The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 65

After the envoy left the command post, Perfit stood on the fortress wall for a long time.

The north wind blew in from the open fields north of the defense line, carrying fine snowflakes that felt cold and hard against our faces.

She pulled her coat collar tighter, leaned her cane on the frozen, hardened stone bricks, and gazed at the moat and fence in the distance, which had been repeatedly reinforced.

The defenses have been held, epidemic prevention measures are being strictly implemented, the infection rate among wounded soldiers is declining, and soldiers no longer need to be forced to wear gloves by military law.

Everything she did in this fortress, from epidemic prevention procedures to the transformation of the defense line, from the black bread transformation array to the religious preaching of eternal punishment of souls, all achieved the expected results.

However, these achievements did not lead to victory. Instead, they made the rear feel that the situation was under control, thus refusing to activate the wartime system.

This was no longer irony; it was some kind of inescapable knot that she couldn't untie with alchemy.

She turned and walked down the city wall, her boots making a dull thud on the stone steps.

Belfast followed half a step behind her, the hem of the maid's long dress swaying slightly in the cold wind without making any extra sound.

Back in the officers' quarters, Perfit asked Belfast to close the door, then took out the stack of blank report papers she always used from her desk drawer and spread them out on the table.

Her pen still had more than half a tube of ink left, enough to write a detailed report.

She sat down, unscrewed the pen cap, and wrote a line in the blank space at the top of the report paper: "Investigation Report on the Epidemic of Wilt Disease on the Border of the Holy Romulus Empire and the Implementation of Epidemic Prevention Measures".

The pen tip made a soft scratching sound as it glided across the paper. She wrote fluently without pausing to consider her words—the content of the report had already been drafted many times in her mind.

From the fall of St. Petros Port to the ancient seal beneath the ruins of the Pledelshchensk District Hospital, from the appearance of the divine abominations to the scale of the zombie horde during the breakout, from the epidemic prevention reforms at the Wild Boar Ridge Fortress to the political predicament of the special envoy refusing to activate the wartime system, each item is presented clearly and objectively, without any unnecessary emotion.

After finishing writing, she read it through again from beginning to end, and on the last page she added her signature and identification mark—Perfit Brandlis, Chief Scientific Advisor of the Victoria Empire Crisis Response Team, directly appointed by the Empire's Grand Princess.

She placed the report into a waterproof document bag, sealed it with sealing wax, and then stamped it with her alchemist's badge and the sigil of the Brandlis family.

This stamp, along with her signature, was enough to allow the report to bypass any intermediate levels and be delivered directly to Princess Anne herself.

"Allen." She handed him the file bag. "Take Maurice, and a squad of veterans led by General Chertsov, and deliver this report to Stokana Port by carriage. The cruiser is still waiting there."

Tell the captain that this report must be sent back to Langdon as soon as possible and delivered directly to Her Highness the Princess; it must not be transferred to any other department along the way.

You don't need to come back. Just stay at the port and wait for news from home. I'll wait here for your reply.

Allen did not leave immediately after receiving the file bag.

He stood at the door, turning the file bag over and over in his hands several times, as if hesitating over his words. Then he looked up at Perfit and asked the question that he and Maurice had wanted to ask since receiving the order: "Miss Brandlis, aren't you coming back home with us? The cruiser is docked in Stokana, and it's only a few days' journey from here to the port."

You have done far more than your job description required—sealed the abomination, brought back the sample, saved the team, and helped the Romulus defend the fortress.

The current stalemate is not your fault.

You could simply return to your home country and report this to Her Highness the Princess in person, leaving this mess for the Parliament and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to handle.

Perfit sat at her desk, still holding the pen in her hand. She tightened the cap on the self-made ink-filled pen, put it away, and then turned to look at Allen.

Allen's brows furrowed, his expression a mixture of confusion, resentment, and worry—not for himself, but for her.

Morris stood half a step behind Allen without saying a word, but his eyes were exactly the same as Allen's.

"I'm staying here not because I don't trust your abilities." Perfit pushed his chair back to sit more upright. "My report is detailed enough that Her Highness the Princess will make the judgment she should after reading it."

But if I also board the cruiser and return to Langton, then Romulus will have no one left pushing this matter.

She paused, then gently tapped the wax seal on the cover of the report on the table with her finger.

The sealing wax had cooled and solidified, pressing the outline of the Brandlis family's wolf head emblem into the dark red wax surface.

"Victoria is indeed isolated overseas. The ocean is our strongest barrier, but also our most vulnerable point. If the entire Old World falls, Ross is gone, Romulus is gone, Frans is gone, and every inch of land from the northern tundra to the southern coast is covered with infected..."

By then, what do you think the ocean will still be able to stop?

The zombie horde doesn't build sailboats, but it can walk across the frozen sea.

Even if they couldn't make it across, losing the entire Old World meant losing all land trade routes, losing more than half of the strategic resource imports, and losing everything except the homeland and colonies.

By then, Victoria would be a besieged island, and we wouldn't even have a single ally left on the Old World to contain the infected.

She stood up, leaned on her cane, and walked to the window.

Outside the window was the fortress's drill ground, where soldiers were lining up to receive their dinner. Smoke rose from the kitchen chimneys and was blown away by the wind against the gray sky.

"I don't want to look back on this history three, five, or ten years from now and have to admit one thing—that we could have stopped this disaster in Romulus."

But because I returned to Langdon, because no one stayed to continue pushing for the activation of the wartime regime, and because those who could have been persuaded were ultimately not persuaded, the Old World's defenses crumbled.

I don't want to one day stand on the walls of Langdon, across the ocean, and hear the sound of the Old World sinking.

She turned away from the window, looked at Allen again, wrapped her coat tighter, and said in her usual steady voice, "So I need to try again. Maybe the result won't be any different, maybe staying will just mean hitting another wall."

But at least after trying, I can write a sentence in my second report to the princess: I have tried everything I could.

Now, let's set off with my report.