The one-man high gear slowly turns, pulling the piston to the lever and transmitting the power to the gear in the distance, and the energy is transmitted layer by layer, driving the huge mechanical long leg to move slowly, although the mechanical long leg is very heavy, but the movement is very flexible, falling on the grass, almost no sound.

You can see that there are many shallow pits in the grass by the lake, which are left by the long legs of the machine when they move in a fixed trajectory, day after day, without the slightest deviation.

Lawson was standing at the base of one of the long legs of the machine, watching the complex mechanical movement at the junction, he stretched out a hand, and his sense reached out, trying to search for clues in it.

Perception swept over the long legs of the massive machines, but found no trace of the source of power, which moved as if they had a life force, and could not find the source of the energy.

"I've had a question from before, have these long mechanical legs failed over the years?"

Rosen asked, looking at Fina.

Fina was her own personality at this time, near the edge of the city, and the wind became much wilder, blowing her long aqua blue hair, Fina pressed the messy hair behind her head with one hand, and her skirt with the other, and was a little unclear about Rosen's question.

"Mr. Rosen, I don't understand ......"

"No, don't worry, I'm just talking to myself. ”

Rosen shook his head and gave up on teasing Fina, who was still just a child, in stark contrast to Avinia.

He took out a document from the law space and quickly finished reading the contents.

This is a detailed record of the operation of Greenwich, but due to the stability of the mechanical city, the whole document is very boring, most of them are such and such a year, a certain month, what the weather, everything is working normally.

There are only two records that differ.

In one place, 700 years ago, the mechanical city had an abnormal stagnation for half an hour, and then returned to normal.

In another place, a few months ago, it was also unusually stagnant, but only for a quarter of an hour.

The events of 700 years ago are now largely unsearchable, but some clues can be found in the failures of months ago.

Lawson looked at the scenery here for a while, and then waited for the arrival of an El craftsman.

He had a beard and wore a vest that showed off his strong upper arm muscles.

"Are you the craftsman who was inspecting the long legs of the machine?"

Lawson asked, nodding at the other man's sight.

"My name is Ellie, and I happened to be on the long legs of the machine when it malfunctioned. ”

Although he was a little skeptical about Lawson wearing a helmet, he answered truthfully.

"What were you doing?"

Rosen asked, and although he had asked the Artisan League to find Avery , he still didn't know much about what he had done that day.

"I'm repairing the condition of the rail trains. ”

Avery gestured to the winding track between the machine's long legs.

"Rail trains need regular maintenance, and I'm the one who does the maintenance work on the long legs of the machinery while Greenwich is moving. ”

"So, these tracks didn't exist on the long legs of the machine in the first place?"

Lawson vaguely remembers that the rail train must have been built in the last few hundred years, before the opening of traffic, the only way to get to and from Greenwich was to rely on airships, and now, airships have not declined, after all, this is also one of the most convenient modes of transportation on the mainland, but more people choose to use land transportation to get to this workshop city.

"Of course, the railcars were built by master craftsmen using the gaps in these long legs of the machine, and it took hundreds of years to build them, and they are one of Greenwich's greatest pride. ”

Ellie boasted proudly, looking at the rail train looming between the long legs of the machine.

"Why is there a gap in it?"

Rosen's seemingly simple question made Avery speechless for a while.

It's as if no one has thought about it for so many years.

Lawson has looked at the data of mechanical long legs, and it can be said that except for the energy of unknown origin, the rest of the parts are not beyond the normal scope of mechanical engineering, and the materials used can be reproduced relatively easily even at the current level, and there is nothing special about the structure.

In other words, this is the fruit of a normal mechanical industry.

So the gap, Lawson thought of several explanations, not only to reduce weight, reduce wind resistance, of course, but also easy to maintain, and even a little design aesthetics mixed in.

But none of this is necessary, as exposing the inner structure means that it is easy to breach its weaknesses if exploited by others, which is not optimal for a fortress that has existed since the Holy War and may have been through war.

"I don't know, maybe it's not a reason for a little person like me to know. ”

Avery spread his hands and admitted.

"So, Mr. Ellie, put that aside for a moment, can you recount any special sights you saw when the mutation happened?"

While it is not possible to conclude that the stagnation of the mechanical city is related to the retreat furnace, Rosen thinks that what Avery says next will be very informative, and he has read the report on the relevant paperwork, but still thinks that he can actually talk to Avery to get more information.

"Uh, I've already reported this when the incident was being handled, do you want to say it again?"

Eri was a little hesitant, he looked at Fina beside Lawson, a little curious why such a young girl would come to investigate such a thing.

"Say it, please. ”

Rosen replied.

"Well, I was in the third joint of the long leg of the machine, which is the part, to inspect the rail train. ”

Ellie gestured to a part of the robot's long leg.

"My usual job is to check that the track is in order, and that day was a routine inspection, and I didn't find any problems, and then all of a sudden, there was a jolt from the long legs of the machine, and then it stopped. ”

"I didn't dare to move around at will, so I hurriedly used the communicator at the orbital node to contact the city, but to my surprise found that the communication was cut off, and that was the first time I had seen such a situation, considering that Greenwich's wired communication would work as usual even in a storm. ”

Ellie said with trepidation, one can imagine how alone he was in the air.

"Then I thought I was going back to the city first, so I started moving up, and that's when I saw that. ”

Rosen knew that Avery was about to tell the strangest part of his experience, which in the literature was dismissed as a delusion caused by Avery due to fear and nervousness.

"What do you see?"

Rosen asked.