Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead
Chapter 811 - 811: This Time

"I feel confident that we'll succeed this time"

"Mister Irtop, you've said the exact same thing the previous times as well, and it quite literally blew into our faces"

"Well yes, but… You Misses were not here during the first tests! The blasts were far more powerful back then, we've been getting better, and the last few times, the machine actually worked as it did in the theories for a few seconds! Nearly a minute last time… The undead engineers may not be able to work directly on the machine and run the tests themselves, but they were rather reassuring this time, they seemed confident that it would succeed"

"Sir Gharl and Lady Tiloh were present as well, and they are the best in that department, in fact, the amount of leaders, visionaries and top of their craft that time was so staggering I nearly lost consciousness from their combined presence"

"Irtop, you did lose consciousness"

"Ah yes… I do remember waking up with my head on your lap… I think I got knocked out because two of General Loimos's lieutenants were sparing a few kilometers away, or something like that… Was that it?"

Ayelah shook her head.

"You lost consciousness because one mentioned that King Nitok might come by to congratulate you for your work"

Irtop bit his tongue.

"It seems my mind erased that memory from my brain… To think that his majesty would even know of our existence… Anyways! I am certain that we shall succeed and bring both light and dark to this realm cursed by life! Let's activate it" Irtop spoke loudly, and the other soldiers in white within the room began to move about like industrious ants.

This room, hidden away in the guts of the hideout, at the end of a labyrinth distorted by space and full of terrible traps, was the single, most important one of this entire layout, so much so that everything else could be considered smoke and mirrors to cover for its existence.

It was here that a most complex machine forged out of various materials and alloys stood tall, countless pipes and wires could be seen all over the place, somewhat cluttered from the countless changes that had been made and damage that had occurred during the numerous test runs for it.

An issue that they had encountered early on in the assemblage of this wonder of creation, was that although many ways of powers and such could function normally inside of the Emerald Realm, it had been a struggle to find a design that could work for what they had in mind, the first few concepts had featured arrays, magic circles, sigils, runes, glyphs and countless other things, true marvels of the undead empire, seamlessly combining countless ways of power, melding different branches, assembling ways that would have otherwise never coexisted, but the first few machines were deeply flawed.

For what they were attempting to contain and manipulate was something unique to this realm, and it simply refused to mix with the foreign energies and ways of power, they interfered with one another too greatly, leading to the entire room enduring multiple, terrible explosions, if not for the fact that the place was built out of the strongest alloy available, it would have been torn apart as well.

Some people had died in these tests, Irtop himself had come close to dying as well, when a stray bit of shrapnel nearly cut his head right off, or when a blast had sent him flying back, and if not for his reflexes, would have hit the top of a door frame with the back of his head.

Amongst other near-death experiences.

Recently, he had also been accompanied by the Soror, oddly cheerful girls that really brightened the ambiance here, although their leader, Bellah, was quite the serious type, it was rather obvious that she was trying to imitate the one she considered her true father, in other words, Loimos.

She sometimes would try to even walk or talk like he did, without much success, but he didn't say anything about it and just nodded along, in all honesty, the fact that these girls were even allowed to go around and claim themselves his daughters was enough for them to be technically higher ranked than him here, after all, who the hell would dare to question the child of the General?

But they were actually here to learn, Irtop did not have any children of his own, but he guessed that Loimos had sent them here so that they could see things for themselves and without him behind them, or so one could assume, trying to decipher the motives of Loimos could be as easy as just thinking for a second, or as complicated as trying to understand the world and its fundamental laws.

Everything he did was based on absolute logic, which allowed anyone to get a grasp of his actions, but also made everything seem mysterious, especially for livings like themselves, who simply could not operate on such a method.

In any case, the presence of his daughters here was actually a good thing as they could help fill in dangerous positions, Babriel could take care of the commands closest to the danger as she seemed impervious to any and all forms of damage, last time, she had taken an explosion at point blank, and didn't even budge, or even cough due to the smoke.

Alila could also take a blast at point blank range, but instead of not taking damage, she just didn't die and put herself back into one piece in just a few seconds.

In any case, due to the interference problem between special energies and ways of power, the machine had to be constructed using what was being called machinery or engineering, which was a rather wide-ranging subject, which were headed by Gharl and Tiloh in the undead empire, a way of power focused on craftsmanship that could be made to work without energy-infused materials, they just put things together, create reactions that literally anyone could accomplish with the right tools, and somehow, incredible things followed.

The lightning, or 'electricity' as they called it, was especially impressive, and it was hard to believe that magic wasn't involved in it- Making use of mechanism, steam and many other things that Irtop had learned to understand over time, they had designed the machine that was currently roaring into action, it had nothing that what they were trying to manipulate could interfere with, so theoretically, it should work.

All previous attempts had ended up poorly, but today, Irtop felt certain that they would manage.

The two-hundred and fifty-seventh attempt would be the right one!