After night fell over Budapest, tiny insects trapped inside the orange-red streetlamps scattered throughout the city kept battering the old glass covers, where the charred corpses of countless bugs had accumulated. Other than the occasional passing vehicle, the streets were utterly silent, with hardly any residents out for a walk. Beneath the silhouettes cast by the streetlights, the War Engine standing near the Parliament Building threw long, blurred ghostly shadows like a Titan from myth, while the signal lights on its chassis flickered intermittently like deep-space stars falling through the atmosphere. Supreme steelworking techniques assembled and forged alloys at the atomic level, producing all manner of materials for War Engines and heavy armored vehicles. Even now, such technology remained beyond the imagination of ordinary people. The only comparable process on Earth was powder forging. Although Mars's technology had likewise developed from that primitive technique, the armor plates it produced far surpassed Earth-made alloys in strength, heat resistance, and other measures. Only Wakanda's Vibranium could compare.
Every resident of Budapest knew that their conqueror was holding court inside the magnificent Parliament Building. There was no need to see the Legislator Armored Vehicles of the Legal Department roaring down the streets, nor to hear the noise of Laser Weapons and Explosive Weapons being fired. Order had descended naturally. From central Budapest to the suburban Pest District, everything was quiet. Drunkards rarely stayed sober, LGBT supporters no longer flaunted vulgar displays of pleasure in the streets, and even the pet dogs running wild everywhere and the thieves hiding in the shadows had vanished without a trace.
Hammurabi's icy face was unusually full of helplessness, because the Emperor's prank had escalated again.
Behind the magnificent dark-brown desk, a seat specially prepared for a giant held nothing but the most common kind of mannequin found