With the battle over, everyone let out a long sigh of relief. Sunrise was just a few minutes away, and everyone was contemplating what to do in the future.
Just then, Jean suddenly realized a blind spot: "What about Irisviel and Illya?"
The others all indicated that they didn't know.
"They were already teleported away by that Saber, right when the white Barrier was first deployed," Medea stepped forward to explain.
"Damn it, I can't believe they got away!" Rin said, feeling quite indignant.
Just then, a quiet "Hey" reached Jean's ears. Turning around, she saw XX beckoning to her.
Jean had just noticed that XX was hiding behind a charred tree trunk, peeking at Ai-chan.
Even though this small tree trunk couldn't hide her rather impressive figure at all, Ai-chan was gazing out at the city as if she didn't see her.
Although she was very interested in the situation between the two, Jean wasn't the type to force herself into others' relationships.
But now that XX had initiated contact, Jean walked over.
When Jean reached her, XX threw an arm around Jean's shoulder, and the two turned their backs to the others, crouching down with their arms around each other.
"Hey, your name is Jean, right? Ai-chan's friend?"
"That's right."
"That's great, Ai-chan has made a new friend. Ah, no, wait, let me ask you something. Do you think Ai-chan has forgiven me?"
"That's hard to say. What exactly did you do?" Jean took the opportunity to ask.
"Ah, this... it's embarrassing to say, but back when I was participating in the Dark Round Table battle with Ai-chan, I accidentally used too much force and..."
Hearing this, Jean understood. It was likely a cliché story of friends fighting and killing each other, and presumably, this was the reason Ai-chan came to the Reincarnation World.
"Then why are you crouching here instead of going to apologize?"
"I'm scared! What if Ai-chan doesn't forgive me? What if Ai-chan ignores me from now on?"
"What can you do? You reap what you sow, so just deal with it. Hurry up and go, beg for forgiveness properly. Ai-chan's heart is actually quite soft."
Jean wasn't speaking without basis; Ai-chan coming to this timeline was nine times out of ten to find XX, but she probably didn't know how to face XX herself.
XX nodded, thought for a moment, and then sprinted until she was a short distance in front of Ai-chan. She then dropped to her knees, slid forward by momentum to Ai-chan's feet, and slammed her head against the ground, completing an incredibly magnificent dogeza.
"I'm so sorrrrrry!"
Ai-chan, who had been filled with hesitation, was startled. "Eh, eh, you, get up first," she said, sounding flustered.
"No, I won't get up until you forgive me." XX relied on her instincts to act like a rascal.
Hearing the commotion, everyone looked over. Ai-chan's face turned red, and she hurriedly pulled XX up.
"Alright, alright, I forgive you, okay!"
Having been forgiven, XX stood up. Using her Stand, which seemed to have developed much more than Ai-chan's, she gave Ai-chan an all-encompassing bear hug, almost swallowing her whole, while flashing a V-sign at Jean.
Jean gave her a thumbs up in congratulations, while quietly putting away her phone, having recorded the precious footage.
---
Jean was quite satisfied with her actions; otherwise, it would have taken quite a while for those two to reconcile given how coy they were being. Seeing them happily hugging, Jean stopped paying attention to them and walked over to Rin, who was sitting on the steps, staring blankly at Fuyuki City.
At this moment, Rin was staring at the entire city with vacant eyes. Just as Jean sat down beside her, the first rays of dawn arrived, which was truly breathtaking.
Just as Jean turned her head to share her thoughts with Rin, she noticed Rin smiling with a broken expression.
"Hehehe, it's over, everything is over."
"Huh? What happened?"
Her behavior made Jean a bit nervous.
"The concealment of mystery can't be maintained anymore!"
"Ah."
Jean suddenly realized. They had been having too much fun fighting all night, forgetting that mystery in Type-Moon is a limited resource, so Magicians have always been concealing the existence of mystery from the general public.
"But it should be fine, right? Although I don't know who did it, the citizens of Fuyuki are all in a state of slumber, aren't they?"
At this point, Jean mentioned her discovery. After all, the commotion from the mountain-slashing sword earlier had been so great, yet it hadn't caused any chaos in the city, so she had investigated.
The result was that everyone had fallen into a deep sleep, and they hadn't just fallen asleep suddenly; they had returned to their beds in an orderly fashion before falling asleep.
"Wait, no way. Why didn't I sense such a large-scale spell? I am the administrator of Fuyuki!"
Jean didn't know what was so great about being the administrator of Fuyuki that Rin kept mentioning it, but even she hadn't detected the deployment of this spell. She turned to look at Medea, the magic expert on the side.
"It wasn't me, and I didn't find any traces either. As far as I know, the only ones capable of doing this, besides the God of Sleep, would be the counter force."
The God of Sleep was naturally out of the question; gods find it very difficult to leave the Sea of Stars. Ultimately, the answer pointed to Alaya, the collective consciousness of humanity.
"If it can be confirmed that the counter force intervened, then this timeline can indeed be saved, and our efforts weren't in vain."
Jean had thought of this when she first discovered the anomaly in the city. After all, at that time, Medea was still a Servant and didn't have the capacity to cast spells on such a large scale.
Therefore, Jean had actually been acting on the premise that if they successfully repelled the Evil God, there was a possibility of preserving Fuyuki, even if the feasibility wasn't high. It wouldn't hurt to try.
Ai-chan, who was listening to their discussion, walked over with XX and offered a contrary view:
"It's hard to consider such a thing. After all, the residents fell asleep before the Evil God descended, and the Evil God did indeed descend here. The counter force wouldn't want a timeline full of contamination."
But in reality, only Jean held onto such hope. Ai-chan had never held any hope of saving this world from the beginning; she helped intercept XX and BB only because Jean and her friends were here. Once Jean got the Holy Grail, it would be time to drag everyone away.
XX also nodded from the side. She had seen such things many times, which was why she often used Noble Phantasms that targeted planets. After all, usually, the moment an Evil God descends, the people of that timeline are already beyond saving. This is the most troublesome aspect of Evil Gods. Moreover, World Pruning is not a specialty of this planet's counter force.
However, this conversation made Rin and Sakura's expressions turn fearful.
"Wait, what do you mean by whether the world can be saved? Wasn't the Evil God defeated?"
Looking at Rin, and facing her confusion, Jean began to explain the concept of World Pruning.
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