Ex-Machina on a Dimensional Journey

Before Ellen could say anything else, Isaac directly shut the door.

Leaving behind only Ellen and a stack of documents as tall as a person on her desk.

"Ugh, I have to work overtime again."

Ellen rubbed her temples in frustration and began today's overtime work.

A Brief Time of Rest

The view shifted to the Fraxinus—

Faced with Xiu Er's latest video recording, everyone held another meeting. This time, however, they unusually reached a unanimous conclusion.

Because Xiu Er's objective was far too obvious now. Anyone with eyes could see it.

"First Princess, then Hermit, followed by Witch, and now Nightmare..."

Kotori crunched the lollipop in her mouth, her expression as awful as if she had tasted her least favorite flavor.

Reine beside her promptly added the investigation results from the past half month.

"Based on the information currently available, after fighting Princess, the Unknown Mechanical Entity used unknown technology to copy her Angel. At present, it is speculated that she possesses the Angels of Witch and Nightmare in addition to Princess."

They had not mentioned Hermit because, in all records so far, Xiu Er had never used the true form of the ice Angel apart from ice itself.

Therefore, they speculated that Xiu Er's copying ability had prerequisite conditions.

"But the Unknown Mechanical Entity hasn't killed any Spirits other than Nightmare. Could it be targeting her because of the sheer number of people Nightmare has killed?"

"We don't know who the force controlling the Unknown Mechanical Entity is, nor what their intentions are. But based solely on their ability to copy Spirit powers, their technological level cannot be underestimated."

At the thought of an unknown force lurking in the shadows and eyeing the Spirits' power, Kotori ground her teeth in anger and could only vent it on the candy in her mouth.

So far, Xiu Er's disguise had been successful. Whenever he appeared before the public to fight Spirits, he deliberately imitated the Ex-Machina' manner of speaking, successfully making others believe he was an anti-Spirit weapon secretly created by some organization.

That would direct those people's attention into thin air.

He also intended to treat strangers the same way in the future.

Unlike the oppressive atmosphere aboard the Fraxinus, Xiu Er, the person at the center of it all, was currently relaxing in a milk tea shop.

Over the past month, he had either been fighting every day or on his way to prepare for a fight.

After defeating Takamiya Mana yesterday and releasing the AST members subdued by the Doppelgangers, he had chosen not to do anything excessive to those girls who ran around for humanity's sake.

He had already gathered all the relevant data, so naturally, he had no reason to make things difficult for them. He simply left on his own, using teleportation.

It was only after returning to the city, passing an amusement park, and seeing the smiles on the faces of the people inside that he realized this issue.

Although Ex-Machina had no concept of physical or mental fatigue, Xiu Er, who had once been human, felt terribly uncomfortable if he did not reward himself after doing a whole mountain of things.

It was probably a matter of habit.

In the past, it had been to relax his exhausted body. Now, it was simply to enjoy life.

So today, Xiu Er decided to give himself a day off!

The milk tea shop where Xiu Er currently sat was located inside an amusement park.

As he drank the extra-large triple-topping milk tea in his hand, its rich sweetness and various ingredients fully satisfied Xiu Er's taste buds.

Come to think of it, he did not seem to have taste buds anymore. He should call it a taste system instead.

As for money, although Xiu Er had been busy running around because of the Spirits recently, he still had plenty of spare time.

Naturally, he had earned the price of his amusement park ticket from the "jobs" he took online.

What sort of jobs were they?

Naturally, they were jobs related to the field of electronic networks.

After all, he could handle the "jobs" he accepted online while doing other things at the same time.

Of course, he had not done anything that he considered "illegal."

Today, Xiu Er temporarily set aside all thoughts about the Spirits and focused entirely on the happy time ahead...

Time passed in the blink of an eye.

Xiu Er happily spent the entire day at the amusement park. In his previous life, he had never been to a place like this, nor had he ever had time to go. To him, every different kind of attraction was more than enough to draw his interest.

At dusk—

After leaving the amusement park, Xiu Er found an arcade.

Since he had already decided to take a day off and play all day, he walked in without a second thought.

All kinds of dazzling game machines filled the hall, and Xiu Er did not know which one to play first.

Naturally, it was Xiu Er's first time in an arcade. In his previous life, he had never even visited a game parlor. Looking at the countless machines before him, the hand holding a cup full of tokens trembled slightly.

His difficulty choosing had kicked in.

In that case, he would play them all once!

If he ran out of tokens, he could just exchange for another cup.

The time that followed became Xiu Er's campaign through the arcade. No matter the game, genre, or style of play, Xiu Er relied on his extraordinary talent to play through every single one. Moreover, whenever a game had a leaderboard, he took first place, drawing passersby to stop and watch.

During that time, his absurdly overwhelming performance even drew challenges from others.

They competed in player-versus-player games represented by fighting games, best two out of three.

Then, after the clock struck eleven at night, he had achieved an astonishing record of sixty-eight wins and zero losses!

No matter what type of game it was, Xiu Er could flawlessly outplay his opponents.

There had even been times when he ran out of tokens, and his opponents personally offered to pay for more just so they could challenge him.

"Hey, hey, hey, is this for real? She's way too good."

"Seriously. Even that guy lost to her."

"She isn't cheating, is she?"

"These machines belong to the arcade, and we've all been watching her. Do you really think she had any chance to cheat?"

"Trash is trash. If you can't accept losing, don't play."

"If someone plays well, they're automatically cheating?"

The onlooking passersby naturally witnessed the birth of this miracle and gathered behind Xiu Er, chattering among themselves.

Looking at the dispirited gaming expert across from him, Xiu Er guessed that person would not want to touch another game for quite some time.

Countless people had tried, but they had all failed.

There were always those who refused to accept it. After the previous challenger failed, they stepped up themselves, only to end up the same way.

They were all local fighting game enthusiasts, and many were experts. Yet when facing Xiu Er, not one of them had managed to win even a single round.

Every one of them was defeated by Xiu Er with a score of 2:0.

That felt good.

That was Xiu Er's mood right then.

The expressions of the opponents before him shifting from confidence to defeat, along with the admiration of the passersby around him, all satisfied his vanity at this moment.

Perhaps after today, some legend would spread online about an undefeated genius beautiful girl gamer who had faced sixty-eight highly skilled players in a row and defeated them all by herself.

But that had nothing to do with Xiu Er anymore. He would not care about it.

By the time he left the arcade, it was already midnight, and the moon had long since risen into the pitch-black sky.

It also signaled the end of Xiu Er's vacation.

The Calm Before the Storm

More than ten days had passed since Xiu Er's battle with Kurumi and Mana.

During that time, under the watchful eyes of every faction, Xiu Er had unusually made no moves at all.

Because of this, they all began anxiously speculating whether he was preparing to do something big.

Among them, DEM Company took the matter most seriously.

Because Isaac knew that he happened to have a Spirit here.

Nia Honjou, the second Spirit to appear, had been captured by Ellen several years ago and was now imprisoned within DEM Company.

During that time, Isaac had tried countless methods to torment her, hoping to make her invert, but he had never succeeded. That situation continued even now.

And since that Spirit Hunter—Isaac's name for Xiu Er—also sought the powers of every Spirit in the world.

He would naturally come to DEM Company to look for her.

Even Ellen admitted that she might not be able to defeat him, which showed that his strength could not be underestimated. That also caused Isaac to feel unease for the rare occasion.

Although the records so far showed that the Spirit Hunter had not harmed any humans and had even deliberately moved his battlefields with Spirits to deserted places.

Still, that was merely the information they could gather so far. What if the other party's intelligent system had orders to stop at nothing to achieve its objective?

Wouldn't that mean he would deal with Isaac first in order to search for Nia?

Yes, even now, Isaac still believed Xiu Er was an intelligent robotic weapon against Spirits created by an Unknown Faction.

He was still guessing at the other party's exact objective. It was not to kill Spirits, but to copy their powers.

For now, Isaac believed the other party, like himself, had set its sights on Spirit power. The only difference between them was the process.

Strengthen the system firewall, increase the number of guards, and add more patrol teams.

That was all Isaac could think of for the moment.

While this DEM director was still trembling with fear.

Xiu Er was currently standing on an uninhabited island.

He stood on a coastal beach somewhere on the island.

Not far ahead of him, two orange-haired girls with similar appearances, clearly twin sisters at a glance, were playing volleyball.

It should have been a beautiful scene, except each strike sent the ball blasting toward the other with a fierce gale, while the other refused to be outdone, catching the ball at speeds too fast to see before smashing it back with the same effect.

A powerful wind raged across the beach alongside the flying volleyball.

The two traded blows back and forth, while the surrounding beach had already been ravaged into pits and holes as though it had undergone a great battle.

That volleyball was surprisingly durable, wasn't it?

The two girls were Xiu Er's targets for this trip: Yuzuru Yamai and Kaguya Yamai, Spirits from the original story.

The sisters had originally been Tempest Yamai, a being that split apart after obtaining a Spirit Crystallization. They had constantly dueled under the condition that the victor would become the true Tempest Yamai.

Yet their duels had always ended in draws.

No matter what they did, they could turn it into a duel. On the surface, they seemed unable to stand each other, but in truth, each cared about the other most deeply.

Of course, Xiu Er did not care about any of that. He had only one objective: the Angels of the Yamai Sisters.

But how had things turned into this situation?