Chapter 1793: Chapter 1793
With the corpse's chilling threat, the wind abruptly intensified its howl. At the same moment, metal pillars erupted from the earth, funneling a blinding light through chains that surged into the undead creature.
Soaring higher into the sky on the unicorn's back, Jenkins raised his White Bone Holy Sword and cleaved downward with all his strength. The blade's brilliant edge slammed into a shield woven from chains, sending gears scattering in every direction. Even as he struck, more chains erupted from the earth, swarming toward the corpse's back like a dense thicket of thorns.
Its pitch-black eyes seemed to glow with an inner light. The creature then struck an eerie pose, assuming a seated position in mid-air. It raised its hands high, as if poised over the keys of an invisible piano, though nothing but empty air lay before it. Newest update provıded by NoveI[F]ire.net
It held its hands aloft, then brought them crashing down.
A deep, resonant note echoed not in his ears, but from the depths of his very soul. Jenkins's face flushed, and a trickle of blood escaped the corner of his lips. He'd heard the sound of a piano, yet that single tone had thrown the natural flow of his spirit into chaos. For a fleeting instant, his blood ceased to flow, and a sharp, agonizing pain seized his heart. The injury was severe, but thankfully, not fatal.
With an expert twirl of his blade, Jenkins urged the unicorn into a direct dive. Flames erupted around them, engulfing both rider and mount, transforming them into a blazing meteor hurtling toward the corpse below.
Countless more chains shot skyward, battling the inferno to keep Jenkins at bay. The corpse, still 'seated' in the air and manipulated by the hundreds of chains piercing its back, slid horizontally. Its posture remained unchanged, but its hands rose once more. Against the inky blackness of the sky, a single nut was embedded in its left palm, while a small spring dangled from the tip of its right index finger, swaying in the wind.
A bolt of lightning crashed down toward the corpse. More than a dozen chains instantly twisted into a thick cable to block the strike, only to be shattered into a rain of falling gears.
No third note followed. Instead, the corpse held its fingers parallel before it and began a slow, deliberate tapping on the empty air. A strange melody, one Jenkins had never heard, wove itself into the howling wind and drifted into his ears.
The unicorn abruptly halted its dive, its body beginning to twitch and convulse in mid-air. Jenkins instantly placed a hand, glowing with a soft green light, on its back. At the same time, a black, demonic shadow materialized behind him.
The resulting explosion, naturally, only served to obliterate the chains shielding the corpse, but the deafening blast did manage to diminish the piano's melody. The music was unnervingly serene—a calm so profound it made one want to retch. It was like gazing into an abyss; a tranquil darkness on the surface, but what lurked within was enough to drive a person to madness.
It was a bizarre, chaotic sound, more unbearable than the most piercing shriek.
His raised hammer once again summoned lightning from the sky. Amplified by the purifying effect of his [Hero] ability and the raw power of [Titan's Power], the lightning caused a faint, white spiritual aura to shimmer around the weapon.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the dark night. Jenkins, wreathed in its glow, felt his robes billow around him. He hurled the crackling energy forward, blasting apart the flowing ocean of chains and gears. The electrical charge surged along the metal links toward its source. The corpse, still playing its invisible 'piano,' suddenly froze as smoke began to pour from within its body. A moment later, however, the somber music resumed.
"You brought this on yourself," Jenkins muttered.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small, holy silver vial he'd acquired in the Mysterious Realm. Sigrid Capet had claimed that if he drank its contents, he would become the strongest mortal in the physical world.
Just as he was about to drink, however, an entirely different melody rose from the ground below. It was the sound of violins. Jenkins glanced down and saw, emerging from the other side of the thick fog, more than twenty women in matching white robes. Each held a violin, and they were advancing slowly toward the battlefield.
They were all hooded, but it did nothing to impede their performance. The brisk, cheerful music brought a sense of calm to Jenkins's turbulent heart. The harmonious blend of their instruments was so powerful it seemed to silence the very wind.
The piano from the sky and the violins from the ground were utterly different in both tone and tempo, and they clashed, vying for dominance. Although there were no visible effects of light or sound, Jenkins's enhanced sight could perceive the spiritual aura of the Cursed Item above being steadily worn away by the grand ritual the musicians on the ground had formed.
He couldn't see their faces, but Jenkins had no doubt they were members of the Music Cult. Of the more than twenty violins, an astonishing quarter of them were supernatural items. And of the three women leading the group, the one wielding the [Violin of the Ocean's Sound] was unmistakably Hathaway.
The power of their music unlocked the inherent power of the violins. Though the subterranean behemoth fueling the corpse was mighty, it was clearly no master of music. In just thirty seconds, the orchestra on the ground completely suppressed the piano's discordant tune. Their violins summoned warm breezes, phantom ocean waves, illusory knights, and a floating forest canopy. These manifestations transformed one by one into orbs of light that flowed into the unicorn and Jenkins, infusing him with strength as he hovered in the sky.
Jenkins had never felt so invigorated, not even when surrounded by the life energy of a forest. Buoyed by the joyful melody of the violins, he raised the holy sword in his right hand and the hammer in his left. He brought the hammer down onto the sword, and in that instant, a colossal thunderbolt descended from the heavens, bleaching the entire sky white.
A blade of pure energy, wreathed in lightning, swung down from the sea of thunder above. As the violin concerto reached its crescendo, the electrified blade vaporized everything in its path—the chains, the corpse, and the metal pillars erupting from the ground were all annihilated.
Among the ruins on the ground, arcs of electricity still leaped between shattered metal fragments. Even the women, who had now ceased their playing, dared not step forward. Jenkins, seated atop the unicorn, gazed down at the ground. The black spiritual aura was completely gone. He had won.
Yet, this was no cause for celebration. The subterranean Difference Engine had just proven it was more than capable of influencing the surface world. And it had caused Jenkins immense trouble by merely controlling a single corpse.
As things stood, if the fog over Nolan didn't give birth to something even more powerful, then once the Difference Engine merged with it, there was a fifty-fifty chance it would become this epoch's Beast of Calamity.
In his normal state, Jenkins knew he stood no chance against such a foe. This was different from his recent probing of the Beast of Calamity, the 'Undying Abyss,' at the 'Night Manor.' Once the Difference Engine broke free from its subterranean prison, Jenkins, completely ignorant of its nature, might not even be able to locate its true form.
Seeing that the women below hadn't departed, he knew they wished to speak with him. He had the unicorn carry him down to a distant spot in the ruins, out of sight. There, he left behind a [Real Illusion] and a spiritual lodestone before walking over with the unicorn.
He had chosen a rather impressive guise this time. Clad in a black robe and walking beside a unicorn that radiated a holy, white light, he cut a rather charming figure.
The three women at the forefront removed their hoods. He recognized the young lady who had opened the door for him at the music club, Hathaway Hersha, and a third, a beautiful young woman he didn't know, who looked even younger than Hathaway did in person.
"What was that thing just now?"
The woman he didn't recognize eyed the unicorn with curiosity, looking as if she was itching to reach out and stroke it. Hathaway, meanwhile, was staring intently at the orange cat perched on the stranger's shoulder, as if searching for specks of black and white in its fur. The question had come from the lady to the left, the one Jenkins had met once before. Before he could answer her first question, she posed another:
"How should we address you?"
"Twin Demons. And you, miss," he added, looking at the other woman, "please refrain from touching the mount. I borrowed it from a Miss Fabry, and if she knew I allowed someone to touch her 'precious treasure' without permission, I'd never be able to borrow anything from her again."
The woman nodded, though her eyes remained fixed on the unicorn. She then introduced herself.
"I am Lydia Bernreuter," she said. "Our order has a rather loose structure, so we don't have a formal title like 'Archbishop,' or I would introduce myself as such. This," she gestured to Hathaway, "is Skylark Miss. Your friend knows her; she is active in Nolan, so I won't use her real name. She serves as our liaison for the continent's west coast. And this other young lady, your friend Candle Mr. should have met her once—Briley Harms, the composer of our music."
She didn't elaborate on the meaning of that last title, but Jenkins understood. Miss Bernreuter was the highest-ranking member of the Music Cult present; neither Hathaway nor Miss Harms was its leader. He had heard the names Bernreuter and Harms before, mentioned by Hathaway when she had complained about a failed ritual.
After a quiet greeting, his gaze shifted to the group of musicians behind them.
"Thank you for the assistance," he said.
"We just happened to be nearby... holding a meeting," Miss Bernreuter replied, then repeated the question. "What was that thing?"
"The big fellow underground was controlling that corpse. It wanted me to cooperate with it," he explained. "You know about the thing beneath the city, don't you?"
"Yes, we know something of it," Hathaway answered.
"Good. It claims to be collaborating with the Tree House and the heretics from the Gear Artisans' Association. They've researched and unleashed a curse based on the characteristics of the End of the Epoch. This curse is perfectly attuned to our era, so it takes effect quickly. Essentially, it causes the dead to merge with nearby machinery, granting them powerful, machine-based abilities. The curse then spreads through this fusion.
"This is likely a prelude to the true end. When the apocalypse arrives, the Children of the Mist and this Mechanized Body Curse will become the new normal for the material world—a reality that will take centuries to combat."
This was speculation, based on his knowledge of past apocalypses, but the more he said it, the more plausible it sounded. The future would likely unfold just as he described.
He explained all this to the women in front of him to avoid the trouble of repeating it all to the Church later. Miss Stevel would surely get the information from them, and she could pass it along.