674
"Ignite the furnace core!"
At Hilland's roar, the atomic clock sped up, its gears and levers working against one another.
Rumble, rumble. The body of metal stood as tall as a mountain, but such an object should never have been able to exist. Its skeleton would have collapsed under its own weight and armor. Enormous rollers hauled cables made from materials imbued with spirituality, moving components with a precision no ordinary mechanism could achieve. They thundered like the rumbling before a rainy night, working together to activate the body of a god without a will.
"Not enough fuel! Your Highness! One of the Lord's bodies has already been activated. Without the Lord's power, the remaining fuel isn't enough to ignite the furnace core again!"
A Saint mopped the cold sweat from his forehead in disarray. His seniority and power were sufficient for a church to be named after him, yet in the face of this sudden, nation-destroying catastrophe, he behaved like a greenhorn who had just entered a workshop. Everyone worked anxiously at their stations, watching the furnace core with fearful eyes as it grew ever brighter yet never reached its critical point. The Lord permitted them to regard the divine shell as explorers, with eyes that sought to analyze and understand, but did not permit them to make unauthorized changes-not that they had the ability to do so.
The enormous underground structure was filled with the sounds of mechanisms at work. The roaring collisions of metal drowned out his cries, and he could not leave his station. He could only shout as loudly as possible, "Your Highness! Your Highness! Our fuel reserves are rapidly dwindling!"
Hilland was a middle-aged man with a stern, square face, a sturdy build, and a capable air, like a professor of mechanical manufacturing