Papa Oliver had indeed heard of Serpent's Tail Alley. When Jenkins asked, he casually pulled a city map from behind the counter and circled the location with a pen. The alley's na wasn't marked, which ant even a tourist map from the post office would have been useless.
"Tell the truth, what are you up to?"
Papa Oliver asked from behind the counter without even looking up, catching Jenkins before he could leave. He was wearing a monocle, examining a gold ring under the glow of a gas lamp.
"Well..."
Hearing the hesitation in Jenkins's voice—the sound of soone who didn't want to answer but refused to lie—Papa Oliver knew he was heading into danger.
"You're always like this."
Papa Oliver sighed but didn't try to stop him. Although Jenkins had been his apprentice for less than a year, he was already skilled enough to be on his own. Papa Oliver trusted that if Jenkins was set on doing sothing, he had his reasons.
"Just be careful."
Though a thousand worries for the young man remained unspoken, that was all he could bring himself to say.
Jenkins understood the depth of his ntor's concern. He gave him a solemn nod and stroked the cat perched on his shoulder.
"Look, I've got Chocolate with ," he offered. "I can't be getting into anything too dangerous."
In truth, Chocolate's ntal fortitude was likely even stronger than his own. When they faced supernatural threats together, the cat only ever showed signs of distress on the rare occasions that Jenkins himself faltered.
But Papa Oliver didn't know that. The cat's presence was just enough to ease his worries slightly, leading him to believe Jenkins was rely occupied with sothing he couldn't discuss openly.
Serpent's Tail Alley was an utterly unremarkable lane in Nolan City, tucked between an antique collectors' club and a private clinic. It was so short that Jenkins could walk its length in three minutes at a normal pace. The alley connected two main roads and contained little more than garbage and what appeared to be waste, leaving nothing hidden from view.
Jenkins erged from the mist and stepped into the alley. He stood at the entrance, surveying his surroundings, when his brow suddenly furrowed.
"Not this again," he muttered.
He was just about to lift the cat from his shoulder when he abruptly looked up. Two n were leaping down from the roof of the clinic. It was only a two-story building, not particularly high, but the n clearly hadn't expected to find anyone standing at the mouth of the alley.
They stared at each other for a tense mont. Before they could recognize him, Jenkins whipped his hand out of his pocket and flicked a seed toward the ground farther down the alley.
"Damn it, that's one of the Legacy Sage Church's..."
They had recognized him. The taller of the two spun around and bolted, while his companion, a man with a weary expression as if he'd just woken up, charged straight at Jenkins.
The morning glory seed, energized by a surge of life force, erupted from the ground into a tangle of thick vines. The fleeing man didn't get more than a few steps before he was ensnared. His charging partner, however, had avoided the trap by not running.
Jenkins drew his Spirit Striking Cane and advanced to et him.
Neither of them seed to want to cause a scene. As Jenkins brought his cane down in a swift arc, the man simply raised his right arm to block.
Clang!
It was unmistakably the sound of his cane striking tal.
"Just as I thought. It's you lot."
He grumbled under his breath.
The weary-faced man radiated heat, and as he drew closer to Jenkins, the feeling intensified into a palpable wave washing over his face.
His cane couldn't shatter the man's modified chanical arm, but on the second strike, Jenkins's sheer strength was enough to force his opponent back a step.
"If you tell why you're here," Jenkins said, "I might consider not killing you."
I'll just hand you over to the Church instead, he added silently.
He held back a third strike. The first two impacts had been enough for his [chanist] ability to completely map out the inner workings of the man's arm. Just like his recent foes, this wasn't a pure prosthetic; it was a grotesque fusion of flesh and machine.
Although perceiving those internal structures through his "chanical hearing" stirred a visceral sense of revulsion—the innate disgust of the World Tree Seedling for such unnatural, blasphemous creations—he forced himself to commit the arm's design to mory.
The man ignored Jenkins's offer, showing no sign of surrender or willingness to talk. Seeing Jenkins pause, he ripped open the front of his shirt, revealing what was underneath.
It wasn't a sudden fit of madness. Embedded in the man's chest was a living eyeball.
"A magic eye?"
Jenkins hadn't seen many of those since the man from the Magic Eye Collector's Club left Nolan. It was an orb with a blood-red pupil, unremarkable at first glance. But the mont Jenkins shifted his gaze away from the eye, he saw a crimson wave surging from behind the man, crashing down the alley toward him.
It didn't feel like an illusion. The sound, the tremor in the ground, even the damp scent of an approaching tide—it was all terrifyingly real. Jenkins blinked, and under the scrutiny of his Eye of Reality, the vision vanished. What he actually saw was the man with the magic eye turning to run toward his trapped companion. There was no wave of blood.
"An illusion, just as I thought."
With a flick of his right hand, the iron-gray to symbolizing his [chanist] ability materialized in his grip. As its pages fluttered open, two classical-looking chanical birds of bronze took flight, soaring from the book to land neatly on the shoulders of the two n.
Instantly, both n—the one struggling in the vines and the magic-eyed one attempting a rescue—froze solid. Their bodies began to tremble violently, as if seized by a sudden, violent illness or locked in a battle for control of their own limbs.
He was in luck. Both his opponents had undergone chanical modifications to their hearts, which was precisely why he could subdue them so easily.
He tossed another seed, trapping the magic-eyed man as well. Only then did he ease his control through the [chanist] ability, allowing them to speak again.
"So," he began, "I'll ask again: what are you doing here? The first one to answer gets to live. The other one dies."
"Williams, what in the world is this?"
the man demanded, his eyes fixed in terror on the chanical bird perched on his shoulder. It was a lifelike creation of brass, its movents driven entirely by gears and chanical parts, with arcs of electricity crackling between its flapping wings.
"What this is doesn't matter," Jenkins replied coolly. "Is one of you going to answer my question?"
"Impossible!" the magic-eyed man exclaid. "How can you possess this kind of power?"
He looked on the verge of a breakdown, though Jenkins didn't recall his ability having any ntal interference effects. The other man just frowned in silence, seemingly wrestling with the sa conundrum.
"You're with the Orthodox Church! You're the World Tree Seedling! How can you possibly wield chanical power?"
The Difference Engine already knew Jenkins Williams was the World Tree Seedling, so it was hardly surprising that the cultists working with it were also aware.
"Is this power so unusual?" Jenkins asked.
"You fools will never comprehend the wisdom we have witnessed! The future of humanity, the future of the world, lies in total chanization—in chanical immortality! Viscount, since you clearly have a talent for it, why don't you..."
Jenkins commanded the vines to gag him and turned his attention to the other man.
"Anything you'd like to say?"
"It's just... strange," the man said. "I'd always thought that machinery and nature were incompatible. Are you hiding so secret, Viscount?"
This man appeared older than his companion and spoke with more composure. Perhaps that explained why he had tried to flee while the other had charged head-on.
"Answer my question. What are you doing here?"
"I can answer," he offered, "but you must answer one question of mine in return. After that, I don't care what you do with us."
His gagged companion imdiately began to struggle in the vines, trying to stop him, but with a twitch of its wings, the tal bird on his shoulder paralyzed him once more.
"Fine, I agree," Jenkins conceded. "But you'll answer my question first. Were you just passing through, or are you here for a specific reason?"
"The High Priest relayed instructions from the Great Wisdom. We were to wait nearby for two won escaping from a Mysterious Realm. There are more of us than just the two of us; we were simply assigned to this area because the search radius given by the Great Wisdom was too broad."
That was more or less what Jenkins had figured. He could afford to interrogate them without rushing because he had spotted the entrance to a Mysterious Realm the mont he arrived in the alley. As expected, Miss Windsor and Magic Miss must have fled into it while being pursued by a Cursed Item. The only odd thing was that Jenkins couldn't detect any black aura nearby, leaving the whereabouts of their pursuer a mystery.
"Now it's my turn," the man said. "Williams of the Legacy Sage Church, the chosen World Tree Seedling... tell , what is the na of your chanical ability?"
That wasn't the question Jenkins had been expecting. He hadn't planned on answering at all, but since it was a harmless query, he didn't mind. After all, he had no intention of letting either of them leave here alive to tell anyone else.
"chanist."
he replied.
The taller man nodded.
"I see."
"What do you an?"
"It's an ability I've never heard of," the man explained. "Chances are, it's one you created yourself, isn't it?"
Jenkins wasn't sure if he had created it himself, but based on how it manifested, it didn't feel like a power native to this world. Newly created abilities were often unique, born from the rules of the current era, and thus tended to be slightly stronger than established ones. Their rarity and the fact that most couldn't be taught to others ant they weren't necessarily a cause for alarm.
"I don't know if it's my own creation," Jenkins admitted. "Is there a problem with that?"
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