Chapter 1265: Chapter 1265

A writhing mass of tentacles erupted from behind the humanoid face, spewing forth like a spider spinning silk. What met them was a cascade of fire from above.

Jenkins had no idea what alloy the machine was forged from, but it was clearly terrified of the flames. He didn't even need to focus on the intensity of his attack; the moment the metallic tentacles touched the bestowed fire, they melted away as quickly as ice in intense heat.

"So it comes down to a fight in the end."

Airborne, Jenkins soothed his unicorn, which had grown agitated by the repulsive tentacles. Despite their metallic texture, they writhed like living creatures, emitting a viscous, squelching sound. It wasn't just the unicorn; even Jenkins felt a wave of visceral revulsion.

He summoned the White Bone Holy Sword once more, took a deep breath, and leaped from the unicorn's back.

A golden, spherical cage of runes protected him. From a distance, the hidden Alexia and Chocolate could only see a golden orb descending from the sky, from which a colossal beam of white sword light erupted. Thıs content belongs to NovelHub(.)net

In response, the silvery-white tentacles, covered in black, protruding knobs, twisted together in an instant, forming a makeshift shield that met the sword light head-on in midair.

For a moment, a brilliant white light flooded the sky above the small, snowy plain. Six overlapping shrieks of agony were the only sounds between heaven and earth.

When the light faded, the unicorn carried a slightly drained Jenkins high into the air. Where the mercury-like face had been, droplets of molten metal dripped onto the snowfield like a suspicious, viscous fluid from a sewer. All that remained suspended in the air was a mechanical contraption of brass gears, levers, pistons, and springs.

But a single glance sent a trickle of blood from his nose. He couldn't comprehend what he was seeing. The workings of that thing—a haphazard collection of scrap-like parts forcibly cobbled together—defied the orderly logic of the human mind.

It had no apparent power source, yet it continued to vent steam. The sound of the small cylinders operating inside the mechanism was perfectly clear to Jenkins, but the more he heard, the less he understood how the thing actually functioned.

The less he understood, the more his mind tried to simulate the consequences of each mechanical action. The result of his brain attempting to follow the bizarre machine's operation was a pain that felt as if his mind were being torn apart.

"Don't think. Close your eyes. Empty your mind."

A small hand steadied the back of Jenkins's head. Fighting back a wave of nausea, he followed Alexia's instructions. It worked. The moment he forced himself to ignore the inner workings of the mechanical core, his human way of thinking reasserted itself, stabilizing his mind. The nausea and the splitting headache vanished with it.

With his eyes closed, he couldn't tell what was happening. He only heard a loud crash. When he opened them again, the strange mechanical core had plummeted to the ground. It had stopped functioning upon impact, and a few of its components lay scattered about.

Sparks shot out continuously from the main body of the core. Based on Jenkins's experience, this was a sure sign that the steam engine was about to explode.

Alexia shouted. Jenkins immediately complied, a black shadow shooting from behind him toward the ground. But after a strange beeping sound and a burst of black sparks, an invisible blue shockwave expanded outward, instantly blanketing the entire snowfield.

An illusion spread out with the blue shockwave, but this time it wasn't the phantom of a city. It was a man in a white robe, his face hidden within a hood, cradling a metallic box covered in spiky protrusions and muttering to himself. The surface of the box hadn't been polished smooth; instead, it was assembled from countless tiny gears. From a distance, it looked bristly, but up close, it looked as if it had been hit by Jenkins's [Mechanical Light] and then pieced back together by Chocolate.

Inside the box was a cube made of a material that resembled liquid mercury. Jenkins and Alexia recognized it at once—it was a miniature version of the thing they had just fought.

Seeing the illusion appear again, Jenkins's face paled. He raised his sword, ready to channel what little spirit he had left for another strike into the empty air.

The shorter woman pressed down on Jenkins's raised hand, then thought for a moment with a skeptical look:

"I'm not sure why this is happening either, but after taking a direct hit from your sword and then a frontal assault from the Twin Demons, there's no way it isn't destroyed... Do you think it's possible that when the machine broke, the data stored inside was leaked?"

In his original world, that would have been a completely illogical explanation. But in this one, it was quite plausible. In fact, at almost the exact moment Alexia voiced her theory, Jenkins had arrived at a similar conclusion.

Regardless of what the two living people were thinking, the mysterious figure in the illusion continued to cradle the box and mutter to himself. Perhaps because the data was so badly damaged, the background was a complete blur, filled with rippling distortions. They could only vaguely guess that the setting was a structure built of red bricks, which, based on its style, seemed to be underground.

Fortunately, they could still make out some of the man's muttering:

"...Finally found it. Yes, this is it. With this, I can... The new poem can be continued. Fate is truly on my side... The third step of the Child of Disaster is nearly complete... The others..."

The voice was faint and echoing, the words disconnected. Luckily, the language he spoke wasn't entirely lost to time, so Alexia was able to translate for Jenkins as she listened. After filtering out the words she didn't understand and the syllables that were truly indecipherable, this was all they could make out.

After that, just as Alexia had predicted, the illusion began to display other important "data" stored within the machine. But because Jenkins's attack had been so brutal, the fragmented scenes served no real purpose other than to give them a glimpse of the architectural and clothing styles from several thousand years ago.

When the illusion finally ended, the two of them slowly descended and saw that the mechanical core had been reduced to a pile of scrap metal. At Alexia's direction, Jenkins used his sword to violently dismantle it, and in the center of the gears, they found a blue cube.

"This one looks a bit like yours."

Jenkins said hesitantly.