023. Turning the Tide: A Crack in the Sun
A crack had formed in the sun. This was no metaphor or simile. One day, when I lifted my head to gaze at the sky, a black, ominous fissure had torn right through the center of the dazzling orb that should have illuminated all creation, splitting it with a jagged crack.
It was as if some giant had swung a massive axe straight into the heart of the heavens. At first, we believed it was just a temporary eclipse or some bizarre celestial phenomenon. The temple priests reassured the masses, and I, too, as the proxy of the God of Light, ascended the podium with a benevolent smile to soothe them. The light would endure forever, and the god's mercy would never abandon us.
But my faith—no, our arrogance—shattered before the seasons could even turn once. The crack in the sun grew darker and deeper with each passing day. The light began to fade. Even at noon, the world dimmed as if shrouded in gray mist, and a bone-chilling cold began to lick at the earth.
The farmlands, the veins of the land, were the first to greet despair. Wheat fields, stripped of light and warmth, froze black without yielding a single ear. Fruits in orchards on the verge of harvest hardened like stones and plummeted to the ground. Frozen rivers and seas yielded no more fish.
"Saintess! Please, have mercy...! My child hasn't eaten in three days!"
"Just a handful of wheat, or even a rotten potato—anything!"
Every day, hundreds of paupers gathered outside the cathedral's iron doors, shedding bloody tears and wailing in agony. Crop yields across the continent had plummeted to half their former abundance. Granaries emptied, and famine spread like a plague. The world grew colder and hungrier by the day.
But hunger was not the true calamity. As the light weakened, things lurking in the darkness began to stir. Beyond the massive barrier shielding humanity's fringes in the continent's harshest wilds, ravenous monsters pounded relentlessly at the walls to sate their hunger.
"The eastern barrier's breached! Monster hordes are overrunning the outposts!"
"What are the knights doing? Draw your swords now!"
The blood of border guards stained the frozen snowfields, but the monsters' numbers showed no sign of thinning. Worse still, within the barrier—in the cities and villages humanity deemed safe—grotesque horrors unfolded. As nights lengthened and fear and despair nested in people's hearts, demons and spirits born of those negative emotions rampaged wildly.
Neighbors who'd exchanged greetings the night before were found hanged by morning; wells bubbled with blood. The world itself plummeted vertically toward ruin.
In the face of this colossal disaster, did intelligent humanity and the other races join hands to overcome it? No. Despair paralyzed reason, and hunger awakened savagery.
Two vast empires dividing the continent. Three kingdoms below them, eyeing hegemony. Seven petty states flailing to survive. These twelve nations raised blades of hatred against one another to seize the dwindling food and scant warm territories.
"The barbaric northern empire raiders stole our food wagons! Raise the army!"
"The western kingdom's crossed the border! Sever their heads and melt this frozen earth with their blood!"
Troops meant to fight monsters were turned on fellow humans. Foolish lords, blind to encroaching doom, blew the horns of conscription to steal tomorrow's bread from their neighbors.
Inter-species strife was no better. Elves, bereft of the forest's blessings, cursed endless human greed for enraging nature and cracking the sun. Dwarves, losing subterranean warmth, shuttered mines and cut off trade with the surface. Humanity and other races grew distrustful, hateful, utterly isolated.
"Ah..."
I knelt in the deepest recess of the empty cathedral, before the altar to the God of Light. The hem of my dazzling white saintess gown brushed the cold marble floor, but only a piercing chill wrapped my body. Above, sunlight filtering through stained glass was no longer holy. The light from the cracked sun was murky, biting, grotesque. Beneath that baleful glow, even faith crumbled.
"Saintess... I can endure no more."
Yesterday, a high cardinal who'd served at my side lifelong confessed to me with a pallid face.
"Look to the heavens. The god's eye is split. He's abandoned us! How can we pray to mercy that doesn't exist when the light itself dies?!"
He hurled his sacred rosary to the floor and fled the cathedral. I couldn't condemn him. Witnessing devotees starve, freeze, and be torn by demons daily, parrot-like comforts of "It must be the god's will" rang hollow—mere mockery.
The God of Light faded from hearts. All that remained was desperate selfishness and fear to survive the night.
I clasped my trembling hands and gazed up at the massive crucifix atop the altar.
"God..."
A cracked voice escaped my parched lips.
"Merciful and great Lord of Light. Have you truly forsaken us?"
No answer. Only the wail of north winds battering window cracks haunted the cathedral.
"The scriptures foretell it: When thick darkness engulfs the world and despair blankets the land, a 'Hero of Salvation' chosen by divine will shall descend, cleaving the gloom with a radiant holy sword to restore the sun's light."
I pressed my forehead to the altar, shedding tears of blood.
"Where is this hero?! What keeps them from this frozen, starving world?!"
The sun died. The world froze, harvests rotted, selfish powers sealed borders and pressed knives to kin for paltry gold and grain. Before perfect apocalypse—cold, famine, monsters, spirits devouring the continent—magic proved impotent, knights' swords cooled, faith fell to the floor.
"Save us..."
I clawed the ground, sobbing wretchedly.
"Anyone... grant a massive, blazing miracle to shatter this horrific cold and hunger...!"
Silence. Absolute divine silence crushed the saintess's prayer.
But the saintess, prostrate on the cathedral's cold marble shedding bloody tears, could never know.
That the "Hero of Salvation" she so desperately invoked was neither a holy knight with gleaming sword nor a grand mage wielding spells.
That before her prayer reached the heavens, far away on the nameless Rene Riverbank in remote Peluah...
Not faith, not magic.
A viciously mundane, violent "steel beast" devouring coal, exploding mana steam, spewing scalding flames at hundreds of degrees Celsius and thick black smoke into the sky—it had just opened its massive eyes.
That an arrogant merchant who'd stolen otherworldly knowledge stood ready to smash this world's paradigm and sealed trade routes with brute metal force.
That soon, atop despair's gray sky, black chimney smoke named civilization and industry would billow fiercely.
The saintess's prayer missed. But the miracle of revolution had just begun.
*Screeeeech!Crack!!
Exactly 0.1 seconds before explosion.
The 2-inch-thick iron plate screamed as it tore, and hundreds-of-degrees Celsius mana steam was about to erupt like a blade in a life-or-death instant.
My eyes, gripping the cockpit valve, reflected the boiler's hellfire blaze. I gritted my teeth, bracing for impact. Even if the pendant sent me back to Peluah, I couldn't dodge this behemoth's physical force exploding before me.
But then—
Whiiiiiir!
Inside my chest, the Carnoble family pendant—heated from dimensional crossing—emitted another bizarre vibration. Its central gear spun madly, birthing a blue vortex, then gaped like a ravenous black hole.
"Wha...?"
An unbelievable sight unfolded. The 150 atm explosive mana steam ripping through the boiler shell and scattering iron shards halted dead in midair.
Then, like reverse film, that immense thermal energy and overload pressure surged fiercely into the blue vortex.
Shooooooo!
In mere seconds. The house-sized boiler, bloated to burst, deflated like a punctured leather sack. Acrid smoke and searing heat filling the workshop vanished like a lie.
"..."
Silence. The makeshift shipyard, once roaring to burst eardrums, echoed only with faint crackles from the dying embers in the firebox.
I stared blankly between my valve-gripping hand and the crumpled boiler drum.
Touching my chest, the pendant lay cold, reverted to ordinary metal trinket—no sign of its glow.
"This... is a total cheat item, isn't it?"
A hollow laugh escaped me. Closing the dimensional gate, it had absorbed all the condensed destructive energy as fuel!
If I could fully master this artifact's principles, it could devour even a grand mage's Meteor in one gulp—a monster of an item.
"Elpanso!!"
Then, Aila burst through steam and dust, screaming, collapsing onto the deck before me.
Tear-streaked, she gawked between the mangled boiler and my unscathed self.
"Wh-what?! Wasn't it about to blow? Then blue light flashed and... where'd it all go? You okay?!"
"Yeah. Perfectly fine."
I hopped leisurely from the cockpit, patting her stunned shoulder.
"Told you I had it covered. Special design vents all steam through an emergency outlet the instant pressure hits critical. Test run was flawless."
Of course, a blatant lie. No way she'd grasp the pendant's interdimensional miracle.
"You... you crazy bastard! Thought you were dead for real!"
Aila kicked my shin with relief-fueled fury, but I feigned pain while inwardly cheering.
Perfect. Got the explosion cause and critical data with my own eyes.
This test failure wasn't meaningless. Mana steam expansion rate on plates, rivet seam timing, metal deformation limits under heat—all this failure data would fuse with Taesan Special Steel's "alloy formulas" to birth a flawless blueprint enduring any load.