Sakura Matou Rewrites Destiny

She wanted Zouken Matou's help to assist Sakura in carrying out the Winter Saintess plan.

The current old worm definitely would not do...

Therefore, Sakura had to bring back Makiri Zolgen, the man who had once possessed lofty ideals.

Before the Holy Grail War, the only way for Sakura to achieve this goal would have been to spend Destiny Points to exchange for a person or item capable of restoring a decayed soul and "save" Zouken Matou.

But now... Sakura could accomplish it without using those precious Destiny Points.

She took Zouken Matou out of the bottle, then used Hax magic, "Petrificus Totalus," to pin him against a protruding rock.

"Sister Kurumi... please!"

"Fourth Bullet..."

The Fourth Bullet—turned back the time of whatever it struck.

That was the Fourth Bullet's effect.

With a bang... the bullet, wrapped in spiritual power and the power of time, struck Zouken Matou's plump worm body...

As a burst of light enveloped Zouken Matou... his time began rapidly reversing.

One day... one year... ten years... a hundred years...

Time continued to flow backward, and astonishing changes occurred to Zouken Matou's fleshy worm body...

Until the dust settled.

Zouken Matou had returned—handsome and resolute, bearing some resemblance to what Shinji would look like as an adult...

Shame, remorse, and pain... His body and soul had returned to five hundred years ago, yet his memories had not vanished.

Faced with everything he had done over the past five centuries, faced with how he had gone down a path contrary to his ideals after his soul decayed... Zouken Matou silently knelt before the Great Holy Grail.

"Justiça... I became evil..."

Quietly watching Zouken Matou, who had lost the will to live and sunk into endless shame, remorse, and anguish, Sakura knew he had much he wished to tell the Winter Saintess, Justiça. She chose not to interrupt him.

Instead, she stood silently at the side and allowed Zouken Matou to make his final confession...

PS: There will be a few more updates tonight...

'Guardian of the Great Holy Grail'

He spat out a mouthful of murky blood.

Zouken Matou had knelt before the Great Holy Grail and poured out his heart to it for more than ten minutes. At last, his already battered body could no longer hold on.

After all, Zouken Matou's current body was merely something Orochimaru had casually made over half a year ago.

Lasting until now was already quite remarkable.

Yet Zouken Matou did not care in the slightest about his terrible physical condition.

After realizing that he did not have much time left, Zouken Matou, filled with shame and remorse, now desired only redemption... and Sakura's Winter Saintess plan happened to be his best opportunity for it.

Slowly rising from the ground, he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. His face filled with shame, Zouken Matou looked at Sakura... After hesitating for a moment, he spoke with deep guilt.

"Sakura... may I call you that?"

"If you want to, then call me that... Makiri Zolgen."

"I know my sins cannot be atoned for... but I still beg you... please allow me..."

"You want to replace the Winter Saintess, don't you?"

Sakura cut off Zouken Matou before he could finish. A trace of hesitation appeared in her eyes as she looked at his guilty expression, filled with a longing for redemption.

Naturally, Sakura had guessed what Zouken Matou wanted to ask of her.

But... she hesitated over whether to agree to this request.

According to Sakura's original plan, after the Winter Saintess merged with Irisviel, Sakura might not only gain an inferior Third Magic User, but also use Irisviel to control the Great Holy Grail to a certain extent.

And with Illya in her hands, Sakura was not worried that Irisviel would one day turn against her.

But if she agreed to Zouken Matou's request... then she would have to add another step to the plan. After extracting the remaining fragments of the Winter Saintess's soul from the Great Holy Grail, she would also have to send Zouken Matou inside.

She would have him take over as the Saintess of Heaven and become the Great Holy Grail's new administrative intelligence...

Although the current Zouken Matou would most likely help Sakura control the Great Holy Grail more effectively after merging with it, all of that hinged on one condition... that he would not betray her.

After pondering for a long time, Sakura ultimately shook her head and firmly refused Zouken Matou's request.

"I refuse. I cannot come to trust you in such a short time. I will not choose you as the Great Holy Grail's administrative intelligence..."

The grief on his face deepened. Zouken Matou had intended to erase all his emotions and enter the Great Holy Grail in the Winter Saintess's place, hoping that someday someone might need him and use him to wash away his sins.

But now... just as Zouken Matou silently prepared to return to the earth with all his sins after helping Sakura settle her affairs, Sakura's voice rang out beside him again.

"However, while I will not hand the Great Holy Grail over to you... I can allow you to become its guardian."

"Guardian of the Great Holy Grail..."

"Yes, guardian of the Great Holy Grail... I can turn you into an earthbound spirit and bind you beside the Great Holy Grail forever, allowing you to guard it eternally... What do you think?"

Guarding the Great Holy Grail... perhaps that, too, was a form of atonement for Zouken Matou. Or perhaps he still hoped to personally witness someone fulfill his ideals through the Holy Grail... In any case, Zouken Matou did not hesitate for long before nodding and accepting Sakura's offer to become the Great Holy Grail's guardian.

But Zouken Matou also put forward a condition...

He hoped Sakura would remove the five hundred years of memories and all emotions from his soul...

Just as Sakura's Fuyuki Saintess plan was progressing in full swing.

Over at the Clock Tower, Kischur Zelretch had returned half-crippled. After several days of fallout, under the Clock Tower's calm surface, hidden currents had begun to surge.

At this moment, El-Melloi was undoubtedly seen by many as a juicy piece of meat.

But the storm at the Clock Tower had yet to break. After Kischur Zelretch returned to the Clock Tower, Marisbury, who hoped to use his talents to accelerate the Chaldea Plan, had not left his side. At the same time, Kischur Zelretch's mentor had immediately come to provide him with "protection"...

Thus, for the time being, Kischur Zelretch and El-Melloi were still safe...

But temporary safety did not mean they would remain safe afterward. Likewise, the Holy Grail War—the event that had reduced Kischur Zelretch, the Clock Tower's renowned genius and Lord, to this state—had entered the sights of certain interested parties as news leaked out after his return.

The Three Founding Families of the Holy Grail War and Fuyuki City, this remote city at the edge of the Far East... naturally drew the attention of certain interested parties without anyone realizing it.

Just as Sakura was carrying out the Winter Saintess plan underground.

On the banks of the Miyou River, amid the battlefield that had been burned into ruins.

A silent slaughter was quietly unfolding.

Without drawing attention, she clenched her fist.

Dressed like a traveler and looking somewhat road-weary, the red-haired woman casually swept her gaze around. She immediately found four or five "mercenary" Magi who had apparently been hired by some faction and sent to Fuyuki City.

But just as the woman unconsciously tensed her muscles, ready to teach those worthless pieces of trash a lesson.

A scream suddenly rang out from the ruins.

Then came a strange beastly roar, followed by the sound of something being chewed.

A pungent smell of blood filled the air, and a mage missing nearly half his body staggered directly into the woman's line of sight.

The next second, before the mage could cry out for help, a completely flat "black cat," like a shadow, roared as it caught up to him and swallowed his entire upper body in one bite.

The crisp clack of high heels against the ground followed. A tall orange-haired woman, whose features closely resembled the red-haired woman's but whose temperament was entirely different, appeared in her sight behind the bizarre black cat.

"Long time no see... Did you come specifically for me?"

"I considered it, but gave up... I just came to take a look."

"That really is a pity... I had wanted to see how much you've improved over the years..."

Though she spoke of regret, the orange-haired woman's expression showed that she did not care in the slightest. As she spoke, she pulled a cigarette from her shirt pocket and, ignoring the red-haired woman's reaction, lazily lit it.

"If you want to fight, I'll accompany you anytime..."

"Tch, you really dare to say that. This time, Aoko, you don't have Alice or that strange wild man helping you..."

PS: There should be two more chapters today. The rest will continue tomorrow... (＃^.^＃)

The Aozaki Sisters and Surging Magical Energy...

Inside a small Chinese restaurant in a Fuyuki City alley, whose aroma alone made it clear that it served exceptionally authentic Chinese cuisine.

A priest and two women with unusual red and orange hair sat side by side in the restaurant, savoring the profound richness of Chinese food.

The red-haired woman stared in slight shock as the priest, whose body was still wrapped in bandages, spooned mouthful after mouthful of mapo tofu, like molten lava from hell, into his mouth.

The food in her own mouth smelled delicious and tasted wonderful.

But after witnessing that scene, the red-haired woman—the Fifth Magic User, Aoko Aozaki—could not help finding her food tasteless as wax.

The orange-haired magus beside her—Touko Aozaki—seemed accustomed to it.

She was not the least bit surprised by Kirei Kotomine's habit of stuffing his mouth with mapo tofu.

Aoko hurriedly swallowed the food in her mouth, then leaned toward Touko's ear.

"Hey, where did you find this freak priest?"

Apparently amused by her younger sister Aoko's question, Touko set down her chopsticks, rolled her eyes at her, and said helplessly.

"Where else? You should know just by looking at how he's dressed."

"...So it really is the Church again. Does that place produce freaks all the time...?"

Touko nodded in agreement with Aoko.

In the eyes of these sisters who loved and hated each other, the people of the Holy Church really did often produce all sorts of bizarre oddballs.

As the subject of their open discussion, Kirei Kotomine did not seem to care much.

At that moment, he appeared to be fully engrossed in his battle against the mapo tofu.

Even after becoming the freak those two women were talking about, Kirei Kotomine showed no reaction whatsoever.

Just as the sisters used Kirei Kotomine as an opening to begin their first sisterly chat in many years.

Suddenly... both Touko Aozaki and Aoko Aozaki's expressions changed, turning grave at once.

"You felt it too?"

"Yeah... from that direction. An astonishingly enormous amount of magical energy!"

The enormous magical energy that had suddenly appeared in Fuyuki City was naturally not sensed only by the sisters. Many Magi and magic users backed by various factions, as well as some people who had come after hearing the news to try their luck, sensed it as well.

After all, magical energy fluctuations of that scale could be felt by anyone with even a slight understanding of magecraft. It was an astonishingly immense amount of magical energy.

At Zenjo Villa, some distance from Fuyuki City, where the Tohsaka family was currently staying temporarily.

When that astonishing surge of magical energy erupted in Fuyuki City, Tokiomi Tohsaka, who was enjoying the early spring sunlight in the villa's garden with his wife and daughter, naturally sensed it as well.

He looked in the direction of the magical energy eruption, and the words Mount Enzou immediately appeared in Tokiomi Tohsaka's mind.

Although Tokiomi Tohsaka had never visited Mount Enzou, the site of the Great Holy Grail, in his life, he constantly monitored the Great Holy Grail's condition through the leylines. As one of the Three Founding Families, he naturally knew its precise location.

Thus, after discovering the approximate location of the magical energy eruption, Tokiomi Tohsaka's first thought was that something had gone wrong with the Great Holy Grail.

But he quickly dismissed that idea.

"No... the Great Holy Grail cannot develop such a problem for no reason... It is probably Sakura!"

"Sakura? Father... what happened to Sakura?"

Rin Tohsaka set down her textbooks for the next term. Sitting beside Tokiomi Tohsaka and reviewing next term's lessons, she immediately jumped up upon hearing Sakura's name and looked at her Father with anticipation.

Although she had only been separated from Sakura for a few days, Rin Tohsaka knew there were "enemies" around her sister who intended to steal her away. She had become exceptionally sensitive whenever Sakura was mentioned.

Thus, the moment Tokiomi Tohsaka said Sakura's name, Rin Tohsaka became agitated. She could not help grabbing his sleeve and began asking him... what had happened to Sakura.

But the excited Rin Tohsaka did not notice Tokiomi Tohsaka's expression.

Fortunately, Aoi Tohsaka, who had been organizing some documents nearby, understood the look on Tokiomi Tohsaka's face. She immediately set down the documents, stood up, and pulled Rin Tohsaka away.

"Rin, don't make a fuss... your Father is thinking."

She turned to look at Tokiomi Tohsaka, whose brows were tightly furrowed and whose face wore a contemplative expression.