Chapter 1823: Chapter 1823
Worried the Church might pursue him at any moment, Jenkins refrained from using abilities he shouldn't have. Just as the giant palm slammed down, the strangely shaped, massive wheel of bone that had been waiting nearby suddenly began to spin at incredible speed within a depression in the sand.
The bone spikes on the wheel's outer edge tore through the air with a sonic boom, strafing the metal giant like machine-gun fire. Before the massive palm could land, and though the giant's body wasn't pierced, it was forcefully knocked over by the relentless barrage of bone spikes.
Jenkins seized the opportunity, leaping from the metal giant and landing on the sand below.
The chain-and-gear tentacles controlling the giant channeled a terrible power from deep within the earth. As the giant struggled to rise, Jenkins prepared to counterattack, but just then, a voice echoed from the sky.
Looking up, he saw Miss Bevanna, Mr. Gilbert, and Miss Strass emerge from the high layer of fog. They were relieved to see Jenkins unharmed, but their sharp eyes took in more than just him. What truly caught their attention was the strange, ancient town surrounding them and the giant struggling to rise.
"World Tree Seedling, we will meet again."
Without any warning, leaving only that single sentence behind, the giant that had been trying to rise collapsed with a tremendous crash. By the time the two demigods and the Saint from the Church of the Sage landed before Jenkins, he was certain the entity had already retreated.
The four of them scanned their surroundings but found no other unusual creatures nearby. Jenkins stared at the town before him, his hand touching the small vial in his pocket, momentarily at a loss for words.
Afterward, Miss Bevanna pulled Jenkins high into the air. Once they reached a certain altitude, the ancient town vanished, and the Nolan coastline reappeared below. All that remained beneath them was a thick, vision-obscuring fog.
As for what happened here, the Church would get to the bottom of it.
The night's events offered Jenkins no tangible benefit; even his encounter with the Difference Engine felt like a pointless interlude.
The Church, however, seized the opportunity to uncover an anomaly unfolding in Nolan. It had nothing to do with the hastily retreated metal-gear tentacles of the Difference Engine. After an investigation, the small patch of fog enveloping the beach was classified as a "zone of spatial anomaly."
Entering the fog transported one to an unknown town. It wasn't spatial transference, but a superposition of space. For some unknown reason, the space containing Nolan's beach had overlapped with that of a town in a distant land, making them effectively "the same location."
The area had clear boundaries. Regardless of the direction—above, below, east, west, north, or south—exiting the zone of spatial anomaly had a consistent effect. Those who had entered from Nolan would return to Nolan, while those who had entered from the real town in Cheslan would find themselves back in the surrounding wilderness.
Although the town was deserted, an investigation quickly revealed its origin. It was located within the territory of Cheslan, nestled in the kingdom's desolate, rocky northern mountains—a region ill-suited for agriculture. Roughly a decade ago, the remote town had been abandoned due to administrative rezoning and population shifts. This explained the desolate, uninhabited scene Jenkins had witnessed upon landing on the mechanical giant's head.
Its location in northern Cheslan meant the town had so far been spared from the great fire. A field investigation revealed it was similarly shrouded in a dense fog. Upon entering the fog, one still found themselves in the town, but now the massive gear giant was visible. Inexplicably, large patches of sand had also appeared, and its low-lying areas were flooded with seawater.
Exiting the fog returned one to the normal area surrounding the town. However, subsequent experiments by the Church revealed a peculiar quirk: when two people—one from Nolan's coast and the other from the Cheslan wilderness—attempted to leave the anomalous zone at the same time, they would both emerge at the origin point of whoever stepped out first.
In other words, the overlapping beach and abandoned town had become a "spatial corridor," linking the docks on the continent's west coast to the wilderness on its east. This corridor, however, was unstable; a successful exit wasn't guaranteed every time. The proof of this was the disappearance of the Enchanters who had originally been stationed there.
Enchanters from the Church of Creation and Machinery and the Church of Death and End were responsible for guarding and containing the gear giant, rotating shifts every three days as per regulations. But after Jenkins stumbled upon the anomaly, the Orthodox Church Enchanters who should have been stationed nearby were nowhere to be found.
The Church initially assumed they had gotten lost in the town, but a subsequent search turned up no trace of them.
On Sunday, the day after the incident, Jenkins attended a joint conference at the Church of Death and End. The primary topic on the agenda was the "Unified Storage of Contained Artifacts," a proposal to prevent widespread containment breaches with the onset of the apocalypse. During a break, he learned from one of the Church's Gravediggers that the missing Enchanters were all but confirmed dead.
The cause of their deaths was discovered by the diviners of the Church of Destiny and Equilibrium. Their readings indicated that the missing Enchanters had fallen into a "crevice in space," exiled forever to a realm unreachable by mortals. It was a cruel fate, but there was nothing the Church or Jenkins could do.
What intrigued Jenkins most was the cause of the spatial overlap. He had initially suspected the Difference Engine, but there was no evidence it possessed the ability to manipulate space.
No one could answer his question, but the general consensus was to attribute it to the approaching apocalypse. The spatial anomaly was simply one manifestation of a world in chaos, a random, low-probability event.
However, that very evening, not long after this conclusion had been drawn, a second dense fog materialized over the eastern mountains of Nolan. It merged the mountains with a village in the southern Hamparvo Kingdom, burying dozens of people alive. Only then did the Church begin to take the matter seriously.
On Sunday evening, Jenkins went to investigate the mountain range himself. His Eye of Reality revealed gears imbued with spirit buried deep underground. However, the mountains were a known area of activity for the Gear Artisans' Association, so finding scattered gears proved nothing. His efforts were fruitless.
But whether this was a conspiracy orchestrated by machines or a natural disaster heralding the apocalypse, it filled Jenkins with a profound sense of crisis. He didn't return home to rest after coming back from the mountains that Sunday night. Instead, he arranged to meet Sigrid Capet alone in the Evergreen Forest.
Beneath the giant tree, he held out the two halves of the World Tree Seed for Sigrid to see, one in each palm. After he'd obtained the Tree Soul, the seed's metallic material had transformed, taking on the appearance of a walnut, though its size remained unchanged:
"This can't wait any longer," he declared. "I'm going to join the two halves of the seed as soon as I can. Whatever happens next, it's better than remaining completely in the dark."
"If you've made up your mind, I'll support you," Sigrid replied. "No one knows what will happen when the halves are joined, but you're right—it's far better to act than to just sit and wait for the worst. Do you need me to do anything?"
Jenkins shook his head:
"I'll inform the Church so they can prepare for any accidents. An elder of mine suggested setting up a large-scale ritual to channel the spirit. I hope you'll attend as a witness. Of all the descendants of the World Tree's priests in this world, we're probably the only two who have become Enchanters and wield the power of our bloodline. I want you to see this with your own eyes." ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novelꜰire.net
Naturally, Sigrid agreed.
The inexplicable spatial phenomena had pushed Jenkins's anxiety to a breaking point. His intuition screamed that it was an omen, a prelude to some greater danger.
He explained his plan to awaken the [World Tree Seedling] to the Church, which offered its full support. To prevent any complications arising from delays, they set aside only Monday for preparations. The ritual to join the halves of the seed would take place beneath the great tree in the Evergreen Forest on Tuesday.
In the three short days since Saturday, the world had not paused for Jenkins's decision. The Tri-King Summit and the Twelve Churches Joint Conference proceeded as planned. The great fire in the south raged on. Anomalous events erupted worldwide, plunging both the Church and common folk into peril and unease. Mechanized corpses appeared with increasing frequency, and the fog smothering the skies began to creep from the cities into the countryside, threatening to merge into one vast, unbroken shroud.
It seemed as though in a single week, the entire world had realized it was on the cusp of a great change—and not for the better. Even Briny Mikhail had asked Jenkins what in the world was happening.
Jenkins reassured the blonde girl, telling her that this was simply the nature of their era.
While the Church of the Sage spent Monday making preparations in the Evergreen Forest, setting up wards to contain the effects of joining the World Tree Seed, Jenkins had his own business to attend to.
He had learned the method for summoning the coachman from Alexia Miller, and during his free time after breakfast on Monday morning, he set up the foundational array for the ritual in his basement.
To keep Hathaway from realizing he knew about her secret activities, Jenkins made sure to avoid the other young women in the house. He posted his trusty cat as a lookout at the basement door before laying out the materials Alexia had prepared for him on the floor.
He used the White Bone Holy Sword to inscribe the foundational array on the floor. Alexia believed that using the holy sword, a former Cursed Item, would yield better results than a simple silver dagger.
After tossing a silencing charm against the wall, Jenkins set the final component—an amethyst inlaid with obsidian—into its proper position. Then, he tossed a [Blasphemy Seed] high into the air. He was down to his last four Sin Coins.
As the Sin Coin arced through the air, spirit surged, activating the ritual on the floor. Billowing black smoke erupted from the inscribed array. Before the coin even reached its highest point, the smoke had already flooded every corner of the basement.
Jenkins put on his monocle, watching as a spiritual aura representing the coachman materialized from thin air. Just as the coin began to fall, a dark, shadowy hand reached out from the smoke and snatched it.