Gramophone

(Lunch was mashed potatoes. Full.)

"Prepare for an armed intervention in the town's affairs. The conflict we resolved this morning was just minor scuffling among the protesters. Now, this is the real battle—for you."

Bai Ye nodded to the Rhodes Island group.

The infected involved in the conflict that morning numbered only a few dozen, above and below ground combined. Now, they had merely stormed the industrial district in an attempt to destroy the central power furnaces, or gathered to assault the council hall tower.

And now, these rebellious infected had gone beyond the bounds of conflict or protest.

Pure violence. Rioting. They were waging a war.

A battle to seize control of Wolumonde.

Bai Ye made a rough estimate. Around one-fifth of Wolumonde's people had joined the rebellion.

That was roughly two thousand people.

There were not only infected among them, but also some non-infected—the people Thor had called themselves "Winterspirits."

"What a complete mess..."

The houses along the street were burning, civilians fled in every direction, and the sounds of explosions and wood crackling in the flames rang out without end.

Leithanian infected were terrifying.

In this country, Arts were one of the things they took the greatest pride in.

In Leithania, most household appliances were powered by Originium Arts. Even carriage drivers knew a few spells, let alone those who had studied in academies.

And their identities as infected allowed them to cast spells directly without using wands.

Of course, that alone would not have been enough. What was even more absurd was that they had seized Wolumonde's gramophones.

Gramophone was the abbreviated name for the "L-44 Gramophone City Defense Arts Generator" [Gramophone].

It was a city defense device that could attack automatically once controlled.

Yet these things were extremely unreliable, for a simple reason: they were