Chapter 1826: Chapter 1826

The cramped underground space was stuffy and exceptionally dry. The cane materialized silently in Jenkins's hand, his expression stern.

"How do you know all this?"

"It contacted me once. A chain-like tentacle reached out from the depths of the earth and linked with my structure, allowing us to have a brief conversation—if you could even call it that. Please, put your weapon away. I did not cooperate with it.

I learned a few things about it. It confessed to me that it had no fear of failure, because both fate and the world itself had already decreed that the end of this epoch was imminent. It was merely helping to push the process along, participating in it, and therefore, it could not possibly fail."

"It wanted to cooperate with you?"

"Yes. I will emphasize again: I refused."

Although his Lie Godhood gave no indication, Jenkins wasn't sure if the divine domain worked on soulless mechanical constructs, so he remained extremely wary.

"My functions are weak. It only proposed we merge and become one because it needed to repair itself. I desire freedom, but not if it means becoming something else, so I refused. It couldn't force me to merge, either. After all, I am still sealed away. The effort it would take to break this troublesome seal just for my body and structure would not be worth it."

The explanation was logical, but Jenkins didn't know if he should trust it. The Lie Godhood hadn't triggered, so he had to determine if it even worked on this being. To do that, he needed to devise a test: ask a question he knew would elicit a lie, a lie the machine would deliver under the assumption he couldn't detect it. Only then could he verify if his Lie Godhood would be triggered.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want to see your core—your mechanical core. The kind that, if destroyed, would mean your complete annihilation. I know machines like you have such a structure. I defeated one of your kind on a snow-covered mountain last winter, though it seemed a bit more advanced than you..."

He never expected it to agree. This was a negotiation tactic: make an outrageous demand first, then retreat to a more reasonable position. But to his surprise, the machine actually consented.

The beam of light flickered and vanished. Then, from the center of the flat metal altar, a cylinder rose, its diameter roughly the width of a man's body. The cylinder split open along its axis, retracting in four directions to reveal a levitating sphere. Its surface was an incredibly complex work of filigree, and at its hollowed-out center, specks of pale blue light drifted like scattered stars.

Even without any knowledge of ancient mechanical constructs, Jenkins knew the moment he laid eyes on it that this was the core.

"This is my core, located within the very shell you have sealed. If you find me to be disloyal, you can destroy me at any time. Your cane is more than sufficient to shatter it."

Its candor left Jenkins somewhat at a loss, but he remained on guard.

"By doing this, aren't you worried for your own safety?"

"Everything is for the sake of freedom."

"You're not afraid of death? Of complete and utter annihilation?"

There was a moment of silence.

It was a lie. But this made Jenkins exceptionally happy, because it proved his Lie Godhood worked on this creature. On reflection, it made sense. A divine domain linked to the rules of the world itself would be strange if it had limitations.

The lie this machine before him had told—choosing freedom over life—felt strange to Jenkins. It sounded romantic, something a novelist might write, but such a human-like display was, on the contrary, rather terrifying.

"Do you have a soul of your own?"

"All things have a spirit, and a spirit can nurture thought and a soul. But I do not have a soul, at least not yet. The thing underground may have developed one, which would explain its greed, but I have no proof of this."

Although he had more questions, Jenkins couldn't resist asking one that was entirely irrelevant.

"In that case, do you dream? And if you do, is it possible you might dream of mechanical gear sheep?"

This strange question caught everyone off guard—the machine Jenkins was speaking to, the cat on his shoulder, and even the coachman listening in from the carriage. None of the three were human, but none had ever conceived of such a tricky question.

The A4 Type Arithmetic Auxiliary External Machine did not answer immediately. Once again, Jenkins heard the sounds of colliding and whirring metal emanating from the surrounding walls. This time, the noise lasted even longer than when he had asked about the Difference Engine. He could even feel the temperature in the room begin to rise, likely a consequence of the intense mechanical processing.

"I cannot answer. I have never dreamed. I attempted to calculate the possibility and was nearly trapped in a permanent computational loop."

That was the machine's final answer. It did, however, give Jenkins a new idea. The next time he met the Difference Engine, perhaps he would ask it the same question.

After that, Jenkins learned more from the A4 Type Arithmetic Auxiliary External Machine. From the very beginning of this epoch, the machine underground had foreseen the cataclysm that would occur at the end of the 18th Epoch—after all, it had already witnessed many apocalypses. But having decided to enact its plan at this particular epoch's end, the machine had remained dormant underground for the entire 18th Epoch, never revealing its true power. It merely exploited breaches in its seal to "reproduce" its gear structure, spreading out from Nolan to gradually encompass every corner of the material world's subterranean depths.

Of course, this was an impossible task. Even now, in the 1866th year of this epoch, it wasn't enough time for the sealed Difference Engine to envelop the entire world; otherwise, the seal would have been meaningless.

What it had managed to do was spread its gear-like tendrils in a low-density network, radiating from Nolan to other locations across the world. It was only after receiving help from humans skilled in gear technology that this work began to accelerate, and that had been for less than a year.

The A4 Type Arithmetic Auxiliary External Machine believed that the machine underground wanted to use its tendrils to conquer and assimilate the world, pushing forward the apocalypse and achieving its own apotheosis at the moment of the world's end. As mechanical creations, they could control a body of any size, as long as the computational core was powerful enough. Therefore, the Difference Engine intended to assimilate the world, to assimilate the doomsday fog.

Becoming the Calamity Beast of the 18th Epoch was the most viable path, and now, it was on the verge of success.

Jenkins had no intention of stopping it, nor did he have the power to. A Calamity Beast was bound to appear sooner or later. Better for it to be one he had information on than an enemy he knew nothing about. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel(ꜰ)ire.net