Chương 240

The runic locomotive hung suspended over the yawning chasm, stripped of its weight by the negative gravity. Inside the cabin, the sudden loss of downward force caused loose tools, discarded armor plates, and the dwarven guards to float toward the ceiling. Orion grasped the bronze console to hold himself steady, pale from the effort of maintaining the spell. Through the window, he watched the effects of his magic become visible.

The Magitek Burrowers clinging to the exterior hull were designed to move along vertical surfaces using anchors and mechanical pitons. Both systems naturally depended on gravity to create resistance. Deprived of that fundamental constant, their metallic limbs spun uselessly. One by one, the constructs lost their grip, drifting away from the speeding iron wedge and tumbling into the lightless void. It should have been a perfect escape, but the underworld was far from empty.

As the train glided over the abyss, the darkness below started to churn, and Orion's glasses flashed, converting the intense surge of energy into something his mind could grasp. The Arcane Overlay displayed a detailed topographical map of the chasm, and the data made his blood run cold. A colossal being was emerging from the depths. It moved through the solid bedrock of the chasm walls as if swimming through liquid, creating a seismic wake that loosened the surrounding stalactites.

When it emerged into the open air, the sheer size of the creature made his breath catch, not helped by the fact that a large part of it was still hidden in the shadows. It looked like a serpentine amalgam of rocky formations and obsidian. Veins of glowing magma glowed beneath its craggy exterior, illuminating a maw lined with rows of crystalline teeth designed to crush granite.

The effects of the Silence powder the Burrowers kept shedding, along with the intense disturbance from Orion's gravity magic, had awakened the apex predator of the Deep Roads from its slumber. Lithic Leviathan - Son of the Tectonic Patron Class: Great Hunter of the Deep [A-rank] Level: 185 Mind: 221 Attunement: 959 Body: 3100 Traits: Earth Oneness [A-rank]; Seismic Tremorsense [A-rank]; Mana Devourer [A-rank]; Unyielding Carapace [A-rank]; Mana Manipulation [A-rank]; Right of the Apex [A-rank] Upper tier four.

We're fucked. The Leviathan's jaws unhinged, spreading wide enough to swallow the locomotive and the drifting Burrowers entirely. The train's current trajectory, disrupted from its natural arc by the zero-g environment, was carrying them straight into the beast's path, and Oron genuinely doubted the monster would bother moving aside.

"Brace!" he shouted, instantly dropping the negative gravity well. He shifted his stance, focusing on the intact rails sticking out from the far cliff edge. Working frantically to modify the spell's formula, he set a heavy gravity point directly onto the landing zone and anchored their mass to it. The sudden return of the train's weight, combined with the violent forward pull of the artificial singularity, caused a brutal slingshot effect.

The locomotive jerked so violently that the iron frame screeched as it accelerated downward and forward at the same time, dropping out of the sky like a falling star. The train scraped over the Leviathan's snout, the heat from the beast's magma veins blistering the paint on the undercarriage and making the environmental runes flare with intensity as they kept them from cooking alive. Several of the Burrowers were not so lucky.

Without the gravitational assist, they fell directly into the creature's maw, even as some of their kin used them as platforms to jump. The Leviathan snapped its jaws shut, sending a shockwave through the Deep Road and effortlessly pulverizing the brass armor and alchemical payloads into fine dust. A split second later, the locomotive slammed onto the intact rails. Sparks flew in a blinding spray as the wheels screeched against the tracks.

The suspension groaned, threatening to buckle and send them careening into the cavern wall. There was little Orion could do about that, but fortunately, Daelin had not let go of the commands.

Instead, he quickly demonstrated his skill with dwarven engineering, wrestling the heavy control levers with bruised hands, and dumped raw fire mana into the lateral runic thrusters, actively fighting the train's momentum to keep the chassis centered, and feathered the brakes just enough to lock the wheels into their grooves without losing too much speed.

"Don't falter now!" Daelin roared over the deafening grind of metal.

"It's hunting us!" Orion looked back through the shattered rear doorway and saw that, indeed, the Leviathan had not retreated to the depths after its meager meal. The beast roared, sending out another shockwave that caused the entire cavern to tremble, and then plunged straight into the solid wall of the chasm. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Its size was so enormous that the trail of displaced earth could be seen, and Orion watched it swim through the stone, running parallel to their tunnel, feeling like a lone swimmer in the ocean at the start of a horror movie about sharks.

"Lithic Leviathans track by vibration and dense mana!" Daelin yelled, throwing the throttle wide open. The runic engine whined, pushing past its intended safety limits.

"Nothing stops them once they catch a scent!"

"Then we have to make sure its attention isn't on us," Orion replied, feeling strangely alive even though he knew he could die at any moment if the beast decided to strike. None of the people aboard had the power needed to stop it. That was simply a fact. But he remembered that its Mind stat had been the lowest by far, and while not insignificant, it showed that the Leviathan wasn't a particularly clever beast. That would have to be enough.

The chase pulled them deeper into the twisting passages of the underworld, and the train sped through the darkness, relying solely on the headlights and Daelin's skill to navigate the dangerous bends and turns. However, it soon became evident that the Iron State had not limited its sabotage to just a single broken bridge. A mile down the line, Orion's HUD flashed a bright, warning crimson, indicating a serious structural anomaly ahead.

The tracks had warped, and the runic anchors securing the rails to the floor melted, leaving a dangerous bend of metal sitting right on the edge of another cliff. They really weren't intending to let anyone escape. How long have they been in the depths of the Adamantine Range? I'm starting to think this must have begun at the same time as the factory in Silverpeak. It makes no sense that they could bring so many machines all at once without being detected, so it must have been a slow process over a long period.

"The track is ruined!" Orion warned, projecting a holographic illusion of the data to Daelin's side.

"I see it," Daelin grit his teeth.

"Thrum, Brok! Prepare to anchor us! Orion, clear a path, just like you did for the magma!" Instead of messing with the brakes again, which Orion could tell were far too stressed to handle any more maneuvering, he activated a sequence of runic dials on the control panel, sending a pulse of mana through the cart. Easier said than done, Orion thought to himself.

Luckily, the CC made casting less taxing on his mind, and with the huge amount of data he received from the SDGs, he could handle even more of that burden by making each spell extremely specific. Still, he was definitely struggling with it. But now was not the time to complain, given the danger they faced. As the train hit the warped section, it violently bucked, with the left wheels leaving the track entirely. For a long moment, they teetered on the edge of the abyss, gravity seemingly ready to pull them in.

"Hold us down!" Daelin yelled. Orion cast [-g], directing a downward vector right over the lifting side of the locomotive. He didn't even try to stop the train and simply forced the chassis to follow the twisted angle of the bronze rails, acting as an artificial suspension system. The iron wheels sparked furiously, grinding against the damaged track as the train tilted at a sickening forty-five-degree angle. Brok and Thrum braced themselves against the lower wall.

For a terrifying span of time that could have easily been hours, but more likely was just seconds, they rode along the wall of the cliff, suspended by pure momentum and gravitational manipulation. As soon as they cleared the warped section, the train slammed back down onto the level rails, rushing forward without speed. Before they could catch their breath, the ceiling above them groaned as another swarm of Burrowers fell from the stalactites, dropping straight onto the speeding train.

This group was equipped with heavier pneumatic drills, clearly intended to stop anyone from escaping the fortress.

"To hell with you!" Brok shouted, swinging his axe to shatter a drill that pierced the roof directly above his head, then reversing his grip, stepping one foot out of the door, and swinging at another Burrower, unleashing a skill that made the air ripple.

"They want to slow us down for the beast," Thrum grunted, discharging a wave of force through his shield that dented the ceiling, dislodging a couple of the mechanical parasites clinging to the exterior, only for more to take their place. The tremor of the Leviathan swimming through the nearby rock wall grew louder, as if echoing the dwarf's words.

The cavern shook, dust and loose pebbles falling onto the tracks, and it was clear to everyone that the beast was drawing closer, gearing up to break through the tunnel and swallow the entire locomotive. That was when Pauline, who had been unusually still for the longest time, moved to the center of the battered cabin. Her eyes shone with an eerie silver glow in the semi-darkness, and Orion didn't need his glasses to see she had been planning something big.

As she raised both hands, the shadows flickering in the corners of the cabin expanded outward, wrapping around the exterior of the locomotive and actively reducing the acoustic vibrations of the grinding wheels, silencing the runic engine's signature. Within moments, the train became a ghost, its presence muffled until even Orion, who was inside it, could no longer hear or feel any sign of movement, despite knowing they were still traveling at incredible speeds.

Simultaneously, Pauline manipulated the ambient shadows clinging to the Burrowers swarming their roof. She seemed to have inverted her cloaking technique, infusing the shadows around the Iron State constructs with agitated mana. Basically, she was painting the mechanical spiders with a dazzlingly bright magical paint.

"Hold on to something!" She commanded, pale from the strain of manipulating so many complex spells at once. Her warning didn't come a second too soon, as the rock wall to their right exploded. The Lithic Leviathan broke through the tunnel, its massive, crystalline maw sweeping through the darkness. Guided by the false sensory markers Pauline had painted, the beast completely ignored the train, and its jaws snapped shut just above the roof, cleanly scraping a dozen Burrowers off.

The sound of screeching metal filled the tunnel as the constructs were devoured, mistaken for a cluster of frantic prey. The sheer power of the Leviathan's movements sent another shockwave through the tunnel, violently rattling the train, and Daelin struggled with the controls, keeping the wheels on the tracks as they rushed past the devastating spectacle. The beast roared in confusion as it chewed on the bitter alchemical powder of the saboteurs while the ghost train slipped away into the dark.

"It won't stay distracted for long!" Daelin warned, pushing the engine until the control console smoked. Orion's Arcane Overlay projected the tunnel ahead, comparing it to the maps he'd seen in the fortress. The natural cavern walls were starting to smooth out, indicating that due to the incredible speed they had gained, they were approaching the final chokepoint much earlier than expected.

"We're almost at the Bronze Gate," he said, and Daelin gave him a surprised look at his knowledge before clearly deciding it could wait. He nodded in relief and grabbed a lever, preparing to slow down but not yet pulling it. The tunnel sharply narrowed, passing through a series of perfectly circular archways reinforced with bands of glowing silverite. Their design was intended to accommodate transit trains while actively preventing the passage of the massive beasts that roamed the deeper layers.

They blasted through the first archway just as Pauline finally faltered, and her shadows started losing their oppressive sheen. Behind them, the Leviathan realized it had been tricked. Furious, the beast surged forward, swimming through the tunnel walls to chase the escaping prey. It lunged, its maw opening wide to crush the rear of the train, only to hit the bottleneck. The underworld groaned beneath the colossal impact, but the dwarven engineering held.

The beast shrieked, its stone shell grinding uselessly against the unbreakable ring. It could not squeeze through the narrow passage, nor could its crystalline teeth gain a grip on the enchanted metal. The train sped ahead, leaving the furious predator trapped behind the impenetrable chokepoint.