Chapter 283: The Rampage in the Kingdom of Kront
Iron and Eliza sat on a wide sofa in the left wing of the Main Building, quietly discussing technical issues.
"If we simplify the power supply to the distribution nodes, the load on the conductors will drop significantly," Iron said thoughtfully, tilting his head slightly. "We don't necessarily have to run maximum current through the entire network, right? It's enough to just maintain a stable pulse at key points."
Eliza nodded, settling more comfortably on the sofa:
"Yeah. If we overload the central core, the whole system will just burn out from a spike in resistance. Better to split the streams into several smaller branches—it's safer that way and easier to maintain."
Iron listened to her with interest and grunted approvingly:
"Yeah."
At that moment, Eliza's gaze casually drifted toward the window, and she froze. Beyond the transparent glass stretched a sky fully bathed in morning sunlight.
"Oh, it's already daybreak," she said quietly.
Iron shifted his gaze to the brightening street, stared silently at the horizon for a while, and then turned to Eliza:
"Where did you get so good at engineering?"
She felt a little embarrassed, shrugging her shoulders:
"Well... let's just say that in my past circumstances, it was impossible not to learn the basic principles and mechanics."
Iron nodded silently in response, getting up from the sofa. He briefly adjusted his clothes and headed toward the room's exit, tossing out on the move:
"We really spent way less energy and time on this task than I originally anticipated. Thanks for the help."
Eliza got up after him, and they headed for the exit.
Stepping out of the Main Building, Iron and Eliza walked across the village grounds. On their way, they almost immediately bumped into Elyria. Noticing them, she immediately flew closer, shifting her gaze from one to the other, and asked impatiently:
"So? Did it work?"
Eliza gave a tired but affirmative nod. Elyria's face lit up with a happy smile—she twirled joyfully in mid-flight, then bounced up to Eliza and started jabbering:
"Thank you so, so much! I'll do everything in my power. If you need anything, just ask—I'll help out any second, do whatever you want!"
Eliza yawned heavily, covering her mouth with her hand, and gave a sluggish wave:
"Mhm," she mumbled, heading toward the houses, before adding, "Nighty-night."
"Yeah," Iron tossed out shortly, following her with his eyes.
Elyria blinked in confusion, looking at the departing Eliza, and said:
"Nighty-night? But it's morning right now..."
Iron ignored her confusion, throwing out grimly:
"And where's Noah?"
Elyria immediately perked up and blurted out that very second:
"Oops! I'll go call him right now!"
Left alone for a moment, Iron narrowed his eyes slightly and looked up at the sky.
Through his scanner, the shimmering outline of a protective dome covering the entire village instantly stood out before his eyes. Built on the principles of electrodynamic resonance and high-frequency vortex currents, this barrier made the village completely invisible to external scanners and monsters. Any hostile creature that dared to cross the border would instantly face a severe overload of its nervous system and cellular breakdown.
Literally a couple of seconds later, the air beside Iron quivered slightly, and without any unnecessary noise, Elyria and Noah appeared beside him.
"Here he is, Noah," Elyria announced briskly.
Iron turned around and gave a short nod:
"Great. Then it's time to head off..."
He snapped his fingers. Space distorted instantly, and a moment later, they were hovering high in the sky.
"...to the Kront Kingdom," he finished his sentence.
So that Noah wouldn't fall straight down, Iron immediately enveloped his body in a dense vector of directed gravitational compensation. However, realizing that maintaining someone else's mass would consume a lot of mana, Iron turned and said:
"Elyria, take Noah."
"Of course!" Elyria responded easily.
A moment later, Iron's vector dispersed, and barely visible streams of Elyria's magic swirled around Noah, safely catching him in mid-air.
Iron shifted his gaze downward. Through his scanner, he clearly saw the contours of Kront's protective dome.
Descending right down to the translucent gradient of the dome, Iron raised his hand to trigger antiphase interference, but Elyria suddenly pressed her palm against her forehead, taking in the view with interest:
"So what are we going to do?" she asked brightly.
At her sudden question, Iron's concentration broke, and the prepared antiphase interference wave fizzled out before ever leaving his fingers. Iron exhaled and tossed out dryly:
"Just kill Olgerd, that's all."
"Ah, got it!" Elyria nodded carelessly.
Iron extended his hand forward again, focused his scanner on the barrier's carrier frequency, and launched antiphase interference. In that exact same moment, the dome dropped, shattering into millions of invisible sparks.
Wasting no time, Elyria sped downward together with the held Noah. Iron delayed in the sky for half a second, following them with his gaze, and grunted mentally with satisfaction:
Alright, finally I can teleport straight here.
The engineer folded space instantly and materialized right in the middle of the office.
Before teleporting, Iron distorted the light waves and space around their faces—his own, Elyria's, and Noah's—creating a dense, constantly blurred optical noise. To any outsider, their faces became an unrecognizable, floating blob, though Iron himself saw the surrounding world with perfect clarity.
Iron found himself standing right across from a massive desk. Behind it sat a wide panoramic window, draped with velvet curtains. Along the perimeter of the room stood a dozen elite guards in heavy armor.
However, raising his gaze, Iron froze in slight bewilderment.
Behind the royal desk sat a young guy. His face was twisted in a grimace of wild terror, and his ragged breath escaped his chest with a whistle.
The guards and mages reacted instantly. With drawn blades and pointed spears, they blocked the passage to the desk, and a stern shout rang out from the crowd:
"Who are you?! How did you break in here?!"
The young guy behind the desk cringed in his chair, looking at Iron in indescribable horror, and screamed frantically:
"Kill him! Kill him!"
The guards and mages lunged forward. In a fraction of a second, Iron drove the temperature down toward absolute zero.
Molecular motion stopped instantly. In the next moment, all the guards—both elite knights and mages—turned into motionless ice statues. Frost struck the walls rapidly, the floor froze over with a thick crust of ice in an instant, and the massive oak desk turned to ice halfway through. The ice stopped right at the guy, binding his arms, legs, and torso, leaving only his head free.
Iron hopped onto the frozen desk, sat on it while propping his chin with his hand, and asked calmly:
"So where is Olgerd?"
The guy, losing his mind from terror and his teeth chattering from the biting cold, stared wildly at Iron. A cracked, panicked scream burst from his throat:
"I... I don't know! Leave me alone, please! Just leave me alone!"
Iron merely measured him with a cold look. He extended his right hand forward—and right out of thin air, an Asfolt sword materialized in his palm. Lowering the blade, Iron pressed the edge right against the trembling guy's throat:
"So where is he?"
At that moment, the massive office doors burst open with a crash. Two more late guards from the outer corridor rushed into the room. Seeing the frozen room and the blade raised over their ruler, they screamed in horror:
"Ardolf!"
The knights charged toward the desk at full tilt. Iron, without turning around, zeroed out the friction coefficient on the floor surface beneath their feet with a single pulse. The guards slipped with a crash and fell to the floor heavily. At the same time, thick, spiked roots burst from the doorway, wrapped around their legs, and dragged them back into the corridor with a snap.
Iron pressed the blade slightly against the guy's neck. A small trickling stream of blood instantly welled up from the thin cut and ran down his skin.
"You don't want me to kill you, do you?" Iron asked quietly.
The guy broke completely. Closing his eyes tight in wild panic, he shrieked hysterically:
"He's dead! He's dead! Fine, he's dead!"
Iron froze for a second, frowning, and asked back in bewilderment:
"Dead?"
"Yes! Yes!" Ardolf screamed in hysteria, bursting into tears and trying not to move his neck. "I already told you, he's dead! Now let me go, please!"
Iron peered intently into the young man's face.
Realizing that interrogating him further was useless, Iron lowered his hand. The sword vanished instantly. Iron pushed off the desk and landed on the floor.
"Then who killed him?" he asked coldly.
"I don't know! I really don't know who did it!" Ardolf blurted out, gulping air frantically. "If I only knew..."
"What do you mean you don't know?" Iron interrupted him.
"I really don't know!" Ardolf sobbed, attempting to curl up inside the ice shackles.
"There must be leads," Iron said calmly.
"Leads...? Well, he was just sitting in his office, and then... then they reported him missing. And that's it! That's all I know! Really!"
Iron held his gaze on him for a moment and asked dryly:
"What's your name?"
"Ardolf... Ardolf Wilhelm Rosenkron!" the guy hastily emphasized.
Iron exhaled heavily, giving a short shake of his head:
"I see."
In that exact same second, he vanished into thin air.
The moment Iron disappeared, all the ice in the office dropped instantly. The bound crust of ice turned into steam and water, and the guards, previously frozen like statues, took a couple of steps forward on momentum and rushed to the desk all at once:
"Your Majesty! Are you alright?! What happened?!"
Ardolf breathed heavily and raggedly, feeling his cut neck, and answered hoarsely:
"Yeah... yeah. Everything's fine. Thank you..."
At that same moment, Iron materialized in a wide clearing not far from Kront's borders. In the very next second, Elyria and Noah appeared beside him.
Elyria, still in combat mode, unleashed a cluster of powerful, spiked roots from her palm that whipped through the air like a fan. Looking around and realizing they weren't in the castle, she lowered her hands in confusion and turned to Iron:
"Hey! What gives?!"
Noah, clutching a drawn sword in his hands, also measured him with a dissatisfied look:
"And why did we need to do that?"
Iron exhaled heavily and said calmly:
"Olgerd is dead."
Elyria and Noah froze at the same time. Noah's mouth opened slightly in surprise, while Elyria asked back in shock:
"What? Dead?"
"Yes," Iron nodded. "According to Ardolf, his son."
"And why do you even assume he has a son?" Noah frowned.
"I met him in person," Iron replied. "He introduced himself as Ardolf Wilhelm Rosenkron."
Elyria pouted and threw her hands up:
"Yeah, yeah, but you can't just believe the first person you meet! You told me yourself, I remember that I shouldn't be naive!"
"You're right," Iron said calmly. "But I didn't see any lie in him."
Elyria instantly slumped her shoulders and looked at him in complete bewilderment:
"How do you even tell who's lying and who's not...?"
Iron merely shook his head and walked past them:
"Isn't it obvious? To me, it's pretty simple."
After walking a couple of steps, he stopped, turned around to face them, and raised his hand slightly, preparing to snap his fingers:
"Alright. We'll deal with Olgerd later. For now—let's go to Eridan."
With a sharp snap of his fingers, all three instantly vanished.