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

Langley, Virginia, an oval-shaped analysis room on the third basement level.

Forty-seven hours of continuous work filled the air with the mixed smell of cold coffee and printer toner.

The dense red markings on the holographic wall have been crossed out one by one, leaving only the last three lines still faintly glowing orange.

Gray pulled the last cross-match result out of the printer; the edges of the paper were still warm.

"Mirror One".

She put the photo at the very top of the whiteboard.

A telephoto photo of the Sanya naval port shows a blurry but recognizable profile, with the military vehicle's number circled in red.

"The last reliable confirmation was at the Sanya naval port in China, where he was seen alongside military vehicles. Satellites continued to track him thereafter, and based on a combination of thermal imaging and analysis of ship deck activities, it was determined with high confidence that he had returned to the vicinity of the core ships of the Pacific Fleet."

Patterson sat at the end of the long table, his fingers resting on his knees without moving.

"It highly overlaps with the area where the water god was active."

Gray continued, pasting the second satellite screenshot.

"But we cannot obtain close-up confirmation. The electromagnetic protection and counter-reconnaissance deployment of the Chinese fleet mean that all optical means can only obtain a blurry outline at the deck level."

Collins entered from the side, clutching a summary document from the National Reconnaissance Office.

"No personnel have been found to have left the ship in the past 72 hours. The heat source distribution and personnel activity patterns of the three warships are highly stable. She has not left that area of ​​water."

"In other words," Patterson finally spoke, "she was in the Pacific Ocean during the timeframe of the four incidents in Congo, Dhaka, South Sudan, and Aleppo."

"Yes," Gray nodded. "Physically, long-range delivery is not feasible. Unless she can purify the abyssal residue at a depth of 10,000 meters in the ocean while precisely deploying the conceptual weapon to four countries on three continents."

Patterson did not respond to that sentence.

Gray turned to the second page of the report.

"The owners of the six ancient concept weapons all have clear locations and activity patterns."

"Professor Hassan, the holder of the Cairo Scales, a 72-year-old Parkinson's patient, has not left the museum for the past week."

"Arthur, the wielder of the sword in the stone in London, is trapped in a force field he created."

"John, the holder of the New York coin, is facing a $640 billion lawsuit."

"The holder of the Qinling Tiger Tally is 68 meters underground."

"The Siberian Fire Holder is trapped inside the walls."

She placed the six photos on the whiteboard one by one, and labeled each one with a timeline and the scope of the activity.

"The other surviving superhumans after the Holy Grail War," Collins continued, "we investigated them one by one, totaling seventeen. Nine of them had a power level no higher than C-rank, barely enough to protect themselves. Of the remaining eight, four were engaged in collaborative research under the surveillance of various governments, two were in seclusion and their abilities had nothing to do with conceptual weapon manufacturing, and the last two disappeared, but their ability files showed that they were both physical enhancement types and did not possess creative superhuman abilities."

Gray closed the three-page report, walked over to Patterson, and placed it on the table.

"There's only one conclusion."

Patterson looked down at the line of bold text.

Gray's voice echoed in the enclosed space: "Within the intelligence framework controlled by the US, none of the known superhumans have the means to commit this crime. We are dealing with someone who has never entered any intelligence database."

The analysis room remained quiet for a long time.

The sound of Rogers flipping through files in the corner stopped.

Collins' coffee cup remained suspended in mid-air, never reaching his lips.

Gray stood still, waiting for Patterson's reaction.

Patterson flipped to the last page of the report, read it, closed it, and put it back on the desktop.

Fifteen minutes.

He sat in the chair for a full fifteen minutes without saying a word.

Gray number.

She stood three meters away, looking at the man who held the highest authority over the US military's intelligence system, and for the first time saw something close to bewilderment on his face.

Then Patterson stood up, walked to the encrypted phone on the wall, and picked up the receiver.

"Connect with the Director of the National Security Bureau."

While waiting for the call to connect, he turned and glanced at Gray.

"You missed a possibility in your report."

Gray frowned. "Which one?"

“If this person has never been in any database,” Patterson tapped his finger on the microphone, “then he either appeared out of thin air, or he’s been hiding in some place we think is impossible.”

The call was connected.

"I need metadata for all global satellite communications over the past ninety days."

Patterson spoke a beat faster than usual.

"Filtering criteria: Any coordinate that shows unusual encrypted communication or unexplained energy fluctuations within 48 hours before the events occur at the four coordinate points: Kolwezi in Congo, Dakabogra in Congo, Juba in South Sudan, and Aleppo in Syria."

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone.

"General, this amount of data covers the complete metadata streams of 372 communication satellites in orbit around the world. It will take at least two weeks to filter and cross-reference it."

Five days.

"General, technically speaking..."

Five days.

Patterson repeated himself, his tone unchanged, but the veins on the back of his hand holding the microphone bulged.

"If it's been more than five days, the fifth nail may have already been driven in. At that point, your two-week report will be nothing but scrap paper."

He hung up the phone and turned to walk towards the door.

He stopped a step as he passed Gray.

"Continue to monitor the Pacific formation. Report to me immediately if Mirror One shows any signs of leaving the ship."

Gray nodded.

Patterson pushed open the heavy soundproof door, and the cold light from the corridor shone on his back.

Before the door closed, Gray heard him say something to his adjutant in the hallway.

"Double the staff size of Project Hunter."

……

Cairo, the underground restoration hall of the National Museum.

At 3:47 a.m., Hassan's thirty-ninth hour.

Parkinson's tremors were suppressed to the occasional slight tremor at the fingertips within a two-meter radius of Libra, without affecting his grip on the pen.

The lights in the restoration room were buzzing overhead, and two of them had started to flicker, but no one came to replace them.

The table was covered with papers.

On the far left is a copy of the fourteen unknown symbols on the Libra base, each marked with its frequency of appearance and positional relationship in red.

In the center is a high-resolution scanned print of a Sumerian clay tablet, with the seven symbols on the back enlarged to A3 size.

On the far right is a thin document, only two pages long, handed over by the Ninth Bureau through diplomatic channels, bearing the official seal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Rabbit Country.

The document content is extremely brief.

The description of the giant fish's fin symbols observed by Funina during her first dive can be summarized in one sentence: fourteen symbols, alternating between swirling and acute angles.

Hassan read the sentence aloud for the sixth time.

enough.

He pulled a blank A4 sheet of paper from the table and broke down all the known symbols according to their basic structure.

Whirlpool, acute angle, horizontal bend, water ripple.

Four basic stroke units.

Three of the fourteen symbols on the Libra base were used after being disassembled.

The seven symbols on the Sumerian clay tablets were broken down into four different symbols.

The seven new symbols of Libra's self-burning are also four in number when broken down, but the way they are combined is completely different from that of the clay tablet.

He arranged all the breakdown results together and drew a grid on the paper with a pencil.

Twenty-four columns.

Each group of symbols calls only a portion of the four basic units, arranged in a strict cycle from the first column to the twenty-fourth column.

The base of the scales features reliefs of twenty-four deities.

The symbols on Sumerian clay tablets, when broken down according to this logic, can be precisely categorized into twenty-four groups of basic elements.

Hassan's pencil moved swiftly across the paper, and the tremors of Parkinson's disease completely disappeared at that moment, not even the slightest tremor in his fingertips.

After the seven newly burned symbols of Libra are filled into the grid, the originally incomplete sequence is only one set away from closing.

Group 23.

His pencil tip stopped on that blank square.

The position of the twenty-third deity on the bottom of Libra was deliberately scraped flat.

When magnified four hundred times, the cut reveals an absolutely perfect hexagonal geometric lattice array.

He wrote a line in his notebook with trembling hands: The absence of symbol number 23 is not a sign of damage; the entire symbol system is waiting for group number 23 to be returned to its place.

The pen nib paused for three seconds after the period, then continued writing.

He didn't know if it was a countdown, a summoning program, or some kind of permission verification process.

But there was one thing he was certain of for the first time.

Libra is not reminiscing about the past.

It is waiting for a certain outcome that is about to happen.

The scarab's compound eyes flashed in the darkness, at a frequency of exactly fourteen times per minute.

Hassan looked up at it, then lowered his head and continued writing.

He added a parenthesis at the end of the last line, which read: "The fourteen symbols on the fins of the deep-sea giant fish, if they belong to different positions in the same sequence as the fourteen symbols on the base of the Libra, then together they may just complete all the basic units required for the twenty-third group."

As the pen tip traced the final ink mark on the paper, a very low-frequency humming sound emanated from the base of the Libra.

The frequency of the scarab beetle's compound eyes jumped from fourteen times per minute to twenty-one times per minute.

Hassan's hand stopped.

The two flashing lights in the restoration room went out at the same second, leaving only the golden light of the scarab beetle's compound eyes dancing rhythmically in the darkness, illuminating the line of undried ink on his notebook with flickering brightness.