Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 807: Is it a deus ex machina?

The sky darkened.

Although it was late at night, the darkness that was descending was even darker than the night itself, as if a basin of ink had been poured directly onto the curtain, making those restless shadows almost form a substantial body, gradually spreading in four directions of the night like sticky tentacles.

However, at this moment, a sacred sword suddenly rose from the human world, drew a shining, sharp straight line in everyone's eyes, and then accurately pierced through the center of the darkness.

That was not a sword, but light.

A beam of incandescent light seemed to span across two worlds. It rose from the duel disk of Tiantis and pierced straight into the night sky above. The dark and oppressive ink blocks piled together and gradually twisted into a huge, slowly rotating vortex. Every rotation of it would pull the surrounding airflow inward, swallowing up countless light and dust. Due to its huge size, even the extremely slow rotation relative to the human eye generated huge energy, causing visual distortion of space. The airflow attached to the dust seemed to have a specific shape, which was a beautiful arc trajectory, outlining the appearance of another vortex under the thick clouds. The two vortices covered each other, bringing an indescribable sense of oppression. Looking up from the ground, it seemed as if countless small black arcs were gathering from all directions, rushing to the center of the vortex and merging into it, much like tributaries merging into the sea and water drops merging into the tide.

The beam of light rising from the duel disk was like a sacred sword, straight through the intersection of the two vortices. That was their central area. Under the influence of some unknown great force, the accumulated clouds there sank upward and collapsed downward, forming a peculiar hollow structure. Compared with the turbulent airflow around it, it seemed so calm, as if the center of the typhoon eye would not be affected by the storm. Looking across the central hollow, you can see the transparent sky reflecting deep dark purple and blue-black. The air is thin and the temperature is enough to freeze frost, so that the stars outside the universe can also project their light here. However, when passing through the barrier at the edge of the world, the light gradually changes into another appearance due to the dilution. It is no longer a gorgeous and dazzling starlight, but looks like the texture on the surface of a machine or the lines on an engineering drawing, precise, neat and cold.

These lines and patterns seemed to be directly engraved on this deep curtain, and the curtain seemed to be falling down, so everything seemed within reach. Gloria felt like she was holding her breath, but for some reason the snoring sound coming from her ears became heavier and heavier, just as those rigid and indifferent lines were gradually magnified in her eyes.

They are never a single existence; sometimes they are parallel, sometimes they are staggered, as if there is some specific law behind them guiding their movement, gradually cutting the sky behind the clouds into a magical scene, a pattern flashing with the beauty of coldness and steel, more shocking than what the most skilled mechanics consider to be their masterpiece of their life. Each line presents a rigorous, delicate yet breathtaking beauty, the straight ones are like bearings, the curved ones form gears, overlapping and interlocking, so that the whole world becomes like an emotionless machine, running rigidly, meticulously performing the established operations, and never overstepping the mark.

Watching this scene, Tiantis couldn't help but think of the "creation mechanism theory" that the followers of the cult space-time Enigma madly advocated. In this heresy, they believed that the world was originally a machine, and the laws set the rules and efficiency of its operation. Just like the steel weapons without self-awareness only choose to hurt or protect according to the will of the master, the huge machine of the world will only operate according to the laws established at the beginning of creation. This is enough to show that everyone is originally a mechanical creation, and the generation of emotions is an acquired state. Eliminating the influence of emotions, erasing acquired human nature, and retaining the original divinity is the only way to make the living beings return to their true self and obtain the control authority of this huge and sophisticated creation machine.

However, who can afford the huge consumption of this machine when it is in operation? Going back in time, Sangil, the great wizard of the Moryas, observed the stars and predicted the arrival of the disaster of destruction in three thousand years. He spent two hundred years of his life for this, which was the limit of mortals; looking back further, the prophets of the Windmill Cross never dared to assert that they had seen through the truth of fate. They would rather they were like ignorant ants rolling in the mud. This was their awe of this machine, knowing that no one could understand its principles, let alone control its operation.

Gloria's pupils couldn't help but shrink a little. She had to admit that she had never seen such a mysterious, magnificent and spectacular sight. At this moment, in the girl's eyes, the sacred and indifferent beam of light had expanded, and almost in an instant it occupied the entire huge and empty vortex, and even pierced through the sky and the earth, shrouding the duel arena on earth in a dazzling and dizzying light.

Click.

The followers of Spacetime Enigma were also unable to do this, but they were inspired by the Steam Holy War and realized that if there was a great will that could control this machine, He must have the most perfect nature in the universe. Unlike all acquired life forms, His uniqueness in time and space constituted His complete appearance. If His godhood was enough to reverse time and control space, then operating this creation machine would be as simple as turning over His own palm.

That is the sound of bearings rolling and gears rotating.

Therefore, He is the ruler of reason, steam, time and space, and absolute order as described in the Enigma Codex.

In their theory, the world becomes a cold computing machine, calculating all the tiny probabilities on the track of fate and time until they become certain things. And those steel gears and metal bearings are the underlying logic and basic code of the machine's operation. They run through a unique algorithm, and through the number of operations that cannot be described by numbers per second, they finally construct a complete model - the essence of this world.

It is difficult for any mortal to look directly at this surging ocean of light. Only a very few people can resist its erosion of pupils and irises, and stubbornly see through the scene behind the light curtain. They see circles of brass rings falling from the sky, like the orbits of planets, overlapping and surrounding this beam of light. The steel gears of history on the rings are silently turning, making a clicking sound. The tilt angle of the rings draws tracks of different lengths on the plane of time and space, and graceful arcs pass by. In front of this old, bulky, but solemn and silent machine, the river flows backwards, snowflakes float upwards, and dust gathers inwards... Countless times have proved that the world is just operating according to cold laws. If you master these laws, you can reverse time and reverse space.

Time began to become unreal, space began to become distant, Gloria gradually felt that her heartbeat and breathing no longer belonged to her, and those rapid and throbbing were just to cater to the resonance of the machine when it started. In a shock that could not be expressed in words, she vaguely heard a burst of passionate music, which came from the other side of the Tywell River, from the National Grand Theater. It was like the most classic stage play being performed, and a passionate soprano repeatedly sang:

"Alexandria!" "Alexandria!!"

"Alexandria!!!"

Each syllable that contained changes danced on the singer's tongue, and after countless overlapping echoes, it sounded like a solemn hymn, and the sound of mechanical operation seemed to be mixed with the indifference and rationality unique to inanimate creatures. The ancient steam engine constructed of huge steel gears and exposed metal bearings roared in the sky, and the giant shadow of God slowly descended in the light. He still seemed to be still not awake at this time, with his head lowered and silent, like a pious saint. On His head, torso and arms, there were extremely thin silk threads wrapped around His head, torso and arms, which seemed completely insufficient to support the magnificent body, but they firmly bound His body and hung Him down from the deepest part of the vortex bit by bit, just like the drama in the classical era chose to use stage machinery to hang the actor playing God from the sky because it could not continue to deal with the plot, relying on the power and majesty of God to let the story finish.

No matter how absurd the previous plot was, how powerful the enemy was, or how difficult the story was to continue, as long as the gods appeared, everything would be solved naturally. This did not have any dramatic significance, but was simply because people at the time believed that gods had such power, even ignoring the rules of drama, plot logic, and all moral reasons.

"Deus ex machina..." Gloria watched helplessly as the majestic giant shadow, like a god in a classical drama, was lowered from the distant universe by a mechanism invisible to the naked eye. It came closer and closer until it covered the sky and the earth, causing a violent wave in the Tywell River. The souls at the bottom of the river fled, and the light in her eyes was gone, leaving only a dim shadow. She muttered to herself, "Deus ex machina..."

The low voice was torn into pieces by the wind and drowned in the depths of the surging River Tywell. In the distant National Theatre, the passionate soprano was still singing, singing to the climax of the drama, or perhaps its ending.

“Alexannnnnnn—dria!!!”

Thin threads snapped and powerlessly detached from the majestic body, melting into the deepest part of the light column like snowflakes. Then, as if awakened from a deep sleep, He slowly raised his head. From the outside, He looked like a giant covered with gear mechanisms and metal pipes, or a fortress made of black iron and brass. He had no legs, only a head, a torso, and a pair of arms that were almost the same length as his torso. The black iron and brass shoulder armor, chest armor, and waist armor covered the majestic mechanical body tightly. Spire-like steam boilers were stacked along His arms, back, and shoulders, and connected by black metal pipes, and finally merged into the most eye-catching and largest steel steam boiler behind him. The steam gushing out of the cold exhaust holes was like a white ocean, and the sudden rise in temperature even made people suspect that there was the energy of an entire volcano hidden in it.

His head also looks like a steam tower, but it feels more like the control tower of some airship. It has no humanoid facial features or expressions, only unchanging steel armor and cold metal pipes. A deep rectangular horizontal line replaces the place where the eyes should be. When He raised his head, the horizontal line flickered with alternating blue and dark purple light, then turned into deep red, and finally fixed.

In the blood-red color, Gloria saw a measure based on absolute rationality, as if everything in the universe had equal value and meaning under his gaze. He held all knowledge, truth, and answers. In front of him, there was no distinction between the unknown and the known, because both the unknown and the known were born from his gaze; similarly, there was no distinction between time and space, because both rivers would start with him and flow to the end.

Perhaps it was born from a sudden thought, or perhaps it was purely unconscious thinking... The universe will be born in such a coincidental moment, and then usher in time, fate, matter, nothingness, chaos, order, life, death, civilization, knowledge and all its accessories. Countless cold rules constitute this creation machine that never stops running, and He was born here to control this machine.

He silently looked down at the world below him. In his eyes, games might not be much different from reality. Everything was just a material division, but conceptually the same. His majestic body slowly descended under the gaze of everyone, breaking away from the pillar of light that penetrated the sky and earth, but he did not land on the duel field, because as Tiantis said, he was not a monster, but a god, perhaps the only one who possessed divinity among all the false gods, evil gods, and imaginary gods in history.

When He landed behind Tiantis, the city of Lonwittin, which was only in the background, seemed to tremble violently. Dust rose from both sides of the Tywell River and was knocked down from the sky by the huge waves. The Indorsis Bridge connecting Westminster and the old city also looked so small in front of this majestic machine that it almost made people wonder if it would break and collapse in the next moment. Only the even smaller Tiantis could not be ignored, making people feel that the two were on an equal footing. Perhaps the latter was even higher in status, because from beginning to end, when she faced this god who had just been born and her former enemy, her face never showed any expression other than calmness and scrutiny.

"I am... Alexander, the God of Machinery..."

A deep and rich voice came from the steel fortress, echoing in everyone's ears, making them suddenly feel as if they had been locked in and could not escape the other party's gaze no matter where they fled: "Observation, ended, mankind... the moment of divine judgment has arrived..."

"From now on, material interference begins."

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)