If I had still possessed my original, unmodified Ex-Machina AI, the sheer dissonance of housing a human consciousness would have triggered an endless cascade of fatal error warnings.
But thinking about my origins in that war-torn world brought a strange, entirely unprompted thought to the forefront of my mind.
I paused my drone manufacturing to process this sudden tangent.
The Holy Grail War. Seven Masters and seven Servants fighting a desperate, bloody battle royale to claim an omnipotent, wish-granting cup.
The Great War of my original world. Countless races and gods fighting a planetary, apocalyptic battle royale to claim the Suniaster, the Star Cup, a device that granted absolute power and the ability to reshape reality itself.
Functionally, the Holy Grail and the Star Cup were identical: ultimate wish-granting devices.
The only difference was the scale. One was a global war that shattered continents and killed billions. The other was a secret skirmish between fourteen people in a Romanian countryside.
Conclusion: The Holy Grail War is simply the Suniaster War scaled down to the level of a rural village brawl.
"..."
I stared blankly into the white void of my pocket dimension.
Did I really just reduce a legendary, mythical conflict to a "village brawl"? The human ghost in my machine had apparently developed a sense of cynical humor.
"System," I said aloud. "Delete the last sixty seconds of my internal monologue log."
[Acknowledged. Deleting specified records... Deletion complete.]
I exhaled a soft breath, feeling a strange sense of relief as the useless, distracting tangent was purged from my active memory.
Just then, a ping echoed in my sensor network.
"Drone 01 has established a visual link," I noted.
Drone 01 was the very first micro-machine I had deployed. Its specific, pre-programmed mission was to tail Kairi Sisigou and his Servant.
These drones were not purely mechanical. Over the decades I had spent in Frieren's world, I had seamlessly integrated magical theory with my Ex-Machina technology. These drones were cloaked in high-level concealment magic and emitted zero heat or sound.
But one might wonder: how did I know exactly where to send Drone 01? If Mordred had teleported away via a Command Spell, leaving no physical trail, how did I track her instantly?
Could I have used Pseudo-Rasiel to look up her location? Yes. But I hadn't needed to.
I had placed a tracker on her myself.
When my replica of Clarent bit into Mordred's left shoulder, it didn't just deliver the "Mana Breaker" effect. Under the cover of that disruptive strike, I injected a microscopic packet of customized dimensional energy directly into her Spirit Origin.
It was a parasite beacon. It perfectly mimicked her own mana signature, blending in seamlessly while continuously broadcasting her GPS coordinates directly to my network.
Unless she underwent a complete spiritual reconstruction, that beacon would remain lodged in her core until the end of the Holy Grail War.
Through the optical feed of Drone 01, I watched the scene unfold inside the church in Sighişoara.
I watched Kairi refuse the priest's offer. I watched Semiramis cast her healing magic.
My sensors analyzed the green light washing over Mordred. The Assassin's healing was impressive, capable of repairing severed ethereal nerves, but it only healed the physical and structural damage. It did not detect or purge the foreign energy signature I had buried deep within the Saber's core. The beacon remained active.
I watched Kairi and his Servant leave.
"Command: Drone 01, maintain pursuit of Subject Kairi Sisigou," I ordered. "Command: Deploy Drone 07 to remain at the church and monitor Subjects Shirou Kotomine and Semiramis."
I had no intention of visiting the church myself. Engaging the overseer of the war so early would be inefficient.
Right now, I had a much more important matter to attend to. A matter that could fundamentally alter my operational capabilities in this world.
…
[Prerequisites met. Protocol approved. The 'Enhancement' feature is now available.]
That was the notification the System had generated shortly after my arrival in this world.
To be completely honest, I had assumed my System was a single-purpose tool. When it first fused with my chassis, it had provided me with the Dimensional Engine and the Energy Conversion module. It had effectively handed me an operating manual for those two functions and then went dormant, acting only as a stabilizing background process.
I hadn't considered the possibility that it possessed hidden, locked features.
Not until this third world.
"System," I asked the empty white void. "Are there other functions you have kept hidden from me?"
[Detecting Host query. Accessing relevant protocols... Please wait.]
[Protocol approved. Host has met the required milestones. Upgrading clearance level. Downloading new feature data now.]
"What is this?"
A massive burst of complex data was instantly uploaded directly into my cognitive processors. It was the user manual for the newly unlocked [Enhancement] function.
Just like when I first received the Dimensional Engine, I instinctively understood how it worked the moment the data settled.
[Enhancement].
On the surface, it meant exactly what it said. I could select any Armament in my database, any copied spell, weapon, or Noble Phantasm, and the System would optimize it, patching its flaws and upgrading its overall performance.
But as I processed the deeper mechanics of the function, my golden eyes widened in genuine shock.
To understand why this was so revolutionary, one must understand the fundamental nature of the Ex-Machina.
My race copies abilities through technological replication. We analyze a phenomenon, reverse-engineer its effects, and use our own internal machinery to reproduce the outcome.
In the world of No Game No Life, this worked perfectly because every race and spell operated on the same underlying energy system.
When I began traveling the multiverse, I encountered entirely new energy systems, like the magic of Frieren's world. I bypassed this hurdle because the System allowed me to convert my Dimensional Energy into any local energy type.
But even with perfectly matched energy, an Ex-Machina's copy is still just a copy. A forgery.
That is why my replicated weapons are designated as Pseudo-Endo Armaments. They are imitations built within the mechanical framework of my chassis. They look the same, they act the same, but they lack the genuine, conceptual "truth" of the original.
For instance, I could copy Mordred's Clarent, but my version was just a highly dense mana construct shaped like a sword. It lacked the true weight of her legend.
The new [Enhancement] feature, however, broke that fundamental rule.
….
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