Cloud Rail

Tapping fingers sounded from the Den Den Mushi—once, then again.

Vegapunk was thinking.

"What about power? What drives the Dial Car?"

"Breath Dials."

"The thrust from Breath Dials is enough, but their endurance is lacking. Long-distance travel would require Dial replacement stations along the route, or..."

Vegapunk paused.

"Use your lightning. Embed conductive metal wires inside the tracks, connect Energy-Storage Dials at both ends, and use lightning to power the entire line. Install Electric Dials beneath the Dial Car to draw power from the tracks and drive the Breath Dials. As long as the rails have electricity, the Dial Car can keep running."

Annus held the receiver without answering immediately. He imagined the scene: a silver-gray Cloud Rail departing from God's Island and stretching westward, crossing the sea of clouds, passing through the cloud ridge belt and the Western Extreme Cloud Plains, all the way to that unlit place at the edge of the map.

"Then that's what we'll do," he said.

Over the following months, Annus handed most of Heavenly Kingdom's daily affairs over to Lilith and Sariye, while he threw himself into building the Cloud Rail.

He first summoned a group of craftsmen skilled in working Processed Clouds from Brian and Rubia, then recruited technicians familiar with Dial Energy from Birka. On the Cloud Field west of God's Island, they erected a temporary workshop.

Vegapunk sent over structural blueprints for the tracks through Kuma—thick stacks of cloud paper, every sheet covered in cross-sectional diagrams and stress analyses. Annus spread them across the workshop's long tables and reviewed them with the craftsmen one by one.

The rails had trapezoidal cross-sections, narrow at the top and broad at the bottom. Their bases were flat, while raised rims on either side prevented the Dial Car's power brushes from slipping off the