"Holy shit, Adam! This… this is a little over the top, don't you think?!"
"That attack was so thick, so massive!"
"You actually used that thing on a Berserker?!"
"Are you sure a raging Lancelot even needed that kind of firepower to take down?!"
"That's straight-up using a cannon to swat a mosquito!!!"
"I'm kinda dying to know what was going through that Berserker's head in the last second before that world-ending beam hit him."
Adam just gave the chorus of stunned voices a casual wave.
"Yeah, it was a bit much, but no big deal. No humans nearby—just reshaped the terrain a little."
He'd seen attacks on this scale more times than he could count, and plenty worse. At this point he was completely numb to it.
What he called "a bit much" was apparently way past the others' threshold.
"What do you mean 'just reshaped the terrain'?!
"That's a whole damn basin now!!!"
"France just got a brand-new tourist attraction~"
Adam's ears were flooded with nonstop emotion-value dings.
The group's reactions were only the appetizer—maybe a few thousand points at most.
The real jackpot had come the instant the Artorias' colossal pillar of light shot into the sky. Ever since then, his emotion values had been refreshing in waves. The dings blurred into one endless tone, and the pop-up speed was faster than Artoria (Lancer) firing her spear.
Final tally—
Emotion Value: 600,630
He'd smashed past sixty thousand in a single burst and was already knocking on the door of six figures.
Why the sudden explosion?
Because that one Noble Phantasm—the beam that punched straight into space—had left every single witness absolutely speechless. The Artorias had supplied the lion's share of the points.
Adam glanced through the incoming notifications and quickly tapped the names that mattered most to him. He scrolled up a little.
[Cleopatra Emotion Value +10]
[Elizabeth Bathory Emotion Value +10]
[Saint George Emotion Value +10]
[Olga Marie Emotion Value +10]
"Looks like they saw it too," he murmured.
The first three were the teammates he still needed to recruit. Their city was still a ways off.
"Nope. Gotta pick up the pace."
He decided right then: they needed to reach that city before sunrise. No more delays if he wanted a full 24-hour speedrun.
"Senpai, what do you mean 'pick up the pace'?" Mash asked, tilting her head curiously.
Adam glanced at the sky, but Artoria (Caster)'s Reality Marble still painted everything in twilight hues. No matter—he could tell the time from the moon's position a few minutes earlier.
"Ritsuka and I arrived in this Singularity in the afternoon. It's already the middle of the night. Any later and we can kiss that 24-hour clear goodbye."
Mash fell silent for a second, momentarily speechless.
As for the last name on his list—Olga Marie—Adam watched her points tick up and smiled.
"Looks like the Director's awake."
——————
A few minutes earlier.
Chaldea.
The command room door slid open with a soft click.
Olga Marie strode in.
"Shift change, Roman."
She had come to relieve Romani. Someone always had to stay on duty in case anything went wrong, and even magi needed sleep. Olga Marie had appointed Roman as Deputy Director—not because he was some genius, but because there simply wasn't anyone else.
They had agreed to rotate watching over Adam and Ritsuka, feeding them support from Chaldea.
It was still the dead of night. Olga Marie clearly wasn't used to the schedule yet; she looked half-asleep.
"Yawn~"
She tried to stretch, then caught herself and quickly stifled it. A Director couldn't be seen slacking like that.
"Cough, cough."
She cleared her throat loudly at the doorway, trying to announce her arrival.
But the entire staff—including Roman—acted like she wasn't even there. Every eye was glued to the big screen showing live footage of Adam and Ritsuka in the Singularity.
The whole room looked like they'd just witnessed the end of the world.
"?"
A giant question mark floated over Olga Marie's head. She turned toward the screen.
The first thing she noticed was the sky on Adam's side. What had been pitch black when she went to sleep was now a warm orange twilight.
"Hm? Isn't it the middle of the night?"
"Why does it suddenly look like dawn over there?"
"Did I oversleep?"
Her first panicked thought was that she'd slept through her alarm because she'd been daydreaming about Adam's rewards. But she quickly dismissed it—she distinctly remembered setting the alarm and dragging herself out of bed the moment it rang. Maybe she'd taken too long fixing her appearance?
No, that had only been thirty minutes tops.
Still, something felt off. She studied Roman's slack-jawed face, then the equally stunned expressions of the staff.
She frowned. The employees were one thing, but her own Deputy Director looking that rattled? Unacceptable.
"Roman, you can't freak out over every little thing. I put you in that seat. A Deputy Director needs to keep his cool."
She walked over, face the picture of serene confidence. "A good leader stays calm no matter what. Only then can we properly support Adam and Ritsuka. You need to be more like me—completely unflappable."
Roman pressed his lips together, glanced at her, then at the screen, and quietly hovered his finger over the rewind button.
"Director… I think you should watch this first."
Olga Marie gave him a pitying look. "What could possibly make all of you lose your composure like this?"
She turned to the screen.
"Why are there suddenly so many people who look exactly alike? Their faces seem… familiar?"
She kept her expression perfectly neutral.
"It's unusual, sure, but is that really enough to make you all gape like idiots? Embarrassing, Roman."
Roman stayed silent and fast-forwarded to the exact moment Artoria (Caster) unleashed her Noble Phantasm.
"Star of the True Round Table Assembly!!!"
The scenery on screen warped instantly—from a pitch-black forest to the golden twilight walls of Camelot.
Olga Marie's calm mask cracked. Her eyes flew wide, mouth hanging open.
"Is that… a Reality Marble?!"
As head of one of the Twelve Lord families of the Clock Tower, she knew exactly what it meant: an instantaneous world rewrite that pulled everyone into the caster's inner landscape. A Reality Marble was one of the highest echelons of magecraft, manifesting the user's mind and scenery to overwrite reality itself. She had only read about them in theory. She had never seen one cast.
Her heart raced.
So powerful… As expected of Adam. Even his Servants include someone with magecraft on this level?
She stared at Artoria (Caster) standing atop the wall, a flicker of genuine envy in her eyes.
Roman: "Stare~"
Olga Marie felt his gaze and quickly schooled her face. She remembered her own lecture.
Stay calm. Stay calm.
Oh no. Boomerang incoming.
She forced her expression back to serene and spoke in the most casual tone she could muster.
"It's just a Reality Marble~ I already knew that. No big deal."
"One Reality Marble and you're all losing your minds? You should learn from me—keep a tranquil heart at all times. Adam told me a good leader must always stay level-headed. That's how we provide proper logistical support. And you're the Deputy Director I appointed, Roman. You're falling short here."
Roman simply watched her performance with deadpan eyes. He had seen right through it—her acting was terrible.
He silently fast-forwarded again, this time to the moment right before the three Artorias released their Noble Phantasms, then looked back at her.
Olga Marie was still mid-lecture about staying calm, every other sentence somehow circling back to Adam.
"Adam told me that to keep a tranquil heart I must always remember my goal. Think about it, Roman—we're saving all of humanity—"
"Director, you really need to see this."
She was cut off mid-sentence and looked irritated. She had been enjoying her rare moment of authority. Whatever it was, it had better be good.
"What now? I'm telling you, Roman, nothing can shake my—"
Her words died in her throat.
"Caliburn!!!"
"Ex~calibur!"
"Rhongomyniad~"
The three Noble Phantasms fused into one cataclysmic blast that swallowed Lancelot whole. The screen flooded with blinding golden light, painting Olga Marie's face in pure awe.
"Wh-what… what is this?! The quality, the magical energy, the scale—it doesn't even fit on the screen! This is insane!"
She couldn't comprehend it. This level of power was far beyond anything a magus of her caliber could grasp.
The golden radiance kept pouring out; the Artorias' attack still hadn't finished. The screen was too bright to see details.
"What's the actual range of that thing?!"
"It's too bright—I can't even see!"
She was still muttering when the blast finally ended. The moment she saw the nearly ten-kilometer-wide crater left behind, her face slammed straight into the monitor.
"It actually caused that much destruction?!"
"Most of the light shot straight up, yet it still gouged out the earth like that?!"
"If that entire attack had hit the ground instead… how big would the blast radius have been?!"
She started mentally calculating what would happen if something like that struck the Clock Tower.
"So much for that tranquil heart," Roman deadpanned.
"Shut up, we'll talk about that later!" Olga Marie snapped, eyes still glued to the screen. "Roman, explain. How much did I miss while I was asleep?!"
She no longer cared about composure. The scale of destruction was something she had only heard about in the Age of Gods wars between divinities. She needed answers now.
Roman scratched his head, equally puzzled. "I was slacking off earlier, chatting with Magical Girl Merli while eating red-bean buns~"
"We were talking, then she suddenly told me to look at the screen. Said something about a ton of Artorias appearing out of nowhere. Next thing I know they're all firing off Noble Phantasms. I don't know what happened before that either."
"Want to watch the full replay?"
Olga Marie nodded eagerly, too excited to notice anything odd about his story.
"Ooh, replay—"
Then she froze. Slowly she turned back to Roman.
"Wait… what did you just say you were doing?"
"Slacking off?!?!"
——————
Orléans.
Not far from where Adam's group stood.
"Marie!"
From the forest that had been completely flattened came a roar that sounded exactly like a Berserker's howl.
***
If you want to read up to 25 chapters ahead, don't hesitate to visit our patron: pat reon . com / XElenea (remove space)