Mount Enzou—Ryuudou Temple.
Ophis crouched low, focused as she dipped her finger in mercury and etched line after line into the ground, carving a complex array.
Her free hand held a book—the form the Tablet of Creation had taken.
The constraints of a Servant's body were simply too great.
A Servant existed as an appendage of the Holy Grail, and yet in truth, the abilities and Noble Phantasms of many top-tier Servants already exceeded the Grail itself. Not to mention Ophis's true body—even within her treasury were countless items whose rank did not lose to the Holy Grail, only that Ophis found them awkward to use.
Artifacts with properties akin to the Holy Grail? Ophis had several.
And if she went all out and crafted a serpent of her own, then in sheer energy alone it wouldn't fall far behind the Grail.
Chaldea's summoning system was different. A Servant's strength there depended primarily on her own Saint Graph, making it far more flexible. If the two sides truly came to blows like this, then with Ophis currently holding back as much as she was, she really could end up getting blindsided by the endless parade of bizarre abilities Heroic Spirits were capable of.
The intuition Sha Naqba Imuru granted her was clear: if someone called the King of Heroes got too careless, nothing good ever came of it.
So she needed to leave herself a few contingencies.
But just then, a crimson streak tore through the air.
BOOOOM!!!
A blaze of fire erupted. The ground shattered across a wide area, and a mushroom cloud surged straight into the sky.
The scarlet arrow struck Ophis dead-on. It looked slender—almost delicate—but the moment it hit, it detonated with the force and spectacle of a missile strike.
"I don't know what you're trying to do," said the white-haired Archer in red, standing at the temple gate with his eyes closed,
"but I understand one thing perfectly: if the enemy wants it, you don't let them have it."
"Still… I did think that since you carry the title 'King of Heroes,' even if you weren't that glittering loudmouth, you wouldn't go down so easily… but coming out completely unscathed is still a little discouraging."
"…"
The smoke and dust cleared. Ophis floated over the center of a vast crater, spotless—not a speck of grime on her.
If she'd taken that hit in a pure Servant state, she might actually have been seriously injured. But at the last moment, Ophis had phased out in time.
The spell formula she'd painstakingly drawn, however, was now gone—blown to nothing.
Ophis had a "mongrel" on the tip of her tongue, but wasn't sure if she should say it.
She didn't know what kind of Heroic Spirit this was…but she would kill him.
Two longswords emerged from the Gate of Babylon, trembling as they flared with a faint golden gleam.
"Not a word, and you're already swinging… Really,"
EMIYA shook his head and sprang back with agile ease.
Boom! Boom!
The two longswords slammed into where he'd been standing, triggering bursts of prana.
Nowhere near the "nuclear" arrow from before.
But…
Staring up at the sky, where the golden ripples had already multiplied into more than a dozen, EMIYA couldn't help but sigh.
"Honestly. It's a familiar sight, but the sheer scale never lets you relax."
The moment his words fell, a rain of golden weapons swallowed the brawny silhouette of the red Archer whole.
...
"You're saying… you know where Caster's workshop is!?"
Irisviel clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
"Is it true?"
Saber pressed at once from beside her.
Just moments ago, that heretical Caster had led a group of children into the Einzbern bounded field—and right before Saber and Irisviel's eyes, he had slaughtered them all.
With her body intact and unharmed, Saber had defeated Caster without issue, yet she couldn't guard against his myriad grotesque tricks. He'd slipped away in the opening they'd created.
Fury boiling over at Caster's vile methods and repulsive deeds, Saber naturally wanted to find him as soon as possible—and kill him.
Standing before them, Lord El-Melloi II felt a quiet, helpless frustration.
If he'd known Caster would come here, he would've arrived early and set an ambush.
He'd investigated everything he could about this Holy Grail War, but he wasn't looking down from a god's-eye view. Some details—some hidden parts—could never be fully known.
It wasn't as if he could drag Kiritsugu Emiya, Kirei Kotomine, and Gilgamesh into one room and make them do a postwar roundtable interview.
Well. His fifth-time self had, actually.
"Please rest assured. I can guarantee my information is at least eighty percent accurate."
With a faint smile, Lord El-Melloi II spoke confidently.
He wasn't about to assume things just because of what he'd lived through. He'd already sent familiars to confirm it—Caster's base was in exactly the same location as before.
The only concern was Caster suddenly moving house, but the odds of that were vanishingly small.
"Th-that…"
Irisviel hesitated.
If it were only her, she would have agreed at once. But Saber's Master wasn't her.
"Why do you want to work with us?"
Saber stepped forward, her gaze grave as it pinned Lord El-Melloi II and the others.
She wanted nothing more than to cut Caster down immediately—but that wasn't a reason to lower her guard against this unfamiliar group.
Whether it was the slender figure wrapped in a cloak, the pinkish-purple-haired girl holding a strangely familiar shield, or even the overworked-looking man in front of her, Saber sensed a measure of threat from each of them.
"If you're after the Command Spells you could gain by subjugating Caster, then you should keep this secret to yourselves and defeat him as quickly as possible. Don't tell me that with your strength, you'd be helpless against a vile heretic like Caster."
"Yeah. I'd like to hear the answer to that too."
At that moment, the door to the castle's reception room was suddenly pulled open, and Kiritsugu Emiya walked in.
It wasn't that he wanted to stop hiding so soon—but some inexplicably perceptive sense, seemingly from that overworked man, had locked onto him, growing more blatant by the second as if afraid he might miss it. Kiritsugu understood there was no point in continuing to lurk and observe.
There was a very good chance these people already knew he was Saber's true Master.
"What exactly are you after?" Kiritsugu asked. "Let's hear it."
Seeing Kiritsugu finally show himself, Lord El-Melloi II's mouth curved upward.
As long as the man was willing to talk instead of firing a bullet into someone, everything was negotiable.
"I wasn't planning to reveal this so early," he said, "but plans rarely survive contact with reality. In that case… let's start with our organization—'Chaldea.'"
---
T/N: EMIYA MAMA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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