The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 30

Perfit did not answer.

She stood about five steps away from the well and suddenly stopped.

It wasn't because of what I saw, but because of what I felt. It was an indescribable chill.

It wasn't that the temperature was low—the temperature in the cellar was indeed very low, but Perfit was wearing a thick wool coat with a wool lining, so normally he wouldn't be shivering from the cold.

But she was indeed trembling at that moment.

The chill didn't seep in through her skin, but rather seeped outwards from within her body, as if something was gently touching her soul. With each touch, her consciousness would momentarily blur.

Her fingers began to go numb, and she could no longer feel the texture of the hilt of the dagger in her fingertips. The white mist she exhaled condensed into a thin layer of ice on the inside of her breathing mask.

Suddenly, Allen behind her knelt down on the ground, his hands bracing against the stone floor, his shoulders trembling violently.

Another alchemist slid down against the stone wall, his face as white as paper, his lips moving but no sound coming out.

Just as Perfit felt her consciousness being dragged little by little into the depths of darkness by that chill, a golden light shone behind her.

Judge Sabel had somehow already stopped in front of the well, opened the Book of Words, and held it to her chest with both hands.

Her voice wasn't loud, but every syllable was extremely clear, as if every word was nailed into the air.

She wasn't reciting the requiem prayers she used to suppress the infected, but rather ancient, somber scriptures—Popickett couldn't understand a word, but she could feel the invisible pressure in the air receding with each utterance.

The golden light emanating from Sabel was not the flickering warmth of candlelight, but a constant, stable, and pure radiance, like an invisible shield that pushed back the darkness gushing from the well from where she stood, inch by inch.

The chill retreated to the edge of the well.

Perfit took a deep breath and straightened up. He felt the tip of his dagger hilt as his fingertips regained sensation. He took two steps forward and turned to Allen and the other alchemist, ordering, "Prepare to collect samples. Make rubbings of the inscriptions on the wellhead stone railing, scrape off all the ash outside the railing, and sample the dark stains on the ground—note, seal the sample bottles with lead."

Allen pushed himself up, his hands still trembling, but he was able to grip his leather bag firmly.

He took out ink and a roller for making rubbings from his leather bag and walked toward the stone railing. The knights entered the four corners of the cellar, each guarding a direction, their swords drawn, tips pointing into the darkness.

Cherzov stood on the other side of the well, his brow furrowed, clutching a flintlock pistol, his gaze shifting back and forth between the well opening and the top of his head.

Perfit walked to the edge of the well and looked down. The darkness was now being suppressed by the scriptures, and the invisible pressure emanating from the well was no longer present. She activated the Emerald Record - All-Knowing Eye in her right eye.

The field of vision suddenly changed.

The ancient characters on the well wall presented a completely different appearance in the perception of the Jade Record—each character was not just an indentation carved into the stone, but a remnant of some kind of energy that had become extremely weak but was still slowly flowing.

The energy was a deep purplish-black color, slowly creeping along the strokes of the characters on the stone wall, like blood that had been cut open but had not yet congealed.

They spread upwards along the well wall, only to stop abruptly at the stone railing, as if locked by some invisible boundary.

The all-knowing eye continues to delve deeper.

Beyond the ancient stone wellhead, beyond the purplish-black characters, beyond the layers upon layers of ancient seals, her vision suddenly sank—and then she saw it.

The bottom of the well is empty.

That was the space of the seal itself, an area completely sealed off by layers upon layers of ancient alchemical structures.

Each seal carries the energy imprint of the ancient gods' era, and even after several eras of decay, those imprints are still clearly discernible.

The Jade Record outlined a crack in the innermost layer of the seal in the form of a rune array. The crack itself did not belong to any alchemical system that Perfit knew, but she understood at a glance that it was not broken.

This was opened from the outside.

The seal is breaking down from the outside in.

Those ancient seals, which should have been indestructible, were torn apart layer by layer from the wellhead until the last layer was completely broken.

The things inside have already left.

The All-Knowing Eye continued its investigation.

She passed the ancient stone well, past the purplish-black characters, past the layers upon layers of ancient seals—and then she saw the bottom layer of the seal.

The last line of inscription remains there.

It wasn't carved on stone, but floated directly in the void, formed from pure purplish-black light.

The strokes of the inscription were disintegrating stroke by stroke in the golden light of the Shabel scripture. Each character burst open silently with a small clump of purplish-black light as it shattered, before being swallowed up and dissipated by the golden light.

Perfit could sense that this inscription was the final shackle of the entire seal—the last trace left within it, a mark deliberately left here by an ancient being.

Deeper beneath the inscription, in the void sealed by layers of seals, something is rapidly coming to life under the stimulation of the golden light.

It was a small patch of pure darkness remaining at the very bottom of the seal—not a shadow, not mist, but something thicker than the night and more desolate than the bottom of a well.

It surged violently under the golden light, its surface constantly bulging and cracking, each surge causing the surrounding sealing structure to tremble with extremely subtle vibrations.

It is alive. It is fighting against the seal. It won't be long before it breaks free.

Perfit read through the last few fading inscriptions word by word, his eyes wide open. Then, he withdrew his All-Seeing Eye, took two steps back, and before anyone could react, ordered the four knights, "Back up. Everyone back up."

Her voice remained steady, but the knights could tell that her breathing had stopped for a moment.

Ludwig paused behind her—he had walked alongside Perfitt in the swamp for days and had never seen her lose control of her expression for a moment.

Sabel was still holding the Book of the Word, her face was deathly pale, but the recitation of the scriptures never stopped.

Pficott turned to Chertsov and Shabel and said, "The seal has been broken from the outside, and what was inside has long since escaped. We must return to the surface immediately."

"Stop sampling. Seal all samples, roll up the rubbings and take them away. Discard any unfinished samples." Her speech was faster than usual, but she still enunciated each word clearly. "Everyone check your gloves and masks to make sure they are properly sealed."

The knight led the way, the judge maintained the scripture suppression without stopping, and Allen, carrying the sample, walked ahead of the judge. Once out of the cellar, he immediately ran towards the main gate, without looking back.