Starting as a Manga Editor-Chapter 89: Eh?

Currently, there was no such thing as an app store in this world, but there were terminal management tools like "91 Mobile Assistant"—which more or less served as a joint-distribution platform.
That said, mobile games were still in their primitive stages, and the games offered through these kinds of terminal tools were pretty rough.
So, the users on those platforms weren’t even close to the target audience for 2D anime-style games. In terms of quality, they were completely unsuitable for proper testing.
That was why Tang Yao didn’t test the game through these terminal tools.
But… this also brought some challenges.
Mainly, that downloading the game for user testing was kind of a hassle. You had to download the software from the website, then manually transfer it to your phone. The whole process was tedious.
Luckily, for now, phone manufacturers hadn’t started restricting app installations under the guise of anti-fraud, user safety, or system stability enhancements.
In fact, most of them didn’t even have an app store yet.
So while downloading was annoying, installing was still simple.
Soon—
Rumi had installed the game software from Avalon Studio.
“…Fate/Grand Order, huh?”
Rumi looked at the new app that had appeared on her phone and softly read out the title. Then she looked at the icon.
The game’s icon featured Saber, but wearing a crown—looking a bit more regal than her appearance in Fate/Zero.
The icon was quite polished.
Rumi muttered to herself, then tapped the app.
The screen went black.
Then, it lit up again—a sleek, stylish logo faded in. It looked like both a small boat and a sword sheath, with the word Avalon slowly appearing underneath.
After the logo disappeared, a character illustration appeared: a cute girl with short pink hair, glasses, and a white short-sleeved lab uniform. A progress bar was displayed at the bottom, indicating resources were being loaded.
The loading wasn’t fast.
But the character illustrations kept rotating—each one beautifully drawn and eye-catching. As Rumi stared at them, unknowingly, the game finished loading.
The main screen appeared.
A deep blue sky with a swirling, black hole-like vortex in the center. Clouds encircled it, light radiated outward… It looked like a gateway to another world, as if tapping it would transport you somewhere else.
“This looks pretty legit… but what a waste of good art assets.”
Rumi could tell immediately—serious effort had gone into the game’s visuals… But thanks to her preconceptions, she didn’t think it was a good thing. Instead, she felt the artwork was wasted: “No matter how pretty it looks, once you’re in the game it’s still just the same old gameplay. You’d be better off making an online PC game. Phones just…”
She shook her head and tapped “Start.” The game prompted her to register.
Rumi registered with her phone number and randomly chose a username.
Finally—
The screen flashed white.
The game began.
…A howling wind suddenly rose.
A snowy facility nestled among mountain peaks appeared on screen.
At the same time—
Text appeared at the bottom.
【—Base sequence confirmed as human genome.】
【—Spiritual device classification: Good · Neutral.】
【Welcome to the Archive of Humanity’s Future. This is Chaldea, the Human Order Preservation Organization.】
“…???”
Rumi stared at the subtitles, slightly confused.
Wait, wasn’t this… Fate/Zero? What’s with this “Chaldea”? What the heck is the “Human Order Preservation Organization”?
She was dazed, lightly tapping the screen to advance the story.
She discovered that the player seemed to be… a Master? Or perhaps a newly hired staff member at Chaldea?
Tapping again, the interior of Chaldea appeared—and a white, cat-like creature suddenly popped onto the screen. Its fur was soft and fluffy, and it leapt gently into view.
“…”
Rumi widened her eyes slightly at the sight.
Animated sprites?
She immediately thought of the animated character illustrations on the Fate/Zero website and was a bit shocked. Wait—don’t tell me the whole game is like this?
This is… a mobile game?
Just as that thought crossed her mind, the pink-haired, glasses-wearing girl reappeared on screen—but this time, it wasn’t just a static image—it was animated…
Yep. Sure was.
Rumi stared at the lively character in front of her—the girl even pushed up her glasses—and was momentarily stunned. She reflexively tapped the screen…
And with the dialogue lines appearing in sync with the beautifully animated sprite, a timid girl who wasn’t good at expressing emotions seemed to come alive right before her.
“Wait… this is a mobile game?”
Rumi stared at the character illustration on her screen and couldn’t help blurting out the question aloud. She even took off her glasses and leaned in close for a better look.
Up close—
She could tell the resolution had been slightly lowered to adapt for mobile, but the animation based on the original artwork was incredibly fluid and finely done—so the visual experience was excellent.
“…Mobile games can reach this level now?”
Rumi put her glasses back on, looking utterly stunned. But she didn’t stop playing—she kept tapping through the dialogue.
The opening story wasn’t particularly complex—it was mainly used to set up the plot and worldbuilding. Not especially fun, just standard fare. But combined with the utterly explosive visual quality… there was no way it could be called boring.
It wasn’t just not boring—it was astonishing.
Because up to now, the mobile games in this world were still rough, low-quality mini-games.
So to encounter a real anime-style mobile game like this—Rumi was thoroughly shaken.
It was like the game had the words “Art Asset Overload” stamped across the entire screen.
Soon—
The prologue wrapped up.
And amid her awe, Rumi found something very strange: she didn’t recognize a single character in the game.
Though many of the terms and settings clearly followed the Fate/Zero universe—like Masters, Heroic Spirits, Holy Grail Wars, and so on…
She understood the general premise too. Basically, in the game’s world, “Chaldea” was a special global organization formed by various countries to preserve humanity—preventing human extinction.
And half a year ago, Chaldea discovered something shocking: humanity would go extinct after the year 2016.
It made no sense. Logically, such a future shouldn’t be possible—physically or otherwise. It wasn’t caused by an economic collapse or geological disaster. One day, human history just… vanished. It was unexplainable.
Yet observation confirmed it. So Chaldea sifted through 2,000 years of human records to look for anomalies—anything that had never existed on Earth before.
After relentless effort, they finally detected a new anomaly—
In 2004, in a small city, Chaldea discovered a space that didn’t exist in recorded history—a space they couldn’t observe. They theorized it could be the reason for humanity’s extinction and named it “Singularity F.”
At the same time, they decided to execute the sixth experiment, still in its testing phase—the Spiritron Dive.
Spiritron Dive meant converting a human’s body into spiritual particles and sending them back in time.
The player took on the role of one of the chosen Masters participating in the experiment—your task was to travel back and investigate Singularity F… going back twelve years to Fuyuki, uncovering the cause of humanity’s disappearance, and eliminate it.
“I get all that… but where’s Fate/Zero?”
Just as Rumi had that thought, the prologue reached its final stage…
The player-character, a Master candidate from Chaldea, was sent to Singularity F to analyze and remove the disruption to history. But during the teleportation process, something went wrong—and the player was accidentally thrown into a parallel timeline, becoming an observer of a certain Holy Grail War.
This place was also called Fuyuki… and it had already seen four Grail Wars.
As this explanation scrolled across the screen—
Illustrated stills suddenly appeared.
Saber vs. Lancer’s first clash.
The showdown between the two mages, Kayneth and Kiritsugu Emiya.
The Three Kings' conversation: Artoria, Iskandar, and Gilgamesh.
…All iconic scenes from Fate/Zero.
And finally—
The image froze. Then… Fate/Zero’s protagonist, Kiritsugu Emiya, appeared on screen. He slowly raised his hand, his expression shadowed. The Command Seals on the back of his hand glowed blood red.
【By the order of the Command Seal… grant me the Holy Grail. Saber, use your Noble Phantasm to destroy the Grail.】
【By the third Command Seal, I order you again—Saber… destroy the Grail.】
Yes.
In a hazy flashback, the climactic scene of Saber destroying the Holy Grail appeared in-game.
As Saber collapsed and raised her sword, slashing downward—at the moment the Grail was destroyed, black mud burst into the sky… pouring into Fuyuki City as flames erupted everywhere.
Even though it was just dynamic CG, the high-quality presentation made it incredibly powerful.
“…That was awesome.”
Rumi stared blankly at the scene and muttered softly.
But then, she suddenly realized something was wrong.
Wait.
Hold up.
What… what was that!?
Did she just get spoiled!?
Huh? No?
What did that mean!?
Why would Kiritsugu order SABER to destroy the Grail!?
?????????