The Forge Lord's enormous metal body leaned forward slightly, and a thoughtful light appeared in the pale green eye remaining in the half of his human face that still remained.
Gaia's words made sense to him. This was most likely some kind of coincidence. Even if there was a hidden hand behind it, there was no way it would have made contact with these two in advance.
After all, the servitors had said, "Below."
That was clearly a form of guidance, which meant that thing only wanted to meet them.
But when the matter involved Ulizar, he was not about to be reasonable.
Because that man had betrayed his trust, betrayed their teacher, and betrayed the Omnissiah.
A dangerous red glow began flashing in his left bionic eye.
If this person had truly come into contact with Ulizar, then even if her conscious mind had been cleansed to a degree, the memory traces would still remain buried deep within the neural transmission chains of her brain.
The Forge Lord began considering whether he should crack open the skull of this Space Marine, one whose existence would absolutely make the old monsters on Terra and Mars lose their minds, and carefully search every electrical signal in every neuron until he dug out whatever memories of Ulizar still remained in her subconscious.
Gaia, who had been closely watching the shifts in his emotions, immediately guessed what he was thinking.
Cold sweat poured down her back.
Wait, what happened to engineers being rational and reasonable?
Why are you this insane, you oil-stinker?
But after thinking about it more carefully, members of the Adeptus Mechanicus did seem to be wildly unhinged in at least one or two areas, just like how every Inquisitor from the neighboring Inquisition had their own special flavor of madness.
Just as the Forge Lord was preparing to pull out some little tools from the enormous power pack behind his back, Solomon finally finished processing the life-changing revelation that his assumed "brother" was actually female, and his brain started functioning normally again.
He looked around at the sealed chamber, then sensed the intense heat of the surrounding environment and more or less understood their situation.
He took a deep breath, looked at the mechanical giant currently selecting a model of monomolecular chainblade, and calmly spoke.
"Honored Forge Lord, as you can see, we still know absolutely nothing about this so-called Ulizar."
"It is possible we may have met him before, but that he concealed his identity."
"So would you be willing to tell us about his traits and behavior? That way, we might be able to search our own minds for dormant memories that could possibly still be there."
The cold metallic eyes beneath the red robes stared at Solomon as he spoke with steady confidence, but the rumbling of that enormous mechanical body did nothing to intimidate the mortal wearing a calm smile.
Solomon's composed and respectful attitude made the Forge Lord take a second look at the ordinary man he had mostly ignored until now.
His massive body slowly bent down, and that half-metal, half-flesh face met Solomon's gaze directly.
After a long pause, he finally began speaking, introducing the close friend he had hated for nearly a century.
"...Ulizar was a genius."
"He was born into one of the countless ordinary families living on the surface of Mars, and he fulfilled his wish of becoming an apprentice."
"By the time I had only just emerged from the gestation tank, he was already studying under our mutual mentor, striving toward the rank of Arc-Controller."
"He was refined and mild in temperament, and his thirst for knowledge was astonishing."
"In pursuit of knowledge, he followed our mentor's exploration fleet beyond the Pacificus Sector into the Halo Stars in search of ancient legacies."
Hearing that, Gaia's expression turned slightly strange.
If she remembered correctly, there was a forge world called Styx VIII somewhere in the Pacificus Sector.
Could this Ulizar have some kind of hidden connection with those people?
"The beginning of everything was that expedition. For reasons unknown, he suddenly became obsessed with biotechnology, and during the voyage, he even published a sacred binary thesis and was granted the title of Great Genetor."
"By the Omnissiah, if only he had stopped there."
"The more knowledge he gained, the more... hungry he became."
"He once said that human understanding is a circle, and as that circle expands, one becomes ever more aware of just how ignorant one truly is."
"That pursuit of truth was not wrong in itself. After all, it is the great work the Omnissiah wishes us to undertake."
"But Ulizar became obsessed. He believed that every circle must eventually reach its limit, and that the only thing preventing humanity from obtaining all knowledge was the steady passing of time."
"He began to crave endless time and ultimate truth, and he was willing to pay any price for them."
"To gain access to deeper and more secret knowledge, he abandoned me and our mentor, leaving us buried beneath a collapsing bunker during our final exploration voyage while he took an ancient STC for himself."
"In the instant the falling stones came down, it was our mentor who pushed me away and spared me from being completely buried."
"Ulizar used that STC to become a Magos, while our mentor suffered permanent damage to his neural core from suffocating beneath the rubble, and I lost most of my frail flesh body, surviving only by relying on the new shell I now inhabit."
The Forge Lord's synthetic voice became slightly unsteady, and a nearly imperceptible trace of pain surfaced on the remaining half of his human face.
But he quickly regained control, and seemed a little surprised himself that he had actually started talking about that man.
Perhaps it was because those memories had been festering inside him for too long.
He had once regarded Ulizar as both his closest friend and his role model, sincerely admiring that brilliant man who had risen from an unmodified apprentice into a senior Tech-Priest.
But when he had needed help the most, Ulizar had abandoned both him and their mentor.
What he found hardest to accept was that Ulizar had become a Mars-certified Magos through that betrayal, while their mentor, because of the atrophy of his brain, would never again be able to operate delicate equipment for the rest of his life.
The traitor without blood or tears basked in the blessings of knowledge, while the mentor who had protected him could never return to his forge again.
What kind of justice was that?
As his emotions surged, the Forge Lord's metal body thundered with roaring mechanical noise.
"And what is truly unforgivable was his final betrayal."
"I do not care where that traitor went after becoming a Magos. But nearly a hundred years ago, Mars officially declared him a traitor."
"By the Omnissiah's lungs, both my mentor and I had already been ruined by him, yet because we had once been associated with him, rival branch sects seized the chance to push us out, and in the end we could only leave Mars."
After listening to the Forge Lord's almost cathartic account, both Solomon and Gaia gave a slight nod.
Based on what he had described, they searched carefully through the depths of their memories.
The result could not quite be called no impression at all.
It was more accurate to say the person simply did not exist in their memory.
The Forge Lord had been monitoring both of their physiological responses through the servo-skulls the entire time, so he easily guessed what they were thinking.
As he began attaching a monomolecular chain to the front end of one of his mechanical arms, Gaia, drenched in sweat and operating under the principle of trying anything in a desperate situation, hurriedly spoke.
"I may not know where Ulizar is right now."
"But I can tell you a place he might be connected to."
(End of Chapter)
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