Steam Laboratory

"Ah ----!"

Tweedledum Hills, deep underground in a steamy laboratory, Fintan, his body constantly twitching, gritted his teeth in death as he endured the excruciating pain of his magical transformation.

Begin promotion to Blood Knight.

That legendary level blood magic potion was not drunk, but rather, it was forced to be adapted by quickly replacing the promoter's entire body with blood through an infusion-like transfusion, and the process had to remain conscious, otherwise the promoter would be dominated by the evil instincts that remained in the blood magic potion.

The warm blood was quickly drained, the body's temperature rapidly dropping as it went cold, followed by an even colder liquid taking over the body.

Lying on the lab table, Fintan's whole body trembled, his violently heaving chest constantly emitting hissing breaths, his wide eyes nearly lost in thought.

Looking at the knight, who was almost on the verge of fainting, Eleazar silently dropped his eyes.

The first phase barely succeeded.

Sniffing the toxic smells that he had long since lost all feeling for, so much so that he had almost forgotten that magic potions were deadly to most people.

The demonic blood had been adapted successfully, and next, it was up to his destiny.

Fintan stared at his blurred vision and saw Witcher turn and walk out of the room, his lips jarred but nothing could come out of his throat and his consciousness drifted into darkness.

...

.....

Walking out of the lab that had its door kicked in hard, Eleazar looked around at the surrounding area which hadn't changed at all.

A long absence from the steam lab, the last time he had been here, he had been stopped on the second floor by an awakened demonic statue.

And the magical iron gates that had left him helpless before were now being kicked down with tremendous force.

There was no mistake with his guess, this was indeed a laboratory for the Mechanical God Cult's research on void creatures.

Eleazar looks back at the knight's room, then comes to the fine gold guardrail at the top of the stairs.

Whereas before he could only forcefully slice through it with passable chalk, now with all his might he was finally able to barely break some of the bends.

"Sure is still hard ....."

Eleazar looked at the reddened imprint of his palm and bent down to burrow through the previously scratched gap.

The demonic statue that had once whisked him away stood silent and on standby at the second-floor entrance.

As he approached, those electrical energies left over from before were once again awakened.

"Bare..."

First, there was the sound of a turbine turning, followed by a puff of steam coming out of the air holes as the statue slowly started.

Eleazar preemptively stomps out, his figure storming, and in the blink of an eye, he stops at the guardrail gap carrying a surprising amount of momentum, twisting and lifting his leg, kicking out heavily with an air-shattering sidekick.

That's how those doors on the first floor were broken by his three kicks.

But this three-meter tall demon statue, whose shell was dented by the kick, only took three heavy steps back.

This was followed by an even stronger spurt of steam, which seemed to be more than enough power.

These strong constructs seem to be able to convert any energy they take into power.

There must be some energies it can't absorb to convert, such as; Shadow, Holy Light, Void, Blood, Death, Corrosion...

And of all those guessed-at energies, he wouldn't have any of them.

But thankfully, he could <Time >. In the next moment, facing the iron fist that came tearing through the air, Eleazar dodged sideways and backhanded an upturn with the blade of time in his hand.

The blade cut through the iron arm like nothing.

The iron fist that could smash a person alive into flesh and mud hit the air and swept in again, then flipped and slapped down, and the fierce attack did not stop for a second, because it would not get tired at all.

Boom boom boom...

The steam lab was suddenly as noisy as a construction site, with a constant roar.

Eleazar kept circling the hulking demonic statue, slashing out time blades one after another, then waiting silently for the time to arrive.

Then, time rifts erupted one after another.

The first thing that happened was that the affected arm suddenly snapped off from it, and it looked as if it had broken off its arm.

However, the incision is smooth and even.

It was followed by the torso, and the limbs, as the statue's body froze, the figure staggering as the power furnace prodded it on before finally being cut into a pile of scrap metal by a concentrated burst of time cracks.

Clank, clank, clank...

A mass of mechanical parts tilted out of the enchanted secret silver casing, and the power furnace, cut in half, sluggishly gave one final turn.

Eleazar crouched down and rummaged through the parts.

Unfortunately, he's not a researcher sequence or a steam pathway to see what these things do to maximize their value.

Looking at the liberated second floor, he followed closely as he continued to breach all those room doors.

Research, research, countless studies, and test data.

Unlike the lower functional layer that keeps the lab running, this layer seems to be used for parsing the experimental data conveyed down from the upper layer.

Eleazar finds the stairway, also closed up, and starts by scratching those fine gold guardrails with his Timeblade.

More than ten seconds later, the time blade in his hand was silently annihilated, while the impenetrable fine gold parapet was unchanged.

"It's worthy of being refined gold, the density of this transcendent metal is too high, and the defense capability far exceeds my energy output level."

Eleazar has no choice but to hold out his hands for a hard break.

"Drink!"

Stomping on one of the guardrails with his foot, Eleazar grabs one of them with both hands and leans his body back up with all his might.

Crunch crunch crunch...

The hard guardrail slowly flexed, and the teeth-grinding sound of sharp metal resonated through the lab.

With much effort, Eleazar finally broke a gap that he could pass through.

Resting for a moment, he cautiously walked up with silent steps.

The third floor is an unbelievably spacious place to look at the whole at a glance.

Through the parapet, the ceiling could be seen as a huge oval sphere with spiderweb-like tentacles all around the perimeter, enveloping the top in its entirety.

Directly underneath the elliptical sphere was a neat lab bench surrounded by transparent crystal walls that separated it, creating a dead-end observation room with a circular corridor outside.

This seems to be the real experimental site now, without the vigilant demonic statues.

Eleazar as he did here with the fine gold guardrail and drilled out.

Where's the star core?

What about the equipment they're working on?

Turning around and seeing only a large pile of cluttered abandonment of Eleazar, not even the bodies of the researchers, it seemed that, just as the poor caretaker on the lowest level had said, the higher-ups had all but run away after the accident at the base.

He turned his head to the observation room.

On that lab table, a pitch-black insect shell is like a ladybug.

As he got closer, he realized again that the transparent crystal walls, long ago riddled with cracks, seemed to have withstood very high-energy impacts.

It took a bit of fumbling around before he found the switch, letting the last remaining energy in the place lower the barrier by half and jamming it in place.

Eleazar stumbled to his feet as the aura inside leaked out completely, then looked up at the oval thing with disbelief.

Creatures of the Void...

It was a void creature captured by the Mechanical Theocracy and transformed!

After an unknown number of years and ages, it still did not die, sensed an outsider approaching, and even slowly opened a slit-like eyeball.

A psychic whisper from nowhere sounded low in his head.

"Knowledge that comes from decomposition..."