Outside New Eridu.
In a transmission channel with no visuals, several mysterious individuals seemed to sense something all at once—and each of them gasped in surprise.
"Well, this is unexpected… One of the Keys has been activated."
"Eh? Really? Which one is it—Ghost? Jinni? Or Youkai?"
"None of them. It's Fairy."
"Oh my, now this is getting interesting…"
...
When Belle opened her eyes and her vision gradually shifted from blurry to clear, she realized she was back in the archive room of the video store.
"Belle, are you alright?"—and then came her brother's face, entering her field of vision, gazing at her with deep concern.
Having just regained consciousness, Belle hadn't yet figured out what had happened, and her expression was blank for a moment—until her senses returned to her.
"Did I... faint?" she asked. She clearly remembered dreaming—an odd but unnervingly real dream.
A towering being over a hundred meters tall. A silhouette floating within that colossal creature. And Hollow Zero—cleaved cleanly in two by that very being.
It sounded like pure fantasy, yet she could recall every detail of the emotions she'd felt within the dream.
It was as if she'd absorbed years' worth of emotional energy all at once—utterly chaotic, like a volatile bomb ready to explode at any moment.
Thankfully, it was just a dream. Whatever its truth or falsehood, it hadn't left any apparent impact on her current state.
Still… she was incredibly curious.
Who was the figure floating inside that massive being?
"After you hit the restart button, you just collapsed out of nowhere. Luckily, you woke up pretty quickly," Wise explained gently in response to her question.
Zhong Yan stepped in then, handing Belle a cup of warm water.
"Are you sure your body's okay? If something happened because of the thing I gave you, I'd never forgive myself."
"I... I don't feel anything wrong, at least not for now." Belle accepted the cup and, as she spoke, she did a quick check on herself to see if any residual pain lingered.
But no—besides some residual mental fog, everything seemed normal.
"By the way, looks like you accidentally triggered the AI. We've already interacted with it. Now it's your turn."
With that, Wise walked up to the idle HDD system, cleared his throat like he was talking to a person, and said:
"Fairy, your user is here."
The room fell into a brief silence—there was no response from the system.
Belle tilted her head in confusion.
And then, the room lights flickered again. The TV screen next to them lit up, broadcasting a stream of current news footage.
A moment later, the once-dormant HDD system booted up fully. Bright light flashed across the entire screen.
"System startup complete—Now initializing Model III Unified Protocol General-Purpose AI with Sequential Integration Suite. Codename: Fairy. Hello, Master."
The voice—one Belle had heard before in her own mind—was now speaking out loud in the room. Her first reaction was complete shock.
Wise explained just in time:
"Right after you passed out, the HDD system restarted—and then this showed up."
It took Belle a moment to process it. After all, having your home computer turn into a talking girl was... a lot to take in.
"Surprised?" Zhong Yan chuckled. He stepped closer and addressed Fairy:
"Fairy, why don't you explain your functions to your user?"
Although Zhong Yan wasn't her registered master, Fairy didn't ignore his request. According to its usage protocol, introducing itself to the master was a necessary step.
"As per the user agreement you've signed, I will assist you in all tasks and operations—until the moment of opportunity arrives."
"My main function is data retrieval. I possess unrestricted access to over 80% of the city's intelligent devices. With my support, cumulative Hollow data is no longer necessary. I enable real-time evacuation route mapping within Hollows."
Real-time Hollow evacuation mapping. Hearing that, the siblings froze—stunned speechless.
"Th-that's not possible..." Belle muttered in disbelief; her mouth slightly open.
Only the Rosetta Data—the city's master Hollow archive, exclusively held by New Eridu's ruling class—could allow real-time route mapping. Yet this AI claimed to do the same?
Zhong Yan, by contrast, remained calm. He had known all along what Fairy could do.
"That is not a false claim. It is my core function. To demonstrate this, I can assist you in field Hollow surveys."
"I've already filtered some commission jobs from the Hollow Intel Forum—more commonly known as the Proxy Network. These tasks align with your current capabilities. Please proceed at your convenience."
"I look forward to working with you, Master."
At that, Wise pulled out his phone and checked the Proxy Network—sure enough, Fairy had flagged several commissions for them.
The rewards were high. The difficulty levels and qualifications required were just as demanding. Only a handful of people across the Proxy Network—perhaps only the legendary Proxy known as Phaeton—could even qualify.
But now that Phaeton had Fairy?
Those once-insurmountable missions would be trivial.
"You see how powerful this gift is now?" Zhong Yan asked with a grin. Judging by Wise's reaction, he knew the present had definitely hit the mark.
The question now was: what kinds of missions would the siblings take next?
After all, in the original game, the Phaeton siblings had their main account banned and were forced to create a low-level alt, which meant accepting only bottom-tier tasks.
But now?
With Fairy—an AI 270 times more powerful than anything they'd ever had—this was going to be a whole new story.