Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 544 - 373: The Story of Fate (1)

Chapter 544: Chapter 373: The Story of Fate (1)

Looking down from the balcony, it was a beautiful city, except for the high-rise hotel where Malin was standing; all around were various villas and small buildings.

Perhaps in normal times, there would be pedestrians running for fitness on the streets, mothers pushing strollers, and people of all stripes giving the city a flavor of the living, rather than the current situation with zombies shouldering their way through the crowd. Looking at the swarm of undead below, Malin helplessly shook his head—this was the era when the Great Destruction had occurred.

This city, Malin didn’t know where it was now, but it had indeed existed back then.

With that thought, Malin finished eating and then returned to his room, letting Ansa start flipping through TV channels—this should be the most intuitive way to understand the current situation.

The first channel was a fitness channel, which seemed to be playing pre-recorded programs—after all, the transparent background of the screen was a world of ice and snow, a burly man with a six-pack leading a group of equally sturdy men in stretching exercises.

With only a naturally formed six-pack, Malin unhappily decided to change the channel.

The second channel was labeled "news," and the female in the studio was broadcasting an explanation about the loss of control of the biohumans. Malin confirmed that this was also pre-recorded, because while she was speaking, Malin saw that the star ring visible through the transparent background glass was still neatly intact.

Yet just before, on the balcony, Malin had seen that large sections of the star ring had already been lost, and he didn’t know where those pieces had fallen, but presumably, most of it burned up upon re-entry into the atmosphere; otherwise, this world would be uninhabitable—such massive mass crashing down would kick up so much ash that the entire world would be without sunlight for a while.

Thinking thus, Malin once again looked toward the balcony, where sunlight streamed in, passing through the glass door, bringing an inexplicable warmth to the room.

The third channel showed only one message—"Broadcast suspended."

Chopin’s nocturne was playing, though Malin couldn’t tell which one, he simply sat on the sofa and took the tablet, which the mechanical waiter had handed over.

Turning on the news channel, most of the news in the European region was four days old, whereas the Asian and North American channels still had news from the same day, with widespread scenes of battles likely shot by audacious thrill-seekers. The high-speed running of the zombies and their fearless, wave-like charges in the footage were reminiscent of what Malin had witnessed in the Legrande Belview Hotel.

Only this time, the screen showed high-speed electric motorcycles driving arrays of multi-barrel rapid-fire cannons shredding tens of thousands of rampaging biohumans.

The person filming didn’t speak, but judging by the camera pointing to the sky, it likely wasn’t recording sound, and the person was probably cheering.

It seems that the Asian and North American regions were still resisting.

With this information, Malin began to understand—the biohuman incident must have erupted most severely in the European region, and according to the clues Malin had, the production bases for the biohumans were indeed in Europe, with the star rings probably being sent up via space elevators.

Did this represent the division of labor between different continents?

Malin wasn’t too clear, from the words of Kahn Kedel, Malin could clearly understand his view on East Asians—a very neutral term.

"Give me a pen,"

As soon as Malin spoke, the mechanical waiter immediately took one out from the drawer that opened in its abdomen and then floated over to him, defying gravity.

Malin took the pen handed to him and began writing his own conjectures on the tablet’s canvas.

First, the European region was the origin of the biohuman crisis because the factories were here. Malin had asked Faye especially about this to confirm the approximate map of the current human world, and compared it with Europe as he remembered it.

They were currently located in the central part of Italy, with Carterburg near Marseille in France, and the Sydney Union almost encompassing southeastern France, central and southern Germany, and part of the Czech Republic.

The Swiss region and the Milanese area of northern Italy were what was known as the Dark Zone.

Contrastingly, the Northern Kingdom encompassed the area around Denmark, the Holy Kingdom, and various other kingdoms took up northern and central Germany, Poland, and the eastern part of the Czech Republic.

The Eastern Kingdom likely included Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus, and the entire Russian region and the Middle East had become a vast Dark Zone.

The Great Wilderness of the Church of Justice probably comprised Austria, the northeast protruding part of Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and extended south towards the Greek Peninsula.

This region should be mountainous, but the intelligence indicated it was hilly. Malin consulted the map on the tablet and did find it to be hilly, so he felt that this Earth wasn’t the Earth he knew, or perhaps the Earth Union had already mastered planetary transformation technology.

The three northern countries had become a vast Dark Zone, known as the North Dark Zone, because its extreme cold deterred Tech Hunters from venturing there. Only some of the Giant race eked out a living on its edges, but they couldn’t discover much. By comparison, Malin found that the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish regions had become uninhabited zones before the Great Destruction Era—all had moved south to live.

Only some wealthy people would build isolated vacation homes there—so to Malin, that godforsaken place had almost no searchability, and hardly any zombies, just constant temperatures that broke through negative one hundred degrees.

It was a spooky place where even a Frost Giant would feel cold.

The north of France and the territory between it and the United Kingdom no longer had the English Channel, once the Engma Empire, now also the Dark Zone and Chaos-controlled area,

Spain and Portugal had vanished from the map, and Malin didn’t know if this signified differences between this world and the one he remembered or if some destruction over the millennia was to blame.

Italy had lost Sicily and the southern regions, Corsica and Sardinia were within the scope of the Raging Sea. The people on land had long forgotten them, and Malin didn’t know if they had disappeared or still existed. Should he ask the Sea Clan next time?

As for Africa... considering that only the Western Mediterranean region was still navigable and that the Thanan people said East-West navigation took about half a year, Malin suspected Africa might no longer exist.

As for why he had disappeared, Malin himself had no clue either.

In any case, it was an absurd world.

Malin sighed.

All the relay towers in the European region had been destroyed, so ground communication was not possible; satellites in space still functioned, but Malin didn’t know why Kahn and the others had said they couldn’t make contact before... Could it have been interference caused when the ring of satellites fell?

Anyway, Malin was now watching the major troops in the Asian region scramble to put out fires—perhaps because they had decisively blown up the orbital elevator, not too many of the bioengineered humans from the ring had entered the Asian region.

Just before, Malin had even seen a wingless shuttle slowly fly through the sky, its loudspeaker blaring, telling survivors to take cover, as the Earth Union military would soon head to the European region for rescue.

If history hadn’t told Malin that such destruction would occur four more times, Malin would have thought this was merely a biohuman crisis.

Thus, when the sky of Washington D.C. turned a dark green at dawn and countless mysterious objects trailed black fire as they descended, Malin couldn’t help but marvel at how the apocalypse had finally arrived.

For Kahn Kedell, he might have been unfortunate, for his young life had been cut short; but similarly, he was lucky, as he wouldn’t have to face the death raining from the sky.

True death had come, and compared to such beings, zombies were merely a nuisance of scabies.

Watching the video recorder scream at the sight of flesh landing in their garden, Malin understood—this was the price of gazing directly into Chaos; the recorder eventually knelt down, their tablet falling to the ground, the lens capturing its distortion.

Malin glanced at the time on the tablet.

The year 2489, July 17th.

Malin sighed and simultaneously heard the alarm.

"Guest, a nuclear strike en route has been detected, and the Union Military Commission has announced that the Southern Italy region you are in will be included in the nuclear strike sequence," Ansa warned.

"What about North America?" Malin asked.

"North America is in combat. New enemies have emerged from low Earth orbit. Please proceed immediately to the hotel’s underground shelter for evacuation," Ansa dispatched a mechanical server: "Mr. Malin, please proceed to the shelter immediately. There are fourteen minutes and seventeen seconds left before the four nuclear missiles launched from central Siberia arrive. Please follow the server to the shelter, and do everything possible to survive, guest."

"...No need," Malin sighed and then lied down on the bed: "Goodbye, Ansa."

The next second, when Malin opened his eyes, he heard soft breathing. Turning his head, Malin saw Faye, the elf girl asleep so deeply that she didn’t even react when Matilda, the entire fox, hugged her.

Malin carefully withdrew his hand from his sister’s embrace, cautiously applied the Spider Walk Technique to himself, then climbed out from the interior wall of the carriage, and finally landed quietly on the ground.

Franny and Bippo were sleeping curled up together on the coffee table. Malin turned his head, Fio stood up from the coffee table, and it opened a small portal for Malin, who crawled through and then climbed to the top of the carriage.

At the remote eastern mountain peak, there was the light of dawn, and the planet beneath Malin continued to fulfill its mission.

As the sun leapt over the mountain top, Malin pulled out a bottle of liquor from the void, uncorked it, and drained it in a single gulp.

After tossing the bottle behind him, Malin lay down on the roof of the carriage, and Chopin’s Nocturnes emanated from the tablet.

Until a portal opened next to Malin, and Faye, dressed in her pajamas, poked her head out, immediately frowning: "Why are you drinking so early in the morning?"

"Nothing, just toasting a happy birthday to myself," Malin said with a smile, and then let out a hiccup.

"Don’t be silly, it isn’t even your birthday yet, come on, get down," said Faye, as she reached out and grabbed Malin: "You’ve shrunk again, really, are you even a giant, Malin?"

"Of course, whether I’m big or small, you can check for yourself," Malin teased.

After saying that, Malin was pulled by the back of his neck and through the portal.

"I’m not going to humour a drunkard’s madness, sober up!" Faye chided as she threw Malin onto the bed.

Faye seemed somewhat baffled as she did this.

But that was to be expected.

Faye wouldn’t understand that Malin had just experienced another birthday during his recent deep dive.

Thinking of this, Malin’s lips puckered in a way they hadn’t in a long time, and then he was tightly embraced by Matilda, who was still in her dreams.

Damn, this girl’s grip had grown strong, and he was struggling to breathe.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.