How about you find another savior?
Author: Kirei Kotsuki
Synopsis:
Many years later, when Xi Jianxi recalled the moment he first stepped into the Holy Grail War, perhaps fate had already been arranged:
Thrown into the Shadow Realm without knowing anything, he became Scathach's disciple.
Kirei entrusted him with Karen, the daughter he was unable to raise, while he adopted Sakura, Tokiomi's second daughter.
Just when he thought his life of raising children in Fuyuki had begun, he was chosen by the Holy Grail and given Command Spells.
He planned to summon Berserker for the war... and you were telling him the one who came was the famed Magus, Fairy Queen Morgan?
"Since I was always being pushed forward anyway, I might as well get ahead of everyone else."
Unless even that thought had been accounted for.
A Fate crossover fanfiction
Volume One: Zero
Volume Two: Case Files
Volume Three: The Fifth Holy Grail War (FGO-modified version)
Volumes Four to Six: London, North America, the Round Table, and the Uruk Singularity
Volume Seven: Temple of Time, CCC
Prologue: Land of the Dead
The boy dragged his utterly exhausted body along a rugged mountain path where, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but stone.
The sky was covered by heavy clouds, and sunlight could not penetrate that darkness at all.
A gale carrying the stench of death rushed headlong into him.
He had already lost count of how many days he had been in this place.
There was no distinction between day and night here. At any time, all there was was the gloom of dense cloud cover.
"...This is practically... the Land of the Dead..."
Xi Jianxi muttered to himself.
Xi Jianxi tightened his grip on the wooden stick in his hand. He had found it on the road, and it could barely serve as a weapon.
The reason he needed a weapon was simple—
The wind swept down the mountain road, and emerging from what seemed like black mist were skeletons, undead, ghosts, and things of that sort.
Dead men with dry, sunken, rotting faces; skeletons without a shred of muscle; and monsters hidden in the shadows beneath tattered cloaks, their faces completely obscured, with only eyes burning like ghostly flames.
These "things" carried rusted swords, spears, and lances in their hands.
Xi Jianxi knew he was surrounded.
They radiated a danger that was obvious at a glance.
He could not let them get close. Though they looked unsteady even as they walked, they wielded their weapons with tremendous force.
Seizing the moment, he dodged the slash of the first skeleton to charge him. The wooden stick in his hand struck its cervical vertebra with precision, and its white skull rolled several times across the ground before stopping.
That skeleton swayed as it toppled backward.
All the monsters let out eerie, terrifying sounds and rushed Xi Jianxi one after another.
His strength had long since been steadily drained by countless ambushes like this. He seemed to be at his limit, yet somehow he was always one breath short of actually dying.
Yet it was precisely thanks to that desire to survive that Xi Jianxi gradually mastered ways to deal with these monsters, as well as how to fight, through one encounter after another.
The moment swords, spears, and lances were raised, he could predict their attack paths, evade vital points in advance, and counterattack.
His body met the monsters with the precision of a combat machine.
However, he was outnumbered, and the wooden stick wore down with every counterattack until it shattered across the ground.
Dodging a corpse's slash, Xi Jianxi rolled backward, only to land within the range of the other monsters' attacks. Weapons of every kind rained down densely upon him.
Whoosh—
A sharp crimson flash streaked past, and every monster instantly turned to dust, along with their weapons.
"Oh? I never expected that, even now, someone could enter this place alive. I thought it was an illusion, so I came out to take a look. To think I would actually find such fine material."
An incomparably sharp crimson spear pointed at Xi Jianxi. Its owner's voice was cool and noble.
The wind, laced with the scent of death, continued to howl past his cheeks as the owner of the crimson spear's long hair drifted in the breeze.
Though he was exhausted to the bone, though her face was veiled, he could not help holding his breath at the peerless elegance of the woman before him.
"Since you have reached the Shadow Realm and met me, the ruler of this otherworldly realm, this realm of sorcery. Warrior, state your name."
The woman withdrew her spearpoint and planted it against the ground.
"Xi Jianxi..."
Congratulations. You successfully survived in the Shadow Realm and met its queen. But do not think this is the end. Now, your journey steeped in death is only just beginning.
The instant Xi Jianxi gave his name, it was as though someone had told him this—not through sound, but more like information being carved directly into his mind.
He could sense that he had stepped onto a fate he knew nothing about.
Sakura Tohsaka
Xi Jianxi narrowed his eyes as sunlight streaming through the chapel's upper stained-glass windows stung them white.
He gradually came back to himself from his light doze. Somehow, he had fallen asleep in a place like this.
Heavy, sluggish footsteps came through the church's wooden floorboards. An elderly priest slowly approached, entering Xi Jianxi's field of vision from the left.
He was the priest in charge of this church, Rin Tohsaka, nearly eighty years old. He looked old and dim-eyed, but the gaze within his narrowed eyes still conveyed that age had not made him senile.
"Tired of waiting?" Father Rin asked Xi Jianxi, who was far younger than himself, in a very calm tone.
Only then did Xi Jianxi pull back the arms he had draped over the wooden bench. He shifted from reclining on his back to sitting upright, his right hand slowly lowering onto the silver-haired girl sleeping across his lap.
"No. I came here for this matter today anyway, so waiting a little longer was still just waiting." Xi Jianxi sounded unconcerned. "But Father Rin, your son still hasn't come."
"You know that only a year has passed since he suffered the loss of his wife. He is currently studying magecraft under Tokiomi and preparing for the Holy Grail War two years from now. I am afraid he has no time to spare for coming to see his own daughter." Father Rin explained solemnly, his gaze falling on the little girl in Xi Jianxi's arms.
Karen Ostia.
The daughter born from Father Rin's son, Kirei, and an Italian woman.
Kirei's wife had passed away only two years after their marriage. At the time, Kirei knew he could not personally care for his two-year-old daughter Karen, so he entrusted her to Xi Jianxi, who happened to be in Italy.
The two had once carried out missions together that required executors of the Holy Church and Magi from the Mage's Association to cooperate. Based on that connection, Karen had been entrusted to Xi Jianxi.
Xi Jianxi had simply not yet decided whether to change Karen's surname and formally adopt her.
"What a pity..." Xi Jianxi said, scratching his head.
Whether Kirei truly could not spare the time to come, or simply did not wish to come at all and felt nothing for the daughter he had entrusted to someone else, Xi Jianxi reserved judgment.
There was something off about Kirei.
That was the deepest impression Xi Jianxi had formed after working with that priest on numerous missions.
"Still, seeing how this child is now, entrusting her to you may have been the most correct choice Kirei ever made." Father Rin said. "Neither I nor Kirei could have taken good care of Karen."
"Not at all. I just happened to want to settle down, and I figured it would not be a burden." Xi Jianxi waved his hand with a grin, indicating that it was no great matter.
But in truth, he had no way to tell Father Rin—or Kirei—that some strange "will" had instructed him to do it.
Mission: Adopt Karen Ostia. Successfully completed.
If not for such a mission, there was no way Xi Jianxi could have happened to appear in Italy just as Kirei's wife died.
Xi Jianxi really wanted to complain about what the point of making him do something like this was.
But that will—or perhaps he should call it a "system"—was unreliable at best.
His first encounter with it had come when he survived the Shadow Realm.
The second had come when he left the Shadow Realm and returned to the outside world, when it gave him the reward for the so-called Shadow Realm training mission.
And that reward... was merely an airtight identity as a registered Magus of the Mage's Association.
In the four or five years afterward, Xi Jianxi had received no further missions.
What a thoroughly useless thing...
More than once, Xi Jianxi had cursed that utterly unreliable system in his heart.
There were only missions and penalties for failure, with no clear rewards.
Sometimes there were rewards, but more often there were not. Even slavery was more humane than this thing...
As for why Xi Jianxi had brought Karen to Japan today and appeared at this Tohsaka church in Fuyuki City, it was for the same reason.
New mission: Adopt Sakura Tohsaka, the second daughter of the Tohsaka Family.
She is a once-in-a-century genius Magus seed with the Imaginary Element. Be sure not to miss the chance while the Tohsaka Family is troubled by their children's overly exceptional aptitude, okay?
If the mission fails, the only thing awaiting a small-fry Magus is GAME OVER, you know? Ehehe~
Ehehe my ass!
Just thinking of that irritatingly punchable tone, like some bratty little girl, made Xi Jianxi want to curse.
This was Japan in 1992. That concept probably had not even come into existence yet.
—Though sometimes, Xi Jianxi was also surprised by why he possessed knowledge that seemed to transcend his era.
"Tokiomi has arrived at the church gates. He will be coming in shortly."
Father Rin had no idea what Xi Jianxi was thinking. He simply admired the young man's languid air of treating everything lightly, no matter the situation.
After all, Xi Jianxi was one of the rare outstanding Magi in the Mage's Association. Not long ago, he had just been granted the rank of Pride.
He was in no way inferior to Kirei, Father Rin's pride and joy.
"Is that so?"
Just as Xi Jianxi finished responding, the chapel doors were pushed open.
A man in a dark red suit entered. Judging by his appearance, he did not seem much older than Xi Jianxi, who publicly claimed to have just turned twenty, but his composed bearing and imposing aura made him seem extraordinary.
Tokiomi Tohsaka.
He was the person Xi Jianxi had come to meet at the church today.
A little girl with black hair and blue eyes stood beside Tokiomi. That must have been Sakura Tohsaka.
Gently lifting the still-dozing Karen into his arms, Xi Jianxi rose from the bench and turned to face the Tohsaka father and daughter as they approached down the aisle.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Xi. This is my daughter, Sakura Tohsaka." Tokiomi introduced the timid girl beside him.
It was a church on a day off, filled with unfamiliar adults apart from her father, and the atmosphere was solemn.
It was the sort of setting that would frighten a child her age.
"So you have finally decided to accept my request and entrust your daughter to me for instruction?" Xi Jianxi also wore a perfect smile.
Tokiomi spoke elegantly. "For Sakura to inherit magecraft from the disciple of Touko Aozaki, the Grand Magus, would be a rare opportunity."
No one knew Xi Jianxi's origins, nor did anyone know what school of magecraft he belonged to, and no one asked.
However, he wielded magecraft that included the Primal Runes, so at the prompting of that trash system, Xi Jianxi publicly claimed to be Touko Aozaki's disciple.
Of course, Tokiomi also had the Matou Family in Fuyuki and his aunt's Edelfelt family, with whom he had severed ties more than sixty years ago and never spoken to again, as options.
But when Xi Jianxi sent his request through Rin Tohsaka, Tokiomi Tohsaka was still tempted.
The Primal Runes and puppet-making techniques were both inaccessible secrets passed down by that Grand puppet maker, things even Tokiomi Tohsaka could not hope to attain.
If Sakura could become the successor of that lineage of Magi, Tokiomi would no longer need to worry about her future.
"Mm." Xi Jianxi nodded in satisfaction. This way, the mission could be completed perfectly.
Before you continue