Chapter Text
The animal growled not with it’s mouth, but it’s stomach. It had just finished eating a wild boar. It wasn’t enough, it had easily eaten at least a half a ton of meat in the last hour yet it still looked like it might die of starvation any moment now.
It’s snow white skin was stretched thin over a humanoid skeleton as if there was no muscle or fat separating them, it’s ribs protruding from it’s torso, having pierced it’s skin long ago once it stretched too thin to contain them. It’s matted black hair stretching over it’s back down to the waist looked like fur at first glance.
Suddenly, the beast heard the only thing that tasted like food to it, a human just entered the forest.
All it took was 4 seconds.
In the first second it jumped onto the top of a tree.
In the second it hopped between them traveling 110 meters in the span of that one second
In the third the young woman could make out the figure of the creature latched to a tree, it’s yellow eyes savoring the sight of a meal.
In the fourth second the woman’s head, left arm and a fourth of her torso were already in the creature’s stomach.
And yet despite that.
The beast’s stomach growled even louder than before.
An Einzbern of around 180 years of age named Igor Einzbern had been sent to Denris (stand in for Kenora in this setting but a little over twice the size) to work privately on a project to use in a future holy grail war, the creation of homunculi that are the perfect hosts for heroic spirits. After all a servant that is an Einzbern themselves would be compelled to follow their goal to achieve heaven’s feel way more than a pure hero of humanity.
For that he was sent to retrieve a spirit from Alberta that due to it’s nature was the best match around for possessing a living vessel in the place of a proper heroic spirit. After that he was meant to settle there and keep perfecting his homunculi until called upon.
At least that was the plan until he heard of their deactivation after the fifth holy grail war. He was furious, sent to work for over a hundred and fifty years just to discover his creators had given up on the goal that was his whole purpose for existing. So he spit on their graves and visited fuyuki, copying most of the greater grail, retrieving the records for it’s creation, collecting a wraith of a participant of the holy grail war and his corpse to attempt to learn as much as he could about the war from what remains of the boy.
After it was all said and done he had the recipe to create a near perfect replica of the fuyuki holy grail and was able to change some of the rules. Only thing left was the masters. He had devised a way to gather enough magical energy to start the war at a mere 10 years after it’s creation. It would have horrible consequences on the land but that didn’t matter, what mattered was the Einzberns winning the war, so the only meaning to gathering the magical energy on such short notice is to be able to gather the masters without them dying of old age or being too old to participate by the time the war happens.
First he invited a vampire named Viktor Blackwin, one that he had collaborated with in the past due to their shared interest in changing the nature of a humanoid body. While they did it for different end results there was common ground in the process in which the research they shared with each other proved valuable. As a result of their partnership convincing him to come to Denris in 10 years time to participate and use the grail to further his goals was easy.
Igor then scheduled a message to both the clocktower and the church that would be delivered in 10 years near the scheduled start of the Denris holy grail war. Of course an executioner would come to investigate this vampire sighting once they get the message so that’s another person who would qualify as a master down. Viktor had a seal designation due to a past of not covering his tracks well after using magecraft to capture people for his experiments and for food. This meant a seal designation enforcer from the clock tower would come too.
For the fourth master he contacted a 14 year old boy in the middle east. He may have been young but he had accomplished the goal of making a name for himself as a mercenary despite that, often referring to himself as a hassan in training. Of course when Igor was able to convince the boy that if he came to Denris in 10 years time he could summon a real hassan, the boy, despite his skepticism, agreed.
The fifth he planned to be one of the shamans overseeing this land. He was on horrible terms with them due to his project having devastating effects on the ecosystem in the long run but the fact they want to stop and kill him and anyone who might succeed him meant that at least one would be in the city to try to end the holy grail war as soon as possible and use it to restore their ecosystem.
For the sixth he chose the most recent homunculi he had worked on turning into vessels for heroic spirits. A pair of twins sharing one soul, the idea behind them is due to already being incomplete beings a heroic spirit would be able to fill that empty half with no trouble. This method showed little promise in the experiments however with the spirit always completely overtaking the body in the last 3 pairs of twins before these ones. They likely won’t even be able to operate as separate masters due to their nature as two halves of a being making them be recognized by the world and likely the grail as the same entity. Nevertheless even if they could only summon a single servant he would leave them everything he had in hopes they’d achieve heaven’s feel.
The seventh was a tricky one, he had run out of people he knew for a fact would be present and become masters either willingly or forcefully if the grail find no alternatives. With no guaranteed option Igor resorted to quantity, he invited random mage families he was able to make contact with and getting a total of 20 to agree to join, at least one of them was going to not change their mind in the coming 10 years of waiting and any extra who may come after all the masters have been chosen won’t be his problem to deal with, in short it was just a bunch of back up mages in case a slot was empty.
With the masters prepared all that was left was to start the ritual. The location chosen to be the resting place of the greater grail was a pond in Orinwa island (coney island replacement). The man accompanied by the twin homunculi and many of his familiars went to the pond after drying it out in preparation for the ritual.
Once there, he ordered his familiars to tear him apart and use his remains, his very blood, for the magic circle called the greater grail, just like his ancestor Justaeze long ago. The twins who had been activated just a few weeks prior to this, held the responsibility of witnessing and memorizing the location, and when the time for the holy grail war was nigh, to pour in the liquid made by Igor that functioned as a lesser grail, in turn turning the whole pond into the wish granter. After that they were free to spend the next 10 years doing whatever they desire as long as they laid low to hide from the shamans who were after them to prevent Igor’s scheme.
With all that finished and Igor’s life sacrificed for his ambition. The Denris holy grail war, was a matter of time
Notes:
Heya thanks for reading the prologue. It's very short i know but that's just because it's a basic introduction to the setting. The prologue was formatted this way to skim through the material and hurry with the actual story, the rest will be longer. I've already outlined how the story is gonna go so i am planning on releasing around 1 chapter per week. This story is gonna be quite the ride and will get better as it goes so i hope you'll enjoy it and please comment your opinions!
Chapter 2: A choice
Summary:
Introduction to the Einsbern twins and their argument for who will become the master in the holy grail war
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It happened in an instant.
3 armed people in front of him waiting for him to peak his head out to get shot and his only escape was the door leading out of the building that was right behind him, just far enough to get shot If he tried to go for it. His only hope was his smoke grenade, he threw it in front of him to block the enemies’ view as he ran for the exit and got out.
Unfortunately it was all in vain. The moment he got out, a knife pierced the back of his head from a man who was waiting for him at the door. His vision went red as he died right there. So close to stopping the damned terrorists.
Terrorists Win
Oleg slumped in his chair. It was Maj0rMage that eliminated him. Oleg played cs:go a lot in his free time using an account named Appleguy but for some reason, he kept getting matched up against Maj0rMage, worst of all that guy was petty enough to keep score on who has won more games among the two.
Maj0rMage:GG EZ!
Maj0rMage:14 to 5. Look on the good side chump. You might be bad at the game but you’re fantastic for clip farming!
*DEAD* Appleguy: Camping the door doesn’t make you good.
*DEAD* Appleguy: I’ll skip the banter today actually, I gotta go do something
Maj0rMage: L
He turned off the computer and exited his room in a rush, as he ran through the manor. His wristwatch said it was 2:34pm. He and his sister were supposed to meet at the Northen Nook at 2:40pm. She is the type of person he least wanted to piss off so getting there late was as he would put it, an absolute death sentence. Yet as he adjusted his glasses and went down the stairs an intrusive thought kept digging at the back of his head uselessly.
“It’s supposed to be one or the other.” The white haired man whispered under his breath, still bothered by maj0rmage’s choice of words. “GG EZ? Seriously? GG means good game, it’s supposed to show good sportsmanship and respect towards the enemy for doing well. EZ means that it was easy and is supposed to be used to mock the enemy. They are complete opposites! Just because people tend to say them after a game ends doesn’t mean they can be used together. It’s the equivalent of bowing in respect while spitting on someone. It’s linguistic nonsense! The two terms cancel each other out to forge a pairing which means absolutely nothing. Physically typing out these four letters is a waste of time that contributes nothing to any environment it’s used in!” The thought kept bugging him for most of his way to the bakery.
A woman with long, white hair sat by the window of the Northern Nook. The afternoon light came through in streaks, catching on the edge of her glasses and the faint red of the scarf around her neck. Her tea had gone cold, the surface still and pale. The plate beside it was clean except for a few careful crumbs — she’d finished her cake long ago.
She wore a black pea coat over dark jeans, casual enough to blend in, but her posture ruined the illusion. The way she sat, straight-backed and composed, made her stand out even among the quiet café chatter. There was something precise about her stillness, like she was conserving motion.
Her eyes darted to the clock on the wall, 2:51 pm, then back at her tea. The girl’s fingers brushed against the handle of the cup, not to drink, but just to keep them busy. There was no impatience in her expression, just an absence of surprise.
He was late.
She was willing to overlook a minute or two but eleven is not as acceptable, it crosses over from being a mistake to deliberately disrespectful. She needed to get back at him for it in some way but it wasn’t an urgent matter. For now she settled with a small surprise prank for him for when he arrives.
Then the bell jingled signaling someone entering. A brown turtleneck peeked from under a black pea coat matching her’s, and his beige jeans were just a little too neatly pressed for someone running late. He spotted her instantly and hurried over, collapsing into the chair opposite her, still catching his breath.
“Eleven — minutes. Almost twelve actually.” She said it in an emotionless tone that carried a passive aggressive attitude none the less.
“My — watch — broke.” The man’s responded as he tried to catch his breath while adjusting his glasses.
“Was that the best lie you could come up with?” The girl’s insight left Oleg responding with a tired “Yes” to confirm her suspicion. They say twins can basically read each other’s minds. This pair was certainly no exception.
A moment of silence proceeded letting Oleg catch his breath, followed by Elena sliding him his coffee. With a “Drink”
“Thank you.” He grabbed the coffee cup with a relieved smile as he took a sip. This mistake was followed by him profusely coughing after choking on some of the “coffee”. It’s texture was less liquid and more like a coffee bean sludge. A genuine smile appeared on Elena’s face as she tapped the “coffee” cup in the coughing Oleg’s hand with a bright “Cheers”
“Damn you” Oleg set the sludge-like coffee down with careful precision, aligning the cup exactly with the saucer’s edge. He then went straight to the point and asked “So why here in public? Aren’t you worried someone will hear”
“You mean to say you’re worried that someone will hear that the holy grail war our father organized is around the corner and…” Oleg put his hand over her mouth telling her with his eyes to shut it, she removed his hand to reveal her smirk as she spoke some words of reassurance.
“Don’t concern yourself with keeping quiet, I made a small bounded field around this table that blocks noise from escaping. Nobody can hear a thing or sense the bounded field unless they are a mage and literally passed through it.”
“Oh thank god, don’t scare me like that” He relaxed back In his chair with relief, the thing he wanted to happen the least is for their secrets to be revealed rendering the 10 years they’ve spent laying low worthless.
“Oleg, on the topic of bounded fields…”
“Yes I fixed it up. The bounded field around the manor should keep it hidden from the outside for at least 5 months until I have to do maintenance” he interrupted her reading her mind on what she was about to say.
“Well then what about…”
“The message to the church and the mage’s association was sent. That vampire dude also sent a letter in our mail thanking us for the opportunity to participate in this holy grail war and inviting us out for a drink after.” Interrupted again. Oleg had clearly prepared for everything making Elena’s eyebrow twitch at the lack of opportunity to nitpick, as a sibling always should.
“What do you think about the invite then”
“Oh hell no. It’s not that I don’t trust him but I don’t want to trust him. He’s very polite and seems to like us but he eats humans nonetheless. Getting close to that kind of person will definitely bring about trouble.”
“Good. I was also thinking that such actions would be reckless. By contacting the church and clock tower we’ve essentially brought two of his enemies right at his doorstep. It’s unwise to try to contact him right now and risk being the next targets.”
“Hmm, how are the homunculi?” Oleg slumped in his chair feeling a little guilty for how they are using Viktor and proceeded to bring up a much worse sin. Elena sipped a little of her tea and looked at him seriously as if to say they are getting into the really important topics now.
“ Around 70% of the ones in Manitoba aren’t functional anymore thanks to the natives. The medicine men and other forces of Gaia in this land are quite formidable.”
“70%!? They are getting more and more efficient way too fast now!” The young man gasped, his palms flat on the table and baffled.
“It’s partly our fault, we are signaling thousands of the homunculi to migrate towards Alberta. Of course the guardians of the land will notice these “animal’s” unnatural behavior. I will say though, their ability to correctly tell apart our homunculi from the actual animals has been improving at a tremendous rate in the last 2 years.”
“Jeez. Why does this have to be so complicated? It would have been a piece of cake to protect the homunculi if Igor had just made some combat focused ones!” Oleg gave an exaggerated sigh as he voiced his complains towards a man who could no longer hear them.
“You know that man, our “father” was nothing if not a fool. If he just focused on making combat oriented homunculi he could have wiped out everybody in Canada who would pose a threat, instead of becoming a force that even the mage association wouldn’t mess with under normal circumstances he invested everything in the Denris holy grail war. I don’t even know how many homunculi we started with but it was at least 2 million, all specializing in being just normal animals that mix into the ecosystem but also drain it’s mana to send it towards the holy grail through the leylines. If you had hopes for him doing something efficiently then you might be a fool of the same caliber as him” Elena responded with a sharp tone trying to vent her frustrations towards the twin’s creator.
“Yeah yeah I know. Don’t get so worked up about it. I was just complaining.”
Composing herself Elena gave out a meek “Sorry” and proceeded to try to change the topic from their idiot of a “father” to a more important topic. The one that they came here to settle in the first place.
“So then,” Elena continued, setting her empty cup down with a faint clink, “about who the Master will be."
Oleg froze halfway through fixing his cuff and bluntly responded “Me.”
“At least try to make a valid point as to why.”
Oleg sighed and leaned back in his chair, he’d already explained his reasons for this before and Elena has explained why it should be her. They keep walking in circles when it comes to this topic.
“I am not trying to take an unnecessary risk unlike you. Summoning a servant the normal way it should be done.”
“It’s how it’s supposed to be done normally. We aren’t normal Oleg, we were built to be pseudo servants. If both a master and a servant exist separately the master will have a target on their back as the easy target. In our case eliminating that weakness is possible by just becoming the servant, one with flesh and blood.”
“What makes you think you won’t be like all our older siblings? Each one of them had their mind overwritten by the spirit. A heroic spirit is on a whole different level as an existence, trying to summon one into your body will just kill your mind and let the servant’s own one take it’s place, you can’t fuse you’ll just die”
Her eyes flicked up at him, cold and resolute. “Oleg Einsbern. We are the last model of that experiment, the most advanced one. The odds of either of us succeeding in fusing a heroic spirit with ourselves is way higher than that of the ones that came before. On top of that it’s our distinct advantage over the others, not becoming a pseudo servant would just be throwing that advantage unavailable to others away. I’m just willing to use it, unlike you.”
Oleg matched her tone, one that was uncharacteristically cold for him. “The ones before us were also the latest models before they failed and got discarded. While we have a higher chance of success there’s no way to know if it’s significant or as much as one percent. The whole reason we need to win is because our bodies will break apart in an year or two if we don’t make our souls complete and the grail is our key to that. I just want you to be safe and sound, not someone puppeteering your corpse, even if it’s a success and you are a 50/50 split between the heroic spirit and yourself, I don’t know if I would be able to say you’re the same person”
Her expression faltered for a moment — barely, but enough for Oleg to notice. The line of her shoulders eased, her usual precision replaced by something almost human. A small smile formed on her face at Oleg’s reasoning.
“You’re my brother Oleg. Nothing will change that. I want to be strong enough to protect you the way you want to protect me. This is my way of doing that.”
He wanted to argue — to tell her she didn’t need to prove anything — but the words tangled in his throat. Anything he said now would sound like pity, and she would only smile that infuriating smile and do it anyway.
So instead, he muttered, “Going all somber all of the sudden while saying that is definitely a cheat move.”
Elena’s small smile lingered — warmer now, teasing just slightly. “Does that mean you’re convinced?”
He sighed weakly, berating himself inwardly for still being unable to make her back down. It was only natural though, they weren’t just twins, they were two halves of one soul, it’s no surprise that their conviction was dead even. It’s like putting two items that weight the exact same amount on a scale, no matter how many times it’s repeated one item won’t outweigh the other, so in turn no matter how many times they fought over it, it was impossible for one to convince the other of abandoning their own method.
“No, but I also know I can’t convince you, let’s settle this a different way. In two days one of us will perform the summoning back at our manor. Right before that, we’ll play a game to decide who gets to be the one participating in this war. I’ll choose one, you choose the other, if we end up being tied afterwards we’ll settle it with rock paper scissors. Deal?”
Elena tilted her head, lips quirking in that teasing half-smile. “Fine. Game on dear brother.”
They shook hands to seal the deal, or at least that’s how it was supposed to be. Oleg however wasn’t planning to follow through, he was stalling for time. Make her not try to summon a servant in that time so that he can summon one instead.
The world recognized them as the same entity due to being two halves of the same soul, in turn only one of them could become a master since if the other tried to summon one afterward it would count as the same person trying to summon a second servant which of course wouldn’t work.
He’d summon his servant before they met up for the games and bring it with him to the manor to show it at the time they’re supposed to compete for who gets to be the master.
She’ll beat him up, no doubt about that. Probably won’t forgive him for a long time after that too, but that was a problem for later. If her staying the same person she is right now meant that he’ll have to betray her trust then that’s a price Oleg would pay no questions asked.
Their handshake ended and Oleg stood up stretching his stiff shoulders He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled five-dollar bill, placing it neatly on the table beside Elena’s tea cup
“For the coffee”
“5 dollars for that? You only took one sip, it cost like—”
“Leaving a good tip is just good manners” Oleg interrupted smoothly, his expression perfectly earnest and proceeded to walk away with a “See you at dinner”. The moment the bell jingled to signal his exit, his smile faded, replaced by guilt. It was worth it though.
Oleg, the soon-to-be Master of the Denris Holy Grail War, would go to any length to preserve the only family he’s ever had. After all, no matter how greedy it is, protecting what’s important to you is just human nature. For better or for worse, this philosophy was the definition of the type of person Oleg Einsbern is.
Notes:
Heya thanks for reading, i got caught up in some work stuff so this chapter is like a week late. Of to a rough start i know. Well anyway let me know your thoughs on the chapter and come back towards the end of next week if you are interested in seeing the next one. Here's the appearance of some of the characters in this chapter:
https://imgur.com/a/wyiZYpN
https://imgur.com/a/ORn1zPS
Chapter Text
5 years.
That’s how long the doll was left at the bottom of the lake.
The boy had died quite a while before he was even thrown into the lake. His corpse, rebuild into a body identical to the one he had in life, but that of a puppet in essence, his soul, already eroded due to the passage of time without a body and forcibly fused to that of a sickly mouse that wouldn’t have the strength to resist in a matter similar to that of creating guardian spirits, even then that mouse took up a whole 35% of the new fused being’s personality. The boy was then easily tricked into giving the Einzbern that had brought him from a wraith to his current state all the information he needed about the holy grail war.
Unfortunately due to the irreplaceable erosion of his soul the puppet did not remember the last year or so of his life, nevertheless he still had some value even if the fifth holy grail war was a haze to him at best, after all, he came from the family that created the command spells, Igor had already prepared the lands to be suitable for the grail and of course was able to make the grail so this boy, Shinji Matou, had the last missing pieces of knowledge Igor required.
Unfortunately for Shinji he had given all his information too quickly, engrossed in the attention he was receiving, the idea of being such a valuable partner stroked his ego to no ends. When he had already said everything needed, all his value was lost, in turn, he was discarded like a tool that had outlived its purpose, for that is what he was. The connection between his brain and body was forcibly turned off putting him into a coma and he was tossed into the lake while he was still conscious as a mere passenger in his own body.
In the end what saved him is the thing he hated most. Pity. Pity of the shamans of the land that discovered him.
Terrorists Win
“And that’s how you do it chat.” Shinji said as he raised his hands up and leaned back in his chair, a prideful grin cutting across his face. The faint whirl of his PC fans filled the room as his chat filled with comments like “Mage on TOP” and “Lol”.
“Damn right,” he said, pointing lazily at the camera as he started typing.
Maj0rMage:GG EZ!
Maj0rMage:14 to 5. Look on the good side chump. You might be bad at the game but you’re fantastic for clip farming!
*DEAD* Appleguy: Camping the door doesn’t make you good.
*DEAD* Appleguy: I’ll skip the banter today actually, I gotta go do something
Maj0rMage: L
“Ya see that? I’m betting 20 bucks he just ragequit”
His celebration was cut short by the sound of 3 knocks on his room’s door, he and his family had a system, 1 knock meant “Hey look here” two meant “Come if you’re free” and three meant “This is important”.
He sighed quietly through his nose. It was about time to end stream anyway so this works out.
“Gotta say though” he said turning back toward the mic” that dude’s got good timing since it’s about time I ended stream too.”
He leaned back, giving the camera one last smirk. “You guys already know—taking my break till the end of the month. Gotta get some real-life stuff sorted out. But don’t go anywhere, yeah? First stream back’s gonna be starting off strong with a collab with Magi Mari herself.”
The chat lit up with even more messages “Common Magi Mari W” “LETS GOO” “Collab of the year” and many more followed by Shinji signing off with a “See ya chumps” and ending the stream.
He turned off the pc and exhaled as he got up from his chair, stretching his stiff body from sitting for so long as he walked to the door. He opened the door to the sight of a magical beast in the form of a girl. Long seafoam green hair styled in a braid, dark green eyes, a loose off shoulder beige sweater over her generous figure, accompanied by a black skirt and tights. This woman was the boss of this household and the one Shinji called his older sister. Sarah Ataway.
“Gueess whaat~” she sang out clearly enjoying herself.
“What?”
“Your cute friend just arrived for his first day on the job! Go and coach him a bit ok?
He sighed and looked at her as if she was wasting his time “I had to end stream just for that? Can’t you just get Leo to OW OW OW HEY...”
While he was still trying to protest she started pulling him down the stairs by the rat tail of his haircut like it was a leash, each “ouch” or “ow” not even fazing her smile as she got him to the front of their home that was their business. The Northen Nook.
There among the customers two people stood out to Shinji. One was his younger brother Leo Ataway. A dark skinned young man with a dark green cap over his shiny gray hair, light teal eyes, a single sharp canine poking out of his mouth and dressed in a cream colored shirt and gray cargo pants. Beside him stood another guy who looked to be about the same age. He had short blond hair, tanned skin, black eyes and was dressed in a simple white shirt and black pants. Noticing his sibling’s presence Leo said something to the blonde guy and pointed towards them. The tan man approached them with a wave as he greeted them with a “Hey Shinji, Sarah, nice place!”
“Huh? Luca? Why did you apply here?” Shinji responded while prying his sister’s hand off his hair.
“Because people I know work here, duh.”
“I meant what happened to your old job” He replied followed with an mocking, exaggerated “Duh”
“I, uh… kinda got fired.”
“Say, whaat?” Sarah chimed in leaning forward slightly clearly interested in the gossip
“Yeaah, it’s a long story”
“We’ve got time! Right Shinji?”
“Eeeh? No way. Save it for the next break” Shinji said waving his hand dismissively.” Didn’t you say anything about that in the interview anyway?”
“Oh I didn’t do an interview.”
“Yup! I let him skip it!” Said Sarah making Shinji raise his brow.
“And why would you do that?”
“Well he’s your friend isn’t he? If you trust him then I should too right? Unless you’re saying he’s secretly some rascal who likes to slack off?”
“Nah he’s way too much of a goody two shoes for that, he just lets me borrow his notes sometimes so I hang out with him in return.”
“I see. Then it’s totally fine to hire him as a waiter no?
“I guess so—wait—You called me to coach him on being a waiter?”
“Yeah.”
“Luca, didn’t you say a while ago you did a part time job as a waiter? You should be fine on your own.”
“Well. That is true I guess.”
“Buut, Luca here would surely appreciate the guidance of a senior staff member like you. Isn’t that right?” Sarah said getting behind Luca and putting her hands on his shoulders, trying to nudge him towards Shinji.
“Uh? Yes that would help a ton!” Luca responded immediately getting what Sarah is doing.
Shinji put his hand on his chin in consideration, he certainly liked the way Sarah described it so he gave in quite quickly saying “It’s about time I clocked in anyway. Come on let’s get you a nametag and all that.
“Coming” said Luca. Sarah patted him on the back like a mother sending her child to school and he quickly followed behind Shinji who was already going to the back of the store.
“Much appreciated, young miss,” the green haired customer said softly, while adjusting his sunglasses. “Strong tea like this… it’s been far too long since I’ve had any brewed with this much care.”
“That’s nice to hear sir but I’d recommend you pastries more. This is more of a bakery than a café after all” Sarah replied politely but slightly distracted.
“I am not too fond of pastries. Many thanks for the offer though. Also I’m not a man deserving of honorifics like sir, just call me Viktor.”
“Got it. I’ll be going then” she said, offering a brief nod before leaving the table and slipping quietly out of the establishment — her eyes already fixed on the white-haired man who had exited just moments before.
Oleg Einsbern, she heard the girl he was sitting with call him that. She had noticed the bounded field around their table a little while ago and made sure to work close to them to overhear the conversation, she couldn’t get too close but she was able to make out a little bit of the conversation and it was just as much of a goldmine as she had hoped.
Einsbern. She only really knew of Igor Einsbern and the fact he’d have to have left behind successors due to his homunculi’s irregular movements across the country, like they were following some sort of shepherd. To think they’d walk right into the establishment and talk about the holy grail war here instead of at their home. It was either a trap or they were just that unguarded. The first option was way more likely since in Sarah’s opinion, no person in their position with even half a brain would risk their identity being exposed, no matter how unlikely it is, just for a good atmosphere.
Nevertheless even if it is a trap, she couldn’t just ignore it, she knew multiple spirits and magical beasts who still lingered in hiding that were forced to retreat into the reverse side of the world due to the lack of mana caused by the Einsberns. While she preferred a normal quiet life, but she wouldn’t sit still if they presented themselves like this.
She kept following by the sidewalk at a 20 or so meter distance behind, his white hair sticking out like a sore thumb making keeping track of him fairly easy. Eventually he reached a crosswalk, it would look weird if she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk so she decided she’ll get closer to the sidewalk and wait for the red light to run green beside him at a 3 meter distance. A group of high-schoolers stood between them providing good cover for her as she checked her phone to appear busy.
When the light switched and the pedestrian signal blinked green, Oleg crossed first, his coat swaying slightly in the wind. Sarah waited a few beats before closing her phone and following at a slower pace, widening the distance again. This continued for a bit until Oleg had to turn at a corner, this already happened once or twice while she was following him so she knew to speed walk to the corner and wait there until Oleg was far enough away. This time though she heard a loud noise from around the corner, water started to rain down as she ran to see what had happened only to see a torrent of liters of water rising up to the sky like some grandiose fountain as people rushed away from there and cars either drove around or had to stop.
A fire hydrant had broken, “Damn it” she thought. Oleg definitely noticed her tailing him and used magecraft to break the fire hydrant, probably loosened the screws and let the water pressure finish the job.
Now, with a ten-meter wall of water between them and the street choked with chaos, her view of him was completely gone. The crowd had already started forming — people holding up phones to film, others shouting over the noise of gushing water and car horns.
This path was a bust, she’d have to find some other way to locate him, she ran back in the direction she came from but where she had just walked past before, she tried to make a left turn into a secluded alleyway but bumped straight into the chest of a tall muscular man, he was dressed like a construction worker, probably just got back from work.
“Shit, sorry.” She said as recovering from stumbling back from the collision and brushing past him deeper into the alleyway.
“Watch where you’re going missy!” she could hear him say those words in an annoyed tone as she got further from him and turned to another corner with nobody there. It was a good spot.
She ran up the wall on her left and jumped, grabbing onto an open window frame. Her boots planted on the narrow ledge for half a heartbeat — just long enough to launch herself upward again. Fingers hooked the edge of the roof, and with one smooth pull she vaulted onto the top of the three-story building.
She crossed the rooftop in a few quick strides and reached the edge overlooking the street where the hydrant had burst and started looking around, her eyes were way better than that of a human so it should be an easy job as long as he is not too far away. The fire hydrant seemed to be spouting less water, the water department is around the corner of it, it seems Oleg deliberately made sure to cause the commotion close by so that it gets fixed before it caused too much collateral damage.
Oleg himself though, he was almost kilometer away now, she could see him near the outskirts of the city going straight into the forest.
Now she was convinced.
He wanted her to follow him.
She was stronger than most mages in the world, she could just go back to her normal form and gobble him in one bite there, if he was able to notice her he was surely able to sense how much magical energy she had. Going into a place where she doesn’t need to hide her abilities is a horrible idea unless you have something planned. She was willing to bite that bait though, it was possible that he just wanted her to think it’s a trap so that she’d leave him alone.
Sarah slid down the building wall landing back in the alleyway she was just at and went into the open street. She proceeded to take the fastest route towards Oleg ignoring the red traffic lights and just sprinting through at the speed of a professional athlete.
Within minutes she reached the forest, she could see him now, she picked up her pace to a speed equal to that of a cheetah, closing the distance between her and the man running for his life at an astonishing pace.
But then when he turned left and passed behind a tall pine tree, instead of appearing on it’s other side, he was gone.
Instead he appeared 80 meters away on her left running past a completely different tree, as if he had gone through a portal.
Sarah’s shoes dug into the dirt signaling her stop as she made a sharp turn towards Oleg, whatever trick he was using looked like the sort that he wouldn’t be able to repeat too many times before he runs out of magical energy.
She sprinted toward the new location, but before she reached it, Oleg vanished behind another tree.
And reappeared behind her.
Another Oleg ran across her right side, coat fluttering.
Then another straight ahead.
Then three more — one vaulting over a fallen log, one jogging at a calm pace like this was an afternoon exercise, and one casually strolling with his hands in his pockets.
She stopped in her tracks looking all around her, there were at least 4 Olegs in every direction she looked.
How annoying.
That thought passed through her mind as she realized the obvious truth, this wasn’t teleportation but an illusion. Finding the real one would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
She couldn’t trust her eyes. So she closed them and listened.
The forest breathed around her — wind shifting branches, distant water dripping from leaves, the Footsteps of the dozens of Olegs hitting the puddles and mud. But in an instant, all the noise disappeared, replaced by the honeyed voice of a woman.
“Smart cookie”
Sarah spun her eyes open in the direction of the voice to the sight of a woman. Long black hair spilled down her shoulders framing a pale face with sharp angles softened only by her deep green eyes, leaning against a tree just 4 meters away from her. She was dressed in faded blue ripped jeans and a short black leather jacket over her white cut-out top. The shirt hugged her form, its evenly spaced slashes across the top part of the chest giving it a shredded aesthetic. Quite frankly, she looked like some sort of biker punk.
“Ease up missy. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Why should believe that?” Sarah snapped back coldly, still clearly on guard despite how clearly she could see that she had no control in the current situation
“Hmm, good question, let me think” the woman put her hand on her chin trying to look like she’s thinking hard to come up with a response.
“Perhaps because you’re still in one piece? Is that sufficient?” she said while smirking.
“Still, you clearly helped Oleg escape, on top of that you decided to reveal yourself instead of just sneaking away with the illusions. You’re clearly scheming something.”
“Am I now? Well that shouldn’t be a matter of concern anyway since scheming and hurting are to completely different things.” She raised a finger up as if educating Sarah.
”You know what, let’s play a little more so that you may understand that hostility will do you no good. Come on, land a scratch on me and I’ll tell you any one thing you want completely truthfully, I’m even open to making it a pinkie promise”
“Deal” Said Sarah as she sprinted towards the woman, her right hand had transformed partly into her real form, scaly with sharp claws and only 4 fingers, not looking like any animal from the modern times.
As she reached her the moment Sarah blinked, the woman was gone, her strike landed on the tree breaking straight through it like an axe, the bark curled like ribbon, the wood bending in impossible spirals as the collapsing tree slid under her feet and flipped her onto it acting as a seat for her followed by the tree turning into a rollercoaster with the black haired woman sitting behind her, keeping her still seated on it and the scenery changed into an amusement park ride over 170 meters tall going straight down into an ocean.
She tried to take off her seatbelt, even trying to rip it off while muttering “Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck” over and over again in contrast to the strange woman’s celebratory “WOOHOO”. Her seatbelt along with the extra 12 other seatbelts on her wouldn’t let her budge as she was sent at the speed of a racing car straight down into the water. The drop was pure freefall — her hair whipped backward, the air slapping against her face with the force of a hurricane.
Going at the water at this speed should have made it as hard as concrete but the moment she got to it all momentum was lost, the ride and the black haired woman were gone too leaving just her in the water.
Sarah kicked upward—or where upward should’ve been—but as her eyes snapped open to find the surface…
There was no surface.
She knew all of this was an illusion too, however it was happening so fast that her body and subconscious acted before her mind, on top of that, she didn’t know what sort of reaction that woman would have if she didn’t play along but she sure wasn’t going to try to find out.
The water hardened around her, going from liquid to syrup in density, then jelly, then thickening like quick-dry cement that petrified in seconds. It pressed into her ribs, into her legs, into her back, immobilizing her completely. It felt like being buried alive. Sarah completely stuck in the casing transformed her right arm back into a human one to give it just a little bit of wiggle room.
She then spit out acid from her mouth, it was either this or fire, she wasn’t immune to fire though so acid was the obvious choice. The acid ate away at the material and filling her nose with the smell of burnt sugar as she spit more giving her head more room and started doing the same with her right arm, making it sweat acid and melting more of the material allowing her to start tearing through it.
She managed to get her head and right arm free to see a bunch of giant chocolate truffles surrounding her, either dusted in cocoa or rolled in crushed nuts. What she herself was trapped in was a truffle too, she was in a bowl of them.
Giving her little time to process how to deal with this illusion a shadow passed over. A giant finger descended rifling through the truffles looking for a specific one. It pushed aside truffles with casual force, each one rolling like a boulder.
“Ah, there it is.” A smug voice boomed as she got to the one Sarah was in, her world turned upside down as the truffle was lifted between the woman’s thumb and index finger finger, she was easily 90 meters tall in a restaurant her size filled with people who were of similar statute to her.
Sarah locked eyes with the giant who let out a small giggle as she raised her above her head and opened her mouth wide.
With an “Aaahh” she dropped her, she fell for a good few seconds as she fell toward the woman’s pale lips.
Just as she passed them everything ignited. The truffle burst into flames that did not cause Sarah any pain or damage, just shed the truffle off of her revealing the sight to her, it wasn’t the woman’s tongue or teeth or anything of that sort.
It was sky, she was freefalling with Denris below her hundreds of meters away. That distance was closing quickly though. Sarah however was done playing this game, but just as she was about to transform into her normal form that could rival a dragon, with a blink of her eyes the scenery changed.
“Inside a building? And in front of so many people? Isn’t that a rather poor idea?”
Sarah was sitting at a table in the same restaurant where she had been stuck inside a piece of candy moments prior, this time completely normal sized.
A glass of sparkling water sat in front of her, the bowl of truffle there too. A white tablecloth. Ambient jazz. The low murmur of dozens of conversations happening around her.
And across from her—
The woman lounged in a chair, chin resting on her palm like this was a casual dinner date. A smile of her face, obviously proud of what she just made Sarah experience.
“You done now?” Sarah responded coldly to put up a front while steadying her breathing from all the adrenaline.
“Still acting tough I see? Good, that’s great even, if you were all scared and begging for mercy it’d be so disappointing my whole day would have been ruined…”
While she was still speaking the seafoam green haired girl reached out and scratched the back of the hand of the girl opposite of her.
“I won”
Taken aback for a bit the woman looked Sarah in the eyes before bursting into laughter and leaning back in her chair. Landing a scratch, that was the goal set for Sarah in the bet. And she had achieved it
“Spectacular. I was hoping you’d catch on to the opportunity but this quickly? Oh this is way too amusing, you’ve made my day!”
“If that made you so happy can you please stop with the tricks?”
“That’s a big demand missy. Ok I won’t bother you more than necessary. Now go ahead and ask your question. Oh, and you probably already guessed so but I’ll say it anyway, you can call me Caster.”
Of course, who else would be able to cast such convincing illusions but a servant. Sarah knew the Einsberns were trying to perform a holy grail war in these lands from Shinji but she wasn’t aware it had already progressed to the point where servants were getting summoned. She did have a sneaking suspicion though that it’s possible that this is Oleg’s servant the moment she encountered her in the forest, in the current age there were only a handful of people like Caster at most, getting that suspicion confirmed was certainly a relief since it lessened the pile of questions.
What was left was to decide which question was best to ask. The true name of this servant was a pretty good option, Sarah personally wasn’t interested in participating in the holy grail war though so even if she knew her name she wouldn’t be able to do much with it. Asking about the Einsberns was another enticing option that crossed Sarah’s mind. Caster just helped Oleg get away so she was likely his servant. If it was like that however then asking for something like their plan going forward, the location of their home or how they were controlling all the homunculi and how to stop it were bad questions. Not only would Caster be able to report back that Sarah had learned the information allowing them to prepare accordingly but it would also show too much ill intent for Caster not to get serious.
Asking how Caster was able to make such impressive illusions is also a bad idea. She was clearly a heroic spirit of the highest caliber, it’s probably something that only she could ever do. Among the many options Sarah had settled on one that stood out as something she wanted to know but not something that would get her on Caster’s bad side even more than when she tried to hunt down her master.
“Why did you reveal yourself and go through that whole clown show when you could have just left me in the middle of nowhere without it?”
Most of why was clearly because of this servant’s eccentric personality, but getting a better understanding of her and her goals would be useful, for avoiding her that is. Sarah wanted less than nothing to do with her, especially after the insane illusion sequence she had to go through.
Caster was munching on some of the chocolate truffles while Sarah gave her question, she swallowed them and took a sip of her water before putting both hands on the table and leaning in slightly.
“Hmm, yeah that’s a pretty solid question, I’ll give it a solid 8 out of 10. Bravo!”
She clapped her hands quietly but Sarah’s glare was clearly telling her she wasn’t having it.
“Ugh, what a buzzkill, standing your ground is a good thing but it’s kind of killing the mood now. But yeah onto your question. That Einsbern boy is going to be a master you know. To let him die before the game has even started would be suuch a waste”
“So he’s not your master?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. My master is even more interesting, very lenient too! Lady luck is truly on my side to get a master who allows me enough autonomy to be doing stuff like this.”
Caster looked extremely triumphant while blabbering about her master. To be giving away information left and right like this she must truly have difficulties shutting up, not that Sarah would complain about it.
“You still haven’t answered on why you decided to meet me face to face, why you protected him wasn’t my question.”
“Oh am I sitting face to face? You sure this isn’t another illusion, because your sparkling water sure is.”
Like it followed her commands the glass of sparkling water that was beside Sarah melted into the table and disappeared.
“Shouldn’t matter to the question.”
“Yeah yeah I was getting there! One must not skip the foreplay. If I just gave you a smidge of a story you’d be hungry for the rest, I like it when feasts leave you satiated. But since you want to know so bad. I revealed myself to you for two reasons, first is I just wanted to get to know you, you’re a unique individual and boy am I a fan of the unique!”
“And what’s the second reason?”
“To send my regards to your brother of course. He reminds me of someone I used to know.”
“Which brother?” Sarah snapped back, having transitioned from very cautious to openly very hostile.
“The scumbag.”
“Fuck it’s Shinji.” She said under her breath not even refuting Caster’s words about him. If it was Leo then he at least could have been wary enough to not get in too much trouble with this woman. Sarah knew Shinji was hopeless and easy to manipulate, if Caster was trying to turn him into her pawn he’s a remarkably easy target. Shinji becoming the master of the Ataways had already been planned for a long time since he was hoping to use the holy grail to fix the land’s mana drought but to think that he’d attract trouble before even summoning a servant, it was certainly not a good sign.
“That boy. He’s an annoying jerk who places himself and his wants first, sparing not even an afterthought for the rest unless he’s close to them . He certainly has a ton of room for improvement, that’s why he’s the type of person I show favor to, I am certainly interested in finding out how this holy grail war impacts him considering his command spells are already forming. Will he become a better person? Will he play dirtier and sink even lower to achieve victory? Oh or maybe he’ll summon one of those type of servants that would kill him due to sheer incompatibility. That would be an unfortunate end since I like stories where people put in effort and it gets rewarded but the anticipation is still thrilling nonetheless!”
Caster looked like she had tasted heaven as she was gushing over Shinji’s fate. This earned her a look of nothing but pure disgust from Sarah who wanted to tear Caster’s face off. She didn’t want to deal with her family’s trouble for them but she certainly couldn’t overlook talking about her family like they are toys right in front of her.
“Well it was a nice chat missy, even if it was rather short due to someone’s impatience. I hope it helped you learn to negotiate with more than just bluffs. Before I go I want to tell you just for how long you’ve been in my illusion with these parting words”
“Those words being?”
Caster giggled as the voice of a man escaped her lips, not just any man though.
“Watch where you’re going missy!”
The voice of the construction worker Sarah had bumped into on accident while chasing Oleg said the exact same line in that voice. It's as if Caster was replaying a recording of it. But it undeniably came from her mouth, everything from that point onwards was merely Caster’s illusion.
The world changed from the nice restaurant into water in an instant, no fancy effects like all the previous illusions. Just an instant switch like switching to a different program on tv. A salmon slam past Sarah’s head as she swam for the surface only to find herself in the middle of the lake Denris was right next to. There was no doubt about it, the cloth on her right arm being completely evaporated was a show of when she made it sweat acid, it must have burned through the clothing too. She had spent all this time at the bottom of the lake. She was a special one of a kind magical beast, Caster had no way of knowing she could breathe underwater.
The thought sent a shudder down Sarah’s spine as she swam towards the town to warn her family about Caster, trying to not think about the fact that what made the difference between her living and dying was sheer luck.
Notes:
Oof late on schedule again, chapter is longer as a trade off though. I'd like to sincerely apologize to everybody who works on a weekly schedule for these type of things because DAMN i underestimated it. Also i'd like to mention that Shinji Ataway and Shinji Matou are seperate characters. Shinji Ataway is still just as much of an asshole as Matou and he considers himself the same as Shinji Matou because he mostly is Shinji Matou but they differ in personality a decent amount.
Anyway here's the look of this chapter's new characters:
Luca Weston:
https://imgur.com/a/7WetTTBShinji Ataway:
https://imgur.com/gallery/shinji-ataway-ztZoVNRShinji Matou for comparison (Ataway is also 5 years older so you can think of this as a pre to post timeskip comparison)
https://imgur.com/gallery/shinji-matou-QCkJpdhSarah Ataway:
https://imgur.com/gallery/sarah-ataway-zugTeqQLeo Ataway:
https://imgur.com/gallery/leo-ataway-rhiwsMwViktor Blackwin:
https://imgur.com/gallery/viktor-blackwin-F55qF2oCaster:
https://imgur.com/gallery/goth-caster-gpuEeEm
Chapter Text
Ren Tousaki.
That’s the name of the 13 year old boy who was eavesdropping on the conversation between his father and a scary blonde woman in jeans, a gray shirt and black leather coat, who had been living in the church with them for the last two days with her companion, a 9 foot tall wolf man built like a gorilla. His cruel father brought him all the way to this continent to show him how an executioner eliminates his targets properly, murder being far from the proper sight for a child to be forced to see so often, even though his father kept telling him he needs to grow accustomed to it. This time however his father told him to sit this one out because it’s too dangerous.
Bringing him over to a whole different continent to just tell him to sit in a room in the church all day? He did prefer this over having to personally accompany his father as he slaughtered vampires, daemons and other enemies of the church, in fact he’s tried to run away from home multiple times to escape this as he never wanted to be trained to be an executioner in the first place. However simply doing nothing would not satisfy his curiosity. He wanted to know at least what was happening. Because of that he simply had to eavesdrop, laying low to the ground on the second floor indoor balcony to hear the conversation happening on the benches right under him.
“Seal designation enforcer, the location is right here, finding it required a few days of my time since he’s hid it so well so time is of the essence now.”
“My name is Helen. I agree though. I’ve been regularly patrolling the city with my servant for a while and Lycaon sensed just 2 servants. We almost died facing that weird army archer. The holy grail war is starting. It’s pretty clear that if...”
“If that vampire acquires one we stand no chance.”
Grail? Servants? This can only mean one thing. A holy grail war must be happening. Ren had overheard what a holy grail war was from a conversation between his father and an old acquaintance of his, that was an even worse priest, a long long time ago. Only reason he remembers it is because of how interesting it sounded.
“Don’t interrupt me!”
“I apologize. I was trying to show that I understand and am paying attention to what you are saying. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be able to finish your sentence.”
“I…see. Moving on. You called me to attack right now right?”
“Precisely, our original temporary partnership’s terms were that we attack tomorrow and you get shelter here until then, however due to finding his location earlier than expected I thought it’d be best to strike while the iron is hot.”
“Tsk, Lycaon’s power only peaks at a full moon so he won’t be able to fight in top condition but I agree. A full moon would be beneficial to the vampire too so it’s best to take what we can get.”
“Good. Before we go though.”
Following these words the blonde priest jumped higher than the second floor, his long hair flowing slightly from the momentum, and threw his 2 meter long spear towards his son. It grazed the back of his arm, cutting through his shirt just enough to leave a wound comparable to a paper cut. Ren laid motionlessly now not because he was trying not to be noticed but because his mind was racing to come up with an excuse.
Before he could come up with one his father jumped again, this time straight onto the railing looking down at Ren.
“I can…”
“Your breathing wasn’t steady. Anybody with great senses would be able to hear you. If you can’t make it quieter then don’t breathe at all.” Said the priest as he got down from the railing while the blood red tipped spear turned into pink petals that gathered into a shaft in his hand that turned back into the spear it was seconds ago.
Shit. Ren got what he came here for but he bit off more than he can chew. His father was a scary man, the kid felt like his prey in this situation.
“I-I was just cu…”
“No, talking won’t help you in this situation. Only bracing for impact.”
“Huh?”
Before the confusion could even register fully, the priest performed a low spinning heel kick right to Ren’s temple knocking him out in one swift motion.
Helen walked towards the targets location with the hulking gray wolf man behind her and the priest on her left side still holding the spear in his right hand.
“Don’t you have somewhere to store that spear? It can’t be comfortable to be holding it all the time”
“When I need to hide her she just turns into lotus petals and forms a vest out of them under my shirt, good for defense against surprise attacks. She prefers being held though, I also prefer it this way, don’t need to pull out my weapon for a fight if I am already holding it.”
“She?”
“Yes, her name is Orna, she talks to me a lot, a dependable ally with a vile personality. She’s actually been making a lot of comments about your athletic figure and impressive chest. If you want to hear her yourself you can hold her. I will warn you though that it will sting a lot.” While saying that the priest held the spear towards Helen trying to hand it to her but she pushed it away, visibly creeped out by the priest’s lunacy.
“Uhm…no I’m good.”
“I see. Pity. She really wanted you to try wielding her. She does prefer the “playing hard to get” type of people as she puts it.” He pulled the spear back.
The wolfman snorted—an audible hff of disapproval. He had been keeping quiet, a berserker like him was incapable of speech so the best he could do was just follow his master as a shadow. Despite that he could at the very least understand human speech, as a former king even madness enhancement wouldn’t be able to suppress his reason fully, for that reason he could at least express himself through noises.
“Hmm, your servant seems to dislike me”
“Gee I wonder why” Helen muttered under her breath.
“What was that?” the priest had caught it though.
“Oh? Nothing, just wondering how far we have to keep walking. Couldn’t you get a car for this?”
“I could ask you the same question. I lack the funds for a vehicle. I am certain however that your earlier comment was “I wonder why”. I just asked to make sure. To answer that I am pretty sure his dislike stems from my personality. I am…not the best with words” he said with his head drooping slightly, his stoic face looking slightly dejected even though it’s hard to read with how little expression it always shows.
Lycaon released a deep, guttural hhhrrff that seemed to express he wanted to say something along the lines of “No shit Sherlock”
“You don’t say” Helen said while giving him a side-eye.
“Moving on from that topic. Would it be a problem if you told me how you’ve acquired that servant? When we first met both of us didn’t know a holy grail war was happening here so I’m guessing he’s likely not part of the war.”
“Hm? Well it’s not really a secret so I guess it’s fine. It’s my family’s magecraft, members of the Hester family are able to summon and maintain a heroic spirit without external support. It’s a recessive gene though, on top of that the ability gets weaker with age so currently only me and my sibling, the actual Hester heir are able to use it. Naturally since it has nothing to do with holy grail wars we also don’t have command spells for our servants so there’s always a big risk of the servant becoming an enemy instead of an ally.”
“I see. I will not pry further since I assume further details would be knowledge that you would deliberately not share. Keeping your cards close to your chest is good.”
“Thanks, glad you understand.”
“In any case,” the priest continued, “your family’s magecraft is impressive. Maintaining a heroic spirit indefinitely is beyond standard thaumaturgical capability. You must expend incredible mana to keep him materialized.”
“Eh, Lycaon is on the cheaper side. If I summoned someone like Hercules or Karna I’d be dead in a week at best. It’s a common fate for people in my family, a very roundabout Russian roulette.”
Lycaon let out a light grow of approval as his jaws curled into a smile. He was clearly happy that his existence didn’t burden his master a lot.
“Besides. I have a condition, I produce a lot of magical energy but I can’t make it exit my body, it just builds up. If I don’t have a servant draining my magical energy use it directly for something like a mystic code then my magic circuits would erupt inside me, like a balloon bursting from too much air. That’s why my sibling got chosen as the heir while I’m stuck trying to make a living as an enforcer.”
“I see. L." He said with the same straight face as usual.
Helen stopped walking.
“Did you just say L?”
“Yes. I’ve seen my son and other people online use it when presented with or mentioning a negative experience, like losing something or someone. Like an acknowledgement of a loss in modern slang. Were my assumptions wrong?”
Lycaon made a low whuuurf, the sound of a massive wolf trying very hard not to laugh. His tail was wagging too much to hide his amusement though.
“Yes, yes they are wrong. It’s not even something you say it’s only for text. Please don’t ever say that again.”
“I see. That certainly explains people’s expressions at one of my coworker’s funeral two weeks ago. Orna, why didn’t you inform me of this?” He glared daggers at his spear as Helen looked at him so baffled it looked like her brain had short circuited. Lycaon proceeded to pat the priest on the back with his werewolf-like hand, big enough to engulf half the priest’s torso.
“You know what, change of topic, I told you all about my magecraft but you haven’t even told me your name yet. Also why are you so harsh on your son? Locking him in a room and almost injuring him seems excessive for a kid.”
“Sorry for not introducing myself earlier, you just hadn’t asked for my name so I assumed you didn’t care about it much. I’m Raiden. Raiden Tousaki. And my parenting is appropriate considering our family circumstances. Don’t worry, I left plenty of lock picking equipment for my son in his room, I am just using punishment as an excuse to help him practice some handy skills, and also there was no risk of injury from Orna. I am very precise, Orna doesn’t want to hurt him either, we were just scaring him a little.”
“I…see, I’ll just…not ask… why a man of the cloth would want to teach that stuff, since time for chit chat is over”
They had reached the location Raiden had marked on his map, an alleyway with graffiti on the walls that led to nothing, just the pitch black darkness of nighttime. Lycaon sniffed the air, seemingly picking up the scent of the vampire, Raiden’s body tensed up preparing for battle and Helen was left unable to pick up anything.
“This is the place, prepare yourself.” Said the priest as he walked ahead of the other two. Usually a person would just be able to walk through the alleyway and get to the other end, only someone with either great experience with vampires or bounded fields would be able to recognize the true nature of this magecraft. Raiden closed his eyes as he began to chant.
“Let there be no lies.
Let there be no secrets.
Let there be no deception in the kingdom of God.
Through me, the all-seeing eye before which all is laid bare shall manifest.
Prostrate yourself before me.
Confess all your falsehoods so that you may be freed from all burdens.
May the Holy Spirit cleanse it all through this sacred baptism.
— Eye of Providence.”
With that holy rite. A ring of light grew on the ground under the priest and grew to quickly wash over the surrounding area like a wave before disappearing as if it never existed in the first place. Helen and Lycaon both instinctively tensed up but could not find any effect of the rite on them, the same couldn’t be said about the environment though. The darkness completely disappeared to reveal that the alleyway ended with the wall of a building, a rusted metal door barely clung on to it.
“So that’s what the church’s sacraments look like.”
“Surprised? I guess that’s not unnatural. The church and mage’s association aren’t on terms good enough for partnerships like this to happen. I am an exception since I am a way more sinful person than most of you mages. If a priest
that didn’t lack the moral high ground like I do was sent here a partnership like this would have never happened.”
“Well the more the merrier I guess, let’s not dwell on hypotheticals. Lycaon, take the lead and sniff him out.”
Following his master’s orders the hulking wolf man got on all fours and made his way into the hideout, squeezing his 9 foot tall gorilla-like build through the doorframe to be met with a red hallway that looked just out of a 16 century aristocrat’s home, some floorboards were broken, the ceiling was dripping in a few spots in the far end of the hallway, it looked clearly abandoned.
Lycaon knew better though, he relied more on his sense of smell than sight, he crawled with a lack of noise unbecoming of his stature, just like a lion sneaking up on his prey. Raiden and Helen followed 2 meters behind him staying as quiet as possible. There was a total of seven doors in here, three on the left and right wall and one on the end of the hallway, each door reinforced with layers of metal and a window that was likely bulletproof, very much out of place in this noble environment. As they walked past the first set of doors Helen couldn’t help but peek into the glass window of the door on her left to see what was inside.
She was met with what looked like a mix of a medical room and chemistry lab rolled into one, light green room straight out of a hospital, bloody surgical tools scattered around, trash bags in the corner with flies flying around them, likely the husks of Viktor’s victims, a big desk with some sort of potions on it along with vials with organs like a pair of eyeballs, pages of writing along the wall too far away for Helen to read, some of them torn on the ground or with slash marks along the wall as a result of a frenzy.
The highlight of the room was definitely at the center of the room though. A big cylindrical tank, full of a liquid Helen didn’t know, with a person in it. A young girl, probably somewhere between 16 or 18 suspended inside, long yellow hair flowing over a body that looked like it hasn’t eaten in years, drained of all fat like a mere skeleton covered in flesh. Even though she looked pitiful, Helen’s instinct from hunting all sorts of mages over the years were enough to tell her it’s better to not interfere there. Raiden nudged her with his elbow as if to tell her to keep moving. She turned away from the door following his lead, now with an even more serious expression than before.
Suddenly, the wolf man stopped. He looked back towards his companions and then at the door to his left, sniffing the air as he did so. It was clear to both of them that he was telling them they need to go through that door.
Orna turned into lotus petals again and lined up behind Lycaon, like arrows ready to be shot out a target was caught. Helen nodded at Lycaon and gave the command that signaled it’s time.
“Break it”
With that, Lycaon ran through the door on all fours like a bull, breaking the door that could withstand a grenade with ease as if it was paper. The inside was a dark red living room with wooden furniture, mountains of books scattered around that were too many for a person to read in one lifetime. There was no time to pay attention to the rest of the room though as his eyes immediately landed on the green haired man in a suit, wearing round sunglasses that stood to his left. Wielding an iron short sword as if he knew to prepare the moment they entered his home.
“Leave.” He said in a calm and very tired voice.
“My name is Viktor Blackwin, and I, do not want to have more blood on my hands then needed. Whether you are agents of that thing or some other party that has it out for me it matters not. I must live so I will defend this life with all the strength I have left.”
Lycaon stood there, still on all fours growling at the man as Raiden, who had yet to enter, made his entrance, surrounded by the lotus petals that had yet to fire themselves. He spoke in his usual composed manner.
“Your offer tells me you aren’t a complete monster like most of your kind. I wish I could take you up on that offer. Sadly.”
The 40 or so petals around straightened to be as thin as paper and all pointed towards the vampire. Raiden crouched down slightly ready to sprint.
“If I do not kill for the church, I’ll be killed by the church.”
With those words the petals shot out at the speed of bullets towards Viktor as both Lycaon and Raiden ran to close the 6 meter distance between them.
“Fools.” While muttering those words Viktor swung his blade to deflect the petals, his blade moved like a blur, too fast for the average human to keep track of much less fight against, a total of 34 of the petal projectiles were deflected by the flat of his sword while 6 managed to pierce right through him, one grazed his neck, another went cleanly through his left forearm, two right through his left thigh, another through his right breast and the last one cut off the pinkie and ring finger of his empty left hand.
In the next second the man and the wolf had reached him, Lycaon moving his claws to strike through Viktor like a knife through butter while the petals gathered back into Raiden’s hand to form his spear once again. Viktor pierced his left claw, his sword locking itself firmly inside the palm as he twist his wrist to move it aside to halt its attack followed by his other arm punched the beast’s wrist and shattered all the bones inside it.
Raiden moved in aiming to pierce the vampire’s heart but the same hand that had just broke Lycaon’s wrist and had already regenerated its fingers grabbed onto the shaft of the spear just behind the blade. The priest likely wasn’t strong enough to overpower the vampire, he didn’t need to though, he let go of the spear and spun on the ball of his foot turning his back to his weapon, closing the distance in one swift motion and used the momentum to strike his elbow right into Viktor’s face and broke his nose.
Staggered from the impact the spear suddenly short a painful sensation akin to the sting of 100 bullet ants through his hand forcing him to let go. At the same time Lycaon’s jaws came down from above to bite off his head. In a rush to defend himself the still dazed Viktor poured his strength into his right arm and cut through the hand his sword was stuck in like a nail until now, his swing going straight through and slashing it right into the beast’s shoulder, the guard of the sword pushing against said shoulder keeping him just out of reach enough for his head to be unable to reach Viktor resulting in the jaws snapped shut centimeters away from Viktor’s skull.
Before Lycaon triest to bite his arm which is in reach for him or Raiden can deliver a follow up strike Viktor jumps 20 meters away pulling the sword out of Lycaon’s shoulder leaving a lacerated wound. It was clear to him now, individually he could definitely beat these enemies in close combat, when paired together though they were just too overwhelming, the wolf was insanely strong and durable, it was as if he didn’t even feel pain, the priest while not possessing strength near the level of him, still was too strong for a mere human being, his amazing speed combined with that made for a threat of a completely different kind from the werewolf. Viktor took the opportunity to indulge his curiosity trying to get a moment to recover from the concussion Raiden gave him.
“You, the spearman. Indulge me a bit before we continue. You don’t seem like a vampire yet your physical abilities are still too strong for a human. It doesn’t seem like the result of magecraft either so what exactly are you?”
“Your killer. That’s as much as I’ll say. The less my enemy knows about my abilities the better” he replied coldly while retrieving his spear from the ground. Helen meanwhile was still quietly observing the situation from the doorway. While she could definitely beat a human and some magi she stood no chance in this fight and she knew it, the best she could do is command Lycaon from a distance when needed.
“I see. Unfortunate, but it seems I’ll have to put in more effort if I want to defeat you” said Viktor as the air around him became cold. He wanted to avoid spending any mana. He didn’t even know these people, there was a much greater threat looming that he was scared of, forcing him to bide his time until he can summon a servant who can help him. These enemies however were not ones he could defeat through pure brute force, and he understood that.
Therefore.
“Let it be known, that I alone abandon my everything.” He began a chant that sent a shiver down Lycaon and Raiden’s shoulder. If it was what they thought it was they needed to kill him before he finished. Lycaon who had already mostly healed his injuries, sprinted at him as the bottom of Orna shed off a little of itself to form two petals under Raiden’s boots that he used to glide along the floor at the speed of a car.
“For the sake of the one who came before me and the ones who will come after me.” While still talking Viktor jumped to his right and kept sprinting, it was the same side as the one Raiden was approaching him from. That priest was faster than the beast so as long getting closer to him means that Lycaon will not be close enough to intervene in the clash the moment the two are in striking range.
“My purpose is to decipher what is incomprehensible to the human mind. To hold back the invasion of the grand puppeteer.” With those words the distance between him and Raiden closed in an instant. The executioner held his spear as if he was jousting on a horse, ready to stab Viktor with all the built up momentum, Viktor however, 2 meters before reaching him, and less than a second before the spear would pierce his stomach, dropped down sliding on his knees and angling his back backwards just enough to where the spear passed above him, merely grazing his nose as he kept chanting even though he had been inches away from death.
“Equations: Solved, Purpose: Found, Madness: suppressed” Both Lycaon and Raiden needed to halt their charge mid-way to turn around to the vampire who had just passed them, running towards the doorway after getting back up from the ground in an instant. Helen who was at the doorway turn to run and increase the distance between her and the grim reaper with green hair again. She used reinforcement magecraft on every part of her body on a level only someone who’s specialized in this magecraft could. Even then she could only get 5 meters away from the door before he grabbed her hand.
“On this blank canvas. I solve all the anomalies that are out of control.” While commanding the very world with those words he threw Helen with enough force to break bone, through the doorframe at Raiden, forcing him to catch her instead of continuing his assault, his spear immediately turning into petals and shot out towards Viktor to free the priest’s hands.
“Lycaon, don’t stop!” she commanded her servant while flying through the air and into the hands of Raiden. He obeyed and did not halt his charge, bursting through the doorframe and breaking it along with some of the wall around it. The petals followed closely behind ready to hold Viktor in place for Lycaon. Just as he was 50 centimeters away from Viktor though, he saw a slight smirk followed by the man letting go of his swords to perform a single clap of his hands, followed up by the last line of his incantation.
“This is Immutable Reason.” And by finally calling out it’s name the world shifts to an entirely new one. The distance between Lycaon, the petals and the man increased from 50 centimeters to 50 meters. The ground was a white, slightly slippery expanse with a glossy texture as far as the eye could see, above it the sky was pitch black with nothing but thousands of eyes adorning the sky, all of them crying out a yellow liquid like golden fountains coming from the stars themselves to form yellow lakes on the white surface of this world. This is the reality marble called Immutable Reason.
Raiden let Helen down from his arms and the petals returned back to him and floated around him and Helen. He did not know the effect of this reality marble but he certainly didn’t want to find out the hard way, if it had a form of attack it’s best if Orna was close to form a shield out of the petals to defend him. Viktor picked his short sword back up and stared at the trio awaiting their next move. Lycaon looked over his shoulder to check up on his master, awaiting her command on how to proceed.
“Use it. Your noble phantasm!” She shouted back at him. A trump card can only be countered by another trump card. For that reason she allowed her servant to call upon his greatest weapon, he smiled slightly and looked back towards Viktor. This time, what escaped his lips was not a growl or howl, it was words.
“Gioi tou vasiliá ton lýkon”
Many howls accompanied those words, blue dust materializing in the surrounding area and materializing fully into familiars much like Lycaon himself. 49 seven foot tall werewolves, while not as hulking as Lycaon himself and definitely not nearly as powerful, each was a strong magical beast that could easily give a first rate mage a run for their money. This was Lycaon, the king of Arcadia’s noble phantasm, summoning his sons that were befallen with the same curse as him, forming the first generation of werewolves in human history.
“Priest weirdo, play support, I have no clue what this place can do but it’s better to not risk it, unlike Lycaon’s noble phantasm you aren’t expendible, them and Lycaon should be plenty enough to overwhelm him and get an idea of his ability.” Said Helen as the werewolves and Lycaon charged at Viktor from all directions.
“Got it.” Replied Raiden and let his petals continue swirling around the two for defense instead of joining the assault on the vampire.
4 coming from his right side slashed by his sword, the 2 in front of him kicked to the side as he turned towards the ones on his left, he slashed his sword upwards cleaving the head of one into two as he jumped up and on top of the head of another one and used it as footing to jump 15 meters into the sky. There he extended his hand downwards and opened his mouth.
“Unerträgliches Gewicht” and cast the spell that immediately affected everyone in the reality marble making them feel as if they were carrying 2 and a half tons of weight on their backs. Helen almost fell to her knees but thanks to her reinforcement magecraft she was able to not be crushed and got back up from the ground, Raiden’s muscles tensed up but the weight didn’t put too much of a strain on his body. The werewolves however, other than Lycaon, got slower, the weight wasn’t enough to completely stop them of course but it made them about 40% slower.
This wasn’t the only thing that happened though, the white surface of the reality marble began to change. Gigantic writing and numbers began to appear on it at a speed too fast for anyone there other than Viktor to even read. It looked like the solution to some sort of math problem, the reason for that is because it was. The white floor was obviously a whiteboard and the writing was solving something. What that something is was however was unknown to anyone other than the vampire.
Completely ignoring them, Lycaon jumped up towards the still falling Viktor and grabbed him by the leg. He couldn’t even counterattack as Lycaon threw him straight into the ground, definitely breaking a few of his bones and getting sent straight into the middle of the werewolves. They gnawed on his body, ripping out chunks of flesh from his chest, lower abdomen, thighs and calves and even bit off his left hand. In severe pain that made him want to scream but still conscious Viktor let go of his sword, put a hand over his face and sunglasses and cast another spell.
“In tausend Stücke blasen.” Both him and the werewolves piling on top of him were engulfed in fire like a grenade had just exploded there. A total of 18 werewolves were destroyed by it leaving behind only a big cloud of smoke.
“He’s still alive don’t stop” commanded Helen from her safe spot with Raiden. Even if it was a suicide attack it was better not to risk it. Lycaon obeyed and ran towards the cloud, as he extended his claw centimeters away from it the whole hand was suddenly cut off. There in the fading cloud of smoke stood the charred corpse that should have been dead, the coal-like black skin regenerating back to it’s previous pale completion, both his suit and sunglasses seemed untouched by the explosion. Lycaon, kept attacking like a rabbit beast, the 26 still remaining werewolves all following suit, the ones who were in strike distance slashing him and the ones who weren’t patiently waiting right behind their brothers for their chance to strike too.
Viktor’s hand and missing parts of his body regenerated leaving him already back to the state he was before the battle as he kept deflecting whatever attacks he could and tanking any that landed on him. Endure, that’s all he had to do, so he endured and endured and endured and endured as claws dug several inches into his body and he tried to physically restrain Lycaon’s claws and jaw after stabbing his sword right into said jaw since he was the only werewolf there able to fatally wound him without too much issue. As he endured the assault getting parts of his body torn open the equation being written under his feet got closer and closer to completion. Raiden and Helen didn’t even feel the need to provide support even though inside, Raiden really wanted to stop playing it safe against the reality marble and go and join in on the beatdown.
Then out of nowhere, the equation stopped getting updated. Of course it would, after all, “Gioi tou vasiliá ton lýkon” had now been completely deciphered. A small smug smile appeared on Viktor’s face as the remaining werewolves dematerialized in seconds while he was still holding Lycaon’s wrists and pushing his leg against his chest to keep his mouth far from himself. Following that the equation got completely erased and a new one started forming in it’s place, this one at a much faster pace, if the rate at which a line of text was being completed was compared to a car driving across a road the same size as the lines, then it would be moving at 90 kilometers per hour. This was how fast Viktor could solve the equation while fighting at the same time.
“Fuck.” Those were the only words that escaped Helen’s huffing mouth as she saw the effect of the noble phantasm while still struggling with the tons of weight from Viktor’s earlier spell, analyzing and dismantling, the equation was just showing the mechanism behind the noble phantasm. Once Viktor had it completely figured out the equation was complete and he was able to completely dismantle the noble phantasm.
“Mystery.” muttered Raiden.
“Huh?”
“A whiteboard and equations. This reality marble is all about science. Mystery’s power is stronger the less we understand it.”
Helen was shocked realizing what Raiden was trying to say. They couldn’t confirm the limit of the reality marble but Raiden’s theory seemed plausible. Lighting used to be a powerful force restricted to the gods but humanity achieved the feat of harnessing it’s power through science, by defining how it works it lost a lot of it’s mystery and became weaker as a result, if Raiden’s theory was right Viktor’s equations were a vastly exaggerated version of that, reverse engineering the mystery of a target to show how to achieve it through science and then completely erasing the effect.
“I’ll be fine then” Raiden stated as he rushed towards the vampire and reformed the petals back into his spear, leaving Helen completely behind. Viktor meanwhile had thrown Lycaon over his head and pulled his sword clean through his mouth cutting the right half of his snout off while still midair. The wolf man landed 50 meters away rolling against the slippery surface of the whiteboard.
Viktor began to run back towards Lycaon but he only moved a 3 meters before a spear stabbed right through his chest narrowly missing his heart due to Viktor’s instincts making him reflectively try to dodge the strike.
“You should have allowed it to be painless.” Raiden coldly stated as Viktor felt a heat of at least 2200 degrees Celsius course through the spear right into the wound and then spreading through his whole torso. With a bloodcurdling scream he grabbed the shaft behind him with his free left hand, the same heat coursing through that hand too now that he touched the spear with it, and forcefully pulled himself off the spear despite Raiden trying to shove it deeper with all his force.
“Holy scripture?” asked Viktor as he jumped 15 meters away from Raiden while still breathing heavily from the pain. There’s no way the executioner was able to handle that kind of heat while the vampire wasn’t able to when vampires have a resistance towards temperatures way greater than humans. On top of that while he had burn marks over his hand and the exposed closing wound in his chest, the clothes were completely unaffected by the fire, it had to be some sort of powerful holy weapon.
“Correct” responded Raiden as he threw the spear towards Viktor. Viktor moved to deflect it but halfway through it’s second long glide in the air it separated into a bunch of petals again. Viktor was able to repel most of them but 8 still cut cleanly through his body. The wounds weren’t regenerating nearly as well though, they were closing slower and the burn marks remained.
Lycaon was still incapacitated, deploying his noble phantasm and healing from so many injuries inflicted on him by Victor definitely took a toll on him enough to leave him out of the picture for a few minutes much to Viktor’s delight.
This meant he could completely focus his attention on the executioner. In an instant he closed the distance between him and the priest before the petals returned to him. In this short distance he tried to stab him in the stomach but a petal came in time and hit the sword from the side, redirecting it to hit more to the left in a less fatal spot, the rest of the petals came rushing straight through Viktor’s back to Raiden’s side but he ignored them, they were like bullets, fatal to most but to his undead body the area they damaged was far too small to damage him severely. Instead he tried to twist his sword in Raiden to slash straight through his stomach but he could only twist it 30 degrees before it got completely stuck.
The returned petals formed a barrier over the area surrounding the point where Raiden’s wound and the sword were like a piece of cloth. They resisted against Viktor’s strength giving Raiden the time to react, a sane person would use this opportunity to pull away from the sword and let the petals fully cover the wound like a bandage. Raiden however used the opportunity to deliver a series of physical blows with the sword still in his body. Uppercut to the chin, 3 punches to the throat, both hands hitting against his ears followed by another right hook knocking those sunglasses right off and to finish it off a few petals moved to his hand to form the tip of his spear which he used as a knife to stab right into Viktor’s right eye.
He followed up by twisting his hips and in turn the sword still stuck in him, to deliver a kick right to the side of Viktor’s stomach, while pulling the spear point with three of his fingers, knocking both him and the sword still in his hands to the side. Most of the petals moved away from the wound to form the shaft of the spear and complete it again but due to some petals being left behind to bandage the injury, it’s noticeable shorter at around 190cm instead of it’s usual 200 centimeters. He moved in to attack the vampire who was still on the ground but his thrust was redirected to the side by Viktor’s sword and into the floor.
Then the equation on the floor got erased again. Raiden tensed up thinking it might have erased one or maybe even all of Orna’s abilities. That wasn’t the case though. Behind him he noticed Helen trying to run towards Lycaon who seemed to have just gotten up with all her strength even despite the weight spell cast on her. Something was wrong though, Lycaon got back on all fours gathering his bearings again, all of his injuries healed yet again, along with that though there was a yellow dust coming off of every part of his body. He was dematerializing. Viktor still on the ground, threw his sword at Lycaon. It flew right by Helen and hit the werewolf right in the chest, an injury he might have been able to recover from usually but not in this state, this was the last straw. After all Lycaon wasn’t receiving mana from his master anymore, the contract was severed, the very spell that had brought about his summoning was being undone and this last injury pierced right into his spiritual core.
“LYCAOOOOON!” Helen screamed out to him as he looked back, slight disappointment for failing his master appearing on his face as he disappeared just before she could reach him and try to form the contract again.
A shocked expression covered Raiden’s usually stoic face as he looked back down at the now unarmed perpetrator.
“His noble phantasm summoned creatures similar to him in a similar manner to how he was summoned. Makes it easier to decipher how he himself was summoned. Practically started at 60% progress. Convenient huh?” He looked back up at Raiden with a smile, but what Raiden saw was unnerving. Now with his sunglasses off to the side he could see the one eye Viktor had left after having the other one stabbed, golden bright yellow pupil darted all around just a little too fast for the eye to follow, looking in every possible direction without focusing on anything, it seemed like it wanted to pop out of its socket.
“Huh?” even Raiden was slightly taken aback. Other than the erratic movement the yellow eye didn’t seem too out of place but for some reason it send a shiver down his spine, the eyes in the sky were the exact same but they all had their gaze towards Viktor instead of in every possible direction.
Trying to take advantage of Raiden’s visible moment of confusion Viktor lunged towards him, his nails turning into claws he used to try to slash at his face but narrowly missed as Raiden leaned back to dodge it, that however didn’t stop him from using his other hand to claw at his stomach, successfully jamming his fingers into his stomach. He had intended to drive his hand straight through but he had underestimated his durability.
Raiden turned more of spear into petals and let a few wrap around his knuckles as the rest covered parts of his body. He grabbed onto Viktor’s hand that was wedged in his stomach and pulled it out as he grabbed the other one who had almost clawed at his face with his other hand. Having grabbed them he proceeded to kick upwards to deliver a blow to Viktor’s head but instead he was met with Viktor moving his head to the side and biting most of Raiden’s calf clean off.
At the same time the floor started writing yet another equation. Raiden was cornered, a spear is a long weapon, it’s a great weapon but if it had one weakness is that if the opponent is in a range significantly less than the spear’s length then they are out of the range of the sharp tip of the spear making it hard to attack with it and can deliver fast blows against an opponent who can only use the shaft at best. Understanding that Raiden turned the spear into petals and focused on hand to hand combat but with such a big chunk of his leg missing making distance was impossible, he’d struggle to even walk properly. Some petals swarmed and covered in the shape of his calf over the missing chunk like a hollow prosthetic. Since he was already holding Viktor’s hand by the wrists he pulled him upwards above his head, after that some of the petals that weren’t covering an injury moved in front of him positioning themselves like spikes.
Raiden slammed the vampire who was trying to get another bite, hard onto the petal spikes with enough force to break concrete, then he did it again, and then again, 4 times he lifted and slammed him into the spiky ground until Viktor managed to react, on the fifth try when he lifted him above his head again Viktor curled his body to kick Raiden straight in the chin, forcing him to let go as Viktor used his chest as footing to jump away.
Raiden stood there, fractures in his jaw, blood dripping from his mouth, two wounds on his torso and a mostly missing right calf, while 4 meters in front of him stood Viktor, his injuries already mostly healed except the burns, a scar on his face and some of the internal damage from the spear’s other injuries, his yellow eyes looking at every direction while out of sync. This situation made Raiden smile, a small but genuine reaction, getting to fight like this and kill such strong opponents, it warmed his heart in an inhuman way, after all its half the reason he joined the church in the first place.
And on top of that, the petals on the ground and some on his body formed back into a spear in his hands. They were now at a distance big enough for him to properly use it.
“Ah bollocks!” cursed Viktor seeing him hold that damn spear again. The weapon was like poison to him, getting in close to force him to a hand to hand was clearly not an option though considering that while Raiden’s strength was inferior, his skill vastly exceeded Viktor’s. While it looked like he had the upper hand, realistically his best hope of winning was stalling until his equation was done.
“PRIEST!” Helen called out, having already focused back to the fight after Lycaon’s departure. The ability to not get emotional over death when you were in this type of situation, it certainly improved Raiden’s view of her. He didn’t turn his back to the enemy to look at her but he listened nonetheless.
“MAKE IT MORE COMPLICATED TO SOLVE YOUR WEAPON’S SHTICK! AND FUCK HIM UP REAL GOOD FOR ME!” Helen’s advice reached the executioner’s ears. A sound strategy in his eyes. He didn’t verbally respond but it was clear from the equation on the board that he complied. Unnecessary words appeared all over the equation, information that did nothing but take up space. Both Helen and Viktor read the floor only to see…
“I stay out too late, got nothing in my brain. That’s what people say, mm-mm. That’s what people say, mm-mm. I go on too many dates, but I can’t make them stay. At least that’s what people say mm- mm.~” For Viktor thanks to his reality marble’s analysis skills could hear it in his brain, a blessing and a curse, the seductive, mature feminine voice absolutely crushing it on the solo. Helen looked just as confused as the vampire as she verbally expressed said confusion.
“Shake it off?”
“Came out two months ago. By Taylor SWIIFT!” Raiden groaned in pain while saying the last word as he stepped on his leg with an injured calf and coming in close with a flurry of thrusts, so fast they sounded like they cut the air itself, accompanied by the sound of Orna singing “BUT I KEEP IT CRUISIN. CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP MOOVIN~” in both his and Viktor’s heads, slowing the equation immensely through making it process useless information. Viktor was able to repel all of them with his claws but it left cuts all over his hands. Just like earlier the cuts made by the spear itself seemed to be way harder to heal than when it was razor sharp petals, it seems it’s divine properties were more prominent in spear form.
“Does it… really talk?” Helen muttered under her breath as she watched the fight from a distance, noticing that despite his still stoic face, there was a bit of enthusiasm in the way he moved, was the F responsible for the renewed vigor?
The petals on Raiden’s stomach covering his two injuries there latched back onto the spear making it closer to its full length again, the injuries were completely gone, the fact that Raiden had spoken so clearly was a show that his fractured jaw must have healed as well, it made the vampire realize he wasn’t the only one here who could heal.
Raiden tried again, stepping forward and thrusting his spear darted toward Viktor’s solar plexus like a bullet. Viktor didn’t evade though, he leaned into it, twisting his torso so the blade shaved past his ribs, skin splitting but nothing mortal. His hand snapped upward at the same time, claws aiming straight for Raiden’s throat.
The priest blocked it with the spear shaft and kicked Viktor in the left knee with his uninjured leg and took a step back to follow up with two rapid jabs, one at Viktor’s chin, one at his hip. Viktor redirected both with open palms, slapping the spear aside. He followed up by pointing his hand towards Raiden’s face and opening his mouth to…
“Lihbliz” cast a single word spell that made a flash of light erupt from his hand at an instant, a magical flashbang that blinded Raiden for a total of 5 seconds. He had researched mages for half his life and never heard of this spell before, it was likely either made by Viktor or so old that records of it were lost, nevertheless was a surprise that Viktor took full advantage off.
In the first two second he slashed the inside of Raiden’s forearm that was holding the spear, 4 cuts each 3 centimeters deep, no way he can fight like that. In the third and fourth he slashed against his chest leaving 4 equally as devastating. The fifth second he used to raise his leg above Raiden’s righ knee and in the sixth second he stomped down with all his force onto his shin, breaking it completely and forcing it to bend at a 70 degree angle against the floor as Raiden fell down. In those 6 seconds Viktor had secured total victory, even Orna’s singing in both their heads had gone from an enthusiastic cheerleader to Raiden to worryingly telling the priest to heal faster. Raiden looked up at him and tried to buy himself time through words, at least enough for the petals to cover the wound on his hand and if he’s lucky, to attack him off guard.
“You’ve got a lot of tricks, but I still haven’t figured “that” one out. Those frantic yellow eyes, you haven’t look straight at me for more than half a second since the start, are they some sort of mystic eyes that make it seem that way?”
“I can promise you that I am trying, I am trying ha—wait—did you say yellow?” goosebumps ran down Viktor’s body and his knees felt weak at Raiden’s words.
“Hm? Yes.” Raiden gave his reply, by now petals covered the injury on his forearm making it possible for him to attack again, even if his leg was out of commission and chest was bleeding. He had diverted the vampire’s attention for long enough.
“They—my eyes are blue.” Viktor stated, not even saying it to Raiden, but to himself, like he had just realized something that left his pale skin looking even paler while he stared around, finally noticing the yellow eyes in the sky all looking at him.
“Journal. On the third door to the right there’s a journal on my desk!” he shouted at Raiden, his eyes still frantically moving while his attention was set on the man in front of him once again with an terrified expression. Raiden however made use of the moment and from his sitting position, thrust his spear up towards Viktor’s head aiming to hit him right through the brain. Viktor however reacted. He reacted by moving his head towards the strike, leaning in with more power than the strike itself, letting out two last words before the spear impaled him between the eyes.
“Cremate me”
With that, Viktor had successfully committed assisted suicide.
The reality marble collapsed, both Helen and Raiden back in the hallway. The spear lodged into the vampire’s corpse turned into petals and covered all of Raiden’s wounds as both him and Helen were processing what just happened. They stood in silence for around 10 seconds until Raiden got up from the ground and started limping towards the door opposite of him.
“So uh… fuck.” Helen had a lot to say, trying to figure out why Viktor allowed himself to be killed all the sudden after fighting so hard, asking about the spear that from the reality marble’s writing seemed to actually communicate meaning Raiden wasn’t totally insane, something about her berserker servant, Lycaon, who had just been killed. In the end there was so much that she didn’t even know what to say. So instead Raiden started the conversation.
“You seem to be taking the loss of your servant exceptionally well.”
“Oh, uhm, well it’s my eight ever servant, you kind of just accept it as part of the process at some point. I’ll be able to summon a new one soon, Lycaon fulfilled his duty so now he gets to rest back in the throne of heroes. Hold on let me...”
After responding Helen got up and put Raiden’s arm over her shoulder, helping him as he walked.
“Thanks you.” Raiden said as he put his hand on the door hinge and opened it to be met with Viktor’s library, he could not look at it for long though as all the lights turned off, then he heard a countdown coming from the middle of the hallway counting down from 60, was the trigger opening the door, or maybe Viktor’s death? In the end it didn’t matter, a countdown was likely a bad sign, it’d be best if they got out before it finished.
“Enforcer! Go get his journal from his desk!”
“Got it.” She responded as she let Raiden rest against the wall and ran to the desk in the middle of the library, there were around 20 books on top of it, some open and some with scribbles on them, She quickly rummaged through them and as the countdown hit 35 she found a red leather book with “Viktor Blackwin’s research journal” Written on it’s front in a fancy golden font. She grabbed it and ran back into the hallway to find the limping Raiden trying to pull Viktor’s corpse with him as he walked towards the exit but he’s barely made 4 meters of progress, clearly he was worn out from the battle and his injuries.
“The hell are you doing?”
“Fulfilling his request.” Raiden replied calmly as he continued limping. Helen didn’t even bother to respond, there was no time for that. She went to him and pulled his left hand over her shoulder, letting him hold onto the corpse with his right hand. The countdown reached 20.
“Thank you.”
“Save your breath focus on walking dimwit” she stated annoyed at Raiden for trying to carry literal dead weight.
With 5 seconds to spear they made it out into the alleyway, drenched by the now present rain. They closed the metal door behind them and as they got 2 meters away from the door, a loud explosion sounded and send the door behind them flying right onto the street In front of them. Already expecting this Helen kept moving helping Raiden along as they made their way towards the church.
The tall man and athletic girl walked towards the entrance of the church, carrying a corpse behind them that had no place in this holy space. They were drenched in the rain, across the road from the church as they heard it. An excruciatingly loud war cry, closer to a roar, of someone inside.
“SEERVAAAAANT”
Helen wanted to put her hands over her ears but they were both busy helping Raiden who visibly tensed up. The roar had a gruff energetic male voice to it. It was loud enough to wake up everybody in a 400 meter radius and be heard from even further. Raiden pulled himself off of Helen and lifted the corpse over his shoulder as he ran towards the entrance with Helen quickly following behind him. Then the second part of the war cry came from the individual who clearly wanted everybody to hear that he has officially made his entrance.
“BERSERKEEEEER”
Notes:
Heya, been a while. Originally planned to take a one week break but then since this chapter is very long it took me an extra week on top of that to complete it so here we are almost 3 weeks since the last chapter. I'll be switching do posting a chapter once every 2 weeks from now on since this is way more demanding than expected. Also i know POVs are jumping all over the place now but this story is based a lot on having the different character's stories converge into one so please bear with me for a little more. You're only going to switch to POVs of brand new characters like 2 maybe 3 times from now on in the early chapters and they'll be more closely tied to the already present characters, the Ataway, Einsbern and this perpective are the foundation and now that i'm done with them i can focus on expanding the already introduced storylines.
Oh and one last thing, this chapter takes place on the night after chapter 1 and 2, i'll be mentioning when things happen here in the notes when it isn't stated in the chapter to keep the timeline of events clear. Anyway here are the picrews of this chapter's characters
Viktor blackwin:
https://imgur.com/gallery/viktor-blackwin-F55qF2oRen Tousaki:
https://imgur.com/a/MZou2LIHelen Hester:
https://imgur.com/a/QaaRkSiRaiden Tousaki:
https://imgur.com/a/hK9bXwY
And now Lycaon's info
Strength: A
Endurance: B
Agility: C
Magical energy: D
Luck: D
Noble phantasm: ASkills:
Madness enhancement B
Magical resistance E
Charisma C
Monstrous Strength A+
Imperial privelege - (lost due to his tranformation into a monster)Noble phantasm:
Gioi tou vasiliá ton lýkon -A
Calling upon his kin that were cursed by Zeus just like him. Lycaon summons the 49 sons of his that were turned into werewolves as his familiars.
Chapter Text
With another twist that was slightly too much, the fifteenth lock pick breaks.
“Dammit”
Ren punched the wall in anger only to immediately regret it and grab his hand that now stung from the punch tightly. He then decided to distract himself for a bit by grabbing a cookie from the plate of them that was left in his room, on top of the plate other than the 14 cookies Ren had eaten half of, there were two sticky notes.
The first read “Snacks – Raiden Tousaki”
The second read” Message from Orna she wanted me to leave-
Hey Reni! Sorry for being harsh earlier but you know how your dad is. He left you these cookies he bought earlier to cheer you up since he knows he’s being unreasonable but can’t really help it. We’ll be back soon <3”
Unreasonable was an understatement. Ren couldn’t stand his father. He loved him but he also hated him. It was a complicated sort of relationship where he wants the best for his father and truly cares for him but at the same time if he could cut himself away from this family and run away he’d do it in a heartbeat. After all, how could he ever follow the example of the man who killed his mother?
For that reason he was gonna go through with it. He was going to live his own life instead of becoming an executioner like his father wants him to. This time he was going to run away successfully. That’s because he had a plan way better than the ones in the past. There was a backpack in the church on the day they entered for the first time. His father had thrown it away in the trash but after Ren rummaged in the trash for it Raiden decided to stuff it in a drawler in the back of the church and take away the key. At that point if the drawer was opened it would have been obvious Ren did it so he hadn’t even tried opening it because he really didn’t want his father to get mad at him, he’d probably force him to do something like 200 push-ups and fast for a whole day.
That wasn’t going to be a problem now though, He was able to glimpse into the backpack when he found it in the trash before his dad took it away and inside there was a ritual circle. Now that he knew a Holy Grail war was happening Ren thought that might be for summoning a servant. That’s why he needed to get to it before his dad got back. He took a deep breath and picked up another lock pick.
Now with a steadier hand after he took a second to focus, he successfully unlocked it on his sixteenth attempt. He made his way out of the room and towards the place where the old wooden drawler was. There he grabbed onto its handle and pulled with all his strength. It didn’t open so he put his foot against the cabinet for extra leverage. It still wasn’t enough though.
Frustrated, he yanked the whole drawer down, making it topple onto the ground with a heavy thud. He flipped it so the front faced upward and, to vent his frustration, jumped onto the drawer door with both feet. It groaned after the first few jumps until it eventually shattered, making Ren’s right foot slip through and fall forwards, hitting his forehead on the ground.
“Ouuhohouch” he wimpered while covering his forehead and getting back up. He pulled his foot out of the whole in the drawler and opened it. He forgot all about the pain once he saw the red backpack inside. Ren pulled it out and started rummaging through it, there inside was a drawing of a summoning circle, a jar of black liquid and a few miscellaneous items like a pair of silver earrings, a DVD with “Monty Python and the holy grail” written on it, a piece of bamboo, a small rock, a Japanese painting of a woman and a letter were inside. He took out the letter and began reading it
“Hello mister priest, you have been invited to this land’s Holy Grail war. The church would never allow a ritual about something this holy to happen without their supervision. Because of that I advise you to stay and participate because by the time you report to the church about this it’d already be over. You wouldn’t want the grail to fall into the wrong hands right? Especially of the vampire in this lands considering how much your organization hates those. Here are a few catalysts as a gift that you could use, the earrings were used to summon Cu Chulainn in the fifth holy grail war of Fyuki so they’d be able to summon him again, the painting is a copy of an old painting of Kiyohime so it would work to summon her, the disk is likely to summon someone from Arthurian myth, the rock is a piece of limestone from the pyramids of Giza so it can summon a pharaoh and the bamboo would likely be a good catalyst for Kaguya-hime. We hope these catalysts prove useful to you. The summoning chant is written on the back of this note, if you feel like you should change it a little then do it, it differs a bit between people, not the last 3 lines though, they are needed in this war.
-Sincerely, Elena Einsbern”
Bingo! Ren’s theory was right! And how nice of this person to provide catalysts. Not that Ren was gonna use them but it was still nice of them. If he summoned someone like the knights of Arthurian myth they might not let a child run away from home, he needed someone who’d agree with his line of thinking, best bet at that is to summon through pure compatibility instead of a catalyst. He ran into the main hall of the church while gripping the backpack close to his chest and grinning from ear to ear.
There, in the main hall he took out the jar of black liquid and the drawing of the summoning circle and started drawing in on the ground with the black liquid and his finger. Copying it onto the floor in the middle of the room carefully. After 10 minutes he was done, that meant he could begin. He put the backpack on one of the benches and started reading the chant.
“Fill fill fill fill fill.
Repeat five times but when each is filled destroy it.
My will shall create your body, and you sword shall create my destiny.
Abiding by the Summons of the Holy grail.
If you accede to this will and reason, answer me!
I hereby swear; I will be all that is good in this world, and I will destroy all that is evil.
But let chaos cloud thine eyes
Thou, who art trapped in a cage of madness.
And I, who doth hold thy chains.
Come forth Guardian of the Scales!”
In response to this chant, the circle glowed blue, so bright Ren had to cover his eyes like he was staring at the sun itself, wind erupted blowing benches away into the wall and knocking Ren onto his butt, he opened his eyes to see white smoke dispersing to reveal the person standing in the middle.
A 11 foot tall man with black skin and messy white hair grown down to his shoulders. He was dressed in white tobi pants with a thick, ink black rope obi tied in a huge knot in the back, there was some black leg armor on top of the pants below the knees that ended near his bare feet. He wore bracelets made out of big red beads on each hand, each one had only 8 beads on it due to their size. His neck was adorned with a necklace made out of the same beads but accompanied by 8 green magatama tied to it all around from front to back.
He didn’t wear a shirt, instead he proudly showed off his slightly lean but very muscular physique that was harder than stone with red line markings like tattoos pointing towards the stomach from the sides to match the ones with the exact same design under his eyes. His eyes were pitch black, way darker than his skin and with red pupils with a white middle to match his unnatural appearance. To top it all off he had two very slightly curved horns about half as long as his head that were black at the base but got redder the closer they were to the tip. This was without a doubt, a berserker.
As Ren sat there, staring in awe of the giant. The servant looked straight at him with a toothy smirk before taking a deep breath and looking up. Then he proceeded to shout.
“SEERVAAAAANT”
Ren covered his ears as to not go deaf at the war cry, unfortunately for him the servant took another deep breath and shouted again.
“BERSERKEEEEER”
A second scream just as loud as the last. To introduce himself in such a way, Ren was sure he must have summoned someone at least a little insane. The berserker then looked back at Ren who took his hands off his ears but was keeping them ready to cover his ear again in case that man screams.
“That’s who I am. So tell me pipsqeak. Are you my master?” Berserker’s tone had suddenly gone from screaming at the top of his lungs like a lunatic to a casual gruff voice. All Ren was able to give as a response was an almost crying “Oouch” because of how much his ears hurt.
“Huh? Why are you whinin? Did someone hurt ya? You don’t look hurt?”
“Why did you scream so loud? Now everyone in this neighborhood heard you. Mages would know you’re a servant too since you screamed it.” Ren complained at his servant, most people would be intimidated of the 11 foot tall demon-like man but he was used to scary sights. In response Berserker let out an infectious laugh and crouched down in front of the kid to ruffle his hair.
“That’s the idea runt. They better know the bestest of the best has arrived! I ain’t hiding from shit.” He said while ruffling the kids head.
"You didn’t answer my question tho, are you my master?” The giant pondered while Ren tried to push his hand away, the hand wouldn’t budge though so instead of pushing the hand away he pushed his body away from it.
“Oh? Uhm, yeah I guess I am.” They boy answered seemingly just now grasping what he said. This was his servant. Berserker.
“Good, so what’s next…” Before Berserker could finish a spear thrown at the speed of a bullet came right for the back of his neck but without even looking, the berserker caught the weapon with ease. He then turned his head to see where the spear came from. On the second floor indoor balcony next to an open window, stood a blond man with his eyes staring right at him, his expression was calm but there was a quiet bloodlust about him, on his left was a woman with a tense expression, her eyes drifting between the servant and the surroundings trying to come up with a plan.
“Ohoo” Berserker smiled widely looking at his target. As he did that however the spear in his hand turned into petals that held his hand in place. The priest jumped down from the second floor straight at him and delivered a punch to his throat, following up by grabbing his shoulder and using it as leverage to get on top of the behemoth’s shoulders from where he proceeded to try to gouge his eyes out with his fingers.
The giant didn’t allow that though, when his hands reached for his head he grabbed one of the priest’s forearms and threw him into the wall, cracking it’s surface.
“Wait no don’t kill him!” screamed Ren. Berserker looked over at him confused, “Really?” painted all over his face. Raiden however took the opportunity to attack. The fact the giant didn’t even react to a punch to the throat meant he was far too durable for hand to hand combat. For that reason the petals had returned to him to form the spear once more. He delivered 3 strikes. One slash across his stomach to cut it open. Another across his chest. And the third was a stab right in the jaw to pierce through his head. The giant however, not only didn’t even budge, the slashes by a weapon on a level of an A rank noble phantasm didn’t even leave a scratch. He looked down despite the spear right under his chin, only pushing it down with the mere motion of tilting his head.
“I actually felt that punch! Did this war’s lancer incarnate or somethin? You’re close to the strength of a servant but that body’s flesh n blood. No doubt bout it.”
“That child over there is mine fiend. Judging by the fact there’s a magical circle here I can guess he summoned you but that is of no concern of mine. You have two choices, leave, or kill yourself.” Replied Raiden, still holding his spear to the servant’s chin despite how futile it is.
“Heh?” said Berserker and then looked back at his master noticing their hair is the exact same shade of blond. Then his eyes darted to his surroundings. A church, the place where he was summoned, and the man in front of him was dressed like a priest. All Berserker could do afterward was nod his head while saying “Ooooh” finally understanding.
While this exchange was happening Helen had snuck to the front door and opened it wide and proceeded to run away. Nobody was really paying attention to her though, Ren was currently panicking inside, if his dad keeps talking then Berserker might side with him. The boy imagined the worst possible scenario for him.
“So my master is just some mischievous brat who’s trying to run away from home?”
“Indeed. He really is ungrateful for all I’ve done to make sure he grows up well. I would have disposed of him myself if it wasn’t for his mother. He deserves the harshest punishment possible to guarantee this rebellious phase ends.”
Berserker barked a laugh and responded.
“Yeah ya right on that front old man. Watcha got it in mind”
“He will be thrown in the middle of a forest. We’ll release many magical beasts into it after he enters and let him survive inside for a week alone there."
“Oh hell yeah! You got good taste old man!”
No, no that’s a nightmarish possibility. Ren wouldn’t allow it. He shook his head and screamed at Berserker.
“BERSERKER! MAKE HIM LEAVE!”
“Got it!” replied Berserker without protest. He leaned his head back letting the spear go right past his face and kicked Raiden in the ribs straight through the wall right next to the open door and onto the road in a puddle made by the ongoing rain. He then ran to him and tried to grab him but the petals formed into a shield-like form in front of him and managed to block his hand and make it slide off the surface, this only made Berserker more entertained though.
The petals moved under Raiden like a paper thin platform and slid him away from Berserker onto the sidewalk. The servant would have just moved with them to grab it while they tried to slide away but a distraction caught his eyes. Headlights. Headlights of a car on the road he was on approaching him at 80 kilometers an hour. He turned towards it, planted his feet and crouched down in a position like a sumo wrestler.
“BRING IT ON!” He shouted. The psychopath was clearly enjoying this. 40 meters before the car could reach him a woman opened the door of the driver seat and jumped off, rolling on the asphalt a little before catching herself and screaming at Raiden “TAKE YOUR KID AND RUN!”
The car rammed straight into Berserker and crumbled and folded around him. The glass shooting out in many small chunks and the entire front with the hood, engine and every other part getting crushed and the frame bending inward so much it’s like it ran into a concrete pillar. The car’s front was so compacted that he could casually reach in and touch the back seat with ease.
He pulled himself off the remains of the car and shook his head to get the glass out of his hair only to notice Raiden jumping right above him to the stairs leading up to the church. He rushed in to grab his leg as he ran up the stairs, before he could do that Raiden moved his spear to his foot making it so when Berserker grabbed him mere seconds after that he was gripping both the spear and the lower leg, the part of the spear in berserker’s hand formed into petals again to cover the lower leg before Berserker can crush it and also bended into spikes that unfortunately didn’t pierce the monsters hand.
Instead Berserker spun his whole body holding Raiden like a ragdoll and with the built up momentum from the spin he threw Raiden into the sky, so high he would nearly reach the clouds and rocket towards somewhere in the forest outside of the city.
“Homerun!” Berserker jumped with his fist towards the sky in celebration and then turned to look at his master still inside the building who’s jaw might as well have fallen to the floor with how his face looked.
The servant connected the dots in his head. He didn’t kill the kids father of course, only an absolute monster would, it was a different story as to whether gravity might not be as gentle as he was. His smile disappeared and was replaced by a pondering face trying to come up with the best thing to do in this situation. He put his hand to his chin as he considered but heard some mud splash to the left of the church so he stopped his thought for a second to look.
There he saw Helen, carrying a vampire’s corpse on her back and locking eyes with him, an “Oh fuck” expression painted her face as she and berserker maintained eye contact for a solid 5 seconds until she said something.
“You win. I’m leaving. I’ll try to find that guy in the forest tomorrow.”
“Oooh yeah that’d be totally awesome! See ya then pipsqueak!” much to Helen’s surprise he actually let her go, he gave her a big wave and got back in the church, carefully closing the door behind him.
“WHAT DID YOU DOO???” Ren had finally regained his composure enough to say something even thought his voice cracked twice while talking just now.
“Weell…uhm…yeah. Crazy huh?” Berserker said, rubbing the back of his head like a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing.
“Oh god oh god oh god.” Ren began to panic.
“Well maybe your dad is…”
“He’s alive. He’s survived way worse. But I’m soo so so grounded.” Ren’s eyes were filled with terror making Berserker pause for a bit before bursting into laughter.
“RAHAHAHA! Good, good! Ya had me worried there for a sec but if you say he’s such a tough cookie then he’s gotta be. Stop sweatin over the future stuff little man. It’s way more fun to enjoy the present, maybe with some booze and a good brawl or a pretty lady’s company!”
Ren completely ignored the last part of berserker’s words since it was things that were better left unsaid. Instead he focused on the word future and remembered, he’s not getting grounded, he’s cutting ties with his dad anyway! Relief washed over him as he relaxed his body and sat on one of the benches nearby to take a breather from the rollercoaster of emotions he just experienced.
“Hey, Berserker.”
“Sup?” He responded as he sat down on the ground with his legs crossed.
“Since you were summoned, you’re here for the holy grail war right?”
“Eh, I guess. More so interested in just fightin strong people and enjoyin the modern life. You’re plannin to fight for the grail too right?”
“Well, uhm…” Ren scratched the back of his head trying to think of a response.
“Of course. But I have one condition if we are to work together!”
“Oh that so? I’m all ears then little man.” Berserker said with an amused expression, not beastly like before but more like a smug one.
“I will fight in the holy grail war with you…if you…h-help me go live an independent life from my father!” Ren could not help but stutter a bit hearing himself while saying it. Berserker couldn’t help but laugh so hard he laid backwards onto the ground and kept up his obnoxious laughter for a solid few minutes. The instant he was quiet enough for Ren to be heard he tried to elaborate.
“Listen it’s not some rebellious phase thing! Dad makes me survive in the wilderness for days, a-and makes me hunt wild animals. I’m a vegetarian! He also makes me look at him as he kills people while saying ominous things like “One day you’ll be the one in this position. Try not to savor the thrill too much.” Or “You’re not a normal human, just a killer who has yet to kill. A spawn of devils.”! He’s wants me to become like him when I grow up and hunt heretics! He’s insane!”
Berserker suddenly stopped laughing, his expression turned uncharacteristically serious as he processed those words.
“So that’s how it is huh? Why did you make him not kill him then? Woulda saved you a lot of trouble.”
Ren shook his hands and head vigorously while he responded.
“No no no no no! He’s… he’s bad but he’s also good. I don’t understand him at all but he goes out of his way to be a good dad a lot. It’s like… he jumps from one extreme to another!”
“That so? What’s he doin that makes him so redeemable then?”
Ren’s face got ever so slightly red as he recalled a memory that he thought would be a good example for Berserker.
“Well last year I became 12. We move a lot so I don’t really go to school, I just study at home. I was able to make a few friends though since I convinced my dad to let me go to a course for basketball since we were staying in one place in the US for a while, it’s like my favorite sport and I got pretty close to the other kids in the course, I invited all of them to my birthday. I printed out invites while my dad handled the rest. He got a bunch of pizzas and a cake and reserved a few hours at a paintball place…”
“That it?”
“No I wasn’t finished. Don’t interrupt!”
“K my bad. Jeez.”
“So anyway. My birthday came and I waited for like an hour… Nobody showed up though.” Said Ren with an empty expression.
“Dad’s expression was the same as always but he was furious, he had his arms crossed and his fingers dug into his arms so deep that one hand started bleeding a little…He told me we should go but I refused to leave until someone came. After 2 hours of waiting he left on his own.”
“Bastard!”
“Stop interrupting!” Ren raised his voice at Berserker who put two fingers to his lips and dragged them from the left side to the right to show he is zipping them up.
“So I waited there for hours after that. The session dad had paid for was already over so I had to just wait in the lobby while other people played paintball. 4 hours later dad came back, but he wasn’t alone. Guess who friking came with him!” Ren went from looking a bit sad to visibly excited.
“Who!?” said Berserker matching Ren’s excitement.
“The…fricking….Lakers!”
“Eh? The who?” Berserker responded in confusion at Ren’s excitement.
“Huh? The basketball team. You know, from the NBA?”
“Yeah sorry bud but I have no clue bout any of that stuff. Grail probably thought it wouldn’t need it when summonin me.”
“Huh!? Well… I guess that makes sense. Nevermind, they’re amazing at basketball. I watch sport soo much so I know them well! It was like seeing your favorite celebrities in person. They invited me to come with them and watch while they practiced and I accepted super-fast! It was amazing, dad even played a game with them and did super well! They all wished me a happy birthday and gave me the basketball they used after signing it. It’s still in my room! It was such a fun birthday I almost thought it’s a dream.”
“I see.” Said Berserker while pondering.
“Yeah it was amazing! Ok, moving on before start talking too much about that part. Later that day, when it already ended and me and dad were going to bed in a motel room a man knocked on the door. Dad answered and exchanged a few words with the shady guy, I eavesdropped and heard that this person is the one who connected dad with the Lakers and was here for his payment. Dad gave him one of the two necklaces he was wearing under his shirt and the man left. He saw me peeking on the conversation when he turned around but he just ignored it and went to bed.
I started asking him about the necklace even though he was in bed though because I thought it was super important to him. I’ve only seen him wear 3 pieces of jewelry ever, his wedding ring, a string necklace with a gold cross on it and this necklace with a red gem in it with something carved into it. He had already told me the necklace was a gift to him from his dad and the only thing he inherited other than Orna. After I asked he told me “It does not matter much. All that necklace is, is a rune for protection against mental interference attached to a string. A dead man wouldn’t hold a grudge for using his stuff for his grandson’s benefit.”. He has a great poker face but I knew for a fact he was lying, a mage tried to buy it from him one time before that and offered a looot of money but dad rejected instantly, he never took off the necklace too! But he traded it to fix my birthday.” A sad but also happy smile adorned Ren’s face as he said that. No such expression would adorn his face if he wasn’t truly grateful to his father from the bottom of his heart.
“Hm. Well fuck me then this is one complicated love hate relationship ya got. I get it tho, It was kinda similar with me and my big sis when we were alive, putting some distance between us did help a lot to mend things later.” Berserker said while scratching the back of his head. Then he stood up to his full height to announce his decision.
“Ok, little man. I’ll help ya run from home, I was already plannin on using the holy grail war as a vacation so I guess we’ll hafta add some more thrill to it and do it on the run. Now let’s go to a bar!!” He already turned around and started walking towards the outside in the middle of the night while it’s still raining. Ren grabbed onto his leg to try to stop him but he just got dragged along like he weighted nothing.
“Wait wait wait! We’ll sleep here and go buy a room somewhere in the morning! It’s freezing cold outside right now!”
“Don’t sweat it, even a blizzard would feel like just a breeze to me. Plus I don’t sleep. I’m a servant!”
“I do! Also no bars! You’d stand out like a sore thumb, you’re giant, have horns and charcoal black skin!”
“That’s racist! I mean humans don’t really come in this shade of black often but that’s racist!”
“Not the point! Point is you look like a monster.”
“Duhh. That’s cus I am one.”
“So no walking around in broad daylight. Especially in crowded places. Not without my permission!” On complete accident this command activated something Ren didn’t intend to do. Berserker’s body tensed up in response to the command and when Ren looked at his hand on which there were now command spells, one had disappeared. Berserker stopped walking and slumped his shoulders while looking down like a sad puppy.
“You’re a cruel master. So cruel.”
Ren panicked for a second seeing he used one of his command spells already but looking at the dejected behemoth he felt a bit of pity. He let go of his leg and slapped his own cheeks to compose himself. Way too much has happened tonight but he’s got a good head on his shoulders so he should handle it, especially the giant who seems to need to be babysat by him.
“Ok. There is one time you’ll be able to go wherever soon. It’s October 26th today. That’s means Halloween will happen in 5 days, you shouldn’t look too out of place then, people might think you’re wearing a suit with stilts or something. We can go out in crowded spaces like this then.”
Berserker’s face lit up at his master’s words and he turned his head to look back at him.
“For real?”
“Yup.”
“LET’S…FRICKING…GOOOOOOOOOO!” he screamed out once again, quieter than the first time but still enough to annoy the people who were trying to fall asleep after he woke them up with his last war cry earlier.
Ren told the giant to quiet down and they spent the rest of the night rummaging through Raiden’s room to find his debit card and money so they can use it to rent a place on the other end of the city tomorrow. With this, half of the Holy Grail war’s servants had been summoned. Archer, caster and now, one of the strongest berserkers that could possibly be summoned had joined the fray too.
Notes:
Man chapter per 2 weeks is so much easier. I'm definetly keeping it this way moving forward. Also you don't get Berserker's name yet since Ren forgot to ask about it, he's a bit stupid, blame him. The story is slowly starting to pick up pace though, we're finishing the settup within the next 2 to 3 chapters. Anyway time for the info on the new character. Rest of his info and skills will be revealed later in the story
Berserker:
https://imgur.com/a/berserker-9A19mN6
Master: Ren Tousaki
True name: ???
Sex: Male
Height/Weight: 341 cm, 440kg
Alignment: Chaotic evil
Strength:A++
Endurance:EX(A+)
Agility:C
Magical energy:B+
Luck:D
Noble phantasm:???Skills:
Madness enhancement B
A long time ago the user had learned to supress his violent urges allowing him to be able to partially supress this skill's effects on his mind and be capable of proper speech. He still however acts impusively and is hard to reason with like most berserkers, when he as he would put it "gets goin" in a fight the supression on this skill is heavily weakened allowing him to fully indulge in his lust for battle with little ability to think about anything else.Magic Resistance A
Due to this servant's history, this skill acts as if it's rank is C when up against curses.
Chapter Text
Fire.
That was the first thing she saw when she woke up, glass shards scattered on the floor she was laying in, a slimy water-like liquid clung to her and pooled on the ground around her forming a small wet area that kept her safe from the flames. She pulled together her strength to get up onto her knees and look around, what she saw was the remains of the glass tank that had been containing her until now and the pale green walls of the room falling apart, full of holes and cracks, one of the walls was almost fully gone, exposing the room to a red hallway in just as dire of a state.
She stood up on her thin legs, looking like she might fall over from the slightest breeze. Then she walked through the fire and into the hallway, the fire was engulfing her legs but she wasn’t trying to put it out. Her expression was pained but she didn’t know what to do, like the concept of burning was something foreign to her. Through the smoke she could see 4 rooms around her. On her right and far left rubble was blocking the way preventing her from moving or even seeing what was past it, just piles of rubble.
Behind her was the remains of the wall that separated the room she was in from the hallway and to the left of it, there was another steel door. This one was still intact but she could easily see through the smoke and the window of the door, that rubble was blocking it from the inside.
Opposite of her were two rooms with steel doors that were relatively intact. She walked towards the one on the left but right when she got near it the roof above gave out. Rocks fell in front of the door blocking it, while a bunch of them almost hit the girl, she moved away before most could hit her but one slab the size of a human torso struck her right in the head.
“Ooouch.” She wined, even though it didn’t leave even a bruise she massaged the spot on her forehead where she got hit to numb the pain all the while her feet were still getting charred from the fire. The pain faded so she went to the last door left, put her thin hand on the handle and opened it. The door screeched as the blond girl was met with the most intact place left, the only damage there was was from the building falling apart so whatever left those other rooms in such a dire state must not have happened in this room.
Furniture was overturned and piles of artifacts she couldn’t name were scattered around in this crumbling red room. She started to dig through them in curiosity, maybe she’d find something to get out with, she thought. She got engrossed in her curiosity, observing her reflection in an old hand mirror, throwing some things to the fire to see what burned and what melted and at one point she found a shiny white tooth. She measured it to be a little bigger than her hand, it reminded her of something from back home, though she couldn’t tell what.
Even though the building was minutes away from collapsing, she sat down to observe it closely, as she did that though, her hand brushed against the floor next to a pile of artifacts. As she did so, blue lines lit up that spot on the ground, that gathered in a circle mostly covered by the pile of artifacts. The girl looked at the light but before she could make out the sigils inside the circle that started to glow too, a wind blew from the circle blowing the artifacts away and one of them that was a scroll, right into her face blocking it with paper.
The wind was strong, strong enough to blow the girl a meter away while she was still sitting on the ground, but the wind was just the start, it made way for something bigger. The girl used her left hand to get the scroll out of her face and throw it to the side, the right hand in which she was still holding the fang in had red symbols write themselves onto the back of it while in front of her she saw fur with bright yellow eyes similar to the girl’s.
It happened in two seconds at most, the creature’s manifestation just happened to start from the upper half of it’s face, with glowing blue sparks around the edges of the fur that extended it into a full head in less than a second with the jaw wide open, before it’s body could even manifest, before it’s mind could even fully settle in this body, the beast bit down, right onto the right arm of the girl, severing it from a bit below the shoulder.
She gasped and crawled backwards making some distance between herself and the creature as he fully materialized and gulped down the arm in it’s mouth. It was a huge wolf, at least 3,5 meters tall and 7 meters long, it’s fur was about 70% black with white fur on some of it’s snout going down all the way throughout the underside of it’s neck, chest, belly and to the tail, some parts of the white fur along the body on the upper parts of the legs and the sides of the torso bordered the black fur in some half spiral or wavelike patterns that seemed more like tattoos than natural markings. It’d be majestic if not for the fact it looked so, sorry. It was very skinny, it’s beautiful fur was disheveled and a thin dark red ribbon was wrapped around most of it's body in an unorganised manner.
Although the surface of the black fur was darker than the night sky you could see a white undercoat under it, perhaps under all that fur the wolf was as white as snow. The beast had to crouch just to fit in the room, a cramped feeling it absolutely despised.
A longsword manifested in it’s mouth, the blade protruding from the right as the hilt was locked in the wolf’s jaws. The room which until now was as hot as a sauna with suffocating smoke covering half of it suddenly became chilly, the temperature dropped below -15 degrees Celsius and white mist surrounded his blade. A layer of ice encased it doubling it’s size and he used it to slash straight through the wall like a club, the whole wall was pulverized by the ice blade and spikes of ice that grew out of the ground to accompany it’s attack, revealing the night sky.
It simply walked out the broken wall, unbothered by what it’s master thought of it’s actions. No, ex-master is more appropriate, by biting off his master’s arm that had the command spells on it, he successfully severed the contract, as he stood on the road he turned his head back a little, giving the girl a side-eye as he finally acknowledged her presence and spoke.
“Know this, fool.” A deep voice came from the wolf even though it didn’t open it’s mouth, it wasn’t telepathy since it wasn’t limited to the girls head, this was just how the beast communicated.
“I care not for thy name, nor thy wish for the grail. I will never bend the knee to any of thy kind. Thy sloth, thy flimsy morals, I‘ve seen plenty of them in life to know not to rely on thee. I will fight and prevail alone, the only grace I grant thee is not taking thy head too today.”
He didn’t bother to hide his hostility, his tone was colder than even the room. The girl didn’t know what to say or do, she was scared, surprised, curious and baffled all at once. She held her wound with her left hand, trying to stop more blood from pouring to little success, rocks and wood started to fall from the crumbling roof, signaling that the wolf’s blow was the last nail in the coffin for this place. The girl swallowed her feelings and finally tried to speak.
“Miste…”
“But remember this too!” The wolf growled interrupting the girl.
“If thy remaining hand tries to collar and command me, if thou gives chase despite my warning.”
The wolf turned his body to the left so he can look towards the girl properly, his face meeting hers head on instead of a mere side-eye.
“Then thy hand will not be the only thing going down my throat.” After saying that a huge spike of ice at least 2 stories tall erupted next to the wolf. He turned towards it ready to run up it, but before he did so he paused, there was one more thing he wanted to say to the girl that summoned him, one thing that would weight on his mind if he didn’t put it into words before leaving, so without turning, it said one last thing to his ex-master.
“And clothe thyself dammit.” And with those words he ran up the ice spike and leaped off it’s end on to the top of a building, he hopped from building to building disappearing from view leaving the girl alone in the rubble.
She looked down at herself, the beast was probably right, the cold doesn’t bother her much but the wolf probably knew better than her. Her train of thought was interrupted by some rubble hitting her in the back of the head.
“Ooouch.” She wined again as the roof finally gave in, there was no time for complaining so she ran, as the room collapsed around her she ran for the exit the wolf had made. Near it, she saw a yellow raincoat on a coat stand and snatched the whole thing—but that single second cost her.
Just as she reached the breach, the roof caved in, slamming down onto her left leg. Everything under the ankle was buried under tons of weight crushing the bone to smithereens.
“Ooouch.” She wined yet again like the previous times. Her foot getting stuck also caused her to fall, drop her coat stand and slam her face right into the pavement. She massaged her nose a bit and turned her body to look at her leg. She then put her hand to her chin in deep thought to consider what to do, on one hand, it really hurt, on the other…well there wasn’t another, she only had one.
After a minute of consideration her expression changed from deep thought to a smirk, smiling at her own genius plan, she had decided the best course of action would be to try to lift the tons of rubble on her leg, she put her hand on the piece of rubble that was directly on her leg but unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. That made her only more determined though, she thought of another idea she considered just as good, she let out a smug and dragged out “Hehehe” as she grabbed onto her thigh as hard as she could while she pushed her other leg against the rubble to try to pull the leg out.
It somehow worked but it was excruciatingly painful, as the leg was dragged from under the rubble the weight squeezed it like toothpaste out of a toothpaste tube. It was a gruesome sight but what was left of the leg was pulled out, though it was mangled beyond repair. She tried to step on it to test if it was usable but.
“Ooouch.” Go figure, it wasn’t. She hopped over to a wall of the building next to the rubble and leaned on it while she put on the yellow raincoat, at the very least it was able to hide her skeleton-like build. Then she put the coat stand flat on the ground and stomped at around both of it’s ends, breaking off the part where the coats are hanged and the foundation to turn it into a simple stick. She smirked and let out a small “Hmph” as she picked it up to use as a makeshift cane.
She tried taking a few steps with it, luckily the unusable leg was on the same side of her remaining arm so it was fairly easy to walk, she nodded to herself in satisfaction and began to hobble away to search for the wolf, after all, he looked so malnourished, he was so hungry that he bit off part of her body, it’d be good if she found him and got him some food as a thank you for helping her get out of the building. The girl in yellow continued to walk slowly, completely oblivious to the true scale of the events this night had set in motion.
Notes:
Heya so this chapter is REALLY short but there's a reason for that. Originally i was planning to include some of the next chapter's contents but decided against it, the two reasons for that are first, the next chapter is thechnically one scene so even though it's huge it makes more sense to keep it in one chapter. The second and main reason was because i was lazy. Rest assured next chapter will likely be the length of two chapters combined and the most hype one yet, it's pretty much the point where you start to see the plot progress.
Click here for a little teaser for that chapter
Assassin
This ofc also happens on october 26th a little after Raiden and Helen left for the churh. Now onto this brand new servant's info.
Saber:
Master:None
True name: ???
Sex: Male
Height/Weight: 355 cm(height),700 cm(length), 510kg
Alignment: Chaotic neutral
Strength:A++
Endurance:A
Agility:C+
Magical energy:B
Luck:E
Noble phantasm:???Skills:
Independent Action A+
The Servant can operate without a Master. With a Rank of A+ that exceeds even A, the support of a Master is unnecessary even while unleashing a large amount of Magical Energy. It is an ability that bends the rules and allows for the continued materialization of Servants even after the conclusion of a Holy Grail War.Magic Resistance B
Cancel spells with a chant below three verses. Even if targeted by greater magecraft and Greater Rituals, it is difficult for them to be affected.
Chapter Text
“Checkmate” said Elena with a smug smile.
“Again? Best 3 out of 5!” Oleg requested a third rematch.
“Hmm.” Elena tilted her head pretending to think about it.
“I guess I don’t mind beating you in another game. You have to make it worth my time though.”
Oleg leaned forward in his arm chair and put his hand to his forehead, groaning dramatically. He knew where this was going.
“What do you want?” and he gave in.
“I want to go to the spa tomorrow, you’ll pay for it of course.” She named her price for a rematch and sipped the last bit of tea in her teacup and relaxed her shoulders, making herself comfortable on the couch.
“Deal!”
“Fufufu, if this continues it might be more appropriate to call you my servant than the one I summon”
“You mean the one I summon once I win.”
“Sure, let’s go with that.”
Elena as always made sure to look dignified, even when making fun of Oleg like this, something that much to her pleasure, annoyed him a lot. He tried to think of a good retort but drew a blank.
“Let’s just get this over with, we already did monopoly and jenga, we just did chess. Hmm, what would be next?” he said after a small sigh of defeat.
“Feel free to choose it yourself, you can brew us some tea while you’re at it. I want 2 teaspoons of sugar in mine.” She said while smiling and pushed her empty teacup across the coffee table towards Oleg.
He was gonna do it even if she didn’t tell him, going into the kitchen to brew tea is a good excuse to pause the conversation to let him think of a game that he can win. He was planning to summon a servant even if he lost but doing it properly without tricking his sister was preferable. Unfortunately now that Elena told him to brew her tea so smugly, his motivation to do it dropped into the negatives.
The twins always could roughly guess what was going on in the other one’s head so Oleg knew that she knew he would brew tea to stall for some time to choose anyway. She only asked him to make it annoying.
“Fine. Green tea or herbal?”
“Good boy~. I’ll have some herbal. Hibiscus sounds nice right about now.”
Oleg glared at her but she just smiled back sweetly. She was certainly in a good mood since she’s teasing a bit more than usual right now. Sadly she was also way better than Oleg at it, his only hope was to just give in by grabbing the kettle from the coffee table and retreating to the kitchen to make the tea as to not give her the satisfaction of getting more reactions out of him. With an exaggerated sigh he stood up and went to the kitchen without saying another word.
The lights flicked on illuminating the room followed by Oleg preparing the items and arranging them next to each other before he began to brew the tea. He filled the kettle with water from the sink, took out two teabags from the box of them from the shelf above the stove, one hibiscus and a random green tea one. Then he searched for the jar of sugar but, it was nowhere to be found. Cabinet above the sink, lower cupboards, it was gone. He could swear he bought some yesterday.
He rubbed his temple while pondering what to do. He could just give her tea without sugar but if he did, he definitely isn’t getting a rematch if she wins again. It was already past ten, but there was that one shop in town that stayed open late. It wasn’t worth the effort to do all that though, unless…
He came back into the living room to report.
“There’s no sugar, I’ll go buy some real quick, let’s continue afterwards.”
“I’m fine with that, I’ll prepare the tea while you’re away then.”
“Fine by me. Don’t pull any pranks while I’m away. I don’t want to see something like a huge spider in my cup when I try to drink it.”
“Perish the thought.”
Oleg stared at her squinting his eyes in suspicion while walking out of the room. Then he went upstairs and picked up his hiking backpack. He had prepared it a while ago hoping to sneak out before he and Elena started competing to choose who gets the servant but she has had her eye on him all day so he didn’t find a good opportunity to even leave the house. He just got one though. An excuse to go somewhere he can summon a servant without Elena stopping him.
After he got his brown backpack filled with everything he needed for the summoning he went down to the basement, it was dark, damp and full of bugs and cobwebs, there was one thing that he needed here though. Among the old wooden furniture, operating table and other equipment of Igor Einsbern, there was a small metal safe.
He walked to it and crouched down to input the code. 1879, a code only a person who knew what was inside would know the meaning behind. Inside there were was two things. A small wooden box and a wooden effigy. He grabbed the effigy. A dark brown wooden handle as thick as an axe’s but only about 15 centimeters long. On its end was carved a deformed human face that looked closer to that of a mummy.
That was it, the container for the curse-like spirit that had been used on every homunculus before the twins, a creature Oleg was built to be extremely compatible with by nature. The whole point of the effigy is to house the spirit until it was transferred to the next homunculi but Oleg had other plans. It was the perfect catalyst to summon a servant that would get a fame boost in these lands like no other.
More importantly than that summoning the same spirit as the one used to make him, Elena and all their dead siblings before them the perfect pseudo-servants was Oleg’s perfect way of rebelling against the idea of it all. To use the thing that was by nature his missing half in a way that allowed him to remain as himself.
He stuffed it in his backpack and closed the safe. It clicked loudly as it closed but luckily for Oleg, Elena was in the kitchen making tea. He took his hand off the cold metal of the safe and made his way up the stairs and into the hallway near the exit. Then Oleg put on a coat, a beanie and boots.
“Hey I’ll be going now!” he shouted in the direction of the kitchen.
“Remember to not get near the blizzard!” She shouted back in response.
“Don’t worry I won’t! Byee!
“Take care!”
Of course he wouldn’t get near the blizzard. It’s been appearing every night for two days now and 20 people have disappeared inside it already. It was so bad even the news was covering it saying everybody should stay inside since only people who were out in the open have disappeared according to acquaintances of the missing people who were with them before it happened. Oleg of course could easily guess it was the doing of a servant so he should stay away from it until he summons one for himself.
Continuing to think about it he exited the mansion and started to make his way towards the city, in the meantime Elena was tapping her foot against the floor with her arms crossed waiting for the water in the kettle to boil until she faintly heard a glass tap against something in the living room. She quietly walked towards the room and peeked in only to find that it was just the glass jar of sugar that rolled and lightly hit against the leg of the coffee table.
“Oh good heavens.” She sighed in relief, she had prepared for a fight but it was just the item she had hid under the couch, the floor was a little uneven after all, she had her foot pressed against the part of the couch’s blanket that went down to the ground and hid the jar to stop it from rolling while she and Oleg were hanging out in the living room but now that her foot was off of it since she had gone to the kitchen it finally rolled out. She walked over to it and picked it up.
“Well I guess I can use this now.” And with those words she went back into the kitchen to finish the tea.
“It’s soo fricking cold.”
Oleg scrubbed his fogged glasses with his fingers, put them back on, adjusted them to be more comfortable and continued walking. He had been walking for 20 minutes now. Even though he was dressed for winter it was still extremely cold, it was snowing even around the blizzard. The daytime was bearable but ever since the blizzard appeared the nights have been way colder than usual even in the area surrounding it.
He didn’t have to bear it for much longer, he could see the location he was heading to, a currently uninhabited home in the city. Elena often used pigeon homunculus familiars to survey the land so that when the war started they’d have a good lay of the land despite the fact that the twins don’t actually leave their home often since the Ataways are looking for them.
Thanks to that Oleg knew from Elena that this house was currently uninhabited since it’s previous owners moved elsewhere and still haven’t found a buyer for it. He made his way to the window and put his hand on it.
“To whoever owns this I am very sorry” and after saying that he poured magical energy into the glass, he didn’t control it well on purpose, a spell that normally would have reinforced the glass ended up failing and the glass shattered letting shards fall all over on the floor inside the building.
Oleg flinched on instinct because of the loud sound but right after that, he wiped away the glass off the windowsill and climbed inside. A bigger space would be preferable for summoning a servant so he walked past the stairs and through the door leading to the garage.
It was big and there was barely anything inside. It was also cold, especially the concrete floor but it was plenty good enough for Oleg right now. “This will do” he thought to himself followed by him putting the backpack on the ground and opening it. He took out two blood bags and tore a hole in each with his nails, using his finger and the blood to draw a summoning circle on the ground in the middle of the garage.
After he finished he took a step back and stared at the circle for a few seconds. Now that the preparation was done the room felt smaller, suffocatingly small. It was hard to ease up when the thoughts in his head were all along the lines of “No big deal. It’s just my whole life that’s been building up to this.”
A living machine built for the sole purpose of winning the holy grail, while Oleg didn’t want to admit he was something that simple he could not deny that despite thinking of himself as more complicated than that his actions in the end are lining up with that of one.
Even if he does it differently than planned he is still doing exactly what Igor Einsbern intended, there was nothing bad about that, due to each one possessing half a soul they’ll likely die an year or two after the war ends if they don’t get the grail or become pseudo servants. Oleg was not wrong to fight for the basic human right to live that everyone but him and his sister were born with.
Even then it left a sour taste in his mouth, he possessed free will but the end result was still choosing to follow a dead madman’s orders like a cog in a machine. It was also stressful to think about what he’d do when he won, he and Elena had been dedicating their lives to winning the grail but had no direction for what to do after they did, they wanted it to be something, but when their life was focused on a single goal up until now the prospect of seeing something else beyond it was too alien. Like trying to imagine a brand new color.
Nevertheless that was something he had to worry about later, for his sister’s sake, he had to swallow all the hesitation and worries. And so he did. He took out the effigy from the backpack and held it up towards the circle. Then he started to chant.
“Fill, Fill, Fill, Fill, Fill.
Repeat five times but when each is filled, destroy it.
Let silver and steel be the essence.
Let stone and the greater grail be the foundation.
For my great ancestor Justeaze and those who came after.”
The circle glowed blue and wind began to blow in the room almost making Oleg lose his footing. Nevertheless, he kept standing and continued to chant.
“Heed my words, my soul will bear your sins and your claws will shape my fate!
If you heed the Grail’s call then pledge your loyalty and answer me!
From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power.
COME FORTH, GUARDIAN OF THE SCALES!”
The growing blue light from the circle became even more blindingly bright, and before Oleg’s eyes, right before where he stood, the light took on a shape. It faded into blue dust that only left behind the tall figure of a man. Oleg looked at him in utter confusion.
He looked to be about 2 meters tall, had a simple skull mask over his face and black cloth covering the rest of his head and neck and extended into long torn strips. The rest of his clothing followed the same theme, dark shredded layers clinging from his thin waist and down to his knees over skin tight pitch black pants that covered the feet too.
He wore no shirt leaving his torso exposed and had a build that was a bit unnatural, it was extremely lean with long arms and legs. He wore long gauntlets coming from his elbow to the fingers made out of the same material as the rest of his tattered clothes.
The only metal visible on them was a bit around the elbow and a few circles of iron over the knuckles and fingers making it seem like a punch from him would undoubtedly break bones. They weren’t his weapon however, his weapons were too curved daggers that were so big they might as well be short swords.
This was without a doubt NOT the servant Oleg was trying to summon, it was definitely an assassin, a spitting image of an old man of the mountain according to descriptions of the ones summoned in the past holy grail wars, except one thing, his skin was a little tanned but still pale, from what Oleg knew all hassans summoned before this had dark, coal-like skin.
On top of this he could only sense a small, pathetic amount of magical energy from the servant. It probably had even less than Oleg himself! How was he supposed to fight like that? Oleg had a lot of questions but the servant hadn’t made a single noise yet so it was up to him to start the conversation.
“Soo… You must be Assassin right? Nice to meet you!”
Oleg extended his hand for a handshake but the servant still stood as still as a statue. After Oleg waited a few seconds in painful silence he retracted the hand he had been holding out for a handshake and used it to adjust his glasses and then scratch the back of his head.
“Not much of a talker huh? Well to each their own I guess. My name is Oleg Einsbern, thank you for answering my summoning, I’ll be in your care from now on.”
The servant still didn’t answer, he did give a slight reaction though, he tilted his head downwards a little to look at his master. That was problematic in it’s own right though considering there were no visible eyes on his mask, just a black void that seemed to go on forever in the sockets of the skull mask. It certainly didn’t look too friendly to Oleg, something friendly wouldn’t make his hairs stand on their ends like this. To sever the eye contact Oleg turned his gaze downwards and put his effigy in his pocket.
“Usually when someone introduces themselves to you you're supposed to do the same too.” He said as while he glanced back up at the servant who was still looking at him with those lifeless eyes.
“Well…nevermind that I guess. Let’s just go home, there’s someone I want to introduce you to before we start thinking about the war…”
“Who are you mister?” the voice of a drowsy little girl with brown hair and blue eyes who couldn’t have been older than 6 came from the doorway leading into the rest of the building.
Oleg froze as still as the assassin next to him. Did he really leave the door open? There’s people here? When did someone move in? What is he supposed to do in this situation? All sorts of questions filled his head but he could answer none of them, instead he turned his head towards the kid while shaking.
“H-h-hi” his voice cracked and he could barely muster a single word. Despite how quiet his greeting was it was completely different inside his head where he was screaming both in panic, and at himself for being careless.
The little girl’s drowsiness was wearing off as she looked towards the white haired young man with glasses and the tall skull faced man. She couldn’t hold it in any longer though, her cheeks puffed up as she tried to hold in her laughter but failed.
Laughing to herself as she slapped her knee and her voice distorted from that of a little girl to a grown man while her body stayed the same. Oleg became even more confused and slightly horrified at the sight. He pulled down his glasses to rub his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things but after putting them back on, he saw the little girl with the crisp, velvety voice of a grown man still laughing her head off.
“Sorry, sorry. Usually I’m a better actor but you are exceptionally fun to tease.” The little girl calmed down a little and began to talk in that same male voice while she walked.
“What the…”
“You really are a fool if you thought I was a helpless little girl that caught you in the act.” She walked over to get behind Oleg and to his other side but when he turned his head to look at her a different person stood in her place.
“You see boy, in truth, I am a sweet old fisherman.” Instead Oleg was now looking at a hunched old man with a wooden cane, blue eyes and dressed in a damp dark green coat and a knitted cap on his head. He had a long braided gray beard behind which was a smile full of yellow teeth. His voice now matched this appearance, appearing raspy and slow.
“A servant?” Oleg accidentally said it out loud while he tried to calculate his next move. His own servant hasn’t even shown signs of being alive yet, to be such an expert in illusions this had to be a servant, they didn’t invite anyone from the clock tower known for illusion magecraft and even then this was too convincing, if his own servant was assassin then this servant had been hiding his presence spectacularly without presence concealment, just his illusions.
“Hey hey play along a little.” The old man whined. Oleg could hear him follow that up by muttering “Party pooper” under his breath while pouting.
“Very well then. Maybe I am not an old man, maybe.” He walked over behind assassin using him as cover to appear out of the other side with a different appearance yet again.
“I am a rich lady from the mage's association who took an interest in the squabble between fools happening here.” this time she was a tall slender woman with the air of an aristocrat, her brown hair was tied in a bun and she was dressed in an immaculate fur coat over a purple dress. Her sharp green eyes were staring seductively at Oleg like a predator eyeing their prey.
“Show yourself properly! Or I’ll make Assassin attack.” Oleg gave a futile threat as he took a step back slightly flustered. In truth he had doubts if Assassin would even answer him, on top of that an upfront battle is definitely not the specialty of an assassin, the threat was just a way for Oleg to show he’ll stand his ground.
“Hmm your face is a little red. So pretty ladies do work on you huh. I should try a few different styles to narrow down your type to know how to look if I ever want you to do something for me.” The aristocratic woman voiced her thoughts out loud while pondering with her hand to her chin. Oleg had no clue if it was to get a reaction out of him or just that she didn’t bother to hide it.
“Hey fool. Just so you know, I come in peace. I want to talk a little so what type of appearance do you prefer me to have while we chat.”
“Y-your real one of course! I just said to show yourself properly. Who are you exactly?”
The woman giggled slightly at his flustered reply. Then she turned her body in his direction and began speaking again.
“Well you already guessed that I’m a servant. Figuring out the true name is half the fun so I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I can tell you this though, I am a friend and a foe, a fan of joy and woe. I call the crazy hitman my master. I am your friendly neighborhood…” before she could finish she disappeared the moment Oleg blinked, then he heard the same velvety male voice that came from the little girl, this time right against his ear.
“Caster”
Oleg flinched and moved away on instinct only to bump into Assassin who was still as still as a statue. He immediately turned to look at Caster who was probably smirking but what he was met with was a very tall figure. About 245 centimeters tall, covered in a cloak made out of brown feathers, light gray fluffy fur around his neck where the cloak ended and a unique iron mask with fake eyeholes and a smile-like design that extended from one end of the mask to the other.
He was not wearing a hood so his long orange hair was also visible, it was braided and decorated with some gold or silver in a few spots giving the impression that he took good care of his appearance.
“True appearance my ass.” Oleg thought to himself. He wouldn’t even show his face! Though it did exude immense magical energy making Oleg trust his statement. No servant that is not a caster could realistically have this much magical energy.
“So. Feeling more in the mood to chat now, boy?”
“Hm? Yes yes I am. You are the one who came to me so you’re here to tell me something right?” Oleg pulled himself away from Assassin who had been acting as the wall Oleg was backed into until a second ago. It was obvious this servant had the upper hand in this situation even if Oleg couldn’t gauge his strength well.
This meant his only option was to bluff, he’s been preparing for this for 10 years, he wasn’t going to become docile at the first encounter with a possible threat or ally. He needed to look capable enough for the servant to see enough potential in him to think of him as a possible ally but not enough to be seen as a threat.
“I’ll be frank with you boy. Encountering you just now was a purely a stroke of serendipity. But since our paths happened to cross when you are a step from death I thought to myself “Oh, well if this is not fate then I don’t know what is.” Therefore, I decided to come and offer you aid and knowledge in this time of need. You’ll die the moment you step out of here without me after all.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You see fool. I think you already know that the blizzard is the doing of a servant. The masterless Saber has been using it as cover to snack on poor lost fools who were wandering outdoors in the middle of the night to supply himself with the magical energy he was lacking thanks to not having a master. He’s been targeting the mages you’ve oh so gracefully invited from overseas more than others though. It seems mages with their abundant magical energy are much like a gourmet meal to him huh?”
The servant’s face wasn’t visible but it was easy to tell a sly smile adorned his face. How did he know Oleg was directly connected to the handful of mages that were currently coming over to the city? Oleg couldn’t think of any other way to know other than to have been spying on him. More importantly that last sentence was a clear warning to stay away from the blizzard no matter what. None of that should have been a problem right now though since they are not near the blizzard. Why would Caster bring it up?
“I may have been able to grant you passage through the blizzard if I could meet Saber, but unfortunately, when I found him he was in the middle of a fight with an absolutely gorgeous dragon. If I tried to intervene I might have been bitten in two you know.~ He seemed to be able to handle himself well enough on his own so I decided I’ll leave him to handle himself for now but oh how tragic it is that I couldn’t personally meet that fellow servant.” Caster’s shoulders slouched exaggeratedly and he put a finger under his mask’s eye and brought it down to the cheek to mimic a tear falling.
“If you thought the blizzard is safer then you’re saying there’s something even worse out here right?”
“Precisely boy! This whole town has become a hunting ground for two different servants. While the blizzard is the territory of Saber who hunts indiscriminately. A huge part of the blizzard free area is the territory of Archer, who exclusively hunts masters and servants. And you young fool.” Caster pointed at Oleg and then to the tall man next to him, the servant Assassin.
“Have just become a target.”
“Do you know anything about that Archer?” Oleg asked an obvious question, it seems like Caster loved to rant but it was all useful information so Oleg gladly indulged him.
“Ooh I know a loot about him. Or maybe I should say them. You see this land’s Holy Grail is substandard at best, its efficiency is fine but its rules are lacking, that has allowed special individuals to be summoned. I and most likely Archer too are only here thanks to that. This whole war is insidious in nature honestly.”
From the way Caster said it Oleg understood that this wasn’t just information he wanted to share but criticism directed at Oleg, one of the two people responsible for this land’s grail. Igor never taught him or his sister how to change the rules of the grail or even told them any of it’s flaws to begin with though. It made Oleg prepare to curse at the dead man, how much depended on what Caster would say next.
“Archer specifically is a very troublesome enemy. Insightful too, instead of chatting with me properly he started blasting the moment he saw me! I’ve been trying to get to know him better for two whole days now. Every night I come we always fight and today i barely made it out alive!”
“So how strong is he exactly?”
“Hmm, that’s a hard one to answer, the individual is extremely weak, Es all across the board it seems, even you could kill one. This servant is not an individual though. He is a collective. I’ve killed at least 100 of him so far but he still clings on to life like a cockroach. Honestly it’s made me really admire him~”
A 100 servants? Even if each one is extremely weak such an absurd amount sounded incomprehensible to Oleg. The servant must be some sort of powerful general or king he thought. He careful listened to Caster hoping he knew his identity.
“You see. To my understanding. Archer is an impossibly huge amalgamation of wraiths fulfilling a single role. There was a time after the glory of kings and queens when wars like world war one started, during those days the leader's propaganda was elevated to new levels, they needed to motivate their people to fight, for that they started to idolize the ones who fought. Weaponising the custom of worshipping heroes and applying it to the image of nameless soldiers as poster boys for propaganda to increase morale and make more people enlist. The fact they weren't named and were merely known to be soldiers based off of their outfit, it was all to make the soldiers represent everyone at once. A symbol with no set identity. Therefore this servant’s true name. Is Soldier.”
“Soldier?”
“Yup. And his noble phantasm is all the more troublesome. It seems to be a reality marble that parallels the outside world. It seems that it’s always deployed and act like a texture of the world. A space identical to the one it’s placed on with a few key differences. For example you can walk right over the space where it is without entering it unless Soldier specifically chooses to pull you in, if you are not aware of the reality marble you wouldn’t even know you are inside it.”
“I see. So are you saying we are currently in this reality marble?”
“Hmph. Bingoo.~ Of course I was able to sense it immediately which means I know when im pulled inside and I can freely enter without being invited. Now that you are aware you should be able to do the same by simply thinking about it.”
“What about exiting?”
“For that we need to get outside of it’s territory. It just so happens that the most direct path out would be towards your home. Once you reach the forest you should be almost at it’s border.”
Oleg tensed up, not at the threat of Archer but at the Caster in front of him. He was being helpful but there just being something sinister about him on top of that this man or woman knew where Oleg’s home was hidden. Coupled together with his insight on the grail and the fact it seems he knew Oleg is connected to it.
This servant was cooperative but also dangerous, if he knew so much he probably wasn’t here looking for knowledge, considering Assassin also seemed to be weak so he certainly wasn’t looking to gain Oleg as an ally because of firepower. Oleg could not help but think Caster was leading him into a trap. Unfortunately, if he truly was a sitting duck like Caster said, then he had no choice but to cooperate with this servant who seemed too capable to have a need to befriend him.
“This reality marble seems to act like this servant’s home base. I haven’t seen him move it and every time I come back it seems that there are more copies of Soldier with even more gear. I’ve seen planes, mines, even tanks. This servant seems capable of using the magical energy generated inside this reality marble to play god and turn it into more troops or equipment. Practically playing a real time strategy game honestly. I however, have decided to gracefully offer my aid and help you escape.”
“And do you have a plan?” Oleg responded after a moment of hesitation.
“Weeell it’s a bit rough around the edges you see. He’s got this place surrounded. I’m going to exit at the same time as you and give you some cover with my specialty, fire and deception. While you run as fast as you can surrounded by walls of fire I will be fighting Soldier’s troops head on. I should be able to divert his attention somewhat and take care of most of the attacks coming your way. There’s just one problem.”
“That being?”
“I’m soo hurt.~ My body is in excruciating pain all over!” Caster put his hand, covered in a black glove, over his face leaning back dramatically as if he was about to fall over and pass out. Then after a brief childish giggle he straightened his posture and slipped his hand back beneath his cloak.
“I know what you might think but I really am not lying about this. You see, I was in the blizzard earlier I found a very troublesome girl walking around. It’d be spoilers to say too much but even I didn’t have a good enough excuse to let her go.
I killed her of course, I sliced her stomach open and choked her out with her own guts.” Caster said in that same tone slightly reminiscent of a clown while tilting his head slightly and keeping his gaze at the white haired young man in front of him clearly hoping to get a reaction out of him. It made Oleg become even more wary of the theatrical servant. Satisfied with seeing Oleg tense up Caster continued.
“It gives me a lot of conflicted feelings to nip a life with potential in the bud like that before it could blossom, but she was not a flower like most, she was a weed whose growth would only come at the expense of others, and I was far more interested in the progress of others than hers. I never expected that less than 10 minutes later she would pop up unharmed and almost kill me!
It was an exhilarating fight don’t get me wrong but i am only alive right here because I managed to flee. She really gave me the heebie-jeebies.” Caster shivered slightly trying to showcase how scary it was. Oleg could only stare back in deep thought at his comment. Caster was clearly trying to sneak in another warning of a dangerous individual. What sort of servant possessed that kind of ability?
“And that wasn’t even the end of it! The moment I escaped from her by going out of the blizzard I ran into Archer who cruelly took advantage of my damaged state, he swooped in like a vulture to try to seal the deal. In the middle of fighting him I sensed your servant so I let Archer fight a decoy while I rushed over to see you but unfortunately, I haven’t had the luxury of licking my wounds yet.” Caster let out a long, exaggerated sigh, rolling his shoulders as if trying to shake off an ache that went bone-deep.
“I see. Can I see your injuries? Sorry but you just don’t seem to be in pain to me.”
“Oh I’m just used to pain. But to ask me to undress on our first encounter? Oh the debauchery! At least take me to dinner first.”
“Nevermind” Oleg took his words back immediately. It seemed to him that Caster had little reason to lie about his condition to someone in Oleg’s position so he decided to just take his word for it for now. There were bigger things to focus on, for example…
“So, why do you want to help me? You want something in return right?” Oleg asked flatly. Talking didn’t hurt so he could at least listen to the information Caster gave him, but to fight together was a different matter, even if he wasn’t in a position to refuse it would be easier for Oleg to leave his back exposed to someone that he knew had a reason to want to keep him alive.
“Ah…there it is. I was waiting for you to ask that. The first reason is I decided to play the peacekeeper until all the servants are summoned, if the game ends for some before the others get to start it would be soo disappointing. I’m willing to make exceptions on that one if I really dislike the servant or master though. The second reason is… You see, I am a big fan of drama, you fool, just so happen to be the best source of it available! Telling you the exact reason for that of course would ruin the show but here’s the thing.
All that will happen, is that we go out there, you run till you’re out of breath and then some, I support you together with your own servant, and then when you finally get to your home, I take a bottle of your liquor, maybe give you a little prize if you impress me enough, and then I’ll be on my merry way while you fool, go reunite with that girlie who’s been waiting for you! Sounds like you’re getting a good deal to me.” Caster finished his proposal with a flourish, extending his gloved hand from under his cloak out to Oleg to seal the deal with a handshake.
Oleg’s sweating hand began to extend to meet Caster’s for a second but froze soon after. It was the moment he registered the most worrisome thing Caster said. He mentioned his sister, and that he’ll meet her once he comes back home meaning he knew she’s there too. This servant already knew too much, that much was worrying but tolerable, but his words just made Oleg truly realize even though he is the one who became the master, it still didn’t mean that she was any safer.
Worst part, Caster noticed it, Caster noticed Oleg’s sweating hand and freeze up, he couldn’t see past his mask but the way he tilted his head and let out a little almost inaudible “heeeh?” made it seem like he read Oleg’s mind like an open book just now. He knew she was important to him, possibly even understood that there wasn’t anyone more important in the world for Oleg, no maybe not that level, Oleg's paranoia was probably imagining the bad problem as an even worse one. Despite that Oleg's insticts kept warning him of Caster like he was signing a deal with the devil himself. The masked servant extended his hand further and offered his aid again.
“So Oleg Einsbern. Will you make the mad dash through hell with me?”
Notes:
Ok so. about last chapter. I lied. This was originally going to include the archer showdown too but i decided to cut it into it's own chapter and extend this one to make the pacing not feel rushed. I've learned my lesson from the vampire hunt chapter. The next chapter might take a week extra since i've got some irl stuff to do and i also want to take extra time on it to make sure i do it justice. I am aiming to make it easier to follow than the last fight. Also i've made a commision to get art of this appearance of Caster but it's not finished yet so you'll have to wait till next chapter or possibly a little longer to see it.
Anyway here's the stats of the servants:
Assassin
https://imgur.com/a/4Nh4ijY
Master: Oleg Einsbern
True name: ???
Sex: Male
Height/Weight:200cm, 78kg
Alignment: True neutral
Strength:-
Endurance:-
Agility:-
Magical energy:-
Luck:-
Noble phantasm:-Skills:
Presence concealment E
Caster
Master: ???
True name: ???
Sex: ???
Height/Weight:245cm, 100kg
Alignment: Chaotic neutral
Strength:B
Endurance:D+
Agility:B
Magical energy:A+++
Luck:E
Noble phantasm:???Skills:
Magical resistance B
Cancel spells with a chant below three verses. Even if targeted by greater magecraft and Greater Rituals, it is difficult for them to be affected.Illusion EX
A genetic ability of the user enhanced with extraordinary magecraft to create a skill on the level of an authority. Though it's specialised in fooling individuals rather than the enviorment, it's still a one of a kind skill that at it's limit can even temporary fool the world itself.Territory creation D
Item creation B
UzVEHQ (Guest) on Chapter 3 Tue 18 Nov 2025 03:17PM UTC
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ፚፀቢቡንጺቶጶሧፕኮጦፀሌኯ (Guest) on Chapter 6 Tue 30 Dec 2025 07:28AM UTC
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ꛗ꛷꛲ꛘꚢꚺꛝꛡꛮꛍꚲ꛲ꚯꛞꛗꛦꛄꚻꛀꚮꚱꚢꚦꚾꛦꛬꛥꚵꛘ (Guest) on Chapter 6 Sat 03 Jan 2026 01:33AM UTC
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