Joshua, who was "assassinated," fortunately managed to twist open the carriage door handle, but his collar was grabbed by Leon from behind. Despite struggling several times, he couldn’t break free. In his desperation, he could only struggle tirelessly while shouting for help.
The carriage driver, not being deaf, naturally couldn’t remain unresponsive to such a racket in the carriage.
Hearing the guest’s calls for help, he quickly slowed down and stopped. Then he opened the small window between the driver’s seat and the carriage, cautiously poking his head in for a look.
"Gentlemen... what are you doing?"
After covering Joshua’s mouth with his hand, Leon replied calmly looking back:
"We’re just playing around. You can keep going... What’s wrong with your face?"
The carriage driver was taken aback by the question, then reached out with a metal hand like a round ball to touch his somewhat rusty face, full of confusion, and said:
"Guest, is there something on my face?"
It’s not that there’s something on your face, it’s what are you exactly?!!!
Seeing the metallic head with an eerie shine poking through the little window, and those hollow eyes turned into brown glass, the two people in the carriage couldn’t help but gasp in unison.
Already startled by Leon’s "assassination," Prince Freckles was further shocked by the creature poking its head from the window. His fear reached its peak, causing him to go limp and collapse onto the carriage floor, eyes wide with terror at the ironskin driver, unable to speak for a while.
Though Leon was also startled by the ironskin driver, his two-month journey as a Cleaner had significantly trained his psychological resilience. This level of abnormal event was not enough to leave him thunderstruck.
After composing himself, Leon first reached out to close the carriage door, then picked up the now limp Joshua and placed him back on the seat opposite, before cautiously asking the carriage driver:
"Can you tell me how it feels when you touch your face?"
What kind of question is this again?
Though puzzled by Leon’s question, knowing that the guests he picked up from outside the parliament building were unlikely ordinary people, the carriage driver replied honestly:
"It feels pretty much the same as usual, cold and hard... Oh, right, my face might have rusted a bit recently; probably needs a touch of oil."
After hearing this somewhat eerie reply, Leon’s eyes narrowed slightly.
The driver already considers himself an ironskin person rather than a human with soft skin, indicating that his perception has been confused. This means the anomalous object causing his change likely has a relatively high status.
Should I touch his face?
Deciding temporarily to abandon the idea of knocking Joshua out, Leon hesitated whether to reach out and touch the perplexed ironskin head but ultimately gave up on the notion.
After all, if the object that turned the driver into an ironskin doll spreads through contact, directly touching would be akin to delivering yourself to danger. Without confirming the cause and type of anomalous object, minimizing contact is safer.
Glancing at the ironskin driver’s face, Leon noticed some reddish-brown rust stains on his neck and under his chin, and nodded kindly:
"You’ve got some rust on you; it definitely needs some maintenance."
"Haha, never mind that."
After hearing Leon’s words, the ironskin driver chuckled sincerely, his strange voice with a touch of metallic sound replied:
"Maintenance is for esteemed people like you. We just use some canola oil to prevent rust. Besides, with a job that involves exposure to the elements, no matter how much maintenance I do, rust is inevitable."
"That must be tough."
Adhering to the principle of not alerting the other side before confirming the source of anomaly, Leon engaged in light-hearted conversation while holding Joshua’s hand to push open the carriage door, then said with a straight face:
"Oh, I suddenly remembered something, could you pause here and wait for me a bit while I check outside?"
Upon hearing Leon’s words, the ironskin driver nodded in agreement, then turned his creaking neck as the brown glass eyes fixed intently on the Prince Freckles on the ground.
With a chin touched with reddish-brown iron rust slightly pulling up, revealing a stiff and dull smile unique to toy dolls, the ironskin driver tilted his neck that couldn’t turn much due to iron joints, eerily speaking to the terrified Joshua:
"Would you like a warm towel?"
Though appearing human, the ironskin driver’s actions were just unsettling enough to trigger the uncanny valley effect, shattering Joshua’s already fragile psychological defenses.
With a scream, Joshua lunged toward the carriage door, tumbling out as he instinctively sought to distance himself from this uncanny carriage.
Yet when Joshua got up off the ground, face ghostly pale ready to flee, a mere glance was enough to make him plop back down.
The palace, the parade ground, the plaza, the streets... this place he’d seen countless times, now had all sorts of ironskin people everywhere!
The guards supposed to be holding weapons at the palace gates were replaced with two squads of tall black ironskin soldiers, their iron-gray thick uniforms becoming truly black-gray iron, now part of their bodies.
On the carriage routes outside the palace, steam carriages raced by, yet the horses pulling them had become ironskin horses with toy-like ball joints.
The once smooth movement now became jerky due to the changed joints, and every distance the ironskin horse reset its limbs, causing the carriage behind to jerk to a halt.
Beyond that, the plaza guards, well-dressed nobles, pedestrians on the streets, stray dogs stealing goods, merchants cursing and chasing...
All things once alive now transformed into ironskin dolls, even though the palace surroundings remained bustling as usual, cold iron gray was visible everywhere, devoid of any warm hue belonging to a body of flesh and blood.
This isn’t a normal anomalous object...
Squinting into the farther distance, looking at a group of children still transforming into ironskin figures at the street’s end, Leon couldn’t help but take a deep breath.
Not only the carriage driver was turned into ironskin, but all living beings in the vicinity, and the effect was expanding continuously, besides...
Looking down at his still flesh and blood hands, rubbing them together feeling the cold, hard texture, Leon’s brow furrowed deeply.
Am I also an ironskin person?