The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 46

Perfit didn't even have time to think.

Just moments before, she was sitting on the edge of the carriage, a map folded and unfolded on her lap, calculating how many more days it would take to march from the pass to the valley.

The next moment she heard the whistle of the scout ahead—not the short, powerful three-shot whistle that sounds when a few infected are spotted, but a drawn-out, almost hoarse shriek, as if the whistleblower had forced all the air in his lungs into the brass tube.

She looked up, and then she saw it.

At the edge of the white snowfield, a black line is rolling.

At first, it was just a line, like someone drawing a faint ink mark on white paper with a charcoal pencil.

Then the ink streak began to expand, spread, and surge faster than any horde of zombies she had ever seen.

The vast white wilderness was almost completely swallowed up by the blackness in just a few breaths. The snow was crushed, turned up, and ground into grayish-brown mud by countless feet. A dark mass of corpses surged from the horizon, like a tide driven by some malice, overwhelming the lone caravan hanging on the post road.

Too much.

In that instant, Perfit activated the All-Seeing Eye, and the emerald green text of the Emerald Book scrolled rapidly at the edge of her vision, attempting to provide a quantity estimate—but even the All-Seeing Eye could only utter a string of constantly fluctuating numbers, each one barely appearing before being replaced by an even larger one.

It is impossible to count the exact number.

All she saw was a black horde of corpses pressing towards the group from the vast white snowfield, covering the entire wilderness as if the whole place had turned into a giant black maw that was closing in.

"Enemy attack!" The flag captain's roar exploded in the air above the frozen ground.

His combat experience was enough to make him instinctively shout out a warning, but he himself could hear that the voice no longer had the composure that a battle command should have, but only a hoarse cry squeezed out from the bottom of his chest when facing an invincible enemy.

The Ross soldiers around the carriage began to move in a panic.

Someone was shouting, someone was looking for a gun, and someone's flintlock pistol slipped from between their frozen fingers, the butt hitting the frozen ground with a dull echo.

A young soldier knelt down, covered his ears with his hands, and began to mutter something repeatedly in Ross language—not a prayer, but more like a person's name, the name of someone who might have died in the fire of St. Petersburg.

At that moment, Chertzov turned around and roared an order in a hoarse voice, commanding all squads to immediately line up in marching formation.

His voice cut through the surrounding clamor, giving the soldiers something to grasp—not hope, but a clear instruction.

Ludwig charged forward on horseback from the rear of the column, followed closely by the gray-armored knights, their swords drawn and shields frosted in the cold air.

He reined in his horse, glanced at the approaching horde of corpses, and then turned to look at Perfit.

Perfit had already jumped down from the carriage.

Her boots sank into the frozen ground, and with one hand she took the alchemical staff inlaid with a fragment of the Philosopher's Stone from her waist, while with the other she drew the Midas Touch.

When she activated both Philosopher's Stone fragments simultaneously, crimson light burst forth from between her fingers, spreading up her fingers, wrists, and forearms, enveloping her entire arms in a flowing red glow.

She didn't speak, but simply rested the end of her cane on the ground and closed her eyes.

Terrain modification is one of the large-scale alchemical applications she is most familiar with.

The second page of the Jade Record granted her the ability to deduce, allowing her to deduce the optimal structure in her mind before performing alchemy—not by randomly trying things out of intuition, but by being precise down to the direction of each trench, the thickness of each wall, and the firing range of each firing point.

The permafrost trembled beneath her feet.

Suddenly, the snow-covered ground ahead of the column cracked open, tearing a deep trench from the frozen soil, as if someone had used an invisible giant plow to carve a deep wound in the wilderness.

Frozen soil fragments were turned up by some invisible force, piled up, compacted, and shaped in front of the gully, forming a mound several meters high in the blink of an eye.

This deep ditch stretched from the left side of the post road all the way to the foot of the hills in the distance on the right, covering half of the front of the entire team, which was facing the direction of the approaching horde of zombies.

She turned her cane to the left. Another trench emerged from the frozen ground, clods of earth turning upwards to form a circular barrier, just enough to protect the flank of the troops.

Then comes the third and fourth rounds.

The crimson light spread across the frozen ground like mercury, causing the ground to rise or sink wherever it touched.

Her hands were trembling.

She could feel her mental energy being drained away by the two Philosopher's Stone fragments at an unprecedented speed, and that familiar dull pain had begun to pound inside her skull.

But she didn't stop.

When she camped on the edge of the swamp last time, she only used one Philosopher's Stone fragment to compact the frozen ground to reinforce the camp, so the consumption was relatively mild. Now, with two fragments running at the same time and the entire defensive fortification to be completed in a very short time, the loss of mental energy left her with absolutely no room to breathe.

She clenched her teeth and pressed the end of her cane down harder until the ground beneath her feet stopped trembling completely.

She opened her eyes.

Before her stood a simple yet complete defensive fortification.

Two circular trenches encircled the troops, with several-meter-high frozen earth walls outside the trenches, the tops of which still bore the neat ridges left by alchemy.

The ground inside the position was flattened and made firm, and the snow that originally covered the surface was pushed to the outside of the wall, exposing a layer of gray-brown permafrost.

The wall facing the direction of the approaching horde of zombies even had firing ports, with the openings angled downwards, just enough to allow flintlock muskets to fire down into the trench.

A fortress.

It was small in scale and looked very simple, with low walls, narrow moats, and no stone structures.

But it was enough to prevent soldiers from facing hordes of zombies in undefended wilderness.

Cherzov was the first to react. He drew his sword, pointed it at the top of the wall, and shouted out the assignment of defensive positions.

Ludwig's grey-armored knights occupied the high ground on the left side of the rampart, inserting their shields into the frozen ground, leaving just enough space between the shields and the rampart for a person to stand and shoot.

The flag captain, with his sword and the Rose Knights, charged up the right flank. Their knightly swords were already drawn, reflecting a cold, silvery-blue light in the dim sunlight.

At the sergeant's shouts, the Ross soldiers scrambled and crawled across the trenches and rushed into firing positions.

Their flintlock musket barrels protruded from the firing ports of the ramparts, swaying slightly in the cold air.

Some people were loading the gun, some were using a cleaning rod to poke the barrel, and some were biting open the paper packets of loaded ammunition in the ammunition box, spilling gunpowder all over their hands.

Their hands were shaking, but they kept loading.

Then the infantry guns fired.