The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 32

The order to evacuate was given in the first few minutes of the infected influx, but the actual evacuation from the main street was like a nightmare that stretched out countless times.

The Steam Knight's rotary machine gun fired a fan-shaped spray of spent cartridges and black blood mist directly in front of him, the continuous roar of the six rotating barrels drowning out all other sounds.

Each swing of the chainsaw sword tore off a piece of limb, and black blood had already congealed into a thickening shell on Belfast's breastplate.

The Knights of Sword and Rose and the gray-armored knights of Romulus fought desperately on both flanks to maintain their lines, the sound of their shields clashing so densely it was like hail hitting a tin roof.

The sound of flintlock pistols from the Ross veterans grew increasingly sparse, not because they had stopped firing, but because the reloading speed could never keep up with the influx of infected.

Perfit was in the middle of the group, holding a dagger in one hand and pulling Allen forward by the other arm.

Allen's breathing mask was tilted to one side, but he didn't seem to notice. He was just holding the lead-lined sample box tightly in his arms, his knuckles as white as dead bones.

Cherzov caught up from the back of the column. His flintlock pistol was empty. He tucked the empty gun back into his waistband, drew his bayonet, the blade stained with fresh black blood.

Ludwig shouted something to her from the left wing, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of machine guns. However, Perfitt understood his lip movements—the post road was just ahead. As long as they rushed out of the last street corner, they could meet up with the medics who were left behind and then evacuate the area at full speed.

Then the ground shook.

It wasn't the kind of tremor caused by a steam-powered knight's footsteps, but rather a vibration that traveled upwards from the deepest depths, like the foundation of the entire city being violently struck by something.

The gravel on the street was shaken up and then fell back down.

A residential building that was already on the verge of collapse completely collapsed during the tremors. Broken bricks and wooden beams fell from above, burying several infected people who were crawling underneath.

Perfitt nearly fell, but she steadied herself by pressing her hands to the ground. Looking down, she saw the frozen black pools of blood on the pavement rippling with fine waves.

The tremors continued, growing stronger and closer, heading towards the hospital.

She turned around abruptly.

She saw the most in her life that should never have existed in this world.

The hospital ruins collapsed completely amidst the tremors. It wasn't the kind of collapse caused by an explosion, but rather the entire remaining structure of the building collapsed inwards simultaneously, as if it had been gripped from below by an invisible hand and crushed.

Broken bricks, charred wooden beams, twisted iron frames, and broken stone pillars—none of these things fell to the ground. Instead, they were swept up into the air by a stream of black viscous liquid gushing from the ground.

That slime is alive.

It churned in mid-air, with huge bubbles constantly rising on its surface, each bubble bursting and releasing a cloud of purplish-black mist.

The mist did not dissipate, but instead flowed down the surface of the viscous liquid as if it had weight. After reaching the ground, it spread rapidly, and the frozen soil hissed and scorched wherever it passed.

The slime itself was also spreading, gushing out from the bottom of the hospital ruins, overflowing the rubble and corpses on the ground, swallowing everything in its path.

Bricks, wood, iron frames, the remains of infected individuals, paving stones on the streets—everything it swallowed did not disappear, but remained suspended inside the mucus, constantly churning, colliding, shattering, and reforming as the mucus surged.

Then it begins to aggregate.

Starting from the hospital ruins, the black slime slowly crawled forward like a giant slug, each movement drawing more debris and infected corpses into its body.

The entangled corpses were rearranged inside the mucus, arms, legs, torsos, and heads pieced together in a way that completely defied any anatomical logic.

Perfit saw several arms emerging simultaneously from different points on the surface of the mucus, their fingers twitching, but the arms were in the wrong direction, and the angles at which the joints were bent were not something a human limb could do.

She saw another face emerge from the depths of the mucus, its lips corroded away, revealing a row of grayish-black teeth. But the eye sockets were not just dark voids—there was light flickering in the depths, a purplish-black glimmer carrying some kind of malevolent consciousness.

More corpses were swept in, and the mucus expanded in size with each batch of infected people it swallowed. But it didn't just absorb more corpses and rubble to expand itself; it began to reconstruct the bodies of these infected people.

The corpses, which had already lost their ability to move, folded, compressed, twisted, and pieced together in the black slime, their bodies emitting continuous muffled thuds as they squeezed against each other.

Six arms extended simultaneously from the front of the slime, each hand clutching a broken stone pillar or charred iron frame that had been swept in from the ruins. The skin on the back of the hands had been completely corroded by the slime, revealing grayish-white joints wrapped with black filaments underneath.

Four legs—two of which were clearly misaligned, with the knees bent backward and the soles of the feet facing upward—pressed firmly into the ground beneath the slime, lifting the massive body from the rubble of the hospital ruins.

Countless faces emerged from all parts of its body, some still retaining the expressions of its last moments before death, their wide-open mouths screaming silently, but unable to utter a sound.

It stood up.

A wall of flesh and blood, made of a mixture of black slime, fragments of corpses, and ruined bricks, so high that one has to look up to see its top.

Its outline kept changing in the mist, and with each step it took forward, a cracking sound came from inside its body as bones broke and reformed.

Perfit's right eye was burning.

The Jade Record started automatically without her actively activating it, and line after line of emerald green text scrolled upwards from her field of vision at an unprecedented speed.

"Divine Abomination"

Materials used: Not applicable (non-man-made)

"Manufacturing process: Not applicable (non-material manufacturing process)"

"Effect: When the ancient gods fell, the resentment generated by the decay of their corpses imprisoned the souls of the deceased within their remains, preventing them from finding peace even after death."

Imprisoned souls devour, merge, and twist each other in endless torment, ultimately transforming into living calamities filled only with hunger and hatred.

Divine evil is itself the manifestation of the sins of the ancient gods. Its existence is a desecration of life, a distortion of creation, and a trampling of the laws of the world.

Wherever it goes, all living beings will be drawn into its hatred and become a part of it.

"Evaluation: It should not exist in this world. What seals it is not any power of the mortal realm, but the last shackles left behind by the ancient gods before their complete fall."

The shackles have been broken from the outside; it has awakened. There's only one thing you can do—escape.

If you can't escape it, then pray that someone can burn your soul with holy words before it engulfs you.

The souls devoured by it will be trapped within its body forever—a fate far more terrible than the blight itself.