Kirei Kotomine finally lifted his head.
His stagnant, dead-water eyes met Seiji's gaze across the dim church.
"Enjoyment is an extravagant word." He spoke flatly. "I am only searching for an answer that might let me understand what pleasure is."
"And have you found it?"
"Not yet." Kirei shook his head. "But in you, I seem to... see a small clue."
He stood and walked slowly toward Seiji.
His footsteps rang out sharp and clear in the empty church.
"You're very interesting, Seiji Fujiwara." He stopped before him and looked him over with an almost scrutinizing gaze.
"There isn't the slightest mana fluctuation about you. You look weaker than the most inept magus apprentice."
"And yet you can block Rider's ambush, make that legendary witch obey your every word, and toy with both a Lord of the Clock Tower and the genius of the Tohsaka family in the palm of your hand."
"Your soul is like a black hole. Empty, and yet seemingly able to devour everything."
"What... exactly are you?"
Faced with this near-open challenge.
The gentle, harmless disguise on Seiji's face slowly peeled away.
In its place came an indifference identical to Kirei's own.
"Me?"
He smiled and extended a single finger, touching it lightly to Kirei's chest.
"I'm only... someone who found the answer earlier than you."
"The pleasure you speak of doesn't come from searching."
His voice was like a devil's whisper, full of temptation.
"It lies in creation."
"Creating pain, creating despair, creating that most beautiful lament those noble souls let out as they shatter, piece by piece, before you."
"That is true pleasure, Father."
Kirei's body jolted.
In those dead-water eyes, a towering wave surged up.
This man before him had, in the simplest words, named the core he had sought his entire life yet never managed to touch.
"You..."
"Want to learn?" A smile that could be called merciful, saintly, spread across Seiji's face.
"I can teach you."
"I can let you witness with your own eyes how the most extreme pleasure in this world is born."
"All you have to do..."
"...is hand me that spare Command Spell of yours."
Silence fell over the church once more.
Two "monsters" cloaked in human skin had, in this moment, finally bared their true fangs at each other.
...
...
The situation in Fuyuki City grew steadily more chaotic.
Rider had defected with Sakura and vanished without a trace; Caster was utterly isolated, the target of all; and the Lancer faction lurked in the shadows like a viper waiting for its moment.
And Seiji used this chaos to successfully draw everyone's attention away from himself.
What he had to do now was light the next fire.
A blaze large enough to detonate the entire war.
He fixed his target on the strongest enemy, the one who had held still all this while: the Einzbern.
That day, through an information dealer he'd bought off at the Clock Tower, he delivered an "anonymous" piece of intelligence to the Einzbern castle.
The content was simple, a single line:
"Caster is attempting to crack control of the Greater Grail, and she seems to have found a way to control Berserker."
This half-true, half-false but highly inflammatory line was, for the Einzbern who regarded the Grail as their family's long-cherished wish, nothing short of a fatal provocation.
...
In the magnificent, Nordic-styled great hall of Einzbern Castle.
Illyasviel von Einzbern sat upon her enormous throne, swinging her small, bare feet.
In her hands she toyed with the owl familiar that had just brought back the intelligence.
Before her, a short, blurry recording played on a loop across a semi-transparent magecraft screen.
In the footage, Caster Medea was casting Age of Gods magecraft at Ryuudou Temple. The recording had been processed, but that vast and ancient mana couldn't be faked.
"...Hmph, a bad child hiding away in secret, trying to steal Illya's toy."
An innocent yet cruel smile crossed Illya's face.
Her voice was as sweet as a silver bell, but the words she spoke carried a bone-deep chill.
"And she even wants to go after Berserker?"
"Unforgivable."
She hopped down from the throne and walked over to the mountain-like giant standing silently to one side.
"Berserker," she said in a coaxing tone, "go catch that purple bad woman and bring her back to me."
"Illya wants to pull out her wings with her own hands, one feather at a time."
The giant let out a deafening roar, and in those blood-red eyes seized by madness flickered a violent light that would destroy everything.
"And also..." Illya tilted her head, a sly glint flashing in her ruby eyes.
"While you're at it, go say hello to Saber and the others too."
"Illya's getting a little impatient to play games with them."
...
At the same time.
The Emiya Residence.
The fragile alliance was holding a tactical meeting thick with tension.
"...No! I still don't agree!" Shirou's tone was unusually firm. "I can't just stand by and watch you attack an innocent person!"
The "innocent person" he meant was Sakura.
Ever since Rider had defected with Sakura, Rin had put forward a cold proposal: strike first, find and eliminate the Rider faction.
In her view, whether it was the defected Rider or the Sakura connected to Shinji, both were potential enormous threats.
"Emiya! Can you wake up for a second?!" Rin stamped her foot in fury. "Sakura is with that Rider of unknown origin right now! Who knows what the two of them might do! They're the enemy now!"
"But Sakura... she's a victim too!" Shirou argued. "And she got hurt protecting Rider! How can we attack her?!"
"...That might just be a ploy of theirs, playing on our sympathy!"
"Rin! How can you think like that!"
Just as the two were about to start quarreling again.
"Alert! Ultra-high-energy mana reaction detected, moving at high speed from the suburban forest toward the city!"
The computer in front of Seiji suddenly sounded its highest-level alarm.
On the screen, an enormous red point of light representing Berserker was rushing in a dead straight line toward the Emiya Residence at a terrifying speed.
"Berserker?! Why would he suddenly go on the offensive?!" Waver jumped up from the sofa in shock.
"Is the target us?!" Rin had no more attention to spare for arguing with Shirou, alarm written on her face.
"No... his target doesn't seem to be just one."
Seiji's fingertips flew across the keyboard, calling up a more detailed Spiritual Veins sensor map.
"There are two main target points along his line of advance."
With the mouse, he drew a red trajectory across the map.
"The first is here, us."
"And the second..."
His mouse stopped at another spot on the map.
"...is Ryuudou Temple."
"What's he trying to do? Attack us and Caster at the same time?!" Disbelief was written all over Waver's face.
"That Saint of the Einzbern has run out of patience," Seiji sighed.
"A grand hunt, with her at the helm, has already begun."
...
The news of Berserker's deployment was like a boulder hurled into an already churning lake, kicking up towering waves.
Ryuudou Temple.
Medea sensed that vast, undisguised mana, full of the aura of destruction, the moment it appeared.
"...Berserker?"
She stood in the corridor before the main hall, gazing toward the suburban forest, and for the first time a grave expression came over that beautiful face.
"That monster, what is it trying to do?"
She knew well that with Berserker's "irrational" pattern of behavior, he would not leave his own territory for no reason. Unless... his Master had given a clear command.
"Einzbern... so you finally couldn't hold yourselves back?"
A cold light flashed in her eyes.
She understood clearly that after the "fake Assassin" incident, she had been completely isolated. The Einzbern turning their spear on her was only a matter of time.
"But... why does the direction he's advancing seem to be more than just toward me?"
Her powerful mana perception let her catch the subtle deviation in Berserker's trajectory.
That monster seemed to want to sweep her and Saber's group up in a single net.
"Hmph... what an arrogant approach."
A cold smile curled at the corner of Medea's mouth.
"But you underestimate me far too much. You underestimate a magus of the Age of Gods."
"Since you want to play, then I'll play along with you, and play it well."
She turned and walked into the depths of the main hall.
There, a figure in a blue bodysuit was wiping down his crimson magic spear out of sheer boredom.
"Lancer," Medea's voice carried no emotion, "guests are coming. Get ready to receive them."
"Oh? Finally a fight?" Lancer looked up, a warlike, beastly grin spreading across his face. "My spear's about ready to lose its patience."
...
The Emiya Residence.
Once Berserker's target had been confirmed, the atmosphere within the alliance was strained to the breaking point.
"What do we do?! What are we supposed to do now?!" Shirou was frantic as an ant on a hot pan. "Do we intercept him? But there's no way we can beat him!"
"Intercept? Are you insane?" Rin's tone was just as full of anxiety. "We should retreat right now! Get out of here! Find somewhere to hide!"
"No!" Saber retorted at once. "We can't retreat! This is Master's home! We have to protect it!"
"Protect? Protect it with what?!" Rin's emotions were slipping out of control. "With that holy sword of yours you can't even unseal?! Or with Emiya's half-baked Reinforcement magecraft?!"
"I..." Saber was left speechless, clenching her fists.
Just as the group was about to fall apart from panic.
"Everyone, calm down!"
A furious shout full of an elder's authority made everyone fall silent.
It was Waver.
Though his own brow was drenched in sweat, a flame of resolve burned in his eyes.
"Panic is a great taboo on the battlefield!" He swept his gaze over them and said in a heavy voice, "Now, listen to me!"
Everyone's eyes gathered on him.
"Berserker has two targets. Us, and Caster."
"This is both a crisis and an opportunity."
"Seiji!" He looked at the young man who had stayed absolutely calm from the very start. "What's your view?"
Seiji pushed up his glasses and slowly rose to his feet.
"The teacher is right. This is an opportunity."
His voice wasn't loud, but it acted like a sedative, calming everyone down.
"The Einzbern's plan is simple, and arrogant. She wants to use Berserker's overwhelming power to crush us and Caster at the same time."
"But she's overlooked one thing."
"And that is, in the face of a common threat, enemies can become temporary allies."
He walked to the map, picked up a pen, and drew a line connecting Ryuudou Temple and the Emiya Residence.
"My suggestion is..."
"...we take the initiative and go to Ryuudou Temple."
"What?!" Rin and Shirou cried out at the same time.
"Join forces with that witch?!"
"Yes." Seiji nodded, an expression of obviousness on his face.
"Caster is facing the same threat from Berserker that we are. The enemy of my enemy is a friend. I think she understands that principle even better than we do."
"And Ryuudou Temple is her home ground. The Spiritual Veins there, the bounded fields there, are our most advantageous weapons against Berserker."
"Rather than wait here passively for death, it's better to strike out and seek that single sliver of survival."
"This is what the art of war calls placing yourself in a death ground to find new life."
His words sent everyone into deep thought.
This plan was, without doubt, a massive gamble.
A bet that the Caster known as the "witch of betrayal" would keep her word.
A bet that they could keep themselves safe on that witch's home ground.
"...I agree."
The first to speak was Saber.
She looked at Seiji, those emerald eyes full of complicated emotions.
Though she still couldn't approve of this man's "methods," she had to admit that in a hopeless situation, this man's mind was their only hope.
"To defeat that monster, to protect Master... even if it means keeping company with a witch, I won't hold back."
That knightly "ideal" of hers had, before cruel "reality," finally and utterly crumbled.
"...All right." Rin gritted her teeth and made her decision too. "Let's bet on this one!"
In the end, even the most reluctant Shirou chose to yield under Saber's resolute gaze.
"Everyone, get ready at once!" Waver gave the final command. "We move out in five minutes! Destination..."
"...Ryuudou Temple!"
A fierce battle of attack and defense, one that would decide the life and death of them all, was about to begin.
...
...
When Shirou and the others rushed in a frantic hurry to the mountain gate of Ryuudou Temple, what greeted them was not the trap and attack they'd expected.
The defensive bounded field enveloping the entire mountain had quietly opened a gap, as if welcoming their arrival.
Medea stood alone at the top of the stone steps leading to the main hall, watching them in silence.
A complicated, half-smiling expression rested on her face.
"I knew you'd come."
"Caster," Rin stepped forward and got straight to the point. "Cut the chatter. Berserker is heading this way. Right now, our goal is the same."
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