"Welcome,"—standing before Aoko was none other than Marisbury Animusphere, the current Lord of the Department of Astromancy at the Clock Tower. Ever since he took a hit from an Origin Bullet at the end of the last Holy Grail War, he'd been stuck in a wheelchair, looking half-dead. But right now, he seemed to be in a rather good mood. Behind him stood his top disciple and now the nominal director of Finis Chaldea, Kirschtaria Wodime. "I've been waiting for the two of you to arrive for a long time."
"Sounds like you're complaining that we're late?" Aoko raised her eyebrows. She glanced around at Chaldea's interior, speaking to Marisbury with a casual tone, "Well, you can't blame us. The penguins in Antarctica were just too adorable. We spent quite some time playing with them."
"That's not what the teacher meant..." Kirschtaria seemed a bit uncomfortable with Aoko's barbed words and tried to explain for Marisbury, but Marisbury himself just raised his hand to stop him.
"Forgive me, Miss Blue," Marisbury said sincerely. "I am a bit anxious, but the current situation leaves me little choice. The truth is, we've encountered some issues with the Spiritron Transfer experiments, which is why we need your assistance, as well as that of the King of Knights."
"Oh? Problems?" Aoko turned her gaze back to Marisbury's face, looking intrigued. "I heard that the Trismegistus that Atlas sent was adjusted and running perfectly. Or is it Chaldeas that's having problems?"
"No, Miss Touko's work was completed perfectly," Marisbury shook his head. "We'll have to discuss the details once we're in the control room. The situation is... a bit complicated."
Aoko and Artoria exchanged glances, neither confirming nor denying Marisbury's words. But in any case, the vast Finis Chaldea more or less belonged to the Aozaki family, at least in part, so without any hesitation, they followed Marisbury's electric wheelchair deeper into Chaldea.
"Currently, the construction of all of Chaldea's buildings is nearly complete," Kirschtaria explained to Aoko. "As for staff, aside from the magi invited by the teacher, about half the technical personnel invited by the UN and the Mage's Association have arrived. We've barely managed to get Chaldea's facilities operational."
Aoko listened attentively. The last time she saw the photos, Finis Chaldea was still a huge construction site in a snowy wasteland. Yet, in such a short amount of time, it was almost finished. Truly, money can make the impossible possible. With the Aozaki family's funding, the construction team hired by the Animusphere family worked at a phenomenal pace, almost rivaling the legendary infrastructure speed of the mysterious East University.
According to Wodime's explanation, Chaldea's energy system was powered by a custom small nuclear reactor. Most of the output went to maintaining Chaldea's facilities, with the rest supporting the upcoming Heroic Spirit summoning.
That's right: Chaldea's Heroic Spirit summoning system didn't rely entirely on natural mana, but instead converted electrical energy into magical energy—a technology unique at present to the Department of Astromancy and Finis Chaldea. Not even the Atlas Institute or Wandering Sea could replicate it.
But this technology wasn't without flaws. Take, for example, the Greater Grail system built by the Einzbern family: every participant's Command Seals were, in a sense, tokens of miracles, enabling powerful magecraft nearly on par with True Magic, like spatial teleportation. Chaldea's Command Seals, however, couldn't achieve such feats.
Chaldea's Command Seals were mainly used to support summoned Servants, for things like healing, restoring mana, or boosting status—essentially temporary spells with fairly limited effects. They mostly served as proof of contract between Master and Servant. But the system wasn't without its advantages: Chaldea's Command Seals could recover one stroke per day—in other words, they could be recharged technologically.
As they walked through Chaldea's corridors, Aoko suddenly glimpsed, in a half-open room, a man in a white lab coat with pink hair, holding a tray of cake and grinning foolishly at a computer screen.
"Aiya aiya, Magical Mary is so cute," Romani Archaman was saying to the video on his computer, looking every bit the lovestruck fan. "I wonder how I could support Magical Mary... Maybe I should buy her newest figure...?"
Unbelievable. Is this era already seeing the rise of virtual mascots?
Aoko was speechless. Out in the wider world, even Windows was still a novelty, and yet this white-haired scammer had already debuted online as a virtual personality.
"If it were me, I wouldn't spend a single cent on that guy," Aoko said, leaning against Romani Archaman's doorway, passing judgment. She glanced at his computer, where he was obsessing over a gaudy blog page. "I don't see why anyone would pay for someone who's never even shown their face. For all you know, it's some creepy old man running the site."
"Magical Mary is real!" Upon hearing Aoko's words, Romani Archaman took offense. He spun around and started passionately defending Magical Mary's existence, listing all kinds of evidence. "Every one of Magical Mary's blog posts is so full of emotion—how could a man possibly write them?! She must be a girl exactly like the one in her illustrations!"
Aoko was a little stunned by the genuine madness of this so-called King of Magecraft. She blinked, trying to figure out how to explain the old saying, "You know a person's face, not their heart," to this ancient era's virtual fan.
"Ahem!" Kirschtaria walked over awkwardly. "Doctor Roman, this is our largest shareholder, Miss Aoko Aozaki, the wielder of the Fifth Magic. Perhaps you could..."
Marisbury, sitting in his wheelchair, also looked over at this point. But it was clear he wasn't used to Roman's antics either; he just watched with a strange expression and didn't comment.
Back when Touko used the Third Magic to help King Solomon incarnate in the present world, Solomon also temporarily gave up the omnipotent Ten Rings. But those ten rings were still under his control. In effect, this guy was just taking them off and pretending to be an ordinary person, experiencing life undercover—and he'd already become obsessed with virtual idols, specifically Magical Mary.
The most important thing was that Kirschtaria had no idea that Roman was King Solomon—at least, Marisbury hadn't told him. That was probably King Solomon's wish, so Aoko saw no reason to spoil the secret, for now.