"One hour left."
Burrow sat in his chair, eyes fixed on the pocket watch in his hand, his expression grave.
They were at an abandoned platform outside Old Dunling. After several days of hurried construction, it had been transformed into a temporary base of operations.
According to the plan, Burrow would board a train bound for a small town called End. Intelligence from Lancelot indicated that the mysterious Sacred Coffin was stored there. Whatever awaited them, he would take that place by force—at the very least, hold it until Lancelot arrived to retrieve the relic.
To avoid alerting their enemies, the operation had been divided into two waves. Burrow led a large armed force, already lying in wait at the platform, while the Radiant—the Glory-class train—would arrive in exactly one hour.
Originally, Burrow had intended to depart immediately. But with Galahad down and no Knight-Commander present, their odds were far from secure. To compensate, the Perpetual Engine had authorized the deployment of a classified weapon, handed over to them for this mission—and that weapon was being transported aboard the Radiant.
"Are we ready?"
He looked to his side.
In the darkness stood a colossal machine, silent and ominous. Vast stretches of steel formed a grotesque silhouette, while sharp, cold light slid across its surface.
It was a heavy-duty crane. Behind it, concealed in the shadows, were reinforced armored carriages, one after another. According to the plan, the Radiant would depart from the Berhans Armory, arrive here, and stop briefly. The crane would swap out several cars. The passengers would continue on their journey, unaware, while the carriage carrying the weapon would be detached, coupled to another train, and sent directly to the enigmatic town of End.
Burrow rose slowly.
Time was tight; his injuries had not fully healed. He took a few tentative steps. It felt… acceptable. Just louder than he would have liked.
His lower body was encased in a transmission framework. Power rods connected to his leg joints, copper pipes running up to a small steam pack at his waist. At intervals, thin wisps of vapor hissed softly into the air.
A masterpiece of the Perpetual Engine.
They called it an exoskeletal armor. Due to technical limitations, it was useless in actual combat—more ornament than weapon, a beautifully crafted vase with no real purpose. But for helping someone with impaired mobility run again, it worked just fine.
Burrow looked down at the gleaming metal. Beneath the polished surface, intricate gears turned, meshing and rotating in perfect harmony—its complexity far beyond imagination.
Truth be told, Burrow's grasp of mechanics was mediocre at best. Even so, he could recognize the astonishing precision of the device. As for understanding how it truly worked? Impossible. He didn't even know where its power ultimately came from. If not for the steam venting periodically from the exhaust pipes along his thighs, he might have believed it truly achieved perpetual motion.
Sometimes, he really wanted to crack open the brains of those lunatics and see what kind of structure produced ideas like this.
"How's the situation?" he asked.
Blue Jade had just entered from the other side.
"Fully equipped. The soldiers are ready. Once we link up with Red Falcon, our firepower will be enough to win a localized war."
Blue Jade wore a black, form-fitting combat suit and a domed iron helmet fitted with an electric lamp. The light was switched off indoors. Over it all, she wore a thermal cloak—light as a feather in appearance, but lined with a high-strength, lightweight metal mesh that provided protection against heavy impact.
"That's how the Institute people are," Burrow muttered. "The Perpetual Engine chases forbidden technologies, while the Mechanical Academy obsesses over lethal firepower. Every mission eventually turns into a weapons trial for those two research factions."
The thought made him deeply uncomfortable. Most of the weapons he wielded were prototypes. Until the mission ended, you never knew whether the weapon would kill the enemy—or explode in your hands first.
Like that cursed Old-Era Divine Armor.
"So," Burrow asked, "what did they add this time?"
"No idea. But it must be something special. It came straight from the Berhans Armory."
Blue Jade had once been there. Just hearing the name was enough to make her feel overheated.
The Berhans Armory—the largest military-industrial complex in Inverg. During the Radiant War, mountains of metal were melted down there every single day. Hundreds of trains carried deadly weapons out from its gates. Rumor had it that its steam furnaces were second only to those of the Mechanical Academy, making it the industrial heart of Inverg.
Burrow pondered this, then pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write.
"What are you writing?" Blue Jade asked. "A will?"
"In a sense," he replied. "Where we're going is extremely dangerous. We might die there. Given my position, I should at least hand over my responsibilities."
"You really do love your job," Blue Jade raised an eyebrow.
Unlike the dutiful Burrow, she had been deeply reluctant when she first took this work.
Blue Jade was born in a small coastal town. Her father died early. After her mother remarried, her stepfather turned out to be a drunk—one who eagerly awaited her coming of age so he could marry her off to some wealthy household and collect a dowry to fund his own old age.
It was not a pleasant memory. It was enough to break someone.
As Blue Jade grew older, her drunken stepfather began to look at her differently. To escape that cursed fate, she hid inside a cargo truck one day. She didn't know where it would take her. She only wanted to get as far away from that nightmare as possible.
She survived for days on the bread she'd brought with her and droplets of condensed water from the copper pipes. When the doors finally opened, she found herself standing in a dreamlike city.
To a girl from a remote seaside town, everything there was miraculous—like a place straight out of legend.
Massive airships cruised across the sky. Steam trams and automobiles raced along smooth roads. Compared to this perfect city, she—dirty and exhausted—stood out painfully.
She looked up at the station sign, struggling to read the words with her meager education.
Welcome to Old Dunling.
"If I can help it," Burrow continued as he wrote, "I'd still like to survive. I'm young, after all. I've planned my retirement quite thoroughly."
"Oh?" Blue Jade asked. "Such as?"
"Buying a small island in the middle of the ocean. Living by the sunrise and sunset. Or chartering a ship and sailing around the world… Or going east. I'm very curious about that mysterious land."
It was called Jiuxia.
After its brief, dazzling appearance more than a decade ago, it seemed to vanish from the world's memory. Unless someone deliberately mentioned it, few even remembered that such a nation existed in the East.
"If it weren't for the demons," Burrow said, "I might have become a navigator. What about you, Blue Jade? I remember you kept trying to get Arthur to fire you through deliberate slacking. You really don't like this job."
Blue Jade shot him a look and sat down beside him, her heavy equipment clanking softly. She wasn't wearing a mask, though the domed helmet still concealed most of her face. Even so, the glimpse that remained was enough to reveal her striking beauty.
"Yeah," she snapped. "Fighting twisted, loathsome things every day—only lunatics like you would enjoy that!"
She scoffed.
"My only wish is to find a rich man, marry him, kill him within five years, and live happily ever after with the money."
Men were unreliable.
From her deceased father, her damned stepfather, to her former clients—Blue Jade had learned that lesson well.
She had struggled for years in Old Dunling. As she grew older, her beauty only sharpened. Someone discovered her and brought her into the theater as an actress.
At first, no one paid much attention to the newcomer. They assumed she was just another lucky girl with a pretty face.
They were wrong.
Driven by purpose, Blue Jade rose steadily through the ranks. Using the skills she'd honed surviving Old Dunling, she eliminated every obstacle in her way. Her fame grew. Admirers' flowers piled up outside her door each day.
But this was never her final goal.
No one was trustworthy. Only oneself.
She began attending banquets, intoxicating those in power one by one, stealing their scandals and trading them for wealth.
Like a snowball rolling downhill, her influence grew larger and larger. Under the threat of exposure, even lofty nobles became her pieces on the board. They called her the Queen of the Underground.
Until one day, she tried to get a man codenamed Arthur drunk.
Only two paths lay before her then: rot in prison until death—or join the Purification Agency.
Arthur needed a highly skilled female knight.
And so Blue Jade stepped into the thieves' den—and stayed there to this very day.
"Sounds terrifying," Burrow said quietly. "Why are men so unreliable?"
"Do you think Galahad was reliable?" Blue Jade sneered. "The pure knight. The youngest Knight-Commander. And he nearly killed you and Robin. If not for Nikola, before losing his power completely, he could've slaughtered the entire lower city in one sweep."
"So the only reliable thing," she said coldly, "is yourself, Burrow."
At that moment, a long, resonant whistle echoed through the darkness.
From the far end of the platform, the train's headlights appeared like an approaching meteor—carrying steam, cold wind, and an army within its steel carriages.