Chapter 264: Emiya and Hakuno
The young man in mid-conversation found memories from an alternate world surfacing in his mind once more.
Out in the cosmos, catching the sun's rays and glowing with light, a system had begun to rotate slowly around the Earth since its formation. Though humans called it a satellite, it was actually a surveillance system providing permanent, 24-hour, uninterrupted monitoring of the Earth.
The Moon Cell Automaton—an energy accumulator hidden beneath the lunar surface. A massive spherical photonic crystal 3,000 kilometers in diameter, nearly the size of the Moon itself, it had been recording the Earth since before the birth of biological life. It was, arguably, the most comprehensive database of the planet.
By recording everything of Earth's past and utilizing the present, it predicted all possible futures. Through billions of centuries of evolution, it had become an omnipotent computer rivaling the solar system itself.
There was a man with white hair and red clothes who had participated in a Holy Grail War during his lifetime. To save innocent residents caught in an accident, he made a contract with the Moon Cell, selling his soul to be driven as a Heroic Spirit under the concept of an "Ally of Justice."
In the Moon Holy Grail War, the one who summoned him was a certain girl. She could be considered a beauty, but she lacked personality and her face was largely devoid of expression. With brownish-chestnut hair, she stood as still as a doll when motionless.
She was somewhat taciturn and had a thin presence, yet once she committed to something, she refused to give up even upon death. Known as the weakest Master in history, she was clearly terrified, yet she insisted on walking forward alongside her Servant.
She was an incredibly strong and gentle person, tying her life tightly to her Servant—an existence that lived and died, advanced and retreated, as one with him.
He fought side-by-side with the girl, eventually arriving before Twice H. Pieceman alongside the Tohsaka Rin of that world.
Within this space, hundreds of stone coffins were piled haphazardly; these were the corpses of champions who had previously reached this place.
Directly ahead, atop a small mountain of ten or so cluttered coffins, sat a man wearing glasses, looking their way.
His refined face now held only the weary look of the dead, his eyes devoid of light. It seemed the long wait had exhausted him, rendering him numb to all things.
Hovering in the air behind the man was a cube composed of blue squares. At the center of the cube's interior was a sphere of light, rotating continuously.
"Welcome. I would have liked to hold a victory banquet for you, but unfortunately, the functions here can no longer support such a thing. However, praise must be given: your arrival here proves that you are the most outstanding of all Masters across the generations," the man said, looking admiringly at the girl with long brown hair.
"The final dream I saw in life, the ideal that could not begin—to realize this, I have stayed here."
"A dream of the dead? What exactly do you intend to do?"
"War. Letting all of humanity slaughter each other equally on the same stage, just like this Holy Grail War," the man said calmly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Currently, humanity lives only for the sake of survival, obsessed with conservation and mere continuation. To be honest, they are no longer a necessary existence for this planet. Why did we once constantly wage war, consume resources, and destroy the environment? Of course, it was for prosperity! If we stagnate, humanity has no value to speak of. Such a peace is meaningless; therefore, we can only move forward.
I have seen it. In the future extrapolated by the Moon Cell, humanity has entered its senescence. If things continue like this, they will only decline until extinction.
So the whole world needs a war—a struggle for survival where everyone must become a participant. Only then can human consciousness advance onto a different path.
My wish has been verified precisely because of your existence, winner of the Holy Grail War!"
The man looked at the girl with approval and continued: "At the start of the official matches, you were clearly the weakest, yet you persevered all the way and finally defeated the King of the World. You aren't someone who had innate aptitude like I did. You were just an unknown, ordinary person, but now you have grown into a representative holding the fate of the world.
It was war that tempered you; adversity turned your flesh and blood into steel, making you an existence that demonstrates human possibility." The man jumped down from the mountain of coffins, bowed to his guests like a butler, and moved aside to open the path.
"Link with the Holy Grail! You possess the right to let everyone in the world know the process of your growth. I hope you input this phrase into the Moon Cell: 'Conflict is necessary; humanity requires a long-overdue evolution.' Afterward, you are free to enjoy the fruits of your victory. Become a god, become a king—it is all your freedom!"
Reaching the core of the Moon Cell—the "brain" zone storing all past and future data—one finds a single-eyed box that runs as light and is imprisoned as light. Within it are imprisoned countless lights; if spread out, they would span a distance far longer than hundreds of millions of light-years. Utilizing these lights, one could even rewrite the physical laws of the world.
Stored here are trillions, even quadrillions of future possibilities. In the futures predicted by the Moon Cell, nothing is impossible. No matter what kind of future it leads to, the system has a way to simulate and realize it. Thus, any wish can be granted.
One only needs to issue a command to the Moon Cell, and in less than ten years, the Earth would become her ideal world. Whether changing social systems, modifying the environment, or transforming the rules of force—as long as it is a future simulated by the Moon Cell, the wish it contains can surely be realized.
Thus, calling the Moon Cell a "Holy Grail" is not inappropriate. Rather, compared to an ordinary Holy Grail, this is the ultimate wish-granting machine.
To an AI without intellect, this is merely a computational device executing tasks. But if a human wields this authority, it is undoubtedly an omnipotent wish-granting machine.
However, Hakuno rejected Twice's mania and defeated the Servant he summoned, the Savior (Buddha). According to the rules Twice established, the loser must die so the winner can ascend to a higher level.
Thus, Twice accepted his fate peacefully and vanished.
As the progenitor of the Buddhas, a realization of the ideal of saving humanity and establishing original Buddhism, the Savior was an enlightened one who had escaped the sufferings of life—an existence like the Savior of the Earth.
The Savior was an existence that a system of the Holy Grail War's level shouldn't have been able to summon or contain. It was only out of Shakyamuni Buddha's compassion for Twice that he downgraded himself to a Servant's level and descended to this world.
At this moment, because the Master was dead, even a Servant as strong as the Savior had to depart. Before disappearing, he opened his Eye of Wisdom and looked toward the white-haired Archer. Seeming to look through his eyes to the boy deep within his soul, Shakyamuni's eyes flowed with pity.
"I hope you, too, can allow 'him' to find salvation..."
Shirou, lurking within Nameless, widened his eyes, understanding that these words were directed at him.
But this war was destined from the start to have no winner.
The same applied to Hakuno. Her true body was a patient who had been cryogenically frozen thirty years ago due to a sudden brain disease. The Moon Cell recorded the girl's data and cast her into this world as an NPC.
It was only by chance that she gained self-awareness, which was why her presence was so low, her face expressionless, and why she didn't even have a wish of her own at first...
However, in this Moon Holy Grail War, she truly gained so very much. After experiencing all sorts of things, she gained a wish of her own.
"Master! Answers aren't something to be found, but something left behind as footprints. There is no need for guilt or shame. To be born without knowing the reason, to fight without understanding the reason, to die without being clear on the reason—there is nothing strange about that. That is what it means to be human! You are the best Master here. So, whether you go up or stay behind, move forward according to what your heart desires!" The white-haired man crossed his arms, his eyes fixed on the girl as he spoke.
Beside him was Rin—the girl who shared the same face, name, and father, yet was definitely not the same person. She also crossed her arms and said, "Don't look at me. I was prepared from the start. Although it's frustrating, I'm so glad the winner was you. If it had been me, I would have already lost... in terms of the heart."
The girl with long brown hair nodded, then resolutely ascended the stairs made of transparent rectangular blocks lowered from the Angelica Cage, walking up step by step.
Hakuno knew she had to make a choice. This was the right granted to her as the winner of the Holy Grail battlefield, and the duty she had to fulfill—she who, despite being an NPC without life or wishes, had taken the lives of her opponents floor by floor.
The girl understood that after ascending the stairs, her fate would be as Twice said: as "bugged" data, she would be discovered and formatted upon entering the Angelica Cage.
However, before disappearing, there might still be enough time to add a tiny wish. If it were just inputting a single line of text, she could probably manage it.
The girl had several wishes she wanted to realize. For instance, letting the only human girl remaining on the moon, Rin, return to Earth; For instance, sealing this far-too-dangerous wish-granting machine so that even magi could not touch it, ending the cruel war that repeatedly lured humans to this world to slaughter each other; For instance...
Time was insufficient, but she could at least choose the most important one...
But the decomposition speed was too fast...
The girl gritted her teeth and finished typing the last character, inputting it into the system.
"Honestly, if it was going to turn out like this, it wouldn't have mattered whether I came or not." The white-haired man appeared behind Hakuno, grumbling.
"Archer!" The girl called his name. She hadn't realized her Servant had followed her inside.
"Well, if the Master disappears, the Servant disappears with them. I have to exit regardless. I thought I'd come along to help you out, but you managed it all on your own. My concern was quite redundant," the man said self-deprecatingly.
Hakuno smiled. Hearing this man's insincere and sarcastic words... this would be the last time.
Thanks to Archer being there, the Angelica Cage had to analyze the data of an additional Servant, so the decomposition speed slowed down slightly.
In the process of reading the Moon Cell's recorded data, she found data closely associated with herself.
She learned that her original body was not yet dead, but was in a cryogenic sleep device due to an incurable, bizarre brain disease.
Hakuno decided to entrust her future to her original body on Earth, letting that woman—who had lost thirty years of memory due to the disorder—live on in place of her NPC self.
At the final moment before being decomposed, the girl sent out one email.
In a desert on Earth, a cell phone rang.
Information regarding the girl's sleeping original body was transmitted to the phone of the Rin who had returned to Earth. Her true self was not black-haired, but a girl with blonde twin-tails—the illegitimate daughter of Tohsaka Tokiomi and a lover he met while studying in Europe.
As a fellow comrade-in-arms, the blonde Rin swore she would definitely find Hakuno and save her. The terminal illness of thirty years ago now had a perfected cure; Hakuno could truly gain a new life.
However, even if the sleeping body on Earth woke up, she would forget everything due to the memory disorder. Her family and friends from life had long since scattered in the turmoil, perhaps all gone...
And for the girl dissolved in the Moon Cell, everything she experienced would not be transmitted to the original brain. Everything she went through in this Holy Grail War, everything she worked so hard for, would return to the void...
"Entrusting the future to the self that wakes from the dream? I see... It seems we are even similar in that regard. But the decisive difference is that you have no regrets; I'm a little envious of that..." The red Archer muttered to himself, gazing toward the spot where the girl had dissolved.
"Someone like you shouldn't disappear yet..."
In the next moment, the white-clad man standing atop the snow mountain tore through space, emerging from a black hole. He crossed the barriers of the worlds and absorbed his own clone.
Sensing the regret coming from his split-self, the white-clad man opened his glowing white eyes, which emitted a brilliant iridescent light. With a wave of his hand, he exerted a Creator-like authority, changing causality, vowing to reverse all misfortune.
In the world of the White Creator God, the taciturn girl with long brown hair was not decomposed. Instead, the girl within the Moon Cell space would obtain the Moon Regalia and live a happy life with her favorite Servants: the Red Saber (Nero), the Fox "Wife" (Tamamo), and Altera, who had turned into a child.
As for the girl "Hakuno" in the human world, after being successfully awakened, she joined a militia group. However, in this world, in no corner did there exist that white-haired, brown-skinned instructor or that white-haired, red-robed Heroic Spirit anymore...
Read ahead (60 chapters) by supporting me on buymeacoffee com/varietl or ko-fi edwriting