I didn't let the shock of the "softness" against my chest slow me down. I adjusted my grip on the Fusion Sword, extending my arm and pointing the tip of the heavy blade directly toward the distant crane where the sniper shot had originated. I didn't say a word, just stared into the darkness with a cold, piercing gaze, letting my mana flare just enough to "aura farm" and let Kiritsugu know I had him pinned.
"Waver! Get away from him!" Queen Medb shrieked from the center of the battlefield.
She was momentarily distracted, her whip-sword faltering as she looked over, but Artoria Lancer didn't give her an inch, driving the glowing tip of Rhongomyniad forward in a relentless, heavy press.
"And who might you be, boy?" Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald asked, standing nearby with his Volume Hydrargyrum swirling at his feet like a silver predator. "To interfere in a duel of kings and block a projectile of that caliber... you are no mere magus."
"The Doctor," I answered simply.
Kayneth raised an eyebrow, looking at the way I held the girl. "A doctor? You certainly have a level of pride and skill that most magi lack. I suppose I can tolerate your presence if you keep that girl from getting her head blown off."
Suddenly, the air screamed. I spun on my heel, swinging the Fusion Sword upward.
CLANG!
A golden blade, fired with the velocity of a railgun from the sky, slammed into my steel. I grunted, my 16-year-old muscles tensing as I deflected the projectile into the harbor water. I looked up, expecting the gold-armored King of Heroes, but my jaw nearly hit the floor.
It was a woman.
She stood atop a streetlamp, draped in ornate red and gold silks that left her midriff exposed, holding a stone tablet and a ritual staff. Her crimson eyes looked down at me with absolute, terrifying authority.
'Gilgamesh is a woman?!' I thought, my brain short-circuiting. But then I looked at the staff and the tablet. 'Wait... and she's a Caster?!'
I felt a wave of genuine annoyance. If this had been the Archer version, I could have actually worked with that. With this "Artoria face" of mine, I probably could have seduced her into a truce—I know for a fact Gilgamesh is weak to this face. But this was Caster Gil; she was the wise, overworked king of Uruk. Seduction wouldn't work on someone who actually had a functional brain.
"An intruder in my garden?" she spoke, her voice melodious but heavy with the weight of a god's decree. "To deflect a gift from my treasury... you have a bold soul, mongrel."
A sudden gust of wind and the scent of cherry blossoms announced a new arrival.
"Master!" Okita blurred into existence right in front of me, her hand on her katana as she stood as a shield against the King. "I sensed the mana spike! Are you—"
She stopped dead. Her head slowly turned, taking in the sight of me still holding the female Waver Velvet tightly against my chest.
Okita's eyes narrowed into slits. A dark, predatory aura began to leak from her body. She was clearly impressed that I was holding an enemy Master "hostage," but the fact that I was holding her so close was sending her jealousy into overdrive. Then, Okita's gaze dropped. She looked at Waver's chest, then looked down at her own modest profile, and her eyes twitched.
Waver was, quite literally, a whole size bigger than her.
'I am so screwed,' I thought, feeling the air temperature drop ten degrees from Okita's glare. 'Between the Angra Mainyu corruption and this genderbending... what is this war? Are Kiritsugu and Kotomine going to be girls, too?'
"Saber, focus!" I hissed. "We have a god-tier Servant on a streetlamp!"
Okita didn't look at Gilgamesh. She just gripped her katana tighter, her face a mask of adorable, terrifying fury.
"Oh, I see the situation perfectly, Master," she whispered, her voice dangerously sweet.
"It seems your vanguard needs to work even harder to keep your... undivided attention."
I grabbed the female Waver by the shoulders and shoved her straight into the polished reflection of a nearby shipping container. She tumbled into the Mirror World with a muffled yelp.
"I'll be done soon, Sakura! Odin, keep an eye on them," I called through the glass. The dark Eikon gave a single nod.
I turned back to the chaotic docks. "Saber, where are Kariya and Berserker?"
"Engaged with Archer and Assassin," Okita replied, not taking her eyes off the golden woman on the streetlamp. "Berserker sent me to reinforce you."
"I'm fine here. Go back and help her," I ordered. "I know you haven't seen what I can do yet, but I'm plenty strong. That's an order."
Okita sighed heavily. "Fine. But do not die, Master." With a swirl of cherry blossoms, she vanished.
I focused entirely on Caster Gilgamesh. It was still so disorienting. A female Gilgamesh was weird enough, but looking at Queen Medb fighting Lancer just pissed me off. Why couldn't we get a muscular tomboy Iskandar instead?! That would've been the perfect!
But as I watched Caster, I realized she was holding back. She was casually flicking weapons at me, watching my movements and letting me adapt. As I deflected her casual throws, my Doctor System started chiming rapidly:
[Skill Acquired: Linear Projection Lv. 1]
[Skill Acquired: Geometric Trajectory Lv. 1]
[Skill Acquired: Impact Resonance Lv. 1]
[Skill Acquired: Ballistic Analysis Lv. 1]
She was practically feeding me data. What if I used my Alchemy on the system itself? I focused my alchemical energy inward, applying structural analysis to the system interface to merge and alter the data, while keeping the four base skills intact.
[Skill Synthesized: Gates of Pendragon Lv. 1]
My eyes widened in genuine shock. Wait, using alchemy on a conceptual system interface actually worked?! I stared at my hands for a split second in disbelief. I couldn't wait to get back home and spend hours crafting and combining skills into broken combos.
The air behind me distorted as a couple of shimmering, silver-tinted portals flickered to life. Being Level 1, I could only manage two or three at a time. It suddenly hit me—Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon fired real weapons she actually owned. What the hell was my version pulling from? Did I need to load it, or was it pure alchemical projection? I shook my head, aggressively pushing the thought down for later.
Before I could even try launching them, a sharp crack echoed across the harbor. I jerked to the side just in time as Kiritsugu's sniper round grazed my hair. I stumbled, bracing for Caster to capitalize on the opening and finish me off.
But the barrage didn't come my way.
"Insolent pest," Caster hissed, looking genuinely annoyed by the interruption. She didn't even glance at me; she just flicked her wrist. A dozen golden portals opened, raining a hailstorm of weapons down on Kiritsugu's crane and obliterating the sniper nest in seconds.
I quickly got back on my feet, readying my silver portals. Caster's crimson eyes snapped back to me, whatever annoyance she felt shifting into a focused, regal intensity.
"Enough distractions," she declared. Her golden portals flared brightly, and she launched a high-speed onslaught right at me.
Dozens of golden ripples flared in the night sky, raining a relentless volley of ancient weapons down on my position.
I gripped the Fusion Sword and swung.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
I deflected a halberd, a scimitar, and a spiked mace with practiced ease. But as a golden spear shot toward my blind spot, instinct took over.
A silver portal rippled open beside me.
Without a single word or conscious thought, it fired a synthesized longsword that shattered the spear in mid-air.
[Gates of Pendragon has reached Lv. 5]
My system analyzed the impacts and trajectories in real-time, my alchemy constantly rewriting the skill's parameters as I fought.
[Gates of Pendragon has reached Lv. 14]
[Gates of Pendragon has reached Lv. 27]
I stopped swinging and rested the tip of the buster sword against the concrete. The alchemical portals reacted entirely to my instincts now. Three became twelve, twelve became fifty. Silver weapons shot out in a relentless blur, flawlessly intercepting Caster's golden projectiles in a spectacular shower of sparks and shattered steel. Every time a silver weapon broke, the portals instantly synthesized another to take its place.
I expected the King of Uruk to be furious that a "mongrel" was countering her treasury. Instead, Caster Gilgamesh lowered her stone tablet. Her crimson eyes gleamed with genuine entertainment, her lips curving into an approving, regal smile.
"Fascinating," her melodious voice drifted over the clashing metal. "You learn fast. To weave a counterfeit so quickly... let us see how far that hubris takes you!"
She snapped her fingers, and the sky behind her ignited with a hundred golden portals.
If I was going to aura farm the King of Heroes, I needed to look the part. I clapped my hands together, summoning a surge of pale blue alchemical lightning. I pulled the conceptual design of Artoria's imposing Lion King armor and fused it with the heavy, fully-plated aesthetic of Gilgamesh's own golden suit.
The lightning shattered. I stood clad in heavy, pristine silver-white armor, complete with a thick white fur mantle and the stylized visage of a roaring lion etched into the chest plate.
My magical circuits flared. Two hundred silver portals ignited in the air around me, perfectly mirroring the sheer scale of the Queen's treasury. Impeccably crafted alchemical weapons slid out from the liquid silver ripples, locking onto the gold in the sky.
Caster's smile widened into a look of genuine anticipation.
I raised a gauntleted hand, pointing directly at her, and let out the line I had been waiting my entire life to say.
"Here I come, King of Heroes. Do you have enough weapons in stock?"
Caster Gilgamesh threw her head back, her laughter booming across the docks with ringing, genuine approval.
"A fake challenging the original? What delightful arrogance!" she called out, though her golden barrage didn't slow down for a second. "I must admit, though, I'd prefer if you took off that helmet, It's a shame to hide such attractive features behind all that metal!"
The sky became a blinding storm of gold and silver. Our clash completely hijacked the battlefield. Artoria Lancer and Queen Medb were forced to break off their own duel just to deflect the sheer volume of stray weapons raining down around them, both of us completely ignoring them in the crossfire.
As I deflected another volley, I caught a quick glimpse of Artoria Lancer batting away a stray silver sword. Even fully clad in her heavy armor with the helmet off—there was no ignoring her... personality. Those things were huge even while shielded from the world.
I was just relieved it was standard Lancer Artoria and not the actual, divine Lion King. That meant the only real headaches for forging alliances right now were going to be Medb, Assassin, and Archer, whoever they turned out to be.
"Eyes on the King, mongrel!" Gilgamesh yelled, snapping my attention back as a golden halberd nearly clipped my shoulder.
I wasn't just gawking, though. I was actively scanning the docks for Irisviel. If I could find her now, I could safely extract the Lesser Grail and break it before any Servants died, completely starving Angra Mainyu of the mana it needed to build up. But I couldn't spot her anywhere. Unlike the canon timeline, she wasn't standing out in the open.
And then a terrifying realization hit me.
Wait. If Kayneth summoned Artoria Lancer, and Waver somehow summoned Medb... who the hell was Kiritsugu's Servant?
I needed a minute to process this. I let instinct take over. A silver portal rippled right in front of me, dropping a massive, highly polished alchemical tower shield to block a golden volley. But instead of bracing behind it, I simply stepped directly into the shield's mirrored surface.
The deafening roar of explosions and clashing metal vanished instantly, replaced by the dead silence of the Mirror World.
I took off the lion helm and dropped it on the ground, sitting down hard on the reversed pavement right next to it. Sakura and Waver peeked out from behind Odin's armored leg, one looking at me with wide, confused eyes and another with worry.
I just rested my elbows on my knees and stared blankly at my hands. My very first actual, high-stakes fight in a Holy Grail War, and I had literally just turned myself into a silver Gilgamesh.
I let out a long, exhausted sigh, seriously beginning to contemplate my life choices.