Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 677 Manual Transmission Breath

Beatrice opened her eyes, somewhat numbly.

Her eyes darted around, and the cold, hard touch beneath her body made her aware of her situation.

She is still in the furnace.

The pain came like waves, one after another, without end, as if throwing the whole person into a millstone, grinding them finely, over and over again.

She was starting to lose the ability to distinguish between reality and illusion.

Yes, she often hallucinates. One moment she is a little girl chasing butterflies in the garden, and the next she is back in the rainy night of the Rhine, with Hela walking forward holding the triple crown in her hands.

Sometimes I would see Uncle Jules smiling and squatting down to greet me, and sometimes I would sit in the classroom of the Gear Saint, listening to the lessons in a drowsy state.

Time, place, past, present—everything was mixed together, as if the entire memory had been thrown into a large pot and boiled into a sticky porridge.

Sometimes she even wondered if this was just a fleeting moment before death, a revolving lantern show before everything was about to end.

A tearing sensation surged from my abdomen, accompanied by a burning heat, reaching my chest cavity, as if a bag of sharp blades were forcibly ripping open my flesh, and I could not control the blood and flesh that shot out of my mouth.

Beatrice's eyes became numb and gradually vacant.

Her unwavering will saved her, yet plunged her into the abyss: she had to endure this constant torment.

But why?
Why struggle in this pain? Why not just give in?
She seems to have persisted until now because of some kind of obsession, but those things that support her seem to be gradually wearing away.

A sense of bewilderment gradually welled up in her heart, and the hallucinations suddenly overlapped and repeated, making it impossible for her to distinguish reality.

Her anchor in the sea of ​​ignorance began to sway precariously.

As her consciousness sank into the deep sea, she slowly closed her eyes.

Just as she was beginning to lose her way, she suddenly heard a faint sound.

Like a whisper, like a curse.

She instinctively felt a surge of curiosity, which stirred her numb consciousness, and it took her quite some time to concentrate.

She heard it—

Is that really true?

"rest assured."

"But... so many threads... for the first time."

"I'm here. It's okay to talk."

"But... what should I say?"

"Just those"

".good."

Beatrice was confused, but the eerie whispers suddenly became clearer.

"Alright, today we'll begin our first lesson."

The interaction of forces.

『.』

"Go on, why did you stop?"

"Ahem, I just remembered... I mean, I don't have the holy book on hand. Never mind, I'll just go with my own way."

"Now, Pan Jinlian was using a pitchfork to lower the curtain when a gust of wind blew it down, and it fell right on Ximen Qing. He looked at the pitchfork and then looked up at the sky."

This is gravity.

Beatrice listened, somewhat bewildered.

To be honest, she initially doubted whether it was a hallucination, but gradually she felt that something was wrong.

Her hallucinations couldn't be that outrageous.

And
For some reason, after hearing those strange, absurd whispers, the pain in her body seemed to ease somewhat, as if the pollution had been soothed by the whispers.

Gradually, the illusion before her eyes began to crumble, and Beatrice opened her eyes in a daze.

She was still lying inside the steam engine, with a row of eighteen iron barrels filled with pollution in front of her.

Beatrice looked up and met the eyes of the sleepy-looking girl next to her.

Beatrice: "Are you Zoe?"

Zoe: "."

Zoe suddenly jumped up from her chair and yelled:
"Stop, it's stopped?!"

“What stopped?” Beatrice was taken aback.

"Fountain. I mean, you're not spewing pollution anymore!?"

"Ah?" Beatrice looked surprised, then suddenly realized what was happening, a hint of joy appearing on her face. But before she could say anything, a familiar feeling washed over her again—

"vomit--"

Zoe instinctively looked down, and a stream of pollutants sprayed over her head. She had a vague sense of unease when Beatrice looked up at her.
The stoker and the guards, who had been stunned by what they saw, finally came to their senses and rushed over to help. Some carried buckets, some rescued people, and some held up umbrellas.
I've been busy for a while now.

After a while, the cabin returned to calm. Gaia rubbed her temples and looked at Beatrice in the boiler.

Her condition has improved significantly; she is now mostly lucid and can even control her vomiting occasionally.

However, this is not entirely a good thing.

According to Gaia's observation, whether Beatrice vomits or not depends mainly on whether she notices it. When she doesn't notice it, everything is normal, but once she does, she vomits.

To put it simply, it's like breathing; once you start thinking about it, it becomes like a manual transmission.

The key point is that she was lying in this furnace, with iron barrels piled up in front of her; it's hard not to think of that!

To prevent her from breathing in a specific direction, the stoker has now hung a bucket around her neck to prevent her from doing what Zoe did earlier.

Zoe was almost hit by the spray, and she's still shaken.

That was highly concentrated pollution. For ordinary people, it would only cause some damage, but for a superhuman like her, being splattered in the face with Beatrice's breath was practically the same as being splattered in the face with a dragon's breath cannon.
Gaia carefully created a clone, keeping her main body far away, while the clone knelt down in front of Beatrice.

"What just happened? Why did you suddenly feel better?"

Beatrice, feeling somewhat numb from vomiting, turned her head with difficulty: "Pfft, I think I just...heard some kind of distorted whisper...and then I felt a little better."

“Twisted whispers?” Gaia frowned. “How so?”

"That's quite a bizarre story! It all started with a merchant's wife who opened the window of her house facing the street using a pole."

Beatrice started talking excitedly, not even noticing that she forgot to vomit.

As Gaia and the others in the room listened to her story, their expressions gradually became distorted.

"This is about universal gravitation and the principle of the steam engine. Then there's the first cosmic velocity, but I didn't quite understand that."

“This…” Gaia turned her head and exchanged glances with the other members of the Guardians.

"An evil god! It must be an evil god! Who made up such an outrageous story!"

"Indeed, it was Lord Hughes who improved the steam engine, so how did he become someone else in the mouth of the evil god?"

"Blasphemy is terrifying!"

"No, I need to read the holy scriptures to purify my soul."

"This whisper is so twisted!"

"Although what he said is quite outrageous, the knowledge seems to be correct."

"Huh?" Everyone turned their heads at the same time to look at the person who had just spoken.

"W-what are you doing? Is there anything wrong with what I said?" Zoe shrank back. "I also studied elementary physics. I didn't say anything wrong with the basic concepts in these stories!"

(End of this chapter)