The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

On the carriage to Cambay Town, Baron Rudolph put down the file in his hand, threw a piece of firewood into the brazier next to him, and stirred the firewood piled up in the basin to make the fire burn more vigorously.

"Do you want some?" The attendant at the side took out a bottle of gin that had been soaked in hot water for half a day and asked.

Baron Rudolph wanted to refuse, but in the end he couldn't hold back the greed in his heart, and said, "Just one cup!" Then he emphasized, "A small cup is enough."

"Is the baroness still urging you to hangover?" The attendant has been with Baron Rudolph for many years, and the relationship between the two is not so much a superior and a subordinate, but a friend, so he is very concerned about Baron Rudolph. I understand, and I speak a lot more casually.

"Stop talking nonsense!" Baron Rudolph glared at his attendant with some displeasure, and then took the large wine glass filled with wine from the other party's hand. Although the wine glass was not the small glass he emphasized, he didn't mind. After taking a sip, he reluctantly put the glass on the table, wiped the wine stains on his beard, and then picked up the file next to him to read.

"What's the matter? Does this matter give you a headache too?" Seeing Baron Rudolf frowning while looking at the file, the attendant asked curiously, "Is the person you want to arrest troublesome?"

"It's a little troublesome." Baron Rudolph nodded and said, "This matter is a matter of the Special Operations Department."

"Oh." The attendant immediately showed an expression of understanding, and didn't ask any more questions.

Baron Rudolph put aside the dossier that he had read three times, rubbed his eyes, took another sip of wine, then leaned on the back of the seat, closed his eyes and meditated, and was thinking about himself quickly. The case that is going to be dealt with.

On the surface, this case is that the head of a certain secret department in the locality made a mistake and needs to be brought back to the internal affairs headquarters of various secret departments in Winterfell City for re-examination and loyalty testing. He has handled similar cases in the past few years No less than 30 times, it is the simplest of all his tasks.

But this mission is different, because according to common sense, this mission should not fall on him, the first-level inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Imperial Security Bureau. Big Special Operations officer, entrusting him with this task is as absurd as asking a Caprador to pull a wagon.

At that time, after he received this task from above, his first feeling was that someone was joking with him again. When he confirmed that there was no mistake in this task, he immediately thought that he might have become a pawn in the power struggle above.

There are many secret departments in the empire with intricate relationships and different levels of power. The Imperial Security Bureau has always been the most powerful of all secret departments. Its power network covers almost all departments in the empire. The minister is even called the shadow uterus.

Although due to various reasons, the power of the Imperial Security Bureau has been reduced and more and more restricted over the years, but no matter how it is reduced and restricted, it is still the largest secret department of the Empire.

However, the emergence of the Special Operations Department directly cut half of the power cake of the Imperial Security Bureau, and the Imperial Ministry of the Interior also gave the Special Operations Department a lot of powers that the Imperial Security Bureau did not have back then, such as the ability to mobilize some local troops , gendarme and police powers, etc.

Therefore, the Imperial Security Bureau habitually confronts the Special Operations Department in many matters. It is only because of the level of executive power that even if the Imperial Security Bureau makes some small moves, it will still cooperate in some missions in the end. Special Operations Branch.

Although legally speaking, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Imperial Security Bureau can govern the Ministry of Internal Affairs of various departments of the entire Empire, but legal principles do not represent everything. The Internal Affairs Department of the Special Operations Department has always existed independently. The internal affairs task of the Operation Department fell into the hands of the Imperial Security Bureau, and those who got this task would naturally have wild imaginations.

Baron Rudolf, who didn't want to be a pawn, found out all his connections in the Imperial Security Bureau on the day he received the mission, and inquired about the content related to the mission. In the end, he found out that the mission was related to the glorious nobleman Pipero's family. And it also involved the disappearance of the contemporary Count Pipero.

The noble circle of the French Empire is also divided into levels. There are hereditary nobles and military nobles, but no matter what kind of nobles, they still have great respect for those old nobles who have passed down the ancients. The glorious nobleman Pipero who appeared since the first dynasty The family is such a respected noble family.

Because of its ancient inheritance and marriage history covering the entire period of the three dynasties, the nobles of the French Empire now have more or less blood of the Pipero family, which also makes this generation of the Pipero family even if they have declined. However, he can still be regarded as the most respected ancient nobleman by the noble circle of France.

It is precisely because of the status of the Pipero family in the aristocratic circle that the various behaviors of the Emperor of France towards the Pipero family were strongly opposed by the nobles of the French Empire. After the establishment of the United Kingdom of France, many old nobles would not hesitate to give up All the industries in the empire should also be transferred to the United Kingdom. There are many reasons for this, and what happened to the Pipero family should be one of the reasons.

After all, in the eyes of anyone, even the ancient nobles who fought side by side with the King of Knights and inherited the three dynasties of the royal family can also attack, so other noble families may be a piece of fat ready to eat in the eyes of the royal family of Faran That's all.

Although after Louis X succeeded to the throne, in order to eliminate the distrust of the royal family in the aristocratic circle, he made some compromises with those old nobles, and even let those nobles enter the real power department, but at the same time he also promoted many military nobles, and then Divide the aristocratic circle, causing conflicts within the aristocratic circle, temporarily diverting the attention of those old nobles from the royal family.

However, following the sudden disappearance of the puppet Patriarch of the Pipero family, whether they were veteran nobles or military nobles, their eyes returned to the royal family in unison.

At that time, there was news that the puppet master turned into a man-eating monster in the sudden world change, killed several guards guarding the manor and fled.

In the eyes of ordinary people, this incident is nothing. After all, ordinary people suddenly mutate into monsters in various towns. At first, ordinary democracies may feel flustered by this, but now they have become accustomed to it. After hearing the news, they would still feel gloating, thinking that finally some nobles would mutate into monsters.

But for the aristocratic circle of the Faran Empire, this news is obviously not accepted by them, because until today, there has not been a single case of the nobles in the Faran Empire mutating into a man-eating monster, although some people physically There are some non-human mutations, but this kind of mutation is controllable, and the mutants can still maintain their rationality, unlike those mutant monsters that appear everywhere, all of them are irrational and feed on people.

Therefore, it is hard to believe that the current patriarch of the Pipero family has mutated into a man-eating monster. In addition, the Pipero family is completely controlled by the royal family. The soldiers guarding the Pipero manor are all elite soldiers, even if they cannot Dealing with the mutated monsters, but it shouldn't be difficult to injure the mutated monsters until other supporters arrive.

However, it was learned through some secret channels that the soldiers guarding the Pipero family were not injured at all, and the so-called injuries in the rumors were actually disguised.

These rumors made all the nobles think of some secret experiments jointly conducted by the royal family and some scholars, and thought that the current patriarch of the Pipero family might be the royal family as an experimental product. An inexplicable panic soon spread. It spread within the aristocratic circles of the empire.

In the eyes of the nobles of the empire, it is not unacceptable for the royal family to experiment with ordinary people, because it does not touch their interests, but now the royal family seems to be likely to experiment with nobles, which makes the nobles of the empire feel that their lives are at risk If there is a threat, the reaction will naturally be strong.

However, when faced with the reaction of the nobles, Louis X acted very forcefully, temporarily suppressed the dissatisfaction of the nobles, and secretly sent people to step up the search for the missing Patriarch Pipero. Before other forces caught Patriarch Pipero, they had to capture or kill him. Otherwise, once Patriarch Pipero fell into the hands of the nobles, he would not be able to control the final direction of the rumor.

The head of the Campbell Town Branch of the Special Operations Department that Baron Rudolph was going to deal with this time involved a task related to the arrest of Chief Pipero.

It is mentioned in the dossier that the branch chief sent all the members of his team to capture a man-eating mutant who was trying to escape to the Northland, but unexpectedly encountered a big avalanche on Rum Peak, which happened once in a thousand years. All the members, including the cannibal All the mutants disappeared in the avalanche. After the branch chief sent a distress letter to the nearby special operations department, he went to the mountain forest to find the whereabouts of the missing members.

This is just a very common liability accident that caused huge casualties due to wrong instructions. According to the procedure, this branch chief will be brought back to the headquarters of the Special Operations Division for review to see if he intentionally caused casualties and whether he is still loyal to the empire, but now The problem is that after investigation, it was found that the man-eating mutant that those members went to hunt down was most likely the missing Patriarch Pipero, so this ordinary internal affairs incident became a major event that both the nobles and the royal family were staring at. .

After discovering the complexity of this matter, the Special Operations Department immediately pushed this matter to the Imperial Security Bureau. The reason is very simple that this matter involves national security issues, and the members are people from the Special Operations Department. Not suitable for this matter.

The Imperial Security Bureau really wanted to throw this matter back, because they also knew that this matter was very troublesome, but they didn't have any more suitable reasons to throw it back, and in the end it could only fall on Baron Rudolph, who had a suitable experience in the Internal Affairs Department of the Security Bureau. authority examiner body.

After figuring out the cause of the matter, according to Baron Rudolf's own thinking, he also wanted to leave this task to other people. Unfortunately, although he had many connections in the Security Bureau, he was not as good as that person to volunteer to replace him. He took on this difficult problem, and he had offended many people in the Security Bureau. These people prevented him from giving up the mission voluntarily. In the end, he could only be put on a carriage and driven to Cambay Town.

Although, on the road, Baron Rudolph did not encounter any troubles or obstacles, but his keen intuition developed on the battlefield for many years was able to detect that there were many eyes staring at him around him.

Among these people, some of Baron Rudolf's eyes were familiar with the sight of the beast hunters from the Security Bureau, and a large number of people had unknown origins, but presumably they all came from the royal family and the nobles.

Baron Rudolph didn't know what the royal family and the nobles were going to do, and he was not interested in knowing. He only hoped that he could safely take away the head of the branch from Cambay Town, bring it back to Winterring City smoothly, and hand it over to the relevant departments. End this mission.

"How far is it to Campbell Town?" Baron Rudolph suddenly glanced at the woods outside the car window, then at the cavalry from the Ministry of Internal Affairs who followed him, and asked his attendant.

"This is the third time you have asked this question today. This question is like your urge to urinate every night." The attendant teased him very casually, and before Baron Rudolph got angry, he replied: " There is still about half a day's journey, and we should be able to arrive at night."

While talking, there was an extremely unpleasant strange cry from outside the carriage, followed by a strange bird with a long beak and black feathers, flew to the side of the carriage, and landed firmly on a specially installed door next to the carriage. on the shelf.

Seeing the appearance of this strange bird, Baron Rudolph and the attendant were stunned. The attendant quickly returned to normal, hurried to the window, took out a meatball from a pocket, carried it in front of the strange bird, and let the strange bird The bird devoured it, and then removed a special small clip from the clawed neck of the strange bird, and handed it to Baron Rupert.

Baron Rupert opened the folder, took out a text message stored inside, and looked repeatedly at the dim light in the carriage, with a surprised expression on his face.

"What happened?" Seeing that Baron Rudolph's expression was a little strange, the attendant asked quickly.

Baron Rudolf handed the note to the attendant and said, "Those hunting down Pipero... No, two members of the Special Operations Division who hunted down the man-eating mutants survived, and they snatched a very magical item from the monster. The strange object, the higher-ups demanded to take those three people and the strange object back to Winterfell City immediately, without any stop in between."

The attendant simply looked at the note and said, "It seems that the strange object is very important."

Baron Rudolph nodded, then stopped talking, and ordered the carriage and the cavalry behind to speed up and arrive at Cambay Town as soon as possible.