At this moment, Kurumi sensed an immense amount of time within King Hassan—so much that even she could not help but grow excited.
"Ten million... a hundred million... Hahahaha! You strange fellow, do you possess the time of a full seven billion people?"
If I could obtain this much time before entering the Temple of Destiny... how wonderful would that be...
With a trace of melancholy and reminiscence, Kurumi, whose face was almost entirely filled with excitement, began absorbing it to her heart's content...
"So it really is possible to absorb time..."
Hearing Kurumi's words, Sakura's expression immediately turned even more solemn.
Normal Servants should not possess time. Even if King Hassan before them was not a normal Servant...
The amount of time Kurumi mentioned—equivalent to that of seven billion humans—should never have existed within King Hassan.
At this moment, Sakura undoubtedly felt that she might have been dragged into some major event...
One minute... two minutes...
As time gradually passed, Kurumi suddenly snapped out of her excitement. Then, after some hesitation, she directly dismissed the Castle of Time summoned by her clones.
It was not because Kurumi did not want more time, nor because she had already been filled.
Rather, as time passed, Kurumi found it increasingly difficult to plunder time from King Hassan.
If, at the beginning, the time within King Hassan had been like clear water, easily drawn into herself...
Then as time passed, King Hassan's time gradually changed from clear water into glue... By the time Kurumi voluntarily stopped, the time within King Hassan had become almost like asphalt, nearly impossible to absorb.
"Time Spirit, I am pleased that you understand when to stop."
"Tch..."
What nonsense about knowing when to stop? Kurumi did not "understand" that phrase... If it had not become nearly impossible to absorb any more, she would never have stopped.
Especially when this time had been willingly offered by King Hassan, this fellow whose allegiance was still unknown.
Just as Kurumi was forced to stop and felt displeased by King Hassan's almost approving expression...
Sakura's gentle, light voice sounded beside Kurumi's ear.
"Sister Kurumi... can you confirm approximately how much time you just absorbed?"
"Of course... It was probably equivalent to absorbing one month from each of more than seven billion people all at once!"
Moistening her lips, which had become slightly cracked from tension, Sakura became visibly nervous after hearing Kurumi's description and spoke to King Hassan...
"The Counter Force... Alaya?"
Faced with Sakura, whose little face was entirely written with anxiety, King Hassan calmly leaned on the grotesque greatsword in his hand and nodded.
"Your guess is correct. This time was entrusted to me by Alaya to deliver to the Time Spirit."
The corners of Sakura's mouth twitched involuntarily, and an air of melancholy radiated from her...
"Then... does Gaia have something too?"
"Indeed. Gaia also entrusted me to deliver an item to you."
As he spoke, King Hassan tossed out an enormous war scythe with a somewhat unusual design. It landed directly before Sakura.
Picking up the strangely shaped scythe from the ground, Sakura gently ran her hand over the Zodiac scene engraved upon it...
A name involuntarily surfaced in Sakura's mind—Chronos.
Chronos, the Primal God of Ancient Greek mythology, the god of time worshipped by Orphism, one of the three major mainstream sects, the Time Dragon God!
In some modern artistic works, he was usually depicted as an old man holding a scythe.
And if Sakura had guessed correctly, what King Hassan had delivered from Gaia was most likely the scythe held by Chronos.
But was this reasonable?
To Sakura, it was utterly unreasonable.
After all, the Greek mythology of the Type-Moon system was a group of mechanical gods descending from heaven.
According to the original wording in FGO—the Grand Ancestor's description of the Primal God Chaos was, "The scale of Chaos's existence far exceeds our world!"
He was an existence beyond all conventional standards.
And who was Chronos? In mythology, he was Chaos's father!
He was an even more ancient existence, far beyond Chaos.
How powerful was Chaos? He could unleash Noble Phantasm attacks on the level of planets, star systems, and even spacetime. At the same time, he could directly attack concepts and even break down Earth's concepts into spiritrons!
And Chronos?
Within the Greek mythological system passed down on Earth, he stood even higher than Chaos.
Chronos's scythe... How had Gaia, one of the Counter Forces, obtained a Noble Phantasm like this?
This was far too unreasonable! Theoretically, Chronos should not have been part of that Greek fleet.
Could Chronos have been the being who created Chaos?
But if so, how had his human-shaped Noble Phantasm fallen into Gaia's hands? Should he not have existed on Earth at all?
And why had Gaia given this Noble Phantasm to her?
Surely she did not want Sakura to use it to slash apart those Greek gods in the Lostbelt...
And besides... if such a precious treasure had been given to Sakura, what price would she have to pay for it...
Without question, it was a hot potato!
The Scythe of Chronos, Sixteen Years Erased
For Sakura, who knew the truth and history behind Type-Moon's Greek gods...
The moment this scythe fell into her hands, her head nearly exploded.
There were too many questions, too many things that made no sense.
Yet clearly, King Hassan had no answers to resolve Sakura's doubts. Or perhaps, he did not know either.
Looking at this oddly shaped Noble Phantasm in her hand, marked with the Zodiac and a full head taller than Sakura herself...
At this moment, Sakura desperately wanted to return this Noble Phantasm.
Even though, while holding it, Sakura felt that as long as she swung the scythe, nothing would remain uncut—even time itself could be severed...
Sakura still did not want this hot potato.
But clearly, Gaia had never given Sakura a chance to return it. As though she had known Sakura would try to do so, Gaia had not come to meet her at all.
"Old Man of the Mountain... could you return it to Gaia for me?"
"When Gaia gave it to me and asked me to deliver it to you, she did not provide me with that option."
"Fine... I knew this was a trap... If I'd known, I wouldn't have carelessly picked it up."
With a gloomy expression, Sakura stabbed the scythe into the lawn. Knowing she could not avoid this matter, she let out a helpless sigh.
"Sigh... Fine, Old Man of the Mountain. The Counter Forces gave me time and a Noble Phantasm. What do they want me to do?"
"Stop everything, change everything... They hope that you can refuse the Final Day!"
Stop everything? Change everything?
Those two things were, in fact, what Sakura also desired.
But what was the Final Day?
Unable to understand, Sakura looked at King Hassan with puzzled eyes.
Seemingly understanding Sakura's gaze, King Hassan shook his head and spoke indifferently as she looked at him with countless doubts.
"You will know in the future..."
She would know in the future?
Was the future predetermined?
Had destiny already woven all of this?
That damned fatalism again!
As the master of the Temple of Destiny, Sakura deeply, deeply hated such words. She was someone who longed to rewrite destiny and alter the predetermined plot.
Although she could not yet accomplish that due to the limits of her own abilities...
Sakura had always been working toward the day when she could.
And now, King Hassan's words... in a sense, were telling Sakura that the future had already been decided...
"Is that all?"
"Indeed. That is the task the Counter Forces entrusted to me..."
"Hmph, I see... I will do it... if there truly is some Final Day."
As Sakura nodded and accepted the conditions proposed by the Counter Forces...
At that moment, the scythe planted beside Sakura's feet suddenly moved on its own.
The scythe rose into the air, then swung through empty space like a crescent moon... It then began to shrink continuously, finally becoming a palm-sized little scythe that fell into Sakura's hand.
What had happened?
Sakura did not yet know what this scythe had done...
But Solomon, who had been watching Sakura Matou, and Gilgamesh, who was currently leading Kirei Kotomine to experience pleasure, clearly sensed that this world had changed.
At the beginning of 2016, within the peaceful and tranquil Chaldea, where nothing had yet occurred.
As Chaldea's staff went about their daily work... a piercing alarm and warning-colored red suddenly appeared before the eyes and rang in the ears of every Chaldea employee.
Listening to the piercing alarm, Olga Marie, Chaldea's director, hurried anxiously from her office to the control room. The first person she looked toward was the figure beside the command platform, whom she trusted immensely.
"Lev... what happened?"
Hearing Olga Marie call to him, Lev Lainur Frolo, the powerful mage who held an important position in Chaldea and assisted Olga Marie in managing it...
As though startled awake, hurriedly relaxed his furrowed brow before looking toward Olga Marie with a slightly unnatural expression.
"I just got here myself..."
Just as Lev was about to explain to Olga Marie that he did not know what had happened either.
Suddenly, one of the employees in the command room shouted in terror.
"Director... Director... Look at Chaldeas!"
Everyone looked up, only to see that the pseudo-Earth environment model, Chaldeas, beyond the transparent screen in the command room...
Had somehow been shrouded in a layer of shadow.
"Th-Then what exactly happened?"
Looking at Chaldeas, which had somehow been covered in shadow, Olga Marie immediately let out a shrill cry.
As everyone focused their attention on Chaldeas, Lev, unnoticed at the side, involuntarily revealed a savage expression upon seeing this scene.
Damn it, it seems that distortion discovered back then was not some insignificant little problem...
So what exactly was that shadow over Chaldeas, and how had it come into being?
That shadow was time... incomparably violent, incomparably frenzied Temporal Turbulence. And its origin... was naturally the consequence of the slash unleashed by the Scythe of Chronos at the beginning of 1994...
A layer of pitch-black mist... stretching across a full sixteen years...
It was as though the sixteen years from 1988 to 2004 had been severed from the Timeline by the Scythe of Chronos and isolated.
From that moment onward... those entire sixteen years of the Timeline seemed to have been swallowed by a black hole, becoming a peculiar existence that could not be observed, reached, or analyzed...
Gaia had not given Sakura the Scythe of Chronos so she could actually use it to cut people down... though it certainly could cut people down.
Gaia's true purpose in giving Sakura the Noble Phantasm known as the Scythe of Chronos was to make that slash, allowing Sakura to have a full ten years free from interference by forces capable of traveling through Timelines.
At the same time, it was also meant to protect Sakura, protecting her from certain beings capable of traversing Timelines and traveling back to kill her while she was still weak...
Back to Fuyuki City at the beginning of 1994.
Before you continue