The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 48

Perfit walked to the center of the magic circle, took out two alchemical potions he had prepared beforehand from his waist, unscrewed the caps, and drank them down in one gulp.

One was a high-grade mental energy recovery potion, and the other was a mental energy stabilizer that she had specially prepared in Langdon Laboratory before she set off—the former was to accelerate mental energy regeneration, while the latter was to prevent mental shock during the recovery process.

The medicine slid down my throat with a slightly bitter herbal taste, followed by a warm, spreading sensation, as if something was slowly seeping from my stomach into my limbs and bones.

She could feel her drained mental energy recovering at a perceptible speed, and the blackness at the edge of her vision was receding, but it was still not enough.

The recovery potion alone was not enough to support her in launching an alchemy attack on the entire battlefield.

She relies on the amplification array beneath her feet.

Chernzov is on her right.

He didn't ask any more questions after he squatted down to draw the first arc.

He hadn't known Perfit for long, but the march through the swamps, the bloody battle in the Predelshensk district, and the seal held up by one man before the divine abomination made this veteran, who had fought for most of his life, understand one thing—when this young count with silver hair began to squat on the ground drawing a formation, what he needed to do was not to ask her why, but to give her time to finish.

At this point, he had to do something to ensure that this ragtag army of routed soldiers could hold out until Perfitett finished what she was doing.

He knew better than anyone that an army in dire straits needs more than just tactics; it also needs spiritual support—something that can keep soldiers standing even when gun barrels are empty, cannons are red-hot, and bayonets are dulled.

He turned around, took the golden double-headed eagle banner from Rahman, and strode up the stone steps inside the fortress to the top.

The wind was strong. He stood behind the breastwork atop the fortress; the frozen earth walls weren't compacted enough, and loose stones crumbled under his feet. The wind whipped up the hem of his coat, and layers of frost formed on the brim of his hat.

He forcefully inserted the bottom of the flagpole into the crack in the frozen soil outside the breastwork, then gripped the flagpole tightly with both hands, allowing the gold and black Russian military flag to unfurl above his head.

The flag fluttered wildly in the wind, and the golden double-headed eagle cried out against the gloomy sky, like a dying beast spreading its wings for the last time.

"Ross's soldiers—" Chertzov's voice rolled down from the top of the ramparts, hoarse and heavy, drowning out the wind and the distant roar of the horde of corpses, "Your general is standing right here."

I am with you, I am not going anywhere! For Mother Rose! For survival!

The Ross soldiers in the position looked up.

They saw the military flag unfurled overhead, and their general standing at the very top of all the defensive lines, his overcoat billowing in the wind like a tattered cloak. He hadn't hidden behind the ramparts, hadn't left himself any way out, and just stood there at the highest point of the entire position, looking like a target.

Then they lowered their heads again, used a scoop to push the lead bullet into the chamber, bit open the paper package of the loaded bullet, poured the gunpowder into the powder bath, cocked the hammer, placed the barrel on the wooden bracket of the firing port, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

The roar of the infantry gun tore through the air.

The gunner had been testing the newly repaired gun during the previous rounds of firing—he had tried iron shot and solid shot, but the iron shot had too short a range to create an obstacle in front of the zombie horde, and although the solid shot had strong penetrating power, it could only plow a straight line, and its kinetic energy was completely exhausted after penetrating a dozen or so infected.

This time he filled in the exploding shell.

The shell exploded in the center of the zombie horde, and shrapnel and shockwaves swept outwards in a fan shape, tearing the surrounding infected to shreds.

The black blood mist was thrown into the air by the blast wave and quickly swallowed up by the horde of zombies that followed. However, the crater caused the infected coming from behind to slow down their pace when crossing the bottom of the crater. Instead of going around the crater, they fell directly into it, and those behind climbed up the crater wall by stepping on those in front. As one climbed up, another slid down.

Although the craters only held off the zombie horde for a moment, in this desolate wilderness submerged in darkness, every second of delay was a glimmer of hope for survival.

The Ross soldiers' flintlock muskets fired volley after volley from behind the firing ports of the ramparts.

Rahman stood behind the firing line, shouting the loading command in a hoarse voice. With each shout, more than a dozen gun muzzles simultaneously spewed white smoke, and lead bullets swept in rows towards the infected who had rushed to the trench.

The smoke was so thick it was choking, making it almost impossible to see the outline of the position just a few steps away, but no one stopped reloading.

Their uniform cuffs were scorched by gun barrels, their fingers were chafed raw by gun rods, and their eyes were bloodshot from gunpowder smoke, but they kept firing.

The knights lined up inside the trench.

The gray-armored knights' shields were already embedded in the frozen ground, their surfaces trembling from the impacts of the infected. Each impact caused the knights behind the shields to sway violently, but they immediately braced themselves against the back of the shields with their shoulders, forcefully pushing the infected back into the trench from the edge of the shields.

The Knights of Sword and Rose stood between the shields, their blades drawing short, silver arcs in the cold air—their blades precisely piercing the infected's eye sockets, jaws, and cervical vertebrae, each strike no more, no less, just enough to be fatal.

They had killed countless infected, their shields were covered in blackened bloodstains, and the corpses piled up at the edge of the trenches were almost filling the bottom of the first trench.

Perfit stood in the center of the magic circle, holding his staff and the Midas Touch in his hands.

Her breathing became shallow and rapid due to the manipulation of her mental energy, but her hands were as steady as steel stakes cast into frozen soil.

The Eye of Omniscience shone with a vibrant green light deep within its right eye, and the amplification array beneath her feet began to activate layer by layer—the connecting lines of the pentagram lit up first, followed by the internal auxiliary runes drawn by Morris, and finally the external filling runes sketched by Allen.

The entire magic circle unfolded beneath her feet, with crimson and emerald green light flowing between its patterns.

"Now!" Perfit forcefully embedded the end of her cane into the array's core, and the amplification array exploded with a blinding red light under her mental power—the frozen ground in front of the position suddenly bulged up in this light.

Several rows of huge, spike-like soil cones rose from the frozen ground, spreading out diagonally forward in a fan shape, piercing, overturning, and tearing apart the infected who had already rushed to the edge of the trench, along with the frozen soil outside the trench.

Those earthen cones, with surfaces as rough as unpolished granite, some nearly two stories high and with bases thicker than a person's waist, stood abruptly in this barren wilderness, like a row of spears thrusting out of the ground.

The infected at the front of the trench suffered the greatest impact, with several of them being pierced directly from below by earth spikes, along with fragments of frozen soil hanging on the sides of the spikes. Black blood flowed down the rough surface of the spikes, leaving dark streaks on the grayish-white frozen soil.