Chapter 50: Chapter 50: The Steel Threshold

The rhythmic, labored thumping of the stolen logistics carriage’s steam engine sounded like the dying groans of a titanium giant. Each shuddering vibration rattled the wooden frame of the cabin, threatening to shake the very bolts loose from their rusted moorings. Outside, the world was a blur of hostile, vertical geometry. The lush, suffocating darkness of the Wailing Woods had finally begun to recede, replaced by the jagged, ash-gray silhouettes of the Terragard Peaks piercing the sky like the teeth of a dragon.

Kancil white-knuckled the steering levers, his small, soot-stained frame jolting with every bump in the uneven mountain path. The air had turned razor-sharp, carrying the scent of ancient, frozen stone and the metallic tang of an oncoming blizzard.

“Bang Dayat! The pressure gauge is hitting the red zone! I don’t know if this bucket of bolts can handle the incline of the Iron Threshold!” Kancil’s voice was high-pitched, laced with a raw fear he tried desperately to mask with his usual bravado.

Dayat stood on the open rear deck of the carriage, his boots braced against the vibrating floorboards. He looked back, and his heart sank into the hollow of his stomach. Through the swirling gray mists of the dawn, a dozen red sparks flickered like the eyes of demons.

“They’re not giving up,” Dayat muttered, the mountain wind whipping his hair into his eyes. “They’re like ghosts in the machine.”

“Tactical Update,” Dola’s voice cut through the roar of the wind, steady and chillingly calm. She stood beside him, her navy tactical jacket impeccably neat despite the soot covering her husband. Her silver hair whipped around her face like a halo of moonlight. “The pursuers have deployed Mechanical Bloodhounds. Twelve units. They are operating on a hybrid Mana-combustion cycle. Estimated time to intercept: three minutes and fourteen seconds.”

Dayat peered through a pair of manifested binoculars. He saw them now—sleek, terrifying quadrupedal machines forged from matte-black Brassvale steel. Their limbs moved with hydraulic precision, their obsidian claws digging into the permafrost of the mountain path. Behind the pack, the Purge Unit followed—elite kavaleri wearing expressionless metal masks, their energy spears glowing with a sickly, judgmental light.

The weight of his past failures pressed down on Dayat’s shoulders. He could still see Lina’s soul exploding in a pillar of white light. He could still hear the wet thud of Bara falling in that dark alley.

Not again, he thought, his jaw tightening until it ached. I won’t let them take anyone else. I am the Innovator. I rewrite the rules.

“Dola, we can’t outrun them on this slope. The engine will blow before we reach the summit. We need a bottleneck,” Dayat said, his eyes locking onto the massive stone suspension bridge ahead—The Bridge of Sighs, the only path across the Great Chasm into Dwarven territory.

“Analyzing bridge structural integrity,” Dola’s eyes flickered with rapid-fire data streams. “Material: Reinforced Granite with Level 4 Hardening Enchantments. Standard small arms will have a 0.04% chance of causing structural collapse. Dayat, if we wish to sever the path, we need a concentrated shockwave of at least 15,000 PSI at the primary fulcrums.”

Dayat closed his eyes, reaching deep into the Source Code memory that The Maiden had unlocked. He didn’t look for lasers or plasma cannons this time. He needed something Earth-tested. Something raw. Something that had brought down empires and fortifications for decades.

C4 Plastic Explosives. M18A1 Claymore Mines. Detonation cord. Radio frequency triggers.

He visualized the chemical composition—the RDX, the plasticizer. He felt the cold, dough-like texture of the explosives in his mind.

[MANIFESTATION: DEMOLITION KIT – CLASS B.]

A brilliant blue-gold aura erupted on the deck. Ten blocks of dull gray C4 and five curved green Claymore mines materialized out of thin air. Dayat staggered as the manifestation drained his remaining Mana reserves, his vision blurring for a terrifying second.

“Kancil! I need you to plant these at the bridge’s main support joints!” Dayat shouted, handing the boy a satchel.

Kancil’s eyes went wide as he looked at the strange, boxy objects. “Me? Bang, I’m just a street rat with a driver’s license!”

“You’re the fastest one here, Kancil! You’ve spent your life slipping through the cracks of Bakasa. This is no different. Just slip through the shadows of the bridge architecture,” Dayat encouraged, his voice firm and desperate.

Kancil swallowed hard, looking at the deep, bottomless abyss below the bridge. A spark of nekat defiance lit up in his eyes. “Alright, Bang. If I don’t make it back, tell the Elf lady I died a legend!”

The carriage slowed as it reached the mouth of the bridge. Kancil leaped out, his small body disappearing over the side of the stone railing. He crawled beneath the frozen masonry with a monkey-like agility, his fingers finding purchase in the cracks of the enchanted granite.

“Dola, suppress the hounds! I’ll take the long-range knights!”

Dayat manifested an HK416 Assault Rifle, the weight of the German-engineered weapon grounding his frayed nerves. He shouldered the rifle, looking through the holographic sight.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

He fired in controlled, three-round bursts. The 5.56mm rounds pinged off the armored carapaces of the Mechanical Bloodhounds. It didn’t destroy them, but the kinetic impact forced them to stutter, their hydraulic legs struggling to find purchase on the icy road.

Beside him, Dola underwent a terrifying transformation. The warmth he had seen in her eyes during their kiss vanished. Her irises turned a brilliant, deathly silver-white.

[PROTOCOL: MAIDEN OF STEEL – SUB-ROUTINE: TACTICAL SUPPORT INITIATED.]

“Target locked. Calculating atmospheric displacement,” Dola’s voice sounded like a layered metallic echo.

She didn’t use a gun. She reached out with her bare hands, manipulating the very air through Dayat’s lingering energy. As a Bloodhound leaped across a gap to reach Kancil, Dola released a localized shockwave—a miniature sonic boom that hammered into the machine’s chassis. The hound was knocked clean off the bridge, its red eyes fading into the darkness as it plummeted thousands of meters into the void.

“Dayat, enemy knights are preparing a synchronized solar-spear thrust,” Dola warned.

Six knights of the Purge Unit raised their lances, the tips glowing with concentrated solar energy.

“Brace!” Dayat shouted.

The beams of light struck the carriage, searing the wooden panels. Lunethra, who had been meditating inside to maintain the barrier, suddenly burst out. Her green cloak billowed as she slammed her staff onto the deck.

“You dare defile the mountain paths with your hollow fire?!” she roared. Roots, thick as ship’s masts, erupted from the stone of the bridge, weaving into a temporary shield that absorbed the brunt of the holy flames.

Below the bridge, Kancil was screaming—not in terror, but in exertion. “LAST ONE PLANTED! PULL THE DAMN ROPE!”

Dayat hauled on the hemp rope with every ounce of strength he had left, his shoulder screaming in protest. As Kancil scrambled back onto the deck, covered in frost and oil, the first Mechanical Bloodhound cleared the railing, its steel jaws snapping inches from the boy’s leg.

Dola moved like a blur, her heel slamming into the machine’s snout with enough force to dent the alloy. “Detonate, Dayat! Now!”

Dayat didn’t hesitate. He slammed his thumb onto the radio trigger.

BOOOOOM!

The world turned a blinding, absolute white. The concentrated force of the C4 ripped through the granite fulcrums, bypassing the hardening magic through sheer kinetic overpressure. The Bridge of Sighs, which had stood for seven centuries, groaned as its magic-reinforced spine snapped. A massive section of the bridge collapsed, spiraling into the abyss like a falling mountain.

The Mechanical Bloodhounds and several knights were swallowed by the falling stone, their metallic shrieks silenced by the thunder of the collapse. A massive curtain of dust and snow rose up, shielding the carriage from the remaining Brassvale forces.

The carriage rolled forward, crossing the threshold of the mountain just as the path behind them vanished into the mist. They were now in Terragard, the sovereign realm of the Dwarves.

The Gate of Hammer and Stone

The carriage eventually came to a halt before a gargantuan gate forged from black iron and etched with silver runes. It stood thirty meters high, embedded directly into the living rock of the mountain wall. Carved above the archway was the emblem of a crossed hammer and a mountain peak, glowing with a soft, steady amber light.

A battalion of Dwarves emerged from the fortifications. They were short, but their breadth was twice that of a human, encased in heavy, shimmering plate armor that looked like it could withstand a dragon’s breath. They carried mechanical axes that vented hot steam from their hilts.

Their leader, a Dwarf with a white beard braided into four distinct strands adorned with gold rings, stepped forward.

“Hold, travelers!” the man’s voice was a deep baritone that rumbled in Dayat’s chest like a seismic event. He was Grimbar, Captain of the Iron Threshold Guard. “You bring the stench of Brassvale’s gears and the smoke of their failures to Terragard territory. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t crush this carriage and you along with it!”

Dayat stepped down from the carriage, his hands raised in a gesture of peace. He felt Dola move behind him, her presence a comforting, lethal shadow. He knew he had to play this carefully. Dwarves didn’t care for gold as much as they cared for the soul of the machine.

“We aren’t Brassvale’s lapdogs, Captain. We’re the ones who just blew up their bridge,” Dayat said, meeting the Dwarf’s suspicious gaze. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object he had manifested earlier—a High-Precision Ball Bearing, polished to a mirror finish with sub-micron tolerance.

He tossed it to the Captain.

Grimbar caught the tiny object with a gloved hand. He squinted at the silver sphere, his thick eyebrows shooting up. He spun it between his fingers, testing the perfection of its roundness. When he realized that the sphere spun with absolutely zero friction, his jaw dropped slightly, exposing several gold teeth.

“This… this is impossible,” Grimbar whispered, his tone shifting from hostility to pure, unadulterated awe. “No forge in the Lowlands could polish steel to this degree. Even our Master Smiths in the Deep Forge would spend a month to achieve such a surface. Who crafted this?”

“It’s a gift,” Dayat said, a faint smile playing on his lips. “And a sample of the ’Logic’ we bring. We seek asylum from the Church of Gear-Breakers. We seek a place where craftsmanship is respected above dogma.”

Grimbar looked at the bearing, then at Dayat, and finally at Dola. He lingered on her for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he sensed the complexity of her build. “The woman… she’s not quite human, is she? I can hear the hum of a Core beneath her skin. A Core that sounds… divine.”

“She’s my wife,” Dayat said, his hand finding Dola’s.

Grimbar threw his head back and let out a booming laugh that echoed off the cave walls like a thunderclap. “Wife? A human marrying a masterpiece of engineering? I like your style, lad! Anyone who has the balls to mock Brassvale and bring us such fine trinkets is a guest of the Iron Threshold! Open the gates!”

The Glowing Hearth

Hours later, they arrived at The Glowing Hearth, an inn carved directly into a cavern of translucent, glowing quartz. The atmosphere was warm, filled with the aroma of roasting mountain goat, heavy spices, and the yeasty scent of dark ale.

Kancil was already passed out at the heavy stone table, his snores rhythmic and deep, his small body finally giving in to the exhaustion of his heroic climb. Lunethra sat in a corner, her emerald eyes closed as she attuned herself to the mountain’s ancient stone Mana, her staff resting beside her.

Dayat sat by the massive stone fireplace with Dola. He stared at his hands, which were still trembling slightly. Everything that had happened—from the neon streets of Jakarta to the blood-stained alleys of Bakasa—felt like a long, feverish nightmare.

“Dayat,” Dola called softly.

Dayat turned to her. She wasn’t scanning his vitals. She wasn’t running a tactical simulation. She was just… looking at him. Slowly, her lips curled upward into a genuine, radiant smile. It wasn’t a pre-programmed muscle contraction; it was an expression of pure, unalloyed happiness.

“Thank you for choosing me to stay by your side,” Dola said, her voice a soft melody against the crackling of the logs. “In my system, amidst all the variables of this world, the probability of our current happiness is… 100%.”

Dayat smiled, pulling her closer into the warmth of his embrace as the firelight reflected in her sapphire eyes. “We’ve still got a long way to go, Dol. Terragard, then Verdia. But as long as you’re the one holding the data… I’m not afraid anymore.”

Outside, the blizzard roared against the mountain peaks, but inside the crystal cave, the Innovator and his Wife had finally found a moment of peace.

—

Thank you for reading until the end of this volume.

Whatever this story means to you, thank you for being part of its journey.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep