Chapter 128: The Pulse of a New Era
Morning in Dornheim began with a hum.
The residents of the city woke up with an unfamiliar feeling of vigor. Old John the baker, the first to step out onto the porch of his shop, froze, dropping his basket of flour. Along the old copper pipes that Iron had laid along the streets a week ago ran a soft, blue glow. It wasn't blinding, but it dispersed the morning mist.
The lanterns installed at the intersections flared up on their own as soon as the shadows began to lengthen.
In Iron’s workshop, chaos reigned, which the owner himself would have called a "highly dynamic tuning process."
"Iron! Do something! It’s going to fly away right now!" shouted Darwin, clutching the massive lever of the lathe.
The lathe, which previously required ten minutes of steam warmup, now rotated at such a frantic speed that the cutter struck sheaves of blinding sparks from the workpiece instead of shavings. The air around smelled of overheated metal. Darwin was shaking along with the bed, his cheeks flapping in the wind created by the flywheel.
Iron stood in the center of the room, arms crossed over his chest. Lumon, having synchronized with the energy of the Heart, broadcasted data to him in real time. Iron saw the flows of energy flowing through the cables and felt the tension in every bolt of the machine that Darwin was holding onto.
Reduce the rotation frequency by forty percent. Redistribute the excess to the charging circuits, he simply thought.
The blue lines on his prosthesis flashed a bit brighter. The lathe instantly "calmed down," shifting to a measured, powerful rotation. Darwin, not expecting such a sharp change in rhythm, flew forward by inertia and buried his nose in a pile of sawdust.
"You could at least warn me," the apprentice grumbled, rising and shaking the soot off his face. "Before, this piece of iron was predictable. And now I’m afraid to even approach it with an oil can. We will have to redo all the drives."
In the middle of the day, Elyria looked into the workshop. In her hands, she carried a strange bouquet—flowers that just yesterday were ordinary weeds at the doorstep had today stretched to the height of a human and acquired a strange, neon shade of petals.
"Iron, you ruined everything," she stated bluntly, sitting right on the workbench littered with blueprints.
"Good day to you too, Elyria. What exactly did I ruin this time?"
"The earth used to sleep quietly, and now it murmurs in its sleep. Your 'iron threads' are tickling the roots of the trees in the garden. They are growing too fast. If it goes on like this, then..."
Iron walked over to her. The air was vibrating around her.
"This is a side effect of the resonance," he explained, carefully touching a petal of one of her flowers. At the same second, Lumon issued a report on biological activity. "The Heart radiates life. It just does it in a different language. It’s good that you looked in, I need your help," Iron said quietly.
Elyria raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"Mine? But you usually say that magic is just... m-m-m-m... I already forgot, but you definitely said that magic isn't magic!"
"Doesn't matter what I said," he replied. "If we don't set the filters, the city will turn into a jungle of copper and vines. Help me find a balance. Let me know when the vibration becomes 'painful' for the forest, and I will change the frequency."
Elyria gave him a long, studying look.
"All right, I’ll help. But if the raspberries eat the workshop anyway—it's not my fault."
After noon, Wayland and Walter visited the workshop.
"Master Iron," Wayland swept his hand around the room. "My men report that in the barracks, the water boilers heated up by themselves, and the guards on the walls see blue St. Elmo's fires on the tips of their spears. The city bubbles with rumors. Some speak of a divine blessing, some of a curse of the mages."
"It is neither, Your Excellency," Iron nodded to Walter, who was looking with apprehension at the humming switchboard. "We no longer waste coal and time on basic needs. Now we have the resource for what you are here for."
Iron led them to a massive object covered with a dense tarpaulin. With one movement, he tore off the fabric.
Beneath it was an elegant construction. It was a turret, but not like those bulky ballistas that the military of this world are used to. A smooth matte body, a lens made of dark crystal, and a massive base streaked with blue veins.
"The 'Blue Thunder' prototype," Iron introduced. "An active perimeter defense system."
"And how does it work?" Walter stepped closer, looking at the absence of a bowstring or a bed for bolts. "Where are the projectiles?"
"It doesn't need projectiles, Captain. It shoots focused resonance. Essentially, it is a particle of the Heart's energy, accelerated to a critical value."
Iron gestured for them to come into the inner courtyard. At the opposite end of the yard, by a brick wall, stood an old cuirass stuffed with straw.
"Attention, please," Iron said quietly.
He closed his eyes for a second. Lumon instantly displayed a targeting grid. "Object identified. Distance: 50 meters. Capacitor charging: 100%."
The turret on hinges quickly turned with a quiet whistle. The crystal in its "head" flashed for a moment with a blinding indigo.
Psh-sh-t!
Click!
In the same second, a perfectly even, molten hole the size of a fist formed in the center of the steel cuirass. The brick wall behind it turned into red dust.
Wayland slowly walked up to the target. He touched the edges of the hole—the metal was so hot that the air around it trembled.
"Walter," the Count called out without turning around. "Tell me, how many knights in full armor can one such... device stop?"
"If they march in a tight formation, Your Excellency..." the captain swallowed, "then... none."
"Exactly," Iron approached them, wiping his hands with a rag. "We will install such installations around the entire perimeter. But remember: this is only defense. My goal is to make sure that it doesn't cross anyone's mind to attack us."
Deep at night, when the city plunged into twilight and the blue glow of the pipes became even clearer, a rider froze on a hill three miles from Dornheim.
He was dressed in a dark cloak hiding a coat of arms—a golden eye in a triangle. He raised a spyglass, the lenses of which were enchanted to see through fog.
What he saw made his fingers tremble.
Such waves of pure energy emanated from it that the enchanted lenses of the scout began to be covered with a network of small cracks.
The rider lowered the tube, turned his horse, and drove spurs into the sides of the animal.
And at this time in his workshop, Iron sat by the window, looking at the sleeping city. In his ears, the measured, calming rhythm of the Heart still sounded.
"A rider... so yeah." he said quietly.
Iron let the curtain fall back into place and stepped away from the window. The overwhelming exhaustion that had been building throughout the chaotic day finally settled heavily on his shoulders.
He walked over to the modest bed tucked away in the corner of the workshop and sank onto the mattress with a weary sigh. Before closing his eyes, Iron glanced at the faint interface lines shimmering at the edge of his vision.
"Lumon, I just remembered something I've been meaning to ask you," he said quietly into the silence of the room. "How did you even end up with me?"
«ANSWER: Iron, our synchronization was established while you were still in your previous world. However, the original environment lacked the necessary catalyst in the form of mana and external energy flows. Due to the absence of a compatible medium, and because you had no need for my functionality to sustain your life, the system remained in a state of deep hibernation.»
"My previous world?" Iron gave a crooked smile, resting one arm behind his head as he stared at the dark ceiling. "Yeah... The universe really is full of mysteries."
He lay there in silence for a moment, listening to the faint, steady hum of the pipes beyond the wall before asking another question.
"Tell me, Lumon... can you evolve?"
«Correction of terminology. If by the term "evolution" you mean the amount of system capabilities available to you, then that value is directly linked to the capacity of your body. At your current synchronization level, you are able to utilize 2% of my total power.»
Iron let out a sharp breath.
"Two percent...? And I'm already feeling like it's killing me. What's going to happen when that limit reaches five... or even ten percent? Will my body even be able to withstand it?.."
No answer came. Lumon had quietly returned to standby mode.
Before Iron realized it, his thoughts had become hopelessly tangled. Accompanied by the steady rhythm of the Heart beating somewhere deep beneath Dornheim, he drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.