The air inside the church suddenly fell silent.
Kirei Kotomine wore an indifferent, calm expression. Adelson looked at his two children, shrugged, and chose to say nothing. Anno and Archer, meanwhile, had remained silent from beginning to end.
Issei did not understand the situation, so he had no idea what he should say.
Shirou Emiya, on the other hand, sank into thought.
"Do you have any news from your side?"
Picking up the phone, Kirei Kotomine asked Bazett on the other end.
"The situation isn't good. That Servant is definitely no weakling, and the moment we met, she acted like she was ready to fight to the death. Her abilities counter Servants who specialize in close combat, so Lancer could only avoid confronting her head-on for now. Kirei, I'm sorry, but it looks like we can only rely on your side to come up with something now."
Bazett stood atop the mountain and sighed.
Of all things, she had run into such a troublesome opponent. There were hardly any Servants in this Holy Grail War who were easy to deal with.
Archer, Rider, Saber, and this Assassin.
Shuten Douji? The demon king of the Heian era could be summoned into this age... Just what method had that man named Atrum used to summon his Servant?
But it no longer mattered. No matter what method he had used to accomplish this, he could no longer answer, because he was already dead—killed by the Servant he had summoned.
Shuten Douji could actually have answered that question. Atrum had wanted to summon a Servant related to a Dragon. At the time, most of the Servant slots had essentially been decided already, and since Atrum had performed the summoning on Japanese soil, he had accidentally summoned Shuten Douji.
Shuten Douji really was connected to