The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 132 - Gutter King // Hall of Machines

Through the smokey, cluttered streets, the four of them barreled through northern Ironwych. Rain tonight was especially thick with a greasy mist, and it didn’t mix well with the Vile. They could barely see ten meters overhead even with street lamps burning with sickly yellow halos, and with all the smoke still rising from factory chimneys all around them, their only guiding star was the silhouette of the great Gutter King’s Hall in the far north.

Gael still hated running and doing anything strenuous in Ironwych because of the stuffy air, but he hated it less now because of ‘Cooling Spiracles’. Besides, he wasn’t really the one carving the way forward through hordes of Steelborn trying to get in their way. That honor belonged almost entirely to Maeve and Jin.

Ahead of them, Maeve vaulted a fallen railing, snapped her umbrella open midair, and fired a short blood cannon that blasted a Steelborn clean off a catwalk and into the dark sewage below their bridge. Jin followed a step behind, firing a wave of blood with his gauntlet before solidifying it into a five-meter-tall wall, sealing off an entire alley to their left so the Steelborn couldn’t get to them as quickly.

Oh, he’s really good at building random stuff. Maybe I can get him to work in construction for the clinic after this.

Unfortunately, Vivi was dragging all of their feet. There was no easy way around it. The golden-haired girl was the spitting image of a silver-tongued Vharnish, and despite having a system with comparable attribute levels to him, she wasn’t even half as well-exercised and flexible as he was. She ran with her skirt gathered tight in both hands, slipping on wet stone every now and then, breaths coming in thin, panicked gasps, and it was obvious she was struggling just to keep up with the rest of them.

Bharncair wasn’t kind to unbattered lungs, and Ironwych was possibly the worst ward she could’ve been sent to.

Why’d she join the Symbiote Exorcists, then?

Better yet, why this quiet, broodish man for a Hunter?

“Apologies,” Vivi managed between breaths. “I… I fear I’m slowing all of you down.”

“Hey, at least you’ve got some self-awareness,” Gael said cheerfully. “And you haven’t tripped into a pit of spikes yet. That’s already better than most people’s first night here.”

Fortunately, Vivi wasn’t slowing them down by that much. After thirty minutes of straight running north, they could just about see it clearly now—that massive, jagged castle looming above every smokestack, gantry, and factory in the northern district.

The Gutter King’s Hall. Squat and thick-walled, all stone buttresses and wide windows instead of metal slates for ventilation. Where the factories around it were all layered steel and rivets and scaffolding, the castle was fire old masonry with arched stones, weathered carvings, and even perched gargoyles on the roofs half-eaten by acid rain and time. It was the very definition of a ‘castle’, and perhaps the one and only in Bharncair’s entirety.

Maeve jumped, smashed another leaping Steelborn aside with the hooked edge of her umbrella, and landed lightly beside Gael to resume running.

“Why do they call it the Gutter King’s Hall?” she asked. “Is that the nickname of the Steelborn’s boss?”

Gael shook his head as Jin sealed another intersection behind them with a rising wall of mud. “Nah. His nickname is the Steelhorned.”

“Then why is it called that?”

“Because Ironwych wasn’t always steel and smoke,” he began, hopping a fallen pace and keeping pace. “You see, way back before the Nightspawn fell from the stars—and I’m talking maybe a century ago—this eastern end of Bharncair wasn’t

sitting on a pile of very profitable metal. The eastern ward was the trash district. The filth district. Everything the other wards didn’t want, they dumped here and left the locals to build sewage channels, trash pits, and overflow basins.”“So it used to be… the gutter district?”

The gutter of gutters,” he agreed. “You know, they also say the Gulch Pipelines first originated here and then spread outwards to the rest of the city, but… enough of that. My point is, even the gutter of gutters needed a king, so a bunch of scavengers and smugglers and sewer rats with knives and ambitions crowned a single man as the Gutter King.”

They crossed a bridge spanning a churning black canal. Maeve didn’t even break stride as she clipped a Steelborn’s helmet with her umbrella on the way across and sent him tumbling into the sludge below. “What was so special about him?”

“Well, not much. His gang just controlled the drains and charged tolls to anyone dumb enough to pass through his pipes without permission—so basically he did everything a normal gang does—until a new gang, several decades later, discovered there were metals in the mountains.”

“... And everything changed.”

“Yep. Mines got built. Money started flowing in. Guns and swords also followed. This new gang called themselves the Steelborn, crushed the Gutter King and the old gangs, and then took over the eastern ward with new factories built over the old… stuff.” He gestured vaguely at the cluttered and chaotic streets around them. “That’s why it’s so messy here. The Steelborn didn’t feel like stripping down everything the Gutter King built, so the bottom parts of most buildings in Ironwych are made of old stone while the upper parts are made of metal. The only building that wasn’t covered up with metal was the Gutter King’s Hall—his old headquarters—because the Steelborn’s boss liked it, so…”

“It alone is a remnant of the architectural style of old Bharnciar—before Saintess Severin and War God Graves conquered the city and lifted Vharnveil into the sky,” Maeve finished with a whisper. “That’s interesting to know. I used to live in the bottom eastern quarter of Vharnveil, and our house was close enough to the drop that I could always climb up onto my bed, press my face against the window, and peer straight over the edge to look down at Ironwych.”

Gael raised a brow. “What’d you think about Ironwych back then.”

She glanced ahead, then briefly up. “I used to see that castle from the sky. I always wondered what it was. Even at night, I could always hear the factories down here churning and rumbling. They never really slept.”

Gael followed her gaze as they sprinted past another row of looming structures. She wasn’t wrong. Unlike the rest of the word, the factories in the northern end still breathed and groaned in the middle of the night, furnaces glowing faintly behind slatted windows. Here, nearer to the Gutter King’s Hall, industry stayed awake twenty-four seven.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He huffed a quiet laugh. “The more you know, then.”

A minute later, the street opened abruptly and gave way to a broad, grim plaza at the base of the castle. Guarding the giant metal gates—barely—were a handful of Steelborn in heavy armor, weapons lowered, and clearly not expecting anyone stupid enough to come knocking at this hour.

“Stop right there—” one of them barked, but Jin wasn’t very talkative.

He blasted a violent surge of muddy blood forward, slamming the guards into the ground and hardening instantly, pinning them in place mid-shout.

Jin turned back to Gael, eyes sharp and unamused.

“What’s the plan?” he asked flatly. “We just barge in and get an audience with the Steelborn boss?”

Vivi hovered behind Jin’s shoulder, pale and tense, nodding faintly as if she very much wanted an answer too.

In response, Gael only looked up at the towering gates of the castle before shrugging nonchalantly.

“Yep. Let’s go.”

Naturally, the Hunters didn’t care for knocking. They blasted the heavy metal gates open like they were cheap tin on a slum door with their respective blood cannons, popping the whole thing inwards..

And the Gutter King’s Hall swallowed them as they ran right in.

Inside, the foyer wasn’t a hall so much as a hoarder’s cathedral. Vast stone arches older than half the ward draped like decoration overhead, but every inch of the foyer’s former dignity was buried beneath scrap metal, ore heaps, rusted machine parts, and loose chains scattered all around. Gangsters lounged on piles of steel like stray dogs on warm trash, boots on tables, masks half-off, mugs in hand. A few even blinked up at the intruders like they’d been interrupted mid-nap.

Then Maeve’s first blood cannon took a man in the chest and sent him tumbling through a stack of ore. Jin’s punched another into a wall and left him sliding down it with his weapon clattering out of reach. While the Hunters carved a way through the foyer, Gael and Vivi jogged behind them, and Gael couldn’t help but notice the Hunters were starting to sag.

Even perfect technique didn’t make stamina infinite, and even Gael would run out of blood to supply Maeve eventually.

“Aight,” he called. “Let’s make a straight line to the throne room at the top. That’s probably where the boss is.”

And so they began their climb.

The castle was layered like an old carcass dressed in newer armor. First floor was all lounging and scrap. Second was storage and workshops. Third… third was where the Steelborn stopped pretending they were just another normal gang.

The four of them bashed through a few guards into a long corridor lined with barred doors, and the smell of sick men immediately hit Gael’s nose. Behind the many bars sat Myrmurs Hosts: men and women with pallid cheeks, skin slick with fever and coughing into their sleeves. Some stared out with glazed eyes exactly like the prisoners in the abandoned factory they’d raided a few days ago, while most—and he did mean most of them—flinched away at the sight of the Exorcists.

But just like the prisoners in the abandoned factory, none of them had Myrmurs crawling out of their flesh.

Stabilized.

All of them.

Vivi’s breath hitched. She slowed for half a heartbeat, eyes catching on the prisoners, but even Maeve knew this time that they couldn’t afford to stay and help them. With each floor and hall they bashed their way through, more and more Steelborn added to their tail. Gael and Maeve ran through the prisoner’s hall first, forcing Jin and Vivi to follow lest they were left behind.

On the fourth floor, the halls changed again. No more smells of sickness. Here, they ran through vast corridors filled with many doors that led into different halls covered in heavy machines, shelves, scaffolding, and vats of glowing slurry being stirred by mask men. They were Steelborn men, yes, but not brawlers—workers. Tinkerers. Smiths and mechanics and engineers. Gael raised his brows as he spied through the windows on each door the massive production lines. Hundreds and thousands of stabilizers were being assembled across rattling conveyor belts, small capsules sealed tight, pellets ringed with metal bands to keep them from breaking apart.

Interesting.

That’s why it’s so goddamn loud in here.

He also caught more glimpses of factory lines filled with identical housings, vats of pale suppressant slurry, and racks of dull, oddly lustrous metal being processed into strips and bars that later fed into the stabilizer producing lines—ore that didn’t match anything he’d seen outside Ironwych. Unique metal, then. Local. Something with a property that played nice with parasite suppression medicine.

And louder than anything else was the scale of all of it. Deeper and higher up into the castle, more and more factory lines began producing general weapons, equipment, and machine parts. If he didn’t know any better, he might think the Gutter King’s Hall and the Steelborn were preparing to go to war.

The gangsters may not be that strong individually, but this is the true might of the Steelborn, huh?

Total control over Ironwych meant total control over what Ironwych made, and what the eastern ward was churning out, day and night, was metal—equipment, weapons, machinery—enough to arm half the city if they ever felt like it.

Inquisitive people, they are. Highly organized, too, to be able to run factory lines like these.

And seeing just how clean and efficients those production flows were made something spark in Gael’s chest.

Then the stairs finally ended, and the Hunters blasted the throne room doors apart in tandem, blood and mud punching through old wood and reinforced metal.

Chandeliers swayed as the four of them stepped through into the hall beyond.

The throne room was dim, lit by warm chandelier glows that clashed violently with the charred scrap piled everywhere. Prototype equipment lined the walls on hooks: strange blades, oversized gauntlets, segmented armor pieces, and many experimental devices half-finished and bolted into place like trophies. Scrap metal formed columns, railings, and even parts of the floor, all welded into something that pretended to be regal, but was just as scrappy as the rest of the ward.

At the far end of the hall, elevated above a dais, sat the throne.

It was just a heap of scrap, if Gael had to describe it, but sprawled across it was a man who looked like he’d grown there. A massive man. An old man. White hair spilled down his broad shoulders, and the full-body iron armor he wore looked more scavenged than forged. Three steel-armored beetle horns jutted from his head like a crown. One eye stared lazily out at the four of them from beneath a heavy brow, while the other eye was gone, hidden behind a metal eyepatch.

He lounged there, chewing on metallic fruit from a platter balanced on the armrest with fifteen bodies crowding his dais—men and women alike draped in loose silk and straps, laughing softly, touching him, feeding him, competing for his attention. All of them looked healthy. Strong. Carefully chosen.

So the rumors are true, then.

The boss of the Steelborn has fifteen lovers, and he has no preference beyond sheer vitality and strength of body.

Vivi shrank behind Jin the moment she saw him, fear tightening her posture as they advanced into the open center of the hall. Jin stayed rigid, eyes locked forward, while Maeve’s grip on her umbrella was steady, but Gael could feel the tension radiating off her like heat.

Just as well, the Steelborn they’d been outrunning finally flooded into the doorway behind them, sealing off their exit.

They were well and truly cornered now, but… oh well.

Gael smiled and stepped forward alone, bowing as deep as the alcohol sloshing in his stomach would let him.

“What’s up? I’m Gael Halloway, and this is my dearest wife, Maeve Valcieran. These other two guys are just random Exorcists I picked up on the way here.” Then he straightened and grinned straight at the man. “I’d like to have a chat with the mighty Calvos the Steelhorned.”

The old man swallowed, wiped his juicy fingers on his armor, and let out a low, rasping sound that might’ve been a laugh.

“Denied,” Calvos croaked. His one eye hardened as he glared down at them. “You will all die here.”