After obtaining the eighth chess piece, Eichi began preparing the summoning ritual.
Since summoning the seven Servants, Eichi had temporarily neglected the continued production and promotion of stories related to Heroic Spirits.
Because of this, the summoning targets he could choose from were very limited.
Tamamo-no-Mae, the Caster from F/E, and the corrupted Gilles de Rais from F/Z.
Summoning Caster Gilles de Rais was impossible.
After all, Eichi was not a Curse User.
Therefore, the only Servant Eichi could currently summon to assist Medea was Tamamo-no-Mae.
Eichi's earliest understanding of Tamamo-no-Mae came from the F/E game, shared by someone whose name he could no longer remember.
According to the game's lore.
Tamamo-no-Mae was a wisp of a Divine Spirit that split from Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess in Japan's mythology. She was a manifestation of one aspect of Amaterasu's personality.
Due to Amaterasu's status and power in Japan, Tamamo-no-Mae, as an Incarnation of Amaterasu, was also extremely powerful.
At that time, there was a way to calculate Tamamo-no-Mae's strength.
If the strength of a top-tier Servant was set at 100.
Then a one-tailed Tamamo-no-Mae's strength would be 9.
She could not even defeat a second-tier Servant and was a contender for the weakest Servant.
A two-tailed Tamamo-no-Mae's strength would be 9 × 9, which equals 81.
This increase in strength was already extremely large.
A three-tailed Tamamo-no-Mae's strength would be 9 × 9 × 9, which equals 729.
By analogy, a fully powered nine-tailed Tamamo-no-Mae's strength would exceed 380 million.
It was quite absurd.
"I just don't know how many tails this summoned Tamamo-no-Mae will have."
Although he could roughly guess the answer, since the summoning was not yet complete, he could still fantasize a little.
"Declare..."
Accompanied by a familiar surge of magical power, a magnificent figure appeared before Eichi.
"Your trustworthy and peerless beauty, the shrine maiden fox, Caster has arrived, desu!"
Appearing before Eichi with a lively voice was a young woman slightly taller than Artoria.
She had brown fox ears and a fox tail, with a large bow tied behind her head.
She wore a clearly Improvementsed and ornate kimono, and her figure was well developed.
"One tail, huh..."
After seeing Tamamo-no-Mae's appearance, Eichi confirmed it.
"Eh? Does Master prefer me with more tails? But if that happens, I would become very scary, you know."
Tamamo-no-Mae lightly tapped her cheek with a finger as she spoke, her tone slightly troubled.
Eichi naturally understood what Tamamo-no-Mae meant by "scary."
Tamamo-no-Mae only had one tail when summoned, not because she was injured or weakened after becoming a Servant.
Instead, she personally severed her other eight tails.
This was done to prevent herself from making terrible mistakes due to her immense power.
Initially, as a goddess, Tamamo-no-Mae did not care much about humans.
In her eyes, humans were merely beings full of limitations, and their lives held little meaning.
In their short lifespans, no matter how much they gained, everything would eventually disappear at the moment of death.
However, a strange phenomenon caught Tamamo-no-Mae's attention.
Even though she could not see any elements that should make humans happy, humans still appeared extremely happy.
Because of this, Tamamo-no-Mae began carefully observing the humans who worshipped her.
During this process, she developed great curiosity toward humans.
Finally, driven by that curiosity, a thought formed in Tamamo-no-Mae's mind.
Should she also try interacting with humans and serving them?
Perhaps she could find the same happiness humans possessed.
Thus, Tamamo-no-Mae transformed into a Nine-tailed Fox and descended to the human world.
However, under the tricks of fate.
Tamamo-no-Mae not only failed to find the happiness she sought but also caused the downfall of five Dynasties.
Karna once referred to Tamamo-no-Mae as a Queen.
She was also called the demonic fox who caused the fall of five Dynasties.
Among these, the most detailed account occurred during the Heian period, involving her and Emperor Toba.
At that time, Tamamo-no-Mae had lost her memories as a Divine Spirit. Under the name Kuzunoha, she gained Emperor Toba's favor due to her talent and beauty.
Of course, this may also have been due to the effect of her Dakini Heaven Method. When used by a woman, the Dakini Heaven Method could easily win the favor of those in high positions.
However, not long after Tamamo-no-Mae entered the palace, Emperor Toba contracted a strange illness. It was reportedly complications caused by obesity and other conditions.
Originally, this was nothing unusual. However, Tamamo-no-Mae had lost her Divine Spirit memories at the time.
Therefore, she did not know how to treat Emperor Toba. At the same time, someone exposed Tamamo-no-Mae's nonhuman identity.
As a result, everyone believed that Emperor Toba's illness had been caused by Tamamo-no-Mae.
After being exiled, Tamamo-no-Mae regained her identity as a Divine Spirit while suffering the pain of being abandoned by the one she loved.
Because she was a Nine-tailed Fox, a large number of foxes quickly gathered around her.
Those foxes comforted Tamamo-no-Mae, telling her not to be sad and that she would meet someone better in the future.
Thus, Tamamo-no-Mae settled in the wilderness.
However, although Tamamo-no-Mae had no intention of taking revenge on humans.
Humans had no intention of letting her go.
The army sent to subjugate Tamamo-no-Mae soon arrived. At first, Tamamo-no-Mae still tried to resolve the situation peacefully through negotiation.
But humans refused to believe the words of a "monster."
With no other choice, Tamamo-no-Mae could only defeat the invading army.
Since then, the kindhearted Tamamo-no-Mae fell into deep sorrow after taking tens of thousands of lives.
Finally, after many failed negotiations.
Tamamo-no-Mae, who was not even allowed to leave the land, chose to accept subjugation.
This was the story of Tamamo-no-Mae in the Nasuverse.
Normally, such a Tamamo-no-Mae should not have become a Heroic Spirit.
However, her desire to become a good wife was too strong. Eventually, through a fortunate opportunity, she became a Heroic Spirit.
After learning from her painful experiences, Tamamo-no-Mae believed that her immense power was the root of the disasters she caused.
Therefore, she severed her tails.
This was the Tamamo-no-Mae of the Nasuverse, a peerless beauty with a dark past who truly regarded her husband as her entire world.
Later, the tails she severed became separate entities.
It was said that the relationship between those entities and Tamamo-no-Mae was not very good.
However, Eichi did not know much about that.
After entering society, he rarely had the time or opportunity to calmly play games and carefully understand their stories.
In addition, the account he created when the game first launched became unusable after a short time due to issues with his phone's system.
Because of this, Eichi did not know much about Tamamo-no-Mae in FGO.
He had only heard that someone seemed to use her tails as replacement accounts.
"It's not that I prefer more tails. I'm just curious how you maintain balance with so many tails."
"You're curious about that? Master is really interesting."
Tamamo-no-Mae crossed her arms and began thinking about how to answer.
"How should I explain it? It's an instinctive feeling. Having many tails does not affect daily life."
"Is that so."
Although he did not fully understand, if it was an instinctive ability, there was nothing he could do about it.
After all, Eichi did not have a tail. He imagined it was similar to how people naturally controlled their hands and feet.
"In that case, please take care of me from now on, Tamamo-no-Mae."
Eichi raised his hand and revealed his Command Spell, completing the contract with Tamamo-no-Mae.
(To be continued.)
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◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)