Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 671 This can be called technology?
The package of documents Beatrice brought had already been opened. When Zoe came over, several technical priests from the Imperial Truth were already studying it. They greeted her as she approached.

"Miss Zoe."

"How's it going? Is everything alright?"

"It seems there shouldn't be any problems; at least the content matches."

The technical priest sounded hesitant, so Zoe leaned closer to look at the documents and quickly understood why they were so conflicted.

"What the hell is this?"

Although Zoe was an office worker, she worked in a city with a strong industrial atmosphere like Castel and usually interacted with engineers and similar people, so she felt particularly awkward when she saw this document.

"A ritual? Offerings? Burning lubricant? Eating slag? Dancing while banging on the furnace with a wrench? And at a frequency of three hertz?"

Zoe looked around at the people around her with a somewhat confused expression; their expressions were equally strange.

"I thought it would be some kind of bio-engineering surgery, or at the very least, a technique to fuse flesh and machines, but these..."

Zoe suddenly remembered the scene when Chloe, Gaia, and Monica danced around the steam engine when she summoned the first version of the Machine Soul.

I thought they were just joking around, but it turns out this was actually the orthodox ritual of the Mechanical Sanctuary.

And yet, what was created was such a sophisticated mechanical body.
There's a certain aesthetic beauty in the image of a heavy machine gun being found by a primitive tribe, and then used to launch machine gun bullets with a slingshot.

"Wait a minute, that's not right. So many mechanical structures can just dance and come together? The gears can't mesh on their own, can they?"

Zoe suddenly realized that these mechanical limbs couldn't possibly be that simple!
“Indeed, there are specialized data on modification surgery here, but…” The guard handed over a sheet of paper, his face bearing a complicated expression.

"???" Zoe was a little confused. The various rituals were written in several thick booklets, but the modification surgery was only on one sheet of paper?

It was indeed just a single sheet of paper, and Zoe finished reading it in no time, even understanding it—considering her mechanical skills were basically at an "amateur" level.

Now, her face also wore an expression that was hard to describe.

The modification surgery for this mechanical sanctuary was actually very simple.

Under the guidance of those thick booklets, an extremely complicated ceremony was set up in the operating room, and then the parts were placed on the person one by one.

The correct parts will be "blessed" by the ritual, and then it will be possible to select which parts to use for the modification.

Then, the modification surgery must be performed by a high-ranking "sage". During the surgery, they will take a medicine and use it in combination with the mechanical sanctuary's special incense to bring the person into "a divine state".

Based on Zoe's understanding of the extraordinary, it's roughly about taking some hallucinogens to put someone into a semi-mad state, while the ritual can mitigate the effects of the wall of reality, bringing people closer to the sea of ​​ignorance.
If it were an extraordinary being, this would definitely lead to a loss of control, but the mechanical priests of the Mechanical Sanctuary are all mortals, and their natural resistance to pollution is higher than that of extraordinary beings.

They performed the surgery in this state of madness, and they actually succeeded.

After realizing what she had seen, Zoe was completely devastated.

This mechanical sanctuary, despite its blatant worship of machines, turns out to have such a core technology?
If Beatrice weren't still vomiting, Zoe would have wanted to question her about whether she had made up something to fool them.

That's really outrageous; this thing would fit perfectly into Nini's newspaper. "So... the technology of the Mechanical Sanctuary involves using various rituals to make machines assemble and operate on their own?"

"It seems so at the moment." The technical priest of the Apostolic Guard looked speechless.

Zoe fell silent. She felt like she could understand the Gear Sage now; if she had taught for hundreds of years, would she have produced a group of students like this?
"Never mind, as long as it works, it works. By the way, is there any technology that can help Miss Beatrice right now? Her condition isn't very optimistic."

“Yes.” The technician flipped through the booklet. “I must say, most of the technologies Miss Beatrice selected are quite practical, and many are exactly what Castel needs, although the implementation methods are a bit outrageous. Found it!”

He pointed to a section of densely packed small print on the booklet.

"This ritual can please the spirit of the machine and enhance its performance. If I'm not mistaken, it should also be useful for pleasing the machine spirit."

"Miss Beatrice is currently relying entirely on the steam engine to suppress the pollution within her body. Enhancing the steam engine's effects is also a form of indirect treatment for her, although I don't know which aspect of the steam engine's effects is being enhanced."

Zoe stroked her chin and slowly nodded.

Castel's Machine Soul Summoning originated from the rituals of the Mechanical Sanctuary, so it might actually be useful.

And there's no harm in giving it a try.
Soon, the airship's crew cabin became lively again.

Zoe and Gaia pushed open the door and walked out of the house, exchanging an awkward glance.

The two women now had several mechanical symbols painted on their faces with machine oil, and a team of mechanics carrying wrenches and screwdrivers followed behind them.

"Are we really going to come? This ceremony looks like it was made up!"

"There's nothing I can do. I also think this ritual is a bit outrageous, but who knows which step in the process might work? Maybe it's these outrageous operations that happen to work in an unexpected way."

Zoe's face twitched, causing the lines she had just drawn on to become slightly distorted.

"Okay, let's give it a try."

Gaia nodded, not feeling much shame—after inventing the Machine Soul Summoning Ritual, Hughes had made her follow Monica to summon Machine Souls every day, and she was used to being embarrassed.
So a group of people slowly walked out of the room, striking all sorts of strange poses while singing around the steam engine and Beatrice.

Beatrice was still spitting out contaminants into the fuel canisters laid out on the ground while staring at the newly formed dance troupe with an incredulous expression.

Zoe was completely devastated.

She danced while holding a wrench, making exaggerated movements to mimic repairing machinery, all while singing hymns.

The hymns of the Mechanical Sanctuary are carefully chosen, mostly consisting of ancient and evocative words.

However, if you interpret it literally, it is actually very straightforward.

Basically, the embarrassing lyrics, like "The steam engine is so powerful, it works so hard every day, keep going, keep going," made her unconsciously dig her toes into the ground. Because she couldn't stop moving her body, it gradually turned into standing on her tiptoes, almost making her invent ballet in this world.

And the steam engine seemed to have truly fallen silent.

(End of this chapter)