comprehensive influence over the Midgar Kingdom and Snow Fox Corporation's newfound alliance with Shadow Garden, making their presence in Midgar will be nigh unassailable when they already taking all of the Cult of Diablos funds along with their influence in the kingdom.

Oriana's "Black Rose" Civil War Wedding
During the winter, Shadow Garden assigned 664's squad on the task to conduct a reconnaissance and information gathering mission to investigate the Cult of Diablos' activities in Oriana Kingdom which is now in a war torn state due to the ongoing civil war, after receiving reports that the Cult had deployed 40 First Children to the Saisho Stronghold which had fallen to Perv Asshat's faction two days ago under the command of 559 to find out what the Cult's plan is after for sending their strongest troops at a small fortress near the Midgar Kingdom's border of little strategic value.

Arriving at the fort, Shadow Garden squad follows the Cult group led by "Named" First Children, The Raging Gale Kouadoi to the location of the nearby historical ruins site and monitors their actions by sneaking from the forest, until finally getting a ring from the ruins thanks to Queen Reina Oriana who is the mother of Rose Oriana as 666. At that time, Victoria suddenly decided to change the objective of their initial mission to collect the ring from the Cult because she feel that the ring is the "Key" by engage and eliminating all Cult groups in sight, including the queen despite receiving 666's comprehension.

Instantly, Victoria immediately attacked the Cult group while quickly slaughtering some of its members and intending to targeting the queen, but Rose Oriana decide to intervened by attempting to save her mother from 559's attack and asks her superiors for clarification as she wasn't given the proper explanation about the mission this time. While giving animosity on each other, Kouadoi takes the opportunity from their discord to take Rose and her mother hostage as leverage to order her squad to surrender, even revealing that there are 3 other leaders in the Cult group. Despite the dire situation, 559 responded to Kouadoi do as he wish after telling that Rose is unfit to serve Shadow Garden even declared her being branded as a traitor to Shadow Garden for her brash behavior after seeing her act as a form of insubordination before launching herself at the remaining members group of the Cult "First Children".

When Kouadoi sending Rose and her mother back to the capital to be taken to Duke Doem, 559 along with 664 and 665 engages in combat and almost killing entire the Cult forces, including their reinforcements for continuous three days and nights although they sustained severe injures and exhaustion. After running out of mana, 559 is nearly killed by Kouadoi who survived until she is saved from death when Shadow killed Kouadoi. Upon 559 informing Shadow about the traitor in Shadow Garden's midst, Shadow moves to deal with the matter himself. However, Shadow was actually moving to interfere with the announced wedding between Rose Oriana and Duke Doem, unaware of Rose's identity as 666.

In the Oriana's royal capital, Cid is trying to entering the palace until he meets Epsilon who recognizing her master and tries to help him gain entry by using her access influence in her public persona, Miss "Shiron" as the genius pianist. Cid accepts Epsilon's offer of introducing him as her apprentice so that he can infiltrate the royal palace on his own while carrying out the mission at hand. However, the two of them were intercepted by Perv Asshat and his entourage who were observing the palace and intending to check on Cid so that they would not be suspected him of being intruders due to changing the castle's premise rules.

To be able to prove his legitimacy, Doem tried testing Cid on doing his performance in front of the venue of nobles. Cid accepts his challenge when takes up the test so that Epsilon's reputation that has been built so far will not be destroyed by playing the song "Moonlight Sonata" to proof of his validity and ascertain his claim as a apprentice of the famous Shiron. After playing the "Moonlight Sonata" to high acclaim, Cid is rewarded with praise from Epsilon and Doem who is unexpectedly so touched by his performance even wants to try asking his name. However, Cid refuses to answer as he decides to leave after steals a small box of what he thinks is a wedding ring from Duke Doem's pocket unknowingly that the ring is the "Key" to his mission.

After putting on a dazzling performance to gain entry, Cid then goes straight to Rose who is locked up in her room to speaks with her regarding her reason to abandoned her dreams and tried to convince her against the marriage. However, Rose would try to reaffirm her marriage and dissuade Cid from stopping her out of fear for his safety as when Cid refutes her response that she was not being honest to herself. Cid then is forced out of the room by Rose from where he was entering through the balcony when Perv entered Rose's room and Cid who is hiding behind the balcony of the room notice when he learns after overhearing their conversation that Rose is forced to comply by Perv to marry him because she was threatened for the safety of Rose's mother, Queen Reina who had being held hostage by Perv which he slapping Rose on her cheeks as a reminder that her mother's survival depends on her cooperation. Realizing Rose's coerced situation, Cid decides to leave the palace to think about his next move.

Later that night at the Mitsugoshi Deluxe Hotel right beside the company's branch store in Oriana, Epsilon reprimands Victoria for failing her mission for the first time due to Rose Oriana's alleged betrayal, although the blame lies with Epsilon who also feels guilty and responsible for not telling Rose the truth about her mother. Epsilon tells Victoria that Shadow has taken action on Rose's matter with him has already meet her and retorted that he did not do anything to Rose before they dwelled on what burden their master carries.

Epsilon then continued her discussion with Victoria regarding her previous mission after justifies her decision to retrieve the ring which maybe a key that connected to the Black Rose that once annihilated 100,000 Velgalta Empire's soldiers in a single night and nearly almost destroyed Oriana Kingdom in an instant. Knowing that the Cult's true goal is Black Rose, Epsilon had already sending a message to Alpha for send additional personnel before Cid interrupted their conversation as he entered the room and both of them are affectionately welcome him by offered him a body massage. Cid tells them that during his infiltration, the investigation that he conduct had already went well and the only thing left to do is nip the problem at its source and his mission will be complete.

The next day when Cid is in a room at the palace when Epsilon tells Cid about the Black Rose, Cid misunderstands what Epsilon means to the point that he wants to see the "Black Rose", unaware of its status as a weapon of mass destruction before Cid asks Epsilon about the queen's chambers. Cid then infiltrates the castle and headed to the queen's chamber, only to learns that Queen Reina and Duke Doem are in cahoots. Already making his choice after discovering the true answer to Rose's root cause, Cid sees and encounters Epsilon wandering around the palace when she explains that she look for the key. But Cid says that there is no need to search the key, much to her surprise not knowing that he himself holds the key that Epsilon mentions.

On that same night, Cid in his Shadow persona went to the balcony of Rose's room as Rose thought that he personally come to kill her for betraying Shadow Garden until Shadow said to Rose that he wanted to bring her to showing the truth about her mother. Shadow brought Rose to where her mother was at and learned that she was never hostage and that she was conspiring with Doem in taking over her kingdom. Completely shocked by this revelation, Rose lost consciousness and found herself in her room after being brought by Shadow. Having no allies to save her kingdom and rendering her father's sacrifice for nothing, Rose succumbed to despair.

When Rose regained consciousness, she witnessed Cid playing the "Moonlight Sonata" while conversing with her. Despite having to push him away, she believed that he was an illusion until he gave her a heartfelt speech. Cid remarked to Rose that he gave up everything for the one thing he cherished most and the world has become too bright to the point that she would lose sight of things she really cared about. He noted that these lights lead people astray so instead of desperately trying not to lose sight of everything she sees, as she is going through this and told her to sit down under a moonlight and gaze at the one thing she truly cares about before asking what it is that she truly cares about the most before vanishing as Rose already answering his statement, unaware that the ring he was going to pawn off is left at Rose's room.

A moment later, Cid returns to the hotel and bathes in the Mitsugoshi hot springs open-air bath together with Epsilon after noticing that he has lost the ring he brought and kept. As Epsilon learns of her master's thoughts on how the operation will proceed, Cid informs her that everything is at its place and the showdown will be taking place at the wedding ceremony by the time Rose give the signal, which makes Epsilon decide to make the necessary preparations to gathers more members without realizing that he was the one who reignited Rose's resolve to save her kingdom and coincidentally gives Rose a "key" on the ring that he accidentally left behind, to which Cid is unaware the worth of the ring's true value.

On the next day at the beginning of the wedding ceremony that had taken place, Rose Oriana with her ambition to save her beloved country slipped a ring from the person she loved onto her finger which turned out to be the true identity of the ring is the "Ring of Succession" which could only function after Rose wore it, then the ring active and a recording of the late king Raphael Oriana's projection appears which contains the truth about what happened in front of everyone in attendance to all citizens, starting from revealing the crimes of Duke Doem and his collaborators, including the Cult's conspiracy that already exists in the kingdom, as well as his struggle to continue fighting to protect his country before the king's tape ends by entrusting Oriana Kingdom's future to Rose.

With the truth revealed, Rose confronts her ex-fiancé who is desperately trying to dodge all the accusations he faces by giving him the capital punishment as the fight for her kingdom begins. An enraged Doem for being made the scapegoat for the Cult attacks Rose in a duel which he initially doesn't believe to be evenly matched until Rose overpowered Doem and wounding him as she delivers an attack by deliberately avoiding a fatal area of his body so Doem can confess his sins. Before finished his sentence, Doem is suddenly decapitated without anyone noticing. Believing that Rose murdered him, Reina tried cursing her before being cut down by a man as he reveals himself and even finishing off the guard without bringing any weapons.

Knowing that the man could not be underestimated, Rose asked who he was when he answered Mordred which made Rose recognize the man's name during her time in Shadow Garden and realized that the person before her right now is the 9th seat of the Knights of Rounds. Mordred tells Rose that he's here to do a little cleanup of his subordinate's blunderer and tells her that the key has been passed down, which allows Mordred to freely open the door as he demonstrates the true form of the Oriana Kingdom's legendary phenomenon by creating the Black Rose, letting loose hordes of Obsidian Beasts upon the entire population in the capital. After many beasts that already descend from the sky, Mordred announces the Cult's rule of eliminating all witnesses by declaring that the banquet of slaughter has begun.

Understanding the signal intended by Shadow coupled with the current situation becomes very chaotic, Shadow Garden then took action to suppress the huge monster outbreak with 664, 665, including Victoria who helped Rose in eliminating all the beasts that had roamed the capital to which they attacked the citizens, while two of the Seven Shadows, Epsilon and Beta confronting Mordred the Knight Beyond Men for "checking the facts from their answers on a few things" with him before they kill him.

However, Mordred didn't seem to care about their responses because he didn't want to waste his time as Mordred took something from his pocket and threw it into the Black Rose to summon the Grand Ruler of the Fourth Realm, Ragnarok in order to wipe out the members of Shadow Garden along with the capital. Rose who just saw Ragnarok's figure couldn't hide her fear until she felt trembling after feeling its overwhelming power. After seeing the certainty on the creature, Beta and Epsilon believe that Ragnarok is also one of the rulers from other realms that Zeta and Eta had mentioned from their previous mission report in Laugus.

When Ragnarok is about to carry out its attack, Shadow, who had initially hidden to see the action of Princess Rose's birth as a monarch, decided to ambush the creature when he managed to cut off one of Ragnarok's wings, with Mordred praising his action then mock him that his efforts had angered Ragnarok, before Shadow cutting him off and mock Mordred back while he proceed to deal with the creature by turning Ragnarok's attention to him and driving the creature to outside the capital.

With Shadow successfully bringing Ragnarok out of the capital to engage in a deadly battle with the creature, Beta and Epsilon battle Mordred on the standstill confrontation in a triangle position until Mordred then decides to strike at both of them in the blink of an eye before they leap backwards at the same time, though his invisible attack only able to wound the cheek of the legendary Faithful, Epsilon. Mordred compliment them for dodging his attack until Beta reveals his secret, after noticing that he is using the Invisible Sword from the long-lost elven artifact that was supposed to be kept in the elven capital and Beta accuses him of stealing the sword until asking him to return the sword he stole.

Then Mordred taunts them for trying to take the sword away from him before Epsilon suddenly strike him down by throwing her attack filled with magic, much to his surprise as Epsilon along with Beta gave him a warning shot because they both want Mordred to provide them information that he knew, in order to confirm the understanding of their answer on the researched discovery material obtained from both Zeta and Eta's investigation results while they were still forcing Mordred to speak by continuing their fight.

Outside the royal capital, Shadow begins to fight against Ragnarok to the death with Shadow starting the fight as he delivers continuous slashing attacks to the creature. Even though Ragnarok tried to attack, Shadow is able to overcome it because he understood the creature's nature like Delta until finally he is able to overwhelm Ragnarok and Shadow began to cut the creature's body.

Meanwhile at the same time, Epsilon and Beta were able to drive Mordred into powerless to fight back along with Rose joining in until both sides decided to stop the fight and having a conversation to which Mordred revealed the existence of Realm that are countless other worlds beyond their own world in entire other dimensions, the definite organism of the Demon Diablos base in the First Realm, until the truth of the Black Rose incident that almost destroyed Oriana Kingdom during Velgalta Empire's siege, accompanied by the Cult's agreement with Oriana over the ownership of Black Rose which is the portal gate that can connect to Realms with compensation of royal blood and giving the majority of the kingdom's tax revenue to heavily invest in art so that Oriana does not have the military strength to rebel against the Cult of Diablos, so become their puppet state.

Rose, who recently heard all the information she listen from Mordred, become learns the true story of the Oriana Kingdom until he reveal to Rose that she is the descendant of the hero who defeated the demon Diablos who is blessed with an incredible amounts of magic who should have been handed over to the Cult of Diablos when she was a baby with her blood is needed for their experiments and finally finds out more when Beta tells her that the Cult were defanging the kingdom through their culture as for their entertainment, also about her father's struggle to started his plot to gain independence from the Cult by forged an alliance with Midgar Kingdom to build a force to rebel against the Cult after breaking the old agreement to severed ties with the Cult because the king sought to break the cycle as he want to end the Kingdom's old tradition and the real purpose of sending Rose to allow her to attend the Academy was for asylum to protect her from the Cult's grasp.

Hearing the relevance of this truth, Rose is already become enraged at the Cult's unpardonable actions towards her father that she told Mordred that she would not let his evil plans to succeed and declared that she would rebuild her kingdom with her own two hands, but Mordred who was not afraid and felt pride utterly retorted the attempt of action that the princess is about to undertake is just wishful thinking to which even he said with confidence that the Cult will take direct control of Oriana after Ragnarok will burn the kingdom to the ground, despite Black Rose's unstable state.

Later after the conversation, Shadow defeated and slayed Ragnarok with ease after sending his body parts flying one after another much to Mordred's surprise. Left with no option, Mordred decide to consumed a piece of Ragnarok's flesh as his last-ditch effort to absorbs the demon's power until become mutated and fought Shadow. In their final encounter, the mutated Mordred is nearly vaporized when Shadow used his "I Am Atomic" attack, which his attack has causing the Black Rose to nearly collapse and Mordred's severed head had gone inside the portal.

But after that, Shadow suddenly then dives into the now collapsing Black Rose, followed soon after by Beta before it closes in its entirety. Hearing the news, Alpha immediately rush over to Oriana Kingdom to take charge of the damage control operation by rebuilding the capital and making a decision for Rose about her own kingdom situation.

Return to Earth
Shortly after Shadow and Beta exited the Black Rose, they both arrived in Japan on Earth, Shadow's former world as Minoru Kageno. However, Cid thought of going inside the portal thinking it would be cool for him never to have thought that his old world was already in a post apocalyptic era as he saw that the once great nation had been ravaged apart into ruin. Since their Slime Bodysuit were too conspicuous, they decided to change into the regular clothes when Cid crossed Tanaka's skeleton in his apartment which is the place where they had arrived earlier, after seeing the abnormal bite marks and realizing something had happened that could have been so damaging that Japan could end up the way it is today.

After wearing ordinary clothes while walking around and looking all over the dead city, Beta who already notice as she concluded that the land is neither belong to Midgar or Oriana after seeing the view of the building structures that she saw looked more advanced than their world and also Beta recognized the text used by Shadow from the newspaper they had found until she asked Shadow directly about the info she had obtained, which made Cid realize that he had not expected that the written text he had write in the letter that Beta had brought with her before during his previous mission to collecting money for Mitsugoshi Company would be translated so quickly that he guessed while feeling afraid that all the knowledge he had been imparted came from his former world would be exposed if Beta finds out.

Knowing that none of the things and skills he previously taught to the Seven Shadows and the other members in Shadow Garden belong to him and realizing that over time the secrets of his past will be exposed no matter how he kept hid, Cid decides that they must return to their world quickly and must find a way home before Beta can figure it out his charade while she's studying Japanese.

While on their way, they smelled stench of death coming from the abandoned hospital so they decided to check, only to find a whole room full of bloodstains and signs of a struggle that had just happened with an estimated 5 days ago but no bodies were found. When Cid and Beta finished investigating the cause of the absence of bodies around them, they both suspect that the bodies were eaten by some kind of animals as both of them noticed something amiss and prepare for an immediate ambush by the Magical Beasts that laying waste at Oriana Kingdom earlier, but the two of them were able to finish off all the beasts that were there easily and realized the abandoned hospital that the two were investigate has already become a nest for magical beasts.

While contemplating their next steps, Shadow and Beta sensed the presence of several people who had just come into the hospital which makes them decide to make contact with Earthlings by pretending to faint on the spot so that the group members brought them to their base until finally Shadow and Beta are taken in the hospital at Nishino University which is currently being used as a human settlement under the name called Messiah.

In order to gain a sense of reassurance to them, Cid uses a pseudonym by using his old name "Minoru" who has amnesia due to magical aftereffects and Beta uses the name "Natsume" who pretended to be mute which made her unable to speak due to the symptoms of a disorder that the Earthlings call today is "Awakened" by having a backstory posing as siblings who survived after escaping from the attack of magical beasts at the time their former base was destroyed.

By deciding to make Messiah the gathering place for information, the two act separately in moving independently on their respective missions as well as searching for Mordred's severed head that has been brought here which is the only key to being able to return to their world with Shadow being under routine check up by nurse Yuuka to check on his condition, while Beta will be taken in by Akira Nishino under the pretense to research her body by observed and studied her. Beta believed that the plan was to obtain information from two different sources, but in truth, Cid didn't want Beta to discover that he was actually from this world.

The next morning, Cid discovered the true events of Japan after he reunited with his former classmate Akane Nishino who she currently looks to be in her twenties when she tells in detail about the sudden appearance of a Magical Beasts that arrived on Earth out of nowhere which has destroyed all the countries around the world until nothing left and Earth's human population has declined by about a tenth or a hundredth of the original population since their arrival at three years ago, so the remaining population have settled in small communities and would occasionally wage war against one another for resources.

Akane also told Cid that earth's people had now amassed power and knowledge to be able to fight these magical beasts, they even reestablished communication with all countries until then learn the discovery about Magic that had been discovered by group of researchers overseas and found that there were people in foreign countries called knights who can control magic and could fight back against the magical beasts, which made Japan start trying any various ways to be able to research magic until Japan managed to got their first knight one year ago with her golden hair which is an oddity for Japanese person who became Japan's beacon of hope and people called her "Original Knight" until they built a utopia known as Arcadia which was used as a shelter refuge for tons of people, scholars from all over have gathered there and countless knights became Awakeneds until suddenly Arcadia was destroyed due to the "Original Knight" actions who had slaughtered everyone there and disappeared without a trace, which made the incident make Japan has been ruins until humanity became more selfish in continuing to battles started breaking out between all bases for resources, both in stealing supplies and even knights were either being kidnapped or killed.

At the time of his check-up, Cid had been given the latest update from Yuuka about Stampede which is a dangerous phenomenon carried out by packs of magical beasts that gather to build nests and breed to increase their population until once the nest reaches a certain threshold, the beasts will go rampage and start breaking up into groups in gathering resources by hunting humans for food to make preparations for building a new nest. In fact, Messiah is surrounded by the remaining fifteen nests out of the twenty nine nests within the territory of which fourteen of them had been destroyed before to which Cid realized that his old school, Sakurazaka High School was already become the biggest nest in the area and even Yuuka explained about a subspecies that is far more powerful than the average beast which were categorized as "Apex Beasts".

Cid is then be taken under care by Akane after his check-up are over and will be taken to her room, even giving him the old Sakurazaka student uniform which made Akane cry after when Cid is already wearing the uniform which turned out to be his old uniform for a moment when he recognized the many bloodstains on the uniform's wrist. When Akane went out to the laundry to wash his clothes, Cid went around the room and saw two types of drugs each white pills and blue capsules as he thought that Akane is a stimulant drug addict until Cid felt someone approaching the room and he met again with his another former classmate Yuudai Saejima who is currently the Knight Vice Commander who accuses him of being an enemy spy who infiltrated Messiah and intends to carry out his actions before being prevented by Akane who protects Cid from Yuudai until Yuudai arrogantly finally decides to leave the two of them.

Beta who is currently still under Akira and the researchers' supervision who are examining her body after carrying out an observation process on her by using her "Natsume" persona along with the fake mute to weaken their guard, started her act of secretly stealing all the technological items within Messiah to learn more, intending to implement them into Shadow Garden's plans because Beta felt that with the most advanced technology she brought from this world that has an invaluable value which could increase Shadow Garden's power and would even be able to until it developed rapidly, also will allow Shadow Garden to progress by leaps and bounds because the civilizations on Earth were far more advanced in terms of knowledge and technology than their world.

Meanwhile, Cid would secretly sneak out of the base to hunt and destroy numerous magical beast nests nearby that even Nishino Elementary School which is the second closest large-scale beast nest to Messiah after Sakurazaka Middle School he had already destroyed, until the higher ups in Messiah aware on his actions, even Cid in his Shadow persona had saved Akane along with all the other members present there from the attack of the Magical Beasts group by eliminating them easily, to the point where they called him as the "Black Knight", unknowingly thwarting schemes orchestrated by a rival human faction.

When Cid reached Akane's room on time after eliminating the magical beasts, Akane came and started a conversation that was quite heavy for her when she told Cid that she had a wish to die but couldn't remember it in her memory and even felt she had a sense of killing and had hope of being saved, until suddenly they both heard the news that Yuudai had been murdered and Akane was declared involved in his murder because many eyewitnesses saw their argument last night with Knight Commander Haitani were conducting a full investigation and Akane was temporarily declared to be held in the room until further notice, which made Cid defends Akane after noticing the abnormality of the strange cut wound on Yuudai's body at the photo that Yuuka bring and asking her to help out in the investigation when the nurse takes Akane after giving her medicine to soothe the psychological trauma she has from an incident that has passed.

During his search for solid evidence to lighten Akane's sentence, Cid borrows the laptop from the person he knocked out and looks at the forum about Akane's reason for killing Yuudai along with the appearance of a suspicious Black Knight who they think is a plot by The Alliance, until he sees an online forum account name with the name "xXxSilverHairedElfBabexXx" which Cid thought might be Beta because of her characteristic appearance as he wrote his own account name under the name "FallenAngelofRebellion" which then caused an uproar between the two of them then in the end "xXxSilverHairedElfBabexXx" was kicked out of the forum after giving death threats to Cid, without realized that it was Beta who threatened him while she is learning to use the laptop.

Later in doing his detective activity, Cid sneaks into the morgue to get clues by checking the wounds on Yuudai's body until he finds out that these messy wounds were used to hide his original wound, which is a bullet wound and tries to tell Yuuka about the findings of his investigation in order to clear Akane's name from all suspicions which makes Yuuka tell Cid not to tell anyone for fear of being targeted by the killer.

But at nightfall, Cid sensed two people hiding with murderous intent as they shot at him which made Cid take advantage of their actions to fake his death by pretending to be shot and giving fake blood to his clothes, which made both assassins believe that he is died. However, the assassins were surprised after checking his body which was completely unharmed even though there was already a lot of blood around him.

Feeling that his beautiful performance has been exposed, Cid decides to catch the two assassins who are very shocked to see him still alive by grabbing their necks, even though they try to rebel by shooting him point-blank at his forehead and hitting him in the face. Hearing their talk, Cid realizes that these two assassins were ordered by someone who wanted him dead until Cid threatens them while lifting them up while strangling them by threatening the assassins to speak by giving them a choice to reveal who is the mastermind that order them and will be given a quick death or feel agonizing from his stranglehold from the grip on his both hands that made Cid tell both assassins that this is what happens when figured out too much about something that weren’t supposed to, until Cid decides to finish the assassins off after hearing that Stampede is getting approaching to Messiah and decides to leave when he realizes the true mastermind's identity.

Knowing that the situation outside is a perfect time for leaving the base, Beta who was still in her persona saw Akira who came suddenly is quite surprised that she should have been unconscious because she was given a sedative while he is carrying a white box inside which turned out to be Mordred's severed head which had been cryogenically preserved which was the key to reactivate Black Rose so that Beta and Shadow could return to their world. However, Akria plans to use Beta so that she can become a stronger knight than the "Original Knight" by mixing her blood with the head's blood before Akira is suddenly shot from behind by someone who then the shooter shoots her gun at Beta's forehead and decides to leave after taking Mordred's head.

Seeing that the situation is clear, Beta decided to put her bodysuit back on while taking all the electronic equipment in the room into her slime bag before retrieving Mordred's head and asking where is the place between these lab rooms to delete data to Akira who was dying until he easily gave an answer to her while Akira at his last moment asked about who she really is with Beta answered the name of her organization, Shadow Garden. Before leaving the room after getting the information she obtained, Beta asks Akira again by asking if he knows about "FallenAngelofRebellion" but he not knowing about it which makes Beta decide to kill him when she meets him and immediately decides to leave while leaving Akira dead.

At the same time, Cid as Shadow has suddenly appeared before everyone in Messiah after finishing off the Apex Beast whose nickname is "Brute" by splitting the beast in two in just a single slash and stopping Stampede from using his greatest attack "I Am Atomic Sword" who obliterated the entire Magical Beasts horde along with the surroundings in the attack direction from his slash. As Cid slowly begins to walk towards the base without hesitation, all of the Messiah knights reflexively turned around and tried to run away from him out of fear into trembling after actually witnessing how terrifying his immense overwhelming power was until they all got out of his way, not even a single knight who tried to stop him by completely realizing the vast difference in level from the "Black Knight".

While he is still walking, the Knight Commander Haitani who had opened the door base for him asked him why he was here and what he wanted in Messiah to which Cid only replied that the time has come for the door of darkness is cast open which would take the world advances to a new field while Haitani inquires about who exactly he really is until he gives his name as Shadow before disappear. Then, Cid meets again with Beta who this time suddenly can barely speak Japanese because he has learned the language in such a short time, although not very fluent and asked about what she is carrying with Beta replied that she brought all the goods in this world which would later be used to strengthen Shadow Garden with all the advancement of knowledge possessed on Earth have common links which is connected to the "Shadow Wisdom". When Shadow tells Beta about the plan proceeding, she says everything is in place and points the direction of the enemy that carrying the item they are looking for.

Upon arriving there, Cid confront the mastermind who turned out to be Yuuka who was carrying the unconscious Akane as he told her that she is the one who sent the assassins because he realized that Cid had not told anyone about all the stories from the investigation of Yuudai Saejima's sudden murder and only Yuuka who knew the details of his investigation, which made only explained who is the assassins' employer that wanted him dead to the point that even Yuuka who had been shocked after seeing Cid completely unharmed praised his deduction, even took out a gun from her lab coat to fire a warning shot at him but Cid didn't give reaction at all.

Then when Cid asks the reason for killing Yuudai, Yuuka says that she got rid of him after getting all the necessary info because Yuudai was an insider from the start and she revealed herself as a spy for The Alliance. When Cid wants to confirm about her goal in destroying Messiah, Yuuka reveals that the plan came from the Alliance itself because she has her own plan to take revenge on Akane whom she sees as a murderer who killed many people while she told Cid all the true stories at the time of Arcadia's destruction that Yuuka and her husband were researchers who worked together with Akira Nishino to create Knights in fighting against Magical Beasts with Akane as a test subject which in the end their first Awakened trial project was successful from the start after her eyes turn red. Although the initial attempts at her experimentation were very successful, Akira was not satisfied with the test result as he started dabbling in forbidden research in an attempt to make Akane stronger until her black hair turned golden, coupled with an increase in her strength that was much powerful than before.

Despite Yuuka's husband tried to stop Akira from keep going on his experiment, he persistently continued to do his research which in the end one day Akane's powers grew beyond her control until Arcadia was destroyed with Akane who had gone berserk because she could not control her enormous strength slaughtered the people of Arcadia and Yuuka's own husband is become one of the victims of her massacre. Ever since that day, Yuuka has followed Akira until she found him and saw that Akira was still continuing his research which made Yuuka intend to take revenge on the Nishino family to make them pay for their actions that took the life of her husband who was killed in the Arcadia massacre by telling Cid that she has eliminated Akira and plans to end her grudge against Akane by injecting blood from Mordred's head which she calls a "Brute" to force her to recall all the events of the massacre and all the lives of the people she killed until Yuuka reveals to Cid that Akane Nishino is the "Original Knight" created by Akira after injecting her with purified beast bodily fluids a tiny bit at a time.

After injecting Mordred's blood, Akane who is now transformed into the "Original Knight" state suddenly kills Yuuka who then hugs her before laughing and letting herself be killed in Akane's hands by saying that this is her revenge until Akane who already has a sense of consciousness as the uncontrollable magic power in her body had suddenly gone outburst to the point of destroying the surrounding area. Seeing her condition, Cid intends to save Akane when he transforms into Shadow by stopping her. From their brief fight, Cid manages to restrain Akane with magic chains from the slime that comes from his afterimage, though she still struggles to break free until Cid then heals Akane after restoring her magic power while Cid tells her to try to stop being kidnapped so much from now on, before Akane lost consciousness and hears a familiar voice from Cid.

By successfully stopping Akane's rampage, Shadow and Beta who had previously photographed their master's greatness from a distance using Akria's camera that she stole then prepared to reactivate Black Rose by adjusting the magic from Mordred's head to create a portal gate to their world. After Cid had first already entered the portal very quickly, Beta could not enter because her luggage which contained all the tools and documents that she had collected during her time in Japan could not fit the size of the gate which is too small and kept getting smaller. Before Black Rose was about to close completely, Beta is sorting out all the items that is important to take home and she decided to take the local specimen with her when she saw the unconscious Akane by stuffing her into the slime bag after selecting the essential items for her return at her home world and Beta later jump dive into the portal gate while take Akane with her.

After arriving back to their world through the Black Rose portal, Shadow rushed to the Midgar Academy in a hurry, concerned about the ending of academy’s winter vacation. However, given the urgency of his travel, Alpha who is still holding a meeting in the director's office at Mitsugoshi hotel suspected that there might be something important happening at the Academy, whether related to the Cult or perhaps even Diablos. Alpha then hears from Victoria's report that Zeta had returned from her mission without reporting to her and joined Shadow at the Academy for a new mission, also saying that Beta had brought some interesting things back with her during her time in the Realm.

Once Beta had entered the meeting room after returned from their adventure in another world, she informed Alpha and Epsilon that she had managed to bring back some otherworld's technologies back with her as well as one of its inhabitants, from whom they could hopefully learn how to use these items in order to increase Shadow Garden's power. However, Alpha placed the Otherworlder under Beta's own custody, arguing that she needed to take responsibility and fearing what Eta would do if she got her hands on an alien as they continuing the meeting about Rose Oriana situation for becoming a new monarch of Oriana Kingdom for their plans.

The Academy Disappearances
Despite successfully taking control of the Oriana Kingdom using Rose as an ally ruler, Shadow Garden learns that the Cult managed to minimize their gains by creating a faux story about the new queen, namely using her previous act of patricide and blaming her for summoning the "Black Rose" in the first place. The international defamation resulted in Oriana Kingdom becoming a heretic state, thus losing all allies and trade capital. Although knowing that other nations will rally against them, Shadow Garden was not deterred and continued supporting the kingdom from the shadows whilst trying to expose the Cult. With Oriana's current situation, Gamma decide to shut down Mitsugoshi Company branch in Oriana and establish their base within the country. Eta report to Alpha about the otherworlder and technology that Beta brought at the other world.

Shadow Garden also noticed that the Cult had begun running out of Tears of Diablos. In response, the Cult's Fenrir Sect kidnapped students at the Midgar Academy, intent on awakening and recovering the right arm of Diablos sealed underneath the Academy so they might make more Tears. In response, Zeta led her secret personal branch division to stop the Cult and rescue the students. In the end, the Fenrir Sect was defeated after the Shadow and Zeta's group killed several key members, including Fenrir himself, and the students were saved.

Unbeknownst to the rest of Shadow Garden, however, Zeta had her own objective: to make the Shadow immortal using the Tears, allowing him to rule the world from the shadows and prevent the Cult from ever rising again after Shadow Garden had defeated them. To this end, she recovered Diablos' right arm rather than destroy it and later forced Claire Kagenō to absorb it after confirming that she had become Diablos' host.

Bloody Midgar Serial Murder Terror
TBA

Equipment and Artifacts
Aside from their prowess, Shadow Garden have access to technologies far more advanced than their contemporaries thanks to the initial inventions of their Lord, Shadow and his vast knowledge known as the Shadow Wisdom (影かげ の 叡智えいち). The Seven Shadows (mostly thanks to Eta) were able to develop all sorts of tools, outfits, and things recreated from Shadow's ideas and memories by creating effective equipment and artifacts for use in missions. Not only to increase their strength, but also to further assist them in making their work easier. Also, Shadow Garden can improving their research about any objects that are likely to be very useful by collecting them, especially snatching artefacts from the Cult for data collection and among other things. These things are:


 * Slime Suit: Revolutionary apparel invention created by Cid Kagenō/Shadow with nigh limitless utility. Refined by Cid and the Seven Shadows since Shadow Garden's founding, the upgraded version of the suit is now used by everyone, from the Seven Shadows to all subordinates in the Numbers.
 * Slime Weapons: The shapeshifting ability of the bodysuit extended and hardened into weaponry for close-range, distant, and melee combat. These weapons are as finite as the mass of the slime bodysuit.
 * Slime Masks: Are like prosthetic masks.
 * Slime Cloaks: In the anime members of Shadow Garden, use the slime jelly's shapeshifting abiliy to create a black cloak, they are also able to fashion a hoodie to cover their faces to hide their faces to hide their idenities.
 * Magico Training Weights: Some magical devices, created by Cid Kagenō/Shadow. Said, invention, allowed to help strongly, in military training, increasing one's strength, and keeping it in shape, the devices as such, can be readjusted, to apply the desired weight.
 * Locator of Possess: An Artifact created by Eta, allowing Shadow Garden to locate the possessed girls all over the world.
 * Homing Pigeons: Pigeons trained to find a recipient anywhere to deliver a message, a common form of communication in the world.
 * The Rolapoid: An artifact created by Eta, based on Cid's 'Shadow Wisdom', that is a reverse engineered instant camera with self-developing film.
 * Anti-Magic Nullifier: Artifact created by Eta, to counteract the effects of any artifacts that weaken one's magic, or are draining it. Said artifact was created, in an inspired way, from the remains and other reports, of the Eye of Greed.
 * Morse Code: Secret means of communication, taught by Cid, to Eta, which allows long-distance communication, safely.

Founder

 * Shadow (Cid Kagenō) (No.00) : Leader; "figurehead".

Shadow is the founder, main leader, figurehead with absolute authority, and ideological 'inspiration' of Shadow Garden. Here, the seven shadows and all the members under them revere and hail him as the ultimate ruler and mastermind.

Seven Shadows
The Seven Shadows are the original seven members of Shadow Garden, recruited and trained directly by Shadow himself after being named with the Greek letters from Alpha (Α/α) to Eta (Η/η). They are highly regarded within Shadow Garden by having their own magnificent capabilities and are the general overseers of the different facets of the organization.
 * [Α] Alpha (No. 01) : Director of Shadow Garden; Second-in-Command.
 * [Β] Beta (No. 02) : Head of mission logistics; Operations Coordinator.
 * [Γ] Gamma (No. 03) : Head of Finance and Administration; Mitsugoshi Company Founding President.
 * [Δ] Delta (Sara) (No. 04) : Head of Main fighting force; Leading the One-Woman Army.
 * [Ε] Epsilon (No. 05) : Head of Espionage and Infiltration; Special Intelligence Spymaster.
 * [Ζ] Zeta (Lilim) (No. 06) : Head of Exploration and Reconnaissance; Secret sub-branch Division Leader.
 * [Η] Eta (No. 07) : Head of Research and Development; Chief Engineer.

Numbers
The Numbers are those recruited by the Seven Shadows with superior skills to serve as the organization's combat force assets. Their enumeration starts from 8 and continues onward, with the latest mentioned number recently reaching 666.

Named Numbers
Numbers members whose abilities were recognized by the Seven Shadows and serve as their direct subordinates after being granted a Greek letters like them, based on certain numbers in recognition of their abilities on the ranks from Theta (Θ/θ) to Omega (Ω/ω).
 * [Ⲓ] Iota (No.9) : Mentioned by Gamma to Eta after they rescued Kai (Master of Garden)
 * [Λ] Lambda (No. 11) : Shadow Garden's drill instructor.
 * [Ν] Nu (Nicoletta Marquez) (No. 13) : Gamma's personal aid and bodyguard.
 * [Σ] Sigma (No.18) : Mentioned by Beta to Alpha when Cid had already registered at the Academy (Master of Garden)
 * [Χ] Kai (Karen von Herzog) (No. 22) : Epsilon's subordinate; Cult of Diablos' defector as Named First Children and former member of the Velgalta's Seven Blades.
 * [Ω] Omega (No. 24) : Epsilon's subordinate

Regular Numbers
Nameless infantry who have above average capabilities with fierce training to become the best warriors. However, they do have earn the right to challenge the "Named Numbers" to obtain their position by defeating a gatekeeper.
 * 89: High-ranking two-digit number; Gatekeeper.
 * 559 (Victoria) : High-ranking three-digit number; member of Zeta's secret branch.
 * 664: Queen Rose's bodyguard.
 * 665: Queen Rose's bodyguard.
 * 666 (Rose Oriana) : Queen of Oriana Kingdom.

Zeta's Branch Division
Shadow Garden's sub-branch division as an extremist faction that was secretly founded and operated solely under the supervision led by Zeta. These rogue division serves the organization, but operate independently at the same time.
 * Nina (Designation Unknown) : An unofficial member who becomes Zeta's personal subordinate under her direct command.

Allies
Although Shadow Garden had many connections, they didn't have many allies and associates. Shadow Garden had been used their network for trying to make relationship with important people, central figure, even the famous or notorious individual to serve as reliable partners and trustworthy companion in working together to eliminate the Cult of Diablos by secretly aiding their activities.

Colleague
These people are comrades in arms who shared the same interest of eliminating the Cult in their respective acts and coordinating to support Shadow Garden's operations.
 * Yukime: Queen of the Lawless City and owner of the Snow Fox Corporation; Mitsugoshi Company trade partner.

Supporters
They are co-operative friends in need who have their own goals but are allowed to be strong advocates in helping the organization's mutual objectives.
 * Mist Dragon

Acquaintances
These individuals who have affiliations with Shadow Garden but are not members of it.
 * Claire Kagenō
 * Akane Nishino

List of Successful Mission Accomplishments
Shadow began Shadow Garden with Alpha's recruitment and expanded to the initial seven members, having taught the "Seven Shadows" a myriad of knowledge playing to their respective strengths. When they expanded, his teachings became the corner stones of instruction for the rest of Shadow Garden's 600+ membership, who hold him in the highest reverence.

Due to Cid's previous memories from his prior life in modern day Japan, he "grants" his knowledgeable staff quite a few tips in improving Shadow Garden's science, business, economic, commerce, agriculture, and technological understanding in what he describes as knowledge from the "Shadow Wisdom"; when it's merely his previous life's memories. In just two years and using what little information Cid gave them, they managed to build an extraordinarily powerful organization to take on the Cult of Diablos, rivaling their public assets as well as their covert resources.

The rest of Shadow Garden's membership think that Cid is a powerful and all-knowing leader who has everything in the palm of his hand, because they are impressed by how Cid is seemingly able to see through the Cult's plans and come up with countermeasures quickly. Whenever he goes about his Shadow persona, he (unknowingly) creates new opportunities for success for them, such as:

(Two Year Timeskip; on Seven Shadows' command)
 * Making Shadow Garden a world-class superpower organization
 * Establish Shadow Garden's worldwide influence
 * Investigate the potential threat of the mysterious Templars
 * Human possessed rescue
 * Learn out more about the Cult of Diablos

(Present; 1st Year on Cid's command)
 * Exposing the Cult of Diablos to the public alongside their debut.
 * Fenrir Sect weakened.
 * Eliminated Zenon Griffey.
 * Rescuing Princess Alexia Midgar.
 * Saving the Midgar Academy, despite branding as "criminal".
 * Eliminating terror attack mastermind and former Knight of Rounds, Lutheran Barnett.
 * Gaining intelligence on the Eye of Avarice by collecting the remains of destroyed artifact for further study.
 * Infiltrating Lindwurm's Holy Sanctuary to investigate and acquire any information about the Cult.
 * Attaining photo copies of ancient records via The Rolapoid.
 * Annihilating Sanctuary.
 * Eliminating Nelson Sect.
 * Recruiting Rose Oriana after the Bushin Festival.
 * Preventing plotted assassination of King Klaus Midgar.
 * Strength assessment of Beatrix, proclaimed as the goddess of war.
 * Securing Elisabeth's blood sample for studying Demon Possession.
 * Securing ally in reviving and healing Vampire Queen Elisabeth.
 * Alpha and Beta learn Red Mist vampire ability.
 * Earned respect of White Tower Queen, Yukime.
 * Making Midgar Kingdom economically dependent on Mitsugoshi Company.
 * Removing Mitsugoshi's competitor, the Great Commerce Alliance, by taking all of their assets after the death of alliance leader Gettan.
 * The Cult, who secretly had associated ties with the Alliance, were defunded within the Midgar Kingdom after their funds were seized by Mitsugoshi.
 * Yukime allies with Shadow Garden.
 * Snow Fox Corporation partners with Mitsugoshi.
 * Lawless City becomes allied territory.
 * Oriana Kingdom becoming an ally state after the Black Rose incident, despite branding as "Heretic State."
 * Exposing crimes of Cult puppet, Royal Chancellor Perv Asshat.
 * Exposing treachery of Queen Reina Oriana.
 * Eliminating Mordred Sect.
 * Installing allied ruler, Queen Rose Oriana.
 * Retained loyalty of Rose Oriana.
 * Making preparation for eventual proxy war against the Cult's international instigations. (Ongoing)
 * Attaining Earth's more advanced technology to further strengthen their power.
 * Hosting otherworlder for studying her prowess.

(Present; 2nd Year on Cid's command)
 * Preventing Fenrir Sect's mission of using Diablos' right arm to resupply Tears of Diablos.
 * Eliminating Fenrir Sect.
 * Zeta secretly bonded Claire Kagenō to Diablos's right arm.

In just one year after the Shadow Garden operation began when Cid entered the Academy, until he was 16 years old, their success was so effective that it made the Cult of Diablos's power decrease exponentially. Even their core combat power the "Knights of Rounds" has already been reduced by about a third.

Unlike the Cult who have grown complacent in their hubris as they ignore and dismiss the Shadow Garden threat, they also fail to innovate as they has purposefully done so to maintain their policy, allowing the organization to rapidly amass greater wealth and power until Shadow Garden surpassed the Cult in overall might in a few short years. The rapid development and progress of Shadow Garden's efforts agitated the Cult so much, which made them serious about destroying Shadow Garden after their "Round Table Committee" council meeting.

International Relations
While Shadow Garden as an organization had only recently established itself in the Other World, their initial areas of operational activity wasn't as large as the Cult's. Thus, the organization's strength had to continuously grow over time with each success and acquisition of new resources. In the first year of its public emergence, Shadow Garden's sphere of influence had spread widely throughout the region around the Midgar Kingdom, also had earned the reputation of having the strongest military force which surpassed the Cult of Diablos and are feared by all neighboring countries.

Midgar Kingdom
Shadow Garden originates in Midgar due to their founder, Shadow, being a citizen, and Alpha being a resident. During the initial two years in secret, they recruited mostly around Midgar to their still sprouting ranks. After going public by their fifth year, they showcased their power by crippling several Cult installations with the few few months of public exposure. With the attack on the Midgar Dark Knight Academy, devastating the Church's holy site of Lindwurm, Shadow besting Princess Iris Midgar and Beatrix, and the regime change of Oriana Kingdom, Shadow Garden has accepted the branding as a terrorist organization with overwhelming military power, compared to Midgar which is already renowned for their own military superiority.

Oriana Kingdom
As the nation of the arts, Oriana had culturally renounced military favor and kept an alliance with Midgar for allied security, despite having their own Dark Knight order. With the death of King Geerk and Rose Oriana becoming a fugitive with Shadow's protection, Oriana was against Shadow Garden during their civil war between the Pro- and Anti-Chancellor factions. After Rose exposed the Cult's machinations of the Chancellor Perv Asshat's crimes and his collaborators, her ascension to the throne was mired by the Church branding Oriana a heretic state, which economically sanctioned the nation internationally. Despite this, Shadow Garden quietly seeks to aid Oriana and support her reign, even without the resources of their public front in Mitsugoshi Company.

Velgalta Empire
Shadow Garden's standing with Velgalta is limited, but the empire likely holds the organization in identical standing as their neighboring nations. Shadow Garden has been infiltrating Velgalta through Mitsugoshi's stimulation of the new housing and automobile markets, due to major petroleum deposits in the empire and reconstruction from their historic war campaigns. As Velgalta is the culturally inverse to Oriana, Shadow Garden is also utilizing their Mitsugoshi connections to spy on the empire, who is likely to join a coalition of nations against Oriana due to their heretic branding. Due to her past in their military, Lambda routinely consults the Seven Shadows regarding their missions in the "Country of Swords."

Trivia

 * The name of the Shadow Garden highest members, starting from Alpha to Omega receive their names based on the Greek alphabet, from the numbering 1 to number 24. This was taught to the Seven Shadows, by their master Shadow, without asking him the details of the meaning of this.
 * Only 9 people of more than 600 member in Shadow Garden had received their power directly from Cid, these being are the original Seven Shadows, Victoria and Rose Oriana.
 * In the ranking of who is the strongest among the original members: Shadow firstly, Alpha, Zeta, Delta, Beta and Epsilon equally, Eta, and Gamma lastly.
 * In terms of power, Cid is ahead of Alpha, who is above Delta.
 * Delta would be the third strongest of the group, being the most gifted in terms of strength, hunting, and the "Berserker type", being almost the same as Zeta, who beats Delta in terms of magic control and will be more self-controlled, while Beta and Epsilon are tied for fifth place.
 * Eta and Gamma are the weakest members of the Seven Shadows due to the former's sleep disorder and the latter's discoordination, but Eta is better in combat so she is "ahead" of Gamma. However, the amount of magic they possess is so great and their strength is so enormous that even their clumsy movements are enough to kill elite soldiers.
 * Only Alpha and Epsilon can cure the people who had the Demon Possession beside Cid.
 * Until the current date, it has not been possible to explain the details of how Alpha and Epsilon were able to learn and be able to cure the possessed girls, as their teacher Shadow does, in the Light Novel, Web Novel, Manga, or in the anime. those details could only be revealed in-game.
 * The members of Shadow Garden, including the "Seven Shadows" are extremely hostile against anyone who threatens or hurts Cid, to the point that they will not hesitate to slaughter the individual or group that poses a threat to their master, even if the man himself doesn't care.
 * Claire Kagenō is the only exception to this behavior, as it is seen as sibling squabbling by the Seven Shadows, who know their master cherishes his sister.
 * Apart from a few exceptions, the Numbers as the name implies is a designation for assigned members who use each given number and called upon by their respective number as their new name. The "Named Numbers" are the top twenty-four members who are named after Greek letters and considered commanding officers.
 * The directives orders given by Cid are considered absolute as they take priority and were given precedence, even if they are contradict the orders of the Seven Shadows regardless of their instructions. Such as, when Cid suddenly enter the arena during the Goddess's Trial to fight Aurora who would become the key to enter the Sanctuary and Cid as "John Smith" ordering Delta to fight Juggernaut to continue his secret undercover work.
 * Delta usually bites all Shadow Garden members that are weaker than her, an act of asserting dominance within Beastkin, so only the other highest ranking Named Number members can deal with her directly, especially the other six Shadows.
 * Iota and Sigma are the only members of "Named Numbers" who have already been revealed in the game.
 * Nearly every Shadow Garden's members was disinherited and abandoned by their parents due to their suffered from the possession which caused their families to disown them.
 * Due to being dismissed by family, friends, and associates, the original members of Shadow Garden gave the order, at the request in part of the majority of Shadow Garden members, to completely discard their previous identities and names, in order to distance themselves from their previous lives and adopt their new identities as members of Shadow Garden.
 * All members of Shadow Garden have an undying loyalty to their leader and master Shadow, which most of them worships and reveres their leader as an infallible being who can foresee the future and is neigh invulnerable, some of them have even falling in love with him.
 * They repeat all of his quotes like religious scripture. Also, they formed an entire culture around his knowledge and teachings, even they've rebuilt an ancient city in his honor. The more extreme members of the organization believe Shadow is a God in Human Form.
 * This fanaticism the point where they form a "renegade splinter faction", secretly under the leadership of one of the Seven Shadows, Zeta.
 * Due to having a "sentimental relationship" with Cid, Alexia earned the ire of many within Shadow Garden. Especially Beta, being the most hostile towards her in her public persona as Natsume Kafka.
 * When Beta found out that Cid and Alexia were dating, she turned red with anger and jealousy. In contrast, Alpha did not give much importance to this fact as she knew it was only a cover.
 * Shadow Garden were deemed suspicious by the Midgar Kingdom following Alexia's kidnapping. Due to the efforts of the Cult of Diablos, particularly Lutheran Barnett as he manages to frame them for the attack on the academy, the organization is seen as a renegade armed group and are wanted by the Kingdom.
 * Alpha admits to Gamma that she thought Shadow Garden was the force of good and the Cult of Diablos was the force of evil. However, after listening in Shadow's "statement", this inspires her to have Shadow Garden take any action, including illegal and shady ones to accomplish their goals even if meant having the entire world against them.
 * Rose notices that the Shadow Garden were framed for the crime because of three things; the swordsmanship, the prowess and the real Shadow Garden members aside from Shadow were composed of women. After seeing the night and day difference of the real Shadow Garden members, particularly Shadow's, Rose notes that only the real Shadow garden members use Shadow's swordsmanship, even she went on to warn and prevent the Midgar Kingdom from making an enemy out of such a powerful group, but was promptly ignored.
 * During the Red Moon Arc, Marie's companions are skeptical of Shadow rescuing them and Yukime brands them as a mysterious armed group.
 * Most of the public is generally unaware of the exact details of the Shadow Garden's existence beyond what the authorities have told them, and even they do not have much information.
 * Even the Cult of Diablos, for all of their connections, is only aware that Shadow being the leader of the Shadow Garden organization, the "Seven Shadows" being his most powerful and trusted subordinates, and the organization is exclusively made of female members (Shadow excluded).
 * Their achievements alone, like subduing Elisabeth at the Lawless City during a "Red Moon" makes every nation fear them, even Alexia Midgar herself shudders at the thought that the various powers will have to lick their boots to curry favor from them.
 * The Head Librarian himself warns Alexia that the Shadow Garden may become a bigger threat than the Cult as he confidently declares in his dying breath after being severely wounded against Shadow that the whole group are the "strongest people in the world", even telling her not to fully trust & rely on them.
 * Until now, according to the light novel, the web novel and the manga, has all the Shadow Garden members, including Shadow, wear a mask to cover their identity. Although on a few occasions they have taken it off in front of their enemies or acquaintances when they want to. But in the anime, none of the Shadow Garden members wear the mask, only wearing a black hooded cloak which casts a shadow over their eyes where the masks would go, which generated a small controversy with the fans of this work. Since the idea is that no one from the civilian public and their enemies must know their secret identities.
 * From the KAGE-JITSU mini-episodes on Kadokawa's YouTube channel, Eta's development of the Locator of Possess allowed Shadow Garden's membership to skyrocket to 600+ members within one month's time.
 * In the anime final episode, the technology that Eta are doing communicated with the other Shadow Garden members using Morse code is the same like the real life Numbers Station as she making the Wireless Telegraphy method and using the Telegraph Key for transmitting message.
 * The Shadow Garden is almost a complete inverse of the Cult of Diablos. Although both are organizations that act in the shadows and have great influence and power, they have completely opposite goals, ideals and beliefs;while the Cult wants to resurrect the demon Diablos and bring him back to the world, the Shadow Garden wants to stop them. The Cult of Diablos kills anyone who stands in its way, indiscriminately, causing genocides and pandemic massacres, while the Shadow Garden, while they can harm common criminals, they only kill members of the Cult or those associated with it.