The infinite sword system has been mastered, and you say this is the dragon clan?

Chapter 363 "Why Does Life Sleep?"

"Hypnosis complete—hey, I'm telling you, give me some reaction."

After meeting up with the other group members, Emiya tried out the app he was testing, which was actually a form of hypnosis disguised as a pirated version of the Heavenly Voice Assimilation technique, but the overall response was lukewarm.

At least most girls didn't have any particular reaction.

Ugh, doesn't this make it seem like... BB, you're so useless! You rushed over excitedly to test me, but the results clearly show it was a complete waste of time. If I'd known it would turn out like this, I would have waited for Da Vinci and Constantine to work together on the final version before testing it.

Just as Emiya was inwardly complaining that BB's actions were unnecessary, the girls started talking.

Nono suddenly said, "You came all this way in such a hurry just to test me?"

“Yes,” Emiya nodded subconsciously, then realized something was off about his words, “but no, what you said sounds like—”

Nono put her hands on her hips and said, "What is this obedience test... Is it really necessary? I've tried all these positions over the years, or are you going to develop new positions, in which case I'll naturally listen to you."

This fierce female warrior uttered a startling statement, like a thunderclap from a clear sky, leaving everyone stunned and speechless.

"Huh?" Emiya's eyes widened, and he suddenly felt something was wrong... Would Nono usually talk like that in public?

Xia Mi, who was standing to the side, was also humming softly. It was unclear what she was thinking about, but her pure and beautiful face turned so red that it seemed like it was about to bleed. "You guys... you do have quite a few positions. Next time you're with me, remember not to pinch my chest like you do with other people!"

Emiya: "...?" Does Natsumi usually expose her flat chest like this, completely oblivious to everyone else?

Erii, standing beside him, poked her waist hard with her finger, her words short and forceful: "I also want to learn more, more and more!"

Okay, okay, let it go up! Also, stop attacking my waist!
Shuten-dōji exhaled a breath of drunken reeking of alcohol. "Hehehe, how about we spend this pleasant time together? Ah, the atmosphere of this conversation is so lively, and just thinking about your strong and handsome physique, Boss, makes me almost unable to restrain myself..."

Well, this top star is simply playing herself.

Minamoto no Yorimitsu instantly flew into a rage, “Damn you oni bugs, go back to your corner! This child should be with his mother in the good night, enjoying the company of maternal love!”

Why don't you two have a fight every night when you're choosing your cards?
Mashu blushed, a faint blush creeping across her cheeks. "No, senpai, that's too lewd... Before doing all those things... you have to go on at least three, no, five dates with me, and cultivate our feelings gradually!"

So, the key point is "with you," right? Mashu, you're showing your little chicken feet!

Alter Jeanne chimed in, "Seriously, your lives are so wicked and lewd...! But as an organization dedicated to saving the world, it's necessary to relax and unwind occasionally, right? Oh well, if you invite me on a date, I might consider it..."

No way, sis, why are you doing this too?! I only talked to you a few more times these past few days because of this whole bishop thing, and you're already getting all worked up about me?

His gaze shifted, and Emiya subconsciously looked at Black Mary, who was silent and just staring blankly.

Oh, that's great! There's still one Servant here who's staying rational and hasn't spoken without thinking because of the eerie atmosphere—

Black Mary stared intently at him. "...I'm just looking at your face, is there a problem with that?"

"..." I didn't have it before, but now that I hear your words and see the strange look in your eyes, I do.

In conclusion, after listening to the girls' bizarre theories, Emiya finally realized that Erii's example could not be taken as a general case, and that not everyone could maintain consistency in their words and actions under the influence of mental forces.

[Hmph, are you still going to say that BB's hypnosis app is useless?]

"It works! It's incredibly useful!"

Emiya offered a monotonous compliment, then, with a dark expression, proceeded to another step in the procedure. "To avoid further chaos, I'm not going to use it now. Release the hypnosis!"

If he didn't stop soon, he was a little afraid that some of the people in there would pounce on him and demand to try new positions, like having sex in the open...

A moment later, the invisible influence of mental assimilation dissipated, and the chaotic scene finally eased slightly.

Emiya wiped away imaginary cold sweat, convinced that he had temporarily escaped some major trouble—at least the battlefield battles of the Holy Knights and the Allied Forces were not as troublesome as this.

As for whether there will be any lingering side effects after the hypnosis, which was clearly skewed in an indescribable direction by BB, Emiya doesn't know, but hopefully there won't be.

"Speaking of the Allied Forces' war, how is your investigation into the Paladin Army going?"

“We’ve gained something,” Nono said. “To sum it up, the Servants all felt that those soldiers emitting blue light… their existence was similar to theirs, a kind of ‘Heroic Spirit Soldier’ with no skills or Noble Phantasms, just high stats.”

“I specifically captured a few on the battlefield and carefully investigated them using profiling—and then I traced their origins back to their birth. These things were originally human, but they underwent a series of profound mental transformations.”

Emiya nodded. He wasn't surprised that Nono could trace the origins of things so deeply from their appearance. She could do that a few years ago when she was still a mortal, and now the accuracy and detail would only be higher.

"What, then, is the essence of that transformation?"

Nono's description was tinged with disgust, perhaps because it reminded her of her own past. She couldn't help but express her aversion to that kind of extreme transformation. "What is clear is that the medium of transformation is that emperor's 'divine assimilation,' but it's different from the tuning spirit you saw in the Bordeaux church. That one is more thorough and essential..."

"How should I put it? Through profiling, what I get is that the kind of spiritual rewriting is more like spiritual pollution. Mortals are recruited as soldiers by the Holy Knights, and they lead these prospective soldiers to a specific location closer to the Emperor's palace in the center of the Holy City, and then use some kind of religious rhetoric to make them undergo a 'baptism' ceremony."

"Then, these soldiers will feel a surging, turbulent wave of spirit invading their minds. Countless overlapping and distorted sounds echo and tear at their reason. They are swallowed up and sink into it, and their individual spirits fall into a deep sleep. This spiritual mutation also affects the physical state, and in the end, they become the heroic spirits we see on the battlefield."

“And now, you’ve all seen their condition.” Nono said, gesturing with her lips, “They are completely standard, uniform fanatics. Their physical bodies have essentially collapsed, and their outer shells are maintained by their spiritual bodies protected by faith. It feels like a heretical method that is completely inferior to the Servant Spirit Origin, but the miracle is that… they have actually managed to stabilize their own existence.”

Nono suddenly shut her mouth after speaking. If Charlemagne had the Holy Grail, a symbol of miracles, then a miracle of this magnitude was not impossible.

“Mental pollution…distorted sounds…physical changes…” Emiya fell into deep thought, before finally asking, “Nono, have you observed the source of that mental pollution? It shouldn’t be the Holy Grail, right?” The Holy Grail created by Goetia was merely a high-powered energy source, not a Black Grail. Goetia didn’t possess all the evil of this world to create a Black Grail capable of mental pollution. That clearly couldn’t be right. Charlemagne must have used something else to create such a large-scale “cyborg Heroic Spirit Army.”

"Wait a minute, we can't see this, we can only force a 'rewind'—"

Nono took a deep breath; the immense magical power brought by her demigod traits was rapidly depleted as her abilities were activated.

This is a new effect of the profile ability after continuous evolution. Even without catalysts such as heroic spirits at hand, she can still perform in-depth profiles based on her own memories and cognition.

This is almost equivalent to conceptual tracing, as if we were to unveil the appearance of the world and treat its inner workings as a vast world-class library, conducting a direct search to the source.

However, due to the exponentially increasing volume of information being processed, this approach is extremely resource-intensive, and the resulting information is often very limited, potentially leaving listeners confused and bewildered, as if they were hearing a charlatan's prophecy.

"..."

After a long while, Nono, exhausted, grew even paler. She swayed and nestled into Emiya's arms, uttering a few words, "The Human Skin Book!... It's the Human Skin Book!"

"A book made of human skin??" Sure enough, the girls present were all baffled.

“…I understand.”

Only Emiya seemed to have an idea. Amidst the girls' confused gazes, Emiya activated his "intelligence network."

Yes, why didn't Marshal Gilles, who was originally supposed to create the singularity, appear in this era, and instead Charlemagne was there instead?

The Noble Phantasm that the Marshal relied on to perform his magic was the Book of Human Skin, so Charlemagne obtained the Noble Phantasm, then adjusted it with the Holy Grail to assimilate the people's minds.
"Where is Plerati? Is she still on Shadow Border?"

Emiya suddenly asked a question that seemed to have no beginning or end.

He needed to know the whereabouts of the original human skin book from this era. According to the "intelligence" he knew, the human skin book held by the marshal was a gift from his historical friend, Plerati. Therefore, Plerati, a living person from this era, should still have an original human skin book in his possession.

Speaking of which, the original Singularity should have included Queen Mary before she turned evil, and Jeanne d'Arc in white who teamed up with her. If the current Jeanne d'Arc in black and Queen Mary in black are both Avengers created by Prierati using the human skin book and black magic, then everything makes sense.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Aachen, the capital of Europe, is located in the very center of the European continent and is often referred to as the "heart of Europe".

As luck would have it, Charlemagne, the Frankish king who once ruled over most of Western Europe, was summoned to this era and once again launched his conquests, choosing Aachen as the center of his rule.

In the months since the Paladin Army set out, Aachen, as an international capital, has not been idle. Under the orders of His Majesty the King and with the contributions of the Paladins and soldiers, many Carolingian-style buildings have sprung up at an incredible speed.

Among these methods, the means known as magic—no, what the people called "the power of prayer"—played a very significant role in accelerating the construction process.

Soon, more and more churches, monasteries and other church buildings filled the city. At first, the residents would occasionally wonder what was the need for building so many church buildings, but they soon dispelled such doubts after Charlemagne implemented the policy of theocracy.

The European world seemed to have returned to the Carolingian era for a time—when church monasteries were no different from feudal social management such as nobles. The priests had their own fiefdoms, lived secular lives, and also possessed the same martial prowess as knights, as full of martial virtue as the monk soldiers during the war-torn period in Japan.

This was a common phenomenon in early Germanic societies.

Even Tobin, one of Charlemagne's twelve knights, belongs to this category.

Tobin held a dual identity; he was both Charlemagne's personal knight and the Archbishop of Aachen. In chivalric legends such as "The Song of Roland," he was regarded by Roland and his colleagues as the Frankish's most powerful warrior, but he was also known as a mage second only to Merlin...

In other words, this is also a combat-type mage.

Presumably, he shares a considerable amount of common ground with figures such as the British Sword Saint, the Israeli Boxing Champion, and the Uruk Axe King.

The only difference from the past is that Charlemagne, holding the Holy Grail, returned to the secular world, disrupted the ongoing Hundred Years' War between England and France, and expanded the scope of conquest to the whole of Europe. He even semi-openly kicked away the Roman Catholic Church, modified the prayers, and elevated himself to a height never before seen in the Christian faith system. It can be said that he seized the right of interpretation from the Church.

"Hey, you violent sorcerer, lecturing people here?"

When Roland came out of the palace, he happened to see Archbishop Tobin talking with an old woman who was weeping over the death of her son who had gone to war far away, and Roland offered her comfort in a way that was unique to believers.

"...This world is a valley of tears, but the Kingdom of Heaven is eternal. May the crown of martyrs remain for the departed, and may the Lord guide their souls with His merciful hand."

Tobin's words were compassionate.

"Rest assured, the place where our Emperor resides is the closest to Heaven. In this magnificent and beautiful Heaven, death is never the end of life. Your two sons, their bodies are merely in eternal sleep, not dead."

"But why are their lives dormant?"

"For they have received grace in spirit and ascended into the eternal kingdom of heaven. Amen."

"Amen." The old woman wiped away her tears, and both sides returned the religious greeting.

Tobin exchanged pleasantries with the old woman for a while before finally speaking to Knight Roland, "What's wrong? You actually came out of His Majesty the King's palace?"

“Because that guy Oliver from the front lines is back, haha, he's taken my place so I can go fight now. By the way, Oliver suffered a major defeat at the front, even Augier was killed. It's said that the one who defeated them was… uh—” Roland’s expression was strange.

"What is it?"

"A couple passionately in love on the battlefield seemed to be crushing Ogier while kissing, and even Oliver couldn't save the day."

(End of this chapter)