"W-What nonsense are you spouting!" Kayneth trembled with rage. Beside him, Diarmuid was overwhelmed with shame and indignation, his twin spears humming as his hands shook.
"Eh? What a boring reaction... Oh well, this act has gone on long enough."
Asuka's figure began to blur before the Volumen Hydrargyrum could enclose him again.
His body dissolved into ink under the moonlight, retreating and melting into the ground as he delivered a spine-chilling farewell.
"Farewell, pitiful magus. I hope you have a better fiancée the next time we meet."
With a final sneer, the black silhouette burst apart with a soft pop, vanishing completely into the deep night.
Kayneth could not be bothered to give chase; he stumbled forward and threw himself toward Sola-Ui.
The Volumen Hydrargyrum transformed into a silver blanket, wrapping around the two of them, while Diarmuid dropped to one knee, standing guard at their side.
Atop an abandoned building.
Kiritsugu Emiya lowered his sniper rifle, slightly relaxing his index finger on the trigger.
A rare trace of confusion surfaced on his cold face.
He had witnessed the entire sequence of events: the Avenger's appearance, his bizarre combat style, and his completely illogical provocations.
"That wasn't the Avenger," Kiritsugu concluded in a low voice.
But that did not matter.
What mattered was that Kayneth was currently on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Because he was pouring all his efforts into healing Sola-Ui, the automatic defense system of the Volumen Hydrargyrum was fluctuating wildly. To sustain her life force, Kayneth was forced to expend a massive amount of magical energy.
'An opportunity.'
Kiritsugu adjusted his breathing once more.
As the Magus Killer, he did not care about his enemies' internal conflicts; he only cared about the results.
Now was the perfect time to kill Kayneth and end the threat of the Lancer faction.
Just as he aimed at the side of Kayneth's neck, exposed through a gap in the silver liquid, and prepared to pull the trigger...
"Oh my, ordinary bullets can't pierce the Volumen Hydrargyrum, you know."
A light, airy voice—carrying a young girl's characteristic sweetness mixed with a faint, almost imperceptible stench of rot—rang right beside Kiritsugu's ear.
Every hair on Kiritsugu's body stood on end in an instant, followed immediately by the explosive instincts of a hunting cheetah.
"Time Alter: Double Accel!"
He did not look back. Instead, he rolled forward, simultaneously drawing the Beretta pistol from his coat with his left hand and firing a blind shot behind him.
Bang!
The bullet only struck the concrete floor, sending up a shower of sparks.
Kiritsugu quickly crouched in the shadows at the base of the wall, his muzzle locked dead onto his previous sniping position.
On that stretch of concrete, illuminated a pale white by the moonlight, a young girl was now lying on her stomach.
She wore an elaborate, light purple ruffled dress, her pale violet hair scattered in the dust.
She rested her chin on one hand, her legs swinging leisurely in the air. Her purple eyes gleamed with an almost sickly malice toward the world.
Kiritsugu attempted to analyze her magical fluctuations.
However, to his senses, the girl before him was utter chaos. She did not feel like a human, a Dead Apostle, or a Servant.
There was a zipper embedded into the flesh of her abdomen. The sensation radiating from it felt like an illusion constructed from countless malicious intents, or perhaps a stale phantom that had decayed for centuries.
It was a vile existence that toyed with souls, constantly migrating from one fleshly vessel to another.
"Who are you?" Kiritsugu's voice was as cold as ice, his gun hand steady as a mountain.
The girl did not answer his question.
She tilted her head, studying Kiritsugu as if looking at an amusing toy, before revealing an innocent smile that sent chills down his spine.
"Your expression is truly frightening, Ally of Justice."
Her slender fingers drew circles on the concrete floor, seemingly completely unbothered by Kiritsugu's gun barrel.
"What did you think of that little play just now? Prelati put quite a lot of effort into acting the part of that Avenger."
Kiritsugu remained silent, his mind rapidly analyzing the situation.
The girl before him was elusive, capable of bypassing all his security measures to sneak right up next to him, which meant she was highly likely a Servant.
That fake Asuka from earlier was clearly her masterpiece.
'Is she Caster?' He narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Come now, Mr. Killer, don't stare at me with those eyes like you want to dismantle me."
In the blink of an eye, the girl had elusively appeared right beside him again, playfully fiddling with the barrel of Kiritsugu's gun with her slender fingers!
'An illusion? Or time magecraft?' Kiritsugu was greatly alarmed.
"Allow me to introduce myself. To distinguish between me and myself, you can call me Francesca," she smiled sweetly.
"I came specifically to discuss a great—and wonderful—matter with you."
"Discuss?" Kiritsugu rolled away to create distance, pointing his gun at Francesca once more. "I don't think we have anything to discuss."
The girl giggled and turned her head to look down below.
Even from hundreds of meters away, Kayneth's anxious roars could still be faintly heard on the rooftop.
"Look, what a spectacular expression that noble Color-ranked Magus is making right now." Francesca wore an intoxicated look.
"He used to be like a peacock showing off its feathers, but now he's turned into a mad dog with a broken neck. Don't you think it would be an absolute pity to let him exit the stage right here and now?"
"What do you mean?"
"My request is very simple." The girl sat up and patted the dust off her skirt, her tone shifting into that of a demon tempting a saint into depravity. "Please, Mr. Killer, put your gun away for now and let him off the hook."
"Don't you want to see just how much chaos a Color-ranked Magus—completely dominated by anger and stripped of all reason—can cause when he goes on a rampage out there?"
Francesca stuck out her tongue and licked her lips, her purple eyes flashing with a chaotic light. "I went through a lot of trouble! It took so much effort to get François to mimic that nauseating malice."
"The current Kayneth is already convinced that the Avenger is the culprit who severely injured his fiancée! He will follow the scent like a rabid dog, using every method at his disposal to exact revenge and slaughter..."
"You want them to slaughter each other," Kiritsugu coldly stated her objective.
"Exactly, exactly! That's it!"
The girl clapped her hands and jumped up, her skirt swaying in the wind.
The zipper on her abdomen seemed to quiver slightly along with her laughter, continuously emitting a blasphemous aura. "Letting two troublesome guys wear each other down, letting them be torn to pieces by the torment of hatred! Isn't that exactly the kind of good fortune you've been wishing for?"
Kiritsugu fell silent.
As a pragmatist, he sought to achieve the greatest results with the smallest cost.
Kayneth was currently drained of magical energy and in a state of mental disarray—it was the perfect time to eliminate him.
But equally, if he were allowed to engage in a death match with another Master while carrying such monstrous fury...
Regardless of who won in the end, he would have one less competitor to deal with.
'It's not a bad option.'