However, things didn’t always go as planned.

  “Next! Halt!” An Imperial officer wearing a "Heavy Siege Model" steam exoskeleton stopped them. The officer’s name was Balgo. He wasn’t just a gatekeeper; he was more like a mobile steel fortress. His armor carried a massive high-pressure boiler on his back, red pipes coiled around his body like veins, and his right arm wasn’t a hand, but a still-dripping machine oil hydraulic pile driver.

  Balgo’s red prosthetic eye lingered on Aria for three seconds. Despite the perfect disguise, the energy detector in his hand still flickered.

  “Interesting…” Balgo licked his lips, his eyes greedy. “Two homeless men, yet they exhibit high-purity energy. And…” He pulled a crumpled bill from his pocket: a Papal States Arrest Notice. “A target of the Inquisition. I never imagined that such immense wealth would fall into my lap.”

  Sergei narrowed his eyes slightly. “Sir, may I speak to you in private?” He tried to maneuver through conversation. But Balgo was clearly a pragmatist who didn’t want to waste words.

  “Excuse me? No need.” Balgo grinned maliciously; at this distance, he could smell the "danger" emanating from Sergei. As a veteran who had lived on the border for ten years, he never gave his prey a chance to speak. “The dead are the most obedient.”

  Boom!

  Without any warning, without even a questioning, a plume of black smoke suddenly billowed from the boiler behind Balgo, and the massive hydraulic pile driver, with a piercing shriek, slammed into Sergei’s chest without restraint! This attack had Lv.2 Breaking Formation Level peak power, enough to pierce through the skull of a mammoth in an instant.

  “Watch out!” Aria screamed in terror.

  That’s too fast! The explosive power of steam power far surpassed that of human muscles. Sergei’s pupils contracted sharply, his S-level neural reflexes pushed to their limits. Unable to block, he could only instinctively roll to the side in a very clumsy manner.

  BOOM!!! Gravel flew everywhere. Where Sergei had just stood, a cone-shaped crater, one meter in diameter and seemingly bottomless, appeared. The shockwave, carrying debris, grazed Sergei’s cheek like a bullet, leaving a bloody mark.

  “Oh? You dodged it?” Balgo was somewhat surprised. He turned around, maneuvering the heavy mech with surprisingly agile movements. “Looks like he’s not an ordinary vagrant. A trained martial artist?”

  Sergei half-squatted on the ground, wiping the blood from his face.

  [Warning: Enemy armor output: 3500 PSI.]

  [Defense Advice: Avoid direct contact. A graze will result in permanent disability, a direct hit will be fatal.]

  [Current win rate: 0.1%]

  “This is what a real ‘straight man’ looks like…” Sergei gave a wry smile, but this only stirred up the ferocity in his bones. Instead of retreating, he yelled at Aria, “Back up ten meters!” Then, he drew the short dagger from his waist and assumed a fighting stance against the steel fortress.

  “Court death!” Balgo was enraged by the dagger. It was an insult to Imperial Heavy Industries!

  Laugh—! The valves on the armor surface were fully opened, and a ring of scalding white steam erupted instantly from him, forming a high-temperature air wave.

  “Steam Charge!” The steel giant, wreathed in intense heat, crashed down like a runaway locomotive.

  Sergei’s eyes were frighteningly calm. He moved through the high-temperature steam, using the special forces’ "butterfly step" technique to narrowly avoid the deadly pile driver’s thrusts.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Each attack left a deep crater in the ground. Sergei was like a moth struggling in a storm, seemingly on the verge of collapse, but always managing to escape at the last moment.

  “All you can do is run, you rat!” Balgo roared, suddenly changing his attack. Instead of thrusting straight at them, he used the length of the hydraulic arm to unleash a devastating sweep!

  The area is too large; there’s no way to avoid it! A glint of light flashed in Sergei’s eyes.

  “Since we can’t avoid it, then we won’t try to avoid it.”

  The moment the robotic arm swept in, Sergei leaped up and landed precisely on the high-speed moving pile driver pole! Leverage resources! Like a cheetah clinging to a giant beast, he sped along the mechanical arm, charging straight at Balgo’s face!

  “What?!” Balgo exclaimed in surprise, instinctively reaching out with his left hand to grab it.

  But Sergei’s goal was not to kill, but rather—Blinding. With a flick of his left hand, a greasy mess was precisely smeared onto Balgo’s glowing red prosthetic eye—that was… semi-solidified rabbit oil.

  “Ah! My sensors!” With his vision obstructed, Balgo panicked briefly, waving his robotic arm wildly. Sergei was thrown into the air and crashed heavily to the ground, his internal organs dislocated. But he sprang to his feet with a swift movement, completely ignoring the blood at the corner of his mouth.

  You only get one chance.

  “System, calculate the cooling cycle!”

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  [Analyzing... Enemy boiler pressure overload. Radiator valve will open in 3 seconds.]

  [3…2…1…]

  Now!

  Due to the continuous high-intensity attacks, the red warning lights on the back of Balgo’s armor illuminated. With a long hiss, the armor plates on its back automatically popped open, revealing the red-hot cooling core inside, preparing for forced exhaust. That was the only breathing space for this steel behemoth.

  Instead of retreating, Sergei charged forward a second time, facing the still-scalding steam.

  “Give me… Shut up!” He circled around to the back of the mech, and instead of using his dagger to stab the metal plate, he grabbed a large handful of… wet mud mixed with snow water. It slammed hard into the air intake that was drawing in air!

  Physical attack: thermal stress shock. The extremely hot metal core encountered the extremely cold icy mud.

  Collapse!!! A sickening metallic cracking sound came from inside the mech. The core component ruptured due to the drastic temperature difference and contraction. Immediately afterwards, the high-temperature steam that should have been released was blocked, and the pipeline pressure instantly exceeded the critical value.

  “Warning! Warning! Core meltdown!” The armor emitted a piercing electronic sound.

  “No…no!!!” Balgo screamed in terror, but his voice was quickly drowned out.

  Sizzle—!!! The high-temperature steam, hundreds of degrees Celsius, was freed and flowed back into the fully enclosed cockpit through the damaged pipes.

  “Aaaaaaahh—” A piercing scream echoed through the city gates—the sound of a living person being boiled alive in a pressure cooker. The once invincible steel mech convulsed violently a few times, spewing out white smoke tinged with blood, before finally collapsing to its knees with a thud.

  The battle was over.

  Sergei stood beside the fallen giant, panting heavily. His cloak was half-burned, his left arm was scalded, and he was covered in mud, looking utterly wretched. But this only made his figure appear incredibly tall at that moment.

  Dozens of Imperial soldiers surrounded them, guns raised, their hands trembling. They had never seen anyone dismantle a "siege-class" mech with their bare hands.

  “Don’t move! Hands up!” Aria rushed over, drew her broken sword, and stood in front of Sergei like a little wolf protecting its prey.

  Sergei pressed down on her sword. He wiped the blood and mud from his face, his eyes instantly switching from a wild beast’s gaze to… a chess player’s. He stepped on Balgo’s scorching helmet and pulled the card from the other man’s pocket: a Church’s Arrest Notice and a bag of gold coins bearing the church emblem. This was his real "weapon."

  Facing dozens of dark gun barrels, Sergei raised the evidence high and roared with all his might, his voice drowning out the wind and snow: “Let’s see who dares to fire a shot!”

  The soldiers were stunned.

  “I am a special investigator directly under the Imperial Military! Code name ‘Black’!” Sergei slammed the bag of gold coins to the ground. The coins rolled away; they were currency used exclusively by the church. “Balgo colluded with the church of an enemy country, secretly released heretics, and accepted bribes! He even attempted to kill someone to cover it up!”

  “You’re going to go to a military court with this traitor…” Sergei’s gaze was sharp as a knife, sweeping across the face of every soldier: “Or will you put down the gun and become my witness?”

  This maneuver of using someone else’s position to intimidate them was executed with masterful skill. The soldiers exchanged bewildered glances; colluding with the church was a capital offense, and seeing the irrefutable evidence on the ground, their gun barrels wavered.

  Just when the situation reached a stalemate, snap, snap, snap. A languid yet powerful round of applause came from the shadows of the outpost.

  “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.” The crowd automatically separated.

  A tall woman walked out. She was wearing a black military overcoat and carrying a symbol on her shoulder: Major General. She wore a military rank and had a long, thin pipe dangling from her mouth. A delicate silver mask covered the left side of her face. This was The Supreme Commander of the Black Iron Outpost – "Iron Rose" Katarina.

  She glanced at the half-dead Balgo on the ground, then at the wounded Sergei. “Special Investigator?” Katarina exhaled a smoke ring, her eyes gleaming with amusement. “I’ve never heard of this before. When did the military get an extra…”

  “He doesn’t need to use fighting spirit, yet he’s proficient in thermodynamics and structural engineering.” Katarina paused, then continued, “A monster?”

  Sergei’s heart tightened slightly. You can’t fool them.

  “Since we can’t fool them, let’s talk business.” Sergei lowered his foot from Balgo’s, looking disheveled but with his back straight. “Identity is just a code name, General.” Sergei looked directly into Katarina’s eyes, his voice hoarse but resolute: “The important thing is, I helped you get rid of a traitorous parasite. And…”

  He took a step forward, ignoring the gun barrels around him, and said in a voice only the two of them could hear: “I can still help you solve this. That matter—That ‘trouble’ that causes you nightly agony, forcing you to bow down to the church and buy holy water.”

  Katarina’s pupils contracted sharply. That was her top secret—Magical radiation sickness.

  The silence lasted for ten seconds. Finally, Katarina smiled. She waved her hand, signaling the soldiers to lower their guns. “That’s interesting.”

  “Take them both to my office. Don’t put them in shackles.” She turned and left, leaving behind a casual yet murderous remark: “I’d like to see if you, this ‘investigator,’ can survive tonight.”

  As they followed the soldiers into the inner city, Aria supported Sergei, looking at the bustling black market and neon lights around them. “Why…why did we do this?” she asked softly. “We had a chance to escape just now. If you need ‘electricity,’ we can go somewhere else…why did we have to go back to that godforsaken place surrounded by the army?”

  Sergei stopped and looked back at the silhouette of the magnificent yet dilapidated Demon King’s city, faintly visible in the snowstorm in the distance.

  Escape?

  “Aria, the whole world belongs to the divine land.” Sergei said coldly, “No matter where we flee, as long as we are still ‘heretics,’ we will always be rats. Only there—only that ruin abandoned by God—is the only place beyond the law.” Moreover, his life was bound to the "Heart of the Abyss" of that city. The city was destroyed, and he died. More importantly, as an ambitious man, what he coveted was not the ruins, but the ancient technology and loyal demon generals buried beneath them.

  Sergei lowered his head, looked at Aria, and a fanatical smile curved his lips: “I’m not going back to die. I’m going back to Entrepreneurship.”

  “I will use this city as a springboard, and the Empire’s resources as nourishment, until this winter ends…” He clenched his fist: “Reopen that ‘company’ that belongs to me. Then make those high and mighty gods pay the price.”

  Aria stared at him blankly, then finally gripped the sword in her hand tightly. “…Although I don’t understand it, count me in, partner.”

  Ahead, the heavy iron gate of the Black Iron Outpost command post slowly opened. Sergei straightened his tattered collar and strode inside. “The show is about to begin.”