Far away in the Temple on the Babylon Mainland, Gil lay inside a remote-control cockpit.
It relied on "artificial heaven," the Magnet-Magnet Fruit, and Babbage's built-in intelligence system.
The Mechanical King he was "piloting" looked convincing enough.
After Babbage entered the mist, his hazy field of vision gradually cleared.
Rainbow-colored fog shrouded everything in this legendary stretch of sea, as though a gray filter had been laid over it. Visibility was less than a hundred meters.
Wrecks from every era dotted the sea-pirate ships, merchant vessels, Marine warships. Some remnants floated on the surface, while others lay stranded on reefs.
The radar scans were transmitted back simultaneously. The underwater terrain rose and fell like a mountain range. Some areas were bottomless; elsewhere, exposed reefs formed tiny islets.
Countless shipwrecks must have occurred here to leave so much debris piled up.
Just as Babbage was about to explore deeper, his radar picked up several faint life signs at the edge of its range.
He turned in that direction, passed through the fog, and spotted an abandoned warship run aground.
A small figure stood on its mast, holding something as though keeping watch.
It was a lanky, black-haired boy of eight or nine, wearing a green shirt.
Suddenly, he spotted the enormous figure in the fog.
A towering Gray Iron robot, clad in heavy armor and brass piping, with thrusters spilling eerie blue light from its back.
The child had never seen anything like it. His eyes widened, and for a moment, he forgot he was standing on a mast.
"That's..."
He instinctively stepped forward-and found nothing beneath his foot.
"Waaah-!"
The little figure plummeted from the mast. The water below was shallow, but packed with reefs. The fall would kill or cripple him.
Babbage's dark-red, single-eyed lens flashed, and the thrusters