Ex-Machina in Dimensional Travel

He knew this trick; just moments before, the target had used this exact ability on her own kind. Was it Hypnosis Magic?

She herself had researched mental-type magic of this sort. Mere hypnosis—she had long since prepared counter-defense magic for it, so it was fundamentally out of...

"Announce. State all that you know."

As Xiu Er's voice reached into his ears.

Just like the previous Demon, this Demon walked down the path of his comrade without a single suspense.

A few minutes later—

It was quite effortless to resolve.

These two Demons did not possess any formidable strength, nor did they hold much in the way of gathered intelligence or magic.

And unexpectedly, there was no information whatsoever regarding human towns.

Oh well, she was heading there in person anyway.

Hopefully, some useful information could be gathered.

That said, Gabriel was unexpectedly quite useful indeed.

"-Codex Opening-Speed Violation-"

However, the specific direction of the town was ultimately obtained from these two Demons, which proved convenient for Xiu Er.

Therefore, now that the exact coordinates had been confirmed, she decided to fly low over the ground toward that direction at maximum speed to reach the destination.

In the blink of an eye, Xiu Er turned into a streak of golden light and departed from this place.

And after a mere half a minute had passed.

Xiu Er finally arrived outside the town.

She had reduced her speed the moment she caught sight of the town, ultimately avoiding attracting anyone's attention.

Looking at the tall city wall before her, along with the merchants and travelers gathered at the city gate waiting for the guards' inspection.

Xiu Er chose not to join the queue of the latter.

She arrived at the foot of the city wall and walked straight toward the wall ahead.

From an outsider's perspective, anyone would surely assume she was about to crash into it.

Unfortunately, no one noticed Xiu Er; a Golden Passage appeared on the wall surface before her.

She walked into the gateway, and by the time she emerged again, she had already entered the interior of this town.

As for the exit's location, it was situated within a rather unassuming alleyway.

Chapter 3: Premature Timing

She easily entered this town in a manner the guards could never have imagined.

It was just that this type of magic should surely exist, and a town like this ought to have corresponding countermeasures against magic of this nature.

Regrettably, Xiu Er's method belonged to "technology."

Although it also utilized energy, it was not the "magic" of this world, so even if there were devices capable of detecting mana, they could not detect her.

The mainframe's Detector had been set to active by default; the moment she stepped out of the gateway, the terrain and living beings in the vicinity had already been fully detected by her.

This alley probably saw very few passersby under normal circumstances, which also made it convenient for Xiu Er to compensate for the camouflage that was on the verge of collapsing due to the use of her weaponry.

There was no help for it, seeing as any use of other armaments would inevitably interfere with the normally stable operation of the Fake Demoness, resulting in the risk of camouflage breakdown.

Walking all the way along the streets within the city, Xiu Er toured half the area of this town.

Maps? A map was unnecessary; a complete graphical map had already formed within her mind.

Now, she had arrived at the central district of this town.

A central plaza featuring a marble statue fountain.

Surrounded by various merchandise stalls, the flow of people here was at its peak.

Xiu Er's arrival here was driven by her own reasoning; being situated in the central location would assist her in expanding the scan range to cover the entire town more rapidly.

"Detections completed, generating map imagery..."

Xiu Er sat on a bench beside the fountain, quietly observing the people around her.

Merchants, women, children, the elderly, nobles, warriors...

Individuals with diverse appearances passed by one after another, and every single passerby was subjected to a scan originating from Xiu Er.

Physical data, characteristics, weapons... and so on were all recorded by Xiu Er.

She had also amplified the power of her environmental Receiver, enabling her to sit right here and clearly hear the conversations of everyone in this vicinity.

This complex information was effortlessly organized by Xiu Er, who was an Ex-Machina, and filtered to extract useful data, while the remainder was categorized under "miscellaneous."

Presently, Xiu Er's location was situated within the Northern Plains region of this world's continent.

The current state of the world was prior to the elimination of the Demon King, and the conflict between humanity and the Demons was still in an intense phase.

Furthermore, judging from the collected intelligence, a considerable number of Demons and Monsters were still roaming outside this town, assaulting pedestrians.

Based on the intelligence collated thus far, Xiu Er realized that the timeline she had arrived in seemed to be somewhat overly early.

It was not a major issue, though; timeline discrepancies were never something Xiu Er would dwell upon.

Coming to this world was precisely for the purpose of learning "magic."

Yes, not copying, but learning.

Copied abilities would ultimately result in potential variations in efficacy due to the inability to reach 100%, whereas genuine learned abilities would constitute true, complete power.

Within this world, the concept of "magic" was actually something any race could study; the only distinction lay in the differing aptitudes for magic caused by inherent talent.

One person might be better suited for flame magic, causing that specific branch to become the fastest-growing magic for that individual.

Regarding the matter of talent, Xiu Er was uncertain whether she, as an Ex-Machina, also faced issues in this regard.

Yet according to the traits of the Ex-Machina, she deduced that she should be free from such limitations.

Either she possessed none at all, or she was omnipotent—it could only be thus.

In that case, during this era, where should one go to learn magic?

The answer was to seek out that individual: the strongest magic user in history, the great magic user born of the mythic age, encompassing virtually all magic in history, the equivalent of a living Magic Guidebook, the magic user closest to omniscience and omnipotence upon this earth.

In the subsequent eras, she stood at the pinnacle of human magic users and was the founder of the continental Magic Association—the Elf, Sariel.

In the original work, she was a ceiling-tier existence.

If one wished to learn magic, seeking out Sariel could be described as the most efficient choice.

Yet at present, Xiu Er had no knowledge of Sariel's whereabouts.

Among the intelligence gathered in the central plaza, there was no information related to this matter.

The Codex of the Whispers was still analyzing the world and unable to exert its effects.

What could be done then?

Nothing at all.

Even for Xiu Er, who pursued efficiency, it was impossible to squander energy without a target.

That being said, the only course of action was to wait for the progress of the Codex of the Whispers to conclude.

During the waiting process, naturally, Xiu Er would not simply sit idle.

In this era, "magic" on the human side had not been made public.

That strongest human magic user, "Volumen," had not yet made her debut—at least, according to the intelligence gathered here, that was the case.

Human magic users were exceptionally scarce, so Xiu Er would not choose to seek humans out for instruction.

That would be far too time-consuming.

It was worth mentioning here that within this world, Elves and Dwarves were also classified as "humans."

Who should one turn to, then, if one wished to learn magic?

BOOM!!!

The collapsing wall stirred up a flurry of dust and smoke.

Whoosh----

A fierce gale abruptly manifested within the chamber, scattering the fog and the layer of dust across the floor.

A purple-haired figure emerged from the mist, ignoring the monsters around her that were gradually turning to ashes, and walked straight toward the treasure chest ahead.

"Notify the Commander Unit, the dungeon exploration is complete, the reward has been acquired, the mission is accomplished."

"..."

"Acknowledged."

The next second, a Golden Passage opened behind "Xiu Er," swallowing her whole.

Xiu Er sat upon a stone block before the dungeon entrance, just sitting there quietly as if awaiting something.

Then, a Golden Passage appeared at her rear right, and an "Xiu Er" identical to her walked out from within.

The counterpart approached Xiu Er and handed a book to her.

Xiu Er took the book and immediately commenced reading.

Though to call it reading, in reality...

Quantum reading method.jpg

Holding one hand against the edge of the book, she made the pages flip past rapidly.

As an Ex-Machina, Xiu Er used her own traits to record the contents of the magic guidebook in her hand at an extremely high speed.

This world was truly wondrous.

To think there would actually be things like the RPG games she played in her past life, possessing dungeon instances with treasure chest rewards found along the way and after clearing them.

And right now, the magic guidebook she had just finished flipping through was one of those rewards dropped with a certain probability.

Smoke Generation Magic?

Honestly, just who in the world put these things in there?

Xiu Er raised her head to look at the azure blue sky; she knew that gods existed in this world.

Could rewards placed in treasure chests like this be the work of a goddess?

Unable to get an answer, Xiu Er didn't care what the real answer was anyway.

Anyway, next on her list of objectives, dungeon farming had already been included...

Chapter 4 Magic

A language barrier.

This issue was actually the primary problem for Xiu Er, who would be traveling to different worlds in the future.

But for an Ex-Machina, this wasn't a problem.

The strength of an Ex-Machina didn't stop at just that copying ability; it also included extremely efficient learning capabilities.

It was merely an otherworldly language. Earlier, when she was gathering intelligence in the town center, Xiu Er had used the body language and expressions from people's conversations.

Combined with a massive amount of data, she only needed to spend a few minutes summarizing and organizing it to successfully learn the language of this world.

Aside from that, though, the system actually had an automatic translation feature too.