Chapter 405

Chapter 405: Impact and Awakening

Fog was everywhere. The whole world seemed to have sunk into a deep pool of gray-white fluid. Everything in sight had its edges blurred by the mist. The distant city, the nearby roads… all became vague and unclear.

After moving underground for only a short time, the scene on the surface had become something she no longer recognized.

Agatha, who had hurried back to the surface from the Second Waterway, stood at the exit of the transit station and stared in shock at the street. There were no pedestrians on the road at all now. Under the thick fog, even the nearby streetlights were reduced to hazy clusters of glow floating in midair. Besides that, she could only see some dark red lights slowly moving in the mist, mixed with the sound of steam engines at work—warning lights on top of steam walkers, flashing as they moved.

“The city’s Guard Corps and constable units have rushed to every major intersection. Movement between districts is now strictly forbidden. All civilian vehicles are banned from the roads. citizens who could not get home in time are being directed to the nearest shelters,” a Church priest who had come to meet Agatha reported. “Most veil of night Sanctuary Worlds are already full. We can only work with the security forces to divert people into the Cathedral, warehouses, and the nearest subway stations.”

At this point, the priest paused and let out a heavy sigh.

“Sigh… We could have sent more people to places like the library to take shelter, but corruption has started appearing wherever large numbers of books are stored. All the book repositories have been sealed off. The fog rose right when most factories in the city were changing shifts. Too many people were far from home.”

Agatha did not answer. She slowly drew her gaze back from the street and raised her head in thought to look at the sky.

Heavy clouds and the city’s own mist hid the sky. The daylight was as dim as dusk, and in that murky vault she could not see the trace of the Sun.

“It is daytime now…” she said softly.

“Yes, it is daytime, but this strange fog may be interfering with the power of the Sun,” the priest said, face grim and a bit tense. “The corruption that appeared in the library is because of this…”

“Nothing can interfere with the power of the Sun during the day. As long as Vision 001 hangs in the sky, even if clouds block the sunlight and plunge the whole city into a veil of night, the power of the Sun will not weaken,” Agatha shook her head slightly. “In my judgment, this thick fog is not the cause. It is probably only a ‘phenomenon’ triggered by a greater crisis. How are things on the mountain?”

“The great Cathedral is packed with people now,” the priest said quickly. At the same time, several steam walkers with their warning lights on clanked onto the open ground near the transit station exit. Between the walkers was a car bearing the Church’s flag. “Your car is here. Let us go back to the mountain first. We can talk on the way.”

Agatha and the priest climbed into the car. The steam walkers cast strong beams of light into the fog. On the barely lit road, the vehicle set off toward the great Cathedral at the mountaintop, moving much more slowly than usual.

“When the fog rose, many worshippers and tourists were still on the mountain. The great Cathedral sheltered as many as it could. Those it truly could not take in were sent to the old Cathedral next door, the City Museum. City Hall has also arranged Sanctuary Worlds, so at least people were not left outside,” the priest went on reporting to Agatha in the car. “Archbishop Ivan has now stabilized the situation and has not let panic spread inside the Cathedral. Since just now he has been using Psychic Communication to stay in contact with Cathedrals all over the city. So far, no corruption caused by mass panic has appeared…”

A deep mechanical rumble sounded outside the car window. Agatha turned her head toward the direction of the noise.

She saw several long aerial tracks stretching out from above the mountain road, cutting through the thick fog and pointing into the distance. Tall support towers held up the tracks like giants. A black cargo cabin hung from one of the tracks, roaring as it moved into the depths of the mist. The red warning lights around the cabin were like many eyes, blinking nonstop in the fog.

This was the transport system of the Boiling Gold mine. The raw Boiling Gold ore dug out of the mine was carried in those huge cargo cabins along the mountain tracks to the crushing and sorting plants and the great Crucible at the foot of the mountain.

“…The mine tracks are still running?” Agatha turned back in surprise and looked at the priest beside her. “Have the workers not gone to take shelter?”

At the same time, the scene she had just seen deep underground rose in her mind: that ancient mine tunnel that had already run dry decades ago.

“The workers must have gone to take shelter,” the priest said. He looked just as surprised when he saw the cargo cabin on the track, but he still answered with certainty. “The mine Cathedral has already confirmed it. What you see going by now is probably the last batch of ore sent from the tunneling area. It should have been arranged automatically by the Sorting Engine—you know, the Boiling Gold ore that has been mined only stays in the storage yard for a while before it is sent off. It is all set on the program’s punched paper tape. The machines only follow the instruc—”

A disturbing roar suddenly came from the other side of the fog, cutting off the priest’s confident words. Everyone instantly looked toward the source of the sound, but all they saw was another black cargo cabin rushing along the aerial track from the other end—the same track the first cabin had just passed over the mountain road on.

“They are going to crash!!”

The priest only had time to cry out once before the earth-shaking collision happened. The two cargo trains slammed into each other on the aerial track with a terrifying roar and explosion. The side panels of the cabins were torn open, and ore that glowed pale gold poured down the hillside like a rainstorm. Then, as the two cargo trains rocked and swung violently on the track, their drive wheels and guide wheels fell off, axles snapped, and the twisted cabins, spitting sparks and thick smoke, tumbled down into the valley.

A chunk of falling debris from the sky almost scraped the roof of the car Agatha rode in before it smashed hard into the roadside.

Before anyone in the car could react, another teeth-grinding, dreadful sound of metal tearing came again from high above.

The aerial track that had taken the violent impact twisted and warped. Sparks burst from the top of one of the iron towers supporting it. Stretched steel beams and cables snapped with loud cracks, and then an entire section of the track came crashing down from above!

“Get out of the way!”

The priest in the car shouted at once, but even before he spoke, the convoy had already begun to dodge the fallen relic falling from the sky. Several steam walkers scattered at once, and the steam car in the middle of the formation suddenly surged forward. After a few heart-stopping seconds, a terrifying crash sounded from behind Agatha.

She looked back and saw that the broken section of track had already crashed onto the mountain road, completely destroying the main route. Two steam walkers were trapped on the far side of the fallen relic, but thankfully they were unharmed. They moved their long mechanical legs and began to climb the nearby slope instead. White high-pressure steam spurted from the gaps in their armor plates and merged with the surrounding fog.

“Walkers Two and Four cannot get through. They are probably going to climb up to the upper path and circle back to the great Cathedral. We do not need to wait for them,” Agatha said after a quick glance back, making her judgment and giving the order. “Keep going.”

“That was far too close…” The priest beside her could not help wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. “It almost came down right on our heads.”

Agatha did not speak for a moment.

Had that been an accident? Or… malice?

Why would a mine track that should only carry one-way, single-line traffic suddenly have a cargo cabin coming from the opposite direction?

By now the mine’s workers should all have gone to the shelters. In theory, the operator of the track system would also leave after setting up the last train. The final step of attaching a cargo cabin to the track had a safety lock. If there was already another cabin on the line, it would never depart. A Sorting Engine controlled this entire process, and a properly running Sorting Engine did not make mistakes. Its gears and levers faithfully carried out the program set on the punched paper tape. There was no room for doubt in the mesh of metal.

“The mine’s Sorting Engine may have gone wrong…” Agatha murmured, almost to herself.

And the mine’s Sorting Engine might not be the only thing that had gone wrong. If Malevolent Spirit corruption could appear in the library in broad daylight, then the scope and urgency of this mutation was beyond anything anyone had imagined.

…

Faint police bells from distant streets drifted into his ears. A chaotic, disordered cold wind swept freely through the empty graveyard. Thick fog shrouded everything in sight, and in that unbroken mist it seemed as if countless low whispers overlapped and echoed, like the restless stirring of The dead.

The click of a safety catch being released broke the graveyard’s silence. The faint glow of a consecrated lantern pushed back the Shadows in the fog. A hunched old man gripped his loyal, dependable double-barreled shotgun and stood on the path like a watchful sentry, staring hard at the rows of coffins lined up in the mist.

The whispers were only an illusion—for now, at least. Those coffins still rested honestly on the platforms, and the people in them still lay there honestly. Yet the strange feeling in the air could not fool a veteran’s senses.

He knew something was happening. This graveyard was absolutely not going to stay quiet today. Among the “guests” he “looked after” here, some were slowly waking up.