To make sure Rin could keep up and that nothing went wrong, Jizi hoisted her onto her shoulders. She was not built like Heracles, broad-backed and powerful, but there was barely enough room for one little girl. As long as Rin held on tight, she would not fall even if Jizi made some difficult moves.
Following Ryunosuke Uryu was not particularly difficult, since he had no intention of hiding himself. It was not that he was not cautious, but after receiving some little tool from Caster, his recent actions had gone without a hitch, so his vigilance had inevitably slackened.
"He seems to be gathering children in that building." After observing for a while, Rin had formed a rough judgment of Ryunosuke's pattern of behavior.
"Mm-hm." Jizi's attention was not on Ryunosuke. What she was wary of was Caster, whose whereabouts were unknown.
"Should we go inside and take a look?" Rin offered her opinion again.
"Mm-hm." Jizi still looked distracted.
"Asashin is a big idiot!" Rin was a little angry after being ignored twice.
"Mm-hm... Wait, no!" Jizi finally came back to her senses. "You little brat, are you itching for a beating?"
"You're the one who's been spacing out!"
"I was keeping watch on the surroundings! You're too green to tell!"
"I can't pretend I didn't hear that! Take it back!"
"Sure, as long as you can produce the appropriate proof."
"Ummmmm... What proof do you want?"
"For example, why don't you go into that building yourself and rescue your friend? How about it?"
"Huh?!"
"Just as I thought, you can't do it."
"Who says I can't?! I'll show you right now! I don't need your help!"
"Fine, then hurry up and go in. Oh, and if you get scared, you can scream. I'll come rescue you."
"Who needs rescuing from you?!"
Watching Rin Tohsaka storm off after being provoked by her words, Jizi swiftly summoned her twin blades and assumed a stance toward the surrounding area. At the same time, some indescribable monsters emerged from the shadows.
Ryunosuke was not inside the building at the moment, so Rin would not be in any danger if she went in. Staying by Jizi's side, on the other hand, would only expose her to sights harmful to a little girl's healthy development, and Jizi would not be able to fight freely while protecting her.
"Then let me see what you monsters are made of."
With nothing holding her back, Jizi charged at the demonic creatures, wielding her twin blades.
---------------Meanwhile------------
After gently pushing the door and finding it unlocked, Rin opened it a crack and carefully slipped inside.
The inside of the building looked like an ordinary bar. It should still have been business hours at this time, but Fuyuki City's recent curfew had forced such entertainment venues to close early. Having lost a great deal of business, the bar looked desolate.
The room was very dark. Not knowing where the light switch was, Rin could only feel her way forward step by step, cautiously testing each footing. Just as she approached a table—
"Ah!"
Something touched her ankle. That sensation... it seemed to be a human hand!
Startled senseless by the sudden fright, Rin's legs gave out and she fell backward onto the floor. The gems in her pocket tumbled out with her.
"Scary, scary, scary!"
She should not have gotten into an argument with Asashin just now. If Jizi had come in with her, she would not be this scared—No, no! Rin, you are the heir of the Tohsaka Family! How could you think like that?! You have to rescue Kotone perfectly and elegantly, then make Asashin admit defeat!
The power of her pride once more gave Rin courage. Trembling, she stood up and picked up the gems from the floor. Huh? The gems were actually glowing. Had they always been able to do that?
"Could it be from back then?" Rin suddenly remembered Jizi modifying the gem fragments earlier.
Feeling someone's concern in that gentle light, Rin became much less afraid. Using the gems for illumination, she began searching for whatever had frightened her.
"That opening was huge, yet I wasn't attacked. That means what touched me was just an inanimate object."
Once Rin calmed down, her intelligence immediately returned. Certain there was no danger, she relaxed and walked back to where her foot had been touched. Then—
"Ah!"
Under the gemlight was a human face. More precisely, it was the face of an unconscious little girl with a twisted expression. Rin had touched this girl's hand, and the girl herself was—
"Kotone! Kotone, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"
—Rin Tohsaka's primary objective on this trip, her good friend Kotone. Yet her condition seemed rather strange.
In her panic, Rin whipped her head around, looking for water or something else. What she saw was children collapsed everywhere throughout the bar—on the floor, on tables, on the counter. There were more than twenty or thirty of them.
"How could this..." Rin was terrified by the sight before her. "I need to call the police first. What was the number for 119 again?" (1)
Her trembling hand pulled out her phone, but she could not press those simple three digits. After finally entering the number, just before she pressed the green call button, an unfamiliar hand reached down from above Rin and snatched away her phone.
"Oh my, little miss." The red-haired young man Rin had followed earlier was standing behind her now. With a twisted smile, he addressed her. "Did you hear we were holding a party here and come especially for it?"
Who would join your party?! But how did he get in? Asashin should have been at the front entrance. Was there another back door to this bar?
"That's wonderful. I was just troubled by not having enough people." Ryunosuke extended the hand wearing his magecraft bracelet toward Rin, intending to manipulate her mind.
However, Rin had observed Ryunosuke for a long time and already knew the secret of his bracelet. Without the slightest hesitation, as Ryunosuke reached out, she hurled one of the three gems clenched in her hand at him with all her strength. The Mana-filled gem exploded violently in midair. Ryunosuke was struck head-on. It was not fatal, but he was badly injured, especially when his eyes were hit by the intense flash before the gem exploded, leaving him temporarily blinded.
Seizing the opportunity, Rin gripped Ryunosuke's bracelet with both hands and poured a massive amount of Mana into it. That small magecraft tool, with little craftsmanship to speak of, naturally could not withstand such tremendous Mana and was forcibly blown apart.
With the bracelet destroyed, the kidnapped children gradually began to regain their senses. Rin hurriedly used the recovered phone to call the police. Then, to avoid unnecessary trouble, she left the bar before the police arrived and hid in a dark alley nearby to watch secretly.
Seeing the police rescue those children, Rin let out a long breath of relief. Yet the red-haired man did not seem to be among them. Had he escaped after all? Still, rescuing Kotone was enough. Asashin would have nothing to say now, hahaha...
Come to think of it, where was Asashin? And earlier, how had she let that guy enter the building? She had put Rin in so much danger. Rin would definitely use this to extort her properly...
Lost in her thoughts, Rin did not notice that the needle around her neck was spinning violently—something was approaching her!
Screech!
The ground before Rin was broken open from below, and a tentacle emerged! The tentacle first attached its suckers to the walls on both sides, then pulled with force, dragging up something even more enormous.
It was a creature resembling an octopus—though could that truly be called a creature? Both its form and its presence proclaimed the fact that it was not of this world.
Only demons could possess such a form.
She could not escape. She had no chance at all before that thing! Watching the tentacle reach toward her, fear left Rin unable to make any move. But then a voice suddenly echoed in her mind—
"...If you get scared, you can scream. I'll come rescue you."
So Rin Tohsaka poured all her strength into a shout.
"ASASHIN!!!"
Then—
"I'm here!"
Twin blades shining with blue-white light cut the monster to pieces. A masked figure appeared behind the dismembered demon. To Rin, that figure looked so cool, so reassuring.
"Idiot! Where did you go just now?!"
"Sorry, sorry. I had something to deal with."
---------Earlier-----------
After all, they were in the city. Even a madman like Caster exercised some restraint. The Sea Demons that appeared here were far inferior in both number and quality to those that had attacked the Einzbern Castle.
Even so, it took Jizi considerable effort to clear them out. Then she saw Ryunosuke return. Wanting Rin to undergo a trial, and out of a tiny bit of personal bad taste—really, just a tiny bit~—Jizi did not stop Ryunosuke. After he entered, she closely monitored the situation inside from outside, ready to rush in the moment Rin was in danger.
Unexpectedly, Rin had done quite well on her own. As expected of someone Mushroom had described as "one of the truly powerful people in Fate." Even if she was only a little girl, she was still impressive.
But at that moment, Jizi suddenly sensed a powerful surge of Mana—Caster's presence. Having tracked him many times, she was extremely familiar with it.
The direction from which the Mana was coming was not far from here. Strangely, the fluctuation was steadily intensifying, like a balloon about to burst. Had the humiliated Ryunosuke egged Caster on into making some huge spectacle? If it erupted here, an entire street might be blown away. Jizi could no longer spare attention for Rin and rushed over at maximum speed.
But when she reached the center of the gathering Mana, she found nothing at all—a diversion!
Fortunately, her Assassin class prided itself on mobility. Jizi had barely managed to save Rin before she was endangered.
But this was only the beginning. Because of what she had just done, Jizi had also exposed herself before Caster. Caster, who bore a grudge after being toyed with, and Ryunosuke, who was full of resentment toward Rin for ruining his plans—would they let them off so easily?
The dozens of tentacles erupting from the hole in the ground gave a clear answer to that question.
"Oh dear, Rin-chan, it seems we've gotten ourselves into trouble."
---------Notes----------
(1) Both 110 and 119 are police emergency numbers in Japan, but unlike in China, 110 is for crimes such as robbery and kidnapping. Meanwhile, 119 is used not only for fires, but also for emergency assistance and medical aid. The above information came from Baidu. If any of it is inaccurate, you probably will not need to use it anyway, so do not worry about it. (If you really do need to use it, you probably know better than I do, so there is still no need to worry about it.)
-------------PS---------------
PS1. Jizi did not directly kill Ryunosuke because if Ryunosuke died, Caster would theoretically disappear soon afterward. But anyone who has seen the original work and related works knows that this "soon" is actually quite a long time—long enough for a deranged Caster to do something insane, such as summon a giant Sea Demon in the city center. Or, after losing his Master, Caster might simply start eating people to replenish Mana and maintain his existence.
PS2. This chapter feels a little off. I did not manage to write what I wanted to express... What a shame. Still, compared with the beginning, I should have improved, right?
PS3. Come to think of it, I do not know whether it was related, but after I shouted on the Dian Niang forum, "Those WeChat platform advertisements forcibly inserted into chapters lately are so annoying, get rid of them already," I first got "You are not an author" when logging into the author section. Refreshing and logging in again endlessly did not help. Later, it simply became "Password and account do not match." Seriously, was that necessary, Tencent? Then, because the phone number linked to my account was the one I used back home rather than at school, resetting my password took an enormous amount of effort.
Before you continue