On the cliff, the exhaust vent leading to the giant furnace was opened.
Scorching steam clouds and firelight sprayed out from it.
This passage led straight to the bottom of the furnace.
Above were high-temperature flames and molten alloy.
At the bottom was the reservoir that provided it with cooling.
The design of this kind of giant furnace originated from the hands of dwarf craftsmen of Bohemia.
Although the Dwarf King had been stripped of his title for participating in the rebellion against the emperor during the witch hunts seventy years ago, and the dwarf race had lost its autonomy ever since, the forging techniques they left behind had always been used by the empire.
Mechanics of every nation coveted this kind of furnace, because it was truly too advantageous for forging super-metals, and only super-metals could give rise to super-weapons including Steam Armor.
Yet precisely because of the ultra-high temperatures required to smelt metal, the giant furnace exhausted the water in the reservoir every hour and had to be briefly extinguished so that cooling water could be replenished and the accumulated high-temperature exhaust discharged.
A pitch-black figure stood before the exhaust vent.
In the red pupils beneath the black hood was reflected a raging blaze.
“Christine’s blade is in a place like this? What on earth is Veda doing, actually letting that person’s relic fall into the hands of that idiot Moke…”
She stepped into the exhaust pipe.
The valve slammed shut behind her.
The dark figure raced through the narrow pipes at high speed.
Her body was so hot it seemed it might burst into flame at any moment.
She was not wearing a heat-insulating asbestos suit, but the bloodline of the Bruehl family made high temperatures unable to harm her.
The interior of the furnace was not a sea of fire, but a vast network composed of intricate ventilation pipes.
Steam turbines drew massive amounts of air into the furnace, and the high-temperature exhaust was then discharged into the valley through the ventilation pipes.
The black figure was running through the maze-like ventilation pipes.
She tightly gripped a map drawn on asbestos in her hand.
This map had been obtained through several hands from a Carolingian worker who had once participated in the construction here.
Yet the map differed greatly from the actual situation.
The complexity of the pipes far exceeded what the map showed.
Perhaps that worker had been delirious from the heat and remembered it wrong.
After all, in an environment this scorching, even wearing an asbestos protective suit, a human mind could hardly stay clear.
Every breath was like inhaling flame.
The brain was stirred into chaos by the high temperature.
Even she, a vampire, felt a little dizzy.
How could fragile humans be spared?
From behind her came a faint, sharp sound of metal scraping, as if some unknown existence were secretly following.
But each time she stopped and looked back to search, that eerie sound vanished in an instant.
The invader let out a helpless light sigh and slowly turned around.
“You’re already dressed up as an iron can. Is there still any need to play hide-and-seek?”
The indigo Steam Knight emerged from the firelight.
The long-range cannon mounted on its back was especially striking.
The invader slowly raised both arms.
Her hands were empty.
Daring to invade the garrison of the Order of the Hundred Flowers, she was actually bare-handed.
Cornflower slowly closed in.
Although Commander Phine’s order was to kill without mercy, under circumstances where the other party had no ability to counterattack at all, the knight who abided by martial virtue still gave rise to the thought of capturing her alive.
The invader slowly leaned back.
She was standing at the edge of a high platform.
That was a platform dozens of feet high.
Below was a fire-vent rolling with flames.
She fell straight down and disappeared from the knight’s eyes.
Had the invader committed suicide?
Cornflower walked to the edge of the high platform and looked down.
It was as if magma were flowing in a pitch-black abyss.
Anyone who fell in would have even their bones burned to charcoal, right?
Before the knight could think further, a night-owl-like black figure shot up from below.
The knight of Cornflower instinctively jolted.
The mechanical iron claws instantly sprang out and, carrying cold light, swiftly met the black figure.
The black figure came on fiercely yet did not dodge.
The two connected in an instant.
The iron claw had only just touched the black figure’s arm when it split open a gash as if a table knife were cutting into cream.
Muscle and clothing tore.
The splashed blood instantly vaporized in the scorching air.
Yet the invader did not pause in the slightest.
Under the knight’s gaze, the wound on that injured arm actually healed at an astonishing speed.
Muscle and skin re-knit.
In the blink of an eye it was as good as new.
Before the knight could react, it clenched into a fierce punch.
The fist wind howled and smashed hard into the knight’s faceplate.
A tremendous bang.
A spray of sparks leapt from the faceplate.
The knight only felt his head suffer a fierce blow, and the world spun inside his skull.
In the suffocating extreme heat of the furnace pipes, his body began to sway out of control and briefly lost its balance.
At that moment a hand reached out like a ghost and steadily gripped Cornflower’s wrist armor.
The knight snapped back to himself and looked closely.
That was actually the invader’s hand.
That hand looked slender, yet it possessed astonishing strength, locking on like an iron clamp so that Cornflower could not break free.
The power cores ran wildly.
Steam sprayed out in torrents from the gaps.
Vast power surged along the left arm like a tide, trying to break this restraint.
But the armor that was like a steel giant was as powerless as a child before the invader.
No matter how it struggled, it could not move the other party an inch.
The armor on the left wrist slowly deformed.
The invader suddenly exerted force and twisted off Cornflower’s left wrist.
Steam Armor was far taller than the knight, so the knight’s hands and feet could not reach the extremities of the armor.
The invader had not actually injured the knight inside the armor, but because the nerves were connected, he still felt pain as if his wrist bone had been snapped.
The knight forced himself to endure the pain.
His right claw swept out swiftly, carrying the sound of wind, as if to tear the invader to pieces.
But the invader’s figure flashed and easily avoided it.
The airborne right claw only traced a mark through the air.
Before Cornflower could launch a second counterattack, the invader’s figure moved like lightning and instantly straddled Cornflower’s shoulder.
Her strength and speed displayed an absolute overwhelming advantage before the Steam Knight.
Her attacks fell on the armor’s limbs like a violent storm, wantonly destroying.
Every twist and tear was accompanied by the wailing of metal.
The steel limbs were snapped in her hands like fragile branches.
She then picked up that broken steel limb and stabbed it fiercely toward the relatively fragile joints of the armor.
Under this string of attacks the surface of the armor was covered in cracks.
A pained death rattle came from inside the armor.
That was the damaged power core making its last struggle.
But the knight of Cornflower still relied on stubborn will, used his trembling legs to rise with difficulty, and once again assumed a fighting stance, unyielding battle intent in his eyes.
The invader seemed finally to feel bored.
Her gaze fell on the dark-golden chain exposed at the broken place of the armor’s arm.
That chain was like a steel tendon, flashing with a cold luster under the high temperature.
She reached out, lightly drew out the chain, wound it around Cornflower’s neck like a snake, and slowly tightened both hands.
The knight felt death approaching and used his last scrap of strength, both hands clutching that chain for dear life.
The Steam Armor’s power cores let out an overloaded roar and belched dense white steam.
But all of this was in vain.
With a heart-rending muffled thud, Cornflower’s neck armor cracked and shattered like porcelain.
The steel giant, as if its soul had been extracted, slowly collapsed to the ground, raising a cloud of dust.
The invader lightly leaped down from its back, yet did not notice that the gun mount on Cornflower’s back was slowly rising.
This was its last counterattack.
If that shell, originally meant for siege, hit the invader at such close range, even if she possessed an undying body she would instantly be reduced to powder.
The next instant the giant cannon let out an ear-splitting roar, the sound like sinking thunder.
Yet at the very instant the shell was about to leave the barrel, the invader turned like a ghost and fiercely stuffed the wreckage of Cornflower’s left claw into the muzzle.
A boom.
The shell exploded inside the chamber.
The powerful shockwave flipped everything around.
In that explosion, the life-fire of Cornflower’s knight was completely extinguished.
The hot wind produced by the explosion briefly lifted the hood that covered the invader’s face.
In the last moment of his life, the dying knight used all his strength to open his eyes and see clearly the face of the one who had killed him.
Bright golden short hair glittered in the firelight.
Scarlet eyes held coldness and mockery.
Between faintly smiling cherry lips, sharp fangs were vaguely visible.
There was no doubt she was a vampire.
Yet in the instant his consciousness faded, a trace of daze flashed through the knight’s mind.
Memory surged back like a tide.
He seemed to see the student days of several decades ago.
That face had appeared in the swordsmanship textbooks of the military academy.
She was the founder of the Five Swords Under Heaven…
The knight could not recall her name, but he clearly remembered that the founder ought to have lived out her natural span of years in worldwide glory…
Carrying endless shock, the knight’s thoughts stopped forever.
His body, together with the armor, became wreckage beneath the furnace.
Soldiers draped in asbestos cover-robes finally arrived and instantly surrounded the invader layer upon layer.
They held heavy firearms, muzzles pointed at the invader, yet no one dared fire the first shot.
Only because they had all personally witnessed that soul-stirring scene: that human-shaped monster had actually strangled a Steam Knight to death with her bare hands.
“Out of the way!” a brave soldier roared, shaking open the dust cover of a Maxim machine gun.
He stood at the position farthest from the invader and still had time to shoot.
The soldiers who had originally been about to close in and attack together understood at once and immediately retreated.
Although they had not been enfeoffed with armor, as members of the Order of the Hundred Flowers, years of training had given them tacit coordination.
A single look was enough to convey one another’s intent.
In an instant, dense firelight poured down toward the invader like a rainstorm.
That firelight interwove, forming a net of death.
It seemed no mortal body could withstand an attack so fierce.
But in the next instant the invader suddenly lifted the wreckage of Cornflower.
The huge armor blocked in front of her like a shield.
She instantly closed in on the soldier who was firing, seized that machine gun from his hands and spun it.
The surrounding soldiers fell one after another amid flying sprays of blood.
The soldier whose machine gun had been seized used all his strength to snap the ammunition belt.
He knew well that a killing tool with ample ammunition must never be allowed to fall into the invader’s hands.
Yet the moment his movement stopped, a short knife stabbed into his throat like lightning.
In an instant the invader had drawn his own regulation short knife from the soldier’s waist, then cut his throat without the slightest mercy.
The invader expressionlessly let go, allowing the soldier’s corpse to slide slowly to the ground, not a trace of pity in her eyes.
The surviving soldiers witnessed all this, and the fear in their hearts was replaced by anger.
They roared, drew their sabers and pistols one after another, and lunged at the invader from all directions.
The invader slightly raised her head, silently drew the short knife that had just cut a throat, and lightly spun it in her hand.
That seemingly casual motion, yet the soldiers simultaneously saw several different sword techniques in it.
Each form seemed to contain endless killing intent, making people shudder.
In an instant the black figure darted among the soldiers at high speed like a ghost.
Wherever she went, blood mist sprayed.
She was laughing softly, a faint smile on her face.
A moment later the invader lightly lifted her foot and kicked the last soldier off the high platform like garbage.
The soldier’s body traced an arc through the air, then plunged straight into the raging flames below and turned to charcoal.
The screams still echoed through the vast furnace.