A Father's Duty

"Dear teacher, just like my father, you never understood what kind of person I truly was—not even at the very end."

Kirei Kotomine stared at Tokiomi Tohsaka's corpse, whose eyes remained wide open in death, and finally voiced the thoughts he had long kept buried in his heart.

He had been born with a defect in his character—a person who could only derive joy and satisfaction from things morally defined as evil, cold-blooded, and cruel.

That meant the things others considered noble, great, and extraordinarily valuable were utterly meaningless to him. Everything he had done was merely to avoid disappointing the expectations of authorities such as his father, teacher, and superiors.

But such a life had never been what Kirei Kotomine wanted or hoped for.

His life had therefore been as joyless as that of an ascetic, leaving him numb like a puppet controlled by someone else.

But now, under Gilgamesh's temptation, he had finally unleashed the Demon that had always been suppressed within him.

Especially when the blade pierced his teacher's body and he saw the mixture of shock and disbelief on the man's face, Kirei Kotomine was instantly overwhelmed by an indescribable sense of exhilaration, pleasure, and satisfaction, as though some stimulant had been injected straight into his brain.

Without question, from that moment onward, he had opened Pandora's Box completely, just like an addict. There was no turning back.

"How was it? Has some of the regret and remorse over not killing your father with your own hands been released?"

Gilgamesh appeared in an instant, a teasing, amused smile on his face.

After all, everything happening before him was the outcome he had deliberately guided toward and foreseen long ago.

As an extremely arrogant and self-assured tyrant, how could he possibly tolerate Tokiomi Tohsaka's attitude of treating