Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 181 - 135: Boiling Point (VII)

Chapter 181: Chapter 135: Boiling Point (VII)

Susan.

It seemed someone was calling her.

The woman from the North struggled to open her eyes, but she felt very tired, too tired to even manage that.

Susan, wake up.

Someone shook her.

This time, the woman from the North opened her eyes, she tried hard to lift her head and saw a woman kneeling in front of her.

She didn’t recognize her at all, Susan shook her head as she couldn’t feel her left leg, so she struggled and, with the woman’s help, sat up.

She saw her leg, still attached, but mangled and bloody.

"Susan, the Array suddenly exploded, and now the whole area has collapsed, what should we do?" she asked.

Susan tried to shake her head, "Who are you?" she asked, while trying to wipe the foreign substance covering her left eye, then she saw the blood and dirt on the back of her hand.

"Susan, it’s me, Ham," the girl looked worriedly at Susan: "What happened to you, how could you forget me?"

"My... my head hurts so much," Susan said in agony, looking at her companion: "Did my head receive a very serious injury?"

"Yes, there’s blood everywhere, but it doesn’t seem fatal, or you would have died by now," the girl smiled: "That’s great, I thought you were going to die."

"I... I guess luck is still on my side," she smiled and then, with the help of the girl named Ham, she stood up.

The corridor was full of dust, and Susan realized she couldn’t quite remember where this was or why she was here; shouldn’t she have been at the Array before?

With doubts, she saw people coming from the other side. Just as she was about to shout, they noticed something abnormal about the person — it was a corpse with a twisted neck, its gaze behind it, moving in a very abnormal gait.

Ham and Susan both raised their hands to cover each other’s mouths, and in the joy of their mutual strength, they began to carefully retreat to the other side of the corridor as more and more bodies emerged, some of them crawling with only their upper bodies.

It saw the two girls and then shrieked.

At that moment, there was no need for caution anymore, they turned and started running swiftly.

"What the hell is going on?!" Susan looked behind her.

"It seems like Nagoth’s followers have infiltrated!" Ham looked behind her as she extended a hand behind her and cast a slippery spell.

The bodies tumbled into a heap, but some of them simply ran along the walls, while others leaped over the slippery zone.

"It’s a dead end ahead!" Susan screamed.

"Come here!" Ham grabbed Susan’s hand, and the two darted into a small room. Ham closed the door, and with Susan, they pushed a tool cabinet over in front of it, then saw the bodies begin to slam violently against the door.

"You climb up the ladder first!" shouted Ham.

Susan turned and climbed the iron ladder leading to the street.

When she reached the top, she pushed open the cover and then heard dense gunfire outside, she poked out part of her head to survey the surroundings and realized she was surrounded by a small clump of shrubbery, seemingly in a small square.

"Susan, what are you waiting for!" Ham’s voice came from below: "My God, why is there gunfire outside?"

Susan climbed out of the maintenance well, hugged the ground, and reached out to pull Ham up.

The bottom was full of bodies; they might be able to run, to jump, but they were still corpses, and their biggest weakness was that they couldn’t climb up the ladder.

"My God, where are we, a battlefield?" Ham lay flat on the ground, with bullets occasionally whizzing through the bushes; she obviously didn’t want to sit up and test her luck with her life.

"If we can," Susan started, when both of them saw a man appear outside the bush, jumping into view. While he was midair, he noticed the two women in the bush.

"A follower of Mimicking Bird!" shouted Ham!

Susan drew her dagger from her waist, facing the bayonette, she didn’t want to just sit and wait to die.

Then the man’s head exploded as if hit by a bullet, losing balance he fell to the ground, his firearm slipping from his hand.

Susan grabbed the firearm and tossed it to Ham, then drew a revolver from Chaos’s waist.

The two women searched through Chaos’s ammo pouch for supplies, Ham pulled back the bolt and checked the bullets inside: "It’s a military rifle, but this Chaos wasn’t a soldier, did they attack an armory?"

"Who knows," just as she finished, Susan and Ham saw a man dressed in civilian clothes jump into the bushes, he saw the two women: "You," but then he fell down as a bullet hit his head, the civilian gentleman clearly couldn’t keep talking.

Susan was silent for a moment, tossed the revolver and ammunition pouch to Ham, then she took the sawed-off shotgun from the civilian’s hand and removed the ammunition pouch from his belt.

"What is this situation!" Ham looked around and finally pointed the gun towards the direction Chaos had come from.

Susan did the same—the civilians and Chaos were moving in opposite directions, meaning one side was armed civilians like normal people, and the other was followers of the Mimicking Bird.

Then the two girls noticed something—the manhole cover that was weighed down by corpses began to move.

"My God..." Ham’s face was filled with despair.

"Climb fast!" Susan turned and began to scramble towards the civilian side.

Under the horrified gaze of the two girls, the manhole cover was lifted, and a corpse crawled out of the maintenance well using its hands and feet. It stood up, then was instantly met with concentrated fire, like a sack, yet it still did not fall.

A rare quiet fell over the battlefield, and right then, Susan shouted out loud, "That’s a monster! A moving corpse!"

With her cry, the corpse turned and ran toward the Chaos side.

Susan and Ham exchanged a glance, then crawled quickly, threading through thickets, and waving at a group of civilians and City Guards behind cover. Susan knew she was going to live.

"Climb fast!" A little guy popped his head out and yelled, while he also pointed behind Susan.

Susan and Ham turned their heads and saw a half-corpse crawling out of the bushes, and then others that could run.

Scrambling on all fours and rolling to get up, Susan and Ham ran hastily toward cover.

It wasn’t until they leaped over a low wall that Susan had time to turn around for another look and found that the running corpse had already fallen to the ground, and the crawling one’s head was gone, its movements ceased.

"Shoot their heads! If you’re not confident, shoot their lower limbs!" said the child after finishing his advice, he reached out to help Susan and Ham. He glanced at their Church robes, and pulled a firearm from his waist: "Are you followers of the Master of Wisdom?"

"Don’t shoot! I am an undercover agent of the Church of the War God!" Ham threw away her gun and raised her hands, "The Archbishop of the Church of the War God can prove my identity!"

"Alright, you may live a little longer, you too," said the child, turning his gun toward Susan.

Susan shook her head, "I... I can’t remember anything." After saying that, she covered the wound on the back of her head—only now, freed from death, did she feel the pain.

"I can verify that the Chief Bishop gave her something! If she hasn’t lost it, it should be on her person," Ham pointed at Susan as she spoke.

...........

Malin fell silent upon hearing this, then nodded, "You search her."

So, the girl quickly found an envelope on the body of the northern woman.

Malin stepped back two paces, then gestured for others to move away before he ordered the girl to open the envelope. She took out a small notebook and a piece of letter paper from the envelope.

Malin thought for a moment and stretched out his hand, "Give them to me."

The girl obediently handed over the letter and notebook.

Malin opened the notebook, which was an identification from the Sydney Union Military Intelligence Headquarters.

This is to certify that Joanie Yanko is personnel of the Sydney Union Military Intelligence Headquarters, certifier: Kerns One-eyed Marklin.

The notebook was old, with both the cover and inner pages damaged, and the portrait on it was even blurred.

Malin gestured with a hand, and a half-human came over. He was an intelligence officer from the Sydney Union Military Intelligence Headquarters, responsible for identifying their personnel. Malin handed over the little book, "Take a look, is this yours?"

The half-human looked it over and then flipped through the pages, "I can confirm it’s real, but I don’t know who the person inside is, nor do I know who Kerns One-eyed Marklin is. I need to notify my superiors."

"Alright, I’ll leave it to you," Malin said and opened the letter paper.

Sydney Union Military Intelligence Headquarters, undercover operative Joanie Yanko, certifies that the northern woman Susan is an undercover agent of the Church of Justice.

Malin drew in a sharp breath, then handed the letter to the Paladin, who looked at it and frowned, "We can’t confirm its authenticity, but if she really is one of us, there should be something to prove it. I need to report to the Bishop to confirm her identity." After speaking, he handed the letter back to Malin.

Malin’s fingertips ignited with a flame, setting the letter on fire.

"Bring a team, escort them and the half-human from the Sydney Union Military Intelligence back. If they are ours, they may very well be one of the heroes who disrupted the ceremony," Malin said before turning to look at the corpses still in motion, "Now, let’s dispose of these things."

"Looks like Nagoth’s handiwork. How many sleeper agents from the Master of Wisdom are lurking in the depths?" The Paladin, who had just killed an advancing corpse, spoke. His sacred weapon was extraordinarily effective against such monsters.

"Right now, I hope there aren’t too many of these creatures." Malin hit a corpse with his shotgun. If it were a normal person, the four buckshots that pierced through his chest would have killed him long ago.

And yet now this corpse was still advancing, until Malin shattered its head.

If they did not have a sacred weapon, they had to crush their heads, or in other words, destroy their brains... Did this not prove that they were still some form of living entity?

Malin had asked the Paladin about this, and the middle-aged man nodded, then shook his head.

"They can indeed be said to be alive, because their bodies are still warm. But they are also the dead, for at this moment, their husks are more like prisons troubling their souls." The Paladin’s analysis made Malin nod—yes, prisons. They were already dead, but their souls were locked by Chaos in their own corpses.

Poor fellows.

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