The Last Gentleman

[Mariano family]

Beyond the main residence of the Zion family, nearly all the medium and large cities in the Fourth Continent possess buildings or factories owned by the Mariano family, with their firearm industry being the main pillar of the family’s enterprise.

Firearms produced by Mariano are recognized by the organization, each piece being of such high quality that it commands a hefty price,

Each year, the family is also required to hand over a certain quantity of firearms that meet quality standards to the organization, in exchange for the family’s private residence in Zion and the privilege of conducting business affairs.

To ensure the firearms industry operates normally in a Pathological world, each gun factory is supervised by an internal family gentleman, and there are also many prospective gentlemen patrolling all day long, adept in the art of gunnery.

Three days ago,

An early factory built in Wendell Town, which was about to be decommissioned, encountered a severe problem.

Wendell Town was once a small town that relied on its mines, and in its early stages of development, due to various material considerations, the Mariano family built one of their early factories here.

It still produces some classic firearms, which are collected by gun enthusiasts at high prices, but most of the assembly lines in the factory have ceased operation.

As the mines were exhausted a year ago, the town swiftly declined, and the family also decided to shut down this old factory, which had already realized its value.

Just one week before the closure, an anomaly occurred within the factory premises, leaving ordinary family personnel in the town and even a temporary resident gentleman in Wendell Town murdered.

By chance, a coachman happened to pass by the town and immediately brought the situation back to Zion.

Soon a task force from the Gentleman Hall arrived to investigate and categorize the situation, quickly shaping it into a mission event and taking it back to the hall for novice gentlemen to handle.

Because the incident was directly related to a Mariano factory, the staff of the Gentleman Hall also personally visited the family residence to notify them of the matter.

Edmund, who had gained insight during the process of his arm being severed and whose body had recovered, volunteered to deal with the matter, and even called upon his old companion, the Northern Realm giant—Dagbert.

Juliana, due to health issues, did not participate.

At the time, Yi Chen was in the middle of a mission assessment and was not called by Edmund either.

Beyond Edmund’s two-man team, there was another Gentleman Team involved in collaboration, a cooperative task.

According to the task force’s inspection, the number of Patients within Wendell Town had exceeded double digits, and the source of death, injury, and infection in the town was suspected to be a Severe Patient.

…

[Wendell Town]

Before fully entering the town, one could smell a thick odor—a combination of crude oil, industrial waste, heavy metals, and other by-products. If one opened their mouth, they could even taste it.

The entire town was shrouded in thick fog, with what appeared to be coal ash black substances floating around.

Seventy percent of the town’s structures are factory-related, with variously sized chimneys thrusting up all over the place, all products of the previous era, most of them now abandoned.

As of now, the entire town was devoid of people.

Strewn across the streets were some bizarrely-shaped corpses,

All humanoid yet not wholly human, unified by one feature: their stiff, livor-mortis-stricken Physical forms intermingled with a vast amount of metal, some even developing firing structures like gun barrels.

The gun barrel might be on a finger, in an Eye, hidden in the mouth, or even in more special areas.

This illness, related to contemporary firearm craftsmanship, did not form its own major category but was instead a subtype of “Iron Disease.”

It was also called “Iron Disease – Firearms Variant.”

In the early stages of Infection, an individual would exhibit an extreme affinity for iron-containing substances (or other metallic elements), clandestinely consuming metal to satisfy their eating cravings and also wearing various metal items—always more, the better.

In the middle and later stages of Infection, the individual’s skin would show a clear iron-like appearance, and gun barrel structures would start developing.

When they became a Patient, the basic form was already present, capable of unleashing firepower at will, replenishing bullets by swallowing and absorbing metal.

These Patients were extremely dangerous; their iron bodies meant superior defense, requiring one to break through their iron Skin Surface to damage the core within.

Besides the threat of firearm discharge, they could also draw out the iron from human Blood through physical contact, causing rapid Death.

…

However,

the two Gentleman Teams that arrived here had already killed all the Infected and Patients in the streets of the town.

Only the Origin of weapon infection—the Mariano factory—awaited final treatment.

Although it was quite old and one of the first factories to be established, its scale was not small at all. Thanks to the ever-growing firearms business, the factory had undergone several expansions.

It was nightfall by the time.

The two teams had been inside for over three hours,

and more than ten minutes had passed since the last gunshot, with no movement or anyone leaving the factory during this time.

The situation inside was worse than expected.

For some reason, the two teams were forced to separate, hiding in different rooms. They dared not make any rash moves before they could figure out a “Breakthrough” strategy, and both teams had members with varying degrees of injuries.

[Employee Rest Room-03]

Blond Edmund and Dagbert were hiding here,

with the door sealed by some kind of time-limited Sealing Talisman Paper.

Dagbert lay flat on the employee desk. Even under the protection of his gentleman’s clothes, his sturdy and massive body was still wounded by bullets.

What’s worse, the bullets remaining inside his body were consuming his flesh over time, leading it towards death.

Only bullet holes no larger than a pinky finger were left on the surface of the skin,

and the bullets that entered the body were precisely lodged between the organs and major blood vessels, continuously absorbing the iron elements within.Upd@te by n0vgo.c0

Seven minutes had passed since Dagbert was struck by the bullets, which had grown to 1.5 times their original size by absorbing the iron elements.

If it were an Ordinary person, they would have probably died long ago, but Dagbert hung on by relying on his special physique and injected Medicine,

and now he had to go through surgery at all costs to remove these bullets from his body.

As for Edmund, although hit by only one bullet, he was still not in good shape.

He leaned against the corner of the wall, directly used a red-hot sword blade to cut open his abdomen, and forcefully removed the bullets lodged in his flesh and blood.

After a simple bandage, he immediately went to Dagbert’s side.

The two men looked at each other, nodded slightly, with no verbal communication.

Edmund immediately placed the blade of his sword under Dagbert’s chest, ready to cut him open and forcibly remove the bullets.

Crack! A noise came from the window.

Edmund turned his head to look and saw a thick branch extending from the outside, followed by something crawling along the branch until a face too familiar to Edmund appeared against the window.

Creak, creak~ Silently dismantling the window frame by damaging the corners with thin and soft branches.

Yi Chen effortlessly climbed into the room along the plant, and another figure in floral attire followed and jumped in.

“William!”

Just when Edmund was surprised to see Yi Chen appear here,

the latter had already swiftly moved to Dagbert’s side,

two warm and vibrant palms pressed near the bullet holes, with bullets that were deformed and swollen being successively removed by the plant’s roots.

Not only that,

Dagbert could feel a different kind of vitality being infused into his body through the plant, like streams of new life flowing within, creating new blood to quickly replace the iron-stripped waste blood and expelling it from the body.

It had only been a little over two months since they last saw each other,

and Dagbert lying on the table felt that this former team member before his eyes seemed to have reached a higher level, even looking somewhat unfamiliar.

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