Ex-Machina on a Dimensional Journey

Leaving Miku here, aside from getting a little dirty from lying on the ground, she would not encounter any danger.

Besides, Xiu Er had something new to do now.

So, leaving the unconscious Miku alone, Xiu Er opened a Space Gate again and stepped through it.

Today was the unluckiest day Shido had ever experienced.

Yet at this moment, Shido was getting his first taste of a battlefield of romantic rivals.

Looking at Tohka, who seemed to be radiating black smoke, he inexplicably began to feel nervous.

But this was not the time to back down. He had to explain things to her immediately.

What had just happened really was an accident!

After meeting Yoshino, Shido discovered that the child was surprisingly shy. When she had seen AST pursuing her that day, she had taken hits passively the entire time and had not used her abilities to hurt them at all.

Although he had never met her in person, Shido had witnessed her actions through the screen. Watching such a kind child be treated like that, he resolved to save her.

Today, he had successfully approached her and learned her name—Yoshino—as well as the name of her friend, Yoshino's rabbit puppet, a sharp-tongued eyepatched rabbit doll worn on her hand.

Afterward, he had successfully gotten her to agree to his date invitation, and then Yoshino had brought him to this shopping mall, which was deserted at night.

The motionless mannequins forbidden to move in the darkness gave Shido an inexplicable chill down his spine, as though someone were watching him.

Everything had been going smoothly, but then an accident happened.

Due to a mishap, Yoshino slipped while playing up high and fell.

Shido had barely managed to catch her.

As a result, for reasons unclear to him, Yoshino fell on top of him and, carried by momentum, pinned Shido beneath her. Their lips pressed together as well.

It had originally been an accident, but what was terrifying was that Tohka had appeared behind him at some unknown point. Judging by her expression, she had witnessed the entire thing.

Sensing murderous intent, Shido racked his brains, trying to explain everything to her.

Yet at that very moment, Yoshino's rabbit puppet deliberately mocked Tohka, stoking her anger!

While Shido and the two Spirit girls were acting out a battlefield of romantic rivals inside the building,

new visitors arrived outside it as well.

Several AST personnel, already equipped with their Realizers and prepared for battle, arrived at the scene.

They knew that Hermit was currently inside this building.

Origami Tobiichi.

She, the original story's extreme Shido-only devotee, was currently a member of this squad.

With her intense hatred of Spirits, she wished she could kill every Spirit in the world.

Just as she and several teammates were about to launch an assault on the building, an unexpected change occurred the next second.

For some reason, a large amount of frigid ice suddenly condensed on the floor where Hermit was located.

Immediately afterward, a massive white rabbit-like monster burst out of the building.

Origami's group did not know what had happened, but there was one thing they knew clearly: that giant white rabbit had been summoned by Hermit.

So they immediately launched an attack against it.

Shido rushed to the breach Yoshino had broken through and saw the AST personnel attacking her. He was extremely anxious.

Tohka was holding the rabbit doll she had snatched from Yoshino in a fit of anger. She looked panicked too, not knowing what to do.

But at that moment, Kotori, far away aboard the Fraxinus, sent new information through Shido's earpiece.

"Shido! Get out of there! A high-energy spiritual power reaction has appeared in the sky above you!"

"What...?"

Just as Kotori finished speaking, before Shido could make sense of the situation,

Boom!!!!

Something crashed into the bottom of the building amid a violent gale.

A massive tremor surged up from beneath the building, and the entire structure swayed on the verge of collapse from the impact below.

"Kotori, what happened!?"

"Tohka, watch out!"

Seeing the ceiling above begin to fall, Shido had no time to think. He hurriedly lunged toward Tohka, who had yet to react.

He threw himself forward and knocked her to the ground, then braced himself over her and shielded her beneath his body.

At that moment, the building finally gave out and began to collapse, burying Shido and Tohka within it...

"Shido! Shido!"

Aboard the Fraxinus in the sky, Kotori stared at the image on the display and anxiously called for her brother over the channel.

But no matter how she called, there was no response from the channel.

Although she knew Shido would not be killed by something of this level, that did not stop Kotori, as his sister, from worrying about him.

However, what answered Kotori was not Shido's voice.

It was music she had never heard before.

Abruptly,

a powerful piece of music began to play.

"Who still has the mood to play music at a time like this!?"

Already anxious because Shido had been buried beneath the ruins, Kotori heard someone actually playing music at a time like this.

Her heart was instantly filled with rage.

"Um... Commander, it isn't us..."

This left Kotori stunned instead, because if she listened carefully, she realized the sound truly was not coming from the ship.

It was coming from the image on the screen?!

"If it isn't you, then...?"

She instinctively looked toward the screen from before.

As the dust from the collapsed building dispersed, the source of the music that had suddenly appeared here revealed its true form.

It was the existence that had attacked four Spirits alone in succession within half a month, drawing the attention of every faction.

The Unknown Faction's anti-Spirit weapon, the Spirit Hunter, had appeared before everyone once more!

A New Ability

Xiu Er made a forceful entrance accompanied by powerful music.

As for the source of the music, it came from the mechanical device above his head, which was flashing frequently.

This had been mentioned before.

Xiu Er had modified the device above his head. Besides the Dimensional Device, he had added various functions to it.

Naturally, one of them was a music player module.

The reason Xiu Er had chosen to play music here was because he had modified and integrated the functions of the copied Pseudo-Canon: Gabriel into that small device.

Then, using the specific method of using its abilities that he had learned while analyzing Miku's Angel,

he infused energy into the sounds he created and transmitted them outward.

So now, the device above his head was equivalent to the Gabriel.

This time, the results he calculated after completing the analysis were gratifying. With the Gabriel's support in targeting, its abilities were not as overly mystical as those of the Rasiel.

Therefore, he had acquired every one of the Gabriel's abilities. Although, due to it being a Pseudo-Canon, it could not achieve one hundred percent effectiveness, he could forcibly make up for its power with his own energy.

What he was using now was one of the Gabriel's abilities, March.

It could enhance those who heard the music. Of course, Xiu Er could subjectively choose its targets.

At present, naturally, he was enhancing himself.

The activation condition for the Gabriel's abilities was that the user needed to sing different songs to use different abilities.

But for Xiu Er, a Ex-Machina, this was no difficult task.

The music playing above his head now was the manifestation of his use of March.

He looked at the ruins beneath his feet, staring at a certain unusual bulge.

That was the target he had struck down with the Pseudo-Canon: El Kanaph earlier—Yoshino, who had been fleeing before.

Accompanied by a violent gale, El Re'em, acting as an arrow, struck the Giant Rabbit directly and drove it back to the base of the building it had initially escaped from.

Long before Shido and Yoshino had been wandering around inside the mall, he had already been waiting on a nearby high point.

It was not because he knew when this plot event would happen. After all, when he had watched the anime, he had not known the timing at all, and after becoming a Ex-Machina, the database in his mind naturally contained no such record.

He had learned what would happen tonight through the Rasiel' prediction of the following day.

Yes, a day had already passed since Xiu Er obtained Miku's Gabriel.

The modifications to integrate the Angel's abilities into components of his body had also been completed within that day.

Incidentally, this modification had also integrated both the Fake Demoness and the Rasiel into his body, installing them all inside the device above his head.

Naturally, Xiu Er could not compose music himself. The song currently playing was not one that existed in this world either.

It was a BGM he had found in the database converted from memories of his previous life, music he had heard long ago from games, anime, and various music platforms.

Now, he had recreated that piece of music from his memories.

(The BGM here is up to the readers' imagination.)

At this moment, movement appeared within the ruins below.

A huge white rabbit crawled out from under the rubble, with an enormous lance embedded in its body.

The Giant Rabbit knocked the lance from its body and roared furiously at Xiu Er in the sky.

As a Ex-Machina, Xiu Er possessed exceptionally sharp vision. The scene below was completely clear to him, and he easily spotted the figure behind the rabbit's neck.

Yoshino's terrified eyes and trembling body both revealed her fear at this moment.

Recognizing the person in the sky who had attacked her, Yoshino immediately recalled the terrifying robot that had assaulted her like a ghost that day.

Because of her personality, Yoshino had no will to fight. Combined with her fear of Xiu Er, she now only wanted to flee.

Thus, the Giant Rabbit, Ice Puppet, could only bark a few times at Xiu Er before attempting to take Yoshino away from here.

But how could Xiu Er let her have her way?

Hmph! Trying to run!?

"-Codex Opening—Pseudo-Codex—Binder-"

Golden energy condensed around his arm, forming a chain with golden edging.

Under Xiu Er's control, Binder shot toward Yoshino below in an instant as she was about to flee.

The chain tore through the air with a piercing shriek.

In the blink of an eye, it reached Ice Puppet and coiled around its body like a serpent.

It continuously pierced down from its body into the ground, then burst out from underground on the other side and wrapped another loop around the Giant Rabbit.

In the end, Ice Puppet could no longer bear the strain. The chains dragged it firmly to the ground, pinning it there.