It seemed the girl hadn't collapsed by the roadside because of a Magical Beast attack. She had simply passed out from hunger.
Shirou breathed a sigh of relief, his tense shoulders relaxing slightly as he reached into his Time Pocket.
The Time Pocket, also known as a Dimensional Pocket or Time Capsule.
It was an ability developed by Aoko Aozaki, the Fifth Magician and a time traveler, allowing her to physically create a dimensional gap in which objects could be stored.
Strictly speaking, however, it wasn't time-related Magic, but rather Magecraft resembling the Imaginary Number Attribute.
Imaginary space was something believed not to exist, yet did exist. Anything that entered it would no longer be bound by ordinary space and time.
Magus with the Imaginary Number Attribute could reach into gaps between dimensions, retrieving objects from the past or sending objects from the present into the future.
Aoko Aozaki used this property as a time capsule for storing items.
Shirou had previously mastered Time Alter and had also traveled through time. That was why, under Aoko's guidance, he had been able to learn how to use the Time Pocket.
After rummaging around for a moment, Shirou pulled out a paper bag containing sandwiches.
That morning, just before they left, Merlin had apparently lost his mind and suddenly declared, "I really want to eat a homemade lunch made by Shirou," before demanding that Shirou prepare something they could take with them.
It's not like we're going on a picnic. What's with him...?
Pressed for time, Shirou had simply made sandwiches from whatever ingredients he had on hand.
He hadn't expected them to come in handy here.
The moment the little purple-haired girl saw the sandwiches Shirou had taken out, her drowsy eyes opened wide.
"Um... are those... for me?" she asked nervously.
"Yeah, of course."
Shirou immediately handed the sandwiches to her.
"I'm saved... Mmm."
The little purple-haired girl began taking small bites of the sandwich Shirou had given her.
The sight was so endearing that Shirou couldn't help smiling.
When she noticed him watching her, she shyly tugged the front of her hood lower.
Its shadow once again concealed most of her face, leaving only her slightly flushed lips visible.
"Th-thank you... It's very delicious."
Shirou took a cup from his Time Pocket and filled it with water for her.
"No need to thank me. This was originally for a Magus I know... Ow."
A pebble came flying from nowhere and struck Shirou on the head.
"What's wrong?" The purple-haired girl blinked.
"Nothing."
He continued, "These sandwiches were originally... Ow."
Another pebble struck him on the head.
Shirou: "..."
"I think I heard someone cry out."
The purple-haired girl looked up and saw Shirou spread five fingers toward a nearby patch of bushes.
A commotion immediately came from inside, and she could vaguely make out something pinkish-white struggling in the grass.
"Looks like a stray Magical Beast. Don't worry, I already took care of it."
"R-really? I see..."
The girl decided it would be better not to ask too many questions and returned her attention to the delicious sandwich.
"My name is Shirou Amamiya. Just call me Shirou... What's your name?"
"......"
After a brief silence, the purple-haired girl answered.
"Ana... My name is Ana... And, um... No, never mind."
The girl had originally intended to make her stance clear.
I hate humans, so please keep your distance from me.
And yet, for some reason, whenever she looked at Shirou's face, she simply couldn't bring herself to say it.
"Ana..."
Shirou frowned.
She wasn't one of the Seven Knights summoned by Gilgamesh, and he had never heard that name before.
Of course, Shirou knew perfectly well that he couldn't possibly know the names of every Heroic Spirit in existence.
That was right. Shirou had already realized it.
Ana wasn't simply a little girl who had been separated from her parents and collapsed by the roadside.
She was a Servant.
Although her height and build were no different from a child's, even after fainting from hunger she still possessed an impressive amount of Mana.
The reason there were so few traces of Magical Beast activity nearby was probably because of her.
Shirou went straight to the point.
"Ana-san, you're a Servant, aren't you?"
At those words, the girl's small body trembled.
After thinking for a moment, she decided the red-haired boy before her was someone she could trust.
"...Yes."
The girl calling herself Ana hid her face beneath the shadow of her hood and murmured.
"I'm a stray Servant summoned to this land."
"A stray Servant, huh."
Shirou had heard about them from Merlin the previous night while they were discussing Singularities.
They were Servants without Contracts who manifested in a region under the influence of the Holy Grail and disturbances in space-time.
The girl was probably one of them.
Shirou thought for a moment.
"No wonder you collapsed from hunger.
Without a Master to shoulder your Mana consumption, you've been fighting with nothing but the Mana you generate yourself. Of course you'd eventually run out."
"Is that how it works?"
Ana looked confused.
"I see... I've been in the forest this whole time, so I didn't know anything..."
"Huh?"
Shirou was slightly surprised.
According to Merlin, even a stray Servant should receive the necessary knowledge from the Holy Grail.
"Ana-san, you don't have any knowledge about being a Servant?"
"You don't need the '-san.' Just call me Ana."
The girl gave a small nod.
"When I came to my senses, I was already in this forest, with this body.
I don't have any knowledge about being a Servant... but I know exactly what I'm supposed to do.
I have to kill all the Magical Beasts.
That's why I've been alone all this time, killing Magical Beasts and using their souls to maintain my Spirit Origin...
But as the number of Magical Beasts nearby kept decreasing, I couldn't replenish myself fast enough to cover what I was consuming, so eventually... Mmm."
The girl lowered her head in embarrassment and finished the last of her sandwich.
"Oh my, so that's what happened! What a miraculous coincidence!"
At that moment, a figure emerged from the bushes where the supposed Magical Beast had been lurking.
Merlin wore the kind of smile that made people want to punch him as he waved toward Shirou.
"Who are you...!?"
Having recovered some Mana, Ana immediately shifted into a combat stance.
A scythe radiating freezing air materialized in her hand.
In the next instant, she was already beside the Magus of Flowers, the blade pressed against his neck.
Her movements were swift and fluid, the entire sequence completed in a single motion, like a taut bowstring released all at once.
That weapon...
Rather than Merlin, whose head was seconds away from leaving his shoulders, Shirou was more interested in the weapon Ana was holding.
"Save me, Shirou! TAT" Merlin shouted.
"You know him?"
The little purple-haired girl frowned and looked toward Shirou for confirmation.
"It's fine, Ana. This guy is suspicious, but he's my companion."
"Shirou's companion..."
Ana suspiciously studied the Magus, who had both hands raised in surrender, before slowly lowering her scythe.
"That was close, that was close..."
Merlin introduced himself to Ana, then took the opportunity to explain what he and Shirou were doing.
"Just like Ana, we're outsiders who came to this land.
We're fighting the Three Goddess Alliance in order to protect human history.
Ana considers the goddesses her enemies too, right? Then that makes us allies!"
"..."
Ana's adorable little face remained tense.
The Magus calling himself Merlin was far too suspicious, especially when she compared him with Shirou standing beside him.
In the end, however, Ana decided to trust Shirou.
Since their goals aligned, she accepted Merlin's invitation to travel together.
"Well done, Shirou. You won that girl's trust so easily. Having you make contact with Ana really was the right decision."
"You bastard..."
Shirou walked ahead beside Merlin, occasionally glancing back at Ana while complaining in a voice low enough that only Merlin could hear.
"What was that nonsense about, 'All right, next we're going to defeat the goddess!'? That isn't what we're doing at all!"
Merlin looked completely unconcerned.
"Hm? Our ultimate goal is to defeat the goddesses anyway, so technically I wasn't lying.
And who says 'next' has to mean tomorrow? Maybe it means one month from now, or three months from now. Big Brother Merlin has lived for so long that I've completely lost my human sense of time!"
Shirou covered his forehead in exasperation.
...
...
"Phew..."
"We were attacked by Magical Beasts along the way, but it looks like we managed to escape their encirclement safely, Senpai!"
On a plain somewhere north of Uruk, a purple-haired girl dressed like a knight was speaking to her companion.
"Yeah. Thanks to Enkidu-san. Otherwise, we would've been wiped out the moment we arrived."
The girl who answered had vivid orange-red hair that reached her shoulders.
Her long, slender limbs looked athletic, making it obvious that she exercised regularly.
The white uniform she wore, completely out of place in this era, outlined her well-developed figure while also revealing her identity.
She was none other than the final Master of the Human Order whom the Sage Merlin had spoken of.
Ritsuka Fujimaru, a girl from the twenty-first century, just like Shirou.
From the standpoint of Magecraft, she was nothing more than an ordinary person.
Yet over the past six months, she and her companions had crossed countless deadly situations, and she had grown tremendously through those experiences.
The initial naivety had long since vanished from her golden eyes.
Now, they shone with hope.
Standing beside Ritsuka Fujimaru was another dignified young knight with purple hair.
Pink bangs covered one of her eyes, and she carried an enormous shield far larger than her own body.
She was the Shield Maiden who protected humanity's final Master.
Her name was Mash Kyrielight.
Like Ritsuka Fujimaru, she belonged to the Chaldea Observatory, the organization responsible for safeguarding the continuation of the Human Order.
"Thank you very much for helping us, Enkidu-san."
The girls thanked the green-haired young man who had helped them repel the surrounding Magical Beasts.
Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash had barely arrived at the Seventh Singularity before they were immediately welcomed by a swarm of mysterious Magical Beasts.
More than a hundred of them had completely surrounded the pair.
At the moment of greatest danger, the young man calling himself Enkidu had stepped forward to save them.
"As one who supports the earth, it was only natural that I help."
Enkidu gave them a gentle smile.
"Wow! I can't believe it really is Enkidu! This is great. We're incredibly lucky this time!"
Along with the excited male voice, a holographic projection appeared.
A man and a woman were visible within it.
The man speaking was Roman, Acting Director of the Chaldea Observatory.
Standing beside him was Caster Da Vinci, a Servant affiliated with Chaldea just like Mash.
Ritsuka Fujimaru looked at him with a somewhat speechless expression.
"Doctor, aren't you a little too excited today?"
"What are you talking about? That's Enkidu! Enkidu!
We're talking about one of the strongest beings of this era, someone equal to the King of Heroes Gilgamesh!
The humanoid shaped from clay by the Sumerian gods to restrain that tyrant, a Divine Construct created by the gods themselves.
If King Gilgamesh was created as the Wedge of Heaven, a hybrid between human and god, then Enkidu was the Chains of Heaven, created to bring Gilgamesh back to the side of the gods..."
Within the hologram, Acting Director Roman, his hair tied in a ponytail, continued his enthusiastic lecture without pause.
"Fou... Fou, Fou~~!!"
As the girls walked along while forcing themselves to listen, a fluffy little white creature jumped onto Mash's shoulder and began stepping back and forth with its tiny paws.
"Mash, isn't Fou unusually energetic today? Did the Doctor rub off on him?"
"It does seem that way. Ever since Enkidu-san appeared, Fou has been acting strangely excited... though I don't know whether the Doctor is actually responsible."
The two girls leaned closer and whispered to each other.
After receiving Enkidu's help, the Chaldea group was now traveling toward Uruk under his guidance.
"Huh... That's odd. Why are you heading north? According to our observations, Uruk should be southeast of you."
Roman voiced his doubts.
Enkidu responded with a warm, friendly smile.
"You shouldn't be so impatient, Dr. Roman. If we travel through the south, we'll inevitably enter territory controlled by the goddesses, so I'm taking everyone on a detour.
I already explained this earlier, didn't I? The Three Goddess Alliance intends to seize the Holy Grail and destroy Uruk. They are our enemies."
Mash's expression grew grave.
"I still can't imagine it. To actually desire humanity's extinction...
Wouldn't that make them just like the King of Magecraft? If they're goddesses, shouldn't they be humanity's allies!?"
"The gods have never been humanity's allies. To the gods, humans are merely a source of labor.
At most, humanity is something to be protected, not something to be loved.
Any god who claims to deeply love humanity is simply suffering from a logical error caused by possessing too many functions.
Take Ishtar, the Goddess of Heaven, for example. She loves plentiful harvests, loves humanity, loves war, and loves inequality.
She speaks of loving humans while also enjoying wars in which humans kill one another. Contradictory, isn't it?"
"That really is a double standard..."
"Exactly. But if you treat it as a logical error, everything makes sense.
Gods possess too many attributes and functions, so they lack internal consistency.
In other words, there's something wrong with their heads."
Roman agreed.
"That's an interesting interpretation. Gods develop redundancy because they possess too many functions..."
As they continued chatting, Kingu led them into a cedar forest.
The temperature beneath the trees was several degrees lower than outside, and the damp air carried the scent of decaying leaves and earth.
"We'll reach the safe area soon. It looks like we should arrive before sunset.
Hehe, Gilgamesh should be pleased. He's been waiting for all of you for half a year."
"...This should be... the Cedar Forest, right?"
Before arriving in Uruk, Mash had thoroughly prepared herself.
Her studies covered not only the history of Mesopotamia during the Age of Gods, but also the geography and culture of ancient Sumer.
"In legend, the Cedar Forest is a sacred realm guarded by the Magical Beast Huwawa...
But I thought it was generally interpreted as being east of Uruk, across the Tigris River in the Zagros Mountains..."
Roman picked up the explanation.
"Correct. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Cedar Forest is considered a sacred realm, and some even call it the Snow-White Cedar Forest.
But this place... feels strangely dark and oppressive, almost as if we were inside the belly of some monster."
The gloomy forest was so overgrown that sunlight could barely penetrate the canopy.
It was difficult to associate such a place with the sacred realm described in historical texts, and a faint sense of unease began spreading through the group.
"...We're going in the exact opposite direction from Uruk."
Ritsuka Fujimaru quietly tugged at her junior's hand.
"We're getting farther and farther away from it."
"Mm."
The Shield Maiden nodded.
"What should we do, Senpai...? Should we point out to Enkidu-san that we're moving away from our destination?"
For a moment, Ritsuka Fujimaru wasn't sure how to respond.
Then, suddenly.
"You're using the exact same trick again. Don't you ever get tired of it?"
A voice rang out above the cedar forest.
The boy's voice carried a cold edge of mockery, cutting through the oppressive atmosphere like a sharpened blade.
"!?"
Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash looked around in surprise.
Enkidu's expression, however, changed instantly.
The warmth and composure he had shown until now vanished completely.
His lips tightened, and his gaze turned cold and razor-sharp.
It was as though he had become an entirely different person.
"Hey, little shield user... protect your Master."
"...What?"
Mash froze after being directly addressed.
She was just about to ask what he meant when she suddenly sensed an enormous surge of Mana.
"————————"
A cutting gale powerful enough to cleave through the sacred forest and the ancient earth itself descended upon them.
A spiral arrow forged in the shape of a sword became a meteor streaking through the Cedar Forest, hurtling toward the exact position of the girls and Enkidu.
"!"
There was no time to think.
Mash pulled her enormous purplish-black shield from empty space, drove its lower edge into the ground, and poured Mana into it.
Mana drifted around the girl like falling snow as Mash shouted at the top of her lungs.
"Senpai! Get behind me!"
Almost at the exact moment those words left her mouth, Ritsuka Fujimaru had already wrapped both arms around Mash's waist.
After surviving seven Singularities, including F, the trust and coordination between the two had become incomparable.
The moment Mash summoned the Round Table, Ritsuka already understood exactly what was about to happen.
"BOOM————————!!"
A deafening explosion tore through the forest.
Countless cedar trees snapped and collapsed beneath the shockwave as dust, smoke, and shattered wood erupted into the sky.
The instant the arrow struck, a shockwave capable of tearing everything apart swept across the entire forest.
Naturally, Enkidu was swallowed by it as well.
"......"
Within that overwhelming flash of light, Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash caught a glimpse of a red-haired boy.