“You... What is all that?!”
Sven was a mechanical doll, but she was at a loss for words when she saw the Saint was more mechanical than she was herself.
“Uaaagh!!”
The Saint did not answer. She plunged her hand into her own chest and pulled something out.
“I don’t need this anymore!!”
She then scornfully cast aside a lump of flesh enclosed in layers of auxiliary machinery. It was her heart.
“I shouldn’t have clung to it... It just gets in the way!!”
The Saint’s breathing calmed. Of course. Her heart, with all its despair, was now gone.
“In order to remain human, you changed your body into a machine.”
Without a doubt, the Saint was human. She was a human survivor of the world’s annihilation one thousand years ago. She had been sealed away, but she had been alive for a few hundred years. It was unusual for a human being to live such a long time.
“You replaced the failing parts of your body with machinery. That’s how you lived so long.”
How much that was left of her was human? Even after ripping out her heart, the Saint was moving without any difficulty, so it was certain that few of her human parts remained.
“Yes, that’s why I’m different from you. I’m human! Even if all that’s left is part of my brain... I’m not a mechanical doll and a copy like you!! I’m real!”
Sven had been made using machinery to replace a human being. The Saint had stayed alive using machinery to substitute all parts that had once been human. One was a machine that was very close to a human being and the other was a human being much closer to a machine. They were exact opposites; contrasting beings who were intermediaries between human and machine.
“God loves me. That’s why it was my mission to have God return to the world! Until that happens, I’ll do anything I have to not to die!”
The True System—the super crystallized calculation device that was God—had already fragmented and scattered across the continent in the form of rezan ore. She wanted that God to be whole again.
The task was tremendous, like finding grains of sand in the ocean in order to turn them back into a mountain. It would only be possible when human science and civilization had advanced to surpass the ancient great empire.
“That’s why I’m leading you... the ones God abandoned. Why don’t you understand that?! Because you’re stupid and you can’t help it!” she raged and sneered.
Ongoing stimulation through war would force humanity to evolve and develop. That was the Saint’s plan. It was like forced cultivation by providing excessive nutrients. Humankind couldn’t keep up with the rapid development of civilization and would be destroyed.
That didn’t matter to the Saint. If she could bring God back, she didn’t care if she destroyed human civilization and killed hundreds of thousands, millions, or hundreds of millions in the process.
“I’m sick of dealing with you! There is something I have to do!”
The Saint turned her back on them and walked toward Verne 1. Launch preparation was complete, so it was ready to lift off. But first she needed to rewrite the flight program.
“I won’t let you!!”
Lud leapt to stop the Saint.
“Shut up!”
She knocked him away with one blow.
“Master!!”
Sven wanted to run to him, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. Her skeletal framework had been damaged in the fighting.
“Stay here and struggle. Either way, when Verne 1 takes off, this whole area will be wasted. Isn’t that good? It’ll be an easy death.”
Firing a giant object to an extremely high altitude required an explosion of chemical fuel. The large-scale combustion would release an explosive flame and a blast at the launch. Human beings and even humanoid Hunter Units would not escape without damage.
“W... wait!”
Lud had collapsed. He called out, coughing blood, but the Saint would not stop. She calmly walked toward the launch pad until she reached the tip of Verne 1, which housed the flight instrumentation.
“Umf!”
She opened a maintenance hatch and peered inside. A rezanium reactor glowed red. All she had to do now was rewrite the program and evacuate to a safe place via the same elevator Sven’s group had arrived in.
“This is the end.”
“Yes, for you and me both.”
“?!”
The Saint was cornered. She had lived a long time and this was the first time she had been up against such a wall.
“You...!!”
When she turned around, it was too late. She had cut Meitzer in half but he had repaired himself, picked up Toolman’s fallen katana, and now stood before her.
“You Devil!!”
“Grarrrgh!”
Meitzer charged, and the tip of the katana stabbed the Saint’s chest.
“It’s no use. There’s nothing in there.”
The Saint had already removed her own heart.
“I know!”
Meitzer didn’t stop. He pushed the blade further, impaling the Saint’s body, pushing her inside Verne 1’s maintenance hatch, and pinning her inside.
“What are you doing?!”
“You’ll take a trip to space yourself!”
“What’re you... NO!!”
It had been close. He had only been able to outfox the Saint because Lud and Sven had maneuvered her into such a tight spot.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Verne 1 is a missile! It isn’t made for human passengers! If it launches like this...”
Only a few minutes remained until ignition. The shock from the launch would sever her body into pieces or the missile would carry her into space, flinging her into a world without water or air and certain death.
“Yes, that’s right. That’s why I can’t let you go alone. I’ll go with you.”
“What? Give me a break!!”
Insane with rage, the Saint screamed and struggled, but no matter how much she was cut, he would not let go of the katana that held her in place.
“Sven!” He called to his daughter outside. “Hurry and run away with Langart!”
If they boarded the elevator now, they might still survive. It would at least improve their chances.
“What about you?!” Hearing his command, Sven shouted back.
“Don’t worry!”
“Well, I do worry!!”
Sven understood what Meitzer was trying to do. He had chosen to die and take the Saint with him.
“But you don’t need to. This is my wish. Oh, and as for how you can become human...” He finally could answer the question that she was desperate to know. “You just have to wish!”
“Wish?”
Sven was puzzled as Meitzer continued.
“Have you forgotten? With the blessing of God, you can control anything derived from rezanium. Your body is no exception!”
Even now, the power of the rezanium circulated through Sven’s body.
“Give yourself a command. Just say ‘Become human!’ That’s the answer. You’ve had it all along!”
The power of Europea’s God turned ten million people into pillars of salt overnight. A miraculous power capable of transforming substances just might change a mechanical body into a human body.
“Get going with Langart! So long!!” Shouting his last words, Meitzer closed the maintenance hatch.
“What are you—?!”
“Sven... let’s go.” Sven was stunned, so Lud pulled her to the elevator. He didn’t want her final memory of Meitzer to be his death.
A vibration seized the launch pad. Verne 1 shifted into launch mode. A lifeless electronic voice began a countdown. The two jumped into the gondola and pressed the button to take them up. It began moving, but the launch vibrations shook it violently. The engine ignited and the shaking worsened. The rumbling was so loud they couldn’t hear their own voices.