I'm Not A Master, I'm A Director
Chapter 377: No One with the Surname Kotomine Is Ever a Good Person
The person who appeared behind the vampire was, of course, Amakusa Shirou.
As the true mastermind behind this Holy Grail War, there was no way he wouldn't step in at such a critical moment.
After all, if this guy were allowed to lay a hand on the Holy Grail—setting aside Amakusa's own wish for the moment—the mere possibility that a vampire might wish for the destruction of humanity was already completely unacceptable to him.
"Uh… is this priest really that strong?"
Shibamatsu stared wide-eyed at the screen. Amakusa's sudden appearance made his brain short-circuit for a moment.
After all, during the earlier fight with the vampire, Amakusa hadn't displayed anything close to this level of power.
Yet now, he had casually pinned the vampire's foot to the floor with a Black Key. The contrast was honestly a bit too much.
Of course, at this point, the audience still hadn't realized Amakusa's true role in the Fate/Apocrypha movie.
From Jeanne's perspective, Amakusa stepping in to deal with Dracula made perfect sense.
For now, the audience was simply curious about why Amakusa had suddenly become so powerful.
But what the audience thought didn't matter.
For the vampire himself, this was a completely different story.
"Impossible! How is this possible?!"
On the big screen, memories belonging to Darnic surged violently within Dracula. He was plunged into a state of profound shock.
Even though he had forgotten his own name, he could never forget the Third Holy Grail War—
The battle where everything began, and the turning point that forever changed his life.
Those memories were so deeply etched that not even the fusion of souls could erase them. That was why the vampire's reaction was so extreme.
"How could this be—? Impossible!"
Hearing a monster mutter in disbelief like an ordinary human, the young priest couldn't help but let out a scornful laugh.
"Oh my~ I thought an old acquaintance like you would have something insightful to say upon seeing me," Amakusa said lazily.
"Who knew you'd be reduced to repeating such crude nonsense?"
He spread his hands and shrugged, speaking with effortless composure.
"There's really nothing strange about this, is there? If you can still be alive, then surely me being alive isn't something worth getting so worked up over."
"Impossible… impossible…!"
Unfortunately, the vampire had now fully reincarnated as a broken record, endlessly repeating the same two lines.
The audience, at least, had it better than Amakusa.
While Amakusa could only listen to the vampire loop in place, the viewers were treated to flashbacks of Darnic's past.
Through these scenes, they finally learned that Kotomine Shirou had once participated in the Third Holy Grail War of Fuyuki City.
"So that's how it is!"
Shibamatsu suddenly understood.
"Shirou and Darnic are both relics of the Third Holy Grail War."
"Damn it! I knew it!"
Li Ri'ang slapped his thigh in frustration.
"I told you—no one with the surname Kotomine is ever a good guy!"
"Thinking the Kotomine family could produce even one decent person… I was way too naïve."
Fujita shook his head slightly.
"They really keep milking the Kotomine family, huh? Just how deep is the grudge between Shinji and the Kotomines? And besides—"
"Every Holy Grail War leaves something behind for the next one. What's wrong with this Grail? Why does it never fully finish the job?"
Elsewhere in the theater, Cú Chulainn voiced Fujita's exact thoughts using language far more vulgar.
While revelations like these hidden identities did give the audience a satisfying 'so that's it!' moment…
There was no denying that when the same trick was used too many times, it stopped being surprising.
Of course, a trope repeated often enough could also become a defining feature of a series.
Take Mission: Impossible and its fake masks. Every movie uses them, and long-time fans may feel a lack of novelty—but if a Mission: Impossible movie ever didn't include fake masks, most fans probably wouldn't accept it.
In the same way, every Holy Grail War having a "survivor from the previous era" had become Fate's version of the fake mask.
After all, even in the FGO era, there was still Romani—another lingering remnant of past Holy Grail Wars.
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On screen, the vampire's broken-record routine continued.
"How could this be?! Impossible! This can't be happening! Why?! Why are you here?! Why are you still alive?!"
"Got anything new to say?"
The boy impatiently hooked a finger into his ear and answered half-heartedly.
"Obviously because I'm participating in this Holy Grail War as the Red Faction's Master."
"IMPOSSIBLE——!!"
If the volume of one's voice were a measure of the intensity of their inner emotions, then at this very moment, the vampire would undoubtedly rank first in the world for sheer disbelief.
Unfortunately, the young priest paid no attention to the noisy creature. Instead, he calmly walked toward the Greater Grail at the back of the chamber.
"You see, Darnic," the priest said softly, "I've been waiting for this moment for a very long time. The Holy Grail belongs to me."
His tone was tranquil—like he was stating a simple, self-evident fact, such as the Earth being round.
"How could I possibly hand the Greater Grail over to someone as selfish as you?"
"Don't joke with me—!!"
Those words about ownership finally struck the most sensitive nerve in the monster's heart.
Ignoring the foot pinned to the floor, Dracula forced himself forward through the pain.
The result was pitiful.
With a Black Key embedded in his knee, he collapsed to the ground in an utterly disgraceful heap.
"Ah—?!"
Dracula stared at the sharp object lodged in his thigh.
It was a Black Key—the conceptual weapon favored by the Church's Executors, and the natural nemesis of inhuman "monsters" like him.
"Vampires do possess overwhelming power," the young priest said with a smile, pacing leisurely as he spoke in an almost cheerful tone.
"But power always comes at a price."
"Unable to endure sunlight. Helpless before holy symbols. And you have little resistance against purification-focused weapons like Black Keys."
That said, Dracula, who felt as though he were being scorched by sunlight itself, understood something clearly.
Black Keys were indeed his weakness, but the Black Keys embedded in his body were far beyond normal.
Their power was utterly abnormal. Completely off the charts.
The dark-skinned young priest spoke again, his voice now cold and solemn.
"Compared to the one who has opposed you all this time, my power is truly insignificant. I am merely a counterfeit—one who doesn't even possess the qualifications to be acknowledged."
The priest's attire changed.
A red Holy Shroud formed from spirit particles fluttered around his body, and several Black Keys appeared in his hands.
"Even so," he continued calmly, "I am more than enough to deal with you."
Silver blades danced across the screen, nailing the vampire firmly in place, leaving him utterly unable to move.
Snap
The priest's hand closed around the vampire's face, and his presence underwent a complete transformation.
He was no longer the joking, easygoing priest from before.
He was something entirely different from that kind-hearted façade.
This man was not merely the overseer of the Holy Grail War, nor even simply a Master participating in it.
He was something far more complex.
"Now," he said coldly, "this is your final moment for prayer."
His words delivered judgment upon the monster.
"Farewell, nameless vampire."
"I who destroy, also create."
"I who wound, also heal."
Awkward, archaic incantations spilled from the priest's lips, and a white light began to shine from his arm.
"Ugh… ughhhhh—!!!!"
A scream of anguish rang out as the vampire's limbs thrashed wildly in a final attempt at resistance.
But the priest's hand was like it possessed the strength of ten thousand men. No matter how violently the vampire struggled, the grip on his face never loosened.
"Return to dust. The defeated, the withered—answer my call…"
With each line of the chant the priest recited, a portion of the vampire's existence was erased.
This was not a difference in raw power.
It was the priest's faith—unyielding as steel, sharp as a blade—manifesting as an absolute nemesis the vampire could not possibly overcome.
As the saying went, evil could never triumph over righteousness.
The priest's unreserved, pure love for humanity turned him into the natural enemy of creatures like vampires—the most distilled form of calamity born from humanity itself.
"To repay forgiveness with vengeance, to answer trust with betrayal, to give hope despair, to return light with darkness, to grant the living a death of oblivion…"
Each line of the chant pierced the vampire like a blade.
This was a baptismal litany far beyond what any ordinary believer could perform.
He could not understand it. He could not accept it.
Why did it have to end like this?
Why was he being erased by this man?
If he was to be defeated, why couldn't it have been on the battlefield, cut down in glorious combat?
"Holy Grail… my Holy Grail————!!"
With the last of his strength, the vampire tore his body free from the Black Keys. He stretched his arm out as far as he could, desperate to get even a single centimeter closer to the Greater Grail.
But there was no way the priest would allow that.
Bang!
Grabbing the vampire by the face, the priest lifted him bodily into the air, then slammed him hard toward the room's entrance.
The door shattered as the vampire's body crashed through it. Like a discarded rag, he was thrown out into the corridor.
At the same time, the priest finished reciting the final line of the holy words.
"Burn thy sins, carve them into the brand. Eternal life may only be granted by death. Here lies forgiveness—I, who have taken flesh, swear it thus: may the Lord have mercy upon this sorrowful soul."
Hiss… hiss…
White steam poured from Dracula's body as he melted away amid agonized screams.
It wasn't just his flesh—his very existence was being erased by the priest's incantation.
"Ho… ly… Grail…"
Accompanied by regretful groans and desperate, ragged breaths, the vampire's final shred of clothing dissolved into white motes of light.
The ruler of Romania, a hero who once saved his nation—and a vile magician who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals—they reached their shared end together.
As the Duke vanished completely from the screen, the audience in the theater collectively let out a breath they hadn't realized they were holding.
The vampire's death scene had been filmed with such terrifying realism that many viewers felt as if they themselves had been burned by sunlight—some even had the illusion that they were melting alongside him.
"No wonder Master insisted that Vlad simulate the death scene in the most realistic way possible during filming," Jeanne murmured.
"The impact of truly experiencing it… really can't be replicated by visuals and sound alone."
"It's just a pity for Vlad," she continued softly.
"To make art, he really made an enormous sacrifice."
As the heroine of Fate/Apocrypha, Jeanne naturally knew how this scene had been filmed and why the audience felt as if they could barely breathe.
The reason was simple.
For this scene, Shinji had used a new technology capable of transmitting an actor's emotions directly, giving the audience the most realistic viewing experience possible.
Because of that, Vlad III had suffered tremendously during filming.
Jeanne didn't know the exact technical process—Shinji had spared the Duke's dignity and never explained it in detail.
All she knew was that after filming this scene, the old Duke had nearly actually ascended to the afterlife.
Of course, during post-production, Shinji had deliberately toned down Vlad's despair and pain, leaving the audience with only a tiny fraction of the sensation.
There was no helping it, if viewers had experienced even 100% of what the vampire felt before death, they'd have been heading straight to the hospital after the movie.
As for how Jeanne knew all this so clearly, it was something Cloris had mentioned casually during a chat.
"Shinji told me~"
Remembering the smug expression on the magus girl's face, Jeanne couldn't help but feel a little envious.
She genuinely envied how Shinji stood firmly behind Cloris as her unwavering support.
To Jeanne, that kind of absolute, unreserved trust between people was something she had always longed for.
'Ah… Master may be a lecher, but he's truly good to those he considers his own. At the very least, he's sincere.'
With that thought, Jeanne suddenly found herself less bothered by the fact that she was holding Shinji's hand.
In fact, a faint, unfamiliar sense of happiness welled up inside her.
It was only the slightest bit, but it was enough for Jeanne to show Shinji a shy, girlish smile.
Of course, if Jeanne had known that Shinji sided with Cloris purely because Lissy allowed him to maximize his profits, she probably wouldn't have smiled so sweetly.
Instead, she might have skewered Shinji's stomach repeatedly with her banner.
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"Is it here?!"
On the big screen, Ruler and the others—who had been chasing the vampire—finally reached the corridor where Darnic had hidden the Greater Grail.
The saint inhabiting a young girl's body and the black-clad priest met once again.
Only this time, the relationship between the girl and the priest could never return to what it once was.
The young priest standing in the corridor looked exactly the same as he had a few minutes earlier—the same bronze-toned skin, the same almost silver-white hair.
If there was any difference at all, it was that over his black clerical robes now hung a crimson stole and a flowing red mantle.
And yet, in Jeanne's eyes, the priest before her was nothing like the man she had known.
"How… can this be…"
Because the priest had voluntarily discarded his disguise, Jeanne finally saw through his true nature, and in that instant, she sharply sucked in a breath.
It was unbelievable. No—absurd didn't even begin to cover it.
The boy standing before her was not only a Master, but a Servant as well.
If that were all, it might still have been acceptable. After all, the Holy Grail War had never explicitly forbidden a participant from holding two roles at once.
After all, wasn't there a certain married mage-teacher deeply devoted to education who played multiple roles herself, even summoning a vicious watchdog to guard the house?
The problem wasn't that the priest was a Servant.
It was his class.
He wasn't the remaining Caster of the Red Faction.
Nor was he Assassin.
He was—
"This counts as a proper reintroduction, doesn't it, Jeanne?" he said calmly.
"Ruler of this Holy Grail War."
"..."
Jeanne could only respond with silence.
"Tch, so you're a Servant too, huh?"
Mordred's face twisted with barely concealed shock as she questioned him in a grave tone.
The priest they had believed to be an ally had now revealed his Saint Graph as a Servant.
Feeling like she'd been played for a fool, Mordred's temper flared violently.
"You bastard! You actually dared to toy with me?!"
She even slipped into a rough, masculine manner of speech—proof of just how furious she was.
By contrast, Amakusa himself remained perfectly composed.
"Don't make me sound like such a villain, Saber," he said lightly.
"As a former king of rebellion, you should know better than anyone that deception is a weapon of war."
"I hate you!" Mordred spat. "You hypocritical man!"
She spat at him outright.
Amakusa tilted his head slightly, smiling.
"Now, now. Don't be like that. We're both on the Red side, you know. Teammates."
"Who the hell would team up with a sneaky bastard like you?!"
Mordred raised her knightly sword, about to charge, only to be stopped by Jeanne.
"What is your goal?" Jeanne demanded.
"To save humanity."
That answer was clearly unacceptable.
"Answer me properly!" Jeanne shouted.
"Amakusa Shirou Tokisada!"
"I'm telling the truth," Amakusa replied with a gentle smile.
Then, without hesitation, he revealed his plan—his true wish for the Grail—to the former comrades standing before him.
By using the Holy Grail and the Third Magic, he intended to materialize the souls of every human being on Earth, granting them eternal youth and immortality.
And because humanity would exist only as souls, freed from physical bodies, they would naturally lose all material needs and desires.
With no scarcity, no hunger, no greed—conflict would disappear from the world.
"In this way," Amakusa declared proudly, "even on a planet where the leylines have dried up, seven billion immortal souls will exist forever!"
The red glow on his face told everyone present a simple, undeniable truth—he was completely serious.
"Uh… this guy can't be serious, right?"
Shibamatsu didn't even know how to react anymore.
Did everyone named Kotomine really go this far off the rails?
"Hm… using the Third Magic to materialize all human souls…"
Alice pinched her chin, slipping into academic mode.
"If it were truly possible… wouldn't that mean all of humanity would be directly connected to the Root?"
"That's… kind of fascinating."
Hearing this extremely dangerous line of thought, Fujita hurriedly cut in.
"No! Boss! That would be catastrophic!"
Alice waved her hand dismissively.
"Relax. I know. With the current state of Mystery in the world, there's no way it could support the Third Magic on a global scale."
'So if it really were possible… you'd actually try it, wouldn't you?'
The members of the Young Magus Club silently buried that thought deep in their hearts.
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"Madman."
Mordred ground out her verdict through clenched teeth.
Yes, madman was the only word she could think of.
What kind of person, with even a shred of sanity left, would try to erase human desire in order to force peace upon the world?
One could only say that Mordred's perspective was a bit narrow.
In the future, Earth would face madmen who sought to incinerate human history itself—or to turn all of humanity into gods.
Compared to those lunatics, Amakusa's plan of absolute equality for all wasn't that outrageous.
"I see now." Jeanne nodded firmly.
"So this is what the Holy Grail warned me about. The one the Counter Force ordered me to judge… is you."
She bit down hard on her lip, gripping the flagpole with trembling hands. Her entire body shook.
She still couldn't believe it.
The priest who had laughed with her along the way, who had treated everyone with warmth and kindness—that man was now revealed to be an enemy who threatened human civilization itself.
Amakusa shrugged helplessly.
"Don't make me sound so terrible. God loves humanity. God saves humanity. I'm merely following His will."
"Don't joke!" Jeanne shouted.
"God would never allow something like this! If He did, why would I be here?!"
"So you intend to oppose me to the end, Jeanne?"
Amakusa said calmly, then turned his gaze toward Astolfo, Mordred, and Shishigou.
"What about you?"
Jeanne's words failed to shake his resolve in the slightest.
"As comrades who have fought together," Amakusa continued sincerely, "I invite you to join my plan. Come, become my allies."
Mordred spat on the ground.
"Pah! Like hell I'd run with a lying piece of trash like you!"
Astolfo scratched his head and laughed awkwardly.
"On this one, I'm siding with Jeanne and Mordred."
Amakusa wasn't surprised by their answers. His eyes shifted to the last remaining member of the group.
"Shishigou Kairi. What about you?"
"Me?"
"If my plan succeeds, the tragedy of your adopted daughter will never happen again," Amakusa said softly.
"You, who lost your child—aren't you deeply dissatisfied with this world? Join me. Let's change it together."
Knowing Shishigou's past, Amakusa played his emotional card.
But Shishigou only kept that carefree, cynical smile. He scratched his back with his handgun and replied casually,
"Sorry, priest kid. A Master and Servant can't afford to be at odds, y'know?"
"Hahaha! Damn right!" Mordred burst into laughter. "That's my Master!"
Fully armored, she charged straight at Amakusa.
Facing Mordred rushing at him like a mad dog, Amakusa merely let out a quiet sigh.
"What a shame."
BOOOOM—!!!
A flash of white light split the sky.
Brilliant, sunlike radiance—crackling with white lightning—descended as a pillar of pure light, striking the Yggdmillennia castle.
With its defensive barrier gone, the fortress had no resistance at all. The moment the beam hit, it collapsed into rubble.
"Damn it!"
Forced by the collapsing castle, Mordred abandoned her attack and turned instead to protect her still-human Master.
Amakusa, meanwhile, turned away gracefully—heading toward the Greater Grail within the chamber.
"Amakusa Shirou Tokisada!"
Jeanne stabilized herself amid the crumbling corridor and shouted at his retreating back.
"Is this how you intend to save the world?!"
"Of course," he replied without hesitation.
"And it's the only way."
There was no doubt in his voice—only unwavering resolve.
He couldn't be persuaded. As long as he lived, this priest would never stop.
Jeanne was certain of it.
She silently gazed into his amethyst-like eyes, and for the last time, called him by his name.
"I will stop you, Kotomine Shirou."
"You will not succeed, Saint Jeanne d'Arc."
With the collapsing castle as their backdrop, the priest and the saint—both once hailed as miracles by powerless commoners and pursuing soldiers alike—stood silently, staring at one another.
Each had already decided:
The other was an existence they could never tolerate.
A sworn enemy who must, without fail, be defeated.
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