Fate's Choice: Livestream at the Start Summoning Billions of Ravens

Rome, early morning.

The number on the holographic panel jumped another level.

92.3%.

Jiang Ming leaned back in his chair, holding a half-glass of red wine, watching the number slowly climb from 92.3 to 92.4, with the interval nearly three seconds longer than the previous jump.

The speed is decreasing.

In the first eight hours after the anchor point was triggered, the progress bar climbed almost like a steep straight line, jumping from 37% to 88% in one go, advancing by more than six percentage points per hour on average.

However, starting from 88%, the slope of the curve becomes visibly slower.

After reaching 92%, the time required for each percentage point increased nearly fourfold.

Jiang Ming put down his wine glass and cut out the underlying data stream of the holographic panel.

The reconstruction status of the four abilities is arranged in four columns, each followed by an independent percentage value and a miniature progress bar.

Raven Summoning, Super, 100%.

The progress bar in the first row is full, green, and no longer moving.

Weathering With You, Super, 98.2%.

At the end of the progress bar in the second row, there is a small blank section that is slowly being filled, and the filling speed is completely synchronized with the overall panel's climbing rhythm.

Plant control, advanced, 95.4%.

The third line of blank space is longer, but the filling process is smooth and there are no stutters.

Voice of the Soul, Advanced, 97.1%.

The fourth line is almost synchronized with the second line.

Jiang Ming's finger slid back and forth between the four columns of data twice, then stopped.

The remaining 8% is not evenly distributed across the four core competencies; the core competencies were already fully completed at 88%.

The system is currently being rebuilt to optimize the limits of the four capabilities.

The terminal data that was pushed to the ceiling during the last battle of Mirror One in Tokyo Bay; the mental load limit when Raven Summoning gathered hundreds of millions of shadow crows to form a giant bird with a wingspan of 10,000 meters; the atmospheric parameter control precision when Weathering With You created a super cyclone in a confined sea area; and the concept fusion threshold of Plant Control and Mind Voice in a near-death state.

Those data only appeared once during the last thirty seconds of Mirror One's life, and disappeared along with his physical and mental annihilation.

The system is retrieving that thirty seconds of data, byte by byte, from nothingness.

Jiang Ming typed a line in his log: "Limited parameters are recovering, the rate of decrease is as expected, no intervention is needed."

Just as he was about to turn off the underlying data stream, his gaze swept across the bottom of the panel.

My finger froze in mid-air for a second.

A line of small gray text appeared at the bottom of the panel.

The font size is two levels smaller than the normal prompt text, and the color is 60 shades gray, the same as the panel background color. If you don't look closely, it will almost blend into the background.

[External energy residue detected. Integrate? Y/N]

Jiang Ming stared at the line of text for five seconds.

Then he put the wine glass on the table and straightened up from the back of his chair.

External energy residue.

He went over those five words in his mind three times.

It wasn't a function he set up.

When he created Mirror One, he set template parameters; when he strengthened it, he infused it with four abilities; when he materialized it, he invested emotional value; and when he reshaped it, he set anchor point conditions.

Every step was part of his script.

But this line of small gray text is not on any page of the script.

His finger reached towards the Y position, stopping two centimeters from the trigger point, but did not press it down.

"External energy residue".

He broke the phrase apart and rearranged it.

Externally, excluding the host itself and the system internally.

Energy is not information, not memory, not fragments of concepts; it is energy.

Residual, non-original components attached to the Raven God's remodeling carrier.

After Mirror One was completely destroyed in Tokyo Bay, its conceptual remains fell into the Mariana Trench, where it was covered by abyssal debris and slept for forty-seven days at a depth of 9,500 meters.

For those forty-seven days, his layer of ash, sandwiched between the abyssal debris and the crimson-gold light source inside the crystal cocoon, served as a buffer zone.

The abyssal residue erodes from the outside.

The reddish-gold light source expands from within.

The ash layer was subjected to force on both sides, but it was not crushed; instead, it maintained a fragile balance.

During this process, the ash layer absorbed some substances.

It wasn't remnant of the abyss; Funinna had already cleaned it up with the power of water.

It is a fragment of a reddish-gold light source.

The being that had been calling for help at a frequency of 0.07 Hz for an unknown period of time in the deep sea at a depth of 10,000 meters had its energy fragments seep into the ash layer of the Raven God. The ash layer absorbed the fragments like a sponge, and then the fragments were brought back along with the reshaping process.

After figuring out this chain of logic, Jiang Ming typed the second line in his log.

"The Raven God carried something I hadn't written into the script. There was an entity in the abyss remnants that couldn't be categorized by the system, and its energy fragments were absorbed by the Raven God's ash layer and brought back."

He looked at the grayed-out Y/N options.

N is a safe choice, rejecting integration, excluding unknown variables, and allowing the Raven God to return cleanly with his preset template parameters.

Y is a gamble, accepting unknown elements and allowing the Raven God to return with an extra amount of energy whose consequences he cannot predict.

Jiang Ming stared at the screen for three seconds.

He pressed Y.

The progress bar jumped.

It jumped directly from 92.3% to 93.1%, without any intermediate values.

At the moment of the jump, a very faint crimson-gold light pattern flashed across the background of the holographic panel, extending two centimeters upwards from the position of the small gray text at the bottom, and then disappeared.

The small gray text also disappeared, as if it had never appeared at all.

The progress bar resumed its previous steady ascent.

93.2%. 93.3%.

Jiang Ming leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his red wine.

The wine was no longer cold, and the room temperature made the astringency of the tannins more pronounced.

He looked at the slowly ticking number, and a tiny smile curved his lips.

"Mirror One never follows the script."

He swirled the wine glass halfway around, leaving a thin layer of red liquid on the glass.

"Even after he's dead, he's still causing me accidents."

97.4%.

98.1%.

98.7%.

As the hours passed, the night sky over Rome changed from deep blue to inky black, and then the first hint of dawn appeared at the edge of that inky black.

The progress bar slowed down again in the last two percent, and the time required to jump one step became six times that before.

98.8%.

The interval is 4 minutes and 17 seconds.

98.9%.

The interval is 4 minutes and 42 seconds.

99.0%.

A new system notification popped up in the center of the panel, with the font size restored to normal, white, and bold.

[Final form confirmed. Host, would you like to adjust template parameters?]

Below the prompt, an editing interface appeared, in a format familiar to Jiang Ming, exactly the same as the one he used when creating Mirror One.

Personality parameters, memory weight, behavioral tendencies, loyalty lock-in, and emotional threshold.

Each item is followed by a draggable slider and a numeric input box accurate to two decimal places.

He can raise loyalty from its current value to the maximum.

He can erase all those independent judgment tendencies that flashed through his mind in the last thirty seconds in Tokyo Bay and were outside his predetermined range.

He can turn Mirror One into a perfect tool, a puppet that will never stray from the script.

Jiang Ming's finger hovered above the editing interface.

three seconds.

He closed the editing interface.

A confirmation dialog box popped up.

[Are you sure you don't want to adjust the template?]

He clicked "confirm".

"Let him be himself."

The progress bar has skipped 99.1%.