Sasuke showed no expression and said nothing. He simply continued staring at Archer with his Mangekyō Sharingan.
Archer looked somewhat helpless, but seemed completely at ease as he leaned against the balcony railing.
"Although summoning a Heroic Spirit requires a catalyst,"
"Rin Tohsaka hadn't prepared one."
"So she firmly believed that the Servant she summoned had nothing to do with her."
"But a Heroic Spirit can't be summoned by chance. There must be a connection between the summoner and the Heroic Spirit."
"And if the summoner hasn't prepared a catalyst,"
"the Heroic Spirit who's summoned will bring along a catalyst connected to the summoner."
"That's how it works."
Archer's life from childhood until before the Fifth Holy Grail War was the same as Shirou Emiya's.
But the Fifth Holy Grail War that Archer had experienced in life took place in a world that was almost identical to the one Shirou Emiya now lived in—except something was missing.
That missing piece was Sasuke Uchiha, along with a few other factors.
In any case, after the Holy Grail War ended, Archer, who had been Shirou Emiya at the time, and Rin Tohsaka, who had survived, became partners and set off for London.
He studied Magecraft at the Clock Tower, and after an unknown amount of time, he and Rin went their separate ways.
After leaving the Clock Tower, Shirou Emiya became an independent magus and worked in places like the Middle East.
After the Holy Grail War, Shirou Emiya continued to train himself.
But Shirou Emiya, who pursued his dream of becoming a hero of justice, soon fell into despair, realizing that his own strength alone wasn't enough to save humanity.
One day, an accident sent a power plant into a meltdown. Some of the employees evacuated, while others tried their best to shut down the reactor.
Shirou Emiya set off for the reactor wearing inadequate protective gear. The heat melted his skin, and his face began to sag.
No matter how you looked at it, it was clear Shirou Emiya was going to die there. Alone, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop the tragedy or the disasters that would follow.
Even so, Shirou Emiya used Magecraft to barely keep his body moving. Reaching the control rods was the limit of what he could manage.
What came next was beyond human power. Without a considerable miracle, there was no way to stop the disaster.
That was when the Counter Force appeared and asked Shirou Emiya:
"Are you sure you want to save the lives of everyone in this area?"
"Obviously, with your current abilities, that's impossible."
"But if you're determined to save them no matter what..."
"There is a way."
"Will you make a contract?"
"Also, even if you make the contract, your body can't be healed. The only thing that might change is the lives of the people around you. Your own life won't change."
"Your infected body will probably last a few more years before you die in agony."
At the time, Shirou Emiya didn't even stop to think. All he wanted was to save those people.
And so Shirou Emiya made a contract with the Counter Force. In exchange for becoming a Counter Guardian after death, he sold his future self to the Counter Force, bringing about a miracle called salvation.
The backlash from his Magecraft turned his hair white, and his skin became wheat-colored.
He sacrificed himself to save countless lives, and a hero was born.
But even after Shirou Emiya was called a hero, what he did never changed.
Shirou Emiya's goal had never been to become a hero. It was just that he needed a hero's strength to carry out his goal.
To save the few—or, rather, to uphold justice—he threw himself into battle, prepared to die despite his own weakness.
He became a demon who sacrificed the few to save the many, cast aside his humanity and emotions, and carried out indiscriminate judgment.
As a result, people feared Shirou Emiya, a champion of justice who acted without thought for his own interests. They weren't the only ones—criminals feared him too.
In the end, the very people he had saved framed him. Betrayed by his allies, he died miserably, condemned as the instigator of the conflict and sent to the gallows.
Even so, Shirou Emiya accepted it all.
After Shirou Emiya died, he became a Heroic Spirit, just as the contract had promised.
Though he had died because of betrayal, he didn't hate humanity. Yet, ironically, the role the world gave him as a Heroic Spirit was that of a Counter Guardian:
To appear when humanity brought about its own destruction, and slaughter every human in the area.
In the end, he did the same things he had done in life. He was worn away through endless cycles, until all that remained was regret.
Once he realized that his immature ideal of justice had led him into this predicament, Emiya took out his anger on his past self.
Shirou Emiya wanted to escape the cycle, but a Heroic Spirit was a different existence from who he had been in life. Rewriting the past alone couldn't erase the original on the Throne of Heroes.
So Shirou Emiya wanted to make the distortion grow by creating a paradox—"killing his past self with his own hands"—and thereby make the hero named Shirou Emiya disappear.
That was the life of Heroic Spirit Shirou Emiya—in other words, the Archer standing before Sasuke Uchiha now.
After hearing all this, Sasuke's expression barely changed. His Mangekyō Sharingan remained fixed on Archer, indifferent as ever.
"So what?"
"Kill Shirou Emiya as he is now?"
"If that's what you want, it should be easy enough."
"And besides..."
"What does any of that have to do with me?"
Archer leaned against the railing and gave an acknowledging nod.
"True."
"But compared to him..."
"Sasuke Uchiha, I'm more interested in you."
"If I miss this chance, who knows how long it'll be before I get another?"
When Archer had been alive as Shirou Emiya, he hadn't encountered Sasuke Uchiha during the Holy Grail War in Fuyuki.
He had only met Sasuke Uchiha after becoming a Heroic Spirit.
For a Heroic Spirit to manifest again, it must either answer the Holy Grail's summons or be dispatched by the Counter Force to save the world.
The mission the Counter Force had dispatched him on back then—
was to eliminate Sasuke Uchiha.
But by the time Archer manifested, Sasuke Uchiha had already driven off who knew how many Heroic Spirits.
Even Archer himself hadn't managed to gain any advantage against Sasuke Uchiha. In the end, he too had been driven off.
But the Sasuke Uchiha of that time was different from the Sasuke Archer saw now.
What had left the deepest impression on Archer was Sasuke Uchiha's left eye.
Back then, only Sasuke's right eye was the same Mangekyō Sharingan he had now.
His left eye, however, had rings of circular lines, with six tomoe in the center of the pupil.
It was clearly an eye more advanced than the Mangekyō Sharingan. Some Heroic Spirits couldn't even withstand the power of a single glance from Sasuke.
But Archer had left the battlefield too early to know what happened afterward.
Still, Archer never forgot Sasuke Uchiha.
So the moment Archer saw Sasuke Uchiha in this Holy Grail War, he immediately remembered what had happened back then.
However, Archer didn't mention any of that.
It wasn't that Archer didn't want to tell him.
He simply couldn't.
Hearing that Archer was interested in him, Sasuke gave a cold laugh and turned his Mangekyō Sharingan toward a corner of the rooftop.
"Archer."
"More importantly, there may be something else that matters more to you right now."
Archer had noticed it too.
At some point, Lancer had crouched on the iron railing atop Fish Fresh House. He rested his spear on one shoulder, raised his other hand, and cheerfully waved at Sasuke.
Before you continue