Late at night, Upper City of the Steam Capital
Gear Church, Great Pendulum Church
Inside the church, a group of Mechanical God Cult clergy knelt upon prayer mats, praying devoutly.
Yet unlike the usual gathering of over a hundred, there were undoubtedly far fewer believers in the church now.
Because after the daytime "trial"—
Not only had the other non-Church members in the Steam Capital begun to doubt the Gear Church—
Even many within the Church had started to waver in their faith.
They did not care that Bishop Cleve and Saintess Euphemia had secretly controlled the Lower City's trade.
After all, "money" had always been an important tool for reaching the "hall of knowledge," as the doctrines of the Mechanical God Cult had long stated.
What they truly cared about was how those two had treated Silver Knight Vivian.
That holy woman who had been blessed before the Mechanical God's altar, and who was more devout than "dull-witted" people like them.
Rather than dying in the sacred exploration of "knowledge," she was now about to die in a tedious, rotten struggle for power.
To believers of the Mechanical God Cult, who revered knowledge and believed in machinery and rationality, this was undoubtedly a tremendous humiliation and stain.
And the ones who had done all this were Bishop Cleve and Saintess Euphemia, whose souls were closest to the "Mechanical God" in the current Mechanical God Cult Branch—the Gear Church.
Even they had allowed reality's desires to taint their "rationality."
Then what exactly had the "rationality" they prayed for day and night, painstakingly pursuing, become?
Because of this, although only half a day had passed—
The Gear Church had already split into three factions.
One was the Power Faction, led by Bishop Cleve and Euphemia.
Another was the spontaneously organized "Purification