Chapter 476 — The White Knight Armor
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
Amber, sprawled on the windowsill in deep sleep, was startled awake on the instant. With a yelp of "Mother save me!" the disgraceful half-elf sprang up and shot straight out the window—and the next second a tremendous crash and a chorus of startled cries came from outside.
Moving with practiced ease, Gao Yang rose, shut the window, locked it from the inside, and then switched on the arcane-net communicator.
Rebecca's figure surfaced above the communicator: "My lord! The sample of the White Knight armor is finished!"
Gao Yang was somewhat surprised: "That fast?"
"We had the experience from the arcane armor, and Mr. Egg helped too," Rebecca said in the holographic projection, grinning and scratching at her head. "We only added an inverter array converter—nothing complicated."
Gao Yang smiled in satisfaction: "Excellent. I'll come over now—wait for me at the institute."
Then he stepped forward and shut off the communicator—and at that same moment, a resounding thud came from outside the window, right on cue. He turned his head and saw Amber plastered flat against the glass, sliding slowly down it.
Before the girl could slide all the way down, Gao Yang flung the window open, caught Amber by the collar, and hauled her back inside. Without a word of explanation, he headed for the door: "Come with me to the Arcane Technology Institute."
Amber flailed in Gao Yang's grip like a cat caught by the scruff, protesting loudly: "What kind of person are you! Don't you know I was coming back! And what's the meaning of locking the window, anyway! I don't want to go to any research place right now—hey, put me down, I can walk by myself, all right!"
And so Gao Yang carried Amber out by the collar all the way. The servants and guards along the route were long since accustomed to the sight, and greeted the lord and the head of intelligence with perfect composure: it was a common enough thing for the lord to be out and about with his bodyguard—only sometimes he was leading her along, and sometimes he was hauling her, but either way it amounted to much the same.
Very soon, Gao Yang beheld the fruits of Rebecca and the others' labors over the past days.
In Laboratory Two of the Arcane Technology Institute, a rather imposing, heavy suit of full-body armor stood quietly in the center of a circular platform. Rebecca, Camille, Wright, Nicholas Egg, and the others waited around the platform, while several technicians made a final inspection of the armor's condition and the runes around the platform. When they saw Gao Yang appear, they set aside their work and turned to bow in respectful salute.
Gao Yang returned the gesture, then fixed his attention on the striking suit of armor: "So this is the armor prepared for the White Knights?"
It was indeed a rather handsome suit of armor—like the arcane armor, it was entirely unlike any full-body armor common to this age.
The armor was silver-white overall, with a heavier, more massive build than the arcane armor. Perhaps to accommodate more holy-light rune substrate and inverter array components, its torso had clearly been specially designed: on its back could be seen a detachable combat pack, and in the seam between pack and armor a faint glimmer of arcane energy could dimly be seen flowing. On the breastplate, the steel plates bulged out over a broad area, and between the fitted plates a faint light flickered dimly. At the chest and abdomen could be seen a fist-sized recessed area, and set into that recess was a semi-transparent crystal—though what it was for, no one could say.
And on the left breast of the armor, close to where the heart would be, a pale yellow parchment covered in Daystar doctrine had been fixed securely with rivets. That hanging parchment slightly softened the cold, futuristic quality of the steel armor, reminding the onlooker of the connection between this suit and the holy light.