Reborn as a Hated Noble Family, We Start an Industrial Revolution

Chapter 77: Chapter 77: Rival’s Attack (The Logic of Sacrifice)

The Silent City – Central Ruins Sector. Midday – 30 Minutes After the Gate Opened.

The landscape that stretched beyond the massive black gate was not the glittering gold palace or the ancient stone temple typically found in adventure novels. It was something far more haunting, far more alien. It was the Grave of the Future.

Rhea and Arvid walked along a road made of cracked, grey asphalt that had long since surrendered to the encroachment of time. To their left and right, the skeletal remains of gargantuan structures reached toward the pale sky—buildings made not of masonry, but of steel, reinforced concrete, and shards of shattered glass. These skyscrapers, partially collapsed and leaning like tired giants, were strangled by thick, metallic vines that pulsed with a faint, rusted orange light.

This was not the architecture of Aethelgard. It was a vision of a hyper-modern metropolis that had been subjected to a cataclysmic event, then abandoned to rot for a thousand years. The air here didn’t smell of earth or forest; it smelled of stagnant ozone and the metallic tang of ancient, forgotten industry.

”Magnificent...” Arvid whispered, his voice catching in his throat and echoing through the hollow canyons of the dead city.

He came to a stop in front of a mangled pile of metal—the wreckage of a four-wheeled vehicle that had been flattened by a falling concrete slab centuries ago. Arvid reached out with a trembling hand, brushing away a layer of fine, grey dust from what remained of the engine hood.

”This... this is a civilian-class internal combustion automobile. Look at the chassis, Red! The structural integrity is still discernibly intact despite the pressure! This is the smoking gun of history—proof that the Pre-Calamity civilization wasn’t built on the whims of Mana, but on the absolute principles of pure mechanics!”

While Arvid was lost in his academic ecstasy, Rhea’s every nerve was screaming in warning. Her eyes, sharpened by years of assassination training, swept across the dark, hollow windows of the surrounding skyscrapers. Every shadowy ledge, every pile of rubble was a potential nest for a predator. Her instinct—the same instinct that had saved her life a hundred times—told her that this place was too quiet. It was a perfect kill box.

”Don’t touch anything, Professor,” Rhea warned, her hand resting on the hilt of Claw. ”We have no way of knowing if the local defenses are still operational.”

”The likelihood of that is statistically insignificant, Red. The power grid would have collapsed—”

DOOOOORRRR!

The deafening crack of a gunshot shattered the silence like a hammer through glass. It wasn’t the thud of an arrow or the whir of a crossbow bolt. It was the sharp, violent explosion of chemical propellant.

A high-velocity projectile slammed into the asphalt inches from Arvid’s feet, punching a clean, smoking hole into the hard surface and kicking up a spray of stone fragments.

”RUN!” Rhea roared.

Before Arvid could even process the sound, Rhea lunged forward. She tackled the thin scholar, wrapping her arm around his waist and throwing their combined weight into a frantic roll. They dove behind the wreckage of the flattened car just as a second volley of fire arrived.

TING! TING! TING!

The metallic pings of lead hitting steel rang out. The car’s body groaned as the bullets pierced its rusted skin.

”What is that?! What’s happening?!” Arvid panicked, clutching his head and curling into a ball as dust fell from the car’s undercarriage onto his hair. ”Is it an automated Golem sniper?!”

Rhea peeked through the gap of a shattered side-mirror, her pupils Dilated.

”Not a Golem,” Rhea hissed, her voice dropping into a cold, lethal register. ”Humans. Professionals. They’re using modern long-barreled muskets with rifled bores. The muzzle flash came from the second floor of the collapsed building across the street.”

”Humans? Here? How did they follow us through the forest?”

”COME OUT, ARVID! STOP SULKING BEHIND THAT TRASH LIKE THE COWARDLY RAT YOU ARE!”

The voice boomed through the street, amplified by a Magitech megaphone. It was a cold, arrogant voice that dripped with condescension.

Arvid stiffened. The little color left in his pale face drained away completely, leaving him looking like a ghost.

”That voice...”

Arvid gathered his courage and peeked over the edge of the car’s rusted trunk. On the second-floor balcony of the building opposite them stood five figures. They were dressed in black tactical gear, reinforced with leather and metal plates. On their shoulders was a distinctive emblem: a gear made of blackened iron.

In the center of the group was a middle-aged man with slicked-back hair and a sharp, calculating face. He wore a gold-rimmed monocle over one eye and held the megaphone with a practiced elegance.

”Dr. Vargus...” Arvid spat the name with a venom that surprised even Rhea.

”You know this guy?” Rhea asked, pulling a smoke pellet from her belt and checking the edge of her dagger.

”He was my lead mentor at the Imperial History Academy in the capital,” Arvid replied, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists. ”He was expelled after I exposed him for falsifying research data and selling stolen artifacts to the black market. The last I heard, he was working as a ’Special Consultant’ for the Iron Empire’s research division.”

Rhea nodded, the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place. ”That explains the high-tier weaponry. The Iron Empire is backing them. They want this city’s secrets for their war machine.”

”Arvid!” Vargus shouted again, his voice echoing. ”Hand over the Navigation Map and the Gate Logic-Key! We know you’ve already bypassed the primary seal! The Iron Empire is prepared to pay a king’s ransom for the data. Or, we can just take it from your cold, uneducated corpse!”

”NOT IN A MILLION YEARS!” Arvid yelled back, his voice cracking and high-pitched. ”This technology belongs to the history of the world! It’s not meant to be turned into a more efficient way to murder people!”

”Idealistic fool,” Vargus sighed, his patience evaporated. He made a sharp gesture to the four men beside him. ”Finish him. Secure the bag. Bring me his head if you must.”

The four mercenaries moved with terrifying synchronization. They attached rappelling lines to the balcony and descended to the street in seconds. They hit the ground and immediately fanned out, moving in a professional flanking maneuver to surround Rhea and Arvid’s position. These weren’t tavern thugs; they were elite death-squad veterans.

”Red,” Arvid whispered, his body trembling uncontrollably. ”There are five of them. They have the range. They have the high ground.”

”I know,” Rhea said, her brain working at lightning speed, analyzing the geometry of the battlefield. ”They’re boxing us in. Positions at nine, twelve, and three o’clock. Vargus is staying on the balcony to act as a sniper. He’s the real problem.”

Rhea bit her lip, a drop of blood appearing on her skin.

This was a nightmare scenario. If Rhea were alone, she could slip into the shadows of the ruins, vanish from their sight, and pick them off one by one like a ghost. But she wasn’t alone. She had Arvid. The Bookworm who couldn’t run ten meters without wheezing.

If she left him to attack, Vargus would put a bullet in Arvid’s brain in a heartbeat. If she stayed to protect him, they would be suppressed until the ground troops closed in and executed them both.

Checkmate.

”I’m going to drop smoke,” Rhea said, her voice urgent. ”The moment the cloud expands, you sprint for the interior of the building directly behind us. Don’t look back. I’ll hold the line.”

”It won’t work!” Arvid countered, his analytical mind overriding his fear for a split second. ”Vargus is wearing Thermal Goggles—I can see the glow of the lenses from here! Smoke is transparent to him! The moment I move, he’ll lead the shot and kill me!”

Rhea went silent. Damn it. The enemy’s technology was neutralizing her primary escape tactic. The bullets continued to hammer the car, the metal groaning as the cover grew thinner and thinner.

TRANG!

A stray shard of metal grazed Rhea’s cheek, leaving a thin crimson line.

Arvid saw the blood on her face. He saw his protector—the woman who had been a literal goddess of combat throughout this journey—cornered and trapped because of his own physical weakness. He looked at her, then at the mercenaries, then up at Vargus.

His brain, usually occupied by ancient dates and chemical formulas, began to process variables at the speed of a supercomputer.

He saw the enemy’s formation. He calculated Vargus’s firing angle. He spotted a pile of rusted oil drums—likely still containing traces of combustible residue—near the mercenary on the right.

Arvid swallowed hard.

Probability of survival if we stay still: 0%.

Probability of survival if Red is freed from the burden of protection: 92%.

Required variable: A high-priority distraction.

”Red,” Arvid called out. His voice was no longer trembling. It was flat, determined, and frighteningly calm.

”What?!” Rhea snapped, busy parrying a low-flying bullet with the flat of her blade—a feat of superhuman reflexes.

”Listen to me carefully. Vargus is a narcissist. He hates it when his intellectual authority is challenged.”

”Why does that matter rightSekarang?!”

”I’m going to run toward the two o’clock position. Into the open.”

”ARE YOU INSANE?!” Rhea’s eyes widened in horror. ”That’s suicide! He’ll blow you apart!”

”It’s not suicide. It’s a calculation,” Arvid said, reaching up to adjust his glasses. ”I need exactly three seconds to bait Vargus into focusing entirely on me. In those three seconds, their formation will break. You have to kill the four on the ground. Do not hesitate.”

”Don’t you dare! I’m being paid to keep you alive, you idiot!”

”And I am paying you to ensure this mission succeeds!” Arvid roared, barking the command for the first time in his life.

Before Rhea could grab his collar, Arvid lunged out from behind the wreckage.

”HEY VARGUS! YOU STAGNANT, PLAGIARIZING FOSSIL!” Arvid screamed at the top of his lungs, running with a clumsy, flailing gait directly into the middle of the open street.

”YOUR THEORY ON THE FOURTH DYNASTY WAS A JOKE! YOUR DISSERTATION WAS NOTHING BUT PSEUDO-SCIENCE! EVEN A FIRST-YEAR DROPOUT HAS MORE INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY THAN YOU!”

The move was so absurd, so fundamentally unexpected, that the mercenaries actually paused. Vargus, whose ego was his most sensitive organ, felt the insult like a physical slap. He pivoted his musket, his thermal goggles locking onto the heat signature of the screaming scholar.

”DIE, YOU INSOLENT BRAT!”

Vargus pulled the trigger.

DOOOORRRR!

Arvid tried to twist his body—trying to follow the ”evasive maneuvers” he had read about in books—but his muscles couldn’t keep up with his thoughts. The bullet didn’t hit his head, but it caught his left shoulder with the force of a runaway carriage.

D Flesh tore. Blood erupted in a violent spray, painting the grey asphalt.

Arvid was thrown backward by the impact, rolling across the ground like a broken doll. His thick glasses flew from his face, skidding into the gutter.

”ARGH!” Arvid let out a strangled groan, clutching his mangled shoulder as he collapsed.

But he had done it. Every gun in the street was now pointed at him.

”NOW, RED!” Arvid screamed through the agony.

Behind the car, something ”snapped” inside Rhea Sudrath.

She saw Arvid fall. She saw the bright red blood soaking through the white linen of his shirt. She saw the man who was physically the weakest person she had ever known sacrifice his own body just to give her a three-second window.

How dare you...

How dare you touch my Bookworm...

Rhea didn’t think anymore. She became a force of nature. The ”Red” persona vanished, replaced by the primal fury of the Sudrath Golden Lion.

She slammed a smoke pellet into the ground—not to hide, but to create a localized vacuum of air that she could use for momentum.

POF!

From the center of the grey cloud, a shadow erupted. She wasn’t running; she was flying. Rhea launched herself at the nearest building wall, her boots kicking off the concrete. She bounced like a pinball, descending upon the first mercenary before he could even register the movement.

SRET.

His throat was opened from ear to ear before his finger could squeeze the trigger.

The second mercenary spun around, his eyes wide. ”Behind—”

JLEB.

Rhea’s dagger, Fang, drove upward through his jaw, piercing the brain stem. He was dead before he hit the ground.

The third and fourth mercenaries panicked. They began firing blindly into the air, their professional discipline shattered by the sight of their comrades being butchered by a blur.

Rhea moved with a grotesque, inhuman grace. She performed a low-angle knee slide across the asphalt, her blades flashing. She severed the Achilles tendons of the third man, then vaulted over his falling body to deliver a roundhouse kick to the fourth man’s chest that literally collapsed his ribcage.

In exactly three seconds—precisely as Arvid had calculated—four elite mercenaries lay dead in the street.

Only one remained. Vargus.

The mentor-turned-traitor was shaking. He saw his entire squad neutralized in the time it took to blink. With a snarl of desperation, he reloaded his musket, aiming the barrel down at the prone, bleeding Arvid.

”If I’m going down, I’m taking your legacy with me!”

Vargus’s finger tightened on the trigger.

But Rhea was faster. She didn’t climb the building. She didn’t have time. She improvised.

She ripped her dagger, Fang, from the neck of a corpse and threw it with every ounce of her Sudrath strength toward the second-floor balcony.

WUSH!

The blade moved faster than the eye could follow, a streak of silver lightning.

TAK!

The dagger didn’t hit Vargus. It hit the very tip of his musket’s barrel, the high-grade steel wedging itself perfectly into the bore.

Vargus pulled the trigger. The chemical propellant ignited, but the bullet had nowhere to go. The pressure built up in a microsecond.

DUAAARRR!

The musket exploded in Vargus’s hands. The back-blast shredded his fingers and sent him flying backward into the interior wall of the building.

”ARGGHHH! MY HANDS! MY EYES!”

The battle was over. Silence returned to the Silent City, punctuated only by the distant, pathetic wails of the wounded man above.

Rhea stood in the center of the street. Her chest was heaving, her breathing ragged. Her eyes were a glowing, terrifying red—the side effect of a massive adrenaline dump and pure, unadulterated rage. Enemy blood dripped from her grey cloak, staining the asphalt.

She didn’t spare a single glance for Vargus. She turned and sprinted toward Arvid.

The scholar lay on the ground, his face deathly pale as he fought the onset of shock. He was blindly fumbling across the dirt with his right hand.

”The glasses... where are... my glasses...”

Rhea reached him in a heartbeat. She dropped to her knees, her hands trembling. She found the cracked, dirt-streaked spectacles in the gutter and gently slid them back onto Arvid’s face.

Arvid blinked, his vision clearing just enough to see Rhea’s face—splattered with blood that wasn’t hers, her expression a mask of raw emotion.

”Red... you... you’re safe?” Arvid asked weakly, a faint, pained smile touching his lips. ”My analysis... it was correct, wasn’t it? Three seconds... exactly.”

Rhea looked at the jagged wound in his shoulder. It was deep, the white bone visible through the torn muscle, but the bullet had missed the major artery.

Rhea’s hands were shaking—not with fear, but with a fury so intense it made her bones ache. She was angry at Vargus. She was angry at the Iron Empire. But mostly, she was angry at herself for allowing her client—her Kutu Buku—to be hurt.

”You idiot,” Rhea whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. ”You’re the stupidest Bookworm in the entire world.”

”But I was... effective...” Arvid tried to chuckle, but it turned into a grimace of pain.

”Shut up,” Rhea ordered, tearing a strip from her expensive silk cloak to apply a pressure bandage to his shoulder.

Rhea looked up toward the balcony where Vargus was still screaming. Her gaze shifted from concern to something demonic. It was a look that would have made Riven proud.

”Professor,” Rhea said, her voice dropping into a chilling whisper. ”Stay here. Close your eyes. Do not look.”

”What... what are you doing?”

”Closing the account,” Rhea stood up, unsheathing Claw, its blade pristine and hungry.

”No one touches my Bookworm and gets to keep their soul,” Rhea growled as she walked toward the entrance of the building. ”I’m going to make him regret he ever learned how to read.”

Arvid watched her retreating back, a silhouette of vengeance against the ruins. Her aura was terrifying, cold enough to freeze the very air.

But to Arvid, as he lay there in the dust, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The Lioness was protecting her own. And Vargus? Vargus was about to find out exactly why the Sudraths were feared across the continent.