Fate/Core Hero

[whosaidthat]

AN: After a long period of absence, mostly because of personal reasons and the fact I forgot my password, I did a thing.

I'm most definitely not sorry.

I currently have no beta.

~~~~~~~~OOO~~~~~~~~

He was the last, he was the first.

He was a soldier, he was a scientist, he was a creator, he was a destroyer.

When he finally succumbed to age and his mortal coil left the world, something within himself transcended the bounds of mortality and he ascended into the Throne of Heroes, becoming an Heroic Spirit, a somewhat unique one all things considered.

Thus as an Heroic Spirit, it wasn't impossible for him to be summoned as a Servant in the Holy Grail War ritual, though nevertheless his summoning was extremely unusual. After all no human alive would have the required compatibility to summon him without a catalyst, and acquiring a catalyst in the first place would be an impossible task. Literally no one could pick up a proper catalyst for his summoning on purpose. So it was understandable that the catalyst that was used came entirely by accident, an true miracle possible only through the infinite lens of the Kaleidoscope.

A certain impurity into a single gold coin, that was mined and minted centuries ago, which the microscopic catalyst survived the smelting process by sheer chance. Not only that but the coin would be used as a catalyst for summoning another Servant which in normal circumstances would be correctly summoned by her would be master. However that microscopic impurity had a much greater gravitas towards this particular Servant, allowing him to be called which he eagerly answered the summoning.

After all those years, he still had a question in his mind that he desperately wanted to get answered.

Was it worth it?

~~O~~

Esaias Guillory stared impassively at the summoning circle that flashed for an instant before a man of average height with bright red hair and asian features emerged from the summoning circle. He didn't show it, but was starting to seethe at the sight.

"I ask of you", said the man in a pleasant, almost melodic voice, "are you my Master?"

"My name is Esaias Guillory", he said with a smirk letting the words of his servant wash away his disappointment for a moment, after all it's not every day when you get a powerful familiar like a Servant, "and I am your master. What is your name, Servant?"

"I am Servant Ruler", he said in a matter of fact tone.

Esaias walked around his Servant, evaluating him. The clothing was rather modern looking, but then again he heard those kind of things could happen during the summoning process. "Ruler? I wasn't aware that the grail had selected that class in this iteration of the war", he said while looking his Servant up and down. "You're clearly asiatic thus marking you as a foreigner, and the only foreigner in the Argonauts was Medea of Colchis", he muttered to himself, his anger once more surfacing, "I was expecting Medea, or Jason, or even hoping against hoping that I would luck out and summon Herakles himself. Still, know your place Servant, I asked your name. What it is?"

"My name is meaningless to my legend", he said simply, "I was merely know as Commander to my Enemy, and that was enough."

The magus anger reached a boiling point, and he showed his command seal to his Servant. "By the power of the command seal, I order you to answer all my questions truthfully!"

Ruler felt the command seal take effect and his regards for his master had hit rock bottom. To waste a command seal on something that could be easily solved with a more diplomatic approach, in less than thirty seconds after being summoned? Plans started to form on his head while his master started to talk once more.

"What is your name Servant, and do be clear on that front, please?" He said with a mocking tone, an arrogant smirk on his face.

"... Adam", reluctantly answered the Servant. He could have resisted more, since the command seal was long lasting and thus lacking in sheer power, but Ruler didn't want to let on that the command seal abilities were anything less than absolute. Not yet at least. "My name is simply Adam."

"Adam", Esaias mulled to himself before something sparked on his mind. Certainly he could ask the servant to confirm his identity to him, but he liked to show his superiority to others by picking up clues and piercing them together before answering the mystery. "Would you perhaps be the first?"

"I was the last, but I was also the first", answered Adam to Esaias and he started to become excited, now certain about his own suspicions.

"And how old is your legend?" He asked once more, giddy like a child.

"It's the oldest", he answered being as obtuse as he could get away with it to see where his master was going on with it.

"AH! I see now!" He exclaimed, happy all of sudden, "to think the christians were right with their religion, at least in their creation myth! This is amazing! If his Noble Phantasm strength matches the age of his legend, then I certainly brought the strongest Servant in this war! But first."

"By the power of the command seal, I order you to never use your Noble Phantasm against me!"

Once more Adam felt the command seal take effect.

The next set of word coming out from Esaias would be 'by the power of the command seal, I order you to never betray me', if Adam didn't acted just as the command was finished being uttered, reaching with his hand towards the forehead of his master, coincidentally where the command seal were, before crushing it with his hand and tearing away the command seal from his head, incidentally killing his master.

As the body hit down on the ground as if it was puppet with it's strings cut, Adam sighed.

"Well, if he was like that then killing him was for the best, even if things would be a bit tight for a while." Raising his hand he looked at Easias corpse, hesitating for a moment before thinking that the effect of the command seal was still somewhat active even after he died, and deciding that it was too much of a bother he left he corpse to rot in the open.

Looking around he saw that he was in a forest and it was the middle of the night, which suited him just fine. Raising his hand to a nearby three, he used his prana to send a wave of green particles towards the plant, before it disappeared form sight, being torn down to the last root and being converted into energy, energy that was slightly more than the slow tickle of prana he lost as a matter of fact and the prana used to perform this task, giving him a little bit of surplus energy. The grail supplied to him that eating souls could replenish his energy faster but he dismissed that option, he already had plans in the motion and while he was perfectly fine with killing people, devouring their souls was one of the crime against humanity that he didn't performed yet and he wanted to keep that record intact.

While using prana instead of his usual method when he was alive was very inefficient, bordering on useless, but it had to do for now. He already had plans to deal with his current precarious situation and current existential crisis, and when he was sure he could survive the first few hours without his master and expending a great deal of his prana for preparations.

Then it would be time for him to build a metal extractor in this backwards planet.

~~O~~

Heads Up!

Servant: Ruler
True Name: Adam
Alias: Commander, Ruler
Alignment: Lawful Evil?

Strength E
Agility E
Endurance E
Mana A+
Luck EX
N. Phantasm ?

Skills
Independent Action, A
Item Creation, EX

Noble Phantasm
???

[whosaidthat]

In short time Adam had cleared a large portion of the forest, capping his prana capacity to the max before he aimed his hand towards an empty spot and more green particles streamed. Those particles were nanomachines made out of prana that would in turn flash forge themselves into shape, transforming prana into metal alloys and raw energy for Ruler creation. Soon, by almost depleting his prana reserves Ruler managed to make a Wind Generator that would use the force of the wind to generate Energy that would tickle back into prana back to him at a 10:1 ratio.

The wind generator in itself wasn't the best energy generator he had at disposal, but at night he had to make due with what he had, and the small tickle of prana would help stave off oblivion though it wasn't for that motive he made that generator.

Back to work, Adam cleaned more trees and sooner than before thanks to the wind generator he raised his hand to the ground and more nanomachines streamed, this time into the form of a Metal Extractor that would dig deep into the ground, collect, refine and transport heavy elements, once more transforming those raw materials into prana for use at a 5:1 ratio, though the fact that he placed the extractor on the first empty place he could find meant that the efficiency of the extractor was far worse than that of the Wind Generator. Once more however, he wasn't after more prana even if it would further help in his endeavor.

Two times his prana capped, and two times he used it almost to the breaking point creating two more structures, though smaller than his standards. First was a Metal Storage and the second was an Energy Storage. Now he had real metal and real energy to work with, and once his prana capped once more he build what would be the first in many such facilities in the future: the Kinetic Bio-Organic Lab, or Kbot Lab for short. This time he managed to coax the metal and energy from the storage alongside his prana, greatly saving on his prana reserves and all too soon the structure was finished.

Adam smiled at that, knowing form his connection with the lab that it was running to his specifications. While it was half only half made from real materials it was enough that what came next was purely real. The first of the many construction bots that would come, and without delay he set it out to expand on his economy sending it to the help him reclaim more of the forest grounds and making another to go out on towards the sea, trusting his innate stealth systems to remain hidden from view.

When the morning came a large patch of the forest had simply disappeared, and with creative use of the construction bots and some reclaiming all structures and units were made of real material instead of prana. Smiling, Ruler queried his construction bot to make something that the world haven't seen since before it's conception: a Patterning Lab.

Not that Adam minded being in a half-spiritual, half-physical body, but it was simply too limited for his purposes and he much preferred his own body. Since that was currently out of question he set on the next best thing. When the lab was finished he stepped into the platform and closed his eyes and let the machine do his work.

It broke down his physical body down to subatomic level, taking note of the energy and scanning his brain patterns in such a way that his consciousness was keep continuous through the process, and in no time he became a stream of data inhabiting the quantum foam formed by the collective processing power of his units and the in between of macro scale and quantum reality where his patterned mind now resided.

Something in the grail system broke, and while his 'soul' was now residing intact in the quantum foam, for his part he didn't cared much about such metaphisical concerns since he had become once more an Infomorph, a Commander in charge of his army, even if he didn't had his powerful Commander chassis.

"Haha, hahaha, hahahahahahaha!"

He couldn't help it, everything was falling into place. His construction bot had successfully arrived at the ocean and was fast creating his navy and in the process of creating his underwater economy and power base. While he had lost his ability to use prana to substitute both for metal and energy, now he had actual energy and metal to work with, and once his underwater base were created and expanded he would be basically untouchable and would be able to come back again and again no matter how many times his 'main' base were destroyed and his units turned into slag.

In his mind he had basically won the war since he accomplished everything that his 'wish' would grant him, but he still would fight in the war.

After all a gathering with the best heroes that mankind produced over the ages, perhaps by clashing against them he would be able to answer his question, whether or not the War, whether or not all the sacrifices on both sides, regardless of his feelings on the matter, were worth the end result or not.

Now he just had to figure out how to deal with it. Creating a special kbot in order to fight was easy enough, and he would certainly have an escort of infantry accompany him to ensure his victory, but how to fight the other servants without turning the whole city into a smoking crater in the first five seconds of conflict?

With such minor concerns on his mind, the newly revived CORE Commander went back to work.

~~O~~

Heads Up!

Independent Action (A) -> (EX)
The servant has reincarnated fully into the world of living, losing many aspects of his existence as a servant, but on the other hand gaining the full abilities it had while alive. If he dies he will leave a corpse behind and there is a chance that his soul won't be snatched by the grail.