Being able to seize the Noble Phantasms carried by Magi through Class Cards was beyond Ritsuka's expectations. But if it worked, things would undoubtedly become much easier afterward. After all, a Noble Phantasm was a Servant's ultimate trump card.
Something that could overturn the battlefield and reverse victory and defeat.
If she could take away a Noble Phantasm during battle, then honestly, that power was absurdly overpowered.
"Mm, was that an illusion?"
Ritsuka patted her cheeks and put away the card. The side effects of the spell suppressing her pain had returned. Her vision swam, and everything before her gradually twisted.
Magus Matou Sakura
"Huff... huff..."
Heavy breathing echoed by Sakura's ears. She casually threw out several gems, and fierce flames and lightning struck the frenzied Assassin.
As Assassin, instead of fighting for a single killing blow, Matou Shinji's puppet wanted to directly defeat his enemy. Something was clearly wrong with its head. Even though Sakura appeared to be struggling under a Servant's threat, she still suppressed her enemy with Magecraft alone.
At least, that was how it looked on the surface.
A beautiful butterfly rested at her fingertips. An illusionary bounded field enveloped the area, driving away ordinary people and sealing off sound so no one would wander in by mistake.
In every sense of the word, Sakura was far too kind.
"...It's over."
She crushed a golden gem with force. A dazzling spear of light shot out in an instant, sending the hopping Matou Shinji flying nearly a hundred meters before exploding with a thunderous boom and blasting apart half the street.
With her solid combat experience, Sakura seized that fleeting chance and tightly gripped the Archer card in her hand.
"I won't let anyone hurt Senpai!"
Radiance bloomed in Sakura's hand, and astonishing magical energy surged from the Class Card.
Within the flash bright enough to blind someone, Matou Shinji struggled to widen his eyes. His bone mask seemed filled with shock.
"Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes... With this card, I can definitely defeat you..."
Sakura froze.
Gilgamesh was unquestionably one of the strongest. Even if he was not the strongest Heroic Spirit, he was absolutely among the strongest Servants.
Against an Assassin whom she could suppress with Magecraft alone, Gilgamesh would utterly crush him.
If it truly was Gilgamesh's card...
The card's light faded. It floated quietly in Sakura's hand, then fell soundlessly.
Nothing happened. Like Matou Shinji's "Install," the summoning failed outright, without even the slightest struggle.
"Pwahahahaha—!!" Matou Shinji threw back his body and burst into an exaggerated laugh. "What's wrong, Sakura...? Your Install failed? After enduring for so long... after holding myself back from ruthlessly killing my little sister, I finally got to see it!!"
"Eh? How could this...?"
Sakura fell into unprecedented turmoil. The distorted skull mask appeared before her eyes, and Shinji swung his dagger-like weapon through her shoulder.
Then Shinji kicked Sakura away, sending the "Gilgamesh" card falling to the ground.
"Sakura, you're too naive. Lord Julian already knew you would betray us. How could he possibly give you the strongest Gilgamesh card?"
Shinji raised his foot and viciously stomped on Sakura's shoulder. Blood seeped out. Watching Sakura's pained expression, Shinji covered his face with one hand in "delight" and laughed wildly. "Pwahahahahaha... That's a junk card. It isn't connected to any Heroic Spirit—a real, completely worthless junk card!"
"Hehehehe... What was the point of that old bastard giving the family head position to this trash?! Someone who thinks about nothing but 'Senpai' all day could never revive the family!?"
Shinji ground his foot down viciously, smiling maliciously as he raised the blade in his hand and aimed it at Sakura's eye.
His cold gaze swept across Sakura's entire body.
"Sakura, tell me. Where did that old bastard put the Magic Crest? I'll cut it out for you. Don't worry, it won't hurt much..."
"Because... I'm about to finish you off with my own hands. Of course it won't hurt, pwahahahaha—!!"
The laughter abruptly stopped. Matou Shinji stood there blankly as if he had jammed up, even withdrawing the foot he had been pressing against Sakura's shoulder.
"Huh, what was I doing...? Oh, right. I was going to take back the Magic Crest that belongs to me."
Assassin shook his head hard and held his blade horizontally, seemingly searching for the Magic Crest's location.
Sakura gritted her teeth. Hundreds of butterflies suddenly emerged from beneath her, flooding over Matou Shinji at her side.
Startled by the sudden swarm of butterflies, Shinji lost his balance and nearly fell.
Rolling to her feet, Sakura finally unleashed the ultimate move she had been holding back for so long. Without holding anything back, she pushed her explosive Magecraft to its limit, countless butterflies pouring out behind her.
The successive waves of butterflies completely wrapped Matou Shinji into a sphere at least two meters in diameter.
Amid rumbling explosions, the ground caved in and the surrounding walls collapsed. The intense crimson blast sent Sakura flying as well.
Having dealt with the first enemy to come for her, Ritsuka hurried toward the street where she had sensed a burst of magical energy earlier.
With A-rank Agility, she raced through the streets, leaping onto a wall to one side. Her figure moved like a ghost through the snowy night, so fast that ordinary people could not even make out that fleeting silhouette.
Ritsuka lightly pushed off the ground and landed atop a house.
She looked into the distance at the street that had nearly been blown apart. The asphalt was scorched, as if every underground gas pipe had exploded. The whole street had almost lost its original appearance.
"Assassin?"
There was only one twisted figure on the street, its presence flickering in and out. It clearly possessed some sort of concealment ability, though for some reason it had remained in the center of the street.
But that had nothing to do with her.
Judging by that frenzied appearance, she would have believed anyone who said that thing was Berserker. What normal Assassin looked that strange? Could this be another hallucination?
The girl she had expected was nowhere to be seen. The street looked like the aftermath of a battle. Perhaps Assassin had driven back his opponent.
Ritsuka let out a small sigh of relief, her slender fingers gripping a great golden bow.
The treasure Alcides had used to slay the Hydra, the Bow of the Hydra, was drawn to its fullest by Ritsuka. Her eyes were as sharp as a hawk's.
With her Synchronization Value at 100%, Ritsuka also understood just how exceptional the ranged combat abilities of this existence, originally an Archer, truly were. With a visual range of twenty kilometers and astonishing strength, she could fire supersonic arrows comparable to Noble Phantasms and strike targets twenty kilometers away without any loss of power.
And with only a few hundred meters between them...
"Second one."
The arrow never flew. The Assassin in Ritsuka's sight vanished in an instant, and her pupils constricted sharply.
The surrounding space seemed to fracture. Without realizing it, she had entered a not particularly large Grand Magecraft bounded field, and her perception had been significantly affected.
Clearly, the hallucinations caused by the side effects of the spell on her body had inadvertently aided this magical bounded field.
Just as Ritsuka wondered who had cast Magecraft of this level, a dark purple figure rushed into the residence, its sharp blade stabbing toward her chest.
Clang!
The golden bow knocked aside the incoming weapon. Ritsuka narrowed her eyes and pinched a throwing dagger between her fingers. Her enemy had just thrown it like a concealed weapon.
That thing could not possibly break through the defense of the Twelve Trials.
Ritsuka gripped the bow's shaft in one hand and used it as a melee weapon. With an explosive charge, she smashed her opponent flying in a single blow.
The wall shattered with a crash, countless bricks and stones flying through the air. The slender figure flew nearly a hundred meters before landing on a distant slope.
Drawing her bow and nocking an arrow, Ritsuka slowly followed. The Bow of the Hydra was aimed at the Assassin. Standing at the edge of the slope, her pupils tightened slightly...
"Sakura?"
Holding a card in her hand, Matou Sakura lay on the ground. A trace of blood spread from the corner of her mouth as she gave a helpless smile.
Then she closed her eyes.
Even If Hell Lies Ahead?
At the Emiya Residence, less than half the gate remained. It swayed in the wind with strange creaking noises, while the snow gradually began to let up.
Inside the room where they had eaten together not long ago, Ritsuka and Sakura sat in silence across the kotatsu from each other. The Assassin and Archer cards lay between them.
"The Holy Grail War... The power of Heroic Spirits is forged into cards, and the participants slaughter one another to seize victory. The families that created this magical ritual are known as the Three Founding Families."
Ritsuka herself now possessed the power of Heroic Spirits as well, though there were slight differences between the two.
Cards fed power back into their users, allowing them to borrow a Heroic Spirit's abilities. Ritsuka, on the other hand, burned herself away, constantly replacing what lay within her with the power of Heroic Spirits.
Having removed all her armaments and dressed in a thick tracksuit, Ritsuka did not look much different from the girl next door she had once been. Only her eyes seemed slightly vacant, giving her an eerie, doll-like air.
Sakura naturally knew where the problem lay.
From the moment she learned the Enzō family's information and discovered that the Holy Grail vessel had been found, she had known everything.
"Sakura, did you come to deal with me too?"
Had she been deceiving me all along?
Was everything fake?
Those thoughts flashed through her mind for an instant, then vanished immediately. Ritsuka noticed the incomparable sorrow on Sakura's face and could not help bitterly mocking herself, nearly laughing aloud.
The Matou family was one of the three founders of the Holy Grail War. Kirei Kotomine had likely hinted at it before, but unfortunately, she had failed to understand sooner.
"Senpai, you're really cruel."
Her face was somewhat pale, and Sakura looked weak as she smiled desolately.
She raised the hand she had kept tightly clenched and pushed the cards on the table toward Ritsuka. "Please, Senpai. You have to save Miyu."
"Sakura..."
Ritsuka silently accepted the cards. An absurd possibility suddenly crossed her mind, yet the more she considered it, the more it seemed possible that this was truly the case.
Pressing her lips together, Ritsuka said something that made Sakura's expression stiffen—
"Sakura, you knew Miyu's identity a long time ago, didn't you...? Her identity as a Divine Child."
"Your Magecraft is far more accomplished than mine. You can even maintain an illusion-based bounded field independently. Could it be that, all these years, you've been secretly placing special spells on Miyu?"
At Ritsuka's crisp words, Sakura lowered her head.
Imaginary Numbers—the rare Magecraft aptitude Matou Sakura had possessed since birth—was defined as "something that might exist, yet does not exist within the material world." It was also known as Imaginary Number.
It was an exceedingly rare magical attribute, perhaps related to time and space.
With that as a foundation, combined with Matou Sakura's magical ability far surpassing Ritsuka's, it was not impossible for Sakura to have secretly placed an extra layer of protection on Miyu. The butterflies Sakura could control were quite unusual.
The reason it had been exposed must have been related to the girl named Erika. There was a divine presence about her that Alcides found familiar.
A Greek god.
"I'm not blaming you, Sakura. I just wanted to say thank you. That's all."
No matter when Sakura had discovered Miyu's identity, she had never harmed either Ritsuka or Miyu. She had even helped them many times. By every measure, Ritsuka owed her thanks.
Sakura smiled foolishly, unconsciously straightening her posture as her expression grew serious. "Senpai, have you ever thought about running away?"
Ritsuka suddenly froze.
Run away? So that had been an option. She had never even considered it before.
She had carried every burden alone. In the end, Kiritsugu had chosen to respect her wishes and no longer treated Miyu as a tool.
Loss, then more loss. From the very beginning, there had been nothing else by her side, just like the room from her previous life that reeked of disinfectant, its white walls sickening and nauseating.
The uncontrollably upturned corner of a mouth surfaced in the depths of her memories.
There had been no one with her.
"..."
Amid the indescribable silence, the girl bearing the Emiya name suddenly laughed softly. Her expression became resolute.
Even someone as hollow as her—someone who imitated others and tried to learn, an absolute failure among artificial geniuses—now had a wish of her own.
"I won't run away."
Ritsuka tightly gripped the two cards in her hand. One was Assassin, the other Archer. Yet the Archer side was blank, a useless card without any Heroic Spirit's power.
The next moment, images seemed to slowly emerge before Ritsuka's eyes. An overwhelmingly familiar sense of déjà vu arose.
A silver-haired, brown-skinned man wielding twin swords stood atop a desolate Sword Mound.
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