“What the heck is this mess?”
A sudden downpour drenches Cologne Plaza.
Giant craters have formed all around.
In a plaza filled with the ruins of collapsed buildings, Cern plopped down a toolbox with a thud.
A boy drenched in blood.
A woman wailing as she holds him tight.
And a familiar-looking man stood there.
“Glad you showed up.”
“What’s the reason you called me?”
“I already told you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you mentioned something about needing help swapping out the engine for a machine…”
“……”
Swish. Swish.
Cern glanced at the boy with a hole in his chest.
Then at the shameless man’s bold face, his expression turned to horror.
“No way!”
“You’re sharp, I see. Unfortunately, that ‘no way’ is exactly right. Time is of the essence, so hurry up and get ready.”
“No! Hey! Where’s the damn machine?!”
“A person is a type of machine too, right? It’s just a matter of how intricate and delicate they are.”
“……”
Cern was left speechless.
He thought he’d been called to help fix a machine.
But now that he was here, there was a boy with his heart ripped out lying in front of him.
Is a heart a kind of engine too?
Cern felt his vision starting to fade.
“Are you really going to do this?”
“Yeah. Please, Jill.”
“I don’t think he can last much longer…”
With a grim expression, the Priestess encircled them with a barrier to block the rain.
She began to channel mana into the boy.
Golden mana gathered around, shaping into the figure of a winged angel.
It started seeping into the boy’s body, triggering a miraculous recovery.
His fatal wounds began to heal, and the blood that had stagnated started to flow again.
He was in a state where one could hardly say he was alive, but he certainly wasn’t dead.
Sola blinked in confusion, utterly lost about what was happening.
“Priestess! What are you doing? Zenon is already dead! Withdraw your mana!”
“Not yet. As long as there’s a possibility, I can’t stop.”
This was like pouring water into a bottomless pit.
No matter how much healing magic forced his body to recover, it was only preventing the damage to a corpse that was already gone.
Unless the heart that had been ripped out started functioning again…
“No way…!”
Sola suddenly realized.
She understood the suspicious man, the Priestess, and the old man were trying to do something forbidden.
They were about to reach into a realm that should not be touched.
“Don’t worry about hygiene or bleeding, just leave it to me. Think of it as a dead body and approach it with a calm mind.”
“Even if you say that… Ugh! What the hell! Wasn’t it you who said the body is a kind of machine? Can’t argue with that!”
Cern rolled up his sleeves and started rummaging through the toolbox.
He took out several small engines and measured them against Zenon’s chest.
After selecting a suitable size, Cern put on the gloves the Priestess had handed him and got to work—no, ‘engine replacement.’
“Geez… I don’t get any of this just by looking.”
“I’ll teach you. This side and this side are the arteries, so you should connect them to direct the blood flow…”
The combination of the Priestess and the engineer began.
Jill constantly poured mana to stop the bleeding and infused oxygen into the brain and vital organs to prevent damage while Cern inserted the engine into the boy’s chest to replace the heart.
‘It’s not the first time I’ve combined organic material with machinery. I’ve even performed surgeries on cyborgs…’
The beginning of clockwork dolls came from wanting to create moving dolls by assembling the limbs of cyborgs.
Cern, who had extensive experience in attaching magical legs to people who had lost theirs, was doing this for the first time—to swap out a vital organ like a heart.
It was fundamentally unprecedented.
No one had ever attempted it, nor had anyone even thought to.
“What about the rejection reaction…?”
“The only way is to suppress it with magic.”
“365 days a year, 24 hours a day, you’ll need to cast that spell? If you slip up for even a moment, he’ll die. How do you expect to sleep?”
“Well…”
Jill lost her train of thought.
An engine could be charged and recharged periodically but…
The magic to repress the rejection reaction was a different story.
Who could continuously cast magic without a moment’s rest?
Even the simplest magic would be impossible that way; suppressing rejection was quite complex.
It would be nice if some device could cast the spell automatically.
Just as Jill was grinding her teeth at that thought…
“……Formation.”
“……?”
“……?”
The two, who were lost in thought, turned around to find a pale-skinned Blood Ghoul girl standing there.
The girl crossed her fingers and formed a seal.
Demonic energy inscribed into the engine nestled inside Zenon’s chest drew the formation.
A zero-dimensional cubic shape.
It evolved into a cube of the next stage, then Mi Jeong twisted her seal, frowning, to form another seal.
‘Just something a bug did… I just need to follow what it did, it’s easy.’
The cubic formation crumbled into an unstable shape.
While everyone held their breath, Mi Jeong, with utmost concentration, transformed the formation into a diamond-shaped eight-faced figure.
A second-level formation.
This was the serious application of the curse.
The moment Mi Jeong awakened to the application of curse formations.
“……Done. I did it.”
“Here’s the spell for suppressing rejection.”
Jill immediately transferred the spell’s magic to Mi Jeong.
The magic formation transformed into demonic energy from Mi Jeong’s hand.
Applying it to the formation, the body began to accept the engine as the rejection eased.
‘There are quite a few similarities between formations and magic.’
Yoo Jin nodded watching the scene.
Though they originated from the same mana, curses and magic seemed entirely different.
Without the cumbersome transformations, formations and magic could share the spell.
Ultimately, it was proof that their foundations were the same.
“It seems we need demonic energy to activate the formation. If I connect an adapter that converts mana to demonic energy to the formation… Ugh! How in the world am I supposed to connect this! It’s all made of demonic energy, which is invisibly tricky! What a frickin’ headache! Guess I’ll just have to go through trial and error!”
“Hurry up! My mana’s running low…”
A fierce race against time began.
The replacement engine and the formation to suppress the rejection were all ready, but connecting them was anything but simple.
“If I let the demonic energy flow, the formation will absorb the surrounding demonic energy, right? Then if I connect it like this… Good…”
After countless trials and errors, the connections of the blood vessels were finally completed.
After finishing the connection of the adapter to supply demonic energy to the formation.
Cern gulped and powered up the engine.
Vroom!
The engine started with a powerful roar.
Then, it thumped rhythmically like a heart, pumping the blood without backflow, starting to circulate on its own.
“We did it…”
Ugh!
Cern stepped back, his voice trembling.
Jill concentrated on strengthening the magic, starting to repair the hole in his chest.
She reattached the broken ribs, covering the engine.
New flesh sprouted over and stitched the torn muscles together.
Before long, Zenon’s chest was perfectly fine as if the hole had never existed.
Sola burst into tears of joy.
“Ah…!”
Having pushed herself beyond mana exhaustion, Jill started to bleed from her nose and lost her balance.
Thud.
A familiar hand caught and supported her.
Despite the barrier disappearing and the downpour starting again, Jill closed her eyes, feeling that this was the warmest moment of all.
“Sleep well. You did great.”
“Yeah…”
She saved a life.
Though that sense of fulfillment was present…
Jill felt this single phrase held even more value.
She wasn’t hated by Yoo Jin.
That assurance washed over her, allowing Jill to finally faint in peace.
“Zenon! Zenon! Wake up!”
“……”
Sola pressed her ear to Zenon’s chest, shouting at him.
Without a doubt, the heart—no, the engine was beating strong.
The operation was successful.
But that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any side effects.
There was a chance Zenon might never wake up.
She had no way of telling where it went wrong or how to fix it.
All she could do was pray endlessly.
That Zenon would wake up without any issues…
“Sister…?”
“……!”
Finally, a bubbling voice emerged from Zenon’s cracked lips.
He looked a bit weak, but Zenon was definitely breathing by himself, his eyes glistening with life.
Clearly confused as he looked around, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
Sola’s tears stopped briefly, and then she hugged her precious brother tightly, overcome with joy.
“Ahhh! Thank goodness! Ah!”
Sola’s wails echoed.
The fierce downpour stopped.
The dark clouds that had engulfed Cologne parted, allowing sunlight to stream down upon the two.
.
.
.
Zenon had regained his life.
Everything had come to an end.
Soon after, the main unit of the Sacred Knights arrived in Cologne to start cleaning up the situation.
“Is this the one? The one who took Cardinal Nicholas? Arrest him. Take him away.”
“No! This person is innocent!”
“Sola, do you not realize you’re also under investigation? Don’t ignore my words, just move!”
“I’ll chime in as well. This person is innocent. Cardinal Nicholas has been dead for a long time. What moved his body was an evil spirit. Instead of arresting him, it’s only right to request his cooperation as a witness.”
“Even the Acting Mayor is…?”
Sola’s defense proved utterly useless.
Thanks to Cornelia’s testimony, I was able to remove the handcuffs.
The incident was so chaotic and intricate that I decided to cooperate with the Sacred Knights to clarify the facts.
It wouldn’t be easy to suspect that a necromancer like Luna had possessed the Cardinal’s body and sacrificed over 500 corpses in the cathedral’s underground to resurrect a spider monster.
For now, I kept my mouth shut about Sola.
If it was revealed that she cooperated with the enemies, she would undoubtedly be sentenced to life in prison for treason.
It was a waste to lock up such a monster in prison.
Of course, if she cracked under guilt and blurted out everything, it would be pointless.
Once the fact-gathering was largely completed and it was revealed that I protected the Priestess and destroyed Luna’s puppets while saving Zenon, the stance of the Sacred Knights shifted dramatically.
I was initially a witness, but soon elevated to a sort of investigation supporter.
Whenever something strange came up, everyone would come to me, bowing and asking for my help.
“Thank you once again… What did you say your name was?”
“Michael Jackson.”
“Mr. Eek Jackson.”
“It’s a combined name.”
“Oh. Mr. Michael Jackson. We found a survivor in the rainwater tunnel.”
“A survivor?”
What kind of nonsense was that?
The rainwater tunnel contained nothing alive.
I had chopped up all the dead bodies.
Still puzzled, I followed them to wherever they were leading me.
“This is the one.”
“This is…?”
There, a naked girl wrapped in a blanket was sipping warm cocoa.
Long black hair reaching her bottom.
And golden eyes.
I couldn’t help but frown.
This girl…
“Hey, you. Are you Kali?”
“Huh?”
She looked exactly like Kali.
To be precise, she resembled the female form of Kali connected to the spider body.
