INTERLUDE The 296-meter-tall tower rising from the center of Yokohama’s lower stratum and holding the upper stratum—the Atlas. Atlas was the name of the titan in Earth mythology who was sentenced to hold up the heavens. Red light ran across the tower’s surface as its walls came apart. From within appeared a black-iron mechanical god, 296 meters tall. Titanic magi-gear Atlas. The true form under the tower shell, the creation built on the vast earnings from the illegal drugs—the Progenitor’s divine body. By breaking the bodies of the ten thousand citizens of Yokohama into aether, absorbing their souls, and using them as fuel, the mechanical god awoke. As the Atlas’s divine body booted up, the barrier that expanded from it and supported the upper stratum dispersed, letting the stratum break, crumble, and fall. The crumbled upper stratum crushed the iron lower stratum and plunged the artificial island of Yokohama into destruction. The box dissolved with the wish for a new beginning. The man with his consciousness synchronized to the mechanical god awakened by ten thousand sacrifices took a step forward. To achieve his goal, to create world peace. For whom? For what? The root of his goal was long in oblivion. He could only move forward. Memories of the past and motive lost. It could be he no longer knew who he was, to begin with. The only thing propelling him was a mad desire to fulfill his goal. World peace and nothing else was his raison d’être. Inside the steel cage, the spiritually higher being—the god—laughed. “Let us begin the realization of world peace. The Utopia Project.” The words were once meant for someone, but now he didn’t know for whom. It was the beginning of the journey to slash the worldly desires of all mankind and enlighten the masses, realizing them from this impure world. The mechanical god raised its first cry, like a whale’s.
Chapter 40
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