[Seeing the hooded figure approach, Fuli immediately stood up to welcome him.]
[His gaze quickly fell on the object in the other's hand. His originally calm eyes revealed a peculiar excitement, much like a train molester encountering a voluptuous married woman on his way to work, revealing an impatient greed at that bursting fullness.]
[Hey! Can you stop with the random descriptions?!]
The innocent victim, who had been standing still the whole time, loudly protested the trash AI's slander.
[Prometheus is merely describing the Host's behavior upon seeing the other party. Why is the Host reacting so strongly?] The little AI glanced at him sideways, her lips pursing in a malicious tease. [Could it be... a guilty conscience?]
[Guilty my ass! If a normal polite greeting gets twisted like this by you, I can't imagine what you'd say if something actually happened!] Fuli fought back the urge to roll his eyes in front of the hooded figure. [And where did you learn all these messy terms? I never let you scan my memories!]
[The Host just rode the train. There were many observation subjects in the carriage.]
The little one fully demonstrated with her actions that traveling ten thousand miles beats reading ten thousand books.
While the hapless Host and his troll AI were bickering mentally, the hooded figure arrived slowly in front of them.
He looked suspiciously at Fuli, whose expression was fluctuating wildly, and after a moment of thought, took a large, imperceptible step back.
[It's all your fault. Great, now he thinks I'm mentally ill!]
Facing the complaints of the certified mental patient, the little AI replied solemnly, [Actually, Prometheus is just a product of the Host's schizophrenia. The Host never awakened any Finality Coordinator System.]
[Why don't you just say everything in front of me is a hallucination before my death, and my real body is lying in a hospital bed receiving palliative care?]
Fuli decided to ignore this loose-lipped duck and turned to look at the storage box held by the hooded figure. "Is everything here?"
The other party nodded silently, reached out, and lifted the lid:
Famous Object: Mikazuki Munechika. The last protective treasured sword of Ashikaga Yoshiteru, the 13th Seii Taishogun of the Muromachi Shogunate in the Far East. Curved blade, blade length 80cm. Frosty, simple, slender, and sharp, like flowing moonlight. Even after hundreds of years, it still cuts iron like mud and slices gold and jade.
All of the above was written on the label next to the tachi.
One could only say that the people of the Far East had standards; when praising their own treasures, they really praised them to death.
Prometheus realized something was wrong from this label. She bit her lip and asked tentatively, [Host, was this sword... taken by the Foundation directly from the Far East National Museum?]
The forging process of a tachi involves the blacksmith forging the blade body and the tang as one piece, and then installing the mountings, which consist of the hilt, guard, scabbard, etc.
This construction allows the metal blade to be preserved for a long time without corrosion simply by removing the wooden mountings.
In other words, blades that are specially disassembled to prevent corrosion are basically antiques with some history.
Combined with the label next to it, and the fact that the real Mikazuki Munechika—one of the Tenka-Goken (Five Swords Under Heaven)—was kept in the Far East National Museum, it was hard not to make strange associations.
[Stolen from the museum? Probably.]
Fuli fiddled with the famous sword in its unmounted state, like an uncle or auntie picking vegetables at a market, and commented as he looked:
[Don't be too surprised. The Future Foundation is, after all, among the top tier of medium-sized organizations. The Far East after WWII is a recognized sieve. Schicksal established a branch, Anti-Entropy sent troops to station there. So what if they took one of the Tenka-Goken?]
He picked up the label and read it repeatedly. [I can only say they deserve it. Being perfectly good humans yet choosing to act like beasts.]
As expected, on the back of the label was a note left by the hooded figure in scrawled Chinese characters:
This tachi comes with the skill 'Tenka-Goken,' which can significantly increase physical attack power by consuming weapon durability.
Simultaneously, in the hands of someone with mental fortitude, Mikazuki Munechika produces an awe-inspiring pressure that can, to a certain extent, harm non-corporeal entities like spirits and elemental lifeforms.
It is worth noting that while the weapon's hardness and sharpness are sufficient to easily sever limbs and decapitate, due to the tachi's extremely light weight and thin blade, it is difficult to break through thick, hard substances when slashing.
Prometheus summarized simply: [Special attack against biologicals, suppression against spirits, scratch damage against mechs.]
She seemed to naturally assume that Fuli met the condition of "mental fortitude" required to trigger Mikazuki's effects.
[Fighting that big fox Jizo Mitama requires exactly this special attack against biologicals.]
After a simple inspection of the blade, Fuli looked at the jade stone resting quietly in the other recess of the storage box.
Perhaps worried that he didn't know how to use it, the hooded figure explained meticulously, "Hold it in your hand and crush it."
Like the skills obtained from the Finality Coordinator System gacha, skills sealed in jade stones didn't require extra time to learn.
Crack!
Fuli crushed the jade on the spot and quickly scanned the new memories in his brain. After confirming everything was correct, he stored Mikazuki into the Galactic Baseball Bat, which functioned as a scabbard, and turned to walk out of the locomotive.
The hooded figure watched his back silently until he disappeared outside the door.
No unnecessary communication throughout the entire process. That's professionalism.
"Oh, right." Remembering something, Fuli popped his head back in from outside the car window like a cat. "I hope there will be more teammates this time."
Unexpectedly, the hooded figure, who had been calm all along, seemed to have his defenses breached by this sentence.
She coughed hard, the delicate corners of her mouth hidden under the hood twitching uncontrollably with an indescribable bitterness:
"I appreciate your good wishes."
...
Leaving Kisaragi Station wasn't as troublesome as coming. After just three simple transfers, the afternoon sun was shining on Fuli's shoulders.
"3:00 PM."
Amidst the crowd, he rubbed his belly. Conscientiously avoiding buffet restaurants where he would bully ordinary people, he found a nearby Chinese restaurant instead.
After ordering the largest, most filling, and cheapest Yangzhou fried rice at the counter, Prometheus asked curiously, [What did that sentence before leaving the station mean?]
[Literal meaning. I just hope that when the three-year period is up, out of the twenty-one people in this batch who made wishes, a few more will actually show up as teammates for the Future Foundation's secret mission.]
Fuli, who had found a seat, thought for a moment, then stopped wiping the table with a napkin in surprise.
[Prometheus, you don't really think that those twenty-one guys who took out loans first and will pay later can all live peacefully until the mission starts, do you?]