Chapter 1860: Chapter 1860

He whispered, not allowing the profound feeling of this moment to crystallize into a new ability.

He placed the pocket watch on the windowsill, his eyes fixed on the countless black specks soaring into the sky from the direction of the metal tower.

Taking his cat, he entered the courtyard. A strange sense of calm settled over him as he mounted the unicorn and ascended into the night. Against the backdrop of the city center, amidst the earthquake, the rising tower, and the incessant tolling of bells, he saw them—mechanical birds forged from bone and brass machinery, bursting from the depths of the earth.

Their ferocious appearance and nauseating composition screamed of their connection to the coming cataclysm. Searing steam erupted from the fissures around the tower and the town square. With each blast, a plague of mechanical creatures, like a swarm of locusts, poured from the sundered earth into the city's night sky.

Like a black canopy blotting out the heavens, tens of thousands of metal birds filled the air in the blink of an eye.

Jenkins saw the people on the ground scrambling to fill the chasms, and he saw the demigods of the Orthodox Churches rising to meet the threat.

He flew toward them, bathed in the moonlight, without drawing his cane or the White Bone Holy Sword. His right hand shot out, plucking a nearby mechanical bird from the air as it lunged to attack. Flames erupted, selectively incinerating the bones and leaving only the metal components behind.

He crushed the metal in his palm as if kneading dough. Amidst the funeral-knell toll of the bell, the metallic sheen covering his body grew more pronounced.

The cat watched alongside Jenkins as the bird soared into the sky. Jenkins pointed a finger toward the heavens.

"Call the lightning!" Follow current novels on NoveI-Fire.ɴet

A bolt of electricity shot down from the depths of the starry sky, striking the mechanical bird dead-on. In that same instant, the metallic radiance emanating from Jenkins reached its zenith.

The bell boomed below him as the lightning-struck bird spread its wings, flying through the crackling arcs of electricity.

A colossal, indescribable, even incomprehensible behemoth flickered into existence behind Jenkins for a fleeting moment. Then, a rusted, iron-black light radiated out from him, spreading across the sky with the little bird's flight.

It was the flash of lightning that drew the attention of the people on the ground to the figure on the unicorn. Before the Church could react, the bird and its strange, rusted, iron-black light had swept across the entire sky.

Every single bone-and-gear bird caught in that light froze in mid-air. After a pause of one or two seconds, they plummeted to the ground. For a moment, it began to rain metal over the city.

Jenkins took a deep breath. He felt the earth surge, heard the bells resound—a moment when all things converged. He raised his hand to catch the little bird as it flew back to him. It shifted in his grasp, transforming into an iron-gray book, arcs of electricity still dancing across its cover.

He held the book in his right hand, covering its pages with his left. When he slowly lifted his hand, the last of the tremors subsided into perfect stillness. He felt a profound and serene power emerge from within, a power utterly different from any he had wielded before.

"Mechanist (White Basic)"

Honestly, Jenkins hadn't expected his burgeoning connection to machinery to evolve into an ability . Both Magic Miss and Alexia had mentioned that any ability that came with a "symbolic object" was an exceptionally potent and mysterious transcendent power.

After the lamp from Mechanical Light, his second symbolic object was, once again, related to machinery. He had never heard of the ability "Mechanist," but he understood its function instantly.

When using the ability, he could summon the book and, by opening it, control and manipulate any object that could be called a machine within a certain range, up to the limits of his own endurance. The degree of control depended on a combination of factors, including distance, quantity, mystique, and complexity.

That was how he had been able to clear the sky of the bone-and-metal birds in a single, sweeping instant upon gaining the ability.

Beyond that, Jenkins could now sense the presence of machinery around him and could perform simple repairs and modifications with his mind alone, no tools required.

Furthermore, if a machine of his own creation was struck by lightning, it could briefly surpass its own design limits. This, he suspected, stemmed from his memories of the technological systems of his former world.

But it also made him realize that this world—or at least, the fundamental material and metaphysical rules of this era—did not support the development of an electrical technology tree. Otherwise, the ability born of this moment would have been about creating machines powered by electricity, not just using lightning for a one-time boost.

With this thought, he opened the book in his hand once more. As the iron-gray light radiated outward, he summoned the White Bone Holy Sword and slashed down at the fissure in the ground.

The gash from his sword plunged into the chasm but, to his disappointment, produced no effect. Still, there was no need to worry. The Church had been guarding the black tower day and night, precisely to prevent such an occurrence.

A massive ward was already forming. Jenkins ascended on the unicorn's back, watching as the Church scrambled to deal with the fissure that seemed to lead into the abyss.

Now that he had dealt with the "birds" in the sky, fewer and fewer of them emerged from the ground. Once Jenkins was certain the Church had the situation fully under control, he left with a sense of relief.

He returned to his house through the study window, acting as if he had never left. Picking up the pocket watch from the windowsill, he listened to the rhythmic tick-tock of its hands.

He murmured to himself.

"Why do I have such a strong affinity for mechanical power?"

Mechanist was an ability he had grasped on his own, and because of that, he could feel its immense power. It was the end of an epoch, and as a Savior, it might just be fate's design for him to gain a power that could contend with machinery. But this ability... it felt as if it had emerged because of his intrinsic compatibility with mechanical forces.

His soul was from another world, one that knew a vast and entirely different system of knowledge. That could explain his affinity for machines. What he couldn't understand was how he, a candidate for Savior of the Eighteenth Epoch, destined to fight against a catastrophe of steam and steel, could possess a power that was almost of the same origin as his enemy.

This world was governed by will and belief; any coincidence was worth investigating and pondering.

"Could it be," he wondered aloud, "that in the end, the Difference Engine will assimilate me? Or... will I go mad and assimilate the Difference Engine?"