Night fell over the Tohsaka residence.
The lights in the underground magecraft workshop flickered. A tall figure sat at the desk, bent over a sheet of paper, writing with a soft scratch.
Yet after only a few lines, the man would irritably tear off the messy draft, crumple it into a ball, and throw it into the wastebasket already stuffed to the brim.
Crash!
Finally, after enduring for several dozen breaths, Tokiomi Tohsaka, his brow tightly furrowed, swept the ink bottle from the desk to the floor.
The dull impact echoed through the basement. A blot of pitch-black ink stained the snow-white wall, painfully conspicuous.
This was a rare loss of composure for him.
Tokiomi glanced at the mess before him, a bitter smile appearing at the corner of his lips.
In order to maximize his chances of victory, he had made thorough preparations before the coming Holy Grail War.
On one hand, he had originally planned to adopt Sakura into the Matou Family, thereby winning Zouken Matou's support and gaining an ally within the conflict.
On the other hand, through his grandfather's old friend Rizei Kyomine, he was forming an alliance with the Holy Church, the war's overseer. This would allow him to learn the identities and movements of the various Masters, giving him the advantage in intelligence and an edge outside the battlefield.
These were connections the family had accumulated over the years. More than two hundred years ago, the Tohsaka Family had been Christians hidden among the populace, and during the period when Christians were heavily persecuted, they had sheltered quite a number of clergy.
Thus, the Tohsaka Family and the Holy Church had established a good relationship.
With both avenues in motion, everything should have proceeded smoothly in theory.
However, in the mere few months since