Chapter 26 Steam-Powered Motorcycle <TOC> Chapter 28 Steam-Powered Mechanical Power Arm
Translator: SumTLMan
“Riding on my beloved little motorcycle, it’ll never~ get stuck in traffic…”
Rayne hummed a little tune all the way across the wilderness for hundreds of kilometres, long after any Imperial Cavalry could be seen chasing behind him.
He has to say, the steam-powered motorcycle looks very odd, but the handling experience is simply fantastic.
The three-metre diameter double-decker wheel has a superbly balanced suspension system that ensures speed while giving the big single-wheeled iron grunt excellent stability and safety on the complex wilderness terrain.
Even when the ground is uneven, this thing bounces around with the “circular ring”… The beauty of the circular ring design is that as long as the rider keeps a good balance, it’ll never tip over.
Moreover, the inner rim was equipped with a counterbalance gyro seat that changed rapidly with gravity. The rider’s posture was always level and kept the six-wheeled muskets loaded on both sides of the vehicle from straying too far from the target.
Of course, riding such a steam-powered vehicle requires a high level of physical fitness from the rider. Otherwise, performing complicated acrobatic manoeuvres would’ve torn apart an ordinary person alive.
……
The steam-powered vehicle sped across the endless wilderness while Rayne had never felt freer and at ease than he did at any time since his journey in this new world.
The depression that had built up in his heart for over the past year had been blown away by the wind, simply turning into a passing cloud.
For the first time, he felt the kind embrace from this mysterious new world.
With “freedom”, he had a real sense of yearning for life.
However, this was only the beginning.
……
Chug, chug, chug… Chug.
The sound coming from the boiler came to a screeching halt.
After a few hundred kilometres of riding, the motorcycle’s steam-powered boiler went out.
Rayne had to stop and check. He saw that the bike was still in good condition.
“This steam-powered motorcycle actually uses solid fuel?”
He realised that the motorcycle wasn’t using gas or oil, but a solid fuel called “High Combustion Coal”.
Compared to ordinary coal, the same volume of “High Combustion Coal” can provide hundreds of times more energy through the combustion process.
However, its output is scarce and a rare associated mineral in coal deposits. Often only one piece of “High Combustion Coal”, the size of a longan fruit can be found in thousands of tonnes of ordinary coal.
Rayne had seen old veterans grab these things when he was in the “Demon Weasel Bandits”.
A single piece was worth thousands of lire, with the purest worth tens of thousands, making it a costly and rare energy source.
This “High Combustion Coal” is also a strategic resource officially controlled by the two great Omagh and Sidhe Empires and is rarely supplied for civilian use.
At this moment, the steam-powered vehicle’s miniature boiler had run out of “High Combustion Coal”, and Rayne had no spare fuel, so he had to climb off and walk on foot for the rest of the journey.
It was a good thing that the ten cubic metres of folded space carried by his “Wisdom Brain” was enough to perfectly fit the vehicle.
Otherwise, he would’ve had to abandon this good stuff in the wilderness.
…….
As night fell, the fog curtain that must come every night had descended and covered the entire Ice Ridge Wilderness.
It’s only at night that the wilderness is at its most dangerous.
All kinds of nocturnal beasts began emerging from their nests to forage in the wilderness.
Without the shelter of a mechanical city, human beings are the favourite prey of the predatory beasts.
With the fog and darkness, visibility is extremely low, with occasional stretches of fog so thick that one can’t even see their own hand in front of them.
The beasts of the wilderness have evolved a sharper sense of smell and acute hearing over the aeons they’ve stayed alive. They can pick up the minute traces of scents and sounds of their prey in the thick fog. These beasts are like assassins born to stalk and sneak up on their prey. When a wilderness traveller is completely unaware, they go in for the kill and violently rip out their victim’s throat.
“Probably no one would have the nerves to give chase hundreds of kilometres to catch a small shrimp like me…”
Rayne stood at a higher vantage for a while, watching to make sure the vicinity was still safe.
He didn’t dare to break the “night traveller’s taboo” of walking blindly in the wilderness and instead opted to prepare and set up a simple camp for the night.
Even a third-order [Demon Hunter] wouldn’t usually travel alone through the thick fog at night, not to mention an [Awakened] who had just broken through the first-order genetic lock.
There’s a saying in this world that the thick fog of the night always hides a “Great Terror” and that travellers from other countries will lose their way and eventually fall into the abyss…
Beyond the steel mechanical cities has always been the hunting ground of beasts. They’re the masters that dominate the wilderness.
Hidden in the dark fog is home to an endless array of terrifying creatures, including: Jackals, human-sized spiders, earth bears, dragons…
……
Rayne had learned the common sense of wilderness survival in his recruit training base and knew that “fire” was the best way to dispel the thick fog and scare away most creatures of the night.
He had set up a makeshift camp, then found some dry brush and lit a campfire next to the camp.
The silence of the wilderness night was terrifying quiet.
The light coming from the fire gave Rayne his only comfort as the warmth dispelled the thick damp fog.
He ate a little dry food and then estimated his remaining journey and destination for tomorrow: “The nearest large-scale human settlement would be ‘Snow Hawk Keep’, at least a thousand kilometres further east. I hope it’s still there, and humans haven’t migrated somewhere else…”
Rayne prayed in his heart.
“Snow Hawk Keep” was a small city with a population of more than 100,000 people.
Three months ago, the “Demon Weasel Bandits” had passed near that location, and Rayne had written down its general coordinates for his future escape route.
But the cities in this world are all mobile and have no fixed location, and he wasn’t sure that it was still in the same place as he remembered.
Because a steam-powered mechanical city needed a vast amount of energy to operate, namely–coal!
On the Ice Ridge Wilderness, long-distance energy transport routes are vulnerable to attacks by bandit gangs and demon beasts.
Therefore, most human cities are always in the vicinity of resource points such as coal mines, timber, salt or various metal mines…
Where there are resources, there are human settlements.
When the resources are exhausted, the cities will migrate, like shepherds looking for the greener pastures to settle down in.
“If all goes well, it’ll take at least another five days to get there… But hopefully, I can make it through these couple of nights without incident.”
By the campfire, a blazing fire illuminated a stoic face.
Rayne chewed on his black bread as he contemplated his “new life” in the future.
Only if he found a human stronghold could he plan his future moves.
Now that he had escaped from the bandit gangs, he was a free man. First, he planned to find a human stronghold, then he would spend some money on a new identity and start a new life.
Besides, he has a few things he needs to take care of as soon as possible.
Those “blood nematode worms” in his body were a constant problem, and he wanted to find some high-level doctor to see if they can completely solve this problem once and for all.
Moreover, the translation of the “Munkel Text” also needed to be put on his agenda. Now that Rayne had advanced to transcendence, he was also in desperate need of an excellent genetic source power training method.
As for the map to the airship wreckage that Baron Maureen had left behind, there was no need to consider it for the time being. Judging from the descriptions in Maureen’s diary, Rayne felt that he had to break through to the second-order genetic lock to protect himself before considering exploring that location.
The night was eerily quiet.
After thinking about it, Rayne fished out the storage ring in his pocket again.
It was the one he had gotten today from killing Pythius.
Looking at it, it was another big harvest!
Magic potion masters are indeed the richest profession.
Although the things in this storage ring didn’t look as valuable as the ones left behind by Baron Maureen, Pythius had, after all, spent three years in the bandit gang and had accumulated a lot of rare and strange treasure materials in hand.
For example, the collection right in front of him.
These instruments are the works of the Omagh Empire’s only master forger, Primo.
“Is this an excellent surgical set hand-forged by Omagh Empire’s ‘Master Primo’?”
Rayne didn’t bother to look at the potion formulas but was immediately drawn to the silver-looking set of fine surgical instruments.
Scalpels of various types, vascular forceps, forceps, hacksaws… There are hundreds of tools in all.
Each instrument’s handles were beautifully engraved with an intaglio pattern with the initials “Master Primo”.
These were legendary surgical instruments of the highest grade, forged from mithril and orichalcum alloys and crafted to perfection…
He remembered that Maureen had wished for such a “luxurious” set of surgical instruments in his diary, but he had never been able to buy such a set as a baron. This Pythius actually had such a set in his collection?
Probably stolen goods from a robbery.
“I’m going to be a doctor in the future, and this set will come in quite handy…”
Rayne played with the tools for a while and grew quite fond of them.
The instruments had the inscriptions [Toughness] and [Sharpness] attached to them and were very strong and sharp.
At the very least, with this scalpel, he didn’t need to worry about the blade breaking when he used it to perform [Slit Throat] on an enemy.
And his surprise didn’t stop there.
That’s when Rayne discovered that Pythius’s storage ring actually contained a collection of metal exoskeleton steam-powered mechanical power arms!
“Huh… What good stuff!”
Chapter 26 Steam-Powered Motorcycle <TOC> Chapter 28 Steam-Powered Mechanical Power Arm