Free Web NovelChapter 91: The Iron Horde
Celestial Peak’s observatory was a welcome sanctuary after the frozen hell of the north. Three days after clearing the Frozen Throne, the party filed into Valerie’s office, still riding the quiet, lingering high of surviving a High Class Tower. In the corner, Boris the Yeti snored softly. On the desk, Valerie’s "TUFF GRANNY" mug radiated a steady ribbon of steam. She sat behind it, reading glasses perched low on her nose as she flipped through their clear report.
"A-Rank," Valerie noted, tapping the parchment. "Not an S, but solid work. The Butterfly was faster than your projections, and the environmental regeneration caught you flat-footed. But you adapted. That’s what keeps you alive." She pulled off her glasses and leaned back. "One down. Five to go. But do not get cocky. The Iron Horde won’t be anywhere near as pretty."
She slid a thick, grease-smudged folder across the desk.
"Tower of the Iron Horde. High Class, out in the western badlands," Valerie explained. "About a century and a half ago, the Tower swallowed a massive industrial complex—factories, refineries, assembly lines, the whole rusted mess. Expect metal elementals, construct enemies, and brutal environmental hazards. The boss is the Iron Legionnaire, a heavy construct that commands endless waves of lesser machines. It’s a war of attrition. Manage your mana, or you’ll be ground into paste."
"Floor count?" Nathan asked, skimming the file.
"Nine. One more than the Frozen Throne. The catch is Floor 8—it’s a gauntlet. It will throw everything at you before you even see the boss room. Pace yourselves." She picked up her tea. "You leave in three days. Rest up. Dismissed."
As the party turned to leave, Valerie raised a finger. "Cross. Hold on a second."
Nathan paused, waiting as the heavy oak door clicked shut behind the others. Valerie’s expression hardened, the brisk guildmaster routine dropping away.
"The TCA got back to me regarding those operatives you encountered in the Sunken Depths," she said quietly. "They’ve been flagged in several recent incidents across the outer regions. Nothing concrete enough to authorize a strike, but there is a clear pattern. Watch your back. If these people are who I think they are, they aren’t going to just stop poking at you."
Nathan nodded, the quiet victory of the morning souring slightly. "We’ll stay alert."
"See that you do," she muttered. "I’m too old to break in a new party."
---
The day before deployment, Nathan found Vex in the TCA forge wing. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and hot iron, punctuated by the rhythmic chirping of Ember from her perch. Vex was hunched over a workbench, meticulously etching runes into a pair of heavy steel bracers. She didn’t bother looking up when the door chimed.
"You’re going to wear out my hinges, Cross," she said, setting down her etching tool. "Heard you fought a butterfly. Good. Now you’re off to smash some scrap. Hand it over."
Nathan offered Moonlight. "It took some severe cold stress in the Frozen Throne. Just want to make sure the string tension is holding."
Vex snatched the bow, her eyes narrowing as she ran practiced hands over the limbs, testing the give of the string and inspecting the swirling silver mist within the Tyrant’s Eye.
"String’s fine. Limbs are fine. Core is stable." She shoved it back into his chest. "You pamper this thing better than most men pamper their wives. A word of advice for the Iron Horde: aim for the joints. Constructs are heavily plated but brittle where they bend. And watch the steam vents. I knew a Climber who lost half the skin on his back to a pressure trap in there. Had to retire. Sells life insurance now."
"Encouraging," Nathan said, slinging the bow over his shoulder, still intrigued about how Vex seem to know everything and anything about what he’s doing or has done.
"I’m a smith, not a cheerleader. Now get out of my forge."
---
The western badlands were a graveyard of rust and red rock. Old Marren drove the guild bus in his usual, stony silence, occasionally muttering about the "acrid air" as they rolled past the skeletal remains of collapsed refineries. The sky overhead was a bruised, heavy grey, threatening a rain that never seemed to fall.
Rising from the center of the ruined industrial zone was the Tower of the Iron Horde.
It didn’t look magical. It looked like a monument to industry gone mad—a towering spire of black iron, smoldering steel, and grinding external gears. Massive conveyor belts and rusted catwalks spiraled erratically around its exterior, groaning under years of neglect. The entrance was a colossal blast door, currently wrenched open to reveal a portal that pulsed with the angry, dull orange glow of a blast furnace.
Dillon stepped off the bus, shielding his eyes. "The Frozen Throne was deadly, but it had aesthetic. This just looks like a mechanic’s nightmare."
"You asked for variety," Elise noted, adjusting her grip on her staff.
Nathan drew Moonlight, the silver core cutting through the gloomy light. "Standard spread. Let’s see what the factory has for us."
They stepped into the heat.
---
Floor 1 was a cavernous, dark assembly line. Massive, rusted conveyor belts ground endlessly along the floor, carrying warped, half-finished machine parts into the shadows. The heat was dry and suffocating, reeking of vaporized oil, and every surface seemed to hiss with leaking steam.
Click-clack-click-clack.
"Contacts," Nathan warned. [Hunter’s Insight] immediately lit up, painting a dozen hostile targets in his vision.
They were Iron Crawlers—jagged, spider-like constructs the size of large wolves, welded together from discarded gears and scrap plating. In place of mandibles, heavy welding torches sputtered with blinding orange flame. They swarmed over the conveyor belts, moving with terrifying, mechanical franticness.
"Don’t let them cluster!" Nathan called out.
Mirko stepped to the front, [Impenetrable Fortress] flaring to life. The lead Crawler launched itself at her, its torches blazing. It collided with her green mana barrier with a horrific shriek of grinding metal. Mirko didn’t flinch; she pivoted, her broadsword shearing cleanly through its neck joint and sending its optical sensors skittering across the floor.
"Noisy and ugly!" Mirko declared over the din. "Give me an ice wraith any day!"
"Ugly still kills," Garrett grunted. He stepped into a heavy swing, bringing Volcan down on a second Crawler. The mace’s thermal pulse triggered on impact, flash-melting the construct’s chassis into a bubbling puddle of slag. Beside him, Red caught a leaping Crawler on its horns and violently bucked it backward into the grinding gears of a conveyor belt.
But the environment belonged to Dillon.
"Metal floors. Metal enemies," Dillon grinned, stepping forward. "Finally."
He drew his katana. [Thunder Edge] ignited with a deafening CRACK. Because the Crawlers were entirely uninsulated, the lightning didn’t just strike—it chained. Arcs of blue-white energy violently leaped from one construct to the next. Three Crawlers instantly seized up, their internal circuits frying in a shower of sparks before they collapsed in smoking heaps. Overhead, his Cloud Serpent rained static bursts, turning the assembly line into a chaotic light show.
Elise mopped up the stragglers, a cluster of [Mana Bolts] detonating against the far wall and shattering the remaining spiders into shrapnel.
The party didn’t slow down. They pushed straight into Floor 2, encountering Steam Sentinels—hulking, bipedal boilers that vented scalding, heavy-metal vapor. But they were slow. Kuro utilized [Shadow Meld] to bypass their sensory arrays, driving her daggers cleanly into their unarmored neck joints while Nathan’s [Focus Shot]s punched straight through their exhaust grates.
Floors 1, 2, and 3 fell in rapid, brutal succession. The Iron Horde was tough, but straightforward.
Until Floor 4.
Floor 4 was the beating heart of the forge. A massive, open-air furnace dominated the center of the room, radiating an oppressive heat that made the air physically shimmer.
Standing before the fire was the Forge Warden. It was a walking tank made of reinforced steel and brass pistons, its massive arms ending in hydraulic hammers. Its optical sensors burned with the same furnace-fire that lit the room.
Nathan’s [Hunter’s Insight] swept over the boss. The plating was incredibly dense—arrows would deflect, and even Volcan’s blunt force would take too long to crack the chassis. But dead center on its chest was a spinning ventilation fan, actively expelling the massive heat generated by its core.
"Dillon!" Nathan shouted over the roar of the furnace. "The chest grate! You have the narrowest blade!"
Dillon tracked the spinning vent. "Narrow and loud. Got it."
He didn’t run. He vanished. [Flash Step] blurred him across the room, depositing him directly beneath the Warden’s towering chassis. The construct reacted, bringing a hydraulic hammer down with enough force to shatter the floor, but Dillon was already pivoting.
He planted his back foot, ducked the swing, and thrust upward. [Thunder Edge] pierced straight through the spinning fan blades of the ventilation grate.
KRAK-BOOOOOM.
Dillon discharged the lightning directly into the Warden’s internal power core. The massive construct convulsed violently. The hydraulic fluid lines ruptured, steam shrieking from its joints. The furnace-fire in its eyes sputtered, sparked, and died. It collapsed into a mountain of dead, smoking iron.
Dillon ripped his blade free and sheathed it with a sharp click. "Turns out I do HVAC now."
You are entirely too pleased with yourself, Kuro murmured from the shadows.
"I choose to take that as a compliment, little shadow."
---
Floor 5 was dead.
Unlike the deafening roar of the lower levels, this section of the factory tower floor was completely dark. The conveyor belts were motionless. But as they moved down the narrow, grated corridor, Nathan raised a fist, signaling a sudden halt.
He knelt by a heavy iron bulkhead. The access panel to a pressure valve had been wrenched open. Wires were stripped and hastily rerouted, bypassing the Tower’s standard runes and connecting directly to a massive steam pipe running along the ceiling.
"Don’t step past this line," Nathan warned, pointing to a nearly invisible tripwire rigged across the floor. "The Tower didn’t design this. The trap is supposed to vent at ankle height to deter movement. This has been hot-wired to release superheated vapor at head height. It’s designed to blind and scald."
Elise knelt beside him, her fingers tracing the frayed edges of the wiring. "This is fresh. Someone was in here recently. Maybe a few days ago."
Garrett gripped Volcan tightly, his eyes scanning the dark catwalks above them. "The Nemesis Court."
"They knew our assignment," Nathan said quietly, standing up. "They knew exactly which Tower we were headed to."
"They aren’t just observing us anymore," Elise said, her voice chilling the hot air. "They’re trying to permanently cripple us."
Dillon drew his katana, the electric hum suddenly sounding much more aggressive. "Then we clear this place fast and don’t give them time to reset."
Nathan agreed, his jaw set. "And the second we’re out, we report this directly to Valerie. The Court just crossed a line."
The heavy iron portal to Floor 6 pulsed in the darkness ahead. The Tower was half-cleared, but the atmosphere had irrevocably shifted. They were no longer just climbers battling the environment.
They were being hunted.
Nathan checked the tension on Moonlight one last time, stepped over the tripwire, and led his party into the dark.
