Time in the Selevan Tower was not measured by the rotation of the sun.Time was measured by the shadows of machines.Elara ran or more accurately forced her body to struggle forwa

The glass pipe joint shattered to pieces. Melted high-pressure steam sprayed out from the panel cavity. Metal shards were thrown hitting the pile of parchment around Elara and Niko.The air pressure tore the vacuum space membrane. The law of silence of the Selevan Tower broke into pieces.Sound returned.That sound did not propagate slowly piercing the air. That sound hit the base of the skull directly. The steam explosion deafened the ears. The giant gear above their heads creaked roughly piercing the tolerance limit of hearing. Metal clashing with metal produced a creak that sliced the nerves.Niko fell to his knees. Both his palms pressed his own ears hard. That valve explosion tortured his eardrums. There was another far more personal horror following a fraction of a second later.Niko heard his own heartbeat.That beat throbbed brutally inside his chest cavity. The air flowing into his throat sounded like the sob of a disabled animal. The friction sound of his clothes resonated v

This escalation corridor ambushed them with a temperature far colder than the cylinder room outside. The steel walls on the left and right were covered by thick oil layers and static dust. Small oil lamps embedded between the pillars provided erratically flickering light.Borot walked on the far right side. His right hand tightly

The metal barrel on the Elite Scribe's chest locked onto Ganda's forehead. The metal membrane arrangement spun narrowing. That spin created a black hole the size of a fist.The machine fired.There was no flash of light cleaving the corridor. The air did not vibrate. The steel plate floor beneath Ganda's boots did not creak.This attack ignored the laws of kinetic physics. This focused wave purely pierced the boundary of space and hit directly into the center of perception.Ganda's forehead felt like it was pierced by a very long ice nail. An absolute coldness spread to all his skull bones in a matter of milliseconds. His eye nerves tensed hard. The hiss of steam from the mechanical arm on his right shoulder seemed forcefully pulled out of his eardrums.The world left behind a painful silence.Ganda was not pushed backward. His vision did not blur. His body posture remained upright.Ganda stood stiffly staring straight at the black shell belonging to that guard machine.Inside Ganda's

Borot stepped on a black shell shard beneath his shoe. Hydraulic fluid stuck to the leather sole, feeling thick, slippery, and smelling of piercing metal. The five guards in the lower corridor had just become junk, but the Selevan Tower never gave humans time to truly breathe oxygen.The three of them forced themselves to run up the series of escalation stairs.Borot's lungs felt like they were being burned from the inside. The old man surged in front, refusing to give the tower system space to rearrange its defense rhythm. Every time a machine silhouette tried to emerge from the dark gap of a steel pillar, Borot lunged without hesitation. As if he slowed down for a single second, the tower would swallow them from behind.He kicked the enemy's steel knee until the machine's leg position snapped backward. He pressed the muzzle of his flintlock right to the opponent's steel chest plate. He pulled the trigger mercilessly.The gunpowder explosion hit the narrow corridor. The sound bounced