I still hadn't even processed what had happened when an enormous force slammed me down onto the floor.
My face hit a puddle of filthy stagnant water with a wet smack. Icy bitterness and a fishy stench surged straight into my mouth and nose, and the shock nearly made me vomit when I was already barely able to breathe. But in the next instant, a female body—soft, yet with a hint of hard armour beneath—came down on me like a hammer, crushing the last air in my lungs and squeezing the foul water out of my mouth and nose in the same spray.
Then the world around us suddenly became blindingly bright. The air temperature spiked like we'd stepped into a boiler room, and the thunderous roar of flame—whooom—punched into my eardrums. Aside from the half of my face and body still submerged in the puddle, and the side pinned under the Lady Inquisitor's weight, every inch of exposed skin felt a searing, drilling pain.
After a string of ear-splitting booms and explosions, someone hauled me up again and we resumed sprinting forward. I instinctively coughed out a mouthful of dirty water—only for a scorching palm to clamp over my mouth and nose again.
"Don't breathe!" the Lady Inquisitor's voice rasped in my ear.
We staggered on for a while longer. My vision was already tunneling into black, my lungs aching like a knife was sawing back and forth inside them, when I desperately tried to pry that hand away—
And then we lurched sharply to the right and tumbled into a room.
I didn't care about the pain of the fall anymore. Like a fish thrown onto shore, I opened my mouth wide and sucked in air with everything I had.
Immediately, the superheated air and the thick, acrid stink of smoke and scorched metal hit my throat, and I broke into violent coughing. I coughed until it felt like my windpipe was going to tear. The veins in my head throbbed wildly from hypoxia and pain, and I genuinely felt one step away from a brain hemorrhage on the spot.
Behind us, there were still massive impacts.
Dazed, I turned my head. I only saw a human silhouette at the doorway—charred black from head to toe—swaying violently. After several metallic clashes, a shriek of explosions (in this cramped, sealed space, the sound made every blood vessel in my body hum), the crackle of energy weapons, and a short, sharp scream—
That silhouette turned into a filthy smear of white and stumbled toward me.
The Lady Inquisitor looked so different I almost couldn't recognize her.
Half her back was burned black. Her long platinum hair, once bright as a full moon, had been reduced to a snarled, ragged mass—charred, curled, and broken. Her front and her face were stained with dark, grimy blotches. Some dark liquid was dripping from her—drip, drip, drip—and I couldn't tell whether it was sewage water, blood, or molten armour material that had softened under the heat.
I opened my mouth, but not a single word came out.
She only came over, hooked an arm under mine, and in a voice so hoarse it was almost inaudible, forced out two simple words.
"Move. Now."
When we reached an enormous room washed in a dull yellow hue and covered in rust, a sequence of heavy footsteps—like pile drivers—began converging on us again from every direction.
At first I thought they were walking tombstones. Only when they drew closer did I see clearly: several heavily armoured warriors carrying gigantic shields.
They wore thick brown greatcoats and cloaks, and through the openings you could see silver armour beneath, along with vicious-looking face masks. The shields they carried were as big as security doors, carved with complex religious iconography and script.
They didn't shout. They didn't waste a single motion.
They advanced in silence, a moving wall of steel, rumbling toward us like a combine harvester.
We had nowhere left to run.
The Lady Inquisitor stepped forward again.
She raised the long sword in her hand—still dancing with blue arcs of electricity—and with a hoarse voice, for the last time, cried out to her God-Emperor.
Out of sheer habit, I thought: by the usual rules of anime and games, this is where a beam of holy light should descend and cloak her, or a pair of wings of light should snap open behind her.
Of course, nothing happened.
Her sword—sharp enough to cut iron, blazing with crackling energy—still couldn't shake that carved greatshield. It couldn't break past the shield wall like a bronze-and-iron fortress to reach the warriors behind it. And they didn't rush to attack. They simply kept pushing forward with their shields, compressing what little space we had left, exactly like riot police I'd once seen in documentaries shoving back a crowd.
The Lady Inquisitor was forced to retreat again and again—
Until her back slammed hard into me.
And then I was shoved back too, crushed by that irresistible pressure. Whether it was because my upper body lost balance from the squeeze, or because the platform railing behind us was far too low, or simply because that rotten railing had already rusted through and snapped—
All I knew was that my body suddenly tipped backward, losing every point of support.
"Ah—!"
I flailed wildly at empty air and let out a terrified scream as I toppled straight off the platform.
On the way down I instinctively curled into a ball. My right shoulder blade slammed into something hard, and then, driven by gravity and the brutal impact, I began tumbling like an out-of-control hamster ball.
Good news: it wasn't very high.
Bad news: it was stairs.
I rolled like a gigantic waterlogged exercise ball, clack-clack-bang-bang, bouncing down a run of filthy, rusted metal steps. I don't know how far I went. At last, with a loud clang, I crashed into a cramped space like a small cage.
But before I could even make sense of anything through the dizziness and full-body agony, a fierce sensation of weightlessness seized me—
And I started dropping again.
Only then did I realize I'd fallen into the shaft of some ancient cargo lift or hoist platform. That last collision had either triggered a switch by sheer bad luck, or else it had simply shaken the decrepit machine loose at last.
With a shriek of metal grinding on metal, the battered iron cage carried me—sparking, flashing, and screaming—hurtling downward into a black abyss with no visible bottom.
Above me, the Lady Inquisitor's voice ripped through the shaft, a howl of despair so raw it tore at the heart.
"No—!!!!!"
The opening of the elevator shaft, dim and distant, grew smaller and smaller, and her voice went with it—until both vanished completely.
(End of Chapter)
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