novelraw Chapter 28
Chapter 28
Before they could recover from their shock, Perfit turned and faced the ruined city filled with infected people, raising her right hand.
Belfast. Forward.
The steam knight moved.
Two plumes of white steam shot out from the exhaust grille on the back of the armor, emitting a sharp hiss in the cold air.
When Belfast took her first step, the ground trembled slightly beneath her feet—not the sound of ordinary footsteps, but the result of nearly a ton of metal and hydraulic linkages working together.
The gravel road cracked beneath her feet with fine, spiderweb-like fissures, leaving a shallow pit in the frozen ground with each step.
With her left hand, she removed the chainsaw sword from the arm armor slot, and with her right hand, she gripped the starter handle inside the hilt and twisted it forcefully.
High-pressure steam from the steam core is injected into the transmission mechanism of the chainsaw sword through copper pipes, and the serrations on the sword begin to rotate—at first slowly, each serration is clearly visible, then faster and faster, the boundary between the serrations blurs into a silver-gray band of light as they rotate at high speed.
The chainsaw sword didn't make a loud sound, but to Perfit's ears, it was a sound more intimidating than any war cry.
The first infected creature appeared less than twenty steps ahead.
It was originally facing away from the street, lying on a pile of collapsed bricks and rummaging through something, when it suddenly turned around after hearing the footsteps of the steam knight.
Even from dozens of steps away, Perfitt could see its mutilated face—its lips had been gnawed off by something, revealing grayish-black gums underneath; one eye was still moving in its socket, while the other was filled with dried black scabs.
It opened its mouth, let out a hoarse howl, rolled off the pile of bricks and stones, and charged toward the steam knight.
Belfast did not stop.
She simply raised her chainsaw sword and drew an extremely simple arc from her left shoulder to her right hip.
When the chainsaw blades bit into the infected person's chest cavity, they encountered almost no resistance; bones and dried-up muscle tissue were torn apart like dry bread by the high-speed rotating blades.
Black blood and bone fragments gushed out from both sides of the incision simultaneously. The infected person didn't even have time to let out a second scream before being cut in two.
The upper half landed on the ground, the fingers still moving. The lower half staggered forward two more steps before collapsing.
Belfast stepped over its corpse and continued forward. Only a few breaths had passed since Perfit ordered the advance.
More infected were alerted. Perfit noticed that they turned their heads in different directions, but almost all of them locked onto the same sound source at the same time—not the footsteps of the steam knights, but the sharp cutting sound of the chainsaw sword tearing apart the first infected.
They surged out from the shadows of collapsed buildings, emerged from behind the wreckage of overturned trams, and pounced directly from the broken windows on both sides of the street.
The numbers increased rapidly—from a few to dozens, dozens to hundreds, faster than any gathering she had ever seen in the swamp.
But the Steam Rider is faster.
Belfast made no attempt to wait for the infected; she neither stopped to adopt a defensive stance nor retreated to find advantageous terrain, but simply kept moving forward.
The chainsaw sword was like a living thing in her hands; with each swing of the blade, it precisely bit into the head or neck of the infected.
Her attack trajectory was devoid of any superfluous movements—each sword strike was executed with minimal amplitude, the fastest path, and the most effortless angle.
When designing this armor, Perfit had input hundreds of tactical stances for melee weapons into Belfast's differential system. At this moment, Belfast simply selected the most efficient one and then executed it to its fullest potential.
The knights following behind her could only keep up by running.
Before setting off, the flag captain adjusted the formation, placing four shield-bearing knights at the front to cover the flanks, with Ludwig leading the Romulus knights at the rear, and Perfit and two alchemists sandwiched in the middle.
Even with such a carefully arranged formation, they almost couldn't keep up with the steam knights' advance.
Occasionally, a few infected individuals who slipped out of the alley and weren't directly killed by the Steam Knights would rush over from both sides of the shield. The Sword and Rose Knights fought hard to parry and kill them, but without exception, they were all fish that escaped the net—the infected individuals who were truly blocking the frontal charge had no chance of survival in front of Belfast.
Perfit followed closely behind the knights, one hand always resting on the dagger at his waist, the other carrying his portable alchemy experiment kit.
Allen and another alchemist followed on either side of her, their breathing rapid and shallow through their breathing masks.
Perfit didn't turn around, but she could hear Allen muttering something under his breath—not a prayer, but a repetitive recitation of the transmutation circle's rune arrangement.
This is his habit; when he's nervous, he uses memorization to calm himself down.
The streets were quickly left behind in an almost violent manner as the steam riders propelled them forward.
Perfit quickly scanned his surroundings as he ran.
Burned-out trams, overturned artillery carriages, half-collapsed residential buildings, and infected people everywhere.
They surged in from all directions, some even leaping directly from upstairs windows, crashing onto the street and breaking their joints, only to drag their broken bodies back up.
But the Steam Knight maintained a steady pace of advance, neither accelerating nor slowing down, occasionally pausing to swing his sword before continuing forward, as if treating the entire street as a front-line trench that needed to be cleared.
Ludwig shouted out a series of distances and directions from the back row—they were three streets away from their target.
Chertzov walked through the line to Perficott, panting, and pointed out the landmark at the next intersection: a clock shop with its exterior completely blackened by soot. Turn into the narrow alley from the clock shop, and then through the ruins of a residential building, and you would see the outline of the hospital.
Perfit didn't answer, he just nodded.
Her breathing was equally rapid inside the mask, and her legs were already stinging in protest, but she did not slow down.
After the Steam Knight swiftly dispatched three infected individuals who lunged out of the alleyway with an extremely sharp horizontal slash at the entrance of the watch shop, he turned into the alley without hesitation and continued his advance.
When the hospital came into view, Perficott finally understood why Chertsov had used the word "outline" to describe it.
The entire building looked as if it had been blown open from the inside by something, or as if it had already been engulfed by fire once before.
The charred brick wall was covered with grayish-white mortar cracks. The east wing had completely collapsed, leaving only a few twisted, burnt iron beams sticking out from the pile of rubble.
Although the west wing still barely retains its architectural shape, the clock tower on the roof has completely collapsed, with broken tiles and rafters scattered all over the ground from the base, resembling a tombstone that has been deliberately toppled.
Calling it a "hospital" is being too kind; at this moment, it looks more like a huge, decaying corpse that's completely dead.
After eliminating the last few infected individuals in front of the hospital, Belfast sheathed her chainsaw sword, stopped in front of the hospital ruins, and turned to await further instructions.