Chapter 26 - Level Twenty

Hunting in Piston Gorge took on a different tempo from day ten onward.

They abandoned the southern sector and pushed a quarter of a mile deeper into the fissure, where the drainage sluices spilled into the switching yard of the Old Freight Line. There were no laborers or Legion sentries down here, only lines of ore cars toppled across warped tracks, caked in a heavy crust of red rust.

Dante had advanced to Level 17 on the eleventh day and Level 18 on the twelfth, driven by an unyielding ambush routine that operated from sunrise until four in the afternoon.

The experience threshold required for each level spiked in massive jumps, but the yield from the constructs in this sector justified the strain.

On the thirteenth day, with Maria already at Level 20 and Dante at Level 19, just before eleven in the morning, they located the construct tasked with servicing the derelict rail yard.

The entity stood motionless atop a hundred-foot turntable. It possessed four jointed outriggers of forged steel, two centerline auxiliary drive treads for rapid bursts of traction, and a cylindrical boiler torso of naval armor plate mounting two heavy limbs: one ended in an eight-hundred-pound hydraulic forge hammer, while the other housed an electric-arc cutting torch with a tungsten nozzle.

[Entity: Track Forger Automaton (Tier 2 Elite).]

[Level: 23.]

[Health Points: 390/390.]

"That one is packing high-grade hardware," Maria whispered, crouched behind the iron wheel of an overturned railcar sixty feet from the turntable.

Her forty-pound greatsword rested flat across her knees, its edge dressed with fresh grease to fend off surface corrosion in the steamy air.

Dante adjusted the strap of the chalk pouch at his belt. The blind haste of the Black Smelter had been completely scrubbed from his process. He invested three unbroken minutes studying the automaton's operational loop: the Forger swiveled its torso every fifteen seconds, spraying a burst of lubricant over its center treads before dropping its hammer onto buckled rails.

"Its torch takes four seconds to heat the tungsten nozzle," Dante murmured, pointing his slender forefinger toward the copper cooling coil over the construct's left shoulder. "Every time it ignites the arc, the pressure relief valve on its spine opens to vent compressed steam. We hit it inside that window."

"I'll snap the rear drive leg," she adjusted the rawhide gloves on her knuckles. "You jam the hammer's rotation with your barrier, or do whatever that arrogant head of yours comes up with."

"No rushing, Maria. Close in, hit once, clear the torch line, and wait for the steam vent."

"I know how to do my job, bighead."

The engagement opened with the severing of a structural support line.

Dante loosed a [Concentrated Aether Dart] straight through the wire rope anchoring a four-thousand-pound plate of scrap suspended above the turntable's flank.

The cable snapped with a clean crack.

The iron slab slammed into the rails fifteen feet from the Track Forger, kicking up a blinding cloud of rust flakes and mineral dust.

The construct whipped its chassis around on the spot, all four outriggers digging into the steel deck while the torch arm flared with the blue static of pre-ignition sparks.

Maria burst from behind the railcar like a two-hundred-pound projectile.

She eschewed a direct line. Weaving through the dry trenches between concrete ties to close distance, she dropped onto her knees in a slide beneath the opening sweep of the machine's hydraulic hammer.

Eight hundred pounds of falling iron struck the ties where she had been a fraction of a second earlier, pulverizing the concrete tie into loose rubble.

Maria pivoted on her hips, planting her left hand on the deck.

[Lead Impact] flared.

The broad greatsword traced a low horizontal sweep, shearing through the air with the dense hum of leaden force.

The strike caught the bronze knuckle of the machine's right rear drive leg dead-on.

CRACK.

The lead-reinforced steel shattered the joint's retaining pins in a single impact. The Track Forger listed violently to starboard, its center tread screeching against the metal deck without finding purchase to compensate for the lost strut.

The copper coil across the construct's spine blew its valve, venting a geyser of compressed steam precisely where Dante had mapped it.

"Now, Dante!" Maria rolled clear over the rail ties, evading the stream of white arc flame erupting from the torch arm.

The edge of the gout grazed within inches of her shoulder, scorching the sleeve of her black shirt and raising a first-degree burn across the skin of her forearm.

[-12 HP to Maria.]

[Maria's Health Points: 118/130.]

Dante was already in prime firing position thirty feet back, boots planted squarely inside a chalk array drawn across a flat steel plate.

He brought both palms up, aiming directly into the exposed vent on the machine's spine.

[Casting: Piercing Aether Dart.]

[Mana Cost: 40 points.]

[Current Reserve: 340/420.]

Two razor-thin bolts of incandescent blue light lanced out in a dead-straight line.

They bypassed the outer armor plating entirely, punching straight through the two-inch aperture of the blown relief valve to detonate deep inside the primary combustion chamber.

The internal detonation sounded like sealed drums bursting under pneumatic surge.

The black exhaust boiling from the Forger's head thinned to a pale gray wisp. The torch arm went dead, coughing out a faint sputter of dying sparks.

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Maria was back on her feet.

She gave the machine no opening to wheel its remaining hammer into play. Closing the distance in two lunging strides, she drove her heels into the steel turntable and brought the greatsword down two-handed in an immaculate vertical cleave straight down the central firebox seam.

The forty-pound blade bit to half its length into the chassis.

The Track Forger seized with a brutal shudder, its internal gear train grinding to a violent emergency halt. Hot oil drained down the fuller of Maria's blade, hissing onto the deck plates before the automaton crashed onto its side across the rails.

[-215 HP to target.]

[Target Eliminated: Track Forger Automaton (Tier 2 Elite).]

The silence of the rail yard settled over them again, punctuated only by Maria's heavy breaths and the distant rhythmic pounding of the great valley pistons miles away.

Maria wrenched the blade free from the wreckage with a boot braced against the frame. She dragged her singed forearm across the sweat on her forehead, letting out a long, shuddering breath.

"Arc burns hurt worse than blunt hits," she grumbled, inspecting the raw red patch on her arm.

Dante walked up to her, retrieving a small glass bottle of salamander fat salve from his pack.

"Rub this in before it starts blistering," he handed the vial over, calling up his own interface.

The screen hovering before his sight carried no threat warnings.

The lines unfurled in bold, shimmering gold script, lighting the shadows of the train graveyard.

[Experience Distribution Complete!]

[Dante Miller has reached Level 20.]

[Maria has reached Level 21.]

[Tier Transition: Second Soul Rank Cap reached.]

[Condition for Tier Three Unlock pending: Completion of the route to the Capital.]

[Shared Quest: Capital.]

[Secondary Objective: Reach Level 20 in both primary classes - COMPLETED.]

[Overall Quest Progress: 50%.]

[Time remaining on timer: 166 days.]

Dante dropped to a seat on the iron grating of the turntable.

The sensation in his core felt like a floodgate swinging wide at the base of his gut.

[Attribute Update - Dante Miller:]

[Intelligence: 31 -> 34 (+3)]

[Wisdom: 24 -> 26 (+2)]

[Constitution: 10 -> 12 (+2)]

[Strength: 08 -> 09 (+1)]

[Dexterity: 10 -> 11 (+1)]

[Total Mana Reserve: 420 -> 510 MP.]

He looked down at his slender fingers.

Twelve Constitution finally granted real structural density to his flesh. The drag of the mountaineering rucksacks no longer wrenched his shoulder joints with that piercing ache from his early years, and his Mana reserves had broken the five-hundred-point barrier. With five hundred and ten Mana, he could maintain three lesser summons simultaneously or cast five full-force runic containment barriers without dipping into emergency consumables.

Maria, leaning back against the dead Forger with green salve smeared across her singed forearm, surveyed her own window with a broad grin.

[Attribute Update - Maria:]

[Strength: 31 -> 33 (+2)]

[Constitution: 29 -> 32 (+3)]

[Dexterity: 23 -> 26 (+3)]

[Intelligence: 10 -> 12 (+2)]

[Total Health Points: 125 -> 160 HP.]

[Total Mana Reserve: 30 -> 45 MP.]

"Thirty-two Constitution," she declared aloud, rapping her knuckles against her battered breastplate. "One hundred and sixty hit points. That boiler colossus would need three full-power hammer swings just to make my vision spin now."

"That colossus was Level 24, Maria. It would still out-muscle you in a head-on clash," Dante reminded her with his trademark realism, getting up on solid footing.

"Yeah, but I'm at twenty-one," she fired back without missing a beat. "And you're at twenty. We knocked out half of that dumb quest before even burning through thirty days down here."

She set about wrenching the tungsten torch from the monster's chassis using a heavy spanner, dropping brass bolts into a canvas pouch.

Dante glanced up toward the violet sky above the gorge.

They were on day thirteen of unbroken hunting. Under their initial itinerary, they were slated to begin their ascent back to the canyon rim that very afternoon to strike the trail toward Coal Depot Twelve.

Yet the fatigue stacked across the past two weeks could not be waved aside.

Maria wore dark rings beneath the coal dust under her eyes, her knuckles raw from sword vibration and the fresh burn along her arm needing at least twenty-four hours of downtime to settle without risk of infection.

Dante felt his spinal muscles knotted stiff from carrying the chalk array and maintaining constant sensory readiness sixteen hours a day.

"We stay one more day," Dante said, packing the ointment bottle into his kit.

Maria paused her wrench mid-turn, looking at him with an arched eyebrow.

"One more day in this soot?"

"We need to consolidate all this copper," Dante pointed toward the basket loaded with cores lashed near the mouth of the drainage conduit. "There's over one hundred and thirty pounds of prime material cached across the three field blinds we set up. If we pull out right now, we forfeit half the capital we need for the train vouchers and grease for the Legion freight conductor."

He stepped into the center of the turntable, lending a hand to unbolt the automaton's compressed gas canister.

"And you need twelve hours of unbroken sleep without waking every twenty minutes thinking there's an iron spider crawling down the flues," he added. "Tomorrow we spend the entire day inside the boiler sorting our packs, separating salvage from scrap, and resting our husks. Day after tomorrow, at dawn, we climb the ropes and march for the depot."

Maria looked at her dressed arm, then down at the machine carcass they had just dropped without taking critical damage.

She dropped the wrench with a flat clack onto the deck, wiped the sweat from the back of her neck with her grimy forearm, and nodded.

"Fair enough," she agreed, her voice carrying the deep relief of someone finally touching dry ground. "You take first watch for six hours while I rack out. At four in the afternoon we switch, and you sleep until midnight."

"Deal."

It took them two hours to haul the copper cores, salvaged tooling, and brass plates back up to the hollow boiler perched two hundred and fifty feet up the canyon wall.

By two in the afternoon, the circular hatch was dogged shut behind double layers of vulcanized tarp, the steel cables lashed tight through the pressure clamps.

Inside, the dimness was broken only by the pale beam of a hand-crank dynamo lantern hooked to an iron bracket.

Maria was already lying on her side across her air mattress, the greatsword leaned against the edge of the wood pallet within easy reach of her right hand. She had stripped off her brigandine and heavy boots, resting in just her gray tank top and thick wool socks.

Her breathing was deep and rhythmic, the steady respiration of a body with thirty-two Constitution beginning accelerated tissue repair.

Dante sat at the far end of the pallet, back rested against the four-inch curve of the iron hull, notebook propped across his knees.

He held his pen in his fully healed right hand, totaling the aggregate weight they would haul in their rucksacks and calculating the approximate return in gray scrip the salvaged copper would fetch at the Low Ember exchange counter.

Every twenty-eight seconds, giant piston number four plunged with its familiar crash three hundred feet away.

THUM.

The boiler's iron wall vibrated gently against Dante's spine.

The noise didn't bother him anymore. It was merely the ambient drone of this damned realm, a steady mechanical reminder that they were alive, intact, and officially standing at Level 20, a threshold that veteran hunters across these plains often spent years attempting to reach.

Dante glanced toward the sleeping girl on the mattress, pulled the collar of his heat-resistant coat snug over his chest, and continued tallying figures across the yellowed sheet beneath the lantern's amber glow.