The gentle smile Claudia had managed to maintain instantly froze, then peeled away piece by piece, like shattered porcelain.
The last glimmer in her eyes, the faint light that had persisted after enduring all the betrayal and harm, instantly dimmed completely, turning into a dead, silent void.
She lowered her head, her voice as faint as a sigh, carrying the realization of utter despair: "Yes... From the start, you only wanted to use me to make Kirei Kotomine suffer. In the end, Kirei Kotomine didn't care about my life or death at all... So, you never had any feelings for me, from beginning to end."
"Mm." Kanjuro, his back to her, nodded, his admission crisp and cruel.
He pushed open the dilapidated wooden door. The night wind rushed in, blowing his messy fringe.
He lifted his head and let out a burst of meaningless laughter toward the polluted sky. The laughter was filled with complex emotions—perhaps relief, self-mockery, and a trace of embarrassment he refused to acknowledge.
"I don't know if this is the last time I'll see you, but in any case..." His laughter subsided, and his tone reverted to that indifferent control, yet carrying a hint of imperceptible bravado,
"It seems I didn't lose this time either."
Having spoken, he strode into London's cold night, never looking back.
Inside the dilapidated shack, only Claudia remained, slumped in her Wheelchair like a puppet whose strings had been cut, her gaze hollowly fixed on the boundless darkness outside the door, as if even her soul had completely vanished with the words, "I don't love you."
In the days following Kanjuro's departure from London, Claudia struggled to survive alone on the edge of the ruined city.
The cold words Kanjuro left when he departed that day were like the most biting wind, freezing almost all her will to live.
She felt an unprecedented fatigue and nausea, initially assuming it was due to emotional exhaustion, until severe dry heaving one morning made her realize something was wrong.
Dragging her weak body, she painstakingly made her way to a temporary hospital that was still operating.
After a crude but necessary examination, a weary-looking doctor told her a piece of news that struck her like thunder:
"Madam, you are pregnant. Based on the cycle, it is approximately four weeks."
Pregnant... four weeks... Claudia froze in place, her mind instantly blank.
She had only ever been intimate with one person in her life—Kanjuro. The man who had destroyed her life, deceived her feelings, and then walked away after saying, "I don't love you."
She instinctively stroked her still flat abdomen. A life connected by her blood, yet also flowing with the demon's blood, was growing there.
Complex emotions surged like a tsunami—fear, confusion, helplessness—but at the end of this chaos, a faint warmth and determination, which she herself could not explain, quietly began to grow.
This was the only thing left purely belonging to her after enduring all the betrayal and despair.
Thousands of miles away, Kanjuro, completely unaware of this, set foot on the soil of Fuyuki City together with Jeanne d'Arc.
The sky over Fuyuki remained that familiar shade, as if veiled by a layer of gloom; as twilight deepened, it draped the city in a veil of dark blue.
Unlike the purgatorial clamor and madness of London, Fuyuki City presented a strange tranquility, yet beneath this calm surged even more hidden and dangerous undercurrents.
Jeanne d'Arc keenly sensed that since returning from London, a subtle change seemed to have occurred in Kanjuro.
On the surface, he had resumed his usual nonchalant, all-controlling posture, but within those bottomless black eyes, a flicker of gloom and irritability—which even he might not have noticed—would occasionally flash; though fleeting, it was captured by Jeanne d'Arc, who had been observing him.
"What is it? Still thinking about the events in London?" Jeanne d'Arc spoke softly, her voice exceptionally clear in the silent street.
Kanjuro did not stop walking, his gaze sweeping over the familiar streetscapes of Fuyuki City as his lips curled into a cold arc, as if to completely cut away all unnecessary emotions: "It's already in the past."
His tone was decisive and his gaze sharp as ice, as if he truly had discarded that interlude, along with the woman named Claudia, into the trash heap of his memory, returning to being the Kanjuro who acted purely for pleasure and purpose.
Jeanne d'Arc watched him in silence for a moment, not piercing through that fragile disguise, and instead asked: "What are your thoughts for what comes next?"
"Wait for news!"
Kanjuro spat out those three words with a cold sneer, casting his gaze toward the outskirts of Fuyuki City, where the Einzbern Castle sat deep within the forest.
He had not returned to Fuyuki unprepared.
Long before intervening in this Holy Grail War, he had planted seeds within key chess pieces. Inside Einzbern Castle, Emiya Kiritsugu's assistant, that calm and taciturn female assassin—Maiya Hisau—had long since been controlled by Kanjuro through absolute power and hidden means, becoming the deepest nail he had driven into the enemy camp.
At this moment, he was waiting.
Waiting for Maiya to use a special communication method to relay the situation inside the castle to him, especially regarding Artoria—the king of knights, Saber.
The end of the Holy Grail War was drawing closer; he needed to ensure everything was under his control, or at least, provide enough fun and variables for his upcoming 'game'.
As the night deepened, Kanjuro stood on the streets of Fuyuki City, seemingly merging with this land that bred war and sin. The fireworks of London had already dispersed, but the stage of Fuyuki had only just begun its new act.
And he remained the director and protagonist ready to stir up the storm, though whether his heart was truly as rippleless as he appeared, only he himself knew.
Deep within the Einzbern Castle, surrounded by forest, a waterfall cascaded down the cliff like a silver ribbon, the roar of the water splashing up a cold mist.
Artoria—Saber—stood atop a giant rock beneath the waterfall, allowing the bone-chilling current to batter her petite yet resilient body.
She gritted her teeth, her heroic brows tightly furrowed and her face pale—not from the cold of the water, but from an intense internal struggle. A cold, viscous power, like a maggot on a bone, was constantly eroding her will. It was the Black Magic pollution from the avalon scabbard; since being tampered with by Kanjuro, this power that was supposed to bring absolute protection had now become her greatest inner demon.
Every time she tried to mobilize her mana, every time she recalled her glory and oath as the king of knights, the whispers of that Black Magic would follow her like a shadow, attempting to twist her beliefs and drag her will into the dark abyss.
She had to overcome it; she had to maintain absolute calm and clarity of heart under the washing of this cold waterfall. Otherwise, not only would she be unable to exert her full strength, but she might even be consumed by this inner demon at a critical moment, falling into an eternal perdition.
Not far away, on the flat ground beside the waterfall, Emiya Kiritsugu stood as usual in his black trench coat, watching his Servant's bitter cultivation in the water with an expressionless face.
Beside him stood an old man with white hair and beard, wearing ancient Magician's formal wear; he was the current head of the Einzbern family and Irisviel's grandfather, Jubstacheit von Einzbern.
Jubstacheit's cloudy yet sharp eyes watched Artoria under the waterfall as he spoke slowly: "When the Holy Grail was first constructed, its foundation was closely linked to the leylines of Fuyuki City.
The leylines here have accumulated pure mana for thousands of years. While they cannot eradicate that Black Magic, they might temporarily suppress its influence, creating an opportunity for Saber to purify herself."
Maiya Hisau, standing silently to the side like a silent ghost, calmly raised a question: "Can the power of Black Magic, especially that applied by the hand of that Kanjuro, be so easily eliminated by the mana of the leylines?"
Jubstacheit shook his head, his voice carrying ancient wisdom and a hint of unquestionable authority: "It is not elimination, but suppression and transformation.
The key lies in Saber's own will.
As long as she can rely on her own powerful spirit, aided by the leylines mana, to completely overcome the erosion of this dark source, she will not only recover her strength, but it is even possible... to fuse and harness this cursed power, making it her new strength. Crisis often comes with opportunity."
His words carried the typical calm and calculation of a Magician, as if the pain Artoria endured was merely an experiment worth anticipating.
However, Irisviel, standing a bit further away, had her hands tightly clasped in front of her chest. Her silver hair fluttered gently in the breeze created by the waterfall, but her beautiful face was written with unconcealable worry and unease.
She did not look at Artoria under the waterfall; instead, her gaze was cast toward the vast forest outside the castle, as if she could penetrate space to see the man who brought endless nightmares.
Only she had personally felt Kanjuro's unfathomable power and his cruelty in toying with people's hearts.
Only she knew that it was impossible for that man to have simply done something as minor as tampering with avalon.
He was like an invisible net that had already enveloped everyone; the current calm was perhaps just the final breath before the storm.
Her grandfather's plan sounded feasible, but facing Kanjuro... Irisviel's heart was filled with an ominous premonition. That fear, like a cold snake, coiled around her heart, tightening more and more.
The waterfall continued to roar as Artoria struggled amidst the cold current and the internal searing, while far away in Fuyuki City, Kanjuro seemed to sense something, a cold smile curling on his lips that no one noticed.
The chess game continues, and he remains the player hidden behind the scenes. Inside Kanjuro's temporary base in Fuyuki City.
A mobile phone screen lit up in the dim light, and an encrypted message from an unknown number was quickly decoded. Kanjuro looked at the brief report sent by Maiya, his lips curling into a cold arc.
The content of the message pointed directly to the latest movements at Einzbern Castle—using the Fuyuki leylines mana to assist Artoria in resisting and attempting to fuse the Black Magic power on avalon.
"Using the leylines to purify my curse? And even wanting to harness it in reverse?" Kanjuro muttered to himself, as if hearing a funny joke, "A nice idea, but unfortunately, too naive." A wisp of dark flame ignited at his fingertip, incinerating the message completely until not even ash remained. To him, this was merely the futile struggle of prey in a trap, which instead added to the pleasure of the hunt.
Meanwhile, news of the shocking tragedy that occurred in London—the Clock Tower destroyed, the Lords nearly wiped out, the suspected descent of an avatar of a Great Old One, and the entire city turned into a purgatory—spread through the underworld like a plague, naturally reaching the ears of Emiya Kiritsugu and Irisviel, who were closely monitoring external developments.
Although the details of the news were vague and suppressed as much as possible by the Mage's Association, keywords like'summoning deep-sea horrors', 'dark Noble Phantasms', and'slaughtering Lords', along with the lawlessness and extreme cruelty revealed in the style of action, caused Emiya Kiritsugu to instantly lock his suspicion onto Kanjuro. The danger level of this man soared once again to an unprecedented level in his heart...
And when Artoria learned of this news during a brief respite, her emerald pupils contracted violently, and her clenched fists turned her knuckles white from excessive force.
"Slaughtering innocent citizens, summoning evil gods to trample upon human order... such actions are no longer tolerable by the way of the knight; they are the deeds of a thorough demon!" Her voice was low, contained with suppressed rage and deep shame. She recalled Kanjuro's face with that playful smile, and his means of easily breaking and polluting avalon. Now, the tragic state of London further confirmed this person's madness and dangerous nature.
A strong sense of urgency and responsibility surged in her heart. If she could not even rid herself of the curse he had set, how could she stop him from continuing to create more tragedies? How could she protect this land and its people?
This heavy conviction turned into an even more powerful motivation. Under the waterfall of Einzbern Castle, Artoria's training became even more diligent, one could even say cruel.
"Ugh—!"
Under the impact of the cold water, she let out more than one muffled groan of pain due to the intense confrontation between her spirit and the Black Magic. In her mind, the knightly oaths of glory and the dark, sacrilegious whispers intertwined and collided, attempting to tear her will apart. Several times, she was nearly swallowed by that cold power, and an ominous black mana faintly seeped out from her body, briefly dyeing the surrounding waterfall current with a hint of ink.
But she gritted her teeth and pulled through. Relying on her own iron will as the king of knights, along with the gentle yet majestic mana support coming from the leylines beneath her feet—like that of a mother earth—she suppressed the restless darkness time and again, striving to construct a more solid defense in her spiritual world.
"I must... overcome it!" she shouted in her heart, "To stop that man, to prevent the tragedy of London from repeating!"
Her eyes grew more determined amidst the pain. Originally just passively resisting the erosion of the Black Magic, she began to try to actively understand and analyze this power, seeking the possibility of 'fusing' or 'harnessing' it, just as Jubstacheit had hoped. This process was full of risk, every step like walking a tightrope over a vast abyss, but she had no other choice.
Far away in Fuyuki City, although Kanjuro could not see Artoria's struggle under the waterfall with his own eyes, he could vaguely sense the increasingly strong will of resistance and the intent to 'turn the tables' coming from there through that mysterious connection remaining with the Black Magic.
Instead of being annoyed, he showed an even deeper interest.
"Struggle, resist, my dear king of knights." He raised a wine glass taken from somewhere toward the night view of Fuyuki outside the window, the dark red liquid inside swaying like blood, "The harder you work, the more delicious that expression will be when you finally realize everything is in vain, or... when you are completely assimilated by this darkness."
"I look forward to seeing your brand new... 'form' on the final stage."
He drained the liquid in the glass in one gulp, his eyes flashing with the cruel and joyful light of a hunter watching a precious prey fall into a trap. Artoria's resistance undoubtedly added crucial chips and drama to his upcoming game.
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