The air in The Hub wasn't for breathing; it was for chewing. Every breath felt like swallowing a mixture of hot sulfur, rust, and coal dust.
Elian Laurent walked unsteadily along a massive iron corridor that curved upward. Around him, the heart of Sector 8 stretched out like a steampunk nightmare. This slum city was built directly inside the hollow of a supermassive planetary gear that never stopped turning. Every five minutes, the floor beneath them shuddered violently, accompanied by a metallic screech that threatened to rupture eardrums.
A constant pain throbbed at the back of Elian's skull—a lingering gift from the Brain Overheat that had nearly claimed his life on the train. Beneath his grimy grey cloak, his ribs protested every step he took. He was "blind" now. His Null Perspective was completely dark. The world before him no longer displayed rows of code or flickering variables. He had to look at Sector 8 through ordinary human eyes again.
However, losing his anomalous vision didn't make Elian an idiot.
His eyes swept over the rows of massive steam pipes snaking along the corridor walls. The heat from those pipes distorted the air, creating thermal mirages that made the silhouettes of people in the distance shimmer like ghosts. Elian noticed a main transmission pipe whose surface was slightly bulging. The steel color was fading due to extreme thermal expansion.
Elian's brain began calculating instinctively. Steel thickness: 5 mm; outer casing diameter: 18 inches; plus the hiss of a valve joint vibrating a hundred times per minute. The gas pressure inside exceeded 400 PSI, Elian noted coldly. That pipe would explode in less than seventy-two hours if no one lowered the boiler temperature.
But no one cared about the pipe. In Sector 8, human life was cheaper than spare parts. Along the corridor, Elian saw factory workers who had lost limbs in machinery accidents left propped against the hot walls, groaning with their remaining breath while people passed by as if they were nothing more than heaps of useless scrap.
"Watch your step, Workshop Boy," Caelus warned casually, stopping Elian just before he stepped into a puddle of oil mixed with blood.
In stark contrast to the disgusting surroundings, Caelus walked like a nobleman on a sightseeing tour. His silver cloak remained spotless, without a single speck of dust. He continued eating his apple with a constant rhythmic crunch, occasionally humming a soft tune to rival the roar of the massive engines.
They turned into a narrow alley flanked by two smelting plants. Steam-lamp lights flickered dimly. At the end of the alley, Elian's steps halted.
Three large men in tattered, foul-smelling black fur cloaks were cornering an old mechanic. They were the Rust Ravens—scavengers, assassins, and the street kings of Sector 8. One of the thugs, who had a prosthetic metal jaw, was pinning the old mechanic's chest with his boot, trying to forcibly pry a blue energy cell from the poor man's mechanical chest.
"Please! If you take that, my pacemaker will stop!" the old mechanic shrieked, his voice hoarse with desperation.
"That's your problem, old scrap-heap. We just need the energy to sell to Sector 7," the metal-jawed thug chuckled, raising a rusted crowbar.
Elian's blood boiled. His instincts as a Sector 9 mechanic revolted at the cruelty. His right hand reached into his cloak pocket, gripping a heavy steel bolt he had scavenged from the train tracks earlier.
He couldn't use his Axiom. But his eyes locked onto a main steam valve lever located exactly three meters above the Rust Ravens' heads. The valve was ancient and corroded.
Elian calculated rapidly. A parabolic toss with a 45-degree angle of elevation. Sufficient initial velocity would snap the already corroded retaining lever. In a fraction of a second, high-pressure steam at 100°C would spray down like a waterfall from hell. They would be boiled alive before they even realized what hit them.
Elian's arm muscles tensed. He took a deep breath, ignoring the sting in his ribs, preparing to throw the bolt.
But before his arm could swing, a hand wrapped in a silver glove gripped his wrist. The grip wasn't forceful, yet it felt like it possessed an immovable mass.
"Don't be stupid," Caelus whispered. His tone was flat, devoid of his usual comedic grin. "The probability of you winning against three armed thugs with broken ribs and a near-melted brain is two percent. If you release that steam, they might blister, but they'll kill you before they die."
Elian turned, glaring at Caelus with a murderous look. "We're just going to let them kill him?!"
"We are here to find a Ghost, Elian, not to find death," Caelus countered coldly, his eyes locking onto Elian's rage-filled gaze. "You can't save Miya if you die a fool's death for an old mechanic in a Sector 8 alleyway. Use your logic. Calculate your priorities."
Elian's jaw tightened. His adrenaline rebelled, but the agonizing throb in his brain was a brutal reminder that Caelus was right. He was still weak. He was a general without an army, a hacker without a computer. Acting heroic now was suicide.
Slowly, Elian lowered his hand. He put the bolt back into his pocket, looked away, and stepped back, letting the old mechanic's screams fade behind them as they walked away. It was the bitterest pill he had ever swallowed—living proof of how powerless he truly was.
Caelus guided him through the grimy labyrinth of The Hub until they finally descended a rusted spiral staircase toward the city's basement level. The stifling heat was replaced by air that was cramped, damp, and reeking of cheap alcohol.
They pushed through a heavy iron door into an underground steam bar. The room was packed with miners and bounty hunters. Music played through a mechanical gramophone, its sound drowned out by the shouts of drunks and the hiss of a broken air purifier.
Ignoring the hostile glares from the crowd, Caelus walked straight to the darkest corner table. There, a thin, one-eyed man was busy chugging a neon-green drink.
"Vander," Caelus greeted as he pulled out a creaking wooden chair. "Long time no see. I heard you were still losing money."
The one-eyed informant looked up, his remaining eye narrowing as he recognized Caelus's silver cloak. "You again, Crazy Poet. Word on the street was you died after being tossed from Sector 6."
"The probability of my death has always been greatly exaggerated," Caelus grinned, placing his phantom harp on the table. "I need information. Someone very specific. White hair, can refract light, and has a bad habit of stealing military data."
Vander choked on his drink. He glanced left and right in panic before leaning forward. "Are you mad? Every thug in Sector 8 is looking for her. Information is expensive. Very expensive."
"I don't like paying," Caelus took out his silver coin and spun it on the table. "How about we play a guessing game? Three tosses. If I win consecutively, you give me the information for free. If I lose even once, you can take my harp."
Vander's single eye gleamed with greed at the sight of the white-gold harp. He immediately pulled out a metal coin of his own. The coin was slightly thicker on one side—a weighted cheat-coin specifically designed to land on "Heads" if tossed with a certain technique.
"Use my coin," Vander smirked.
"With pleasure," Caelus replied without hesitation.
Vander tossed the coin high into the air. Elian watched the movement. He could clearly see the coin's rotation was unbalanced. The added weight on one side would force it to land on its heavy face. Vander was a cheat.
"Tails," Caelus said casually, just as the coin reached its apex.
Instead of staying still, Caelus tapped his index finger onto the rough surface of the wooden table. The tap wasn't loud, but its frequency was synchronized with the natural vibration of the massive planetary gear the bar resided in.
As Vander's coin landed on the table, a micro-vibration wave from Caelus's tap traveled through the wood fibers, hitting the coin at the last millisecond before it settled. The coin's weighted bias was overcome by the table's mechanical resonance. The coin flipped once more and landed on Tails.
Vander stared, wide-eyed. "Coincidence," he growled. He grabbed the coin and tossed it again with a more aggressive spin.
"Tails," Caelus ate his apple. He pressed his knee against the steel table leg, channeling kinetic energy that canceled the coin's rotation in mid-air.
The coin landed. Tails.
Cold sweat began to bead on Vander's forehead. Three times he tried. Three times Caelus performed absurd probability calculations without magic—purely manipulating environmental variables—vibration, temperature, humidity, and ricochet angles—to force a weighted coin to defy its own physics.
The third toss landed. Tails.
"You're cheating!" Vander hissed, his face pale. He looked at Caelus as if the man in the silver cloak were a ghost.
"Probability never cheats, Vander. It just doesn't like people who force their will upon it," Caelus's smile vanished, his eyes sharpening like a blade. "Now, speak. Where is the Refraction Girl?"
Vander's lips trembled. He swallowed hard. "You... you're looking for the Refraction Girl? You've just dug your own graves!"
The informant's voice shook with pure terror. "She isn't running alone anymore. She's being hunted by 'The Bloodhound'!"
BOOM!!!
Just as those words left Vander's mouth, the iron door of the underground bar exploded inward. The sound of snapping steel hinges shrieked deafeningly, followed by a surge of thick, hot smoke forcing its way in. The gramophone music stopped instantly.
A deathly silence enveloped the bar. The sound of heavy metal clanking against the stone floor echoed ominously from the smoking threshold.
A giant stepped inside. The man was nearly two and a half meters tall, his muscles reinforced with rusted steel plates welded directly to his skin. He wore the black fur cloak characteristic of the Rust Ravens' elite. In his right hand, wrapped in an asbestos glove, he dragged a human body—charred and blistered from high-pressure steam.
It was the Chief Executioner of the Rust Ravens. The Bloodhound.
The giant tossed the charred body into the center of the room like a sack of rice. His red, ferocious eyes swept over the bar frozen in fear, before finally locking his gaze straight toward the dark corner where Elian and Caelus sat.
The executioner snorted, steam billowng from his metal nostrils.
"Who..." the monster growled, his voice making the glass bottles on the tables rattle violently. "...dares mention that girl's name in my territory?"