The terminal's silver glow hadn't dimmed, but those threads had stopped fighting the cable. They just hung there, like something that had run out of reasons to struggle.
My fingers moved across the keypad as windows of complex code flickered and closed one by one.
After nearly thirty stacked windows collapsed, only a single one remained.
[Terminal Jubstacheit]
[Access Log]
[Research Log]
[Resource Log]
[Database]
[Justeaze-Type Homunculus Blueprints]
[Third True Magic Data Compile]
[Homunculus Genesis Archive — Memory Imprints]
[Holy Grail War Records]
I scanned these logs. The Einzbern homunculus blueprints, the compiled Third True Magic data, the Holy Grail War records, all were self-explanatory.
What held my attention was [Homunculus Genesis Archive — Memory Imprints].
Selecting it brought up a new window, layered over the previous one.
[Note: Divergence tracked only at genesis. Post-activation divergence not logged.
Batch 001 — Failed. Cognitive collapse at Hour 3.
Discarded. Routed to Disposal Yard.
Batch 002 — Failed. Cognitive collapse at Hour 3.
Discarded. Routed to Disposal Yard.
Batch 003 — Failed. Cognitive collapse at Hour 4.
Discarded. Routed to Disposal Yard.
...
Batch 213 — Failed. Cognitive collapse at Month 6.
Discarded. Routed to Disposal Yard.
Batch 214 — Stable. Designation: Irisviel.
Memory Imprint recorded. Divergence: 0.08% — Deviation Authorized.
...
Batch 331 — Failed Vessel. Salvaged. Reassigned: Caretaker Unit. Designation: Leysritt.
Memory Imprint recorded. Divergence: 0.02%.
Batch 333 — Failed. Salvaged. Reassigned: Caretaker Unit. Designation: Sella.
Memory Imprint recorded. Divergence: 0.01%.
...]
More than two hundred failures before a single success. The Einzberns' pursuit was in one word: Inefficient. Even their success, a homunculus codenamed Irisviel, diverged from Justeaze by a mere 0.08% at creation.
If Jubstacheit wanted to create a homunculus different from Justeaze to act independently and serve as a living Lesser Grail like Illyasviel, then this divergence quantifier made logical sense, even if the process itself could be optimised countless times.
So... this Irisviel was a baseline model for Illyasviel's later design.
I continued scrolling down. Many subsequent batches yielded similar failures, yet I couldn't find a single batch or record for Illyasviel anywhere in these logs.
Cataloguing that observation for now, I pulled my focus elsewhere.
Memory Imprints.
"Memory" implied a set of lived experience, sequential, chronological, requiring elapsed time to accumulate. But the note above had already told me that was wrong: divergence was tracked only at genesis, before any experience could occur.
"Imprint" in this context meant copying something into a database for storage and retrieval when needed.
And both of these things together meant something entirely different.
I navigated back to Irisviel's batch and pressed Enter. That list folded on its own, replaced by a new window bearing only a single line.
[Overwrite Active Terminal Identity: Jubstacheit → Irisviel?]
[Yes/No]
Things were much easier for me now. Normally, I would have needed to reset this entire terminal from the ground up to restore it to full capacity, and rebooting an advanced AI tasked with maintaining and protecting the Einzbern castle would take time.
Now, working around it was possible, I just had to change the terminal's identity and grant myself owner access, saving hours that could be better spent hunting for any leftover ingredients.
Selecting 'Yes,' I pressed Enter.
[Overwrite in progress...]
Every silver thread seized at the same instant, then unwound from the shape of a terminal into ordinary, inert threads, their silver light fading out entirely. Some remained connected to the USB cable; others lay spread across my table, unresponsive.
[Purging active identity: 'Jubstacheit' — 03%... 41%... 89%... complete.]
[Loading identity: 'Irisviel' — pending memory imprint verification.]
[Verification complete. Divergence within recorded parameters.]
[Initializing... 1%]
The counter held there. I waited for it to climb.
It didn't.
[Insufficient energy supply. Estimated Time for Completion: Recalculating...]
[ETA: 14 days, 6 hours.]
Fourteen days. Far beyond our time limit, we couldn't wait that long just for this AI to come online.
[Power draw: 0.3% of required output. Source: residual castle reserves.]
[Recommend: Alternate power source to reduce completion time.]
I kept my gaze trained on those words for a moment before a solution presented itself. Through my Servant connection to Medusa, I reached for her.
Medusa... Come here.
Mn. Her reply was instantaneous.
It would take her about a minute to reach me. In that time, I decided to get the preparations done.
As I reached across the table, those magic circles on my glove rotated once, materializing another USB cable in my grip.
There was no need to wait. A sharp jerk freed the plug from its wire; the other end got a similar treatment, leaving two detached connectors and a bare wire.
Looping two fingers around that metal wire, I tossed it aside. It could only transfer electricity, useless as a power source for this terminal's energy needs.
A minute passed as I worked. Then, a deep engine rumble echoed from nearby. A black bike cut through the horizon, growing larger with every breath. Medusa rode it, purple hair hovering behind her, glasses back on her face.
I glanced at her once, then brought my hand to my mouth, teeth closing around the edge of my glove.
I pulled back, tearing a short ribbon of fabric from the glove. It would serve as a wire.
Unlike standard metallic wires that conducted only electricity, my gloves were dyed in a mana solution, making their cloth a perfect conduit for magical energy.
Medusa braked close by, suspension screaming and the front tire screeching to a halt beside my table.
She looked at the ribbon of cloth hanging from my mouth and tilted her head.
"... What do you need me to do?"
I spoke without looking at her.
"I want you to put R1 on its centre stand first, making sure the throttle is within my arm's reach."
Medusa dismounted in a single fluid motion, her boots barely making a sound against ground. She gripped R1's handlebars and shifted her weight, hauling the bike backward onto its centre stand with a controlled heave. Its metal frame rocked once, then settled steady.
The throttle sat just within arm's reach of where I stood. Good.
Picking up those two discarded USB connectors from the table, I turned one over between my fingers. Standard copper pins and plastic casing. Nothing special about them individually.
What mattered was what ran between them.
I laid that ribbon of cloth on my table, smoothing it out with my palm. Bringing a single connector close, I pointed a finger inside its casing. A magic circle flared on my glove, sparks erupting from that fingertip, intensity controlled to only melt copper slightly.
Then I pressed an end of the ribbon into its heated casing, a makeshift solder. The other connector and ribbon's opposite end got a similar treatment.
A crude wire of cloth lay on my table, looking almost comical with two connectors bound to a strip of fibers. But it would carry mana instead of electricity. And that was what this terminal needed.
Medusa watched from beside R1, her expression unreadable behind those glasses.
"...Cable?"
"Yes, a cable."
I brought one end of that cable near the terminal's silver threads. A few among them twitched, then drifted upward to latch onto its mouth.
Taking in their reactions, I shifted the laptop toward R1 and rose from my chair, footsteps crunching through snow beside the bike's fuel tank.
My hand drifted to a shallow space beneath the fuel tank, fingers searching behind its metallic frame for one specific thing.
After a few seconds of searching, my fingers closed around something and pulled it out.
A plug, or rather R1's auxiliary power outlet, normally used for accessories. I plugged the remaining connector into it without hesitation, that cloth ribbon bridging the gap between bike and terminal in an arc.
I turned to Medusa.
"Pull the throttle. Hold it steady."
She mounted R1 again, hands wrapping around its handlebars. A twist, and the engine roared back to life, RPMs climbing upward to a sustained, thrumming growl that rattled through its frame and into the cloth cable.
Pressing my right hand against R1's chassis, fingers splayed across its fuel tank, the magic circles on my glove began to rotate in sequence. Each ring clicked into alignment before the next engaged.
Circle one. Circle two. Circle three. Each rotation triggered another one, a cascading chain that pulsed through metal, sinking past its chassis all the way to its tires.
Thousands of miniature magic circles awoke along R1's frame, and the engine's roar climbed to a howl, tires spinning free so fast that all the snow beneath them melted in vapour, exhaust punching up curtains of slush and water behind.
My left hand closed around the ribbon. It vibrated ceaselessly, channeling a massive surge of mana from R1 straight into the terminal.
But its flow was uneven, the cloth strained where copper met fabric, small sparks hissing through air.
I tightened my grip.
"[Structural Reinforcement]."
My mana poured into the cloth's structure, only as much as it could take without choking. Its strain eased, flow evening out, barely. Sparks thinned. A band-aid solution.
On the screen, that counter stirred.
[Initializing... 7%... 15%... 29%...]
Medusa glanced at me from R1's seat, pulling the throttle even further.
VROOM!
"... It's working?" She asked.
"It's working."
[Initializing... 34%... 46%... 51%...]
Those threads had started to thrash around by now, coiling into one another, forming the outline of a new terminal.
A micro-tear opened across that cloth-wire from the sheer amount of mana being transferred through.
Releasing the fuel tank, my right hand shot up, closing over Medusa's grip on the throttle, adjusting its speed just below our makeshift wire's breaking point.
[Initializing... 67%... 82%... 100%...]
The window went dark. Then flashed with new words.
[Terminal Irisviel — Online.]
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[10 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
First of all, the talents he used here? [Ultimate Biker], [Ultimate Mechanic] and [Ultimate Inventor].
Now, before I was thinking about only doing something with Justeaze, but then I thought better to take Iris as well. Technically not really Iris since she won't have any memories of after being created, exactly like a newly created Homunculus, besides she even exists as an AI. But I have something huge planned for both of them.
I think bending my protagonists thought process to explain things to others without it feeling tell-y or exposition should work like this. I've found this as a place where I can still improve tremendously, so from now on I'll try to dive deeper into the thoughts of both Izuru and Bell.
Anyway, have a fun day, everyone!
Note: For anyone wondering, yes Izuru does not know Iris is Illya's mother. Never asked probably.