So it really is you, Illyasviel.
Through the master-servant visual link from the basement of the Church, Kotomine Kirei felt a smile tugging at his lips, caught between excitement and dread.
The excitement came from the prospect of finally making up for the regret he'd carried since the Fourth Holy Grail War, when he had failed to drive Illyasviel to true despair. The dread came from the terrifying potential he was witnessing before him.
After all, even knowing that the Servant he had summoned with decades of accumulated savings and a precious relic was extraordinarily powerful, a match even for the Golden King Gilgamesh from ten years ago, he remembered all too clearly who had cut that Golden King down. Twice.
Perhaps luck had played a part. Perhaps the alignment of time, place, and circumstance had all been in her favor. Illyasviel's raw combat ability had never truly surpassed Gilgamesh's, not from beginning to end. But those fearsome victories she had racked up were no fabrication.
Even summoned as an Assassin-class Servant, she had managed to slay Heroic Spirits that ranked well above the first tier.
So what might happen if she were summoned into a stronger class? Who could guarantee her ceiling wouldn't rise again?
"What an unexpected windfall," Kirei murmured, suppressing the turbulence in his heart. One of the Command Seals on his arm flickered with light.
"By Command Seal, restore your mana, Lancer. Capture the enemy before you alive if at all possible, and bring her back to the Church basement."
He couldn't afford to let this old acquaintance survive to the late stages of the War. He had seen her growth with his own eyes. Her combat strength during the first night was nothing special, but once she had slowly unraveled the exploitable gaps in the Holy Grail War's rules during the middle and later phases, her spirit summoning techniques had reached an almost unparalleled height.
Their goals, after the truth of the Grail had been laid bare, were more or less aligned, at least from his perspective following that one fateful night. Both sought the successful descent of that which embodied all the evils of the world. But some threats remain threats even when you share the same camp, to say nothing of the fact that their camps were no longer the same at all.
Between two villains, there was simply no such thing as fighting together for a shared ideal. Were it not for the fact that during the Fourth Holy Grail War they had still held value for each other, they would have been stabbing each other in the back long before the end.
As for why he wanted her taken alive? Well, beyond the obvious pleasure of watching her despair...
The primary reason was her blood. The Servant he had summoned was a tremendous mana consumer. Liberating his greatest Noble Phantasm required at least two Command Seals' worth of mana, and even with nearly ten Seals in his possession, he could not guarantee sustaining him long enough to cut through the entire War. Who could say whether another existence as wildly out-of-spec as his own Servant might appear?
In that context, Illyasviel von Einzbern, a walking humanoid mana reactor, was extraordinarily useful.
If he could capture and hold her, a daily bloodletting would be more than enough to keep his lancer fighting at full capacity. Enough to put a Noble Phantasm through each and every Master on the field.
And so, Kirei's first instinct upon seeing Miss Illya's face had been cautious retreat. But the next moment, a far more devious idea surfaced.
Even at the cost of spending another Command Seal, leaving himself with a mere eight remaining as supply.
He had no fear that his Servant would fail. Others might not know, but he knew all too well.
Illyasviel von Einzbern, during the first night of a Holy Grail War.
Was, at most, a... second-rate Heroic Spirit Servant.
"Clang!"
A blade far too heavy for such a small body smashed against a burning spear edge!
The blazing lance was pressed back by a strength that should not have belonged to that tiny frame, and the spear was forced to burst out with flames to interfere, cutting, striking, slashing. Walls of fire enveloped the entire courtyard. Over a hundred exchanges exploded across a dizzying storm of magical clashes, and to any outside observer, Miss Illya appeared to have the white-clad lancer firmly pinned beneath her momentum!
Her martial skill was not poor.
But.
That was all.
After a brief moment of confusion and surprise, the lancer, who had by now taken the basic measure of his opponent's abilities and judged them to be at the upper tier of the human scale, narrowed his crimson eyes slightly.
Every strike Miss Illya delivered aimed for a vital point. Her combat style was chaotic, purposeless-looking, designed purely to kill. This was no swordsmanship capable of ascending into legend. It was a killing art, refined from pure intent to slaughter every enemy before her.
Against most first-rate Heroic Spirits, her stats combined with this killing art could absolutely overwhelm a veteran with sheer ferocity. But before this lancer, her martial skill was simply not yet ripe. It had not reached the divine realm that stood at the pinnacle of heroes and warriors, the kind most plainly exemplified by Lancelot.
"It would seem you are not truly a swordswoman. In close quarters combat, my skill is marginally superior to yours."
The lancer shook his head mildly and spoke without inflection. The black spear rotated along its shaft, scraping down the blade in a sliding deflection, sparks scattering and scorching skin, and yet not truly injuring him in the slightest. This was the unloading technique of divine-realm martial arts, sufficient to bridge the gap even between differing stat values.
Boom!
And in the next instant, when the black sword's strike met empty air, the spear erupted with a far more intense blaze of mana-flame, flooding the world around it. Like a missile detonating at close range, it lit up the night sky, and the entire residential district flickered for one brilliant moment.
The searing heat wave caught the hem of Miss Illya's skirt alight, forcing her back several steps.
The scorching heat left her pale skin flushed and burning. In less than two minutes, the entire battle had performed a complete reversal.
"In the past, many people were stronger than me."
"And then?"
"Then they all died."
The sun was slowly rising.
That was not a metaphor. It was a fact that Miss Illya, her expression calm, could see with her own eyes.
The lancer pressed one foot lightly against the ground, and with simple control of his mana flames, fire flooded up to cover his body like a cloak of obedience, pressed beneath his heel. He sliced through the night sky like a meteor, lifting from the earth and stepping out into the darkness above.
Flying Heroic Spirits were exceedingly rare. Even those capable of flight typically suffered some reduction in their stat values, because whether in modern society or in the Age of Gods, flight through empty air was something beyond what humans could aspire to. As a reference point in a Holy Grail War, the Conqueror King Iskandar, during the Fourth War's port battle, had cut through the sky to sever the source of Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasm torrent directly from above.
That was a level of mobility that even a Gilgamesh who hadn't taken things seriously couldn't have easily intercepted.
If the Conqueror King Iskandar in the Fourth Holy Grail War had chosen only to flee rather than fight...
Even Miss Illya herself, right up to the very end, would probably never have been able to deal with him.
The state she had been in during the banquet battle, burning away her spiritual foundation at the cost of her life, would likely not have been enough either. The Wheel of Divine Might was faster than her. Even if she had closed the distance to that chariot, a fully-drunk Iskandar would have sent her flying with a direct charging slam.
"Forgive me. I did not wish to use this kind of attack. It risks hitting your Master as well. But these are my Master's orders. I cannot disobey. I must end this battle as swiftly as possible."
The spear moved lightly through the night air, and a massive surge of mana condensed above the courtyard.
A "sun." A colossal sphere of burning gas, at least twenty meters in diameter, its attack range swallowing the entire courtyard and the streets beyond. He was being somewhat serious now. The loyal and unhurried Servant had answered his Master's wish. No matter how absurd or unreasonable that wish might seem, this white-clad lancer would execute it without hesitation.
Mana Release (Flames). Rank A.
This was one of the lancer's passive skills. A terrifying ability that, though mechanically a skill rather than a Noble Phantasm, rivaled the destructive output of a Noble Phantasm release.
Stats? Attribute suppression? Meaningless. For Servants below the top tier, stat panels were the measure of strength. But for a Servant like this lancer, stats were merely something to glance at. The skills he possessed were enough to compensate for any and every deficiency.
Setting aside the straightforward boost from his Divinity, while maintaining flame-flight through Mana Release (Flames), his airborne speed could reach the speed of sound.
Even if you possessed Agility A+ or something comparable, for a flying Servant who could fly and fly fast, you were nothing more than a ground-bound monkey trying to swat a bird soaring free and far above.
"...Is that so?"
The atmosphere began to warp and groan under the scorching heat. Beneath that miniature sun overhead, the courtyard and every Servant in this Holy Grail War seemed terribly, pitifully small.
Miss Illya's tone remained flat. She slowly lowered the black knight's sword in her hands, exhaled deeply with both hands tightening on the grip. As a Saber-class Servant, she lacked the diverse mechanisms and traits of the Assassin class. The best weapon she could utilize was limited to a "sword," unlike the Assassin class, where anything that could kill an enemy was a viable tool.
But did that represent a nerf for her? Now that she had shed the mechanisms tied to her "pure little girl" disguise, had she become weaker?
Clearly not. Or rather, it wasn't that those masquerade-type mechanisms were gone.
It was simply that the Saber-class version of her no longer needed them.
And even the class cards themselves were subject to the same logic. Assassin-class tools made up the bulk of her combat power once, but now that she had ascended to the Three Knight classes, was she really going to be lacking in raw strength?
"The most mistaken decision you made was giving up on close-quarters combat with me once you gauged my level."
Facing that descending miniature sun, fully capable of killing a second-rate Heroic Spirit Servant, Miss Illya gripped the black knight's sword and shook her head.
And then, from her body, darkness began to surge. A terrifying mana output that was no less intense than the scorching heat bearing down on her.
It wrapped rapidly around the blade in her hand, coiling and circling, until the entire sword seemed to have grown a full size larger.
"His compatibility with me is quite good. So I, too, apologize. I don't intend to let him die just yet."
Which means you will have to die here first instead.
As the black mana continued to pour into the blade, it stretched and shifted. One meter. Two meters. Three. Five. Ten. Twenty... and finally locked into place at a terrifying fifty meters. This was not any single skill from the class card she was using.
Because frankly, that black card wasn't particularly useful in itself. Using it was mostly just to get her hands on a usable weapon. Or rather, the card's greatest contribution was simply giving her this sword.
That set of cards was too low-ranked. They were already useless to her, because even without any class card at all...
She was now, undeniably, a top-tier first-rate Heroic Spirit Servant.
This was the strength belonging to her now that she had risen to the Three Knight classes. And those cards could only accommodate up to a second-rate Heroic Spirit at their ceiling. They had simply fallen behind her current version.
Using an overwrite-type summon invocation would only get her killed instantly by the lancer.
Of course, even if she had been summoned into a Three Knight class during the Fourth Holy Grail War, her strength would only have been one tier above the Assassin class. Her current state owed a great deal to that one person, that very, very, very unpalatable mother of hers...
"Mana Release (Evil)."
Miss Illya gripped the black knight's sword in both hands, adopting an angled slash posture, drew a deep breath, and then looked coldly up at the mythological miracle descending upon her.
Mana Release (Evil). Rank A. One of her passive skills, matching the lancer's in rank.
"This mana... so saturated with suffering and malice...! What kind of existence were you in life?!"
The miniature sun dozens of meters across fell like a star collapsing from the heavens, and every living thing in the world seemed to hold its breath!
The buildings in the courtyard. The concrete street outside. The green plants and flowers along the roadside, all crumbled and evaporated into dust within seconds. The ground cracked and shuddered for over three hundred meters in every direction. The entire residential district rocked like an earthquake had struck, lit up by radiant light.
The apocalyptic divine disaster of mythology had truly manifested in this moment. Ordinary people could only look up to the heavens and pray to the gods for mercy. On the surface, a sun with temperatures in the tens of thousands of degrees had annihilated all things. This was no catastrophe a human being could possibly stop. This was a divine might that only the son of a sun god, descended from myth itself, could possess.
But.
So what?
Before the accumulated evils of all humanity, even gods themselves could be infected, dragged down from their thrones.
Crack.
"Wha... what?!"
Kotomine Kirei in the Church let out an involuntary gasp. Cold sweat broke out down his spine, as though from pure instinctive dread.
For the black mana blade, nearly a hundred meters long, had slammed down onto the miniature sun. The shockwave from the collision sent even the lancer himself hurtling upward dozens of meters. This was the kind of thunderous detonation only a Servant possessing extreme mana could produce, a force that defied human comprehension and made the soul tremble.
And in the very next instant!
Like a knife slicing through cake!
The nearly hundred-meter blade, wrapped in black mana, shattered the sound barrier in an instant and cleaved the sun cleanly in two!
The night sky burst like a detonation, a beautiful firework. The bisected miniature sun scattered into clusters of burning fireballs several meters wide, exploding as they fell, delivering a spectacular display to the world below, until the last embers were consumed by that far darker, far more vicious mana!
The white-clad lancer's eyes flickered several times. He seemed genuinely unable to comprehend why the dark fae before him possessed such abnormal mana, why she had been able to cut his sun apart head-on through sheer force of her weapon-augmenting Mana Release alone!
"My sun?"
"Was... consumed?"
Because even if the rank of Mana Release was identical, his flames carried the additional amplification of his Divinity!
This wasn't simple high-temperature fire. It was the undying flame of the Son of the Sun God.
Her cleaving his flames could be explained by sheer strength. But consuming his flames right in front of him, that was no longer a question of skill levels. It meant she definitively possessed an ability that countered his.
Absurd.
Truly absurd.
This was the emotion the lancer felt. Divinity in a Holy Grail War was, without question, a symbol of immense power.
And yet this dark fae seemed to counter divinity. She appeared to carry something like a divine-attribute bane.
It gave him a fleeting, strange sensation: that his Divinity was not a buff but a debuff applied to himself.
"Outside this city, I am no match for you. But within Fuyuki, I don't mind trying."
"The hero of uncrowned valor, undying golden armor, the great hero of Indian mythology, the Son of the Sun God."
Clang!
Sparks flew again. Through the distorted atmosphere, the black blade slashed down violently from the sky. Using the smoke and dust produced by the collision of their two high-rank Mana Releases as cover, it struck in the brief moment the white-clad lancer was distracted and had not yet reacted!
The unmistakable sound of steel meeting steel rang out across the heavens. Bursting flames spread across the sky like a gale scattering embers.
His true name had been exposed. Truly wretched news. He had been somewhat serious, intent on ending the fight. And yet not only had he been struck back, his true name was now fully out in the open.
"Is this too... karma? ...This is not ideal at all."
My luck isn't particularly terrible. So why did my second battle bring me an opponent that specifically counters divine attributes? But it is precisely because of this that this Holy Grail War has become something to look forward to.
Watching the enemy use her overwhelming mana to launch herself up from the ground and come at him from above, the white-clad lancer seemed to reach some kind of decision. His usually impassive expression carried the faint suggestion of something that wasn't quite a smile.
He had assumed no one in this Holy Grail War would be his equal in a true contest. What a tremendous miscalculation that had been. This stage where ancient heroes and warriors fought to the death...
Never lacked for its protagonist. And even he, the Son of the Sun God, was not destined to always be that protagonist.
"I don't mean to pry for information. But I'd like to ask: what is your name, unknown Saber?"
"After having your own true name exposed, asking for someone else's, that sort of unfairness isn't quite fitting for a great hero, is it?"
"Simply curious. Because you don't seem to know how to lie. Not a single moment from start to finish has there been any intention to conceal or deceive. And a hero with that kind of honesty, in my recollection, should not be a monster or a fallen god."
"It's not that I can't lie. It's just unnecessary. Like a certain knight I once encountered, who, even as a member of the Three Knight classes, was always direct and righteous, never once resorted to deception. She even said strange things like offering to have the Assassin-class and Caster-class fight her in fair, open, close-quarters combat."
"...She sounds like a knight who didn't understand the human heart."
Getting an Assassin and a Caster to fight a Three Knight class, a raw stat powerhouse, in a straight-up melee.
That wasn't "strange." That was utterly absurd.
But the lancer, or rather, the Son of the Sun God, Karna, understood Miss Illya's implication as well. When weak, one might rely on deception and lies. But now that she was in a Three Knight class, what reason did she have to lie?
I am weak, you tell me you don't eat beef, and you are probably right. But now I am strong. So now it's my turn to tell you I don't eat beef.
At incomprehensible speed, two streaks of light continued to grind against each other. The sun was falling.
Under the combined suppression of both Strength and Mana attributes, the sonic boom tore through the air.
BOOM!!
The meteor struck the ruined street. The chaotic mana shockwave from two battling Servants directly shattered the surrounding walls. From a distance, it looked like two missiles falling from opposite ends of the horizon. The wide civic plaza where the residential district's elderly and children had strolled and played was obliterated completely by the impact, reduced to shattered rubble and nothing more.
Strong.
Very strong.
Their actual capabilities were not on the same tier.
But from the outside, being able to fight a not-fully-serious Karna to this extent meant Miss Illya was undeniably a top-tier Heroic Spirit Servant.
This dark fae of the night, and this man who blazed like a sun, were adversaries matched against each other on the same level.
"Two Servants are fighting."
"One of them is the lancer from the school earlier. As for the other, I can't confirm their identity or position, but their strength is clearly no second or third-rate level. Heh heh... looks like you arrived a step too late. Your little magician friend probably won't even be able to leave a whole body behind in the blast radius of a clash like this."
Three kilometers outside the residential district, a busty Servant wearing a black eyepatch, who had glimpsed from a distance both the falling sun and the black sword-light, let a smirk of malicious amusement curl at the corner of her lips.
She had waist-length purple hair. A serpentine mark adorned her forehead. Black clothes and trousers accentuated her alluring atmosphere and a figure that was the envy of Miss Illya, beautiful enough to quicken the pulse and steal the breath.
In theory, everything about her was captivating.
But strangely, despite being so mesmerizing, this eyepatch girl's aura looked wrong no matter how you looked at it. She resembled a starving wolf wearing a veil of illusion over its true face, poised at any moment to devour the person bound to her.
Clearly, this was not her true appearance. It was a disguise crafted through magecraft and some form of cheating ability.
"..."
In response, Matou Sakura, who was being carried in a princess-hold by the woman, felt her expression fall.
Because what her Servant had said matched her own analysis. In a mana burst like that, forget that half-baked senpai of hers. Even she herself couldn't say she'd walk away from the blast radius uninjured, even from the outer edges.
"How tragic. Someone you clearly care about, and yet you'll be parted so young, by something as absolute as death..."
"He is only a tool for optimizing the Matou bloodline! As family head, he means nothing more to me than an outsider!"
"Oh? Is that so?"
Faced with the amused sneer of the Servant holding her, Matou Sakura's tone dropped several degrees colder. On the back of her hand, only two red Command Seals remained.
One of them was dedicated to restraining this malicious Servant from betraying her.
And right now, the Servant was obviously unhappy with that restraint.
"Keep your mouth shut. Whether he lives or dies is irrelevant. Right now is the best opportunity to observe those two fighting Servants. If I can draw them into my Anti-Medea Alliance..."
"Don't make me use another Command Seal to twist your will and force you into complete submission... Gorgon."