"Lancer's Master should be nearby. The exact location is still unknown; he has probably used some method to blur perception, but I should be able to see through it soon."
"Berserker's Master? Same situation as Lancer's."
"There is a Servant presence at the top of the bridge. It is extremely powerful; conservatively speaking, it is no weaker than Archer."
"Kiritsugu Emiya's subordinate, Maiya Hisau, has been spotted—Master, do you need me to eliminate this romantic rival for you?"
"Kiritsugu Emiya has not been confirmed yet, but he is definitely nearby."
"With such a strong presence, Archer must have sensed it as well. However, I personally suggest not interfering too much with the Heroic King's interests."
"Yes, Master. No problem, Master. Gather as much intelligence as possible without exposing myself, correct? Please trust in my professional standards as an Assassin."
After cutting off contact with Kirei Kotomine, Jizi, still in spirit form, gave a dangerous smile at the lemon-haired man not far directly in front of her—Kayneth, whom she had just reported as undiscovered.
Weapons collided violently, their aftershock shattering the asphalt into fragments. The wind pressure unleashed by their swings sliced through nearby streetlamps. What terrifying power was bound within those bodies scarcely different in size from human beings?
Powerful. Unmatched. This was the power possessed by the crystallizations of human fantasy, the Heroic Spirits who guarded this world—and these were merely their avatars.
It was precisely because they were so unreasonably formidable that, despite having only seven participants, it could be granted the grand title of a war.
After witnessing the battle between the two knights at the harbor, every Master had such thoughts and impressions arise in their minds.
But they only thought so because their vision was limited by the identity of "human," preventing them from reaching a certain height. If they were viewed on the same level, Servants, while powerful, were unexpectedly quite fragile.
Not fragile in terms of combat, but on another level.
The level of the "heart."
Because no matter how glorious their legends were, their originals had still been human—or fabricated by humans.
Humans were absolutely not perfect, invincible beings.
Therefore, what arose from humanity could not be either.
Servants elevated by legend were also constrained by legend. This was a Servant's greatest weakness.
A Heroic Spirit with dragon blood would be restrained by a Heroic Spirit with a dragon-slaying legend; a Heroic Spirit once defeated by a certain weapon would be restrained by one wielding that weapon; if one legend was a variation of another, their compatibility would become rather delicate; if someone had been ironed to death by an electric iron in life, they would be at a disadvantage against tailoring tools. And so on and so forth.
If that explanation was too abstract, then there was now an excellent pair of examples—the two knights on the open battlefield:
Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, the foremost knight of the Knights of Fianna. Besides his peerless martial prowess, the tragic legend of his elopement with Princess Grainne of Conmac was still widely discussed to this day.
Lancelot, the foremost knight of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. Compared to his record of crushing every foe before him, his adulterous... tortured love affair with Queen Guinevere was more often discussed over tea after meals, influencing artistic creation for more than ten centuries.
Princess Grainne had originally been the fiancée of Fionn, Diarmuid's lord, while Guinevere was the queen of King Arthur, Lancelot's lord.
Whenever the two were mentioned in later poetry or other works of art, there would always be a passage devoted to praising their exemplary speech, bearing, character, and exceptional handsome features.
Both were heroes of the Celtic mythological tradition spread throughout the British Isles.
Surely clever and wise readers had already noticed some clues, but allow me to show off a little: Lancelot's NTR legend—and the countless similar love stories that followed—originated from Diarmuid's NTR legend. (①)
Thus, the compatibility between the two could be easily imagined.
According to Berserker's hate priority list, the first were naturally the error of this world and the Heroic King, the second was the lion king with the stupid hair tuft, and the third was Lucky E.
With the first two absent and the Lancer having activated a full-screen taunt, Team B decisively sprang out and blew up at Lancer. Lancer, unwilling to be outdone, immediately blew up right back.
It seemed Yanye had been forcibly taunted into gaining aggro... There was no helping it. He could not control Berserker, and the Knight of the Yangtze was especially enraged upon meeting his enemy—
Fuck, my love story was a tragedy! Fuck, practically everyone on Earth knew about this great tragedy! Fuck, they even turned it into plays, poems, music, and lyrics because they were afraid other people would not know! Fuck, not only did they know, they kept dragging it out to yammer about whenever they felt like it! Fuck, they had been yammering for more than ten fucking centuries, and the details got more and more ridiculous! Fuck, the maker of this great tragedy was neither Made-in-China nor the Great Cosmic Empire, but you, you man with two brushes!
It was all your fault, all your fault, all your fault! Not the world, not Tokiomi—you! That's right, you! Who are you looking at? Think you're impressive because you can work those two brushes so well? Think you're hot shit? It was still your fault!
As for Lancer, although he had taken the initiative to seek battle, he wanted an opponent with whom he could duel fairly and fight to his heart's content, not a lunatic like this! So he was now full of pent-up anger as well, with no choice but to vent it through battle. (②)
"Damn it, this guy..."
Lancer's initial strategy of "hiding his Noble Phantasm" had no effect whatsoever on Berserker. The black knight did not care which spear was the true Noble Phantasm—because their legends were related as prototype and variation, even without reason enough to recognize his opponent's identity, Berserker instinctively felt that Lancer's aura made him extremely uncomfortable. Thus, he only wanted to kill his opponent. As for weapons, with Knight does not die with empty hands, they simply did not matter.
Gae Buidhe, regarded as his secret weapon, could not pierce the armor of the Knight of the Lake. Worse, if it was caught by his opponent during the struggle, there was even a faint danger of it slipping from his control. Gae Dearg could penetrate that ominous black armor wrapped in Mana and had no danger of being taken away, but how could Lancer, constrained by his Master's order to conceal his True Name, handle the "foremost knight," whose pure martial skill surpassed even King Arthur's?
His strategy was ineffective, he could not release his Noble Phantasm without orders, and he had no confidence of winning through martial skill alone. Lancer had fallen into a tremendous crisis. As the utility pole in Berserker's hands whistled through the air in a circle and was about to smash down on his head, the spear knight, forced into a corner, could only cross his twin spears over his head and prepare to take the blow head-on.
"Alalalalalalala!"
The anticipated impact never came. Instead, after a gust of fierce wind and a crack of thunder, a Greek-style chariot appeared in the middle of the battlefield.
"Stop, all of you! You stand before the royal carriage of a king!"
Iskandar, King of Conquerors, and Queen Consort Weber Velvet had arrived!
"Maiya, can you see Lancer's Master?"
"My angle seems to be a blind spot. I cannot see him."
"Then search for Berserker's Master. Be careful."
"Yes!"
After giving orders to his subordinate and switching off the radio, the renowned Magus Killer once again turned his attention to the battlefield.
If the battle had continued without being interrupted by the suddenly appearing Servant, Berserker would presumably have been the victor. Unfortunately, although Lancer had been completely suppressed, his injuries were not serious. He still had the ability to continue fighting, and even after fighting for so long, there was still no clue as to the true identities of the two Servants.
But that did not matter. No matter what methods Lancer still had in reserve, he would never have the chance to use them—once his Master was killed, even the strongest Servant would only disappear along with him.
The newly arrived Servant had drawn everyone's attention for the moment. The noise produced by that chariot-like Noble Phantasm was as powerful as its might, and its thunderous roar could absolutely cover the sound of a sniper rifle—this was the chance to eliminate the enemy Master!
He put his eye to the thermal imager, ensuring that the red shape representing Kayneth was at the center of his crosshairs. Kiritsugu Emiya held his breath to steady the hand gripping his gun, then pulled the trigger—
"Bang!"
"This is so boring~ Kiritsugu papa, why haven't you fired yet?"
Squatting bored behind Kayneth, Jizi had no interest whatsoever in the battle between the Knight of the Yangtze and Lucky E. As for the Emperor's cuteness act, she had seen it far too often in anime and the millions of fanworks to feel anything about it.
From the beginning until now, she had been waiting for Kiritsugu's move—logically speaking, Kiritsugu had originally planned to snipe Kayneth, only to suddenly discover Assassin and thus refrain from acting. But now that she, as Assassin, was hiding so well, what was Kiritsugu waiting for? Why did he not put a bullet straight through his soul?
Was he afraid firing would expose him? Then the Emperor's flashy entrance, with all its holy-light effects, was his opportunity!
I need to get ready too—if anything goes wrong, everyone will only suspect the Magus Killer.
Aha, the ox cart had appeared!
Then, after a delay of several seconds, Kayneth's body suddenly toppled backward. Standing right behind him, Jizi could clearly see that there was a wound through the heart in the chest of the genius of the prestigious Archibald family.
"Lancer will be here soon. I have to move quickly!"
"...Are the wishes you seek through the Holy Grail weightier than a grand ambition encompassing heaven and earth?"
"...If you hand the Holy Grail over to me, I shall regard you as friends and share with you the joy of conquering the world!"
Spreading his arms as though he wished to embrace heaven and earth, the famous King of Conquerors in human history proclaimed such grand words before the participants of the Holy Grail War.
Putting aside how many people heard that declaration in secret, the reactions of the two heroes in the open—the Lancer and Berserker whose fight Rider had just interrupted—upon hearing those words were—
"My lord!"
Lancer's handsome face twisted into an expression of extreme terror. Taking two steps as one, he turned, broke into a run, then made a great leap onto a shipping container. From behind it, he carried out an unconscious person, then sped away from the battlefield. (③)
As for the other one, after Lancer, the main source of hatred, had left, Yanye finally had a chance to soothe his Servant. He was now using all his energy to control Berserker. However, because Berserker's entire body was covered in heavy armor and black mist, he merely appeared to be standing there blankly to outsiders.
The great Alexander had subdued countless heroes of his era. When he extended his olive branch, those heroes either laughed heartily and accepted gladly, or sneered with disdain until they were beaten into submission. But this was the first time such a situation had arisen—one target of recruitment ran away immediately after listening, while the other completely ignored him.
"Baka, baka, baka..."
It was the depths of winter, and birds were basically nowhere to be seen. Yet miraculously, a crow actually appeared at this moment, flying over the heads of Team Rider.
-----------Notes---------
①, Actually, I do not think Diarmuid's story counts as NTR.
At the time, Fionn had become too powerful and thus incurred King Conmac's suspicion. To eliminate the rift between the two houses, he proposed a marriage alliance. Conmac then asked his daughter, Princess Grainne, whether she was willing for the two families to intermarry—note that he said the two families, not the two people. As a princess, Grainne understood the greater good. Though she knew it was a political marriage, she agreed. However, she thought she would be marrying Fionn's grandson—also a hero of the Knights of Fianna—not Fionn himself. The guy was about as old as Grainne's grandfather, and he was an extreme wife-killer; he had married N wives before, and every one of them had died.
At the meeting between Conmac and Fionn, Grainne only then learned that she was to marry Fionn, and she immediately refused—Fuck! I came here to hook up with young fresh meat, who the fuck wants this old piece of trash?—then she looked around at the members of the Knights of Fianna who had come with Fionn. She evaluated the knights in turn as "the skinny-legged man" and "the arrogant, frivolous man," savaging them in her heart, until she reached Lucky E. Then her evaluation became: "That man whose language is beautiful and whose speech is extraordinary, whose hair is black as a raven's wings, whose cheeks are rosy like rowan berries."
Everyone knew what happened next.
So Fionn could be said to have tricked her into marriage! The arrangement had been illegitimate from the start, while Diarmuid was true love. How could it be called NTR?
②, Lancer's inner thoughts: "Fuck! What are you staring at? What are you staring at?"
③, The reason Lancer noticed Kayneth had been ambushed a little late was because Jizi had tampered with things.
--------------Author's Note---------------
My health bar had almost recovered. Updates had gone from once every seven days, to once every six, then five, four, and finally once every three days, when midterms arrived—fuck, universities have midterms too?!
Midterms dealt a fatal strike! Midterms killed Director Luo!
The various subjects will not be finished until around November 20, and the C-route is a little stuck too, so today's chapter happened...
Also, everything I mentioned about Heroic Spirit legends came from Baidu. I make no guarantees whatsoever about their authenticity. If anyone wants to research them, please privately message Baidu.
Thanks to Lonely Underworld-chan for recommending this chapter. Also, I think your story is very promising, but just talking about it with us in the group without writing it out is a bit...
If you think this book is good, please remember to add it to your bookshelf so you do not lose it next time.
Before you continue