A False Story

"Without money, I naturally couldn't get animal blood. I can't exactly use my own blood, can I? There wouldn't be enough anyway."

Shirou slowly took more than ten steps down the street. A thought stirred in his mind and gradually surfaced.

Come to think of it, the boots Coachman Shirou had stolen from Nero were still stored in the White Mist Space. To keep him from being punished by Nero as a thief, Shirou had to summon a Servant as soon as possible—preferably within two or three hours.

There was too little time. This was going to be a little difficult.

In that case, he might as well borrow someone else's summoning magic circle.

The Matou family. He did not know whether they had already summoned a Servant, but he could sneak in and use their magic circle to summon his own.

Besides, this was a perfect chance to test whether ordinary magi had any way to deal with his Elementalization.

After three years of training in the Pirate World, dealing with a decrepit old worm should not have been a problem.

Inside the Matou family's dim basement.

"You've memorized the summoning chant, haven't you?"

"Yeah."

"Good. But while chanting the spell, you need to..."

Before he could finish, Zouken Matou suddenly stopped and frowned at the staircase nearby.

A wave of cold white air was flowing down from there.

In the blink of an eye, a layer of white snow covered the basement.

Then came the deliberate sound of someone's footsteps.

"Who is it? How dare you trespass here? Do you think the Matou family has no one left?"

As Zouken Matou spoke cautiously, countless insects surged in from every direction and scrambled toward the stairway above.

Yet the swarm seemed to trigger an avalanche. Even more snow poured down from above, instantly burying the insects.

Bugs continued to emerge from every direction, only to be buried beneath the snow and frozen to death.

In an instant, the basement was left as a vast expanse of white.

"Magic on this scale... just who are you?"

The next moment, the footsteps slowed, and a red-haired child appeared before the two of them.

As Shirou walked down the stairs, he looked Zouken Matou and Kariya Matou over.

"Looks like your bugs can't handle low temperatures."

Before coming to the Matou family, Shirou had considered freezing the insects to death with ice.

However, turning snow into ice took ten seconds. In battle, those ten seconds would become a fatal opening.

So his original plan had been to immediately escape with Elementalization if things went wrong.

He had climbed over the wall into the Matou family estate and been spotted by insects before he had even taken two steps.

Just as Shirou was hesitating over whether to flee at once, he suddenly realized that the snow he had casually created had already frozen the bugs to death.

With that, there was naturally no need to run.

In the end, his self in the Pirate World had spent all his time developing his low-temperature abilities, making the snow he created colder and colder without ever testing exactly how cold it was. He did not even have a point of reference.

Still, judging from the situation, it was at least fifty or sixty degrees below zero.

"Whose child are you? To wield such powerful magic at such a young age."

"Are those your last words?"

"Wait! Why are you here? Looking at your age, could you be connected to that little girl? I can give her to you."

Shirou lightly shook his head as he looked at Zouken Matou several meters away.

"Five years ago—or rather, five years from now—you said the same thing. Can't you come up with something new?"

Five years later, Shirou had brought Rin and Kirei with him to the Matou family to rescue Sakura. Back then, Zouken Matou had said something similar.

Honestly, although Kirei's personality was utterly vile, he had treated Shirou fairly well on the surface.

However, the grudge of murder and the debt of raising him canceled each other out. In this life, Shirou had no intention of getting involved with Kirei again.

A thought stirred in Shirou's mind, and snow instantly buried Zouken Matou.

Humans could endure cold better than insects, but extreme low temperatures blurred the mind and stiffened the body.

The instant he was buried in snow, he lost the ability to resist.

Looking at the snowman Zouken Matou had become, Kariya Matou could not help clenching his fists before slowly loosening them again. He hesitantly asked,

"Who are you? Are you... his enemy?"

"No. I came to save Sakura."

"Are you Sakura's classmate?"

"I'm one grade above Sakura. I'm her senior. Of course, at this point in time, she and I have nothing to do with each other."

As he spoke, Shirou had already walked over to Zouken Matou.

By now, after ten seconds of transformation, Snowman Zouken had completely turned into an ice sculpture.

Shirou studied the ice sculpture for a while, deep in thought.

It seemed that his self in the Pirate World had developed the temperature of snow to an extremely low level.

Although snow took ten seconds to turn into ice, snow cold enough could still kill people even without becoming ice.

After all, not every world's humans had resistance as ridiculously strong as those in the Pirate World.

Judging from the situation, his earlier estimate of minus fifty degrees had been far too high. This snow had to be at least minus one hundred degrees.

"Based on what I know about Zouken Matou, he definitely has Brain Worms hidden elsewhere. So next, I'll use snow to thoroughly cleanse the entire Matou family estate."

"Wait..."

Before Kariya Matou could finish, he saw endless snow surge out from Shirou's position, instantly covering the ceiling and walls.

"What were you going to say?" Shirou asked, turning back.

"Ah... forget it. It's nothing."

Kariya Matou let out a long sigh. No matter what, Zouken Matou's death had lifted a tremendous burden from him.

At that moment, he noticed the Command Seal on Shirou's left hand, and his expression changed slightly.

"You're a Master too? Where is your Servant? Take my life if you want, but please... please don't hurt Sakura."

Shirou was briefly stunned, then quickly realized that Kariya had probably misunderstood.

Indeed, while someone was summoning a Servant, another Master suddenly appearing at the door looked like the beginning of a fight to the death no matter how one looked at it.

"Don't worry. I'm not your enemy. Besides, I haven't summoned a Servant yet."

"You... who exactly are you?"

Kariya Matou paused, then cautiously asked,

"Can I trust you?"

"Of course!" Shirou answered without hesitation. "I'll explain where I came from once we're in front of Sakura."

"Sakura?"

Kariya Matou's face filled with worry. Ignoring everything else, he limped toward the stairs.

Seeing this, Shirou sighed softly and followed behind him at an unhurried pace.

One was crippled, and the other had short legs. The two moved at nearly the same speed, their steps almost matching.

The False Story

The False Story

Once they left the basement, Kariya Matou froze in place.

As far as the eye could see, everything was covered in white snow.

The hallway floor, windows, and ceiling were all blanketed in snow. The endless whiteness added an even deeper chill.

"Sakura!"

Kariya Matou limped through the snow, nearly falling several times.

Seeing this, Shirou hesitated for a few seconds but did not step forward to support him. He simply watched silently from behind.

Before long, Kariya Matou stopped outside a room.

Because the door and walls were covered in snow, he stared for several seconds before finally locating the doorframe.

He tried to wipe the snow from the lock with his hand, but the instant his fingers touched the snow, they suffered severe frostbite.

That sight made Shirou lower his estimate of the temperature once more.

"Sakura, Sakura! Are you all right?"

Yet no matter how loudly Kariya Matou called, no sound came from inside the room.

He gritted his teeth, turned around, and slammed himself into the lock.

The next moment, the door flew open.

What greeted them was a little girl sitting on the bed, wrapped in a quilt and shivering.

Her eyes were hollow and lifeless. Expressionless, she looked at the two standing in the doorway like an exquisite puppet.

The sight made Kariya Matou's heart tremble. He limped over, embraced her, and said,

"It's all right now. Zouken is dead. There won't be any more danger."

As he spoke, tears suddenly streamed down his face.

"I'm sorry. It's because I was too useless... If I knew magic, if I had the strength to resist Zouken, you wouldn't have suffered so much."

"Grandfather is gone?" Sakura repeated expressionlessly.

"He isn't your grandfather," Shirou could not help saying.

Kariya Matou nodded slightly and said with great seriousness,

"He really isn't."

At that moment, he noticed that Sakura's body was still trembling and hurriedly looked at Shirou.

"It's too cold here. Can we talk somewhere else?"

"Of course." Shirou looked around and pondered for a moment. "But the entire Matou family estate has been buried in snow. There probably isn't anywhere left that the snow hasn't covered."

"The entire place?"

"Yeah, the entire place."

"Then... can you take the snow away?"

"I can't." Shirou lightly shook his head. "Have you ever seen water that was poured out get collected again?"

Even Admiral Aokiji could not make the ice he had created disappear.

"In that case, let's go to a hotel. Before the snow melts, this place definitely won't be livable."

Shirou thought for a moment, then rejected the idea again.

"No. We should summon a Servant first. Something like this happening to the Matou family will definitely draw other Masters here to investigate."

"If we haven't summoned a Servant before then, we'll be in danger."

Although the Holy Grail War would only officially begin once all Servants had been summoned, who knew whether someone might start early?

After all, a Master with only Command Seals and no summoned Servant was no different from a child carrying gold through a crowded market.

Besides, Coachman Shirou was still waiting for him. He had to summon a Servant as soon as possible and could not delay for too long.

"This..." Kariya Matou looked at Sakura, curled up beneath the quilt, his face full of hesitation. "Sakura is safe now. I don't plan on continuing in the Holy Grail War. If you want, I can transfer my Command Seals to you."

"I understand how you feel, but you're only running away."