Walking through the streets of Fuyuki, the group ultimately gave up on continuing the fight. It had nothing to do with Fu Yuan's emotions or Kariya Matou's body. Well... maybe a little.
Most importantly, the streets were full of people!
Because they had not set up Suggestion Sorcery beforehand when they blew up the hotel, everyone was now on edge. Quite a few people had formed groups, seeking warmth in one another's company.
It was not that they were lazy; the few of them simply could not deploy magic over such a vast area!
They returned to the castle in silence. Irisviel had originally wanted to give Kiritsugu a hug, but when she saw Fu Yuan's arm, she changed targets at the last minute.
Kiritsugu Emiya's mouth twitched, but he said nothing. After all, he had not regarded Saber as an adult either.
Just a child!
Hmph!
"A Yuan, what happened to you? How did you get hurt so badly?!"
Irisviel asked with great concern, then slowly treated him with her healing magic. Though its effects were barely noticeable, she did not stop.
She had not even been this attentive when Kiritsugu had exhausted his mana before.
Hmph!
Kiritsugu Emiya insisted that he was not jealous at all, then pushed open the door and walked inside as if nothing had happened.
"Irisviel, look at Master!"
Once Kiritsugu Emiya had left, Fu Yuan's slightly resolute expression instantly changed.
With a faint sob in his voice, he began accusing Kiritsugu Emiya of his crimes to Irisviel.
"Originally, I only got this tiny injury fighting the other Heroic Spirits!"
He sniffled and gestured at a very, very small wound on his arm.
"B-But Master gave random orders! Look, my arm ended up like this!"
Whether he truly felt that wronged anymore was unclear, but Fu Yuan certainly looked pitiful.
Maiya had wanted to speak up for Kiritsugu, but since she had not gone along, she could not really say anything.
Helpless, she could only turn her gaze toward Kariya Matou, who was still watching the show nearby, hoping he would say a few fair words.
"What Saber said... isn't wrong."
Kariya Matou nodded helplessly. It sounded absurd, but that really did seem to be the truth.
But who could have expected Saber's different forms to vary so greatly? And what kind of Noble Phantasm injured its own user?!
And why did Command Spells have a delay?!
Maiya: ...
Seeing Irisviel's increasingly hostile gaze, Maiya silently apologized to Kiritsugu in her heart.
Meanwhile, Kiritsugu Emiya, who had already sat down on the sofa, suddenly felt a chill run down his back, as though he was about to eat Irisviel's cooking again.
"Gah!"
After thinking of that comparison, Kiritsugu Emiya instinctively began to panic.
But he quickly calmed down again, even though his intuition had always been accurate.
This is an illusion. This is an illusion. This is an illusion...
Kiritsugu Emiya began hypnotizing himself...
There were many ways to replenish mana. One was natural recovery, the usual restoration of mana.
Another was through external items, such as Kaineth's three magic cores.
Of course, eating could work too! Though the amount was small, if the ingredients were good enough, it could still be considerable!
For instance, the lavish meal now laid out before Kiritsugu Emiya. He trembled slightly as he raised his chopsticks.
Although Irisviel said she had not made it, Maiya's guilty gaze and Kariya Matou's sympathetic one had already given him the correct answer.
Looking at the table full of sumptuous dishes, Kiritsugu Emiya figured they could not have been made by one person. There was simply too much food!
The fact that Kariya Matou did not dare sit at the table showed that he had not cooked it!
And Maiya's gaze...! Was she trying to signal something?!
"Irisviel, I'm hungry too!"
At that moment, Fu Yuan shook Irisviel's arm beside him and spoke in a childish voice.
After receiving confirmation from Irisviel's motherly gaze.
Fu Yuan directly sat down about four empty seats away from Kiritsugu Emiya, then swiftly moved the food Maiya had made to his side.
Though he still hesitated slightly, Fu Yuan brought over several dishes Irisviel had made as well.
Then—
Five Senses disabled!
Kiritsugu Emiya had actually noticed Maiya's cooking before Fu Yuan did, but his hands were not fast enough!
Kiritsugu Emiya's eyes shot open and his pupils shrank—not only because of his own plight, but also because Saber remained completely unfazed!
What a ruthless beast!
Kiritsugu Emiya looked gloomily at the food before him, feeling a faint sorrow.
When Fu Yuan came to the table, Kariya Matou had already used sleep as an excuse to return to his room. Though his door was half-open, a head would occasionally poke out.
P.S. A book recommendation comes next. There are too many words, so it would not fit in the author's note.
"Our compatriots raised their weapons and bought us time with their flesh and blood..."
"Knowledge, technology, time, faith, psychic power, genes, magic, arcana, the Void, dimensions, reality..."
"We had gained... everything."
"We were no longer weak, no longer lambs waiting to be slaughtered. We had become starving wolves with sharpened fangs..."
"Reality had been anchored. Time was under our control.
"Our thoughts and consciousness belonged to us..."
Humanity had fought its way out.
When they heard the news, the races still locked in chaotic warfare paid it no mind.
What waves could a race that had been crippled in the previous war, with only three percent remaining, possibly make?
But they soon could no longer laugh.
Because humanity was still killing.
They killed from east to west, from south to north, from reality to the Void, from the past to the future, from low dimensions to high dimensions...
They came, and they destroyed everything.
They left, they moved onward, and then they continued destroying.
They did not speak. They did not reconcile. They made no unnecessary movements. They merely destroyed, then destroyed again, repeating and repeating.
Humanity, a race of repeaters, was especially skilled at repetition, and they displayed that talent to the fullest now.
It was madness. It did not resemble something humans would do. It was more like monsters, or beasts.
But Jiang Cheng did not care, and neither did they. The purest revenge, the most exhilarating slaughter, and the ultimate madness.
Those were all they wanted.
Nothing suited those who had become monsters better than death and destruction, and nothing was more fitting to memorialize the ninety-seven percent they had lost.
So the killing would continue, and destruction would endure.
Until this fucked-up world had been turned upside down, until those bastards' blood had run dry, until they had sobbed for their parents and crawled out of everything humanity could observe.
They would never stop.
"How laughable. Truly laughable. That person who could remain calm no matter how desperate the situation, who planned everything step by step, who would not shed a single tear no matter how much pain he endured, who would not mourn even when his closest friend died..."
"Was crushed by the hope and beauty that were about to arrive."
He remembered. He remembered everything.
Those maddening memories of the past caught up to him and kept whispering into his ear.
Do not trust humanity.
Again and again.
"You can't trust them... Everything will turn back into what it was..."
"I have to do something... do something..."
"Right, right, right, right! I remember now, the Mind Network Node!"
"Humanity only needs one voice... The past must not repeat itself again... It can't..."
"I have to help them... I have to fulfill my promise... It cannot happen again... I promised them..."
"They cannot have individual wills... I can't keep letting things go... I'll do it... Let me do it..."
He remembered it all.
He had been born in the light, yet because he had walked through darkness for too long, he could no longer look directly at the sun.
In the end, he still lived in the darkness of the past. From beginning to end, he had never escaped it.
And the most laughable thing was that the others could be filled with hope because he played the sun, slowly shining in the darkness, allowing them to grow accustomed to that light and embrace tomorrow.
But...
Had anyone ever considered where the sun of the one playing the sun...
Was?
Jiang Cheng was still Jiang Cheng.
No matter how weak he was, no matter how broken he became, he was still the commander. Even if his most vulnerable part had been struck, even if crushing hope had brought him down... he was still Jiang Cheng.
His mind was in chaos. The impact brought by countless emotions clashed against his own will. Disordered fragments of memory surged endlessly, the past and present blurring together until truth and falsehood could no longer be distinguished.
He noticed the danger of his current state, but he could not kill himself. The Mind Network Node still needed him to operate it. If he died here, everything they had now would turn into bubbles.
He was the commander, holding immense power, incomparably strong, capable of anything...
He... could do nothing.
No one could pull Jiang Cheng out of the past he had sunk into, because he had long since died there. The one alive now was the commander born from darkness.
He was darkness itself, the past's entrustment to the future, a stitched-together monstrosity made of hope and promises.
Perhaps, in his deepest depths, there remained a little something that belonged to Jiang Cheng. But how much of that little remained... who could say?
Yet just as the situation worsened and everyone was at a loss, Jiang Cheng walked out on his own. As always, he greeted everyone as though nothing had happened.
Or rather, he did not remember.
They could still endure that. After all, they understood the situation. Whether Jiang Cheng or the commander, they had always followed your orders, believed in and supported you, and would brave fire and water for you.
But they could not endure the future you had envisioned back then.
The future where dawn had clearly arrived, yet your corpse still lay rotting in the mire of the past.
Before you continue