Witches without count and of every size brought a destruction that was like the implosion of all things, making the main peak of the Honnachis Mountains tend toward the form of a vast stone sphere.
This caused the ruined outer walls of that ancient palace to crumble in quick succession, leaving Klein, his clones and his mystery-puppet, in the centre of the great hall, all together exposed to the stellar realm.
Seeing the python-like black tentacles about to surge into the palace, a crimson moon rose up in this apocalypse-like scene.
Bathed in the moon's radiance, around the outer reaches of the great hall there sprang up at once clumps of wheat, blossoms of flowers, mushrooms, trees; they entangled one with another, layer upon layer, and sealed the palace of
At that moment, the hall in which Klein stood was as a ruin sealed for thousands of years in history and in forest, wholly swallowed up by nature.
Those black tentacles, with eyeballs at their tips like pythons, were thus blocked outside by these wildly-growing plants.
They lifted up and beat unceasingly upon this 'barrier' that rose from nature, making it, layer after layer, petrify and shatter, or simply collapse.
Yet whether wheat, flower, mushroom or tree, their renewal came back very swiftly — scarce had they returned into the embrace of the Earth Mother than they sprouted anew.
Thus those natural barriers were, layer by layer, born again, and, layer by layer, destroyed; layer by layer destroyed and again, layer by layer, born — caught in a kind of deadlock.
The "Earth Mother," who wielded the uniqueness of the 'Moon' pathway, had held off the 'Primordial Witch' Chic.
At that moment, a 'light' which the great majority of Beyonders could not see fell straight from on high and struck against this natural barrier of plants.
The light had no substance, but seemed to be made up of a vast tangle of information; it took an illusory form and, like a flood, broke through the gaps among the plants and rushed straight for Klein, who was about to take up that semi-transparent mask.
The '
At that instant, a misty light sprang up from out of the void, and around Klein, scroll after scroll of projection-like paintings was unfurled.
Some recorded the helplessness and the misery of humankind in the face of supernatural species; some, with epic strokes, depicted the scene of humankind taking themselves as test-subjects, attempting to fuse extraordinary materials in order to gain strength and save their kind; some described the many strange and wonderful folk-ways brought into being by the 'Black Emperor'; some bore inventions of every kind, books of every kind, viewpoints of every kind; some were, like an imitation of the present world, made up of vast machines belching steam, ever-rising buildings of every sort, and apparel more convenient for movement…
These contents made the seemingly thin scrolls feel of immense weight, for what they bore was civilisation — the enlightenment and development of human society at its different stages.
Long ago, that 'God of Craftsmanship' had not yet wholly digested the Sequence-1 'Civilisation Enlightener' potion before, for various reasons, He ascended to Sequence 0 and yet kept His reason and lucidity. But this also forced Him to spend more of His mind in resisting the tendency toward loss of control and madness, and among the seven orthodox gods, He stood somewhat the weaker compared with the rest.
The reason that the Church of Steam was the weakest of the orthodox-god organisations was, besides being itself the shortest in history and the least accumulated, that the corresponding true god was in not too good a state.
When Roselle, in the identity of the 'Son of Steam' and a member of the Church, ushered in the Industrial Revolution and brought with it all manner of currents of thought, only then did the 'God of Craftsmanship' seize the chance to change his name to the '
And, as the true god of a kindred pathway, after the 'Hidden Sage' chose to set himself as enemy of Klein, He finally stood with the rest of the orthodox gods.
The terrifyingly vast torrent of information crashed into those illusory scrolls, swelling rapidly and trying to burst the 'cage' open.
But the civilisation of thousands and tens of thousands of years was so weighty and so vast; the history left behind by generation after generation of mankind, counted in the hundreds of millions, was so immense and grand — to bear the information torrent of the 'Hidden Sage' was more than enough.
While the 'Hidden Sage' strove to break through the 'God of Steam and Machinery's' restraint, within Antigonus's hall, sealed layer by layer with plants, Klein's slick, uncanny tentacles, which he had extended, took up the semi-transparent mask that represented the 'Fool' uniqueness, and brought it up close to his face.
The instant the mask was set upon Klein's face, figures emerged on every side, one after another.
Some were men in postal uniforms, some plain birds, some creatures so tiny that the bare eye could not see them; their number reached the hundreds, even the thousands.
The hall, in which there had been only corpses hanging in the air, was at once crowded.
And the common feature of these figures was that they either wore a polished crystal monocle on the right eye, or in that same place bore a ring marking of a different colour.
The clones of Mr 'Error,' Amon!
It was unclear whether they had used the invasion of the 'Primordial Witch' or that of the 'Hidden Sage' to open a back-door, slip through a gap, and silently arrive in the vicinity of their target.
Glancing at Klein, who had only just put on the semi-transparent mask and begun to accommodate the 'Fool' uniqueness, these Amons revealed 'smiles' at the same moment, opened their 'mouths,' and spat out words that no ordinary mortal could understand.
These words wove themselves together, forming dreadful, mad murmurs: "You have overlooked the 'Primordial Witch'…
"For Her, the
"What She most desires now is for a '
"Plainly, compared with you, I am the better choice — you are too weak…"