It was a morning thick with fog. A fine spring drizzle fell from the sky—dense and lingering—silently beading on the broad fronds of lush ferns.

The rain slid off the leaves, streamed along ruined rebar skeletons and alloy piping, and gathered into puddles that mirrored the rust-scarred tower frames in the distance and, farther still, the tiny ant-like figures bustling about.

Suddenly, a short boot stepped into a puddle; those interwoven sights of decay and vitality quickly dissolved in the rippling splash.

“Is this the royal capital of the Skyvault Kingdom?” In the woods outside the city, Abella held up an umbrella and eyed the ruined metropolis in the distance, curious.

Yvette stood quietly beside her, gaze piercing the curtain of rain. Ice Rain stood at her side, nodding like an echo.

Half a month earlier, after finishing the Jadeite Continent tour and knowing they would have to meet Ice Rain on the Silvermirror Continent, Yvette had used a Sanctum in the Golem Kingdom to send Ice Rain a message, arranging a rendezvous at a designated spot.

Ice Rain had chosen that meeting point long ago precisely because it wasn’t far from the Skyvault Kingdom’s royal city. After they reunited—meeting again after many years—Ice Rain, elated, hugged them both, then led the trio into the most famed city of the Machinefolk.

Even the Sanctum Headquarters was here—not on the ground, but aboard an anti-gravity aerospace carrier. The carrier hovered year-round among the clouds; only on clear days could one see its vast silhouette in the sky.

“I live in the capital. I’ll take you in for a tour!” After so many years, seeing old friends again left Ice Rain positively buoyant; she set off at a sprightly pace.

The Skyvault Kingdom’s royal city was, in fact, the ruins of “Future Port City,” which in the Origin Civilization era had been the headquarters of Skyvault Technologies and the most advanced city of the Future Collective. Building the Skyvault Kingdom’s capital here was only natural.

Before long, as they moved deeper through the city’s ruins, a strange sense of daily life grew stronger.

Along the roads, golems in makeshift raincoats inspected magitech lines soaked by rainwater or used crude containers to collect potable water.

In some places the ground had caved in, revealing enormous conduits. From above, one could see golems of various types going in and out. The tunnels were coated in rust and slick moss; above, gaps were haphazardly patched with metal sheets and transparent plastic, a ceiling for the underground and a bandage on the road above.

Stopping and starting along the way, Yvette felt increasingly ill at ease. She found no sign of a developing civilization here. Apart from being larger—with a population in the hundreds of thousands—the Skyvault Kingdom was no different from the Golem Kingdoms she’d seen on the Blacktide and Jadeite continents: a crowd of rusted golems, mimicking humans while doing things humans would find absurd.

She was convinced the God of Machines possessed advanced Origin Civilization tech and the ability to reproduce it—otherwise how did the God-graced bear such brand-new gear?

Yet this was the reality. The only conclusion was that the God of Machines had no intention of developing a civilization—either by choice, or due to some external constraint.

A dozen minutes later, after passing several ruins converted into communal dormitories, Ice Rain stopped at the end of a relatively quiet lane before a two-story shack of sheet metal.

“We’re here!” She pushed open the squealing tin door. “This is my place!”

Yvette followed her in. The furnishings were sparse—empty, really—just the bare essentials like a bed; there weren’t even many decorations.

Given that Ice Rain was a traveler who could be gone for centuries at a stretch—and a mechanical golem with no real sense of time—this might well be normal. She probably hadn’t spent much of her life staying quietly at home.

 After sitting a while at Ice Rain’s home, Abella, bored out of her mind, went out for a wander. Seeing Ice Rain sitting by the bed with nothing much to do, Yvette asked, “Is there a way to meet the God of Machines?”

“Huh?” Ice Rain blinked, surprised. “Miss Good Samaritan, you want an audience with a god?”

“Mm. I have some things to say face-to-face—any way to do that?” Yvette asked.

“That’s… very hard,” Ice Rain fretted. “Usually only the Sanctum’s ‘Holy Lord’ is qualified to be received—” She suddenly brightened. “Why don’t you try praying at the Sanctum? Ask whether the God would be willing to see you?”

Yvette nodded. She had no desire to clash with the Machinefolk. If the normal process worked, so much the better; only if it failed would she take another path.

Guided by Ice Rain, Yvette threaded through dim alleys and into an underground corridor that seemed to have been converted from a sewer.

Reaching a small room that looked like a repurposed electrical substation, Yvette saw several mechanical golems waiting in line.

Ice Rain said, “The Sanctum for our sector is right here.”

Yvette dutifully took her place at the end of the line, glanced at the golems ahead, and found they were a heap of battered scrap—leaving her a bit puzzled.

She had assumed the royal capital of the Skyvault Kingdom would have many mechanicals with high anthropomorphism like Ice Rain. Unexpectedly, they were still that rare.

Could they be out-of-towners come to the capital to beg? A few minutes later, it was finally Yvette’s turn. The attendant was a nun who looked familiar. She paused slightly and said, “

Miss Sunflower?”

Indeed, the Sanctum nun here was the very highly anthropomorphic sister Yvette had seen centuries ago when she first set foot on the Blacktide Continent and visited the Sanctum in the Agasha Golem Kingdom.

What was she doing here?

“Eh? You’re—” Miss Sunflower also found the girl before her familiar—mainly because her aura was too distinctive. One look and you knew her grasp of human nature had reached a transcendent realm of cultivation. In Miss Sunflower’s entire life, perhaps only the Holy Lord could compare.

She suddenly understood. “Ah! The young lady from Agasha? What a coincidence!”

Yvette nodded. “So you left Agasha too?”

Miss Sunflower shook her head. “No, I’ve always been posted in the capital. That time I was temporarily reassigned. Not long after you left, I returned.”

“Temporarily reassigned? For what reason?”

“I don’t know. It seemed there were issues at the Sanctum in Agasha, so I went to keep an eye on things. In the end it was deemed a false alarm,” Miss Sunflower said.

Yvette made a quiet sound of acknowledgment and didn’t press further. She gestured for the magitech line to connect to the god. She wasn’t a golem and had no jack,

but as a runic hacker, remote connections were no problem.

She linked directly to the God Box. A UI appeared before her—she could input a question by thought and await the deity’s reply.

“I am the last human alive. I know you were born from Skyvault Technologies’ ‘Heartcore.’ I want to speak with you in person,” Yvette entered.

In less than a second, the God of Machines’ reply appeared. It contained just one word:

“Refused.”

Yvette fell silent. Her immediate priority now was to determine whether this was an auto-reply triggered by a keyword the God of Machines had set.