Gaia lifted her eyelids slightly and looked toward the nearby residents who were pointing and whispering about them, taking in the mechanical augmentations on their bodies.
She rubbed her chin, an odd expression appearing on her face.
To confirm her suspicion, she strode toward two people standing off to the side, clearly watching the scene like it was entertainment.
The pair had been chatting and laughing, but suddenly felt a gust of wind rush past them. In the next instant, a massive cloaked figure was standing right in front of them.
"Hello. I need directions."
The deep, powerful, genderless voice exploded above their heads. Under that immense pressure, both of them broke out in sweat and nodded instinctively.
Faced with Gaia's overwhelmingly imposing presence, the two answered everything she asked. It did not take long before she had a clear picture of the layout of this district.
Because the surface climate was not very suitable for habitation, the foundries of the senior Tech-Priests had all been established underground, while the factory complexes above, hot as steamers, served as the living quarters for the lowest-tier workers.
Gaia raised her head and looked at the chaotic mass of crisscrossing buildings overhead, like a forest of steel, her eyes shifting slightly.
There, yellow-green mist drifted through the air while thermal currents from the gas giant and the nearby star washed over every exposed structure, pouring terrifying heat radiation into the lifeless metal architecture.
If a normal planetary settlement was a metal tomb, sealing away countless human souls enduring immense suffering,
then that place above was a metal oven, hellish in its heat.
She remained silent for a long moment before turning her gaze back to the two trembling people and asking,
"Why did you not answer when my friend asked for directions?"
The moment those words left her mouth, sweat immediately beaded on their foreheads.
Under Gaia's overwhelming presence, they were only ordinary mortals. They had no way to resist the fear gripping their hearts, so they could only force themselves to tell the truth.
The reason was simple. On Igor III, because of the culture of the Adeptus Mechanicus, augmentation had become a trend.
Aside from the lowest workers, who could not even afford the mechanical products they themselves helped create, most residents replaced their weak flesh with sacred machine constructs.
And someone like Solomon, a man with no augmentations and shabby clothes, would naturally be regarded as lowborn trash by the locals.
After learning the reason, Gaia did not know what to say.
She looked at the people around her and found herself speechless.
In truth, what these people did not know was that although forge worlds did not have the same brutally obvious class divide as hive worlds, the class system here was even more deeply rooted.
Among the lower-ranking functionaries of the Mechanicus who managed forge worlds, a person's upper and lower limits in life had already been decided while they floated in nutrient fluid inside gestation vats.
And these ordinary people, who were not even considered unofficial auxiliaries of the Adeptus Mechanicus, might seem to have respectable jobs, but in reality, they were no different from the ore that was smelted and shaped in the foundries. They were private property of the Mechanicus.
One of the few ways they could ever rise in status was to be noticed by a higher-ranking member of the Mechanicus and then be turned into a servitor with some assigned function.
Gaia looked deeply at the two of them.
They did not even know they were not important enough to be turned into servo-skulls.
She felt a kind of sorrow, but she had no way to change any of it.
Because whether it was the manipulators deliberately creating this system, or the ignorant people immersed in it, happily directing their contempt toward the targets painted for them by others, they were all willingly drowning in the same meaningless dream.
While great enemies still existed in the sea of stars, while xenos lurked throughout the galaxy, humanity was wasting its strength on things like this.
How tragic.
And yet, no matter what, she still longed to do something, to fight with everything she had to change even the slightest trace of this sickness in the human race.
And to accomplish that goal, she had to stop the greatest source of internal ruin in humanity at present:
Goge Vandire.
"Let's go. We'll head underground, find someone in charge of a foundry, and replenish our manpower as quickly as possible."
After getting the directions she wanted, Gaia left the still-shaken pair behind and turned toward Solomon, who had been waiting where he was.
Seeing her approach, Solomon tilted his head slightly.
He could sense that something subtle had changed about her aura.
But he did not ask. He simply nodded and said with a grin,
"Let's hope the priests here give us a fair price."
...
By means of a massive vertical lift, Gaia and Solomon arrived at one of the entrances to the heart of the forge world: an enormous underground complex.
Beneath the dim, thick shell of the planetary crust, the grand foundries burned without pause, their sacred flames dyeing the whole place in brilliant red.
Each forge blazing with gorgeous fire was the territory of a senior Tech-Priest.
The forge-masters, known as the lords of the forge, were responsible for managing these industrial complexes that produced everything from massive machinery to weapons of war, continuously creating goods the Imperium desperately needed out of unshaped ore.
It was worth noting that most of the time, these senior Tech-Priests did not rise through promotion.
They came into being by birth.
In truth, the number of high-ranking priests born from apprentices who converted to the Mechanicus was far smaller than the number who climbed out of gestation tanks.
Priestess Lena had once casually mentioned that she had been implanted from birth with the genes suited to becoming a Genetor.
Thanks to certain special tax exemptions, these forge-masters could basically decide for themselves where their creations went, though most of them were still bought through official Imperial channels.
This enormous freedom even led to situations where the Mechanicus would sell war machines to both the Imperium and the rebels the Imperium was trying to suppress.
That was also one of the main reasons Solomon had dared to swagger straight down from the starport and start looking for sellers.
"The underground foundries really are spectacular."
Solomon stared at the strange sight before him and could not help but praise it.
"Oh right, do you know the first step to buying things in an unfamiliar place?"
As he walked toward the nearest forge, he looked back and asked Gaia, who was silently observing their surroundings.
"It's simple. Pick one place first, then ask the price."
"Then do you know the second step?"
"That's right. Find the next place and ask the price again."
"Keep doing that with every single shop, and eventually you'll discover that they're all equally shameless."
Watching Solomon entertain himself with his own little routine, Gaia's mouth twitched.
But in the very next instant, her expression changed. She leaped forward and shielded Solomon behind her.
Amid the startled cries of the workers around them, the two of them saw the servitors that had been obediently carrying out their tasks suddenly alter their movement patterns and raise their heads one after another.
Then, under Gaia's narrowing gaze, every last one of them turned their heads toward her in perfect unison.
(End of Chapter)
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