The southern outskirts of Fuyuki City.
The city lights had ended five kilometers away.
Mayuri stood on a nameless hill, dry grass and exposed granite beneath her feet, dark fir woods all around her.
The November night wind swept up from the valley, carrying the smell of earth and dead leaves.
She had arrived early.
Presence Concealment was not active.
The fluctuations of Caster's Spirit Origin spread openly, like an unmistakable beacon.
Anyone with the ability to sense magical energy would immediately find her location once they came nearby.
Mayuri stood on a rock, her black Astral Dress wrapped around her body, her four wings folded behind her.
Her rose-red eyes watched the northeast.
Waiting.
Time ticked by.
Then Mayuri sensed it.
To the northeast, roughly eight kilometers away, an all-too-familiar surge of magical energy was rushing toward her.
The King of Conquerors.
Mayuri frowned slightly.
That presence was different from yesterday.
Denser, purer, and considerably greater in quantity.
The fluctuations of the King of Conquerors' Spirit Origin she had felt up close at yesterday's banquet were one thing; the pressure reaching her from eight kilometers away now was another.
This wasn't right.
A Servant's strength was essentially fixed at the moment of summoning.
For it to increase this much afterward, there was most likely only one reason: the supply of magical energy had changed.
Someone was feeding the King of Conquerors magical energy, and plenty of it.
Mayuri withdrew her gaze and began readying herself.
A speck of purple light first appeared in the northeastern night sky.
Thunder followed from beyond the valley.
Two black divine bulls pulled a chariot over the ridge, the purple arcs beneath their hooves denser than yesterday.
The chariot's metal gleamed white in the lightning, its pressure making the surrounding treetops tremble slightly.
Gordius Wheel slowed roughly a hundred and twenty meters from Mayuri and stopped in midair.
The King of Conquerors stood in the driver's position, wearing his full battle attire with a red cloak today, his brass breastplate gleaming in the moonlight.
A huddled black figure crouched on the platform behind him. Waver had been brought along too.
Mayuri raised her right hand.
Her index finger pointed toward the front of the chariot a hundred and twenty meters away.
There was no warning.
A bolt of crimson-gold lightning struck straight down from the night sky.
Its path was perfectly straight, as though measured with a ruler, and it took only a brief instant to strike from the zenith to the ground.
Its target was precisely the two divine bulls.
Crimson-gold light swallowed the two enormous black beasts in an instant.
The divine bulls let out short cries, their hooves flailing in midair as purple electricity tangled with the foreign crimson-gold lightning across their bodies.
Then it stopped.
Both divine bulls were still alive.
They were themselves Phantasmal Species from the Age of Gods that commanded lightning, with high resistance to lightning attacks.
The strike had only been enough to inflict moderate injuries. Their hides smoked, and all four legs still twitched, but they were not immobilized.
In a few more seconds, they would recover.
This was Mayuri's show of force.
Iskandar stood in the driver's position, his amber eyes fixed on the pale-blonde girl a hundred and twenty meters away who had just lowered her finger.
With the two divine bulls briefly incapacitated, the chariot hung motionless in midair.
If Mayuri followed with a second and third strike before the divine bulls recovered, he would have no choice but to jump off.
Mayuri did not follow up.
The King of Conquerors saw that too.
An opening statement. A declaration of war.
The message was simple: she could hit his mounts before he could react, and she could do the same with every attack that followed.
"Still talking as big as yesterday, Caster."
The King of Conquerors' voice carried across the hundred and twenty meters, amused, but his fighting spirit had already risen.
He gave Mayuri no time to reply.
The world changed.
For the second time.
Just like yesterday, there was no warning. Reality seemed to have been replaced outright.
The granite beneath her feet became scorching yellow sand, the night sky overhead became a glaring white midday sky, and the surrounding fir woods vanished, replaced by an endless desert.
Ionioi Hetairoi.
The King of Conquerors' intent was straightforward: deploy his Reality Marble in the very first second of battle, denying his opponent the chance to use flight to gain distance in the open.
Here, no matter how high Mayuri flew, she could not escape. She could only face the entire army within a limited area.
Mayuri spread her four wings the moment the barrier was complete.
Her body sprang from the sand, rising to roughly sixty meters above the ground within a second.
On the ground, thousands upon thousands of armed figures had already surrounded her.
Unlike when they had faced Assassin yesterday, the army entered battle readiness from the outset this time.
Infantry raised round shields, and archers drew their bowstrings taut.
The rain of arrows came.
Thousands of arrows rose into the air at once, a dark mass sweeping toward Mayuri's position.
When the arrowheads reached a point one millimeter in front of Mayuri, they all stopped.
There was no sound of impact and no sparks. The force behind the arrows vanished the moment they touched that invisible barrier.
The arrows fell one after another, striking the sand sixty meters below.
Astral Dress.
Mayuri floated in midair, her four wings beating slowly to maintain her altitude.
To her, that volley had been little different from getting rained on. It did not amount to even the slightest pressure.
The soldiers on the ground did not stop. A second volley was already nocked.
Several groups of javelin throwers also ran out from the rear, raising the javelins in their hands.
None of it would work.
The soldiers had Servant-class Spirit Origins, but no Noble Phantasms.
All they could deliver was basic physical damage, at most rank C to B.
The Astral Dress's defenses were another matter entirely. Without a Noble Phantasm-class attack, they could not even make the barrier stir.
Mayuri floated in the air, looking down at the crowd relentlessly pelting her with attacks, her expression barely changing.
The air beside her shifted.
Thunder Sanctuary emerged from Spirit Form, its black metal reassembling three meters to Mayuri's right.
Once its metal panels unfolded, it looked like a combination of beast and bird anatomy.
An eagle-like head, a lion-like body and limbs, and great wings extending from either side of its back.
Vulture Form.
One of Thunder Sanctuary's four combat support forms, responsible for aerial mobility and midrange firepower.
Its wingspan was roughly six meters. Purplish-red eyes lit up within its eagle head, and its four sharp metal claws flexed in midair.
Vulture Form circled Mayuri once, then settled into a guarding position.
Mayuri did not have it attack the ground army first. Those ordinary soldiers were not worth wasting firepower on yet.
At the rear of the army.
Iskandar watched the two figures high in the sky: the pale-blonde girl and the strange metal flying beast beside her.
Arrows and javelins were useless. The ground troops could not reach her either. He needed aerial combat strength.
The King of Conquerors raised his right hand and gestured toward the depths of the army.
Two eagle cries answered him.
From the very rear of the army, two enormous flying beasts surged into the air.
They were far larger than ordinary eagles, with wingspans of roughly seven meters, bronze feathers, and talons large enough to crush a carriage outright.
Giant Divine Vultures, Phantasmal Species from the Age of Gods that Iskandar had subdued during his eastern campaign, were also the only units in Ionioi Hetairoi capable of aerial combat apart from the bull-drawn chariot he drove himself.
The two Giant Divine Vultures beat their wings and climbed, charging straight toward Mayuri and the metal griffin.
Mayuri's gaze shifted slightly.
Receiving its master's intent, Thunder Sanctuary's Griffin Form beat its metal wings hard, its entire body shooting forward to meet them like a black arrow.
On the bull-drawn chariot, Iskandar studied the metal griffin's details.
On the first night of the Holy Grail War, at the harbor, Caster's Noble Phantasm had been in Lion Form.
Now it had switched to Vulture Form.
If this Caster truly was Cherub, the cherubim's four faces in legend were human, lion, bull, and eagle.
They corresponded to the Noble Phantasm's transformations.
"So it really is Cherub."
The King of Conquerors spoke quietly.
"That leaves the abilities of its human and bull forms completely unknown."
He withdrew his gaze and looked toward Griffin Form, which was locked in combat with the Giant Divine Vultures high in the air.
Metal talons and bronze wings crossed beneath the blazing sun, sparks scattering everywhere sixty meters above the ground.