Gabriel let out a long sigh, staring at the hologram with fresh trauma.
"The second choice is Re:Zero…? Hah."
He glared at the screen for a moment, eyes squinting as if he'd just seen an outrageous electricity bill.
"That world is full of trauma, repeated deaths, mental collapse, identity crises, time paradoxes… basically, a complete package for shattering one's sanity."
He raised one hand and waved it to the side, as if shooing away a pesky insect.
"Pass. I'm not signing up for extreme psychological therapy yet."
"Next is the third choice: Mahoutsukai no Yome…" Gabriel read the world's name flatly. "A beautiful, aesthetic world, full of ancient magic… but—"
He stared at the hologram for a long moment, his expression blank, like a loading screen that failed to process.
"I have no interest in marrying a mysterious giant skull," he finally said. "And I'm not signing up for any supernatural domestic drama. NEXT."
He clicked his tongue softly, crossing his arms. "And again… I'm a guy, okay? Just because my name is unisex doesn't mean I'm suited to be anyone's groom."
"Fourth choice: Fate/Stay Night…"
Gabriel immediately covered his face. "Class Servants are impossible to obtain. There's no way a Herald suddenly becomes Saber or Caster. And if I just appear as a normal citizen—I'd be dead three minutes after the Grail War starts."
He thought about the flying swords and mana explosions. "No. My body wasn't made to be instant pulp."
Only one choice remained.
The fifth hologram glowed softly: Black Clover.
Gabriel stared at it for a long moment. Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth lifted.
"…Fufu. A world of Magic, Grimoires, Dungeons, and Spells. Hehe~ A world where Jobs, classes, and power can be sculpted by one's own hands."
He clenched his fist, calmer now.
"My original goal was to fill a Job slot. This world fits best."
He drew a deep breath, his bangs falling over his eyes—returning to full Ash style, the Watcher.
"Very well. Of the five realities the System offered… this is the only world that doesn't try to kill me illegally."
With a confident, thin smile, he pointed to the fifth choice.
"—Black Clover. I choose this world."
Ding!
[Settings saved!]
[Main Mission assigned…]
__________________
Mission Title: Black Clover
Difficulty Level: Easy
Number of Participants: 1
Number of Main Missions: 3
Mission 1: Join one of the Clover Kingdom's Magic Knight squads.
Mission 2: Complete missions as a Magic Knight, up to a maximum of 10 missions. The number of missions completed will affect the System Evaluation.
Mission 3: Acquire 5,000 System Points. The number of points collected will affect the System Evaluation.
Time Limit: 7 months
Penalty: 1,000 System Points will be deducted for each failed mission.
Reward: Determined after all Main Missions are completed.
__________________
Gabriel read through everything carefully, then… his shoulders trembled.
"Ku… hahaha…"
A soft laugh broke out, then turned crisp and ironic.
"After giving me the most absurd world in the entire universe," he muttered with a grin, "…don't expect me to actually complete this mission, System…"
He stared at the holographic window with a narrow, self-aware smile.
"My initial goal is simple… to fill the empty Job slot. And speaking of Jobs, this world is the perfect choice. Magic. Grimoire. Magic Knight. All PASS."
Gabriel let out a short, calm sigh, his dark bangs once again covering both eyes.
"…Very well. Ash accepts this challenge…"
Before he could finish the sentence, a soft blue-white light began to envelop his body.
Particles of light lifted from the tips of his fingers to the ends of his hair, gradually dissolving his form like mist caught in the wind.
In the next instant, Gabriel vanished.
Pulled out of the Infinity Room, his body was hurled through the Sky Pillar, piercing the boundaries of reality and entering the world of Black Clover.
***
The bright blue sky, streaked with lazily drifting white clouds, stretched endlessly overhead.
Below it, birds flew freely, their cries light and cheerful, while a dense forest spread out beneath the cliff—its leaves still damp from the recent rain.
Gabriel stood on a high, jutting cliff that overlooked the vast green landscape below.
His left hand rested against the trunk of a large tree, while his right remained tightly wrapped around his multifunctional tactical shovel.
His back was slightly hunched, one hand covering his mouth as his body trembled from the aftereffects of meta-reality transfer.
"Ugh… why do I always get hit with motion sickness like this?" Gabriel muttered softly, his voice rough and strained. "…Yeah. Forget it."
He took a heavy breath, then slowly surveyed his surroundings.
"This world… it's incredibly colorful," he said with a faint smile. "…worthy of being observed by Ash."
And just as he said that, his vision truly reflected it.
From Gabriel's perspective, every existence in the world of Black Clover didn't merely emit an aura with familiar waves of distortion—like the ones he was used to seeing—but something more layered, more alive, as if the very fabric of magic itself was breathing along with the world.
Objects in this world did not merely possess physical form and an aura of existence; each of them carried layered, inherent magical resonances.
He could see the layers of "essence" beneath matter—pulsing, vibrating, and at times softly glowing in accordance with the mana potential stored within.
A tree that appeared ordinary, with normal branches and leaves, revealed intricate flows of mana rising from the earth through its roots—twisting, branching, and interweaving, as if the tree were connected to a vast, living energy network in constant motion.
Even stones were not simply stones. Each one emitted an aura that restrained, severed, or reflected the surrounding mana, far more complex than a mere existence aura.
The mana in the air itself looked like flocks of vividly colored birds, darting and circling around one another.
When he lifted his gaze, the sky revealed something even more extraordinary.
The atmosphere was not just blue—it was filled with transparent layers of energy drifting slowly like waves, sometimes resembling crystalline ripples crawling through the air itself.
The clouds above were not merely vapor and an aura of existence; they carried moving masses of energy, shifting their forms and responding to the flow of mana rising from the land below.
And the Sun—through Gabriel's eyes—was not simply a brilliant light.
It appeared as a colossal source of resonance, emitting pulsating waves of energy that spread across the entire sky.
Its light "touched" the world of mana, leaving behind delicate patterns of distortion in the air—patterns that only the senses of Gigan could perceive.
From behind the bangs that veiled his face, the geometric circular patterns of Gigan rotated slowly, interlocking, reshaping themselves, then rearranging like a formula being calculated by the "eye" itself.
A few seconds later, a Gigan magic circle manifested directly before his eyes—thin, like a divine hologram, yet dense enough to sever existence itself.
The moment it activated, Gigan's magical circuits spread into reality, branching out like veins of faint light creeping through the air.
Gabriel increased Gigan's output, forcing the world to peel back its layers even further.
He stared into the distance—and at that very moment, Gigan's "eye" began to hack into the perceptions of several living beings within the surrounding area: animals, birds, even tiny insects.
There, living creatures no longer appeared as simple forms of flesh and motion, but as pulsating nodes within the world's energy network.
Each being became a nodal point, connected by fine, delicate pathways stretching toward a far greater web, as if the body of the world itself were revealing its nerves.
Elsewhere, Gabriel caught sight of a minor conflict between a group of magic-wielding humans—mages engaged in battle.
To ordinary eyes, it was nothing more than a duel.
But to Gigan?
It was like witnessing a "living map": their mana flows intersected, collided, and intertwined, creating ripples of energy and dramatic visual distortions in the surrounding air.
Even the spells about to be cast were clearly visible—not as light or spheres of magic, but as lines of potential piercing through space itself.
Those probabilistic energy trajectories revealed the direction, shape, and outcome before the spell was ever released.
When his gaze shifted to another area, Gigan pierced even deeper—beyond form and aura, cutting through to truth and the very structure of existence.
There, Gabriel perceived layers of time and causality, like fine, translucent lines stretching through the air itself.
Every existence that had ever passed through a place left something behind: soft resonances lingering in the atmosphere, like residual heat after a bolt of lightning fades.
Perhaps because this world was saturated with mana in absurd quantities, temporal and causal traces did not dissipate easily.
Gabriel could even estimate that traces of his own presence might remain for several days.
To Gabriel, the world of Black Clover was a living 4D canvas—not static, constantly pulsing, as if reality itself truly breathed together with mana.
However, as he continued to expand his perception, Gigan began to overheat. His vision distorted, trembling like a machine being forced beyond its limits.
Gabriel hurriedly lowered the output and applied a single drop of Elixir Potion to both of his eyes.
___
Author's Note:
In the world of Black Clover, Gabriel is not focused on the missions. He is far more focused on his own self-development.
Because of that, he will barely encounter the canon characters of that world.
As a result, there will likely be quite a lot of skips, in order to speed up the flow of training and experimentation.