Fate/strange Fake 9

Fate/Strange Fake Volume 9

Translation by: Comun (Beast ‘s Lair)

Typesetting and PDF: @HumbertoZero/ZeroDestreza (Twitter)
Image scans: @Shisuberu (Twitter)

Fate/strange Fake 9
 

CONTENTS

Extra Chapter “From the fertile lands of Thermae” 001

Prelude “One roaming the netherworld and one

returned from the netherworld” 004

Chapter 27 “The Red Little Riding Hood of the Semina

Apartments, Unraveled—or, The Mages

Shot the Wolf I” 011

Chapter 28 “This world’s madness knows no bounds” 028

Chapter 29 “Rhapsody of the Demigods I” 061

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Extra Chapter
“From the fertile lands of Thermae”

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Extra Chapter: From the fertile lands of Thermae

Oh, this is the end for me.

The queen gathered her thoughts under the intense rain.

What a regrettable way to go.

The queen gathered her thoughts under the sound of her creaking tibia.

Dying here is not the problem.

The queen gathered her thoughts under the warmth of the rock-solid fingers crushing her neck.

The gods… Goddess Hera’s trickery is not to blame.

The queen gathered her thoughts under the smell of the shed blood of the Amazons.

Our guardian goddess Artemis.

The queen verbalized her wish under the heat of flames from the destroyed city.

My father, war god Ares.

The queen composed her prayer under the vision of the whole world being covered in dark
shade.

I beseech you. I wouldn’t mind if it takes an eternity. May this legendary hero one day find
the real answers to the doubts he had about us. May he learn that we are not petty warriors who
would employ shameful stratagems to lower his guard. Us dying in this senseless slaughter is not the
problem. All warriors of the tribe, myself included, lived our whole lives ready for this happening.
Sacrifice willed by the gods is not different from the land’s disasters and plagues. But dying while the
hero will kill us thinks of us as cowards…

The queen never got to hear the sound of her tibia shattering completely.

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Because sound was already fully lost from her world.

That alone is the regrettable part.

In the short instant between her neck breaking and her consciousness vanishing…

The queen saw god within herself.

And that’s when she realized it.

No… There’s one thing more regrettable. My apologies, legendary hero.

What face did her killer, the first legendary hero she ever admired, make when killing her?
As she was losing her sight and hearing, she had no way of knowing.
But at the moment the queen received her invitation to Hades, she left behind her regrets
toward the hero who killed her.

I beg your forgiveness with my whole heart, you of glorious radiance, you destined to become a
true hero and eventually ascend to the rank of the gods.

The enormous axe in her hands fell to the ground, making a dull noise.
Her life met its end at the same time as this last sound she heard vanished into the lands.
The blade of the axe, soaked with her wish, was still glistening after leaving her hands.

...What I’ve done to you was…

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Prelude
“One Roaming the Netherworld and One Retur-
ned from the Netherworld”

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 Prelude: One Roaming the Netherworld and One Returned from the Netherworld

Prelude: One Roaming the Netherworld and One Returned from the
Netherworld
Kuruoka Tsubaki was dreaming.
Her skin was covered in dark, ghastly, tenebrous, mud-like darkness.
The darkness was strangely warm. Her slumbering consciousness was sinking into the cradle-
like comfort of the darkness.
The girl in the dream was having another dream.
The darkness enveloping her–a distortion in the world–had gaps that flickered with light
like a slide projector.

She was in Snowfield City.

She could see the shadows of the skyscrapers devoid of people and the light of street lamps.

She was deep underground.

She could see the long and thin shadows of a cage and the light of pale-blue will-o-wisp.

She was on a giant Japanese-style building like the ones that appear in her country’s fairy tales.
She saw the flying shadows of animals, the curved shadow of a kimono-wearing bird, and a
silver glimmer caused by the latter.

She was in nothing but pure darkness.

At the depths of a world where nothing had form, she saw a faint wavering light.

She was in a cavern surrounded by a beautiful vortex of bare rock.

Behind the three-headed beast, she saw a flickering color resembling the sunlight filtered by
the green leaves of a luscious tree.

At every moment, the scenery surrounding the girl was replaced by the next one.
Hundreds, thousands, millions of worlds.
But strangely enough, she could interpret all of those as part of the same world.
Who was showing this to her? The pathogen consuming her brain or the Servant still linked
to her soul?

While the background of Tsubaki’s dream shifted without further effects, the origin of the

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microorganisms consuming her body—

The descendants of a distant something that the Kuruoka family collected in southern lands
and injected in Tsubaki after using their magecraft to make it better/worse—
guided the child into one gloom.

When she saw a small bonfire flickering amidst a dense fog, she felt signs of throbbing deep
inside her head, and for a short time, her slumbering mind returned to her.
She didn’t exactly wake up. She was still in the unclear state of dreaming within a dream.
The slumbering Tsubaki was drawn to the bonfire—and then she got the impression that the
figure sitting by the flame said something to her.
Within the all-covering mist of uncertainty, she could see a man wearing a striking suit, like
he was dressed for a party or was a TV model.

“————, —————————?”

The child still couldn’t understand the meaning of the man’s words.
But there was one thing she could tell:
The figure switched from talking to her to talking to someone in the darkness behind her.

“————, ———.——————.”

Tsubaki looked back.

All she found there was infinite darkness being swallowed by the bright bonfire–
But she knew it.
She knew what the whole darkness around her really was. She knew its warm embrace.
She knew it was the being who saved her from the real darkness.

“...Mr. Black?”

The moment Tsubaki said this name out loud, the darkness envelop her whole body—and
the background switched back to thin cage.
And, illuminated by the blue flame, Tsubaki gradually fell back into her muddy doze.
The second before sunk back into slumber—
Tsubaki suddenly remembered the blinding glow that was next to her last time she was in
the thin cage.

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Not the figure by the bonfire. The glow that was already by the cage from the start.
Feeling lonely that no one was around anymore, she muttered in her head:

Where did that… golden person go…?

× ×

Heaven and earth once were one.

The land where mankind took root was a mirror image of the celestial sphere.
They formed a Trinity, although not the one that the term is normally interpreted as.
In the ancient times, all was connected as one, and was expressed as merged parts of the gods.

The king, his nation, mankind, the era—parted ways with the gods.

After an epic journey and battle to create heaven and earth separately, the Age of Man was
ultimately formulated.
Alternatively, some tell that the gods parted ways with humanity by their own hands because
they understood that this was the form the world would take no matter how they tried to resist
it. Only the Hero King who accomplished it all knows the truth of it.
The king with all-seeing eyes ascertained his fate since infancy.

The pure-hearted boy king used his all-seeing eyes to watch the state of the world and its people,
the king turned into an arrogant hero trampled all there was through fear and accomplishments,
and the king returned as the Wise King offered his soul and wisdom to accompany the citizens
in their personal journeys.

Then what lies in the interstice between them?

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This is a story about the interstice.

The original king discarded the Age of Gods and took the first steps in the Age of Man.
He was humanity’s peak accomplishment and the greatest grace offered by the heavens. He
cleared the path for the tale of the creation of heaven and earth.
This individual was the impossible interstice between heaven and earth. In other words,
between humanity and the gods.
And in the present-day Snowfield, he was rebooted.

It all started when a goddess associated with the entity departed to the netherworld.
And with a treatment measure previously set up by the entity’s Master.
This fact was consequence of many other interacting factors—
But despite this event that could only be described as a miracle, the entity didn’t immediately
recolor the world’s atmosphere.

There was no special surge of magical energy, nor any of the glow and impact from when a
regular Servant summon occurs.
It was as if he was sending a message that nothing significant happened and everything was
operating within normality.

Despite the manifested entity being—

an interstice whose existence was wholly impossible in both reality and telltale.

× ×

Snowfield, top floor of the Crystal Hill

The event happened so naturally that the many mages present at the scene—the members of
landkeeper group commanded by Tine Chelc—couldn’t notice it.

Much like no one questions how the sun rises from the east every day, or how breathing
doesn’t require dedicated thought, no one paid mind to event occurring there.
The body barely held in place by Tine’s magecraft, an insignificant corpse until a moment ago,
was reconstructed into what was simultaneously the same individual and someone completely
different.
From the moment it opened its eyelids and awakened its mind, the entity was fully aware of

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what it was.

Thus, the entity looked at the sky.

Despite the galestorms that continued to rage, its cloud had cleanly vanished while he wasn’t
looking.
Despite the sky remaining azure, it carried a chill resembling clear ice.
The goddess symbolizing the skies fell to the underworld and all heat was being stolen by the
nanostorm west of the city.
Under the skies mixed with void, the entity sensed a presence that made him smile wide like
a mirror and utter:

“The tribute to the end of times is dancing in the sky.”

At first glance, the entity’s appearance was that of a human/god.

By modern standards, his appearance was strikingly youthful.
A being in the interstice between childhood and adulthood, built symmetrical like a statue.
Standing by the window, the entity circulated 100% purely human magical energy
throughout his body and quietly smiled.

“When you let the gods deny your beastly nature and lost your will… What parameter of
humanity do you think you are testing?”

× ×

“Could it be—”

Enkidu’s voice, directed at the eastern sky, was dispersed by the galestorms.
After keeping company to their archenemy goddess in her last moments, Enkidu was running
toward the storm of violence brewing in the west, trusting Saber and Assassin to deal with the
leftover issue in the temple where they previously were. But then—
Along the way, they detected one powerful mass of magical energy gaining life, causing them
to stop and let their bewilderment show in their face. The doubt in their heart escaped as raw
words.

“Could it be—Is it really you?”

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Curiously enough, those were the exact same words Enkidu said when they first manifested
in this land.
But the emotions in the delivery couldn’t be more different.
On the first time, it was out of joy because they pictured an unbelievable reencounter with
their friend, allowed by an whim of fate.
In contrast, Enkidu has now said these words out of pure doubt.

In this land and era—

Something has manifested, and they were powerless to predict in what ways he would be
different from the friend they knew.

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Chapter 27
“The Red Little Riding Hood of the Semina
Apartments, Unraveled—or, The Mages Shot the
Wolf I”

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Chapter 27: The Red Little Riding Hood of the Semina Apartments,
Unraveled—or, The Mages Shot the Wolf I

For the purposes of this telling, we’ll be referring to the college student as “A”.

The student “A”, who recently moved to Kurokizaka’s Semina Apartments, loved his solitude.
So much so that when he saw the child of his new neighbors waiting for someone to appear
by the elevator, when she asked him to press the button for their shared ride, his desire to get
away from her triumphed over his concern for her situation.
Therefore, A paid no mind to the girl’s visible scars and signs of mistreatment, believing that
they would never interact again in his life.

But a minor coincidence greatly changed A’s life.

“May I ask you one thing?”

A girl inside the elevator’s mirror talked to him.

Her stuffed knapsack had a complex smell mixed of wildflowers, grasses, and herbs. A could
tell from her appearance that she was still at school age, so he suspected that she was coming
from collecting greenery from Fuyuki’s mountains as a school assignment.
There was a lot here that A had no way of knowing.
For example, that part of what he was smelling had the automatic effect of the hypnosis
frequently practiced by mages.
She was standing diagonally behind him, interposing her image with his reflection in the
mirror.
Her age was somewhere between her late teens and 20s.
A surmised she was younger than him, but not by much.
Her straight hair was solidly colored black and she wore glasses. The girl gave off the
impression of someone who didn’t belong in society, but A found himself unable to take his eyes
away from the girl.
A was trapped in a sensation of sleep paralysis as he heard the girl talk.

“Please care about this girl.”

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That was when A first noticed it:

A kid in a red hood stood between him and the girl in the mirror.
The “Red Little Riding Hood” in question, just as surprised about this, naturally looked up
to see the face of the bespectacled girl in the mirror.
The instant that the glasses girl and the “Red Little Riding Hood” entered the same field of
view, albeit on different sides of the mirror, the next words of power entered A’s ears.

“I’m not asking you to risk your life.”

Slight movements on the girl’s fingers caused the twigs of the sprouts protruding out of her
knapsack to twitch unnaturally.
But that never came to A’s attention.
A’s eyes couldn’t move away from the face of the girl in the mirror.

“I just want you to… reach out to her if anything happens. That’s all I ask.”

This hypnotical suggestion was engraved in A’s heart.

The glasses girl pressed the 12th-floor button, and as A and the Red Little Riding Hood
lived on the 11th floor, they got off the elevator one story earlier.
He remembered that the 12th floor was home to the owner of the apartment complex,
Mayor Himuro.
The girl was the same age as the mayor’s daughter, so he guessed she was her friend, but
wasn’t interested enough to take his thoughts any further and cut the speculation short at “This
girl says weird things”. He returned to his apartment without saying anything to the hooded girl.
That was the whole story.
After that, A expected his days to continue as usual.

However—
The hypnosis cast by the unnamed girl with glasses was unquestionably taking root in his
mind.
Whenever he saw the girl struggling to press the buttons, he unconsciously pressed the 11th-
floor button.
It was a natural action, considering he lived on the same floor—but starting then, whenever
he got off on the 1st floor and found the girl entering, he naturally pressed the 11th-floor button
before walking out.

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Since no one was there to witness this fact, it began to be told as a ghost story.

Therefore—
The narrative missed the part where the red-hooded girl would always say “Thank you” with
a smile.

But that divergence was inconsequential.

The biggest discrepancy between Fuyuki’s popular horror story of the Red Little Riding
Hood of Semina Apartments and what really happened in Kurokizaka was in A’s actions.

On an Autumn night, immediately after he heard a violent fight, roars, and screams coming
out of the neighboring apartment—
someone desperately knocked on A’s door.
The knocking came from a low position like it was a child slamming her short arms against
the door.
In the horror story, A ignores her, deeming the fight to be entirely the neighbors’ business,
fails to save an easily savable life, and pays the price for it in the last scene.
But his fate had been twisted by one mage.

On the real night of the crime—A opened the door when the girl knocked.
There was only one issue that the mage didn’t anticipate:
This action didn’t branch the story into the route where the red-hooded girl is saved. It was
the start of a greater tragedy than the one told in the horror story.

× ×

Present day, west Snowfield, the former site of the Neo Ishtar Temple

In the forest, after the blessings of the goddess descended to the underworld and the threats
of the flood and the galestorms passed.
Since Enkidu’s power previously traversed through the entire forest, the sturdier trees still
had their roots in the ground, but most of the younger trees were knocked down and washed
away by the cataclysmic water and winds and by the intense battle disturbing the flow of magical
energy in the area.
Most of the forest would still be intact if goddess Ishtar’s blessings weren’t conflicting with

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Enkidu’s magical energy, but nonetheless, the area looked like a tornado had passed through it,
which is exactly what happened.
Numerous animals and plants were missing from the forest, and the only smell permeating
the air was one of mud mixed with broken trees.

However, this bad air quickly dispersed.

By the fiercely blowing swirl of storm that appeared out of the cumulonimbus replacing the
hurricane.

“This presence… It’s that bowman that was in front of the hospital?”, said Saber–the Heroic
Spirit arriving at the devastated temple–before looking at the cumulonimbus.
His Master, Ayaka Sajou, reached his side.
She arrived guarded by a group of El-Melloi Classroom students and alumni. Her reaction
to finding Saber was only two words long.

“Doing okay?”
“A lot better now that that hill-sized Berserker is off our case. But we didn’t get to defeat
her, so she must be hiding somewhere… I know she didn’t go into spirit form, so she’s gotta have
some way of making that colossal body of hers invisible.”

Depending on the situation, learning that a monstrous Heroic Spirit is capable of stealth
could drive some to despair. Saber, however, relayed the information with a grin.

“What’s so funny?”, said Ayaka, short on patience.

“Nothing. I was just remembering the sting I felt on my skin during one of my major past
battles. That Berserker and… that other guy in the western sky that looks like thunderclouds
incarnate make my blood quiver the same it did when I confronted tremendously powerful
armies.”, boldly answered Saber.

“Major battle…? You mean a war? You were fighting against humans, right?”

“Yes. Although, of course, the opponents I’m talking about include the entire enemy army.
I’m talking about their combined presence rooted in the characteristics of their land and
climate, their history, and each soldier’s convictions, so there’s no way to make a comprehensive
comparison here, but…”

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With a wide smirk, Saber appraised whatever was at the center of the raging cumulonimbus
kilometers away.

“I didn’t think a single soul could go as wild as them. That’s one way to get people jealous!
Right, Ayaka?”

“Wrong…”

“Really? You’re a logical one, Ayaka! That also has me jealous! I wish I had what you got!”

“Some king really needs to work on his envy issues.”

Ayaka was ever as baffled by his banter, but even then, a vision was still always present in the
background of her thoughts.
Images of the dream she had that morning.
Saber’s blood-colored past.
The smell of blood entering her nose there was vivid despite it being a dream, and that stench
was probably engraved in Saber’s soul.
Ayaka was not versed enough in magecraft or Heroic Spirits to have any productive thoughts
on the matter.
And for that reason, she was frightened.
Frightened that she would become a burden to Saber, who continued to fight despite having
a soul marked by such things.

But I’m past the point I could back down. Can’t let myself stop. I’m a Master now, whatever that
means.

She was aware that she made herself a participant in a fierce fight.
Part of her wanted to dismiss this sensation as the heat of the moment driving her crazy.
But Ayaka knew from the start that she wasn’t wholly sane.
For the longest time, before she came to this city, she always felt herself strangely detached
from gravity.
She spent her days only running away from her fear of the Red Little Riding Hood and
unintelligible guilt within her.

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If anything, the bond she tied to Saber after coming to this city is what finally grounded her.
Being Saber’s Master was what connected her to the world.
One wrong move was bound to cost not only her life, but the lives of Saber and the mages
around her, or maybe a large number of citizens.
No, she had a high chance of still dying without making any wrong moves.
In the lurid battle from a while ago, Ayaka witnessed the surge of power of a goddess. She
saw with her own eyes that this pile of rubble was a floating temple moments ago. This reminded
her that human common sense had no place in her situation.
Shoving her anxieties further down her throat, she took a deep breath to steel her resolve.
Next, she asked Saber a question:

“So, about the… was it a goddess? Did they defeat her?”

“Looks like it. After the temple fell, the air around her went back to normal.”

Saber was taking Ayaka’s hand to help her climb the rubble, but his eyes were looking another
way.
The temple crumbled into a pile of rock before, and now it was crumbling further, with the
edges of the still-solid debris gradually turning back to sand and dirt.
In the center of the rubble, they found the body of a woman lying down.

“Fillia…”

“Seems like she was the vessel of the goddess… Do you know her?”

“Yeah… I’m here because this woman forced me… in that castle… in the forest…”

- Don’t try to stop me, Sella. I’ll use the Holy Grail to revert the outcome of the Holy Grail War.

She could recall Fillia saying that to a woman very similar to her.
Fillia eventually turned her back against this “Sella” and walked to the city carrying Ayaka.
She could even remember the awe she felt when Fillia picked her up as casually as she would
pick up a purse.
When Ayaka was already feeling lost in the current situation, a torrent of memories confused
her further.

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- You can do what I need.

- You are what I need.

- You have no right to decide the end you’ll meet.

- I’ll give meaning to your life.

- The usurper of the Holy Grail reassembled in foreign ground.

-The cornerstone for the reboot of the Einzbern.
-That’s what you will become.

- Why does something like you exist?

- I don’t care about your origin story.
- All that matters is that you and I are the same.
- Something that has no reason to remain in the world unless we accomplish something.

- I’ll make you into a Master.

- I’ll mark your limbs with Command Spells.
- I’ll give you meaning.
- You’ll steal the Servants of the defeated Masters.

- Your entire past is a sham. A fabrication.

- Your entire being is a sham. Incomplete.
- Your entire will is a sham. Exaggerated.
- Your entire future is a sham. A swindle.

- So I’ll turn you into something real.

- A real tool. A Mystic Code.

- I’ll blur the impact of the Red Little Riding Hood etched within you.
- Participate in the Holy Grail War.
- If you don’t want the Red Little Riding Hood to consume you, that is.

Ayaka felt a sharp stab in her head.

But it wasn’t pain.

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She felt like her brain was being strangled by a snake.

The headaches and discomfort she previously felt whenever she tried to remember something
were taking a different form.
Previously, it felt like her memories were trapped in metaphorical ropes, but the knots were
abruptly untied and her brain was flooded with memories she wasn’t trying to remember.
Locking the eerie feeling deep within her spine, she directed a question to the Rider Masters
next to the collapsed Fillia.

“So, uh… Is she dead?”

She was the person who forcibly sent Ayaka to the US, but she was also one of her very few
acquaintances.
Faced with the fact that something was lost from the narrow world she earned for herself,
Ayaka felt her feet disconnecting from gravity.
But the answer delivered by one of the mages–Toosaka Rin–was not what she expected.

“Her body is still alive. She’s pretty sturdy, for Einzbern homunculus standards… There are a
few parts that look incorrectly maintained, but I’m no expert in that department… “

“Huh…? She alive…?”

“That’s not what I said. There’s nothing left of her Divine Core and the consciousness
associated with it. Nor the original personality of the homunculus body. I was really expecting
some remains of that to last, but alas…”

After saying that, Rin turned to look at Fillia’s face.

Her face and body had no marks of damage or signs of vitality lost.
But seeing Fillia as she was now made Ayaka feel irrational grief.

“Looks like she wasn’t originally built to be a Lesser Grail. Still… I don’t think she can come
back from having all that presence of death passing through her, on top of having already been
invaded by a goddess. That possibly altered her very essence.”

“...She’d’ve been better off if we destroyed her before it got to that.”

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One of the mages next to Rin dropped this careless opinion, leaving Ayaka with the
discouraging confirmation that the people before her didn’t share her values.

“Hey, hold o…”

When Ayaka tried to raise her voice—

a chill ran across her whole body.
It was like time stopped for a moment, and she immediately looked above in search of the cause.
She hadn’t detected anything there.
She was simply looking in the same direction as everyone around her was.
Because every mage around her turned their gaze to the sky.
Not to the spiral of thunderclouds in the west, but the humanoid something a mere 10
meters above them.
Drawn in by the figure above them, Ayaka assumed that the being was a Servant, much like
her Saber and many others she saw.

“Flat… is that really you?”, asked a young man from the mage group to the figure above.

“... The other me… No, I shouldn’t be calling him that. He’s dead.”, dispassionately declared
the humanoid something above. “Thia. That’s what he named me. I won’t go by any other name.”

“What’s going on… do they know each other?”, Ayaka talked to herself out loud.
Checking the reactions of the mages around her, she determined the situation was not that
simple.
And next to her, Saber complemented her thoughts.

“Ayaka, remember the man who got shot immediately after we escaped the dream of the
underworld?”

“Huh…? Oh…”

The picture of the young man with his head and chest full of holes formed in her head. She
answered, trying her hardest to contain the rush of nausea coming from her heart.

“The boy… who seemed to know me?”

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“Yeah. The boy above us is, how do I put it… an altered form of his body. No, maybe it’d be
more accurate to say what was inside came out. Honestly, I don’t understand it either, I’m just
saying what one of my companions told me.”

By companions, Saber presumably meant one of the acquaintances beckoned by his Noble
Phantasm.
He called them “companions”, “retinues”, among many other inconsistent terms, but all
Ayaka really knew was that every one of them was an ally Saber trusted.

“I should have taken my studies of magecraft more seriously in life. Well, no crying over
spilled milk.”

Saber walked in front of Ayaka during his casual chatter.

He was in position to protect Ayaka from whatever the entity above tried.
Immediately understanding the meaning of that, Ayaka swallowed her nausea and guarded
herself.

“Aya…ka…Sajo…u…”

But—a faint moan reached her ears.

“?”
When Ayaka reflexively looked at her feet, she saw Fillia with her eyes and mouth barely open.

“You’re… still alive…”

“!”

It wasn’t the “vestiges of the goddess” talking. It was the woman who brought her here.
Ayaka had only talked to the goddess once through text messages, but she could feel that this
one was the Fillia she knew.
She couldn’t explain why, however.
The feeling of knots untying inside her head was still present this whole time.
Fillia whispered in a way only she could hear.
Ayaka crouched next to Fillia’s face to hear her better.
Her barely moving mouth closed.

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But her voice still reached Ayaka’s ears.

Through some unknown means of magical communication, Ayaka felt her voice ringing
directly from the tattoos on her limbs and shoulders.

When the divine aura squashed me… I also remembered everything… I did… something horrible
to you…

Unlike in their first meeting, her voice had hints of kindness now.
Her tone of conversation was closer to the one she used to talk to the other woman in white
when Ayaka first saw the two by the castle.

Huh? I can remember everything clearly… Right. She was arguing with someone similar to her.
The name was Sella.

The rope in Ayaka’s brain was undone, and every strand composing it—every string of
memory—broke apart into finer fibers that melded together.
This was the perfect opportunity for Fillia’s mental waves to permeate deeper into Ayaka’s
body.

I wasn’t being myself.

I’m an Einzbern defector…
...lost control…ask…someone, ...Ba…t, to put…stop to…

It sounded like an internal monologue as much as it sounded like a confession to a priest.

Her mind was probably collapsing.
Her words gradually lost power until the point Ayaka’s mind was able to shake them off.

I just wanted you to have a normal

I just wanted you to have a human life.
Yet I inflicted you with the same suffering
I’m… sorry
I’m undoing all of my hypnosis.
You’ll be the real you again.
I lied to you.
I was exploiting your past.

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The Red Little Riding Hood wasn’t a curse.

So… so please…
From this moment on, be free.

A voice, maybe crying, maybe smiling, rang in Ayaka’s brain.

Ah… I’m going… home…

To that city… that accepted me… as a human being.

That was the tone of the final words left behind by Fillia’s mind. And when the talk was
over—
Ayaka’s brain was instantly flooded with memories.

× ×

Years ago, in Fuyuki

It was a complete coincidence.

But perhaps it was an inevitable event as long as she was living in the land of Fuyuki.

It happened while she was still roaming without knowing what she was.
Leaping out of the darkness and into the streets, she ran into a pair of walking boys.
The contacted member of the pair wasn’t prepared for impact, so he flipped backward onto
the floor, with his trading cards flying all over the place.

“Ah… Sor…Sorry…”

Contrary to her faltering words, the boy spoke with a smile despite his visible pain.

“Uhuh…! Worry not, young lass.”

With one hand doing a thumbs-up and the other picking up his cards, the boy spoke with
more concern for the party that was still standing than for himself. Until—

“Huhuhu… Heed my words. With each fall, I shall rise anew, sharper and stronger… Kah?

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Sajou-dono? Why are you here? Why did you dye your hair?”

Glaring at her face with disbelief, the boy dropped vaguely familiar theatrical mannerisms
halfway through the sentence.

“Who? Do you… know my name?”

“Excuse me?! Uh, well, I had the impression that we talked to each other enough times. Was
that just my impression? Are the fond memories of the distant days of my youth no more than
the misbeliefs of a self-important wanderer?! Baffling… I see necessity to redefine my standing!”

Confused, her attention was strongly drawn to the boy yelling his excited delusions.
Normally, she would tell herself that she mustn’t interact with humans, ignore whatever he
was saying, and run away…
But, shocked that the bizarrely high-spirited boy knew the name of her current form, she
engaged him directly before she stopped to think about the repercussions.
She remained entirely clueless about how much this goofy incident changed her fate.

“This one goes by Gai. Gotou Gai! In the letters of the West, it is spelled G-O-T-O-G-A-Y!
And your denomination is Sajou Ayaka! It would satisfy me to have you remember me as the
mighty rival who ate from the same cauldron as you in Homurahara’s seats of learning! All is
well in the world if you do! Initiating friendship installer!”

“Sajou… Ayaka? That’s…my…name?”

“Wha!? An unexpected reaction! Forgetting this one would be one thing, but why should
Sajou-dono express doubt about her own name? A mystery for the ages!”

In response, the other boy, who had been sleeping on his feet behind him this whole time,
suddenly opened his eyes and mumbled:

“...? She looks identical to Sajou… hair color aside… but I don’t think that’s her.”

The boy had strange eyes, blurred by sleepiness but capable of seeing through her clearly.
After taking a close look, he continued with a puzzled comment.

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“Amnesia…?”

“Tsunokuma-dono?! Surely you mustn’t mean that I caused it by colliding with her…!?
Which reminds me, I hear that Mitsuzuri-dono lost her memory when assailed by a flying
serpent… This surely must be related…!”

“...Maybe it would be a good idea to take her to the… hospital… Ah…”

Before they noticed it, she had dashed away from them.

Those two knew about her.

That’s what terrified her.
She dreaded learning what she currently was.
She couldn’t forget the secret she intentionally sealed away—
She rewrote her information and recorded this case under maximum importance.

“I’m… Sajou. A friend of… those two… Gotou Gai and Tsunokuma…?”

She caught her breath and recited her newly-acquired information.

“Homurahara’s… Sajou Ayaka. That’s… That’s…”

She was trying to record into her soul that this was what mattered the most to her.

“...my face’s name…”

× ×

Present day, the former site of the Neo Ishtar Temple

Past memories came fresh to Ayaka’s brain.

When asked by the mage named Toosaka Rin about her acquaintances in Fuyuki, those
were the first two names to come to mind. She was able to fish that answer from her blurred
memories when she answered the question, and now the event that explained the reason for that

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was completely reproduced in her mind.

That scared Ayaka.
Being able to recall memories that clearly was abnormal.
Additional information replayed in her head as if to substantiate her apprehensions.
That’s perhaps the recoil of the distortion caused by Fillia’s hypnosis.
From memories she simply didn’t want to remember—to memories sealed by her protective
instincts.

Including memories from before she obtained her current form.

“—————————————————”
Red darkness blotted out Ayaka’s consciousness.
Like her vision was covered by a red hood.

While all of Ayaka’s memories were being reconstructed inside her, the circumstances were
also changing in the real world.

“She’ll… eventually become an enemy of mankind. Just like me.”

Saber, guarding Ayaka, answered the voice above.

“C’mon now, no one likes when people talk like they’re prophets, you know? Look at Saint-
Germain, his prophecies hit the spot time and time again, and that never stopped anyone from
seeing him as a major annoyance!”

“You’re Saber?”

“But well, if Ayaka becomes an enemy of mankind, I’d be willing to join her. Here’s one
prophecy from me: if it comes to that, I don’t think Ayaka will be the one starting the fight, you
hear me?”

The two voices reached Ayaka’s ears.

She could clearly understand what they were discussing. But internally—
That’s not me.
Ayaka’s heart tightened when she heard Saber say the word “Ayaka”.
I’ve been… deceiving Saber… this whole time… No, I’m… I’m… Not even human…

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“I can loudly and confidently attest that my Master… Ayaka won’t become an enemy of
mankind. It would be more accurate to say that mankind will become Ayaka’s enemy.”

This was where she stopped Saber’s words.

“Ayaka?”

While Saber’s attention was elsewhere, something that was no longer Ayaka grabbed his
hand.

“No… I’m not Ayaka.”, the clinging Ayaka forced the words out of her mouth. Like she was
confessing to a sin.

The relationship between Master and Servant.

That was the only thing the current Ayaka held as certain—the frail thread of spider web
holding her will in the living world.

“I remembered it… I remembered everything…! I remember…!”

Ayaka’s line of sight dropped to Fillia. There would be no next telepathic message. Her life
was preserved, but only that. Her mind was vanquished.
Ayake yelled, unable to thank or curse the last thing she had done to her.

“That’s not me… I’m not Sajou Ayaka!”

She clung to Saber but couldn’t look him in the eye.

Despite being shattered by the memories that still hadn’t stopped springing back to life in
her brain, Ayaka still needed to tell Saber who she was.

“I’m… It was me… I’m the Little Red Riding Hood.”

Or needed to tell the grave crime she committed.

“I did it... I was the killer.”

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Chapter 28
“This world’s madness knows no bounds”

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 Chapter 28: This world’s madness knows no bounds

Chapter 28: This world’s madness knows no bounds

The “mother” who birthed the “creature” was a system.

Born of chaos, the gods of order flew from beyond the distant quiet.
She was a software program roaming the mountaintop called Olympus. Unable to project a
body of flesh or a body of machinery, she took solely the form of wisdom and knowledge adrift
in the sea of information.

The designation assigned to her was Ἄτη (Ate).

The intelligence governing madness, who confounded the gods, humanity, and the world by
swaying rationality.
She wasn’t generated by a bug or malice. She was present from the start because she was
always necessary—her significance was comparable to a ballast installed at a ship’s bottom. A
support device implemented to fortify the logic and sincerity of a world.

But, at a certain moment—the gods, humans, and those born in the interstice between them
were affected by a change of paradigm, causing Zeus, chief of Olympus, to personally draw the
conclusion that Ate was unneeded.
This frozen system was removed from the network of gods and discarded into the world of
humans.

Human tradition told the tales of what Ate inflicted upon mankind when Zeus, wroth in his
soul, seized Ate by her bright-tressed head and flung her to the lands of mankind below.

The name of the territory the goddess governing folly fell on was Troy.
The seeds of madness sewn in the tilled fields later to be called “the hill of the Phrygian Ate”
eventually began to take root.
And then the people began to whisper that the Ate banished from Olympus was to blame
for humanity’s recurring acts of foolishness.

It happened to Agamemnon, the hero of the Trojan War.

Amidst a war that the man himself started because Paris stole his dear wife, Agamemnon of all
people had the gall to steal Achilles’s sweetheart, inflicting the first fatal crack in the Greek alliance.

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Among Agamemnon’s apologies to an Achilles barely able to contain his rage, he declared
that his foolish actions were caused by the spell of Ate inflicted on him by the gods.
Ate, daughter of Zeus, was a symbol that governed derangement and confounded all men.
According to him, she never sets foot on the ground, instead flying from human head to
human head, maddening most gods and people along the way.

“My friends, Danaan warriors, squires of Ares, meet is it to give ear to him that standeth
to speak! And amid the uproar of many how should a man either hear or speak? To the son of
Peleus will I declare my mind, but do ye other Argives give heed, and mark well my words each
man of you! Full often have the Achaeans spoken unto me this word, and were ever fain to chide
me; howbeit it is not I that am at fault! But what could I do? It is God that bringeth all things
to their issue! Aye, and on a time she blinded Zeus, albeit men say that he is the greatest among
men and gods; yet even him Hera, that was but a woman, beguiled in her craftiness! Zeus sware
a mighty oath that never again unto Olympus and the starry heaven should Ate come! And
quickly she that blindeth all came flung to the tilled fields of men! At thought of her would he
ever groan, whenso he beheld his dear son in unseemly travail beneath Eurystheus’ tasks! Even
so I also, what time great Hector of the flashing helm was making havoc of the Argives at the
sterns of the ships, could not forget Ate, of whom at the first I was made blind! Howbeit seeing I
was blinded, and Zeus robbed me of my wits, fain am I to make amends and to give requital past
counting. Nay, rouse thee for battle, and rouse withal the rest of thy people. Gifts am I here ready
to offer thee!”, said Agamemnon in a passionate speech to Achilles and their brother-in-arms.

In summary, he blamed everything on the goddess of all madness, and to atone for “Ate
depriving him of his sanity” and smooth things over, he gifted Achilles a large amount of money
and goods.
Achilles never cared much for such items, so he took a big pause to think about whether or
not he should put his spear down.
Odysseus, foreseeing this situation, dashed to the site of Agamemnon’s public apology,
mediated their strife, and spared the Greek army from an inner collapse.

Has Ate been, as Agamemnon claimed, ceaselessly spreading folly, delusion, lies, and malice
since the moment she was discarded?
Were the absurdities of Human Order all caused by a god dumped on the Earth’s surface
scattering madness data?

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The answer is no.

Human Order is not ill-defined enough to be controlled by the discontinued deity of folly.
Through its long journey, mankind obtained idiocy, madness, and doom by its own merits.
It was all accomplished by their own hands, with no influence from a disembodied
intelligence that lost its godhood.
The discarded goddess never lamented its powerlessness nor resented the gods that banished
it—
She only extolled mankind and the world.

Mankind’s folly had no symbol or cause, and for that reason, madness could never vanish
from its world.
Therefore, instead of rotting in her needlessness, she was integrated into the world from
inception.
Mankind was foolish and wise. They already contained the dichotomy of doom and glory,
without any need for her to go out of her way to implant her madness.
And that is what will bring mankind to its inevitable perfect form.
Unhindered by how the depths of time eventually decayed the Olympians.
And no god is left alive to determine whether this future was Ate’s prophecy or the delusions
of the one merged with madness itself.

- Fun and joy, fun and joy. Hear, glorious gods. Hear, my father, Keraunos incarnate! I
commend you for dragging me by the hair, swinging me around, and slamming me on the earth.
I’ll be alive as a companion of mankind while you disappear into the spiral of myth. No, I’ve
been part of humanity since inception. It’s this concrete form of mine that was a dream and
illusion all along. Because my perfect form, madness, originated within humanity.

Ate, goddess governing madness—a wave of information who gladly dissolved herself within
the world.
One tiny ripple of this wave withstood the test of time and long later morphed into a form
that didn’t fit the category of either human or Natural Spirit.
Folly itself, this intelligence that existed only as a wave, gained a physical form.

One unit of folly manifested in humanoid form.

Despite inheriting goddess Ate’s characteristics, he gradually upgraded himself into someone

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else entirely.
In a certain land, he met the myriad radiances of water.
Under the tutelage of a portion of those countless flickering lights—the Lake Spirits, each a
kaleidoscope of different facets—he learned magecraft.
He saw an incubus antagonize the most powerful of the Lake Spirits and incorporated the
concept of illusions into his madness.
The incubus didn’t express a shred of interest in him because he knew the new individual was
nothing more than a booster, devoid of human emotions.
That’s how he perceived the living folly born of Ate.
And after gaining the power of magecraft, the son of the goddess began to wander the world.
He never guided or confounded human beings.
Because he knew there was no need.
Humans were complete from inception.
They contained both sanity and insanity, and both good and evil, from inception.
As such, all he needed to do was—give them a push.
Instead of being a leader guiding them, he stood behind them, only whispering in their ears.
Only amplifying ripples, like a wave.
That’s how the living folly mixed itself into human society and continued to love human
confusion.
For decades, centuries, and millennia to come.
Until the inevitable moment when the folly will offer his life to the wondrous ripple of light
and shadow.
Much like the saint who offered her insane good deeds to God and was accomplished in war
for her dazzling rationality—
and a general who was forced by sanity to curse God and chose a path of madness and ruin
for the sake of the saint.

- So much beauty in the world and humanity. I want to be assimilated into them by
disappearing when they do.

Years after watching the endpoint of the madness of the general he considered his best friend,
it was the folly’s turn to take the gallows.
That’s after he had already planted replication resources all over the globe to replace his
vanishing self in the role of watching the world.
The name that the folly happened to be using at the time of his execution, and that

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consequently was recorded in history, was—

François Prelati.

× ×

A few years ago, Germany, mountainous area

“Ooh, that’s sorta weird.”

A boy roamed a forest confined by large trees and ice.

The upper stream of a river crossing Germany.
The climate in this land disconnected from the world was different from its surroundings,
confined in a layered veil of snow as if that place alone was frozen in time.
A boy walked through these snow-covered mountain paths.

“The natural boundaries of the land are still online. I managed to get through by deceiving
the traps I triggered, but the people in there must be informed that I’m here.”

He leisurely climbed the mountains shrouded in snow, without ever running out of breath.
Surrounded by silence, all that reached his ears were creaks of the branches and trunks of the
trees freezing.
The sky above his track was pure white, looking as if the sun was also frozen.
However, this icy sky didn’t interrupt the boy’s walk.
Every step he took rewrote that world.
At a 1-meter diameter of the boy, the snowy grass instantly thawed into vibrantly green
poison herbs.
And as he advanced his walk, the herbs froze and shattered, returning to the same snow
dune.
That was an advanced illusion deceiving the space around him.
Any mage could find a far easier way to march through the snow with a combination of
magecraft and Mystic Codes.
But the boy mage went out of his way to disturb the snow world through a special illusion
that required vast amounts of dexterity and magical energy.

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“Even making this much of a mess of their lawn, not a single attack homunculus comes my
way. They couldn’t have changed headquarters without my knowing, could they?”

Eventually, the mage who looked like a boy reached a castle.

The base of a clan made up of the innermost secrets related to the Holy Grail.

× ×

At the most inaccessible part of the montane forest, there was a space-confining boundary.
In its interior, a land isolated from the outside.
A sudden abnormality occurred in this space ruled by silence.
Unexpected cracks formed in the otherwise empty space between the trees, similar to gaps
between two pieces in a jigsaw puzzle—and for the next scene, a tackily-decorated wooden
hammer smashed one of the pieces of the puzzle and the boy mage appeared out of the hole
opened by it.

“No reaction even for bursting their barriers?? No way, is this place really empty?”

The boy peeked his head outside the puzzle piece-shaped “hole” and observed his
surroundings.
A magnificent European castle harmonized with the fantastical snowscape around it.
It had no castle town, making it all the more conspicuous, and its appearance formed the
image of a place one wouldn’t want to step into.
But the boy knew that this was just camouflage.
The castle was magnificent only on the surface, and any modern engineer (wouldn’t even
need to be a mage) would be able to notice the glaring incongruences in its blueprint, door
placements, and the internal structure of each room.
The architecture made it plain for anyone to see that this was not a living space for royalty
or titled nobility, much less a fortress at a strategic location, it was a large and extremely efficient
power plant.
A place one wouldn’t want to step into? Beyond that. This was a secret facility purposely
designed to reject others.
Its construction was beautiful like the craftwork of the fae, delicate like a glass sculpture, and
robust in a way that showed its vast history. Normal humans faced with its front gate would feel
overwhelmed enough to bury themselves in the snow.

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The boy, completely unfazed, entered the castle with bold steps, as if he owned the place.
Instead, he watched every corner in search of any obstacles aside from the traps and
boundaries installed in ancient times.

“No way. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The boy advanced through the snowlit courtyard, disabling the boundaries along the way.

“Heeey? Is there really no one here? I’m taking the castle for myself, ok? Maybe I should
make a bunch of Trojan Horses and set them up to come out of here for the audience? Letting
this loser capture your castle would shame you for generations to come, you know? Come out
or I’ll spread the gossip all over the Clock Tower. Hellooo?”

Done with his provocations, the boy produced a cane.

Spinning his cane unleashed a rainbow that spread decorating the castle’s interior in the
image of a Halloween party.
Illusion-generated automata roamed the place, the flying humanoid form of the pure-white
Trojan Horse circled the sky, and the chalk drawings on the walls, with limited animations,
performed Scene 1 of Rhinegold, Act 1 of Wagner’s celebrated opera Nibelungenlied.
The boy’s illusions also created a monster audience to watch the monster spectacle, bringing
a chaotic atmosphere to the castle isolated by snow.
His actions affronted the castle’s dignified looks—but still provoked no reaction.

“There’s really… no one here? C’mon, you know that there’s nothing more boring than
getting no reactions. I’d be impressed if you’re doing it on purpose. You know just the perfect
way to annoy me!”

The boy mage left the automata to continue their mad dance in the courtyard and headed
further down the castle with a sour face.

And then—
When exploring the castle, he raised an eyebrow at what he found.

Somewhere beyond the snow’s reach—on an altar resembling an oratory, there were
countless unmoving homunculi posed like they were offering prayers.

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They were deactivated, or more aptly, abandoned.

In terms of soul and information, it’d be no exaggeration to say they were disposed of.
Physically beautiful homunculi.
No damage was dealt to their pretty appearances, but there was no data left within them.
It felt like a visual statement that those dolls never had life.

And then, when the boy ventured further into the room of the family head, he could reach
only half of his goal.
There’s a reason for that.
The boy’s goal was a conversation with the head of the distinguished family of homunculi
headquartered in this castle, the Einzberns.
The figure before his eyes was indeed the head Jubstacheit von Einzbern.
But it was only his figure.

“Even the stone slab interface… Even his main avatar…”

The man had white hair and beard and was garbed in an elegant priest-like robe.
His face had wrinkles of age but still felt like a finished piece of art.
His eyes had a sharp light and seemed to look at the boy.
But they actually weren’t.
Jubstacheit’s eyes weren’t focused on anyone or anywhere.
They had already lost such function.
A chair was installed only to give him the appearance of a family head to outsiders. He sat
on it with his fingers crossed, postured like someone who just lowered his head after staring at
the ceiling reminiscing of the past.
Time felt completely stopped for the boy as he naturally imagined this scenario.
His skin resembling white porcelain was more hardened than any pure-white jewel, having
turned into a humanoid crystal that left everything behind in the past.

“Oh, ok.”

The boy touched the elder doll’s hand and began inspecting its links.
The boy already knew that this body was an interface and the real him was the stone slab, a
magical AI.
From there, he learned that the stone slab associated with this interface had also ceased its

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functions.
It was no temporary shutdown. The entire system that contained his AI annulled itself to an
extent where it couldn’t be recycled by third parties.
Not even his greatest illusion could accomplish his reboot.
The system was dismantled while leaving its physical parts displayed in a perfect state. Seeing
this practical work of art, the boy slowly opened his mouth.

“You already ran out of hopes, Einzberns?”

The boy monologued watching the formerly metaphorical dolls now turned into literal dolls.

“When it became evident that Fuyuki’s ritual had no future, you people chose to discontinue
yourselves, huh…”

The expression on the boy’s face changed multiple times through the next few seconds.
Mockery, sorrow, joy, anger.
In a moment of silence, his face betrayed that he didn’t know which was the right emotion
for him to feel at the moment—and at the end of this cycle, he strongly hit the tip of his cane
against the floor.
In an instant, the mood of the castle flipped 180.

The boy negated the illusions he previously deployed in the castle, restoring the castle to its
former dignity.
The twist in space compressed itself and engulfed the boy until the distortion burst like a
soap bubble, leaving behind a respectfully kneeling boy.

“You have my apologies for the ruckus I caused while you were frozen.”

No reply, as expected.
But his words were a sincere statement to the humanoid interface of the deactivated
Jubstacheit, the artificial intelligence created by magecraft—a magnificent homunculus.

“Construct who gained enough humanity to fulfill your duties, accept your chagrins, and
give up on your dreams; magnificent tool who challenged yourself to show all of mankind what
lay beyond the walls of the Third and sought Justeaze’s era; you have the respect of this vestige of

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François Prelati—vulgar malice who loves humanity without being loved back, defiles without
being defiled backs, and toys with it as much as I am toyed back. The child of the downgraded
goddess Ate commends you.”

The boy bowed his head, none of his previous goofiness remaining.

“I don’t know what led the humans to create you. Now that you’re deactivated, I don’t want
to rob you of your entrails and spell formulae. I’ll just express my approval of your kind’s dream
and the history you poured into it. I’ll laugh at the silliness of accomplishing your dream soulless
as you are, admire your foolish honesty, and direct my anger at the unfair world that disallows
your project to bear fruit.”

After speaking like a reader who finished a deeply moving book that got him invested in the
characters, the boy mage–as he called himself, a vestige of François Prelati–giggled awkwardly
with a vaguely lonely smile, quite different from the kind of smile he usually bears.

“They genuinely bet all of their chips on the unit that they sent to the Fifth Holy Grail War.”

The boy by the name François Prelati turned his back on the doll who once served as the
head of the Einzbern family, making it clear that there was no point in him staying there any
longer, and mumbled in disappointment.

“I wish I could have met her. But Makiri’s worms really have too much of an advantage over me…”

His words stopped there.

Because something was off in that frozen castle.

“...?”

After confirming this bizarre spike in magical energy, the boy carefully searched for its source.
He eventually reached the castle’s basement, where he found the homunculi’s Repair
Device—in a room that doubled as a warehouse and a graveyard.

“What’s this?”

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Inside this device that he first assumed to be a special coffin made by an alchemist, there was
a homunculus yet to fully cease functioning.
She had the form of a beautiful woman, and checking the formula of her base spell, he could
confirm that she wasn’t a dormant homunculus nor a new unit waiting to be first initialized.
The name “Fillia” on her coffin’s label jogged François’s memories.

“Hey…I’ve heard this name before.”

If I recall correctly, one unit escaped from the Einzbern and had to be forced out of operation by
the Clock Tower’s God’s Holder… Fillia was the name she used while pretending to be human.

“If this is that unit… Why is she not inactive… or rather, why is she not decommissioned like
the rest?”

Puzzled, François observed the homunculus, simulating cycles of dissection and regeneration
through illusions.

“Hm, her combat organs are all destroyed. Well, I wouldn’t have expected any different,
knowing she’s been in an all-out battle against a Sealing Designation enforcer, but wouldn’t the
fact that they didn’t get rid of her implies it would be potentially necessary to repair her later?”

If anything, her Magic Circuit quantity looks higher than what she was modeled with. That’s
not a normal homunculus. She’s specialized for a specific purpose…

At this point, his train of thought led him to the Holy Grail War.

“A spare in case anything happened to the 5th’s Lesser Grail… no, that’s not it. Probably a
sample for the next round, assuming the 5th War wasn’t going to be a critical failure…? Instead
of defining her as a homunculus, they defined her as fully discarded recyclable scraps or reference
material, and that’s what let her escape the forced shutdown…?”

The role of the Lesser Grail is to temporarily pool the magical energy previously used to
mold the defeated Heroic Spirits. Considering this unit was resilient enough to fight against a
Sealing Designation enforcer, it was very plausible that she was meant to be a prototype for the
next Lesser Grail.

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But she was just an unneeded stranger now that the Einzberns discontinued the ritual and
themselves along it.
Despite her deviations from the regular framework, she was still a homunculus built from
the same mold as them, therefore the same deactivation measures might have been applied to
her too.
However, as a consequence of the God’s Holder’s blow destroying her systems, she was
unable to properly process the shutdown command. That was how François imagined it.

“Meh, the cause doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you’re still here.”

With a sinister smile, François dragged the homunculus–who while the only one not
petrified, was still infinitely close to death–out of her coffin.
His eyes had a mixture of nefariousness and anticipation toward “who was still alive”,
directly opposite to the respect previously he showed to Jubstacheit. It was with those eyes that
he professed what was half monologue and half dialogue with the unawakening homunculus.

“Until just now, I thought I was going to have to make do by modding a homunculus of the
Musik, a family of ancient Einzbern disciples. Their Toole series is pretty high-spec, and most
importantly, fits neatly with my personal tastes… Oh, hold on.”

The tendons of the homunculus were magically severed to disable her self-regenerative
functions.
While tracing her scars, the illusions began deceiving those very scars.

“But with you around, problems solved. You’re an ultra-class vessel.”

After basic repairs, he lifted the united named Fillia and walked to the castle gates.
He giggled awkwardly with undertones of sadism, contrary to the awkward giggle from his
encounter with Jubstacheit’s corpse.

“No idea what Faldeus’s boys will do to your mind and memories though!”

× ×

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Present day, Snowfield urban area, back alley

“...Calm down. There’s no sign of enemies nearby.”, Haruri whispered to herself, exposed to
the unstopping winds in a dim-lit back alley.

She lent her shoulder to a petite shadow with a bizarre shape.

It was undoubtedly one of the Heroic Spirits made manifest in Snowfield.
Berserker in the form of a mechanical doll as small as her summoner.
Devoid of her almost hill-sized physique, she could now fit inside the trunk of a car. She
depended on Haruri to support her stumbling feet.
It was clear that she fell into an abnormal state that deprived her of her ability to go into
spirit form—but she wasn’t losing her Saint Graph. Haruri knew that much.

“It’s fine. I’ll protect you.”

Her words sounded lax if taken out of context, but they were spoken with distinct
determination. Her eyes had no sign of the fears and anxieties she used to hold.

“...”

Meanwhile, the Servant didn’t answer.

With or without a Berserker’s Mad Enhancement, she looked like someone who never had
language functions to begin with. But from Ishtar’s conversations, Haruhi guessed she was
capable of understanding her wills.
Her body remembered the time she was almost killed by Berserker’s initial rampage.
She didn’t forget or overcome her fear.
Haruri learned to accept her fear.
It was by accepting it that she could continue to walk by her Servant’s side.
Even if the dream couldn’t last longer than a day, since they defended their temple together,
Haruri considered Berserker a follower of the same goddess.
The goddess’ descent to the underworld didn’t change that.
She had the option to admit defeat and seek protection at the Church, but admitting defeat
meant forsaking Berserker.

- Take good care… of Huwawa.

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Haruhi recalled the mercy in goddess Ishtar’s last words to her.

- She may not look like it… but she’s a really lonely girl.

How could she abandon Huwawa—this Berserker?

She made her decision.
If her feet were still on the ground despite the deep sorrow that comes with losing the subject
of her religion, it must be because she still has something to protect next to her.
And infiltrating the city is what Haruri chose to break out of her disadvantageous situation.
She didn’t know that the city was on the verge of being erased.
She could sense that the city was in danger but assumed that was wholly provoked by the
demon-like Heroic Spirit that formed past the forest.
As she’d been in strong contact with the might and mind of the goddess, she didn’t have
much time to consider what obscure politicians would be thinking about all of this.
Although, even if she was in a fully rational state—Haruri might never have imagined that
they intended to drop multiple non-magical weapons of mass destruction on the city.

“Without a team, we’ll be easy prey… And our options for a partner would be Chief Officer
Orlando Reeve or…”

She knew the police was giving Noble Phantasm to human officers.
Haruri judged that this was the remaining camp she still had a chance to negotiate with.
Alternatively, if a Heroic Spirit was powerful enough to mass-produce Noble Phantasm,
they could also be able to restore Berserker’s Saint Graph.
Possible or not, Haruri had already determined herself to never abandon Berserker.
Because now protecting Berserker was a priority over Haruri’s own wish to ruin the world.
However—the voice of a troublemaker echoed through the alleys to mock her.

“Hold up. Berserker? Girl? What happened to you? What’s wrong with you, even?”

“!”

A chill ran down Haruri’s spine.

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“She’s so deflated! Both in body and in magical energy…!”

Turning to the source of the voice, she found a girl with a seductive smile.

“Francesca…”

Faced with the mastermind who invited her to this Grail War, Haruri raised her guard
without shaking Berserker off her shoulder.
That’s who brought her there, but she didn’t trust her in the slightest.
Despite her blatant caution, she hadn’t noticed another boy above her in the back alley until
his voice rang.
“Oh, that’s because she got inserted as a piece in the ritual to recreate the Mesopotamian Age
of Gods. All that doping she got to surpass the domain of a normal Servant gotta come with a
cost, you know?”

“...Who?!”

Haruri’s voice came out on reflex, directed at another Francesca.

But on a closer look, it was a boy with similar facial features, sitting on an emergency staircase
handrail above with a joyful smile.
The boy’s smile was not belittling, but at the same time, too noticeably suspicious to be
called innocent. It gave him the presence of someone merely enjoying a movie.

“...!?”

Haruri’s first instinct was to assume he was Francesca’s illusion.

She believed that creating a genderbend of herself with illusions was the kind of pointless
tomfoolery Francesca would nonchalantly do.
But she quickly realized that was not the case.

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Through special privileges granted to Masters, special information entered Haruri’s sight the
moment she laid eyes on the boy.

“A Servant…?!”

“Hi, nice to meet you. My Master self told me a lot about you.”, said the boy, approaching
Haruri’s face after casually dropping from the handrail. “The girl who was dying to exact revenge
on the world of magecraft is now a goddess’ head priestess serving as a walking crutch for the
forest guard.”

“...”

Many bees floated around the cautious Haruri, lined up in organized rows to generate a
physical barrier.
The bees were still lapis-colored, but now that the goddess sank to the underworld, the level
of arcanity and energy within them was hugely downgraded.
The wary Haruri kept the conversation going as she still hadn’t figured out their goal and
methods of attack.

“I have a question for you?”

“Oh, what is it? I’ll tell you anything I can, okay? We’re way past the point of keeping things
under wraps!”, said the amused Francesca.
“Why me?”, Haruri asked.

“Huh? You mean why you were picked as a Master?”

“Yes. Even counting only the spellcasters unaffiliated with the Clock Tower, I’m far from the
most competent person you could find.”

She raised this question multiple times before.

The world was full of capable spellcasters who never stepped into the Mage’s Association.
Her mentor, for one, could talk in length about how she would never trust Francesca, but no
famed mercenary spellcaster would let such emotions speak louder than the paycheck.
Haruri ignored the obvious question for the sake of her revenge against the world of

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magecraft, but now that her standing as a priestess overwrote her thirst for revenge, nothing was
holding her back from asking.
And Francesca dropped the answer to her question without hesitation.

“Oh? That was just a whim. No big deal.”

“A… whim?”

Haruri’s face showed how she was caught off-guard. Spinning the parasol in her hands fast,
Francesca elaborated.

“The info Faldeus inherited from his family was on Fuyuki’s third, but the Grail War I
researched the hardest was the fourth, you see? And just as you said, this war counted with the
participation of a very famous spellcaster. Oh, now that you mention it, it was during my research
about him that I picked up Sigma. Good times…”, she spoke with nostalgia before directing a
daring smile at Haruri and putting the conversation back on track. “And then I set my eyes on
you, Haruri, someone minorly associated with him, so I could share some of the good times my
best friend had in the Fourth Holy Grail War! No greater or lesser reason for it, got it?”

“That… was why?”

“Oh, but don’t get me wrong, dear Haruri. I may mock your will to take revenge on the
world of magecraft, but I’ll never invalidate it. I’m rooting for you, even. That whole part with
the goddess pulling you by the strings was kinda boring, but now it’s looking like you’re a
worshipper of your own volition, so you got my approval there. All clear?”

After her carefree speech, Francesca used an illusion to transform a nearby trash can into a
pile of candy and dove into it.

“But the irony! The randos drawn by the Grail War rumors and gathered for the initial
primer summons turned out to be nastier than the roster handpicked for my whims. Can you
believe it?”

Francesca narrated the events of a mere 5 days ago as if they happened in a distant past.

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“One guy went crazy from touching the ‘key’ to the treasury, one guy summoned his Heroic
Spirit in broad daylight on a populated park, one guy wasn’t nice enough to his doggy, etc. All
people who crucially failed as mages one way or another! And to top it off… You won’t believe
this, a VAMPIRE joined the mix!”

Francesca spoke not to Haruri but to the shadow on the opposite side of the alley.
In response—a man came out of the shade, phasing the world.
Seeing the man’s bold smile despite his snapped neck, Haruri figured out who he was.

“...! You were at the temple’s entrance…”

“Oh, it’s the little Borzak successor… kh…huhu…huhuhu, lovely to see you in good health.”,
said the young man–Jester Karture–for his introduction. By grabbing his hair and lifting it, his
neck bones began to repair themselves with loud cracks.

Put off by the plain demonstration that he wasn’t human, Haruri nonetheless opened her
mouth.

“I was convinced that the Dead Apostle was here by your invitation, Francesca.”

“Huh? Prejudiced much? You make me sound like some wicked faerie who only cares about
watching shit hit the fan.”

“Ahaha! Half of the sentence is accurate!”, continued the laughing boy who looked like
Francesca. “We generally side with humanity! More like, we and those guys who reject Human
Order don’t see eye to eye. Whether Human Order perishes or blooms into the cosmos, we want
humanity’s conclusion to come from its own hands.”

“Bold words coming from someone who set up this massive magecraft ritual.”, Jester clicked
his tongue in response.

“C’mon, what else was I supposed to do? It was a facet of humanity that wished I did it.”,
Francesca answered Jester with a seductive smile. “I, we rather, don’t care much about non-
humans. If, instead of the Dead Apostle Jester Karture, you exposed the form you had when you
were a human…Dorothea…the tragic mage banished from the Association despite her immense

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power…then you’d have my full support, you know?”

“...!”

“?”

Jester’s teeth-grinding confused Haruri.

Are they old acquaintances…? No, I can easily imagine Francesca researching her opponents in
a matter of days.

With that confident assumption, Haruri maintained herself alert, while Francesca offered
Jester a handshake, with her eyes sparkling like the devil proposing a deal.

However, her extended hand still gripped her parasol.

“I’ll never lead you by the hand anywhere. Just give you a push in the direction you want
to go. But if that’s what you want, my encouraging push can come with all the impulse and
propulsion of a jet engine, got it?”

That moment—
didn’t escape Haruri’s eyes.
She noticed that when Francesca said “I’ll never lead you by the hand anywhere”, the boy
presumed to be a Servant rolled his eyes with an almost inperceptible awkwardness to his smile.
But without further change to his expression, Haruri thought this didn’t mean much and
proceeded to ask Francesca a question.

“And why would that bring you to me? You’re not really going to help me, are you?”

“I’m here to encourage you, what else? I thought I should show you what your options are…
although I’m not telling you which I recommend.”

“Our options? Fancy hearing that from the one who tried to use me as a pawn against the
goddess.”, said a doubtful Jester.
“That was your own choice, remember? You said it yourself that you’d keep making moves at

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that Assassin girl until you drew your last breath.”, the Heroic Spirit boy laughed.

“...That I won’t deny. My gorgeous Assassin managed to endure the tyranny of the goddess!
No, I’d have preferred this to have been her moment of lapse, but thinking about how I’ll be able
to see her challenging a powerful opponent for the sake of her faith one more time fills me with
the heat I thought I had lost when I became a Dead Apostle.”

Jester’s enraptured body shook.

Haruri felt something creepy within him but figured that the discussion wouldn’t go
anywhere if she gave him any attention and gave her independent response to the Heroic Spirit
boy.

“My option…I already made my choice to work under Chief Orlando Reeve. I don’t need
your words to lead me astray.”

The Heroic Spirit boy and his Master girl reacted to Haruri’s strong refusal by exchanging
glances and—
“You should have told us sooner.”
“Talk about perfect timing.”
Their faces beamed from an unexpected strike of good luck.

“That’s all the more reason to listen to us, you know?”

The girl elaborated in sync with the boy calmly pointing deeper into the back alley.

“Because that was the option we had to offer you.”

He pointed to the alley’s exit.

Where a man stood frozen.
Eyes locked not on Francesca or Haruri, but on Jester.

“You’re… Assassin’s…”

“Hm?”

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Jester noticed the glare directed at him, looked at the policeman standing at the alley’s exit,
paused to think, and…

“Oh!”, he remembered the face he had forgotten and shrugged. “It’s the valiant youth who
fed me his right hand.”

He couldn’t continue talking.

It took one breath before the policeman’s face was right in front of him.
Before he could feel startled at the closed gap, he had a glistening knife pointed at his heart.

“Wha…”

Jester dodged by a hair’s breadth and wall-jumped his way up the alley’s emergency staircase.

“Whew, that was close…Wasn’t this thing loaded with Hydra venom? That’s the kind of
wicked toxin that kills concepts, so despite me having abandoned the course of the living, I still
wouldn’t want to have a taste of that!”

“Bastard…!”

“I have no idea how that works, but I see you still got a foot outside the human domain.”

Jester could sense the policemen fighting the Cerberus-riding bowman in front of the
hospital and knew for a fact that one of them had a sudden power increase back then.
Jester had assumed that was a temporary buff but updated his theory to it being the kind that
remains active for as long as the Servant is manifested and grew one level more wary.
Someone gaining physical abilities comparable to a Servant normally wouldn’t bother Jester,
but at that moment, not only he was weakened but also the opponent had a poison dagger
capable of corroding anything.
He couldn’t afford to deal with obstacles to his reencounter with his dearest Assassin, so he
kept climbing the walls and disappeared into the rooftop.

“Wai…”

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“Don’t you think it’s dangerous to pursue him all on your own, John Wingard?”, Francesca
called John before he ran after Jester.

“...!”

The startled Officer John stopped in his tracks and looked at Francesca.

“I remember you… You’re Chief ’s…”

“Yup, Orlando’s mage friend. So you got nothing to worry about, ok?”

“And who is the woman? And the… what she’s carrying on her shoulder?”

Seeing that John knew Francesca, Jester hesitantly looked in Haruri’s direction and waited
for answers about her and Berserker.

“Oh, I’m…”

Huh? That… Heroic Spirit that looked like Francesca… is gone?

Not letting herself be taken by the confusion from the sudden disappearance of a Servant,
she began to explain her situation.

“I’m Haruri Borzak. I’m this girl’s… Berserker’s Master. I’m here to propose an alliance to the
police chief, another participant in this Holy Grail War.”

Haruri’s words were unclouded.

No longer feeling any of the timidness that occupied her back when she summoned Berserker,
she confronted the powerful John as a proper Master.

This is a gamble. If the chief is already at the stage of forcing other Heroic Spirits out of the
competition…

It was reasonable to assume that if she let anyone know Berserker was weakened, they’d see
it as the best chance to attack her.

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When Haruri revealed her background, she was prepared to make herself a human shield
for Berserker.
But John’s gaze on her was confused.

“Berserker…?”

After a moment of thought, he lowered his weapon but still didn’t put it away.

“Oh… The other Berserker, not Flat’s…? Wait, that’s not something for me to decide either
way. I also need to report about the vampire.”

And so, John activated a small Mystic Code.

That was a perfectly natural thing to do while phone communications were restricted but
Haruri felt strange observing the policeman in uniform operating a Mystic Code.

The arcane will eventually die out and everything magecraft can do will converge into Human
Order’s technology.

Haruri joined this Holy Grail War to wish revenge upon the world of magecraft but with
or without her doing anything, the Mage’s Association and its arcana would eventually be gone
from the planet’s surface.
Still, she didn’t believe this cataclysm would happen during her lifetime. That’s precisely why
she wished to enact her revenge with her own hands.

Are the mages fighting this Holy Grail War really trying to resist this? I mean, if the goal was to
cling to possibilities, they should have just accepted Ishtar as their goddess from the start. Why would
their ilk do such a thing to my goddess…?

Another grudge, separate from her revenge, was about to sprout.

But right before her heart could be sullied—
The small Berserker next to her tightly gripped Haruri’s sleeve with her mechanical arm
resembling that of a human.

“...!”

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That was when Haruri’s hollow heart regained its lapis-lazuli glow.

What am I even thinking? Making my goddess into a pretext for a grudge is the most insulting
thing I could do to her.

Berserker had felt the disturbance in Haruri’s emotions throught their magical energy
connection and got concerned.

“I’m sorry… You saved me.”

The soul inside Berserker smiled, confirming to herself that the girl she almost killed once
was a good person.

“Thank you for guarding my heart.”

Hearing that, Berserker loosened the grip of her mechanical arm with relief and gently
pulled closer to Haruri.
She still looked like a robotic doll but, strangely enough, Haruri felt she was a like a small
child.
But she never found out if this impression was Berserker’s true essence or an invention of
her head.

John had finished his call during Haruri’s interaction with Berserker.
“He pushes himself too hard… I can’t believe he’s leaving to fight in the front lines again...”,
he said with clear unrest.

“Oh, did you send him the word?”, asked an enthused Francesca.
John turned to Haruri and Berserker with a serious expression and sheathed the venomous
blade merged with his prosthetic hand back into the arm.

“The chief is visiting a base not far from here… He said he wants to talk to you there.”

× ×

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On the same block, on the rooftop of an apartment building

“Hey, wait up. You got no reason to dash away.”, someone called out to Jester on the rooftop
of the building facing the back alley before he could run away.

François Prelati, who had disappeared from the alley, appeared behind Jester.

“You returned to the city just to look for my Master and I, so you gotta have something
you want. The card you need to affront that Assassin girl. For all that you hate being someone’s
handmaid, you’re so cornered that you need to ask for help. Did I get all that right?”

“Yes, as much as I loathe to admit. However… I will not be teaming up with the cops, you
hear me? Not that they would ever accept me, but if they did, that detestable priest could catch
word of it.”

“Makes sense, if you take the words at face value.”, Prelati commented about Jester’s reply
with a sinister smile on his youthful face.

“Mm?”

Prelati made it clear that he knew more than his instigating words let on.

“You really should take a look, you know? What you do with this information is up to you.”

× ×

Alleyway

“It’s down this alley. There’s a boundary to keep civilians away.”

He guided Haruri to a warehouse at the end of a blind alley.

It looked like a hang-out spot from a delinquent movie, but naturally, there was no one to
be found there.
The warehouse contained a mill resembling a damaged car parts store, repurposed into a
simplified mage workshop that produced boundaries like the one keeping people away from there.

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“...”

John stepped first past the half-open shutter of the garage to calm down the wary Haruri.

“I brought her, Chief. She didn’t show any sign of hostility on the way here and her Servant’s
Saint Graph is mostly unstable.”

Haruri could hear John’s voice coming from the workshop but remained nervous since she
couldn’t see what was happening inside.
Francesca spoke from behind to spur them into entering.

“It’s fiiiine. I’m the one who guided you here! If it looks like he’ll kill you without giving you
a chance to fight back, it’s obvious I’ll be nice and help you escape.”

Haruri squinted, not trusting a single word, but when she needed any help she could get,
even that felt encouraging enough to let her step into the garage.

And then—
Haruri strongly regretted that step.

× ×

Rooftop

Jester spied on the garage through a familiar hidden in the shadows. He raised his eyebrow
to the Caster behind him, François Prelati.

“THAT is what you’re calling an option?”

“Seems so. It was my Master who talked him into it, so I don’t know.”

“I know I’m not one to talk but… you and your Master are sick.”, Jester joked awkwardly.

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Jester peered into Prelati’s eyes.

There was no faltering or abandon to be found in his eyes distorted by enjoyment. They
displayed pure curiosity and nothing else.
Seeing these eyes confirmed Jester’s suspicions.
This Heroic Spirit was indeed different from the Dead Apostles.
Completely different even from Van-Fem, who was relatively moderate in his treatment of
mankind.
This Heroic Spirit truly loved humanity.
Esteemed it, even.
But he also knew his regards were far from benevolent.
The system known as Prelati gives people the push they need to move forward and does
so without regard for whether the direction they’re facing is the path to glory or the edge of a
precipice.
And then, after thinking things from another angle, Jester spoke with a twisted grin of relief.

“Then I’ll choose the route of the temporary bystander.”

“Hoho? Do you seriously think both you and this city still have time for that?”

Prelati tried to provoke him with a squinting grin, but Jester laughed.

“No to both, and that’s exactly why I’ll do it. I’ll probably only have one opportunity to
reload the cylinder. I need to carefully evaluate… whose body should I load?”

And then he inspected the figure he could see through his familiar.

“That body is a candidate. Big demerits… but I’d have a good time sullying my darling
Assassin with his mud.”

× ×

“Why… how?”

Haruri’s face had gone pale—A familiar face was inside the garage.

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“Its Saint Graph may be weakened, but this is a Berserker Heroic Spirit. Be careful, Chief.”,
spoke John in a serious tone as he watched Haruri come in.

But Haruri could no longer hear him.

Every nerve in her body froze. Contrastingly, the man John called “Chief ” didn’t even look
at Haruri.

“Well done…”

His hellish voice felt like the fingers of frozen corpses clawing at the listener’s back.

“Thank you. But there’s still a lot more work to do to protect our city!”

“Then continue watching the city.”

“Yes, sir!”

But hearing this voice, John’s eyes sparkled like he had just received warm words of incentive
from a father. He turned back to Haruri.

“I’ll be honest. I don’t trust you completely since you let your Heroic Spirit loose in the
industrial district. But since the Chief says he trusts you, I… We will help you however we can.
Be assured of that.”

Looking her in the eyes, John spoke honest and heartfelt words.
That delivered an answer.
Through that, Haruri could figure out the state the man named John was in.
That raised a new question.
For how long has he been like this?

“We and our chief are facing this Grail War with conviction and determination, but we
won’t do anything unreasonable to an opponent who chose to submit. I believe that’s the Chief ’s
idea of justice.”, said John upon turning to the garage’s exit to make Haruri feel better.

He wasn’t lying to lower her guard.

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He wasn’t speaking out of soulless courtesy either.

Despite admitting that he doesn’t fully trust Haruri, he cast those words at her out of genuine
good will.
But Haruri was unable to answer.
Understanding his good intentions made it all the more difficult for her to find the words
to tell John then.
Having watched the two interact, the “Chief ” sent a message to the leaving John with his
usual grave voice.

“At the moment you leave the boundary… forget that you came here and your reason for it.”

“Yes, Chief.”

John responded like that was a casual greeting and strolled out of the garage.
Watching him not even question that last command confirmed Haruri’s suspicions.
She was positive that the instant he left this boundary, his encounter with her and that
vampire Jester would be deleted from his memories.
And that he’d then return to his real chief and continue to follow his idea of justice.

Being the only ones left, Haruri and the “Chief ” faced off.
Francesca was outside with only her head coming into the garage. She waited for Haruri’s
next move with a big smile.
Despite feeling Francesca’s presence behind her, Haruri couldn’t take her eyes off the man
in the garage.

“Are you the option Francesca was talking about?”

She tightened and charged magical energy into the arm she was using to support Berserker.
Determined to pour all of her magical energy and the power of the remaining Command
Spell into Berserker if it came to the worst, Haruri quietly spoke the name of the man she was
facing.

His ominous magical energy was so dense that it was hard to believe he was still sane.
It resembled squirming mud and by circulating it through his entire body, he made it into a
controllable cloak. His name:

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“Bazdilot Cordelion…!”

× ×

“The curtain call is nigh.”

“Will it come down to an epilogue or an extinction? Either one is fine by us.”
“Keep watching the show.”
“Come closer for a clearer view!”

Watching the situation unfold, Francesca and François whispered simultaneously so no one
else could hear.

“The spectacle is the infinite evolution and potential that you humans display!”
“Evolution of madness and potential for folly!”

60
 
Chapter 29
“Rhapsody of the Demigods I”

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Chapter 29: Rhapsody of the Demigods I

West Snowfield

Not long earlier.

“You choose to lament, Bull of Heaven?”

Alcides saw only a mass of tremendous might.

He drew his bow as he stood in a rock platform protruding out of the water in the field
flooded by both the deluge that he caused and the destruction that the giant cumulonimbus
before him caused.
But the Bull of Heaven—Gugalanna, avatar of torrential rain and thunderstorm—no longer
saw Alcides standing on the ground in front of him.
He felt the Divine Core of Goddess Ishtar disappear from the surface, severing the link
between himself, the temple, and Huwawa.

The Mistress of Heaven was falling into the bottom of the earth.

The embodiment of storm was Ereshkigal’s first spouse in some myths, and for that reason,
his Divine Core’s proximity to Ishtar is something that brings her closer to the underworld.
Losing the goddess who was the basis for his present manifestation, the foundation of his
existence was quickly thrown into disarray.
If left to his own devices, he would wreak havoc to avenge the goddess, capable only of
flattening Snowfield before it ran out of magecraft and became a regular tropical cyclone formed
in the continent.
But one man would not allow it.

Shooting the hundred heads

“Nine Lives”

An arrow meant to pierce through anything through comet-like propulsion, far surpassing
the cannon of a tank.

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However, its trajectory refused to follow a straight line. The arrow became a serpent trying
to coil the world and deviated from the shooting line.
In an overwhelming contradiction, it was both a never-bending spear and a freely flexible
whip.
And what enabled that was the fruit of the techniques nurtured by the legendary hero in the
sum of his adventures.

Faced with an unbelievable technique right out of the heroic tales where he put down all
sorts of mystic beasts, the hurricane suffering with the loss of his divine might was expected to
disperse—

But Gugalanna was still a divine beast nonetheless.

It’s because Gugalanna connected to the temple through Goddess Ishtar once that the
passing of the goddess was no reason for him to drop to his knees.
What reason would he have to get pierced and accept his death from an arrow shot by a man,
albeit a hero, who willingly discarded the power of the gods?
That was what finally brought the living hurricane’s eyes to the pile of hostility.
Due to being a divine beast, or perhaps due to being lieged to Ishtar, Gugalanna was sure of
his presence.
Something humanoid stood in front of him.
He was large for mankind’s standards, but still difficult to see from Gugalanna’s gigantic eyes.
But Gugalanna sensed the Saint Graph of a legendary hero of old and the reddish-black mud
within him.
He knew for a fact it was something that mustn’t be let loose.
Its very existence was a tragedy that would sully the world and the humanity that Ishtar
loved.
A few moments before, he could have permitted it.
While the air was that of the Age of Gods, that would have been still dangerous but would
be only one phenomenon out of many. It could sully the land but wouldn’t go as far as harming
the folks living in it, per Gugalanna’s estimation.
But now that wasn’t the case.
Now that Ishtar fell to the underworld, he was a blatant threat to the land she governed.
Therefore, his one role now was to trample the mud, reject it, and return it to the darkness.
That was his entire reason to remain manifest in a world without the goddess.

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With that decided, Gugalanna immediately reorganized his priorities.

To vanquish the enemy of the gods even if it cost the land he was enshrined in.
Gugalanna violently vibrated his body—the cumulonimbus compressed by magical energy—
as if to let the whole nation hear him announce the laws of the world.
He quaked the air, either to spike the power left behind by the gods or to make the human
before him tremble.

The gales gained direction, putting a stop to all winds assaulting the west side of the United
States.
All wind, all hail, all thunder focused on Snowfield as the hurricane with more energy than
a giant earthquake poured 80% of its power into spears of thunder-wind.
With this much natural energy amassed, shattering it would be an act of rebellion not
against the gods but against planet Earth.
He launched them against the incoming serpent-clad arrow, expecting it to vaporize Alcides
along the way.

- Here you see power: the definition of righteousness.

- Here you see god: the definition of the world.
- Here you see death: the definition of humanity.
- Nothing belongs in the hands of those who forgot the goddess’ protection.

Those are the words the divine beast would be screaming if it were capable of speech.
The launched spears of lighting and windstorm shook the earth and the sky like a funeral
lament for the goddess.

But the divine beast forgot one thing:

Despite being human, this hero surpassed humanity’s limits.
The other beast in the sky was wholly aware.
To take revenge against all laws created by the gods, the hero abandoned his heroic past.

Looking only at the results without the process, this hero surpassed the frameworks of a hero.
Alcides.
A legendary hero originally summoned as an archer but later converted into an avenger Saint
Graph by his Master’s Command Spells and “mud” filled with chaos and malice.
Separating from the gods.

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Dedicating everything to revenge.

Neither of those things lessens his essence as an unparalleled hero.
A hero capable of changing the lamenting tone of the divine beast’s roar into its death throes.

The torrent of energy engulfed the avenger hero.

All the energy of a hundred-meter-long hurricane was compressed into two twisters, charging
in the form of Gugalanna’s horns, and passing through where Alcides was.
A torrent of power.
It was capable of shaving away the hero’s Saint Graph, erasing along the mud and lethal
Hydra venom within him.
The Nine Lives he shot was wiped in the crash against the twisters. The platform Alcides
stood on became a gallows to be minced along the subject of the execution.
The Heroic Spirit engulfed by the deathwind would be erased in less than three seconds.

When 30% of himself was shaven away, he mockingly laughed.

“You’re exposed…”

At that instant—the air enveloping the world changed.

The presence of the goddess Ishtar had already vanished, and the local Texture of Snowfield
was returning to the era of men until it began flipping again into another kind of heterogeneous
environment.
The pivot of the alteration was Alcides’s whittled Saint Graph.
The mud-like magical energy covering his body attempted to fill up the lost parts of his Saint
Graph, instead flowing into Gugalanna and beginning to eat away his divine aura.
When Gugalanna noticed the disaster, it was already too late.
The blow that was supposed to completely catch his opponent–the twisters from the Age
of Gods charged with his divine aura and the energy of the galestorms–was used by the lone
avenger as a trap for Gugalanna.
The magical energy at the tip of the repelled arrow expanded in the form of a serpent.
The arrows shattered into nine pieces ascended to form the Hydra, and this nine-headed
venomous dragon tried to strangle the thickest cumulonimbus in the hurricane: Gugalanna’s
head.

“Bring this to a close, divine beast.”

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The divine aura devoured by the mud and the serpent mix together to surge into Alcides’s
body, but he refuses to make it his flesh and blood.

“It’s your turn… this time, your kind will be the ones paying tribute.”

The repelled divinity refused to let go.

By driving his magical energy and “mud” into the lightning-colored divine aura, Alcides
forcibly twisted it, twisting along the space around it.

“You govern man no longer.”

Gugalanna roared in resistance to his words.

In a hopeless attempt to load his dry well of magical energy, the divine beast followed the
thread connecting him to the goddess.
He traced his bond of fate to the goddess, not caring if it would send him to another land,
another timeline, another period, or even a place that doesn’t lead to any future.
To deny his words, not by saying he was wrong about Gugalanna, but by saying he was wrong
about Ishtar.
But he was too late.
No vestige of Goddess Ishtar remained, and no thread was left for Gugalanna to follow. He
could feel Huwawa’s Saint Graph quickly deflating.
Even then, the divine beast continued his struggle, focusing his wind, rain, and lightning.
Only one thought in his mind: if his Saint Graph were to disappear from past and future,
he’d need to at least end the fight in a draw if he wanted to face Ishtar without shame.

One old scene resurfaced in the transforming Alcides’s memory as he watched Gugalanna,
never giving up to the very end, nonetheless helplessly waiting for his Saint Graph to crumble.
The Argo.
Images from when he was risking his life to defend the famed ship in its hard-fought voyage.
This was not like the twelve trials he faced to atone for himself.
He wielded his power purely for the benefit of others.
His days in that boat, where he could entrust his back and his life to others, is what Alcides
considers true glory.

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That might have been a hallucination caused by the extreme pain of the lethal toxin
consuming his body, but Alcides interpreted it as a stream of emotion transmitted through the
opponent’s magical energy and whispered:

“...I see that goddess was the keel to your vessel.”

Alcides’s expression at the time couldn’t be determined with the Nemean Lion’s pelt hiding
his face.
However, he chose to cast final words at Gugalanna’s crumbling Saint Graph.

“My hatred is doomed to rot away when I inevitably do.”

He didn’t know if his words were understood.

In terms of size, he was like an ant compared to a giant, but now, while he was devouring the
essence of the bull’s magical energy, was the only moment when his words reached the divine
beast’s ears.

“Nothing will be left. Neither this repulsive mud nor the divinity I’m stealing from you.”

Alcides knew precisely how much time he had left.

He was greatly affected by having parts of his Saint Graph chipped away just now, and
instead of absorbing divinity to replenish those parts, he spent all of it on an exoskeleton.
How much time did he have left?
If the magical energy supply from his contractor Bazdilot were severed, he’d instantly be
swallowed by the mud and forsake the Saint Graph and consciousness of a Heroic Spirit.
Because the avenger knew that to be the case, he took his time for his first and last expression
of respect to the embodiment of gust and thunderbolt Gugalanna—the beast serving the
loathsome god.

“Return to the sky… You have fulfilled your duty.”

Did he get to hear it?

The divine beast momentarily stopped, but only for a few seconds.
He quickly resumed focusing magical energy, only for Alcides to ultimately plunder all of it.
However, Alcides felt no hatred or sorrow to be found in his final struggle.

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Third parties have no way of determining whether that was a delusion he had while showering
in the immense torrent of magical energy or if the beast really changed in some way.
Alcides himself was also losing his means to verify it.
His last words to the divine beast, his human memories, and his remaining life were all swept
away by Gugalanna’s immense torrent of energy and sunk to the bottom of the deep well.

The fact that he managed to preserve his ego while the deluge ground everything into unclear
particles is evidence that he was an awe-inspiring hero.
As his last light fades, the world began to slant again toward its ambiguous borders.
He was sure of only one thing: at that moment, goddess Ishtar was replaced by an equal
threat in the lands of Snowfield.

× ×

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