Half a Holy Grail

At eight o'clock that evening, Holkodo was ablaze with lights.

For most of the city's residents, tonight was no different from any other night.

At most, with Ascetic Day approaching, they would head to a lively night market, find a bar, order a cocktail, and celebrate in advance while venting their desires.

But to another group of people, this night meant death.

Floris Hospital.

A brutal battle was unfolding beneath the night sky.

The garden, which had originally been cleaned spotless for patients to stroll around and relax in, was now littered with corpses.

Gunshots, explosions, and wails mingled with blood and firelight, drifting and flickering through the darkness.

"Give up, Miss Flame Crow."

A middle-aged man with graying temples stood before a window on the third floor of the main building. Looking down at the girl still fighting desperately in the garden, he spoke softly. His voice was quiet, yet it reached Elvily's ears clearly.

"Never!"

The girl swung her greatsword, and surging flames rolled out like waves, instantly swallowing a caregiver before burning him to ash.

That was her answer.

Even surrounded by enemies, even knowing that she might die here tonight, she would never bow her head.

Iris and Isha were also gritting their teeth and holding on.

With their strength, they should never have been reduced to such a predicament.

Elvily was a Tier Five mage on the verge of Tier Six. Iris had also set one foot into the ranks of Tier Five. Along with Isha, a Tier Four mage who had come from Old Sigel City to help before the attack, and more than a hundred well-trained companions of Tier Two and above, their lineup should have been enough to flatten Floris Hospital.

But what they had not expected was that the Vice Dean, whom their people had personally seen board a plane and leave Holkodo yesterday, would appear at the hospital tonight.

The instant she saw him, Elvily knew they had fallen into a trap.

If the Vice Dean had been alone, things would not have become this bad.

The Vice Dean's name was Zajik. His rank was about the same as hers—Tier Five.

In a one-on-one fight against someone of the same rank, Elvily was confident she could defeat him. At the very least, she would not lose and could keep him occupied.

But since this was a premeditated trap, how could Zajik possibly be the only extra person involved?

Originally, aside from doctors like Quill, the other people at Floris Hospital had no magic power, or very little of it. A Tier One mage was hardly any different from a stronger ordinary person and posed basically no threat to them.

But Zajik had secretly replaced them.

Tonight, every "caregiver" at Floris Hospital had become a mage of Tier Two or above.

That was not all. There were also several times more of them than expected, making it impossible to kill them all.

Zajik had also had people set up a magic array. The team that had gone to the dormitories to rescue the captives had been wiped out without even seeing the patients. Not one had survived.

They had been fighting for only an hour since entering the hospital, yet more than half their people were already dead or wounded.

Forget rescuing anyone—even whether they could escape alive was unknown.

There were simply too many enemies. Elvily and the other two had already killed countless people, yet they still remained trapped within the encirclement. Caregivers glared at them from every direction, waiting for them to show fatigue. The moment they did, the enemy would swarm them and deliver a fatal blow.

And the Vice Dean on the third floor still had not made a move.

This was almost certainly a death trap.

Elvily's beautiful face was already spattered with blood.

Iris no longer looked like the gentle girl-next-door she had been in the Void Arts Space, either. Electricity danced in her hands, and murderous intent gleamed in her eyes. A lightning spell pierced through the head of a caregiver who stepped forward to test them. Her voice rang out murderously: "If I find out who betrayed us, I'll make sure he dies without a whole corpse!"

There were only two possibilities for how they had fallen into the enemy's trap tonight.

The first was that the enemy had discovered them while they were scouting Holkodo beforehand.

The second was that someone had leaked the information. Among those who knew about this operation, there was a spy planted by the Floris Family.

A traitor was more hateful than an enemy.

"Now isn't the time to talk about that." Isha warily watched the caregivers blocking their path. "We have to leave."

If they did not leave now, once the other mages they had brought were captured or killed, they would face an even more difficult situation.

"We can't get away." Elvily had kept her attention on Zajik upstairs the entire time.

Iris and Isha might be able to escape, but she could not.

Elvily knew perfectly well that the trap they had set this time was aimed at her.

Mages above Tier Five were both powerful and precious. Whether it was her or Zajik, each posed an enormous threat to the other's faction. Zajik wanted to eliminate her and cripple the Dawn Council, while she likewise wanted to kill Zajik and deal the Floris Family a heavy blow.

If she was destined to die here tonight, she would pay any price to make Zajik die with her!

Elvily raised her head toward the man by the third-floor window. Her deerlike eyes narrowed slightly, and faint wings began to emerge behind her.

Seeing this, Iris hurriedly said, "Elvily, don't be reckless!"

"I'm not being reckless." On the contrary, Elvily was calmer than she had ever been.

The reason Zajik had delayed entering the fight was simple: he was afraid—afraid that she would find an opportunity to drag them both down with her.

The more the enemy feared something, the more she had to do it. In a hopeless situation, only fighting life for life could carve out a sliver of hope.

The most troublesome problem now was not Zajik, but the caregivers surrounding them.

Among them were quite a few Tier Three mages. Even she had to take them seriously when they attacked together.

Elvily and the others did not yet know that this so-called encirclement was merely a pretense.

Every time the caregivers attacked them, they either used spells to block the magic or relied on their footwork to dodge. They could not possibly stand still, and under this continual tug-of-war, their positions had been guided little by little toward the center of a magic array.

Elvily saw Zajik raise his hand.

At the same time, all the caregivers on the outer edge of the encirclement closed their eyes, lowered their heads, clenched their fists, and assumed praying postures as they muttered incantations.

Elvily sensed that something was wrong at once.

But it was too late.

"Buzz!"

The next second, a ring of scarlet light surfaced from the ground. Surging magic poured upward like a river flowing backward, shooting into the sky from beneath the three women's feet and staining all the air within its range blood-red.

Iris's expression changed drastically. "The Holy Grail Festival?!"

A vast, murderous aura spread through the area. The magic fluctuations brewing within it far exceeded the range of Tier Three, powerful enough to threaten Isha and Iris—and even Elvily.

However, in the very next second—

Just as Iris decisively prepared to stop the caregivers from activating the magic array, even if it cost her life, the array stopped on its own before she could act.

The magic, which should have shot straight into the sky, suddenly stopped halfway, as if someone had pressed a pause button.

If the array had fully activated, the blood-colored aura, distinct from the transparent air around it, would have made it look like an enormous red chalice reaching into the heavens. Elvily and the other two women would have been trapped inside it, washed to death by the scarlet magic, their corpses flowing into the sky to be drunk by the "Lord."

But now, with the Holy Grail Festival suddenly terminated, it looked as though the chalice had been cut in half out of nowhere, creating an indescribably strange sight.

The stranger part came afterward.

As if to prevent the Holy Grail from continuing to grow, golden chains suddenly appeared across the surface of the cup, which should have been made entirely of energy and possessed no substance at all. They locked the half-chalice firmly in place. At the same time, golden characters emerged beneath the chanting caregivers' feet, winding upward around them like vines. Even their mouths were sealed, leaving them unable to make the slightest sound.

Iris was completely dumbfounded.

In theory, the situation was critical, and she should not have been distracted at all. But the scene was simply too bizarre. She had discovered that the "chains" locking the Holy Grail in place and the "tape" sealing the caregivers' mouths were all lines of... math problems?!

Isha's eyes widened even further. She opened her mouth in disbelief and blurted, "A workbook?!"

Weren't these math problems from the workbook Sean had bought at the bookstore two days ago?