I'm Not A Master, I'm A Director
Chapter 374: A Master Backstabbing His Servant Is Part of the Holy Grail War
On the giant screen, Darnic lowered his head and looked at his Servant, his heart tangled in one last moment of hesitation.
If he had a choice, Darnic absolutely did not want to make use of Lancer's Noble Phantasm.
It was true that the Noble Phantasm was overwhelmingly powerful—once activated, even Ruler could be slain with ease. It was, in every sense of the word, a sure-kill trump card.
But the price of activating it was simply too great.
That "price" did not refer to Lancer turning into a literal monster.
As a traditional magus, Darnic's attitude toward Servants was no different from Tokiomi's. On the surface, he treated them with courtesy and respect, but deep down, he regarded Heroic Spirits as nothing more than convenient tools.
And tools existed solely to secure victory.
If a tool became an obstacle to victory, then there was no reason to maintain even the pretense of politeness.
The "price" Darnic was referring to was his own life.
The reason Lancer had agreed to contract with him as a Servant in the first place was because he wished to erase the legend that branded him as a vampire.
"Legend of Dracula, the Succession of Blood…"
Darnic softly uttered the name of the Noble Phantasm Lancer had sealed away himself.
As he looked at the Duke lying weakly on the bed, barely clinging to life, Darnic's thoughts drifted back to the moment of their summoning.
"If you use that Noble Phantasm, it's no different from spitting in my face. I made that clear back then, didn't I?!"
Vlad glared at Darnic with burning resentment.
"Even if I die, I will never use it. And if you force me with a Command Spell—are you prepared to bear the price that comes after?"
If that Noble Phantasm were used, then death would be the only atonement.
That was the command Lancer had imposed on Darnic at the time of their contract.
"...But if we lose here, death awaits us all the same."
Darnic had never heard of Isshin Ashina, but he understood the principle well enough—
Hesitation is defeat.
For the sake of victory, Darnic was willing to sacrifice anything.
With that resolve, he raised the Command Spells engraved upon the back of his hand.
"So he's really going to force him with a Command Spell, huh?"
Fujita muttered under his breath. Unfortunately, his poor choice of words earned him yet another sharp glare from Alice, who was sitting beside him.
Under the intimidating pressure of the big sister figure, Fujita wisely shut his mouth.
Still, his thoughts reflected what most of the audience was thinking.
Darnic was a rotten villain, the kind with festering sores from head to toe. Of course he wouldn't hesitate to massacre others for the sake of victory.
But Vlad III, as a Heroic Spirit, still retained the dignity of a hero—though, admittedly, his current bedridden, half-dead state made that rather hard to believe.
Given that, a villain using forced commands to make a good man do something he despised felt… perfectly reasonable.
Especially when Li Ri'ang noticed that Chiron and Stheno, who were fighting inside the castle, were clearly reaching their limits.
"That so-called vampire better be strong enough to make this worth it."
At this moment, Li Ri'ang even felt a faint sense of anticipation—like watching a naughty kid about to do something catastrophically stupid.
After all, a movie was just a story.
He wasn't about to criticize the plot based on his real-world sense of morality.
On the contrary, precisely because he was watching the story from outside the screen, he felt the kind of shameless excitement that came from enjoying chaos without suffering the consequences.
Unfortunately, Darnic wasn't the type like Kiritsugu Emiya—cold, ruthless, and straight to the point—who would simply activate a Command Spell without a word.
Instead, perhaps indulging in the shared bad habit of villains savoring their triumphs, he took his time carefully examining his Servant.
Sadly, the Duke was not the protagonist of this story.
From the very beginning, he was doomed beyond salvation.
No matter how much time Darnic dragged this out, a happy ending was never in the cards.
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In truth, at this very moment, Vlad was drowning in rage—and an even deeper sense of unwilling resignation.
That anger was naturally directed at Darnic, while the resentment was aimed at himself.
In that previous chaotic melee, he had actually been crippled by a single thrust from Red Faction's Lancer.
Me.
The most famous hero of Romania.
With the greatest possible homeland bonus granted by his legend, he had still been stabbed into a bedridden wreck by a modern-era Chinese Heroic Spirit. How could that not be a blow to his pride?!
This wasn't just damage to the Duke's body—it was a crushing blow to his dignity as a hero.
Is this… where I end?
All of a sudden, a thought bordering on certainty swept through his mind.
As the leader of the Black Faction's Servants, his defeat meant the defeat of the entire Black side.
Chiron and Stheno were indeed strong, but compared to those godlike Heroic Spirits, the gap was simply too wide.
Especially now—among the five intruders storming the castle, three were Servants completely immune to charm, instantly rendering Stheno useless.
If only we hadn't been so reckless… if we had gone all in from the start…
Humiliation, despair, and regret surged through the Duke's heart like a raging flood.
And then, he heard it.
The devilish whisper of the Master who had formed a contract with him.
"No… we still have a chance. As long as my king is willing to release that Noble Phantasm."
Because he was lying on the bed, Darnic's figure—standing at his side and looking down at him—made the Duke feel an intense, burning rage.
Staring at his Master with eyes filled with hatred, Vlad III spoke:
"Darnic… what did you just say to me?"
Sensing the unmistakable killing intent radiating from his Servant, Darnic continued calmly, as if nothing were wrong.
"My king, I said you should release your Noble Phantasm. After all, this is the only path left to victory."
Once he confirmed that his Master was not joking, the Duke propped himself up with difficulty and unleashed a furious barrage of roars at Darnic.
"What are you talking about?!
"I already said I would never use that Noble Phantasm—have you forgotten?!"
"Even if I die here! Die on this bed! Die without a grave to my name! That would still be the fate of a defeated man!"
"I, Vlad III—past, present, and future—will never use that Noble Phantasm! Never!"
The Duke had no intention of pulling a Wang Jingze-style 'iron backbone' moment, but his Master forced him into a classic 'true fragrance' reversal anyway.
"The Yggdmillennia family must obtain the Holy Grail, no matter the cost. And having been driven into a corner, this is the only road left to me."
"My king—accept your fate."
With those words, Darnic raised his hand.
Upon it glowed three Command Spells, shining crimson.
"DARNIC———!!!"
Darnic smiled faintly at the Duke's bulging, bloodshot eyes, then declared in a voice colder than ice:
"I, Darnic Preston Yggdmillennia, hereby command Lancer, Vlad III, by the power of my Command Spells— Activate your Noble Phantasm at once: Legend of Dracula — The Succession of Blood!"
"DARNIC———!!! YOU BASTARD——————!!!"
The Duke's shriek was like that of an elderly man who had just discovered his life savings had been embezzled by his caretaker.
The howl, saturated with overwhelming hatred and despair, was enough to break the hearts of those who heard it and draw tears from those who saw it.
Unfortunately, Darnic was a heartless old monster.
"…So this is what it feels like… to be betrayed."
Watching the Duke writhe in agony on the big screen, crushed by Darnic's successful scheme, Jeanne couldn't help but feel a pang of bitter resonance in her heart.
Being betrayed by one's own allies—that was something Jeanne herself had experienced firsthand.
She glanced sideways at Shinji beside her.
Her own Master might be unreliable in many ways, but there was no denying that he had saved her.
This noisy, chaotic "Heroic Spirit community" run by the Type-Moon company felt like it had washed her soul clean.
Jeanne did not resent anyone for her tragedy. Still, there were moments when sadness crept in.
If Shinji hadn't given her a completely new environment—if there hadn't been so many other Servants with equally tragic pasts to serve as examples—Jeanne was certain she wouldn't have been able to regain her cheerfulness so quickly.
"Jeanne, you don't need to be sad. No matter what happens, I will never let you experience betrayal again in the real world."
Shinji, sitting beside her and watching the movie together, suddenly spoke.
Clearly, someone who had been paying close attention to his heroine had seen right through her mood.
"Of course not!"
Jeanne turned toward her Master and flashed him a bright, radiant smile.
"I have you as my Master, after all."
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On the screen, Vlad—now in the midst of his "corruption"—continued to cry out in agony.
"No! I… I am not a vampire… I'm not…!"
As he felt his sanity crumbling bit by bit, his trembling voice repeated those denials, as though only by doing so could he cling to the last fragment of reason he had left.
Then, the Master known as Darnic crushed him completely.
"No—you are a vampire. Dracula the vampire, a pitiful monster burdened with a slander forced upon him by fiction."
"Now, by my second Command Spell—Lancer, survive until the Holy Grail War is over!"
"Go to hell!!"
With a furious roar, the Duke—freed from paralysis by his vampiric transformation—launched a fatal strike at Darnic.
Pshk—!
Blood sprayed everywhere, instantly splattering across Lancer's face.
Even though his chest was effortlessly pierced through, Darnic accepted the blow with a faint smile.
"Hahahahaha!"
The man who should have died on the spot burst into mad laughter. The hysteria in that laugh sent chills down the spines of everyone watching.
"My apologies—I lost my composure. As compensation, my dear Servant, please drink my blood!"
"Darnic, you—!"
What answered the Duke was Darnic's grotesquely twisted smile.
"You really are a vampire! You don't need any wish at all. All you need is to preserve my dream, my wish—my very existence!"
"By my third Command Spell: engrave my existence into your soul, Lancer!"
Soul devouring.
This ability had been explained to the audience at the very beginning of the film. It was Darnic's power—and the reason he had lived so long while retaining the appearance of a young man.
Magecraft that directly affected the soul was extraordinarily dangerous. The slightest miscalculation would result in instant death.
And now, what Darnic sought to devour was his own Servant—Lancer—the soul of a Heroic Spirit.
A soul so supreme that merely gathering seven such spirits could activate the Greater Grail.
A crystallization of human culture itself.
"Don't joke with me—!"
The thing that was once Vlad III rolled on the ground, letting out agonized screams.
"Even with Command Spells, you can't devour me! In the end, you'll only create a monster that is neither me nor you!"
"You're absolutely right, Lancer."
The Duke's mouth opened and closed—yet the voice that emerged was Darnic's shallow, mocking laughter.
"I can't devour you—but I can engrave myself onto you. I'll carve my will of nearly a century, and my obsession with the Holy Grail, directly into your soul!"
"Even if, in the end, we become a monster that exists only to seek the Grail, I don't mind at all!"
But I mind!
Vlad III desperately wanted to shout those words.
However, as if determined to carve as much of himself as possible into the Duke's soul, Darnic ignored him completely. No matter how viciously Vlad cursed him, he uttered not a single reply.
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop this at once—!! I am the King of Wallachia, son of Vlad II… don't come into me—AAAAAAHHH!!"
Feeling his soul warp and mutate beyond recognition, Vlad III screamed with venomous hatred.
At this point, he was no longer the imposing Duke of Romania.
He was nothing more than a pitiful creature, desperately struggling to preserve what little sense of self he had left.
"Hey, Master… isn't this a bit too cruel?"
Jeanne suddenly spoke up.
"Huh?"
Caught completely off guard, Shinji looked at her blankly.
"If you write a plot like this, won't the Yggdmillennia family sue you?" Jeanne asked curiously. "Doesn't the Clock Tower have an arbitration committee?"
Shinji shrugged indifferently.
"It's fine. That family's never been popular at the Clock Tower anyway."
In this world, the Yggdmillennia clan also harbored deep hostility toward the Clock Tower. But since this version of the family never obtained the Holy Grail—and with Mystery steadily declining—the Romanian Yggdmillennia could only be considered a second-rate magus family with modest fame at best.
Compared to the Tohsaka family, the Yggdmillennia's only real advantage was having a relatively large number of family members.
So in Shinji's view, even if the Yggdmillennia were unhappy with his movie, there was little they could actually do.
As for verbal abuse? They'd been cursing the Clock Tower for decades already, and nothing had ever come of it.
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The Duke's struggle was doomed to be in vain.
Darnic was eroding his soul with frightening steadiness. The proof was right there—his face was gradually morphing into something ambiguous, neither fully Darnic nor fully Vlad III, but an unsettling blend of both.
"Good. Now you are me, and I am you."
The monster let out a sound that was half laughter, half sobbing.
"My king—no, vampire! Your power shall become ours! Everything is for the Holy Grail! My dreams and hopes will take root in your heart and live on forever!"
Like cancer cells, the magus known as Darnic Preston Yggdmillennia implanted his soul into that of the Heroic Spirit Vlad III, parasitizing it in the most grotesque way imaginable.
"Damn youuuuuuu———!!"
The Duke's wail echoed throughout the theater, conveying his unwillingness and regret in the most visceral way possible.
Drip.
Drip.
The monster collapsed to its knees, thick, viscous liquid continuously dripping from its face.
That was not Vlad III's blood, but an unknown substance resembling black shadows.
Chirp—
The liquid that splashed onto the floor quickly finished incubating, transforming into a massive black bat.
Soon, more and more bats appeared—some crawling across the floor, others flapping their wings and clinging to the ceiling.
All the while, the Duke screamed in pain and terror.
But with no one else left in the room, there was no one to hear him.
In desperation, he tore at his own clothes—only to discover that his body itself was dissolving into liquid.
First his cheeks.
Then his hair.
Then his limbs.
And finally… even the Duke's torso—
"This scene is seriously chilling," Jeanne muttered softly beside Shinji.
"Master… how did this even pass censorship back then?"
It was obvious that, despite having fought through countless battlefields, the Saint still felt a faint trace of fear when faced with such an eerie scene on the big screen.
That was perfectly normal.
No matter how bold or tough a girl might be, when it comes to creepy crawlies, there's always an instinctive sense of dread.
Even though what filled the screen were bats rather than insects, with the added 3D effects, those dense swarms of bats were basically bugs in all but name.
Thankfully, Shinji still retained a sliver of humanity—or perhaps it was simply his instinct for making money that preserved his last bit of rationality.
Though the bats flooding the screen also had depth effects, Shinji had deliberately toned them down to avoid giving the audience an excessive psychological shock.
Of course, that only meant not too excessive.
If a horror scene didn't actually deliver something unsettling, then there was no point in filming it at all.
And in terms of impact, this shot of the Duke's monstrous transformation was guaranteed to leave an impression just as deep as that "Astolfo bathing" scene from earlier.
Forget Jeanne—even several of the male Heroic Spirits felt their hair stand on end.
"Shinji definitely did this on purpose," Archer muttered in a low voice.
"He's probably enjoying himself directing a horror movie," Cu Chulainn added with malicious suspicion.
Gilgamesh, meanwhile, lifted his chin proudly, closed his eyes, and let out a disdainful snort.
"Hmph. You two fools, scared by something like this? This king feels absolutely nothing."
"Hey, Gilgamesh, at least open your eyes when you say that!" ×2
Regardless of how the Servants grumbled about their Master behind his back, there was no way Shinji—the inhuman culprit himself—would care in the slightest.
The moment he noticed the look of discomfort on Jeanne's face, he immediately realized this was a golden opportunity to raise affection points.
Shinji quietly reached out, intending to comfort her.
Smack
Jeanne decisively slapped her Master's hand away.
"Master, I'm not that timid! Don't treat me like a little girl."
"You're just being stubborn," Shinji muttered softly.
"You clearly want a hug."
If it weren't for the vast difference in their physical strength, Shinji would have pulled her into an embrace already.
Experience had taught him one thing very clearly—
At times like this, if the guy acted decisively, the results would often exceed expectations.
The only prerequisite was being able to withstand the girl's initial, embarrassed resistance.
If it were an ordinary girl, Shinji was confident he could hold her until she melted into compliance.
But since the other party was a Heroic Spirit… well…
Yeah, no. He doesn't feel like ending up in the ER.
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On the screen, the horrifying spectacle of swarming bats not only made the audience physically uncomfortable, it also gave rise to the illusion that Darnic's scheme had somehow failed.
Unfortunately, there was no way a boss of this caliber would botch his transformation.
The bats filling the room began to gather, converging and intertwining until they gradually formed the outline of a human figure.
"The current me is neither Vlad III nor Darnic of the Yggdmillennia."
The newly reconstituted humanoid monster spoke to itself in a flat, emotionless tone.
You could call it a bout of chunni theatrics—but more accurately, it was introducing itself to the audience.
"I am an existence known by the entire world… and feared by the entire world."
"Dracula."
In the Type-Moon world, vampiric beings existed and were classified as Dead Apostles and True Ancestors.
But the monster now on the screen was neither.
It was a dark creature that had appeared for only a mere hundred years, yet had already become an inseparable symbol of modern horror—
Dracula, the vampire.
Having fully restored a human-like form, the vampire turned its face toward the camera, allowing the audience to finally see its appearance clearly.
Its gaze was still cold and merciless, but the lofty pride it once carried as a Heroic Spirit was gone.
The once-elegant black aristocratic attire was now tattered, and what showed through the tears was not flesh and blood, but shadows given physical form.
"Very well. It's time to seize the Holy Grail. Only by using it can we fulfill the long-cherished wish of our clan."
The monster grinned, crawling through the castle as it muttered to itself in manic whispers.
"Yes… yes. To realize our clan's wish, I must survive infinitely—without end."
"In that case, I must continue to increase my familiars. Right… right… I believe there's plenty of material on the lower levels…"
"Then… the Holy Grail… here I come~~~"
Within the monster's mad ramblings were entwined both Darnic's personal ambitions and the vampire's instinct to propagate.
Now, all that existed within him was the need to increase numbers—for the prosperity of the clan.
All he could think of was growing stronger—for the prosperity of the clan.
By mixing his thirst for the Holy Grail with the urge to breed and expand his species, while refusing to comprehend just how antisocial, inhuman, and pitiful such a dream truly was—this was the monster known as Dracula, the vampire.
"Come now~ the hunt begins~ hahaha~"
The monster had been unleashed.
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