In the white mist of steam Claire tightly gripped her revolver, trying to suppress the fear in her heart.
The figure of the steam armor overlapped with the nightmare of the summer-palace coup, yet she forced herself not to recall it.
What she needed now was calm.
The perfectly coordinated strike with Liz should have already pierced Azog’s chest cavity, yet the Black Knight before her still stood unbroken.
What troubled Claire even more was that she could use her ability for only thirteen seconds each day, and she had already used five seconds in the earlier fighting.
She could already feel the physical burden brought by the rapid loss of blood.
The most urgent matter at this moment was to escape from in front of the Black Knight.
Exposed before a Steam Knight she was no different from a small bird caught in the palm of a hand.
Claire drew a deep breath; her ability activated once more.
Time seemed to slow under her will.
In that brief instant her fingers pulled the trigger like lightning; within two seconds she fired six consecutive shots at the various joint valves of the armor, then turned and leaped into a nearby building that was burning fiercely, leaving only an afterimage that dissolved in the smoke.
Time flowed again.
Six bullets simultaneously split the air and whistled toward the Black Knight.
Only one bullet struck true; a low groan from Azog came from inside the armor, and blood mixed with steam gushed from the joint of the right leg.
The Black Knight suddenly dropped to one knee as if struck by an invisible giant hammer.
The armor weighing several hundred jin let out an ear-splitting roar as it smashed heavily onto the ground, instantly raising a cloud of dust and sand.
Inside the building a wave of heat rushed toward her.
Claire leaned against the scorched wall, still breathing hard.
She could feel her heartbeat pounding like war drums; the rapid loss of blood made her feel waves of dizziness.
Only six seconds remained.
Claire did not know how to defeat the steel behemoth outside.
In her ears there was only the crackling of wooden beams burning in the fire.
This sense of powerlessness made her feel as if she had returned to the burning summer palace of seventeen years earlier.
Whether then or now, she was equally powerless before that steam-spewing monster.
The glass beside her suddenly shattered with a sharp crash; fragments flew in all directions.
Liz rolled agilely into the building; her eyes were filled with concern and anxiety.
She quickly came to Claire’s side, knelt on the ground, and carefully examined her condition, asking in a slightly trembling voice, “How much longer can you use it?”
Apart from her adoptive mother, Claire had told only Liz the full details of her ability—including the thirteen-second daily limit.
“Only six seconds left. We’ve run into a tough one this time.” Claire’s face was deathly pale; her voice was as thin as a thread.
Her hands were tightly clenched into fists as if she were struggling to resist the exhaustion of her body.
Liz quickly pulled a blood bag from the lining of her coat.
She gently lifted Claire’s head and fed the blood bag to her lips.
She stroked Claire’s head, offering her a trace of comfort.
The bright red liquid in the blood bag slowly flowed into Claire’s mouth, bringing her a faint spark of vitality.
A flash of helplessness crossed Liz’s eyes; she said softly, “We never expected to run into a Steam Knight here either. This thing isn’t within the scope of the Fourth Agency’s responsibilities. Running away under these circumstances wouldn’t get us charged with anything.”
There was a note of persuasion in her tone; she hoped Claire would abandon this action.
Yet Claire firmly shook her head, struggled to her feet, and looked out the window.
The Black Knight whose chest cavity and knee had been pierced by bullets finally rose.
Steam sprayed out of the armor with a piercing sound, like a demon god returning from hell.
He once more wrenched free a streetlamp post, gripped the shaft with both hands, and stood upon the battlefield like an old general leaning on his lance.
At that moment a sudden roar rose outside the defensive line; a lavishly decorated formal carriage violently smashed through the piled barriers and charged straight toward the Black Knight.
The Black Knight stood unmoving and withstood the carriage’s impact with a single arm; the carriage itself shattered into pieces under the violent collision, black smoke rising from its front.
The Black Knight casually thrust the streetlamp post into the wreckage of the carriage.
In an instant an explosion boomed deafeningly; the driver’s compartment was immediately swallowed by roaring flames.
A white figure leaped out of the burning carriage like a ghost, landed lightly on the roof, then leaped upward once more.
In its hand it tightly gripped a four-edged estoc that radiated cold light; like a meteor streaking across the night sky it shot straight for the Black Knight’s faceplate.
The blade of that estoc was extraordinarily hard; the force of its thrust was such that even a bullet would find it difficult to match.
The Black Knight’s vision was interfered with by the flames, yet he saw the cold gleam of the edge flash before his eyes.
He was confident in the defense of the armor, yet the instant the sword tip touched the faceplate an unprecedented immense force surged forth, forcing him to retreat again and again.
The estoc struck the dent left earlier by Liz’s sniper shot on the faceplate in a continuous storm of blows.
Under the successive heavy impacts the alloy plating even emitted sounds of cracking.
“Rock Stance—the opening form of the Five Swords Under Heaven.” Claire recognized this sword technique; it had been taught in the swordsmanship courses of the Intelligence Academy.
The Five Swords Under Heaven was the mainstream swordsmanship of the present-day Northern Continent, composed of five different stances.
Each stance was designed to counter a different type of enemy troop, and each stance possessed a complete chain of linked techniques.
Legend said that the founder of the Five Swords Under Heaven was the Sword Saint Elise under Queen Christine.
She had attained enlightenment during the Battle of Agte, fused the sword techniques of every nation she had learned throughout her life, and with them slain a Demon Prince.
The Black Knight let out a furious roar, suddenly wrenched the streetlamp post free from the wreckage of the carriage, and swung it toward the white figure with world-destroying force.
He gripped the very end of the shaft, maximizing its length, intending to kill the enemy with a single blow.
Yet that estoc, which appeared fragile, was like an impregnable barrier and easily parried a strike powerful enough to shatter walls of bronze and iron.
Steam surged from the waist of the armor; the iron rod and the estoc flashed back and forth through the clouds of steam, every collision accompanied by an ear-splitting clang.
Wind Stance—specialized for countering long-pole weapons.
Claire was astonished by this person’s swordsmanship.
The Black Knight’s movements suddenly halted; the clouds of steam were abruptly torn open down the middle.
He rapidly retreated and finally saw the true face of his opponent—a knight clad in white plate armor, the red pattern of a fire rose carved into the breastplate.
That was the armor worn by the bloodkin of the Vandro family when they had come to support the Northern Continent seventy years earlier.
Claire’s heart tightened.
Apart from herself the only Vandro in Kent Harbor was the supervisory official Booker.
She had never imagined that the seemingly decadent Booker was a veteran who had experienced that great war of seventy years ago.
Just as Liz was raising her rifle at the window to provide covering fire, Booker had already begun to run, approaching the Black Knight like lightning.
The estoc pierced the air; the trailing note of its passage was drawn out extremely long under the high-speed flash of the attack, like the lingering resonance of a cello.
In the next instant a torrent of continuous thrusts struck various parts of the steam armor; every blow landed precisely on the bullet holes left by the earlier police volley.
Flowing Water Stance—Booker searched for the flaws in the armor with an unending series of thrusts.
The effect was remarkable; some of the armor plates dented further and shattered under the impact of the thrusts, exposing the complex network of copper pipes.
After a thrust that struck the left side of the armor’s chest, Booker halted the continuous attacks, flashed to the side, and retreated.
The left breastplate of the Black Knight had already cracked open; wisps of scorching steam rose from it, and the noise of high-frequency mechanical operation came from within—that was precisely the power core of this suit of armor!
The Black Knight followed Booker’s gaze and looked at his own left chest; he understood that the weakness of the armor had already been exposed.
He lightly tapped his breastplate with steel fingers, then crooked a finger toward Booker.
He was signaling Booker to attack his left chest—this was a challenge between knights.
Booker knew that no knight would tell an enemy his weakness on the battlefield… unless that person was about to become a corpse.
Booker Vandro.
This year was the four hundred and sixth year he had lived in this world; he was a third-generation vampire and had once been a knight of the family.
During the witch hunts of seventy years earlier Booker had come to the Northern Continent together with the family members who had been rescued by Queen Christine.
Booker and the other old fossils of the third generation actually all harbored various dissatisfactions toward the laws of the United Kingdom.
They had once been the masters of the night, treating villages and cities as their hunting grounds; naturally they did not wish to receive only a blood ration barely sufficient to fill their stomachs each month, nor did they wish for equality and equal rights with those livestock that were raised in captivity.
Until the arrival of the mechanical age shattered Booker’s nostalgia for the past.
The appearance of firearms and steam armor had caused vampires to lose their advantage in strength before humans; the several clans that remained in the Southern Continent had been wiped out in an instant.
Thus Booker had been content to sit in the office of the First Agency and eke out a living.
He liked Kent because he could feel that this city was rotting away together with him, forgotten by the times.
Yet at this moment Booker finally understood that he had never changed from beginning to end.
He was still a knight; he enjoyed the process of challenging this steel beast.
As long as he could defeat a Steam Knight it would mean that he could still become the proud self of the past.
Booker suddenly leaped upward; the estoc pointed straight at the Black Knight’s left chest, like the scythe of the god of death descending from the heavens, combining unmatched lightness with unmatched violence.
The Black Knight raised a single hand to meet it; he actually seized the blade of the estoc.
As his grip tightened the sharp edge snapped inch by inch.
In the next instant Booker was smashed heavily onto the muddy ground; blood immediately choked out from the seams of his helmet.
He struggled to remove the helmet; that pale face was half-immersed in the standing water.
Through those hollow metal eye sockets the Black Knight coldly regarded this defeated opponent.
The Black Knight lifted Booker with one hand; he had at least a dozen fractures throughout his body.
The next thing to fracture should be his skull, because that metal palm was gripping his head, and thick white steam was spraying into his face.
“Vampire… do you think that by hiding inside that shell called Cerberus… you will be accepted by humans… We are the same… both enemies of this land!”
A hoarse voice came from within the armor; Booker could tell that the Black Knight’s lungs had already been pierced—every word he spoke seemed to be vomited together with blood.
Booker remained silent; his left hand urgently groped for something at his waist.
The Black Knight keenly noticed this minute movement and let out a deep sigh; the arm gripping Booker’s head suddenly exerted force.
With a muffled and heart-palpitating sound Booker’s head was mercilessly crushed into fragments at that moment.
The white armor fell to the ground like a kite with a broken string, splashing up a sheet of water.
And in the instant Booker fell, the thing he had desperately pulled from his waist before death also slid into the standing water.
“Can Opener!” Liz cried out in alarm.
This large-caliber armor-piercing gun had been invented by research institutions of the Northern Continent; its conical bullet could effectively penetrate the armor of steam suits.
Northern Continent people contemptuously called steam armor “tin cans,” so this weapon was named the Can Opener.
Yet for the Can Opener to take effect it could only be fired while pressed against the opponent’s armor; approaching a steam armor operating at full power was no different from suicide.
“Liz, cover me!”
Claire leaped out the window; she knew this was the opportunity Booker had left them.
As long as she could pick up the Can Opener she could shatter the power core in the Black Knight’s left chest.
Even if Azog possessed some secret technique that ignored pain, an armor that had lost its power would become his tomb.
Her ability activated; time gradually solidified.
She silently began the six-second countdown in her heart and ran toward the Black Knight.
Suddenly Claire’s steps halted abruptly; her ability dissipated along with them.
Her gaze was drawn by a stooped figure—an old man who had quietly appeared in front of the Black Knight and bent down to pick up the Can Opener.
The old man’s figure was short and small; amid the fierce battle between the two knights he had slowly walked here from behind the defensive line without attracting the slightest notice from the Black Knight.
Dewitt silently gazed at the Black Knight and raised the Can Opener in his hand.
A furious roar of hatred came from inside the armor; the Black Knight swung a fist toward the old man.
In the instant the iron fist pierced through the old man’s body a gunshot like thunder boomed and struck the left chest of the armor with perfect accuracy.
Sparks flew in all directions; the armor plate turned into flying fragments of metal.
The cyan-blue power core was instantly exposed to the air, trailing wisps of steam; the high-speed operation that had been its strength had at this moment become a fatal weakness.
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