Crossing the Aurora Curtain, they arrived in a completely unfamiliar region. The old patriarch of the Uzumaki clan immediately realized they had encountered Space-Time Ninjutsu, becoming even more convinced of the other party's strength.
When Shirou Emiya ordered the four distant Creation Engines to rise, and the old Uzumaki patriarch saw the colossal war machines that nearly pierced the clouds, only one thought remained in his mind...
"The age of ninja is over... Next comes the age of giants!"
I Need to Find a Way to Take a Beautiful Ahegao Photo of Lady Sparkle. (1/5)
His emotion points had accumulated to around 5,000.
The points earned during this period had also reached around 1,300.
That meant fifty pulls in the friendship pool and one ten-pull in the rate-up pool.
"Close enough. I can't keep hoarding like a squirrel forever."
There was no need to use the points yet, but he could enjoy a round of pulls with the emotion points first. After mooching another wave of mystical luck from March 7th, Shirou Emiya remembered that Elysia also seemed to be quite lucky.
So he ran over to Elysia and Eden for another round of blessings, then...
He started pulling like mad.
He did five ten-pulls without pausing, decisively choosing consecutive draws. In the end, before Mr. Emiya appeared a huge pile of blue and white junk, mixed with roughly seven purple rewards.
Among the white rewards were firearms, hand cannons, swords, and the like, along with several blueprints. A quick glance showed that they were mostly weapon and equipment designs, with even two recipes mixed in.
"Rising Dragon Dumplings," "Flame Dumplings."
"Recipes from Chūka Ichiban! Not bad."
There were about twelve blue rewards. He actually spotted a Bangboo from Old Mi's home franchise, along with two Pokémon and two Palworld creatures...
"A pet section?"
He had pulled a Pokémon before, leaving it back at his Fuyuki home with Miyu. It had been an Eevee.
The two he pulled this time were a Meowstic and a Dedenne.
There was no need for those two to serve as fighters. Being cute was enough.
Of course, the Cat and Mouse team was a mystical thing. It could not be underestimated.
Among the remaining blue rewards were several card rewards and three blueprint rewards.
The blueprints were for the λ-driver system and the Drift System, originating from Full Metal Panic! and Pacific Rim respectively.
The former could transform thoughts into tangible physical impact energy, while the latter could establish a neural bridge between multiple people, synchronizing the nerves of two or more individuals and unifying their thoughts.
Both were quite interesting. Mr. Emiya was even tempted to install a set directly into the Creation Engines, Alahato, and the Titan Mech.
The last blueprint was another recipe from the Chūka Ichiban! world. This time, though, he was no longer mooching off Liu Maoxing. It was Master Chef Logan's proud creation: "Four Gods Seafood Eight Treasures Soul-Calming Buns."
"Dumplings and buns... It's a whole pastry collection."
However, after inheriting Shirou Emiya's cooking memories, Shirou himself had become much more interested in cooking. He wanted to personally make these dishes as well.
Other than the blueprints and living creature rewards, there were three skill proficiency cards and two weapons left.
"Three proficiency cards. Put them all into Nen."
"The Wind Spear and Ritual Bow... kind of mediocre, but better than nothing."
The blue and white rewards were not terribly disappointing. In fact, there had been some pleasant surprises. The main event still lay with the SR purple rewards.
"Knights of Valour, Zhang Jue's Headband... This can count as a purple reward?"
"A Devil Fruit, the Paramecia-type Age-Age Fruit? This thing seems pretty good."
"Hulkbuster Armor, nanomachine version... Useless. I'm not fighting the Hulk."
"Desperate Potion. Give it to Mei for research."
"Super Strength Eruption [Balzac]. They even stuffed trash like Imperial Arms in here? Whatever. This barely counts as something usable."
Seeing the consecutive stream of junk, Shirou Emiya's face darkened. That was the bad thing about mixed pools: tossing items of every power level from unrestricted settings together was simply shameless.
Back when he was still in Fuyuki, Imperial Arms had barely possessed some value. Now that he was in the Star Rail setting, they were basically only useful for filling out his projection samples.
"Still, this thing seems able to draw out one hundred percent of a person's potential? Making more of them might be somewhat useful."
Thinking that, Shirou Emiya's expression eased slightly. If the other items could be analyzed, they seemed to have some marginal uses too. For example, the Desperate Potion could not only grant high-temperature resistance and the ability to breathe fire, but more importantly, powerful regeneration and even immortality.
"Three left. I have to pull something good for the boys."
His gaze fell upon the final three rewards. After looking them over, his eyes finally lit up.
"The Tiger Talisman. Good stuff. Even the Aeon of Balance would have to give it a like."
"Black Barrel, an imitation... They even pulled a Black Gun Heavenly Longevity for me? Now this was definitely worth it."
"Moody Blues... Abbacchio's Stand ability. With this, couldn't I directly join Memory of the Past?"
The Tiger Talisman came from Jackie Chan Adventures. Its Yin-Yang power could balance conflicting forces and could even separate a person's dark side and bright side into two independent personalities.
Black Barrel, the Black Gun Heavenly Longevity, came from the Type-Moon side. It was one of the weapons produced by Atlas Academy and was said to be capable of destroying the world. Of course, this was merely an imitation. The genuine Black Barrel had troublesome usage requirements, restricted to individuals who had absorbed Sin. The more Sin existed within them, the more terrifying the damage it inflicted. In theory, it could even kill a UO in one shot.
But this imitation was the one made by Garfiel. Rather than targeting individuals who had absorbed Sin, it targeted the upper limit of their "lifespan." After assessing the target's scale of existence, it produced a corresponding bullet type, then used "mana," "physical strength," and the "Power of Destiny" to carry out a conceptual execution against the target.
Its operating principles were something no one outside Atlas Academy could fully understand. However, the "lifespan" targeted by this weapon included not only the maximum lifespan of living beings, but also the duration of existence of inorganic objects. The bullets it fired were "End of the World Bullets" aimed at the very moment of the target's final death.
When Little Eggplant used this weapon, she had even shot down several Machine Gods. Machine Gods such as Demeter and Zeus had all been brought down by it. Olympus Lostbelt simply could not be cleared without Little Eggplant and Garfiel.
As for the final Moody Blues, it originated from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It belonged to Leone Abbacchio and possessed the ability to unconditionally replay what a specific person had done in the past. This replay ability could even span time using "years" as units. If placed in a detective setting, all those famous detectives would probably be out of work.
Moreover, this ability to read and replay past memories would be extremely popular among Memory Users...
Most importantly, after determining an approximate direction, this replay ability could also be used to simultaneously locate where someone was at the current moment.
Its raw strength was not particularly impressive.
But its utility was not bad, and in a sense, it was also a time-based Stand. If he could get another Insect Arrow to evolve it...
He might even gain some kind of ability to interfere with past timelines, or directly travel into the past.
"Not too much of a loss. It's fine. There weren't any huge prizes in the pool to begin with, so getting these was already pretty good."
Besides, they would soon be heading to the Xianzhou. With the Age-Age Fruit, the Tiger Talisman, and the Black Gun Heavenly Longevity... Mr. Emiya had no idea how recklessly he would have to act to screw up over there. If that brat Sparkle came to cause trouble again...
Then this time, it would not just be a startled photo.
It would have to be... a fertilized ahegao.
Welt: Damn It, There's Still a Traitor Chasing Me!
"This old man has found reinforcements."
"Really, old brother?!"
"Though there are only ten of them."
"...Too few. They won't be much use, Patriarch."
"But they have a ninja equivalent to Hashirama Senju."
"You've done wonderfully, old brother!"
"Only, he doesn't intend to personally take action."
"Patriarch, there's no need to be embarrassed at a time like this. Fine then, it is time for this old man to unleash the fierce tiger-descending-the-mountain stance I have cultivated for years~."
"But they sold us a four-hundred-meter-tall super-class ninja tool capable of blocking A-rank Ninjutsu."
"I'll lead the charge, old brother!"
"Same here!"
After relocating the Creation Engines and the temporary camp to the Land of Whirlpools, and seeing the four Creation Engines...
The old Uzumaki men wept as they applied to the old patriarch, declaring that they had been born into this world to become pilots of such ninja tools.
Men could never refuse giant, hard, handsome, vaguely humanoid mechanical toys like these.
Old Man Welt could not refuse them, and neither could the old Uzumaki men.
As it happened, the giant machines originally needed their power systems modified for the ninja world. Shirou Emiya slapped his forehead and simply added the λ-driver system and Drift System to the Creation Engines, allowing the old Uzumaki men to synchronize their nerves and become pilots together, fulfilling their dream of operating mechs.
There were no bad guys who liked piloting mechs!
Right, Char?
To distinguish the Creation Engines intended for the old men, Shirou Emiya thoughtfully gave them fresh paint jobs. The old men named the two supermassive mechs Indra and Asura. They did not know those were the ancestors of the Uchiha and Senju clans; they had merely happened to find the two names in ancient books and thought they sounded cool.
"Cloud Hidden? Mist Hidden? In my eyes, they are nothing but corpses waiting to be claimed!"
"Before us, there shall be no enemy!"
"Those two ninja villages have chosen the path to death!"
"Ninja? How dare they defy this old man, who possesses the power of Indra and Asura?!"
"Susanoo? What pathetic nobody dares call that the power of the Third God? Can you withstand this old man's Wrath of Asura?!"
"Powerful! Invincible! The strongest! Who else in this ninja world can stand in our way?! Damn it! What else can stand in our way?!"
The Uzumaki clan seemed to have many strange things mixed into their genes: the Uchiha's madness, the Senju Clan's wildness, and even a bit of the Kaguya clan's insanity and the Hyuga Family's inherited self-importance...
In short, once the two mechs had been handed over to the old Uzumaki men, the entire clan completely abandoned its former pessimism about sending its bloodline to Konoha for refuge. Now, everyone was striving to pass the neural synchronization test as quickly as possible.
People in the ninja world deliberately trained their spiritual faculties, but making them open their hearts to one another for neural synchronization was still somewhat difficult.
The younger people especially had a stronger sense of shame. Everyone worried that their teammates would see the embarrassing black history buried deep in their hearts.
But the old men were different. After spending decades together, everyone already knew exactly how long it had been since the thing in your pants had been used. They could openly discuss even that, so what else was there to be ashamed of?
The old men synchronized their nerves with astonishing speed. In only three days, the first team had been completed. The pilots of the Asura Giant God were decided to be the old patriarch and his three younger brothers. Upon hearing the news, the other old men began raising their synchronization rates even faster out of dissatisfaction. Meanwhile, the young group went red-eyed, forcibly abandoning their shame. At the very last moment, one group of young people finally achieved neural synchronization.
With Chakra serving as the power source, the first consideration for every team was whether their total Chakra quantity met the standard. If another ninja clan wanted to use these things, they might need ten or even a hundred people.
But these freaks from the Uzumaki clan did not have much of anything except Chakra measured by the ton. The four old men of the previous generation even exceeded the requirement by quite a bit. Still, since they had grown up together, none of them wanted to leave anyone out of the wonderful experience of piloting a mech. So the four simply synchronized together—and they actually succeeded.
There were even more young Uzumaki ninja than old men, seven in total. They too had grown up together and had nothing to hide from one another. Most importantly...
All seven were single. None of them had partners. Hilarious... What privacy could they possibly have? Even taking care of themselves in front of one another would not feel embarrassing.
The pilots for the two Creation Engines had been selected and were thrown into intense training. Shirou Emiya and the others had also completely settled down in the Land of Whirlpools. Due to the time difference, several people from the Honkai setting now took turns coming here to have fun, while Bronya returned to Belobog to hand over her work.
With matters in the ninja world temporarily settled, Shirou Emiya figured it was time to call over the two old men from the train. More importantly, he had two missions that needed to be handed in.
Thus, after returning to Belobog once again, Shirou Emiya flew directly back to the train. The moment she saw him return, Himeko enthusiastically welcomed him.
"The spatial stability readings have returned to normal. Pomeranian is currently recalibrating the Star Rail. In a few days, we'll be able to leave Jarilo-VI whenever we want. You did very well on this Trailblaze Journey."
"Dan Heng has already told us what you did on Jarilo-VI. Although the Astral Express, as passersby, should not take a position... speaking purely from my personal perspective, you did beautifully this time."
"You flatter me. Sister Himeko, your goods have all been collected for you."
"Oh? Then why don't you take them out and let me inspect their quality?"
Hearing the conversation between those two, Old Man Welt's eyebrows twitched. He knew they were deliberately messing with him.
"This photo is nice. Mm-hmm, such a pitiful little expression. This girl is really adorable. Her name is Seele, right?"
"Pffft!!"
The old man had just taken a sip of coffee. The moment he heard that name, he could no longer sit still. He had barely risen to walk over toward Himeko and see what was happening when he heard her speak again.
"This girl is quite pretty too. Gray curly hair in a ponytail, with that cool and aloof little cuteness... Bronya? Her name sounds lovely too. I'd like to meet her someday."
This was bad!
The old man felt shadows from his past charging toward him at full speed. He even hesitated over whether to walk over and ask about it, when another name that made him want to immediately summon a Star of Eden drilled into his ears.
"Is this her mother? Mm, she's a great beauty too. Supreme Guardian Cocolia..."
Before you continue