Chapter 394: The Tohsaka Residence is Blown Up
In Fuyuki City, 2004, a western-style villa perched on a small hillside was suddenly struck by a beam of red light descending from the sky.
"Aaaaaaahhh!!! My house!" A heart-wrenching, sorrowful scream rang out.
The girl with black twin-tails watched in despair as her home was blasted into fragments. Even the ground underneath had been pulverized, and the treasure chests that emerged from the subsoil were engulfed in that red light, disintegrating into powder.
"My gems... my pocket money stored in cans! The treasure chests buried underground!"
Rin Tohsaka was supposed to be a student at the Clock Tower, studying under Lord El-Melloi II, but one day, the world terminated for unknown reasons. When she woke up, she found herself back in her childhood, shortly after the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War. The sights around her were nostalgic, but she soon noticed discrepancies.
Although this world still possessed the Three Great Families and the Holy Church, they were invisibly constrained everywhere. The Fourth Holy Grail War had indeed begun, but it was thoroughly destroyed in the final battle. Every combat encounter had abruptly stopped just before causing widespread devastation, being broken up and killed by other Servants.
As if by some miracle, a cruel war had failed to inflict mass destruction upon the lives of ordinary people.
After the Holy Grail War ended, entities related to it also vanished. Her father, Tokiomi Tohsaka, and her mother, Aoi Tohsaka, were confirmed dead; as someone who had been reborn, she could not alter such established facts.
Strangely, when she went to the Matou household to inquire about Sakura's disappearance, she was told that they had never adopted a child. Now that the Magiri patriarch—the great magus Zouken Matou—had vanished, the Matou magecraft lineage had completely collapsed due to the lack of an heir to the Magic Crest.
Furthermore, Kiritsugu Emiya, the victor of that war, had not adopted a boy named Shirou.
At that moment, Rin understood: this world was fundamentally broken. The Second Magic already involved parallel worlds, so she was not entirely ignorant; she simply lacked the power to manifest her knowledge into reality.
With Kirei Kotomine, the fake priest, gone, Rin used the knowledge from her previous life to manage the Tohsaka estate while training her magecraft and martial arts. She spent exorbitant sums of money to find a master of Baji Quan from China to learn hand-to-hand combat. This time, she built a solid foundation in her youth so that she could go further once her body matured.
Until one day, the world mutated again. Beast-kin swarmed in alternate spaces, and a new Holy Grail was generated. As Command Spells appeared on Rin's hand, the Fifth Holy Grail War of this world officially commenced.
Rin utilized her own strength to thrillingly defeat the other Masters, obtain the Grail, and destroy it.
But suddenly, another new Holy Grail emerged, followed by six corrupted Servants. One of them released their Noble Phantasm, directly轰 (bombing) the Tohsaka residence—leading to the current scene.
To understand the cause of this explosion, one must trace back to before the start of the Fifth Holy Grail War. With the Grail about to manifest, Rin had laid out a magic circle at home to summon a Heroic Spirit in hopes of ending the conflict.
Deep in the basement of the western-style villa, in a dark chamber, a blood-red magic circle emitted an eerie glow.
A girl's voice resonated from within, chanting the incantation to summon an existence.
"...I am the one who achieves all deeds of good in the world, I am the one who gathers all deeds of evil in the world, Seven heavens clad in three words of power, come forth from the ring of restraint, protector of the scales..."
Lightning flashed; massive, dense magical energy gathered into a mist covering the summoning circle. Then, the figure of a girl was summoned into the present world.
"Are you the one summoning me?!! You've got guts, human... Fufufufu hehehehahaha~!!" Amidst the dense magical smoke, a girl appeared.
Her voice sounded devilish, reminiscent of the mystic sounds of creatures from Digimon or the singing Ibis from Kemono Friends.
"...Wait? Who are you? You look strangely familiar, and this hair color... I feel like I've seen it somewhere?" Rin scrutinized her.
"Yes! I am Gudako from Chaldea! Because of a sudden incident, Chaldea seems to have fallen into an emergency. Then Da Vinci sent me to this world. Actually, I was separated from my cute junior, Mash, and a pet."
"Chaldea? I feel like I've heard that name before. Is it an institution established by the Mage's Association? But you did appear on the summoning circle. Could it be that you are my Servant?" Rin squinted, eyeing Gudako suspiciously.
Gudako patted Rin's shoulder and laughed: "No, Ishtar-chan, what's wrong with you? Is this a new trope for playing dumb and retorting? No matter how you look at it, I'm just a normal human~!"
"Wait! What's with this familiar uniform you're wearing?!" Rin caught sight of the girl's attire, grabbed the hand Gudako was patting her with, and said angrily.
"Ah, this is cosplay, cosplay," Gudako said casually, waving her hand with a laugh.
"Liar! There are traces of magical energy on it; this is a Mystic Code? The quality is too high! Are you an enemy?!" Rin whipped her hand away, glaring at her.
"This is a recent event—a Mystic Code developed by Chaldea." Gudako pinched the hem of her uniform, spinning around to look at herself; it actually fit quite well. Since being pulled in by Chaldea, she was technically a staff member. But in age, she was a third-year high school student—anyway, she was still a minor, so it was within an acceptable range.
"No, no, although I am a Master, I'm not a Master participating in the Holy Grail War. Did you make a mistake somewhere? Summoning a Servant is clearly very simple, isn't it?" Gudako looked at the black-haired girl, puzzled.
"How is that possible! ...No... before, when I was chanting, I accidentally bit my tongue, missing the optimal timing for the summoning, causing the rhythm to lag... Could it be... no way!" The more Rin recalled, the less confident she felt.
Although she was considered a rare genius in this era—impeccable in talent, aptitude, and heritage—and even if her looks were slightly inferior to the Golden and Silver Princesses of the Clock Tower, she possessed the spirit and strength of a warrior, believing her personal charisma was second to none. After her rebirth, she had advanced even further.
Her first ancestor, Nagato Tohsaka, was one of the three founders of the Fuyuki Grail System two hundred years ago and a disciple recognized by the Second Magician. Though he was considered mediocre and had a personality defect of losing his temper and acting recklessly, he never made mistakes. Thus, he attempted the project and passed down the blueprints for the Jewel Sword. While Zelretch didn't hold high expectations for him, Nagato was the only known disciple of a Magician who didn't go insane.
'Always act elegantly, and give everything in every competition.' Nagato established this family motto.
Generation after generation, the Tohsakas strictly implemented this, appearing to outsiders as rigid, inflexible fools. But it was this family that won the chance for change during the Third Holy Grail War. By integrating the bloodline of a genius from the Mage's Association into the bloodline of a Japanese magus, the birth of later geniuses became possible. Rin had inherited the Gandr magic and gem-based property-conversion magecraft from the Nordic Finnish family of Edelfelt via her grandmother.
Regrettably, the Tohsaka head of the household possessed a certain hereditary characteristic: while they performed perfectly most of the time, they suffered failures at the most critical moments—to a degree that could only be called a curse.
"Aaaaaah!" She clawed at her own hair in frustration, shouting angrily: "What is going on! Me! Get a grip! Even after being reborn, I still can't shake the habit of failing at the critical moment! What do I do? What do I do! This time, even the suspicious red Archer is gone!"
Bang!
Just then, in the courtyard outside the Tohsaka residence, there was a sound like shattering glass. A male warrior with blood-red eyes, wearing a tight fighting suit and holding a long red-thorned spear, ran wildly, charging into the Tohsaka house with astonishing speed. The defensive barrier set up outside was easily smashed through by his spear.
When it came down to it, gem magecraft was all about money! To trigger high-level magecraft, one needed high-grade gems. To block a Heroic Spirit, one needed massive A-rank gems. Even a wealthy landlord's family didn't have many of these—each one used was one less left.
Rin, even reborn, would never play so recklessly! Absolutely not! Otherwise, why did she work so hard to exercise her body, practice martial arts, and do sets of push-ups before bed? Obviously, if something could be solved with her fists, she would never use gems!
Bang!
Another sound of a barrier being destroyed echoed. The enemy Servant had already entered the villa and would soon find the basement. At this rate, she would have to rely on the Baji Quan she had practiced for ten years since her rebirth—barely reaching the introductory level—to engage in hand-to-hand combat with a Heroic Spirit.
"There's no helping you; take this." Gudako pulled a smartphone from her pocket and threw it over.
"This is a mobile phone? You're clearly not from the year 2004, but what good is this?" Rin reached out, caught it, and asked in confusion.
"Use this to summon a Servant, and then transform!" Gudako said, giving a thumbs up.
"Huh?" Rin shouted, bewildered. She frowned and looked at Gudako angrily: "Are you treating me like an idiot?! How could a cell phone summon a Heroic Spirit!"
Gudako puffed out her cheeks: "It just can! As long as you have enough luck. Rin-san, you have one-quarter European blood, you're Japanese nobility, and you know Chinese martial arts; maybe you can get a Zhuge Liang on the first try, a Tamamo-no-Mae on the second, a Merlin on the third—then you can dominate everything!"
"I don't quite understand, but I only feel a sense of false advertising from the second half of that sentence. It is definitely not as simple as you say," Rin said irritably.
"Ehehe, was I exposed?" Gudako tapped her own head in a cutesy manner, then looked at Rin: "But the phone's summoning system is real."
Rin tapped the phone, entered the game, and opened the summoning card pool with skepticism. Just as a gold-light card face was about to flip over—
A loud boom erupted from the door above the basement. A rapidly rotating red spear carved over a dozen long gouges into the door before it exploded. In the next instant, the Lancer burst into the basement. Black mist emanated from his body, and his crimson pupils burned with madness, like a ferocious hound that would never let its prey go.
"Finally found you. Oh, two young ladies. You haven't summoned a Servant yet? That's a headache. The order I received was to dispose of all the Masters." Cu Chulainn leveled his long spear, facing them head-on.
"Cu Chulainn!" Gudako cried out. The first Singularity she faced in Chaldea was the burning Fuyuki City; it was Cu Chulainn who had helped her then. She never expected that there would be a world where she had to fight him.
Seeing the Lancer, the black-haired girl realized something and curled her lip: "So he didn't die completely! That fake priest!"
"Oh, young lady, looks like you'd already guessed. But my current Master is cowardly and in a half-dead state, so he sent me to solve the troublesome Masters. You two are really interesting. Looks like I'll have to finish you here." Cu Chulainn shook his head helplessly, looking quite displeased.
"What do we do? Rin-senpai!" Gudako asked.
"Aaaaaah! Enough! We're running!" Rin grabbed Gudako, dragged her onto a teleportation magic circle, and in the next moment, the two girls appeared at a wall corner a hundred meters outside the villa.
After all, this was the home of a magus, and this basement was the Tohsaka magic workshop—how could there be no preparations? Rin triggered the mechanism to seal the basement, meaning even a high-ranking Servant wouldn't be able to easily break out for a while.
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