'But judging from her jet-black hair, the current Matou Sakura should not yet have been altered by Crest Worms.'
Thinking this, Alvin felt a little more at ease.
The black-haired little girl, dressed in a simple white dress, sat somewhat stiffly on the sofa. Beneath the hem of her skirt, her small, delicate feet were chilled and a little cold.
Alvin reached out and held her soft, pale feet. The warmth from his palms seemed to pass into Matou Sakura, easing the cold and stopping her body from trembling so much.
She instinctively lowered her head, looking at the black-robed servant kneeling beside her, and heard him continue, "If you don't mind, you can stay here for the time being. Once the Holy Grail War is over, I'll take you back to the Tohsaka household."
Matou Sakura paused slightly, hesitant and timid.
Although she didn't really understand how influential the Matou family was, she knew that if she stayed here, she might end up causing trouble for these two.
"Don't worry. If you want to stay, no one's going to take you away," Alvin said with a smile.
Alvin didn't consider himself some saint. The Matou family held considerable power in Fuyuki, and Matou Zouken was a monster who had lived for several hundred years.
If he were an ordinary person, he might hesitate over whether he should save Matou Sakura, whether he should have brought her home tonight.
After all, saving her meant becoming an enemy of the Matou family.
But Alvin had inherited the White Dragon's status panel after all. Doing what he wanted within his capabilities wasn't a problem.
He didn't aspire to save the world. As long as he could live without shame in his heart, that was enough.
Perhaps because of the warmth from the boy's hand, Matou Sakura's originally anxious gaze gradually calmed down.
Many years later, when Matou Sakura had grown up, whenever she read The Legends of King Arthur or stories about the White Dragon, she would always think back to that night of the Fourth Holy Grail War, remembering the boy's reassuring smile and the warmth of his palm, and yearning for the Holy Grail War to come once again.
Sajyou Manaka came out of the kitchen carrying a plate. When she saw holding Matou Sakura's feet, she could not help but glance over with some concern.
She soon showed a gentle smile, "Have some cookies."
Matou Sakura was still very young, after all… no matter what, there was no need for her to get jealous over a little girl.
She sat down beside Matou Sakura, then reached out and removed the white mask from the boy's face.
"When you're at home, you don't need to wear it," Sajyou Manaka said with a light smile.
The three of them sat on the sofa, enjoying hot winter tea and cookies. There was an unexpected sense of quiet, peaceful days.
But that calm did not last long.
Knock! Knock!
A faint knocking sound suddenly came from outside.
Sajyou Manaka casually lifted her gaze, glanced at the insects beyond the glass window, and was about to stand up.
Alvin gently reached out and patted her head, saying, "I'll get the door. You and Sakura keep eating."
"I was just wondering myself, who would come visiting us this late at night."
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
It was a kind of incessant knocking, accompanied by the sound of countless insects' paper-thin wings beating. Dense and overwhelming, it was the sort of sound that would make even an ordinary person's scalp crawl.
Matou Kariya stood at the doorway. After the Holy Grail War began, the man's hair had almost completely turned white in the span of a single night, and even his complexion had aged noticeably.
That was hardly surprising. For magi, magical energy was their lifeblood, and among all the masters, Matou Kariya's aptitude for magecraft was extremely poor.
If Matou Zouken had not forcibly intervened and overdrawn his life force, Matou Kariya might not even have qualified to participate in the Holy Grail War.
Yet even so, he had still failed to summon the 'White Dragon' that Matou Zouken spoke of tonight.
'Am I really that weak?'
All along the way after leaving the Matou household with Matou Zouken, Matou Kariya had kept asking himself that question over and over again.
"It looks like you're quite unwilling to accept it, Kariya."
At the stairwell, Matou Zouken, dressed in a traditional kimono, his aged face gloomy and sunken, seemed quite pleased with Kariya's reaction. A terrifying smile flickered across his face.
"I'm quite satisfied. At least compared to those useless pieces of trash in the Matou family, you still have some drive."
Even as he said this, he had never really placed much hope in Matou Kariya being able to summon the White Dragon.
Because he had once been to ancient Britain, because he had heard all sorts of stories about that demonic dragon, Matou Zouken knew very well that with this descendant's 'capacity,' it was indeed very difficult to summon that dragon.
Because Matou Kariya was too weak.
Participating in the Holy Grail War, summoning a servant, overdrawing his own life force. Everything Matou Kariya had done was driven by Matou Sakura and her birth mother, Tohsaka Aoi.
To save Matou Sakura, to save another man's wife, he would rather overdraw his own life. 'Kind,' 'possessor of a strong sense of justice,' or 'a simp,' 'thinking with his lower half', opinions of this man were sharply divided.
But in truth, this was simply the complexity of human nature. Of course, Matou Zouken did not care what reason his descendant had for entering the Holy Grail War. As far as he was concerned, being useful was enough.
Still, that very weakness of his might well become the greatest 'foreshadowing' in this Holy Grail War.
Matou Zouken narrowed his eyes and said eerily, "Kariya, I'll give you one chance."
"This is the Holy Grail War period. Sakura knows a bit about the 'Holy Grail' one way or another. If ordinary citizens of Fuyuki were to find out about this, it would inevitably cause unnecessary trouble."
Matou Zouken slowly climbed the stairs, his steps extremely slow and labored, like an old man on the brink of death, his life already a flickering candle in the wind.
Hunched over, he fixed his dead-gray eyes on his descendant and said slowly, "After you take Sakura back, kill them."
Matou Kariya's pupils abruptly widened.
In the Fourth Holy Grail War, if every magus could be said to possess some kind of innate 'talent,' then Matou Kariya was, in the truest sense, an ordinary person.
Though born into the Matou family, he had resolutely cut ties with magecraft due to his gentle nature. If not for Matou Sakura and her mother, Matou Kariya would never have returned to the Matou household at all.
To kill an entire family of ordinary people in exchange for Matou Sakura's safety.
He was given no time to think, because in the very next moment, Matou Zouken had already reached the door and knocked on it.
Then the old man leaned on his cane and slowly stepped back several paces, saying darkly, "Failing to summon the White Dragon was already your failure. If you fail again this time, you know what will happen to Sakura, don't you, Kariya?"
The words were utterly calm, yet they carried undisguised threat and chill.
The Matou family had no proper bloodline to speak of, which was why Matou Zouken had placed his hopes on Matou Sakura.
But the Matou family's magecraft inheritance required altering Matou Sakura's body first, at the cost of having Crest Worms gnaw at her flesh.
If they could obtain final victory in the Holy Grail War, he would abandon the plan to alter Sakura with Crest Worms. This was the condition Matou Zouken had promised Matou Kariya.
Of course, this honest man probably never imagined that while he was participating in the Holy Grail War, Matou Sakura had long since been sent into the worm pit, enduring the gnawing of Crest Worms day and night until she was completely broken.
"So late at night, and we still have guests coming over?"
Just as Matou Kariya was still struggling with his decision, someone inside had already opened the door, accompanied by a gentle voice of a young man.
He wore a long black robe, with a hood that concealed most of his face. Even so, one could still faintly see the boy's rather handsome features. Beneath the hood, a pair of eyes, dark as if ink had been poured into them, quietly looked at him.
'A… child?', Matou Kariya could not help but freeze.
"Kariya, aren't you going to make a move?"
From behind came Matou Zouken's aged, impatient urging.
Matou Kariya's heart trembled slightly, the struggle on his face growing more intense.
Was he really going to lay hands on an ordinary person?
For Sakura and Aoi's happiness, was he even willing to sacrifice others?
But if he did not act, Zouken would definitely not spare Sakura afterward.
Matou Zouken stood behind him, silently watching the struggle on Matou Kariya's face, his eyes narrowing slightly.
'It seems I'll need to give him a push…'
With that thought, Matou Zouken raised his cane and lightly tapped the floor.
Behind Matou Kariya, a Crest Worm flapped its wings and swiftly burrowed into the boy's body.
"Hesitation will be a major reason for your defeat in the Holy Grail War. Remember this lesson, Kariya," Matou Zouken said coldly.
The old man's sinister voice echoed endlessly in his ears. Matou Kariya instinctively clutched his forehead, cold sweat covering his face.
He gasped for breath, and after struggling for a long time, finally let out a low roar and swung his hand.
Countless Crest Worms surged toward the boy at the doorway.
Dense, horrifying, and disgusting, the Crest Worms swept toward the boy like a tidal wave, blotting out the sky.
Just as a satisfied smile was about to appear on Matou Zouken's face, he suddenly saw that the swarm of insects rushing toward the boy vanished in the very next instant.
Matou Kariya's eyes widened in disbelief as he muttered, "What's going on?"
Matou Zouken's expression darkened, "Kariya, are you deliberately playing tricks on me?"
"I'm not!", Matou Kariya replied instinctively, "Those worms clearly already burrowed into his body."
Matou Zouken snorted coldly, "Whether the Crest Worms are gnawing on his body or not, I can confirm that right now."
The very first Crest Worm he had released was still inside that boy's body. The blood flowing within him, his bones, even his magical energy. The Crest Worm could analyze and devour it all in an instant.
Trying to play such petty tricks in front of him, deliberately letting this boy escape, his child was underestimating him far too much.
Matou Zouken raised his cane and lightly struck the floor.
In an instant, a Crest Worm flew out and began analyzing the boy's bodily structure.
Matou Kariya's face tightened as he desperately tried to signal with his eyes for the boy at the door to run.
Buzz!
At that moment, the Crest Worm scanning the boy's body was burned to nothing, as if by some intense heat.
Immediately after, a scream came from behind.
Matou Kariya instinctively turned his head and saw Matou Zouken clutching his forehead in agony. The Crest Worms within his body seemed to sense some kind of threat and were frantically flying out of him, scattering in all directions.
'What's going on?'
Confusion filled Matou Kariya's gray eyes. He still could not understand what had happened.
After all, Matou Zouken's body could be said to be a fusion of Crest Worms. He was the shadow master of the Matou family. In terms of manipulating insects, there was no one in all of Fuyuki who could compare to him.
And yet now, these Crest Worms were actually fleeing his body in panic.
'What in the world is happening?'
Just as Matou Kariya was lost in thought, a withered hand suddenly clamped tightly onto his shoulder. Matou Zouken struggled to suppress the turmoil in his heart, but his voice still trembled slightly.
"Run, run… no, give me your magical energy, now!"
The old man could feel it. When the Crest Worm entered the boy's body, the other party had used that worm as a medium to devour his magical energy.
If he didn't escape now, he would definitely die.
Matou Zouken, whose state of mind had hardly wavered for nearly five hundred years, was now flooded with intense fear and a desperate urge to survive.
Matou Zouken struck the ground with his cane, and something seemed to writhe beneath the surface of Matou Kariya's skin.
Matou Kariya doubled over like a shrimp, clutching his abdomen in agony. Countless Crest Worms spilled out of his body and swiftly burrowed into Matou Zouken.
At that moment, a dazzling golden light flared up at the dim stairwell ahead.
"Promised Sword of Victory!"
"Saber, so it really is you… it really is you! You really were summoned early by this Holy Grail War's master!"
Drawing in the magical energy from Matou Kariya's body, Matou Zouken's gray-white eyes slowly widened. His aged voice was filled with disbelief, "What exactly are you trying to do… why did you take Sakura away?"
"I just happened to run into a little girl who ran away from home on the street. With weather this cold, I was worried she'd catch a cold, so I brought her home first."
Alvin smiled, golden holy sword forming in his hand.
"Honestly, I had no intention of coming to find you this early. I didn't expect you'd come knocking on my door instead."
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