unlimited blade works (reality marble)
Unlimited Blade Works (UBW) is a Reality Marble, a world created by Archer from the Fate series. It is a wasteland, a vast field of blades stretching off into the distance with innumerable swords planted into the ground.
It is commonly parodied, with other characters taking Archer's place, or with other items taking place of the swords.
The UBW can also store other types of weapons such as spears, shields, and the Rho Aias, but it cannot store modern weapons like guns or bombs. It's the counter attack and antithesis of Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon.
An incantation is used by Archer to invoke the Reality Marble:
I am the bone of my sword.
Steel is my body, and fire is my blood.
I have created over a thousand blades.
Unknown to death.
Nor known to life.
Have withstood pain to create many weapons.
Yet, those hands will never hold anything.
So as I pray, 'Unlimited Blade Works'.
Other variations of the incantation exist that are performed by different versions of Emiya Shirou.
Not to be confused with:
- Unlimited Lost Works: The Void Creation of Swords, the Noble Phantasm of EMIYA Alter. Unlike UBW which is a Reality Marble, EMIYA Alter's reality is inside of a bullet that when it is fired and hits an enemy, will manifest the reality from the inside out, doing deadly damage.
- Originless Creation of Swords, the Noble Phantasm of Senji Muramasa. It uses a landscape similar to UBW to create the ultimate katana, which can sever space, time, karma and fate.
- Fate/Unlimited Blade Works, a story route in Fate/Stay Night.