"?"
Shirou froze, then hurried to explain. "Sorry, Red Archer.' I didn't mean it like that…"
"There's no need to use such distant titles. You can simply call me by name."
Atalanta stroked Shirou's cheek as she spoke. "Or, if you like, you can call me 'Big Sister' the way you did before."
"Uh…"
Her tone was completely different from moments ago. The aloof, cold girl from before had suddenly become warm and attentive.
Her attitude was gentle, and in the emerald eyes she turned on Shirou, something almost like a flame seemed to flicker.
Shirou had a faint sense that this was going somewhere bad, and decided he had to clear things up with her.
"Archer, you've misunderstood. I have no intention of becoming your husband."
At that, Atalanta's delicate brows drew together. "Holy Sword User, are you denying the fact that you defeated me?"
"No…"
"Then you are my husband."
Atalanta spoke with a proud look.
"In life, I swore an oath to the goddess: 'The man who defeats me in a race shall become my husband.'
Countless heroes challenged me, and every last one of them died beneath my arrows.
'Black' Saber, you are the only man to have won that trial. You should feel honored."
"......"
There was no getting through to her at all.
Shirou thought wearily, Does she have some affinity for the Berserker Class?
"That was still an oath you made when you were alive. Now that you've manifested as a Servant, there's no need for you to keep following it."
Shirou continued, "Even the goddess you worship wouldn't want you to be bound by an oath like that forever."
Atalanta said, "Ah, of course I understand that. Lady Artemis has told me the same thing."
"Then since you understand that."
The girl shook her head. "This has nothing to do with the oath I made in life.
I was simply captivated by the sight of you running. I fell in love with you, that's all."
"Wh......"
Shirou was left speechless.
Atalanta had never known love in life.
She had been abandoned by her own father at birth, and even after she grew up and earned renown, her father still treated her as nothing more than a tool for a political marriage.
She acted cold, aloof, and unapproachable, but deep down, she longed for love, and to be loved, more than anyone else.
But not just any love would do.
What Atalanta wanted to know was pure love, untouched by desire, power, or fame.
Every man who had ever proposed to her, without exception, had lusted after her beauty and her body.
Blinded by their ugly desires, they were willing to stake even their lives on Atalanta's trial.
They were foolish and vile. Of course they were killed.
But Shirou was different.
His reason for taking the trial had been simple. Incredibly simple.
It had been for an enemy who was not even his ally.
Just to fulfill a single promise to the "Red" Lancer, he had staked his life and challenged her.
Atalanta had acted dismissive, but in truth, Shirou's character had shaken her deeply even then.
This boy…
He's different from every man I've ever met…
Then, in the race against her, he had run until he was battered and bleeding, barely clinging to life, and still won in the end.
Atalanta knew he must have used some shameful trick to win, but so what?
However underhanded his actions had been, his original intent and purpose were utterly noble.
Atalanta had been captivated by the sight of Shirou's back as he ran with his life on the line. No… perhaps she had become infatuated with him.
As expected.
Even now, with the Age of Gods faded, the goddess must still be watching over her from somewhere.
Perhaps the oath she had sworn back then had existed for this very moment.
I want this man's affection, the girl realized with joy, recognizing her own desire.
"Hehe, you're blushing… How cute."
Atalanta smiled as she watched Shirou's reaction, her cat ears twitching happily.
Shirou quickly pulled away the hand that had been stroking him and turned his head aside as if to hide his embarrassment.
"I'm grateful for your affection, but I'm sorry. I can't become your husband."
"Hmph. I knew you would say that."
Shirou: "......"
He was a little surprised. He had not expected Archer to accept his refusal so easily.
What was that? You were so fired up a second ago, I thought you'd keep clinging to this for a while…
Ngh, don't misunderstand. It's not like I'm disappointed!
"I know you won't be able to accept me so quickly, but the fact that you defeated me in the trial won't change."
Atalanta's expression turned bewitching. "No matter what you think, I am your woman now."
Shirou: "......"
I knew it would turn out like this. Sigh… women.
Ngh, don't misunderstand. It's not like I'm happy about it!
Shirou felt there was no point in arguing further, so he tested the waters.
"Before the race, you said that if I won, you'd listen to me, right?"
Atalanta said, "What do you want? I once swore to the goddess that I would preserve my purity, but if it's you…"
Shirou said, "Can you take me to where the Magi are being held?"
Atalanta said, "It's fine if you don't want to marry me. Even without the title of wife, I'm willing to be your woman.
I have only one wish. I want to carry your child… I love children! I want your child!"
Shirou said, "Never mind. I'll find it myself."
"Since it is a request from my future husband, I have no reason to refuse. Please follow me."
Atalanta took Shirou by the wrist.
They wound through the maze-like corridors for ten minutes before entering a small room.
Inside, five men and women sat around a round table, each muttering something utterly illogical.
"Listen carefully. Compared to precise formulas, Eastern magecraft formulas place greater emphasis on softness."
"I have paid my respects to the legendary Library of Ivan IV. This should allow me to understand what kind of changes the Magi of the Russian region underwent."
"My brother, we clearly obtained the Holy Grail, so why has our wish not been granted?"
"My brother, isn't that obvious? Because we did not obtain the Holy Grail."
"Ahh, I want to work, I want to work. Anything is fine. I have to work."
Atalanta swept an icy gaze over everyone in the room and explained, "Assassin used poison to lower their ability to think so they would peacefully hand over their Command Spells.
It should not be a poison that leaves any permanent aftereffects. Once they get out and receive treatment, they should recover."
Shirou pinched his chin and muttered to himself, "I'll find a way to contact 'Black' Rider and have him use his mount to help escort them."
"Are you close with 'Black' Rider?" Atalanta suddenly asked.
"Well… I guess so…" Shirou answered casually.
"I see. She's very cute," Atalanta said, her voice a little low.
"Is that so?"
She really was cute, but he was a boy.
Shirou brushed it off. "'Red' Archer is cuter, though."
Atalanta: "........."
"Tch… I can't get through. Assassin has set up some kind of interference Barrier around this area, so I can't contact the Magi of the Yggdmillennia clan."
Shirou frowned. For now, he had no choice but to get them away from this area first.
He turned to the cat-eared girl beside him. "Archer, I'll handle these three. Can you… uh, what's wrong?"
Atalanta stood frozen in place, her cheeks flushed bright red.
"W-w-w-what are you suddenly saying?!"
"Huh?"
The girl pressed her lips together and squirmed, her fluffy, slender tail swishing happily behind her.
"Did you just say I'm cuter than 'Black' Rider?"
"No…"
If we're only talking about the concept of "cute," then Rider still wins, right?
Archer feels more like the wild and cool type.
Shirou thought, Rider may score higher on cuteness, but he's still a boy…
"You clearly said I was cuter just now! Don't try to take it back!"
Atalanta lunged forward and grabbed Shirou by the collar.
He caught sight of the girl's sharp canines.
Shirou felt that if he was not careful with his next words, she would bite through his neck in the very next second.
"A-as a girl… you're cuter, Archer."
He said something against his better judgment.
"!"
Atalanta stiffly lowered her slightly bashful face and unconsciously combed her fingers through her hair.
"Cute? I'm not… like that…"
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No, you didn't!"
Atalanta glared fiercely at Shirou, like a cat with all its fur standing on end.
She walked over to the Magi, then hoisted two of them onto her shoulders with one hand each.
"There's a room nearby that can teleport them to the surface. As long as Mana is used, even I can send them back up."
"All right. I'll leave it to you, then."
Shirou lifted the three people onto his shoulders and continued after Atalanta.
The stone corridors stretched on without end. Perhaps because some kind of Magecraft had been applied to them, the ceiling gave off a faint glow. Rather than Greek, the style looked closer to the Aztec temples that still remained in Mexico.
"Come to think of it… you're living with Ruler now, aren't you?"
Atalanta suddenly spoke.
"Yeah."
"........."
An immense wave of resentment suddenly radiated from Archer's slender body.
Seeing that, Shirou quickly said, "Compared to Ruler, you're definitely cuter, Archer!"
This time, he meant it.
"Mm… I thought so."
The girl's cat tail began swaying happily.
"This is the place."
Atalanta entered a room with a Magic Circle carved into the floor and set down the two people she had been carrying. Shirou did the same.
"Give me a moment. I'll contact the Yggdmillennia people and have them receive them on the surface."
"Leaving them to those people… will that really be all right?"
Atalanta hesitated slightly. Wasn't that just taking meat from one wolf's mouth and throwing it into another's?
Shirou explained to her that Yggdmillennia would do everything they could to rescue them.
These Masters were all nobles who had accepted commissions from the Association, and one of them was even an elite whom the Clock Tower held in high regard.
For the Yggdmillennia clan, rescuing them could only be beneficial. No matter how the war ended, they could be used as bargaining chips in the negotiations afterward.
"You really think things through."
Atalanta looked at Shirou with another trace of admiration in her eyes.
"Saber-san!?"
"Yeah, it's me."
Shirou contacted the acting head of the Yggdmillennia clan through telepathy, explained the situation, and asked her to send a large vehicle to the designated coordinates to pick them up.
Once the arrangements were settled, Shirou asked, "Fiore… did something happen on your end?"
He could tell that something was off in Fiore's voice.
"…I see. Archer died in battle, then."
"Yes. My Great Holy Grail War ends here."
Fiore's voice was deeply despondent.
As a Master, she had not been able to do anything, nor had she been able to help in any way. All she could do was watch from afar as her Command Spells vanished. It had to be unbearably frustrating.
Just as Shirou was thinking of offering her a few words of comfort, another voice cut into the telepathic conversation. It was Caules.
"Saber, who are you with right now?"
"I'm with the 'Red' Archer."
"Why?"
"Well, it's a long story… Anyway, she isn't an enemy right now. Thanks to her help, I found where the 'Red' Masters were being held."
"All right."
Caules did not seem particularly interested in that. He got straight to the point.
"Saber, you've been deceiving us, haven't you?"
"Wait, Caules! That's far too sudden! There must be some kind of misunderstanding here…"
"Sis, please be quiet for now."
"......"
What are these siblings doing? Shirou frowned.
Before long, Caules's voice came through again.
"Saber, the one used tonight to lure out the 'Red' faction wasn't the real Holy Grail, was it?"
After a brief silence, Shirou asked in return, "Why would you think that?"
"Kairi Sisigou just contacted us. Manaka Sajyou has disappeared. He saw Manaka leaving while holding something that looked like the Holy Grail."
Caules questioned him in a severe tone. "We all stayed on the ground exactly as you instructed, but your Master vanished tonight. Saber, what exactly are you and your Master hiding from us?"
Shirou was completely baffled.
Manaka disappeared? At a time like this?
He knew absolutely nothing about it. Manaka had not contacted him at all tonight.
"Answer my question, Saber. The one used tonight to lure out the 'Black' faction wasn't the real Greater Grail, was it?"
"......"
"Why aren't you saying anything?"
Caules's tone was pressing, completely different from his usual image as a mild, easygoing glasses-wearing nerd.
Shirou could understand why. At a decisive moment in the war, if an ally did something like this, anyone would be shaken.
"The one used as bait was the real Holy Grail," Shirou answered.
"Are you saying your Master doesn't have a Holy Grail?" Caules asked back.
"Manaka… does indeed possess a Holy Grail. I'm sorry I didn't explain that to everyone in detail."
"You're contradicting yourself, Saber."
Caules said, "The Holy Grail used as bait is with you now, and your Master is carrying another Holy Grail. That's simply impossible."
"Actually, it is possible," Shirou said.
"What?"
"The Holy Grail I have and the Holy Grail Manaka has are both genuine Holy Grails."
"Uh, what are you even talking about? Wait… don't tell me…!?"
Shirou frankly admitted the method he had used to deceive Assassin.
"The Holy Grail used as bait tonight, the one I retrieved afterward… was actually the Holy Grail I already possessed."
"............"
The Forvedge siblings drew in a sharp breath.
"You already had a Holy Grail… In other words, that legend…"
"Yeah. It looks like… I found the whereabouts of the Holy Grail while I was alive. Even after I was summoned by Fuyuki's Greater Grail, that Holy Grail was recorded on my Spirit Origin as a Noble Phantasm."
"How is that possible…"
Caules's voice trembled uncontrollably. "Then the Holy Grail in your possession is the real Holy Grail, not a counterfeit made by Magi under a borrowed name?"
"That doesn't matter right now. More importantly, what happened to Manaka?"
"I don't know. Your Master is currently missing. Even after mobilizing every Yggdmillennia contact we have, we haven't found her. I suspect she entered the Hanging Gardens."
"Understood. Contact me if anything changes."
Ignoring Caules's shout of "Wait," Shirou cut off the telepathic link on his own.
He tried contacting Manaka Sajyou, but naturally, there was no response.
This was not the first time tonight that he had tried to reach Manaka through telepathy.
The previous attempt had failed as well, and Shirou had assumed Assassin had blocked the telepathic channel between the Garden and the ground.
But now he understood. That was not it at all.
The telepathic link between Shirou and Manaka had been severed by a Barrier inside the Garden itself. She was somewhere within this aerial fortress.
A faint unease rose in the red-haired boy's heart. Manaka, what exactly are you trying to do?
...
"One-sided" was not enough to describe the situation now.
The "Black" Berserker was sent flying again, and she barely had the strength left to climb back to her feet.
Not far from where she had fallen lay the corpse of the "Red" Caster, sprawled in a pool of blood as a black shadow devoured it.
Frankenstein had chased Shakespeare all the way here and finally cornered him, only for a new enemy to suddenly appear and kill Shakespeare instantly.
The enemy's identity was Heroic Spirits who should have already died.
Some were her comrades. Others were enemies from the "Red" faction.
Frankenstein did not understand what was happening, and she had been unable to contact her Master since earlier.
She rose to fight back again and again, only to be defeated every time without the slightest suspense.
The "Black" Saber, the "Black" Lancer, the "Red" Lancer…
Any one of the three could have easily slaughtered Frankenstein in a one-on-one battle, and now they had the girl surrounded.
Escape, resistance, surrender. Every option had been cut off.
All the "Black" Berserker could do was grit her teeth and accept the situation, or fully release her Noble Phantasm and drag them down with her.
Forced to make a decision, Frankenstein let out a low growl and steeled herself, intending to put everything she had into taking at least one of them with her.
Frankenstein's second Noble Phantasm, "Blasted Tree."
By driving "Bridal Chest" into the ground, she released all restrictions and discharged her electricity at full power.
A downpour of spreading, homing lightning fell in the outline of a towering tree.
"Come with me…! Blasted Tree…!"
The warhammer containing the maiden's heart stabbed into the ground. Emerald-green lightning surged from the floor toward the sky, forming a spiderweb-like thundercloud that covered the entire ceiling.
The next instant, lightning poured down like a waterfall, swallowing the black Heroic Spirits in its light.
Frankenstein had actually been in a state restricted by a limiter all along.
When she released those restrictions, she could unleash tremendous power in a single instant.
But if she did that, Frankenstein would completely cease functioning. In other words, she would "die."
Of course, this Noble Phantasm could also be used without fully releasing the limiter, but its power would drop drastically.
Faced with Servants far stronger than herself, Frankenstein had no choice but to go in prepared to die with them.
Unfortunately, Berserker's plan had long since been seen through by the Girl in Black.
That was why she had sent Karna, Vlad III, and Siegfried, three people with top-tier Endurance.
Karna faced the lightning strike head-on without fear, and his golden armor shaved away ninety percent of the damage on a conceptual level.
Siegfried raised his demonic sword to block. The twilight-colored True Ether and his Noble Phantasm, "Armor of Fafnir," also withstood most of the lightning.
As for Vlad III, he was blasted apart by the green light, but soon transformed into bats and reformed into human shape.
In the end, the counterattack the girl had given her life for achieved no real result.
Like the "Black" Caster, she was captured by the shadow and dragged into the Abyss.
Seeing that their mission was complete, the black Heroic Spirits departed in silence.
Before long, they would probably gain two new companions.
...
The "Black" Berserker had died in battle as well.
Caules stared in stunned silence as the three Command Spells on the back of his right hand vanished one after another.
An indescribable emptiness and helplessness surged into the boy's chest.
"…I didn't do anything for her."
Perhaps Frankenstein's wish had already come true.
Though she had a human appearance, the girl had been forced to be treated as a monster. Her wish was simply to have "someone" willing to love and cherish her, nothing more than that.
During the Great Holy Grail War, she had met the "Black" Saber and come to see him as her father.
It was a little strange, but Caules thought that as long as Fran was happy, that was enough.
If possible, he wanted them to win together until the very end and share the joy of victory.
Caules bitterly regretted that he had not even been able to help make such a basic wish come true.
Frankenstein had died from using her self-destruct Noble Phantasm.
Caules had once ordered her not to use it, but he knew very well that Berserker must have been forced into a situation where she had no other choice.
But he did not know that "Blasted Tree" had another hidden power.
In the blueprint he had obtained as the summoning catalyst, there was a small passage of text that Caules had never noticed. It read:
"This lightning strike is not ordinary lightning. It is power shaped by Frankenstein's consciousness."
"As long as the lightning remains, she will never vanish."
After the battle ended, the hall fell silent once more.
The shadow had not only dragged away Berserker's corpse, but even sucked up every trace of blood, leaving nothing behind.
Only the warhammer, "Bridal Chest," still stood in the floor, proof that a battle had once taken place here.
"Crackle… crackle… crackle…"
Emerald-green lightning released from the maiden's heart lit up the pitch-black corridor.
***
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on p-@-treon.
[email protected]/PinkSnake (50 Chapters Ahead).
You can also follow as a free member to read a few advanced chapters.
***