"My Lord, this is the list for the first round of open qualifiers. Because you brought in a lot of people from other worlds, a considerable portion of the participants are servants." Host Hundred Faces dutifully handed the list of contestants to Jiang You. Due to Jiang You recruiting servants from all over, many minor magi had been eliminated.
Jiang You took the list from Hundred Faces and lamented, "You're the only one who doesn't give me a headache..."
"My Lord... you seem a bit worn out?" Hundred Faces noticed Jiang You's exhausted demeanor. She now knew his true situation, but given his status, he wasn't supposed to be feeling this way. "Is something weighing on your mind?"
"I have indeed been too hasty lately," Jiang You sighed in frustration. Having been busy making up for the plot he'd missed when he treated everything as a game, he had confessed to and confirmed relationships with numerous women all at once. Most people couldn't accept this sort of thing, after all, not everyone's brain is as Melusine's.
Hundred Faces didn't want to comment on her Master's personal affairs, but she still asked out of courtesy, "It's mainly about Lady Illya, isn't it? Her childhood experiences shaped her personality to dislike others taking what belongs to her... My Lord, perhaps spending more time with her would help."
"And then there's Fairy Tristan." These two were Jiang You's biggest headaches, and they happened to be the two he'd known the longest.
Is the Duel Tournament a battle for the title of First Wife?
Hundred Faces desperately wanted to make that comment but swallowed it back down. She felt like she was being weirdly influenced, but if she said it aloud, her other selves would probably tear her apart over their Master. "If My Lord is troubled, I can separate them. They are indeed very strong, but there are still many current contestants powerful enough to be nearly invincible against them. As long as we have them eliminated early, they won't be able to settle their score now."
As for what to do after the duel, Host Hundred Faces was powerless to help, so that was out of her hands.
"...Your inner monologue is so vivid. Even you are becoming a comedian." All he could say was that the Fuyuki Carnival effect was inevitable, but this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. This was his ultimate goal, after all.
Hundred Faces suddenly felt the nervous tension of a student getting caught playing on their phone by their homeroom teacher: "My Lord, please forgive my impertinence! I await your punishment!"
"You don't have to be so strict about this..." Just when he thought Hundred Faces was the one who didn't give him a headache, she started acting like this. Jiang You was utterly speechless.
"Thank you for your magnanimity, My Lord. There is one more thing. You asked us to keep an eye on the Kaleidoscope, and he just appeared. Unfortunately, this subordinate was incompetent and failed to keep him here."
"I would have suspected you if you managed to keep him." The Kaleidoscope is highly likely to possess Top-tier strength or above, probably just below Beast. His exact situation cannot be confirmed, but he wouldn't be that weak, after all, he is a man who can hold his own against Crimson Moon. "Since he took the initiative to appear, it means he must have come looking for me for something."
"Yes, he disappeared after leaving a letter. However, before that, he left a message." Hundred Faces connected to her own network, and this information was sent by the other Hundred Faces. "He said, 'If this old man appears by your side, you would definitely push many troublesome matters onto this old man, so just let this old man rest a bit more. In addition, those who like Magical Girls are not bad people, so I have specially prepared for you the coordinates of the worldlines this old man has observed, which I presume should be of some use to you.' My Lord, this is the letter."
"The old shameless bastard... Don't think I have the same weird tastes as him." Jiang You curled his lip in disdain. He was simply and purely lecherous, and his preferences had nothing to do with any specific "elements." He wanted Magical Girls, Witches, and especially Female Knights. That was what you called a healthy appetite.
Jiang You opened the envelope, and inside lay a dark purple jewel. He tried to touch it with his magical power, and sure enough, it contained a dense array of spatial coordinates. This was indeed very useful for Jiang You, because the places he could reach were only the worldlines he already knew about in the Type-Moon World. He couldn't directly travel to unrecorded worldlines on his own; he could only rely on a random lottery. Kaleidoscope's letter was quite helpful.
"I should go find the second batch of contestants before the finals." Jiang You stretched his body, which was sore from yesterday's overly intense exercise. The gap between the current Duel Decks was too large, and the spectacle wasn't very good. Jiang You planned to refine the rules, which had been born from his subconscious and leaned towards an anime-style format, so he could write the act of playing cards into the Laws. This would prevent more anti-human creatures like Darius and Zouken Matou from appearing. If they wanted to possess someone later? They'd have to play cards first! Even if they succeeded, they could still be pulled back by a card game.
"Hmm... Since the Old Man of the Jewels left this thing behind, I might as well take advantage of it." Jiang You looked at the jewel in his palm as a sudden idea struck him. "Looking through worlds one by one is too tedious. The Kaleidoscope's parallel world travel is essentially projecting oneself onto a jewel in the corresponding world, right? So, I might as well borrow his name."
"I'm telling you, Flat, do you even know what the Holy Grail War actually is?" Waver's brow furrowed even deeper as he looked at his lazing-about disciple. This guy was just like his younger self; he took the Holy Grail War far too lightly.
"Of course I know! It's a super-cool ritual where you summon Heroic Spirits from legendary history to fight. Just imagine letting Stalin and Hitler fight a war in the form of Heroic Spirits... Isn't that just super blood-boiling?"
"Say, are you seriously saying something incredibly dangerous with such a calm expression?" Waver felt that compared to the second half of the sentence, the first half was already irrelevant. "Is that something you can just casually recreate?"
At that moment, the entire Clock Tower violently shook. Inside the sealed-off office of the Wizard Marshal, a massive jewel was growing at an astounding rate, breaking right through the walls and the constraints of defensive magic, exposing itself to everyone. Upon its surface, magical power far beyond the imagination of the Magi flowed, and the light reflecting from the jewel dyed almost the entire Clock Tower purple.
"This is... the Kaleidoscope's spell?" Waver was the first to figure it out. In the reflections on the jewel's facets, he saw the existence of several Parallel Worlds. This phenomenon probably wasn't appearing only here, but was occurring in countless other Parallel Worlds as well. It was as if some keyword had been detected.
Before anyone could even react, a sky full of invitations poured out of the jewel via parallel world travel. Then, a message accompanied by magical power was injected into everyone's minds:
What Holy Grail War? Let's Play Cards!