Chapter 723: Chapter 1: The First of the Three Families, Einzbern’s Silence!
The silver-haired loli seemed not to have heard Gu Mo’s suggestion.
She just sat there with a blank and vacant look, maintaining that duck-like sitting posture, utterly indifferent or perhaps unaware of the bloodstains on her body, just looking dazedly at the catalyst used for summoning.
This shouldn’t have happened...
She wasn’t supposed to fail! Could it be that her revenge had ended ridiculously before it even began? She unconsciously bit her lower lip, nearly drawing blood.
"Why don’t you believe it yet? Getting me is like winning the lottery, you really got a great deal, didn’t you? Hercules might be useful, but as an SR, there are still limitations. The current environment has long changed, it’s no longer the era where you can win by relying on battle continuity for one-on-one duels..."
Looking at the loli Master in front of him, who showed a look of unwillingness and despair against fate, with a dazed and hollow expression, Gu Mo sighed lightly but still spoke in a serious tone.
"There are only a few people in the Holy Grail War. Even Gilgamesh is serving as an Archer. Does your Einzbern Family still want to win this war with a maddened Hercules? Can he fight? No, he’s not capable, you know that?"
He gently patted the head of the silver-haired loli who was in a daze and walked over to the magic circle, bent down, and grabbed the handle of the enormous axe-sword, which was taller than a person, lifting it effortlessly without any sense of obstruction.
The entire thing was made from the cornerstone of a Divine Hall, prepared by the Einzbern Family as a catalyst to summon Berserker, and later became the weapon wielded by Hercules.
It’s not a Treasure in itself, nor truly a weapon, because it’s just a gigantic rock roughly the height of a person, a weapon only Hercules could wield. With extraordinary arm strength, he would swing and smash the axe-sword, just that alone showcasing a close-combat capability surpassing all Servants.
Gu Mo, with interest, held this weapon, which was more rock than axe-sword, and swung it a few times, creating an unusually fierce whistling sound in the wind.
Whoosh, whoosh.
It’s quite stimulating. The feeling of smashing people with this must be pretty good... Of course, you’d need to adjust the perceived weight first; otherwise, it’s as light as foam.
Just then, urgent footsteps sounded from outside the castle, as if members of the Einzbern Family sensed something amiss and came to check. Soon, an old voice echoed at the door, seemingly angered and somewhat horrified upon seeing the summoned Servant.
"Failed! How could it fail—"
Boom!!
A violent gust suddenly roared and then just as abruptly calmed down!
The result was that the old voice came to an abrupt halt, the gigantic axe-sword that flew out whistled through the door, directly eliminating the source of the voice.
A dull thud was heard after, as the gigantic axe-sword that flew out crashed outside the castle. The rock-like axe-sword, standing one person high, sent him flying away with impact comparable to being hit by a speeding locomotive, leaving flesh and bones scattered, the whole person disintegrated!
In the literal sense, completely disintegrated, not a single intact piece of flesh and blood to be found—
Shattered bones and bodies was the best description.
"No need to mimic the emotion of rage, especially at such a low level; it feels utterly fake. Better shut down early, old man, times have changed..."
Gu Mo casually dusted off his hands, giving his opinion calmly. He had no interest in hearing this human-like terminal directing him in the slightest, nor did he wish to retrace the original fate of Uncle B, which was completely unnecessary, so better to let the other side go to hell.
Hmmm... Just taking out a terminal that acts human, pretending to have humanity, simulating human actions wasn’t of much use.
Should I uproot the entire magic AI?
He cast a somewhat malicious look towards the entire castle before him, fundamentally targeting the essence of the operational castle, the artificial intelligence controlling the castle’s core—that was an existence without personality, merely incorporating essential "humanity" into each generation of human-like terminals, mimicking human behavior and speech.
The central control program of the magic workshop located in the deepest part of the castle, something created by magicians over two hundred years ago, was probably like this.
"You... you..."
Finally startled by such commotion, the silver-haired loli, coming back to reality from her emotions of unwillingness, despair, hatred, and self-loathing remnants, opened her mouth, looking disbelievingly towards the door.
Grandfather...
Just killed directly without saying a word?
"It’s merely a terminal, nothing to care about. Even though it ruled over you, its essence is probably inferior to yours. At least you artificial humans still have your own personalities..." Gu Mo said calmly and then continued to scrutinize this legal loli from above with a subtly peculiar gaze.
"You actually should know as well, that in this castle, there’s fundamentally no familial love to speak of."
Everything is simply a tool.
Even including this magic AI itself, which also sees itself as a tool, running thus far merely an attempt to complete the task set by the magicians who created it and constructed this castle, with the pursuit of the Holy Grail being merely a means, all for the sake of recreating the Third Magic.
This is the meaning of the existence of the Einzbern Family.
The silver-haired girl is naturally also a tool. As a crystallization of artificial life with a higher technical content than her mother, she is also selected as a Holy Grail container. If she is summoned according to the normal development of Berserker, she will also be thrown into hell to experience a series of hardships.
The Einzbern Family would abandon her in the Winter Forest, throw her among the hungry beasts, or even deliver her to a corpse possessed by evil spirits, tossing her into a garbage heap used to store failed works...
— If she wants to survive, she must rely on the power of Berserker.
— This is to enable her to adapt quickly and better control that extraordinary Great Hero...
If she fails, as a tool, she won’t serve her purpose, and if she dies, she dies. This is likely the plan of the Einzbern Family.
However, now it is Gu Mo who has been summoned, so he knows what will happen, reads the thoughts of the artificial intelligence just now, confirms this point, and happily sends off the terminal used by the opponent with a single flying axe. Although those trials mean nothing to him, he still lacks interest.
And at this moment...
The sound of dense footsteps echoed rapidly from deep within the castle, quickly approaching.
Uniformly, like trained soldiers marching, it even had a mechanical feel. The overlapping footsteps were in perfect rhythm.
It was the artificial intelligence that had already made a determination, and mobilized numerous automatons. Just now, due to the need to summon Servants, the artificial humans temporarily summoned away from the hall were rushing over rapidly, ready to deal with the castle invader.
"Let’s go, my Master..."
Gu Mo calmly walked over, picked up the silver-haired girl, like helping a fallen child, and casually dusted off her skirt.
An invisible force field spread out, directly shedding all bloodstains and dust from her body, and then blew them away, making her look completely refreshed. The silver-haired girl resumed her original appearance, no longer in the filthy, distressing state.
She was somewhat dazedly picked up by the young man and hadn’t figured out what was happening before being led outside the castle, her mind blank from the series of shocks, including being heavily impacted since the shipwreck during the card drawing, and Ahad Clan Leader hadn’t even finished speaking before being utterly destroyed by a flying axe...
This series of shocks left her unable to react.
"You... you... what are you doing?" After being led out of the castle, the silver-haired girl suddenly realized something, and angrily shouted, trying to free herself from the young man’s grasp and looked back.
However...
Just after the two stepped through the castle gate, in just a few strides, the massive castle behind them shrunk visibly.
In the silver-haired girl’s astonished gaze, the young man calmly extended his hand and picked up the entire castle as if it were a toy block, tossing it lightly before handing the castle, now shrunken to the size of a Rubik’s Cube, to her: "Here you go, don’t worry, if you’re uneasy, you can take it along..."
Originally, he intended simply to brutally dismantle the entire castle, but after careful thought, he abandoned this idea as unnecessary.
He decided to leave it as a souvenir for Ilya, considering it a small compensation for almost draining her life and magical power. Gu Mo had always been principled in this regard... Moreover, keeping a sample allows for a thorough study of the Einzbern Family’s artificial human technology.
A useful piece of jade for future endeavors, even if purely out of a collector’s mindset, he did not want to miss the opportunity to unlock this tome.
On the land where the castle originally stood, only a vacant expanse remained, with nothing else left.
It was as if a giant had reached down from the clouds and effortlessly picked up the entire huge castle.
"..."
"..."
With her mouth agape, unable to speak, the silver-haired girl instinctively accepted the Rubik’s Cube-sized, intricately proportioned castle handed over by Gu Mo, only to feel her mind utterly unable to keep pace with the current developments.
Each time her brain barely recovered functioning, it would immediately go blank again due to new shocks.
Her ultimate despair was because she felt she had failed in her summoning, not successfully calling forth a Greek Great Hero. In her view, that was the trump card enabling her revenge, leaving her mind filled solely with thoughts of growing strong rapidly and heading to the battlefield, naturally yearning for this trump card.
Hence, her agony when things didn’t go as she wished.
But now, she discovered she seemed to have unintentionally summoned a monster of even higher caliber, as evidenced by effortlessly uprooting the Einzbern Family.
Centuries of fortification by generations of magicians, the enormous castle-level magic workshop, the fortress formed by continually accumulating magical infrastructure... All these were meaningless, unable to mount any defense against invasion, and were promptly packed away by this young man.
Seemingly understanding her shock and confusion at this moment, Gu Mo blinked and said, "As a Berserker, knowing a bit about illusionary magic is quite reasonable..."
