"Fake."
Holmes's voice was neither low nor loud, but it was like a quenched dagger, easily cutting through the noisy alarms and panicked voices in the command room, causing everyone to stop at that moment.
Leonardo da Vinci was the first to recover. She frowned and turned around: "What did you say?"
Holmes walked over to the Sheba observation lens console and pointed his fingertips at the raw observation data at the bottom of the light screen, completely hidden beneath layers of red warning signals.
In those eyes, always full of insight and smiles, there was no tension now, only the professional gaze of a detective seeing through all lies. He clearly shattered the truth into everyone's ears, word by word:
"I said, all of this is a lie. The Emperor of Mankind, the world 40,000 years later, the Space Marines, and even the so-called 'human reason of the future'—all of it is a carefully woven fabrication."
"We have been completely deceived from the very beginning."
A dead silence instantly fell over the command room. Only the red alarm of the Sheba lens still flickered wildly, and the sharp beeping vainly scraped against the stagnant air, making the dead silence even more oppressive.
Dr. Roman was the first to recover. He looked at Sherlock Holmes and, after a moment's thought, asked first:
"Mr. Holmes, is something wrong?"
"I was thinking,"
Holmes spoke slowly, his eyes slightly narrowed as he traced the logical chain.
"As a singularity, a future 40,000 years from now is too far away. Our Chaldean Sheba lenses have never been able to observe the future tens of thousands of years ahead; that is a limitation of the instrument itself."
"According to the history of the heroic king Gilgamesh, the vast future shaped by the Emperor would not have been surprising until a hundred years later. And that surprise should not have led to the formation of a singularity—that is already the limit of the Sheba lens's observation."
"Thus, the very existence of this singularity contradicts all observational logic."
"And according to Gilgamesh's battle records and the testimonies of these Space Marines, we have focused all our attention on the future Emperor of Mankind from beginning to end..."
At this point, his words suddenly broke off.
His brow furrowed sharply, and his originally smooth speech abruptly stopped, as if something had blocked his throat.
The name that had scrolled through his mind countless times and should have burst forth was now like a stone sinking into the deep sea. He could not catch a single trace of it.
He could not remember the Emperor's true name.
Roman subconsciously wanted to fill the gap, but when he opened his mouth, he found his mind empty.
The ownership and documents were clear, but the core name had vanished without a trace. Cold sweat instantly ran down his back, and he froze in place.
The confusion lasted only half a second, followed by a bone-chilling coldness.
They looked at each other and saw the same horror in each other's eyes.
The others also noticed this at the same time, making the air in Chaldea even colder.
Finally, Holmes pulled the corners of his mouth and completed the fragmented sentence in an almost absurd tone:
"...whose body is this?"
He quickly suppressed the absurdity and surprise of the moment, his fingertips again touching his jaw. The casualness in his voice completely disappeared, leaving only the arbiter's cold hardness of seeing through lies.
"Of course, this is just an appetizer, not the core of the matter."
"The core is that from beginning to end, we have taken it for granted that the birth of this subspecies singularity occurred because 'that person' made the wrong choice—to erase humanity's future 40,000 years from now."
His voice was not loud, but it was like an ice pick piercing everyone's previous internal cognition. Every word carried a weight that sent chills down the spine:
"But what if the 'future 40,000 years from now' that we have believed as a premise never existed in the first place?"
"What if everything we see is a fraud from start to finish? What about those so-called future heroes who used some kind of magic or other ability to deceive the local Holy Grail ritual, using lies and our cognition to lead us step by step toward their imaginings?"
At this moment, there was not a trace of hesitation in Holmes's eyes.
All the fragmented points of inconsistency finally assembled into a complete true puzzle at this moment, and he left the final conclusion, word by word:
"I dare conclude that the other party possesses a top-tier illusion capable of covering all of Chaldea, or a cognitive contamination ability."
"He used this scheme to deceive all of us and conceal his true plan."
A dead silence fell again. Even the sound of Sheba's alarm was particularly piercing.
Dr. Roman's face was pale, his fingertips slightly trembling. Da Vinci took a deep breath, suppressed the surging waves in her heart, and asked the question that concerned everyone the most:
"So what is his true goal? Why did he know of our existence in advance?"
"He wants to deceive history and even human reason itself, to enter the Root or to interfere with the Throne of Heroes. But unfortunately, although I do not know how he deceived the Counter Force, the future changes were detected by Sheba—that is an indisputable fact."
Holmes's voice deepened, and everyone began to consider each other's judgments.
This conclusion was like a key piercing through a layer of window paper in their hearts that they had never dared to break through—that is, from beginning to end, they had all felt that the future 40,000 years from now was so far away as to be almost an illusion, and they did not wholeheartedly believe that humanity could possess the power sufficient to break through time and space and transcend mystery.
After all, they had traveled through singularities caused by human reason, had seen the magic of the gods with their own eyes, and had also faced the power of crowned heroic spirits and gods. Those powers, far surpassing ordinary magic, had long become their cognition, etched into their bone marrow.
And the future and romance belonging exclusively to humanity, traveling across the galaxy—that was an unattainable dream for them, for they had always done everything for the survival of human history.
However, at this moment, under the joint guidance of an unknown human lord who had become a complete body in the future, and another unknown pioneer, they had precisely used Chaldea's core authority to pierce through the barrier of time.
In the next second, Chaldea's spiritual child calculation device suddenly activated spontaneously, without any instruction, without any permission, as if controlled by an invisible hand.
The central magic furnace underground instantly triggered an overload alarm. A blinding red light filled the entire command room. A vast surge of magic power wildly raced through the hidden passages, feeding the core of the spiritual child calculation device.
Da Vinci's pupils suddenly contracted. Her fingertips then quickly flew over the console, instantly locking onto the final landing point of the magic power. When the words "Servant Summoning Room" burst from it, a layer of cold sweat immediately broke out on her back.
"Damn it, something's wrong!"
Leonardo da Vinci cursed, no longer paying attention to the alarms in the room. She turned and rushed out of the command room, running toward the Servant Summoning Room without looking back.
And Jeanne d'Arc, standing in the corner, quietly watching the situation and ready to support at any moment, suddenly tensed up. Her entire body froze in place, and her face instantly filled with incredible astonishment. She calmed herself, suppressed the surging waves in her heart, silently walked over to Holmes, and spoke quietly, a hint of confusion still not fully suppressed in her voice.
"Mr. Holmes."
"What is it, Holy Lady?" Holmes turned his head and looked at her unusual expression, slightly frowning.
"Well... I just received a divine revelation."
As soon as these words were spoken, Holmes's face drastically changed. His always calm eyes instantly widened, revealing a complete and unprecedented disbelief on his face.
A name instantly exploded in his consciousness: the Supreme Heavenly Father, who had long since withdrawn from the human stage?
He had actually given a divine revelation at such a moment?
And Jeanne d'Arc looked at his stunned face, a slight confusion and helplessness also reflected on her own face. Although she did not understand why God had given such a revelation, she still clutched the holy flag in her hand and relayed the clear oracle in her own words before speaking it:
"The Great Heavenly Father commands you to follow Miss Leonardo da Vinci immediately. He said that all the answers are in the Servant Summoning Room."
By the time Leonardo da Vinci rushed to the Servant Summoning Room and pushed open the heavy door, this uncontrolled, spontaneous summoning ritual had already been completed.
The gunpowder smoke, mixed with the smell of gunpowder and holy radiance, blended with the majestic magical smoke, still raging in the vast room, as if it had just experienced the explosion of a miniature starship.
As the airflow gradually calmed and the smoke and dust slowly cleared, the core of the magic array was fully revealed before her eyes.
A behemoth, far beyond the comprehension of ordinary people, stood motionless in Chaldea's Servant Summoning Array. Its majestic shadow covered nearly half the room, and even the flow of magic around it was completely frozen by its presence.
Cobalt-blue Seiko power armor covered its robust body. The iconic pure white trim glowed with a cold luster in the undying fire. The ultramarine U-shaped emblem on its shoulder armor was dazzlingly clear, like a beacon that never went out in the room's magical haze.
It had removed its helmet. On the face of a Roman consul and a sharp-featured warrior, there were no superfluous emotions.
A pair of bright blue pupils were deep as a frozen star sea. Short, dark brown hair was neatly trimmed. A laurel wreath was firmly tied among the hair, giving the entire figure an indescribable sacredness and majesty.
As soon as he saw Leonardo da Vinci, he spoke.
His voice was calm as a bell, with the resolve of one seated at the center of thousands of troops, without hesitation:
"Savior (Saiver), Robert Kiliman, summoned by the call of Alaya. It seems you are the head of Chaldea? Form a contract with me immediately. My time should not be wasted. The immature Lord of Humanity must realize his mistake as soon as possible."
It seemed he believed he could correct his opponent's mistakes with his own hands. Robert Kiliman's tone unconsciously became pleasant.
And Holmes, seeing this scene behind Leonardo da Vinci, was utterly stunned. He opened his mouth for a while, not knowing what to say.