Medea? Which Medea?
The Betrayer Witch?
No, the real question was whether that legitimate Age of Gods mage, the one who had been treated like absolute garbage in a Holy Grail War and needed a full seven days of development before she could even think about facing a top-tier Servant, was actually as impressive as people claimed.
Everyone knew that mages, whether Age of Gods or modern, derived roughly ninety percent of their combat output from their workshops and magical territories under normal circumstances.
That was actually the main reason Francesca had lost to Matou Zouken in the Fourth Holy Grail War ten years ago. Fuyuki City was Zouken's home turf, and her workshop was all the way back in America with no outpost set up anywhere near the Far East. With the venue advantage going entirely to her opponent, plus a type disadvantage on top of that, there was simply no way she could hold her ground against another great mage on his own territory.
Medea of the Age of Gods operated by the same principle. From the perspective of the red-haired man who had access to detailed records on the Betrayer Witch, her ceiling was genuinely extraordinary.
She had studied under Hecate herself, one of the oldest goddesses in all of Greek mythology. By the standards of the Age of Gods, calling her a top-five mage was not an exaggeration.
If she had been operating in her own era, there would be barely anyone in the Fifth Holy Grail War worth putting in the same room as her.
But a high ceiling was one thing. Performing in a Holy Grail War was something else entirely.
Medea was a development-type mage, and the Holy Grail War's breakneck pace simply didn't suit her. In theory, given a month or two to build up properly, Medea with a complete workshop could absolutely go head-to-head with top-tier Servants.
The problem was that nobody was going to give her that time. A standard Holy Grail War ran about seven days. The Three Founding Families could summon their Servants early and give someone like Medea a head start, but any outsider who tried to run her would just be raising a Servant who could get solo-killed by enemies inside her own magical territory.
A high ceiling was useless if you never got there. In the 1996 Yu-Gi-Oh manga, Holactie the Creator of Light wins the instant it's summoned, but what competitive deck ever actually ran Holactie?
The workshop Medea could throw together in this timeframe would honestly be worse than the one Kayneth had set up in the Fourth Holy Grail War.
And at least Kayneth's workshop could genuinely hold off a second-rate Servant.
"So the last war's winner was the Lancer? And the one with the most decorated record was the Caster?"
"What happened to the Archer and Saber? One was eliminated on the first night and the other spent the whole war as a bench-warmer?"
In the Tohsaka manor, the man in red had finished cleaning up the disaster of a living room and stood holding a broom with genuine puzzlement, the arrogance from earlier completely gone.
Dawn had broken. Tohsaka Rin had not once used a Command Seal to force him into anything. Instead, she had spoken to him with a kind of basic respect, the way a fallen noblewoman who had been managing her own household since childhood might address someone. She had laid out for him everything she knew about this Holy Grail War.
The Servant Killer Medea, for one. The Radiant Knight Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, for another.
The arrogant, overwhelming King of Heroes. And the great King Arthur of Britain, that glory-hoarding middleweight.
None of that was the most significant thing, though. The most significant thing was that Tohsaka Tokiomi had apparently not yet died, merely been left fully paralyzed and voiceless.
All of this had left his thoughts in knots. He genuinely could not figure out how Medea of the Age of Gods was supposed to connect to a phrase like "top-tier Servant" in the context of a Holy Grail War. Which version of Medea had been summoned? Neither the original legend nor the demigod variant had any record of noteworthy close-combat ability.
"You cleaned the whole thing up overnight. I'll give you that much."
Tohsaka Rin came downstairs in her pajamas, still washing her face and brushing her teeth after about five hours of sleep.
Coming down to find the living room completely spotless, her previously drained mood lifted noticeably.
Summoning a Heroic Spirit drew on the mage's own magical energy, which was precisely why only those with magical ability could be chosen by the Grail. If you couldn't sustain the magical cost of the ritual, you had no hope of maintaining a Servant's supply either.
She was genuinely moved. She had only mentioned it offhandedly and hadn't ordered him around at all, and yet this ancient hero had gone ahead and done it entirely on his own.
Not that she hadn't considered giving this insufferable, self-important man a forced order.
But her father's letters had been very clear: do not treat Heroic Spirits like ordinary familiars. These ancient heroes all carried their own pride and dignity. Without that basic level of mutual respect, combat compatibility and coordination would suffer greatly.
That was a lesson written in blood and regret by Tohsaka Tokiomi himself, and Rin was going to take it seriously.
"...Asking a Heroic Spirit to clean the house. I have difficulty imagining a more unusual first order from a Master."
"Even ancient heroes should take responsibility for the messes they cause. Besides, it was partly my own mistake. And I didn't use a Command Seal on you, did I? I still intend to thank you properly."
Rin finished washing up at her leisure, pulled open the curtains she had kept drawn since the previous night, let in some fresh air, and stretched contentedly in the warm morning sunlight.
The man in red fell quiet again. That was what he found strangest of all. His proud Master had actually said thank you. And she had genuinely shown respect to a Heroic Spirit.
"Setting aside the matter of Medea for a moment, I'm somewhat puzzled. Under the rules of the Holy Grail War, the Church actually published all the information from the previous war? Including the true names of the Servants and their full battle records?"
He set a freshly brewed cup of red tea in front of Rin and frowned. That was deeply irregular behavior.
Most of the time, information about a Holy Grail War was gathered through whoever had the most useful intelligence networks. Fuyuki's Holy Grail Wars had rarely, if ever, involved public disclosure of all Servant identities. The Third Holy Grail War's participants, for instance, had no idea what the Einzbern family had smuggled into the ritual. Each of the Three Founding Families had their own under-the-table methods, and that was common knowledge nobody spoke aloud. Releasing all the details openly would just erode their advantages. The standard was to give a vague summary just detailed enough to trip up outsiders from the Clock Tower or foreign mages.
"I'm not entirely sure about the reasoning. The current supervisor is my senior at the Church, Kotomine Kirei. Maybe he thought it would be fairer that way?"
Rubbing her temple, Rin reached for the tea he had placed in front of her. She was genuinely a little surprised he already knew where she kept it.
Servants received a general instillation of modern knowledge upon summoning, yes. But knowing something and being able to do it were different things. That he had adapted to her household so quickly suggested some kind of frightening adaptive ability.
"Master, don't you think there's a problem with this?"
The man in red frowned.
"What problem? The Church published information. They did it in the spirit of fairness."
"Specifically, the Church states that the strongest Servant of the previous war was Medea of the Age of Gods. Is that actually accurate, or is it an exaggeration? Deliberate misinformation to steer uninformed mages toward summoning her?"
"...?"
"Because to my knowledge, Medea's legend contains no record of close combat. Her magical mastery is unparalleled, but that's precisely why it would be impossible for her to have also trained her swordsmanship to the level of the Three Knights."
There was no question that Kotomine Kirei was full of ulterior motives, even if the specific reasoning wasn't clear yet. Publishing that information was undeniably a nudge to push other mages toward summoning Medea.
And the fabrications were absolutely brazen. Medea's close-combat ability, to put it plainly, was the kind of thing where even an Assassin, without Presence Concealment, could probably gut her standing directly in front of her.
"So my personal assessment is that this intelligence contains deliberate misdirection. There may be something seriously wrong at the Church. Their historically neutral position is now open to question."
"Stop right there. I saw it with my own eyes. Lady Medea defeated the Berserker alone."
Tohsaka Rin frowned and cut him off immediately. She understood he was trying to look out for her.
But this kind of attitude, dismissing the opponent as weak, was exactly the recklessness that got people killed. The Fifth Holy Grail War had essentially already shown one of its cards, and someone was confirmed to have Medea's catalyst. Treating her like a pushover would only make their own defeat more catastrophic.
"You saw this? During the Fourth Holy Grail War? You were only six years old at the time."
The man in red's expression shifted to something approaching disbelief.
"I'd rather not get into the details, but I can tell you plainly, Archer: Lady Medea saved my life back then. I watched with my own eyes as she personally killed the Berserker, who had the highest stat values in the entire war, right there on the commercial street near the new district."
"She saved your life? A six-year-old's life? The Betrayer Witch saved a small girl?"
"Is that a problem?"
"..."
Yes. That is a very big problem.
You're talking about the Medea who set up bounded fields and used every student in a school as a magical energy battery. That same person went out of her way to save the life of an obviously hostile Tohsaka Tokiomi's daughter?
What kind of script was this? He had expected some minor differences between this war and the version he remembered. He hadn't expected the Fourth Holy Grail War itself to be this wildly off.
This was wrong. Something was fundamentally wrong. Was this even the Fuyuki City he recognized?
Everything was insane. By normal logic, a single anti-magic trait from any of the Three Knights would cripple Medea halfway through a fight. There was no rational explanation for how she could have solo-killed a Berserker whose stats were even higher than the Three Knights. Was this some kind of alternate timeline?
Wait.
Could it be that this summoning wasn't just about his own wishes, but that the Counter Force had also been involved...
"Well, looks like this one is going to require a bit more seriousness than expected. Time to warm up."
The man in red, still wearing the cleaning apron, seemed to have thought of something and rolled his neck with mild resignation, the way an athlete prepares before a match.
Whether this was a wish fulfilled or just another overtime shift, things had gotten considerably more complicated.
"Kirei? It's me, Tohsaka Rin."
Not far away, Rin had picked up the living room telephone and dialed.
"I completed the contract with Archer last night. Could you handle the official Master registration? As for his true name, there was an irregularity with the catalyst during summoning, so he has no memory of it. Is registration still possible under those circumstances?"
"Forgotten his true name? That's a rare case. You didn't use a catalyst and performed an affinity summon instead?"
"Yes. I value compatibility over raw power."
Translation: she was broke and had to rely on luck.
"What are the Servant's characteristics? Describe them and I can search the records to help identify him."
The black-robed priest on the other end of the line narrowed his eyes carefully and began fishing for information. The Archer class's strength had been made very clear in the Fourth Holy Grail War.
He had no desire to face another one. King Gilgamesh's style of completely unreasonable long-range bombardment had been more than enough, thank you. This time around, Illyasviel, that hexagonal powerhouse, was not in his hands. Even with the cards he was currently holding, his confidence had limits.
"Don't bother. I'll work it out myself. You're busy."
"Wait, Rin..."
"That's all for now. I'll come bother you when I feel like it. I still need to take some time off from school, so anything else can wait until I've handled that."
Click. The line went dead.
In the basement of the Church, Kotomine Kirei frowned over his mapo tofu.
His hair was longer now than it had been in the Fourth Holy Grail War. The black priest's vestment was worn under a long dark-violet overcoat. His body armor was still the Kevlar fiber Mystic Code suit underneath, though his footwear had been swapped for black ankle boots.
Tohsaka Rin was the third Master to complete formal registration. The first two had been Matou Sakura from the Matou family and a homunculus from the Einzbern family.
All three had the advantage of being able to summon their Servants early, and none of them had let slip a single hint about their Servant's identity. Every attempt to draw it out of them had failed.
"So tonight is the first night of the Holy Grail War."
Kotomine Kirei looked at the Command Seals running up his arm. In the battle against Emiya Kiritsugu ten years ago, he had been reduced to seven. Now he had ten.
Not because he had been selected anew, but because of a clause in the Self-Geis Scroll he had signed with Matou Zouken years ago.
Zouken had helped him relieve a certain unlucky mage of her participation rights and Command Seals.
That unlucky mage's name was Bazett Fraga McRemitz.
She was an executor assigned by the Mage's Association's Sealing Designation Enforcement Department, someone Kirei himself had recommended for participation. By reputation, she could face a Heroic Spirit head-on and held the title "Human Weapon."
Unfortunately, she had been lured into Matou Zouken's workshop, where Kirei had severed her left arm the moment the encounter began. Heavily wounded and inside the territory of a great mage, she had naturally had no hope of continuing the fight.
As for the rumor about a Burial Agency executor coming? That had been bait. Deliberately released to fool the self-important Masters who thought their intelligence networks were so active.
Kirei's official role in this war was supervisor. He was not supposed to be a participant. But a Church with absolutely no participant of its own would raise suspicions, so rather than fabricating an absent-sounding excuse, it was cleaner to do what had been done last time: invent a non-existent Master and play the part of an innocent bystander from the shadows.
That technique, incidentally, he had learned from Illyasviel. You want to know who a certain someone's Master is? Terribly sorry. No idea, even if they're standing directly in front of you.
"The Einzbern family has deployed in full force. Their Servant appears to be Berserker-class, but reportedly retains some degree of rational thought."
"The Matou family's summoned Servant is from Greek mythology. The magical energy output on the first night was terrifying."
"The Tohsaka family made no noticeable disturbance during their summon, but a silent summoning can sometimes be the most dangerous kind."
Take Illyasviel, for example.
In the Fourth Holy Grail War, your first impression of her was that she wasn't especially formidable.
But for an Assassin, she had been alarmingly effective in combat. When pushed to her limits, she could close the distance on any of the Three Knights and briefly hold her ground against them.
"Should I begin reconnaissance?"
The cold Servant leaning against the wall asked in a flat tone. He looked sharp-edged and unfeeling.
This was the Heroic Spirit Kirei had summoned not long after acquiring his participant status, chosen from a different catalyst entirely, not Illyasviel.
His feelings about Illyasviel as a Servant were complicated. The compatibility had been exceptional, yes. Both of them were drawn to the destruction and despair sleeping inside the Grail.
But that was exactly the problem. They were too compatible. Both of them wanted to kill the other.
Two genuine villains cannot coexist peacefully. When it came to the Grail, they both wanted to monopolize that destruction for themselves. Even with Command Seals available, he couldn't guarantee that Illyasviel, upon being summoned and seeing just how many Command Seals were on his arm, wouldn't decide the distribution was unfair and lop the hand off through one or two of them as insurance.
There was no need to ask whether she could do it. She absolutely could. Back when he had three Command Seals, she had extorted him down to one. The arm had been cut with no warning whatsoever.
The more practical reason, of course, was simply that he couldn't find her catalyst. Illyasviel's relic had never been recovered from Francesca. The affinity summon had failed. It was almost as if their compatibility had quietly diminished, the resonance no longer as strong as before.
Which was, in truth, accurate.
Even Kirei himself hadn't quite realized it yet, but at the time of their original pairing, he had been standing at a crossroads between good and evil. Outward kindness concealing inward malice, yes, but also the genuine potential to develop in either direction. The version of him who now purely craved ruin and tragedy simply could no longer resonate with Illyasviel.
Because Illyasviel's malice was the kind that still yearned for happiness and beauty.
Kotomine Kirei could have been a saint or a villain.
Little Lady Illya could have been benevolent or malevolent.
That shared contradiction had been their deepest point of compatibility. A purely evil person could never summon her.
They were both deeply contradictory people, self-contradicting, not yet fully committed to one path.
"Go and scout. Keep it light, just a preliminary probe. Don't engage in full combat."
One of the Command Seals on his arm flickered faintly. Kirei glanced at the cold spearman behind him with a measured look.
"By the power of this Command Seal: investigate and determine Archer's true identity. Do not make yourself conspicuous."
One bright red Command Seal dissolved into magical energy.
It wasn't extravagance on Kirei's part. The Heroic Spirit he had summoned was simply that powerful, the catalyst alone having nearly bankrupted him.
But proportional to that power came a completely unreasonable magical consumption. Even a great mage would struggle to sustain the supply requirements.
Just existing in the current world cost at least one Command Seal per day to sustain. Otherwise the Master would be drained to a dried husk.
Other Masters planned their battles around tactics. His battles were planned around how many Command Seals he had left.
"Illyasviel's self-supply really was something else..."
The thought struck him, and Kirei found himself genuinely appreciating the little lady's independent magical generation for the first time.
Aside from the slight issue of being rather hard on her Masters, she had truly been a near-perfect hexagonal specimen.
The downside being that Command Seal amplification had almost no effect on her under normal circumstances.
"Understood, Master."
The cold spearman dissolved into spirit form and vanished, clearly already gone.
His personality wasn't truly cold. It was simply that he found most things in the world to be perfectly ordinary and held no negative emotions like hatred or jealousy toward anything in particular. The fact that he had proactively suggested scouting the enemy Servant's identity showed that at his core, he was an exceptionally composed and deliberate hero.
It made no difference to him whether his Master was a foolish idealist or an acknowledged villain. He was simply here because he had been summoned, responding to someone who sought his strength.
There was perhaps no more loyal Heroic Spirit Servant than him. He simply wasn't very good at expressing it, which made it easy for Masters to mistake him for being difficult.
"Servant. Caster. Medea."
"Answering the call of the Holy Grail. Tell me, are you my Master?"
At that same moment, in a detached villa somewhere in Fuyuki City, a summoning array glowing deep blue flared to life.
From within it emerged a figure wearing an indigo-purple hooded cloak over a purple outer robe. Her face was hidden beneath the cowl, making her look like the mysterious witch of legend, an alluring beauty with a single braid by her left ear, her lips painted purple.
She stepped out of the array and raised her head to look at the one who had called her.
"HAHAHAHA! Medea! It's really Medea! The one who wins the Grail in this war is definitely me!"
A beautiful young man of about twenty-five with golden hair and brown skin threw his arms wide and laughed at the ceiling, already lost in the fantasy of his own victory.
It had been worth every coin he'd paid for the Fifth Holy Grail War entry rights and for Medea's catalyst.
This was going to be magnificent. A triumph so dazzling it would make history.
"Master, why are you... what exactly are you laughing about..."
"Hah! I laugh at the poverty of the Three Founding Families, at the shortsightedness of the Church. To think that even now, after I have openly revealed my summoning, they have not yet come to surrender. Absolute imbeciles."
"?"
"Medea, tonight, go declare war. Tell the Three Knights and every other Servant to come crawl over here and die on their own. I want to fight all ten of them!"