Fate/strange fake (Free-Range Spoilers)

[jennajayfeather]

Another funny comment I saw was “Bartholomew is all about bangs covering eyes. Clearly he’s there because he’s gonna have to point out Thia’s hair when he shows up.”

and then instead we got deep dive into his character and questioning whether or not he actually truthfully likes bangs

[harlequin320]

Thanks for the translation, Comun!

[Gilgamesh_maximaster]

Is the chapter 31 Raphosdy of the Demigods fully trnaslated or are still parts to be translated?

[friendly]

Is the chapter 31 Raphosdy of the Demigods fully trnaslated or are still parts to be translated?

There's still a part left.

[Ritsuka 23]

I'm excited

[Mikoto Suoh]

I'm excited

*I give you a hug because I am too*

Yes, the novel is great. Soon we will have volume 10 and the anime.

[Comun]

Cutting close to the deadline, but Merry Christmas.

Chapter 31: Rhapsody of the Demigods II(part 3)

Meanwhile, the floating Thia suffered considerable damage. Not only was the impact of the energy torrent tremendous, but it also cancelled the Chaos Magick he was preparing.
Thia himself was unharmed, but the Chaos Magick, on the other hand, took a direct hit from the Mystic Eye of Compulsion's hex of "don't move", reducing it to a plain cannonball loaded with powerful energy.
He was lucky he had made progress in deploying his Mystic Eye Killer defenses. Had he taken the hit unprepared, he would have been unable to move for a few days, and worst-case scenario, his life functions could have stopped.

(But I still can move. The magical energy I poured hasn't scattered. If I reconstruct the spell fast enough…)

Thia's thought was interrupted by the sky suddenly getting darker.

"!?"

A giant serpent arrived to devour the land.
It was the huge venomous snake that attacked the Neo Ishtar Temple not long ago and was ultimately transformed into Ishtar's hammer.

"The Hydra…!?"
"Huhu, huhuhu. You're finally vulnerable."

One mage mounted the giant snake.

"Can't blame you for getting distracted. Yvette's eccentric like that."

It was a Roland Berzinsky—a snake charmer producing countless pseudo-snakes of magical energy from his feet to semi-fuse himself with the Hydra.
In the history of the lineage specialized in reptiles, the only one as compatible as this remarkable figure was the Silver Lizard—his absconding relative Rottweil Berzinsky.
His Hydra was just conceptual vestiges. All Roland's magecraft was doing was manifesting the tangled vestiges dropped from Ishtar's hammer.
The colossal serpent had already lost its deadly venom when exposed to Ishtar's divine aura, and furthermore, it had already become an empty husk by this point.
But it was still perfectly capable of swallowing Thia's small frame whole and slamming him to the ground before crumbling away.

"It really is anything goes with you guys… Enough!"

It took less than an instant for Thia to understand all that happened, and understanding it made him scream.
The emotions he believed to have suppressed lay bare.
He was also aware of his own abnormality.
(Agh, I can't do anything right. Not against them. Look at how much they throw off my rhythm, my mind, and my determination.)
The biggest obstacles to him weren't Enkidu or the Heroic Spirits fighting in the western sky.
The people he was confronting right now were a greater challenge than the powerful Heroic Spirits.
Sure of that, Thia tried to fire a "satellite" loaded with magical energy at the serpent. To blow everything away while his emotions were still heated.
But—the combat plan of the El-Melloi Classroom remained firm.
A simple back-and-forth engineered not to give Thia a chance to use any advanced magecraft, constantly stopping him at step 1.

"Pallida mors."

A muffled voice reverberated from an unknown direction.
Their next move was visible inside the serpent's open mouth.

"Ah!"

A shadow leaped out of the Hydra's jaws and charged at Thia like a cannonball.

"Enough?"

A hand with sharp claws and covered in sturdy fur split the "satellite" in front of Thia.

"Here's what the moron would have said about it."

The loaded energy readily dispersed and intensely expanded.
Amidst the flash of light, Thia's arms were grabbed. By a beautiful beast.

"He'd say… 'Rich coming from the guy who almost blew up Hollywood'!"

A giant biped wolf, resembling the mythical werewolf.
But he hadn't actually turned into a werebeast.
The apex of Beastly Magecraft was to make all watchers see an illusory beast by wearing magical energy so dense it becomes invisible—a state a group of mages refers to as Phantom Wolf Form.
And then Thia yelled.
As if to let loose what's been penting up inside him ever since he lost his other half.

"I knew you'd be here…!"

He screamed the name of the young genius whose talents matched Flat Escardos. The man who used to be called one of the "Twin Jewels of the El-Melloi Classroom".

"SVIN GLASCHEIT…!"

With their arms immobilized, Thia and Svin fell toward the ground alongside the Hydra's head.
But Thia wasn't afraid of the fall.
He had already experienced midair combat in his skirmish against Enkidu.

"Stop this tantrum… and listen to us!"

During their fall, Svin tightened his grip on Thia's arms.

"You can't pretend to be a serious guy after being together with the moron your entire life!"

His raw grip was enough to easily pulverize the bones of human arms and rip the hands off.
But Thia's body was already semi-fractured and forcibly stitched together into a humanoid shape with magical energy from the get-go.
Because there was magical energy compressing the parts into place, how solid he was depended on the amount of energy there.
He could remain hard enough to resist Svin's immense strength for as long as he still had the magical energy to spare.
Thia assessed this situation and calmly began formulating a spell—
But his body was thrown in the air while he wasn't expecting it.

"Kh… Huh…!?"

Another sharp attack hit his back while he was already in a precarious situation.
He took a look at the new shadow above his head—it was a second Svin clad in his Phantom Wolf appearance.
He had shredded the "satellite" before to camouflage the flow of magical energy from Thia.
In this window of opportunity, he controlled the magical energy clone he had previously left inside the jaws of the Hydra and took it out.
Furthermore, detecting its magical energy lead to others.

"You're still making more…", mumbled Thia upon watching the flow of magical energy while using magecraft to slow down his fall.
The Hydra was twisting its body like a spiral as it fell.
Countless Svin copies rose from its back. The pack of Phantom Wolves jumped off the falling Hydra, surrounding Thia in every direction.

"Hurry up, Svin. I can't keep this up much longer."

Roland, the pilot of the crumbling Hydra, asked with words, and Svin answered with actions.
The Phantom Wolves all stopped breathing at the same time—
and disappeared.
At their speed, human eyes couldn't even catch their afterimages.
His movement would still be outdone by a Servant specialized in speed, but wouldn't even allow a regular mage an opportunity to react. The flickering glimpses of his image became blades shining in the Snowfield skies.
In response, Thia accelerated the orbit of numerous "satellites" around him to see if they could repel the Phantom Wolves faster than human reflexes.
He shot the face of one of them, the one Phantom Wolf who rushed in for a frontal attack. And when he did—
The chest of the beheaded werewolf burst open, and a new arm grow out of the hole.
Hiding himself inside one of his own clones was a simple but effective trick.
The claws of the Phantom Wolf dug into Thia's throat by complete surprise.
Thia considered the possibility that the thrust to his throat could snap his neck and hardened it to the best of his magical reinforcement's ability—but as if they were waiting for this moment, the high-speed Phantom Wolf afterimages around him vanished all at once.
From there, the countless wheels that were hidden behind the werewolves come to view.
(Crap…)
The whole El-Melloi Classroom opened fire, violently shooting down Thia and Svin.

Thia crashed on softened ground. Svin stood up and looked at the boy still collapsed on the floor.

"You and Flat both look at magical energy too much."

But Svin also looked heavily damaged. He had been knocked out of his Phantom Wolf state and spoke to the crumbling Thia in his human form.

"So, no matter what, you would reflexively try to follow the energy trajectory of my movements that normal people can't even see. Annoyingly enough, Flat would have had some random idea to get himself out of this situation… but you're predictable. You smell like simple honesty. A straightforward and amiable smell, shrank and hidden under layers."

His reason to drop these apparent words of advice was that he needed to buy time to recover his magical energy and heal his wounds.
Perfectly aware of that, Thia still looked at Svin astonished.
"You're out of your mind...", he said.

"What do you mean?"

"You could have used a clone to hold me down at the end… Why would the real you need to get hit by the crew's back-up fire while falling with me…?"

"Using a clone would be begging for you to hack it. I'd rather not get attacked by a double-crossing copy of myself, thank you.", Svin spoke matter-of-factly.
Thia looked at the sky like nothing mattered anymore.

"You were the most difficult opponent among all the El-Melloi Classroom members here."

"Yeah?"

With a shrug, Svin sat next to the collapsed Thia.

"Can you already get up on your own?"

"Reconstructing flesh takes time.", answered Thia, assessing the state of his body in detail.
He was using magical energy to force himself to heal, but unlike the time he was shot with guns, this time the curse of compulsion from Yvette's Mystic Eye Projector lingered, making it impossible for him to heal instantly.

"This is your chance to finish me off and save mankind from a threat.", Thia casually said.

"Sorry, not interested.", Svin replied. "I'm only here to slug some morons inconveniencing my teacher."

"Are you including me in this?"

"Obviously."

"I can only think of one person who would have known about me… but he wouldn't blabber about it. How did you find out?", Thia indifferently asked the question on his mind.

Thia knew who every student here was.
But all he knew was information seen through Flat's eyes. He had never appeared even once. The only one with a chance of having figured out his existence was a red-haired superhuman who participated in what was essentially a Magic Circuit-sharing experiment. But even then, Thia didn't have any clarifying conversation with the red-haired superhuman, and more importantly, Thia hadn't detected him anywhere in the city.
Svin replied to the confused Thia.

"The sharper guys suspected it way faster than I did. I figured it out from your smell. You felt like an extreme danger mixed within his smell… That's why I advised him to destroy you."

"Hold on… You're talking about when you first met Flat…"

"But, for all that you smelled dangerous, you also smelled neatly put together. That smell intensified whenever Flat talked about himself like it was someone else."

"..."

"At first I assumed he had split personalities or a persona intentionally created with magecraft… but that didn't seem to be it. That's why I didn't trust you at first… neither of you, actually. You were clearly a bomb in a gift box, and if you weren't, you were still made of trouble… But the Professor knowingly accepted you as you were. In that case, I'd look bad if I didn't follow his example."

"Are you telling me Lord El-Melloi II was also aware of me…?"

Thia's voice was faintly mixed with emotion.
Noticing this minor change, seemingly combining shock and resignation, Svin continued.

"That confirmed it to me. As long as you're still around, we still haven't lost our stupid Flat…And the Professor probably also considers you a student."

"... Right… There's no way that teacher wouldn't have noticed…"

Thia stopped the "satellite" he was secretly charging with magical energy to strike back and watched the clouds, exhausted.

"You could destroy me so easily right now."

"I already told you I'm not interested. Do you want me to destroy you?"

"I…"

Right when Thia was about to answer, he saw a streak of light cross the sky.

"…?"

It only lasted an instant.
An extremely dense mass of magical energy flew westward toward the cumulonimbus, tearing the sky apart in speeds not comparable to light but still far quicker than sound.

Delayed shockwaves traversed the sky and earth, pushing back against the winds of the hurricane.
Thia assumed this was also the El-Melloi Classroom's doing… but the students were also staring at it aghast.

"What's wrong…?"

Thia, capable of seeing the flow of magical energy, took a second look at the abnormality.

He didn't feel any energy vestiges in the golden light's trail.
Something was operating that dense magical energy with the precision not to waste a speck.
That unidentified individual was trying to join the battle between myths unfolding west of them.

"Is that who I think it is…?"

Thia remembered a Heroic Spirit but wasn't too sure. In his memories, the Heroic Spirit he thought about had powerful divinity.
But, despite its impressively powerful magical energy, when looked at the light currently soaring through the sky—
He couldn't feel an ounce of the divine aura Ishtar, Alcides, and Rider were clad on.

X 　 　 　 X

Within the hurricane clouds

This battle was unlike any other.
It was a clash between two humans in appearance only. The power of nature colliding against human will in a scene right out of an epic tale.
In the storm, the Amazon horsewoman tried to open a new path to her fate.
The arrows from her bow cut the winds, rode the lightning, and pierced the rain.
Then, she swung her giant battleaxe on the path they opened.
All of that proved her strength and determination.
Blessed by her father Ares and by Artemis to whom she was given as a priestess.
Her experience leading the tribe as a queen and her pure study of martial arts.
Furthermore, the maximum back-up she could have received from her Masters.
She poured all that she was given and all that she built up into defeating Alcides.
Her Noble Phantasm: one battleaxe strike.
Her steed's hooves touch the floor at the same time as she swings down, with her enemy visible a few dozen meters ahead.

And now, a long straight wound was carved in Alcides's body.
The strike was capable of erasing part of the hurricane, not to bisect his body.
Nonetheless, Hippolyte certainly wounded the body she had believed to be invincible.
Hippolyte kept the pressure going.
She sought to keep this offensive momentum, but her arm stopped.
Her polished warrior instincts noticed something:
Someone appeared where they were—someone concealing immense power.

The same happened for Alcides. Instead of looking at Hippolyte, the one who put a huge wound on his body, he looked east.

"What's this…?"

Cold sweat ran down Hippolyte's back.
An unidentified presence was squeezing through the cloudy galestorm and getting inside the cumulonimbus.
It was a presence she knew she felt before.
But with one fundamental difference.
And before she could try to figure out what was it that wasn't like before—

Time stopped completely inside the clouds.

Hundreds of thousands of lightning flashes covered the cumulonimbus in white darkness.
It took one instant for the all the flashes to completely disappear, and the clouds to become a wall of darkness blocking the sun's light. At the top of the hurricane cloud, the sky was isolated from the central area serving as the eye of the whirlwind, locking the space around Alcides and Hippolyte in perfect dark.

(This can't have been Alcides. But who else other than Zeus could have instantly pacified so much thunderbolt?)
Hippolyte had many questions.
And the answer came in the form of a sound in the darkness.

The beautiful tone of a string instrument.
A singular sound, not part of any melody.
A purifying sound that clears the air. A timbre that presumably didn't belong in a battlefield.

"Was that… a lyre… or a harp?"

As soon as the trailing note reminiscent of an ancient instrument faded, something stabbed the ground on an area distant from Alcides and Hippolyte.
It shone golden light, purifying the floor like it was filtering muddy waters.

"A sword…?"

To answer Hippolyte's whisper, the sound reverberated a second time.
The sound practically had an attractive force that guided the listener's attention to the sky.
She couldn't tell how conscious Alcides was, but his face covered in Nemean leather was also looking at the sky.
Eventually, a small star gained life in the sky accompanying the echoing sounds—
And contrary to the sounds that reached the skies, the light fell to the floor.

It crashed in a different place from the previous sword. A spear clad in magical radiance that made one mistake it for gold.

One more echo, accompanied by another weapon descending to the floor.

As the process repeated, the interval between sounds grew shorter—eventually performing a melody.
Understanding what that meant, Hippolyte glared at the sky with a tight grip on her weapon.

She watched the moment one of the stars gained form in the pitch-black sky.
Far above her head, at the top of the closed cumulonimbus dome, shone a ring of countless lights.

"Gh…!"

Hippolyte and Alcides already knew what that meant.
They could tell that the light was not a guidepost to hope, but rather a despair-bringing radiance of judgment, because they had seen it in the northern canyons.

Seconds later, the starry sky came down.
The glimmer of death poured down within the hurricane clouds like a waterfall of light.

Hippolyte's bow rapid-fired arrows, offsetting the lights raining in her direction.
Alcides also swatted away the lights raining directly on him by swinging his heavy bow.

The meteor shower eventually came to an end, with plentiful crops of faint golden light spread around the two.
Whereas instead of wheat, it were the numerous armaments fallen from the sky that were planted there.

"Just what I thought it was…", Hippolyte groaned.

A feat from a Heroic Spirit she believed to be dead.
She couldn't imagine another Heroic Spirit in the same Holy Grail War would also be able to employ such ludicrous amounts of objects.
However, previously, the fired Noble Phantasms would immediately vanish to be continuously fired. This time, they remained stabbed on the floor, continuing to emit their brightness.
Numerous armaments disorderly pierced the ground, but it was evident that each of them carried qualities worthy of the Noble Phantasm qualification.
The visible roster included not only swords, axes, and spears, but also books, wands, and rings.

"Mm?"

They behaved similarly, but were not the same.
Disturbed by the uncanny discrepancy, Hippolyte got to hear the string instrument once more.
A singular sound, not part of any melody.
In the direction of the sound, she found a mini golden lyre rotating midair—and a short shadow floating next to it.
The trees broken by the galestorm piled up together when she wasn't looking, and a young boy sat on them.
"Hi."

A voice as clear as the lyre.
A Heroic Spirit with a voice matching his apparent age glanced at the horsewoman and the avenger.
Despite the completely different age, his face resembled the first loser of the Holy Grail War.
But he was different from that bowman.
Fundamentally different from that arrogant king.
As soon as Hippolyte reached that conclusion, the floating lyre sounded on its own, without anyone's fingers dragging its strings.

"Does this count as our first meeting?", the boy quietly mused in sync with sound of the lyre.

"My utmost respect goes to you, magnanimous heroes.", the boy stood up and courteously bowed.

His gesture had no traces of snideness or unctuousness. There were tangible implications that his respect was sincere.
From the moment he lowered his head, it was already proven he was not the archer.
After Hippolyte was convinced, the boy calmly raised his head.
And then, he said the following to the two figures in his eyes, with the same respect as before.

"To prove it…"

Next, every one of Noble Phantasms planted all over the floor unleashed their energy.
Their shine gave a new color to the cumulonimbus previously colored by the lightning.

"I bring you the end of times."

X 　 　 　 X

A few minutes earlier, Crystal Hill, top floor

"Is that true? Is he really awake?", Tine Chelc asked her suited subordinate on their way down the rooftop stairs.

The man was not her closest confidant. Her usual secretary and driver was currently on a mission to communicate with Rider's Master group.
But every subordinate was like family to Tine, and she regarded them all equally regardless of rank.
The ones who actually share her blood and the ones who wandered into the organization were all equal parts of the same magical faction and the same commune. One cooperative society rooted in one leyline.
One of the members came to call Tine while she was in the rooftop watching what was happening in the western sky.
According to him, Archer woke up and called for his Master.

"Me and the doggo will keep watch of the western sky. Since Archer is awake, I want you to go first and let him know we're not enemies.", said Doris Lusendra.

While Doris (one of Rider's Masters) and the silver wolf (Lancer's Master) stayed in the rooftop, Tine went to her suite, trying to control her racing heart.
There was only one Command Spell left on her right hand.
But she could indubitably feel her Heroic Spirit's presence through it.
If anything, it'd be reasonable to say his magical energy felt more active than it was when she sealed the contract.
(But…)
Something was weird.
Everything was overflowing, yet something was lacking.
Nonetheless, her heart was full of expectation.
She believed her desperation gambit brought her king back when he was falling into the underworld.
Therefore, she interpreted this powerful contradiction as the pulse connecting her to her Servant, and pushed open the suite's door with enthusiasm.

"Your Majesty! You're awa—"
Her words stopped partway.

"Hi, Master."

This greeting incompatible with her image of him confounded her very soul.
The figure by her suite's window looked nothing like the Archer she knew.
He was shorter and his face looked more youthful.
He seemed too young to be like the heroes in the picture books, but too grown up to be a child in need of protection.
His new form was perhaps comparable to an insect freshly hatched out of the chrysalis—taken from a moment he was equipped with all the experiences of larva and the pupa, but still had nothing added or subtracted to his completed body.
Judging by the quality of his magical energy and her subordinates' accounts, she speculated this Heroic Spirit was Archer revived from near-death.
But even after seeing him with her own eyes, Tine still wasn't certain that the one in the room was one and the same with her Servant: the Hero King Gilgamesh.
She was consumed by the sensation that she was next to "something" completely different from the king she knew.

(Who? Who is this person… This Heroic Spirit…?)

She couldn't feel anything resembling hostility.
On the contrary, boundless relief recurred in Tine's heart.
The girl never believed in the idea of a hero destined to defeat the big bad, but she couldn't escape the feeling that if such an adventure protagonist existed, that's what he looked like.
Her fantasy was tremendously out-of-place in the middle of the Holy Grail War, much less at a critical stage that would determine whether or not the city would survive. But Tine, as well as her every subordinate there, felt same thing:
They were in the presence of a hero.
Or rather, they were in the presence of the living definition of heroism.
Even his immature appearance concealed a hope for further growth. His looks suggested the gods were arguing that the image of perfection lie in incompleteness.
However—in contrast to his perfected looks, every smidgen of divinity was wiped off of his energy.
The overflowing divine aura from the moment of their contract was no more. The magical energy that symbolically pierced through the ages of man and gods was lost, giving room to signs of humanity refined to its highest purity.
Its qualities didn't match her own magical energy, which employed the land's leylines.
The best way to describe the sheer purity of his "humanity" is imagining that a baby was born with abundant magical energy and grew up without ever letting the world corrode him in any way.
The Archer that Tine once knew carried so much willpower that he instinctively compelled her to kneel, while the boy she saw made her whole body burst with deep aspiration to be like him.
Tine couldn't contain the relief in her mind—trust him and everything will go well.
Nonetheless…
That was all the more reason for Tine to feel unfamiliar. She didn't take another step.
(What am I anxious for? I know we're in the middle of an emergency, but am I really supposed to simply ignore this sensation?)
Fighting off her first impressions, Tine focused first on fixing her breathing rhythm.
She noticed she was breathing excessively, almost hyperventilating.
(The king I know…)
After long enough, she, covered in cold sweat, finally directed words at the "something" standing still in her room.

"Who… are you?"

The simplest question.
The picturesque Heroic Spirit answered Tine's question with a pleasant smile—like a comforting breeze running across the green land.

"I'm a Servant."

"..."

"A Ghost Liner under a contract to Master Tine Chelc."

A direct answer.
But Tine couldn't bring herself to accept it. There was no word she could profer.
After seeing her non-reaction, the boy-king resembling a white and gold flower continued.

"I came loaded with all the information about you."

"Came… loaded…?"

"Seems like the Hero King considered your every word and accomplishment after meeting him in the northern canyons something worth storing."

The Hero King. Him.
Seeing the boy-king treat the king as someone else, Tine grew more cautious, but still took the risk with a strongly worded question.

"One more time! Who are you? If you're not the Hero King, I'll need your name, if you please!"

Words with cold dignity beneath her age.
Tine knew better than anyone that this was camouflage hiding her uneasiness, and she expected the Heroic Spirit to have seen through it. Regardless, the boy-king didn't really change his expression. He answered with the same affable smile as last time.

"My name is the same as his, Master. But… Calling me by the name of the Archer Saint Graph would be inaccurate. The Class that represents my Saint Graph is, hmm… Well, I'd be the only one of my kind in this particular course of history, but here's a name you can use."

After letting his eyes drift into the distant sky, the boy-king announced the name of the container locking his Saint Graph.

"Alterego, the class of the distilled fragments."

- - - Updated - - -

Full chapter version for the index.

Chapter 31: Rhapsody of the Demigods II

West Snowfield

All was white.
Completely white.

This whole space was illuminated by lightning.
Silence lasted for a while, as if time was stopped.
It was genuinely possible time wasn't flowing there.
Alcides noticed one shadow contrasting the pure white centered around him.
The figure twice his own size, despite being a shadow, shone brighter and whiter than the whiteness surrounding it.
Despite being transparent, the gigantic white shadow had so much presence that it almost convinced Alcides that it was the true center of his world. Alcides recognized it as vestiges of himself and spoke.

"Leave my sight."

"..."

The white shadow didn't answer and didn't move.

"Hear me, my future where I named myself the glory of the god I loathe and turned into a lapdog for the pieces of scrap metal in the mountainous city."

Alcides confronted the shadow—the copy of the legendary hero—and surged the reddened-black lightning within himself.
Within stopped time, the shine of the lightning inverts.
The mud outspeeds the bolts.
The world around them is painted in reddened-black. Gradually the color darkens, dominates, and sacrileges against it.

"You will also meet your end at my revenge… In fact, you will be the final blood drawn. I had always assumed you were scorched at the moment I gained this Saint Graph, but I see you chose to block my path at this juncture."

Alcides wanted to make his assertions clear.
This was where the gods would meet their end.
This was revenge against the gods.
To communicate that, the reddened-black mud gradually corroded the living world of thunderbolt that Alcides was transforming into.

But—
The silhouette before him shone no less brightly.
The hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of mud hands entangling him didn't strip him of his radiance.
Everything except himself being recolored by reddened-black energy didn't strip him of his radiance.
The humanoid radiance never left this world.

"..."

The expression at the face of shining shadow can't be seen.
But Alcides could feel it.
The silhouette was smiling at him.

"Even now, you dare belittle who I am… Belittle humans?"

The space was filled with quiet rage, and the avenger reached his hand toward the shadow brighter than light.
An overwhelming torrent of magical energy agitated itself in attempt to pierce, shred, and crush it.

"..."

Amidst it—the white shade still wouldn't disappear. It calmly opened its mouth.
More accurately, it only seemed to Alcides that it had opened its mouth, but in reality, the silhouette maintained its smile during its speech.

(You can't do it.)

A voiceless voice.
But Alcides could certainly feel the "shadow"'s will.

(There's one thing you can't deny, no matter how much you try to discard the entire past. Even if you erase every single record of your name and appearance from the planet's records and the memories of its mankind, this will remain unrefuted: ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■. )

At the instant this sentence was uttered—
The white world fell apart.

Therefore, Alcides could not accept or argue against the shadow's words.
Without any answer or a need for one, Alcides continued steadily moving toward his revenge.
Was his revenge justified or not?
He knew that since he was re-recorded into the planet as an avenger, he never needed an answer.
The fact that his ways were twisted by someone's intent didn't matter there.

X 　 　 　 X

The thunderbolts regained the flow of time and rumbling roars blurred the lines between real and fantastical.
Alcides floated in the center of the giant cumulonimbus. His sight was no longer within, and never again would the inner shadow take hold of his thoughts. He focused his attention solely on the enemy sneaking through the celestial bolts.
Approaching him was no small feat.
Alcides knew that.
What once was Gugalanna's lightning now could be described as both a small hurricane and a super-large twister compressed as far it could be while still pronouncedly retaining Gugalanna's divinity. Its systems automatically engulfed anything that approached in an electric flash, pulverizing it and adding it to the dust of the twister.
Not even Heroic Spirits could come out from the lightning of the gods unscathed.
He believed the small shadow approaching him would soon become specks of dust wandering in the gales.
But look at that—
The incoming presence ignored the thunderbolts of judgment and continued to approach.

"Here you are…"

Ten million all-piercing spears of lightning came together to build this oppressive storm.
And one powerful presence pierced through the storm to approach.

"Warrior and queen."

The words came to him naturally.
But it was getting unclear if Alcides's will was playing any part there.
The lingering instincts and life experiences engraved in his body were doing the talking for him.
The effects of the "mud" and the hydra venom circulating his body should have already stripped him of his sanity long ago.
Yet he barely retained his reason. Was this proof of Alcides's incredibly strength of mind? Was it due to the Command Spells that distorted him? He didn't know the answer.
He bore only one mission.
To enact his revenge against the gods, he would delete his glory with the power of the Holy Grail.
The name that Alcides abhorred was far too well-known for the otherwise simpler act of wiping away the marks lefts by a single individual.
This labor required dealing a lethal blow to the world, but if it came to that, so be it.
Even before he was poisoned with the hydra's lethal venom, when his thoughts were still in order, Alcides was prepared for those consequences.

Therefore…
She could be considered Human Order's modest counter to him.
As she was now, she had enough to power to make his assumptions not sound delusional.

"She" here referring to—
The brave lady manipulated by Hera's schemes and vanquished by the legendary hero.
Daughter of Ares and priestess of Artemis.
The proud eldest of the three Amazon sisters.

Servant, Rider.
Warrior Chief Hippolyte.

X 　 　 　 X

Her march was as fierce as it was beautiful.
Only one horseback soldier on the offense.
Mounted on the prized steed connected as part of her Saint Graph, she crossed the battlefield solo.
Her opponent was likewise a single Servant, but he had turned into something resilient as an army and was in still in the process of becoming resilient as a nation.
The thunder summit was enshrined in the wasteland that was once a forest.
One Heroic Spirit forced a divine beast into submission and stole its status.
The cumulonimbus-shaped troops of lighting spread widely and three-dimensionally.
Each stroke of the lightning forces could destroy an unprepared army.
After overpowering the embodiment of the gales and deploying the thunderbolt troops, Alcides could be described as the incarnation of the power that erases warriors by the thousands.
But Rider didn't flinch.
Linguists say her name Hippolyte means "the one who sets horses free" or "the one who rids horses of their doubts".
At this very moment, she was releasing her horse from its fears and restraint, granting it true freedom.
Out of care for the one who freed its heart, her steed galloped toward the mass of death, unafraid of its thunderbolts.
And now that the spirits of the horse and the rider were as one, they freed themselves from the binds of gravity.
In a mighty leap, they kick the slushy dirt drowned by the flood caused by Alcides's Noble Phantasm.
The first lightning strikes were indiscriminately unleashed on everything nearby.
By dodging it in trajectories impossible for a normal horse, it could dance its way to the sky, using the blasted bedrocks as platforms to allow Rider to make her way to challenge the giant cloud.
The winds blew fiercely accompanied by the intense drums of thunder, like they voiced the hatred of the Avenger sitting at the center of the thundercloud summit.
Rider dashed firmly amid the thunder.
Her movements could seem effortless when seen from afar, but that's merely an illusion caused by the sheer difference in scale between herself and the thundercloud.
The horsewoman's movements far surpassed the speed of real horses, traversing the field of lightning with the speed of a cannonball.
Utilizing the divinity set up by the sash that is her Noble Phantasm, the horse advanced by quite literally stomping on the lightning flashes loaded with the same divinity as its hooves.
The wingless pegasus no longer needed the bedrocks to fly.
The ground and clouds around Rider were illuminated by the lightning bolts stabbed onto them, and the thunders attempted to rupture her eardrums.
But not a speck of fear could be found in the eyes of her stallion Kallion.
The clouds were heavy and the flashes of lightning obfuscate her vision with white darkness.
In what resembled a scene from the end of the world, the one Rider continue to loudly proclaim her survival.
Her clothes were wet and heavy, and her face was beaten by the rain, but her eyes were filled with determination.
And then—
At the moment the flying woman reached the summit of the cumulonimbus, the thunderstorm was miraculously pacified.
Atop the whirl of clouds, a giant hole extended where the eye of the hurricane should be.
Looking inside, she could see what looked less like the interior of a tornado and more like a whirlpool in a sea of clouds.
Exposed to dense magical energy, as if the interior of the whirl had returned to the Age of Gods, Rider looked deeper inside the swirl of electricity.
At this moment of silence, she found the heart of the cumulonimbus.
She saw the aloof avenger using only his Saint Graph to force the thunderbolt loaded with immense divinity into submission, without ever absorbing it.

"Alcides…"

Lightning flashed again, announcing their fight had resumed.
Rider yelled amidst the thunders, not caring about its cries drowning out her voice.
(When you absorbed the thunderbolts, I assumed you were trying to play Zeus… But I must apologize. I see you overpower the gods with your own strength, ever true to your revolt against them.)
She remembered her first encounter with Alcides in the land of Snowfield, when he said the power of the gods was meant to be controlled by human hands, not to dwell inside him.
If his body born as the son of a god had housed the immense divinity that composed that giant bull, he could have become a god of thunder similar to Zeus and erased the continent.
But that was not acceptable to him, so he chose the hellish suffering that is controlling a power greater than his own while consumed by venom.
(Your resolve is genuine.)
She quietly timed her breathing while enjoying the sensation of floating that comes before free-falling.
Then she opened both eyes and galloped down the ten thousand meters descent with speeds far beyond a natural fall.

(The Downhill Attack of Hiyodorigoe was the name of it, right?)
Rider remembered the tactics of one of the many horsemen she learned about in the past few days.
Even after becoming a Heroic Spirit, she hungered for improvement as a horseback warrior and tried to turn the knowledge granted by Holy Grail into further strength by incorporating tactics and horse-riding techniques from all lands and eras.
The Downhill Attack of Hiyodorigoe was a tactic of a heroic warrior named Minamoto no Yoshitsune.
A Japanese story about one time when he made two horses descend from a cliff, and with one horse confirming that he could make it down unscathed, he struck a horseback surprise attack.
Although she took major issue with how that had one horse sprain its leg on the test, Rider had a daring smile, remembering the anecdotes about the fearless fighter who charged ahead descending the perilous cliff before Yoshitsune did, and the mighty warrior who descended on his own legs carrying his steed because he considered the horse more important than himself.
(Ah, I wish I had the chance to have an earnest contest of martial prowess against the toughest fighters of foreign lands…)
She remembered how she got to traverse a decent amount of lands and conquer numerous battlefields in her days with the tribe of horse riders.
But this Holy Grail War was fake to its core.
It already had numerous cogs out of place and a city was about to be destroyed.
Even then, her intriguing Masters told her to run as she willed it.
A group of different people with different sensibilities; some with the rationality typical of a mage and other following more illogical motives.
She could sense they had strong egos and lacked basic uniformity.
But, strangely enough, they seemed capable of operating as a single lifeform despite it.
Much like how all within the body is counted as one individual despite the heart, eyes, bones, and ears having completely different roles.
(Maybe that's how the adventurers sailing in that famed vessel were.)

"The Argonauts…", Rider awkwardly said the name in her mind.

(Oh, that's right…)
She didn't know about it in life, but now the knowledge she gained from the Grail and everything that the students of the El-Melloi Classroom taught her about her enemy started meshing together in her head.

"If I could, for a moment, forget my role as queen and bad blood with some sailors…"
(That man was one of them.)
"I would have loved to board that colossal ship!"

With joy in her voice, she accelerated her horse further.
Overflowing with vitality, with an expression no one would believe to be the face of someone running to her death.

The interior of the swirl was in a different level of air pressure and magical energy density.
The flow of wind and magical energy was so intense that it would instantly mince a mediocre mage, let alone a normal human.
Entering the torrent of power and running through the walls of the swirl of thunderclouds was far more dangerous than running down a vertical wall.
Nonetheless, her stallion dashed through the storm without hesitating a single step.
The winds messed Hippolyte's hair and her steed's mane, and much worse than the wind speeds were the grains of hail turned into bullets. Normal hail would count as purely physical objects and deal no damage to a Servant. But the hail here was clad in divine lightning, turning them into Saint Graph-shredding pseudo-Noble Phantasms.
However, her horse didn't stop.
The horseback Rider's attention was focused on Alcides deep within the swirl, without ever covering or averting her eyes.
Alcides, on the other hand, showed no signs of attacking her directly, making it unclear whether he noticed her.

"Seems like he doesn't think I'm worth his time."

Rider quietly adjusted her breathing rhythm while dancing through the gales and hail.
She remembered the first day of her summon—the moment she met Alcides and the golden bowman on that ravine.
Her hand tightly gripped a bow, and her arrow was perched, quietly waiting the moment to pierce her enemy.
Waiting while circling faster than the wind. A self-contradicting approach.
Like a jet pilot in a dogfight, she ascertained the right time to shoot while feeling the intense force of gravity all over her body.
Her body—which managed to keep her in the status of warrior chief in the Age of Gods, a time when gods, monsters, humans, and fae shared the same space and numerous fierce fighters roamed the world—maintained a steady posture no matter how intense the winds got.
Despite him not having the same essence anymore, she was still on her way to challenge the greatest hero of her time, so she couldn't afford to falter at the preliminary stages.
She rode across the walls of the vortex of thunderbolt, going wherever the wind and the flow of magical energy took her.
The Amazon rider resisted the galestorms as she readied her bow and fired without ever leaving herself vulnerable.
The launched arrow slipped through the winds, pierced through the hail, and advanced inside the thunders.
Metaphorically carving a new path through the maelstroms of fate.

X 　 　 　 X

Snowfield, central district, underground

"It's starting…?", mumbled Sigma, climbing down a metallic staircase, when sensing the magical energy disturbance in the air.

He was a highly competent spellcaster, but that didn't mean he was knowledgeable about the basics of magecraft.
However, the magical energy to the west was disturbed to an extent even he could clearly sense.

"Yeah, some clash between rivals with shared history… but that can't be called a fight between an Amazon and the greatest hero anymore.", a silhouette of an aged captain shrugged in response.

"You mean it became a battle to fell a god?"

Sigma shifted his attention to the battle above while remembering his own god-slaying shot against Ishtar a while ago.

"No… but I guess yes. The others gotta disagree, but from my perspective, I see no difference. Well, thinking about it that way gets me rooting for that Amazon queenie. Nah, it makes me wanna ask her to lemme take her place."

"Ok.", Sigma answered indifferently.

His response caused the boy with the caduceus to take over and change the subject.

"I have my issues about my old friend consumed by revenge. If I hadn't devoted all of me to medicine, there's a big chance I'd have turned out just like him."

"You would become an Avenger?"

"Well, in my case, perfecting revival would already count as revenge."

"Sounds… productive.",listlessly asked Sigma, climbing down the stairs.

"I'd likely prioritize the rejection of death and, in modern terms, fill the world with zombies. That'd be a long shot from the pinnacle of medicine I yearn for.", the boy with the caduceus disagreed.

"If you're so aware of it now… I don't think you'll turn out like that."

"When you're tainted by revenge, that can twist even the central wish that drives you… or rather, revenge becomes the new central wish."

With that, the shade looked above with a melancholic expression. The shade made from information recorded on Watcher talked about someone in the west, carrying simulated emotion in his voice.

"Maybe the medicine he needed the most now was having the most human of humans back in the captain's helm."

"What do you mean?", Sigma asked.

"People think gods and beasts are the most troublesome drug to handle, but it's actually humans.", the boy silhouette answered with a lonely smirk.

X 　 　 　 X

West Snowfield, cumulonimbus cloud, interior

A killing blow.
That's what Rider's first shot deserved to be called under normal circumstances. In terms of regular weapons of the modern era, her arrow would be like a bunker buster: a projectile bomb with possessing enough impact and perforating force to pierce the floor and destroy the underground enemy. The arrow flies in a straight line toward Alcides drilling through everything in its path.
The hide of the Nemean Lion may block any and all human constructs, but it does nothing to ward off the power of the gods that flows from girdle of Ares that serves as Rider's Noble Phantasm, inevitably dealing internal damage.
With a direct hit, the scales would tip largely in Rider's favor.
In contrast, Alcides shows no signs of intention to dodge.
He could also neutralize the shot by firing his own arrow, but he still hadn't readied his bow.
(Is he really in no fighting condition after all? I figured so, as the effects of the deadly hydra venom and the reddened-black "mud" invading him must be intense.)
She instantly canceled her train of thought before it finished.
(Discard all that wishful thinking.)
No matter how much he's altered, there's no way she would have an easy time against the great hero who killed her.
She began perching a second arrow, thinking her opponent was someone she couldn't take chances against even if he became a corpse.
(No… would that be wishful?)
Rider's eyes filled with another level of energy, and her lips form a daring smile without hesitation.
(The man I wish to fight against… would never lose himself here. I'm certain he will block my arrow. I know this fellow!)
Certain of it, she fired arrows without stop.
Her arrows charged to Alcides, dancing with the wind and thunder.
Their trajectory was fluid as water, and each head was charged with divinity, making them pace to the enemy like they were alive.

But—
Reddened-black lightning flashed between Alcides and the first arrow, shooting down its fierce attack.
However, to get around the thunder strikes, a raging rain of arrows formed another storm inside the hurricane cloud, and engulfed Alcides.

"I knew this wouldn't be enough to get to you…", she gulped, impressed.

Immediately before they met again in the northern canyon, Alcides fully parried a maelstrom of attacks from the Hero King—an omnidirectional shower of Noble Phantasm.
The Nemean Lion pelt alone couldn't block all that.
The reason why the greatest hero surmounted all difficulties in life and achieved numerous feats lied naught in the power of the gods.
The martial skills he learned throughout his human life came together and bloomed, bearing fruit within his soul. He perfected a craft that adapted to every situation, from his default bow and sword to numerous others arms and core ideas, including how to combat armies or monsters barehanded.
This crystallization of experience and technique truly belongs in his human Saint Graph.

The Nine Lives martial arts.

Engraved deep within his Saint Graph is the accumulation of his life's journey, which naturally moved without needing to take the form of the Noble Phantasm.
The lion pelt alone would fall short of leaving him unscathed. The martial arts alone would fall short of leaving him unscathed.
Combined and receiving the addition of vast amounts of magical energy and divinity, the two created a defense akin to an exoskeleton of thunderbolt over he who sits at the core of the stormcloud, the very body of Alcides.
Overwhelming martial might.
Unequalled heroic feats.
At the same time, she noticed the energy density within him continues to increase and irritate his body.
(Is he… getting mixed?)
The presence of mystic beasts began to jumble together with the inner walls of the cloud that resembled a risen ocean in its turbulence.
The Nemean Lion pelt covering Alcides's head had a stench unique to mystic beasts, and sparks in the shape of birds began cross the interstices between lightning bolts.

"The Stymphalian…", Rider mumbled as she watched the flock of electric birds gain numbers as they circled around Alcides.

Those bronze birds were listed among the Twelve Labors.
Her mother told her they were originally an army of companion airships to her father, the war god Ares.
Compared to how she saw them a few days before, they were growing more noticeably alike their original forms.
(Now it makes sense. I did imagine that it was impossible to steal another's Noble Phantasm without any risk or cost…)
A Noble Phantasm that steals a Noble Phantasm that can be considered the opponent's very Saint Graph.
(Having to fuse parts of his Noble Phantasms and Saint Graphs must be less of a cost for this outrage and more of a necessary step in order to crudely staple something together to his Saint Graph. My guess is that if he were to relinquish this mighty hurricane that is the power of Gugalanna, the power of the fused parts wouldn't return to him.)
However, her speculated circumstances alone would not be enough to steal another's Noble Phantasm.
What enabled it was the strength that the legendary hero's Saint Graph still had even after discarding the power of the gods, and an immense magical energy supply from his Master.
The hurricane cloud was gaining the auras of beasts other than Gugalanna.
The numerous mystic beasts that fought the greatest hero during his lifetime mixed together, filling the air with a stench similar to the primordial chaos.
"Your hatred from the gods is such that you plan to transform into the monster who defeated the thearch Zeus… Typhon, the Progenitor Dragon?", Rider screamed, dashing through this air.
Alcides's goal is revenge against the gods.
Therefore, one of the most surefire options available was to become something that has beaten them before.
Adding the power of the Holy Grail to his current state had a very realistic chance of turning him into something close enough.
If that didn't work out, there was still the plan B of resonating his power to wake up the real Typhon asleep somewhere outside the world's surface layer.
Alcides's idea of revenge included destroyed the entire world that continued to remember the gods.
In that case, Rider that all the more reason to stop him.
To remain true to herself, Rider screamed:

"ALCIDES!"

So far, Alcides's mind seemed to be operating semi-automatically, but now she felt like he was looking at her.
Rider loudly proclaimed her name, in a gesture that didn't care for whether or not he still had enough of an ego to understand words.

"My name is Hippolyte!"

Her bow turned into spiritron light and disappeared, and in its place, she gripped a giant axe as tall as herself.

"Daughter of the war god Ares and the Artemis priestess Otrera!"

As she screamed, she effortlessly lifted and brandished above her head the axe heavier than her steed.

"The name of the chief of the Amazons…"

The Noble Phantasm wrapped around her arm, Goddess of War, radiated light and enveloped her body, horse, and axe in divine aura—

"and the warrior who will defeat you!"

After this loud introduction, Hippolyte unleashed the name of her Noble Phantasm.

Fury overcomes hubris

Húbrin Anatropón Erinyes

A full-force horseback axe swing.
That's all she did.
But, combining the kicking strength the horse used to jump off its lightning platform and the flawlessly efficient distribution of power in both the horse and the rider's movements, the very simple act of swinging an axe on horseback reaches its peak.
If time stopped during any moment of her move, the still image generated would be a work of art.
It was beauty created as consequence of a pure pursuit of strength, unlike Ishtar's beauty, which was both the means and the end.
Power and technique culminated from Hippolyte's long years of personal research and training, and the endpoint of the Amazon tribe's unbroken tradition of advanced horsemanship.
All that combines to produce a single strike:
A brutal blow that cleaves the world.

X 　 　 　 X

Somewhere in North America

"Unbelievable…"

Those were the only words the observers covered in cold sweat could drag out of their mouths.
The place seemed to be a control room full of monitors but no windows, and on closer inspection, all four walls had magical boundaries on them.
Here was one of the places from where the government sector responsible for giving Faldeus orders—people that could be described as the masterminds of this Holy Grail War—watched the progress of the ritual.
They already issued the emergency code [Aurora fall], determining that a special bomb should be dropped to erase Snowfield City.
That's why only a handful of CIA officers with formal spellcaster training continued observation to gather accurate data until the very last second.
Weather observation satellites sent them observation footage in real time for them to camouflage and distribute to several agencies and the common citizen.
The man watching the monitor had been struck with terror when the giant hurricane compressed to minimal size in a matter of minutes.
But the truly startling part came later.
The magical observations did show one strong magical energy signal get swallowed by the hurricane, but he thought nothing of it, until less than a minute later, it caused a major alteration in the observed information.

"The hurricane… was sliced…?"

It was like a child had taken one bite out of a pizza and returned the slice.
The hurricane, which took the form of a beautiful circle, lost a fan-shaped part starting at the center and opening up southwest.
And that was not all. The faint cloud layer in the surrounding area and the cloud scraps assumed to be split from the hurricane were also blown off.
The weather satellite picture showed what resembled a straight line drawn with a ruler.

If someone intimately familiar with past Holy Grail Wars, like say, Lord El-Melloi II, was watching the scene, they'd have immediately figured out what happened.
The flash of a Noble Phantasm.
A blow similar but not comparable to the planet's Holy Sword named Excalibur.

X 　 　 　 X

West Snowfield

"What's going on there…?", Thia Escardos involuntarily groaned as he watched the torrent of magical energy split the sky. "Last I saw that Rider… she didn't have the Saint Graph necessary to pull that off."

She had magical energy leagues above the Saint Graph that he measured a few minutes ago.
This burst in amount of magical energy amount, clearly abnormal even taking into consideration the divine aura of the cloth he assumed to be her Noble Phantasm, was enough to take Thia's attention away from the El-Melloi Classroom.

(Weird… None of them are fretting. So did they already know about that Rider's extraordinary strength?)
But he couldn't feel that much power back when they were confronting Ishtar.
Since he shared Flat's body and Magic Circuits, Thia retained his Master ability to measure a Servant's power.
When he looked at her, not too long ago, he clearly identified her Saint Graph as "certainly not weak but considerably inferior to the top Servants in this Holy Grail War".
(Then did removing Ishtar trigger something? …No, I'd have seen if it…)
Thia noticed a certain possibility, interrupting his previous thoughts.

"No way… Is this even possible? With this El-Melloi Classroom roster, maybe…?"

Toosaka Rin shot a charged Gandr at Thia during his epiphany.

"You must be confident if you're not even looking our way."

"Yeah, I am. You're nothing.", said Thia, dodging at the last second.
"Are you counting yourself invincible just because you sparred a bit with that Lancer? I don't think you've done enough to back it up.", Rin haughtily responded.

"I can't deny that."

Thia Escardos was on par with Servants in terms of magical power and movement, but his endurance was entirely reliant on magical energy barriers, with his physical build being not that different from Flat Escardos.
Therefore, Thia did not have the option to ignore Toosaka Rin's barrage of Gandrs.
Clashing with his magecraft, he can even compete with Enkidu—but conversely, when his magecraft is disabled, he has no hopes of winning.

"That's why I won't be careless or arrogant."

Gandr may be a simple Single Action magecraft, but Rin's version, called Finn Shot, is something he'd not come out of unscathed. Thia knew it and repelled the attack by rotating the magical energy around him.
However, the repelled Gandr was repelled back by another magical energy "rotation" a few meters ahead.

"Ah!"

(Was that… a wheel?)
A wheel-like Mystic Code ricocheted the Gandr with the same high-speed rotation of magical energy as Thia's.
He didn't even have the chance to remember what that was.
The bounced projectile bounced in multiple other rotations in a span of 0.3 seconds, accelerating like a pinball until the Gandr pierced Thia's back.

"...!"

Since he managed to put up a magical barrier at the last possible instant, his innards weren't soaked with the curse, but the impact was enough to throw him off-balance.

"You two may be our veterans in the El-Melloi Classroom…"

Luviagelita was waiting for this moment to fire her own Gandr.

"but neither of you gets to look down on us."

Her Gandr had the same "Finn Shot" intensity as Rin's, and as before, the irregular trajectory provided by the countless "wheels" proved a threat to Thia.

"This is nothing…"

He swiftly controlled the "satellites" of magical energy deployed around him to crash against the Gandrs, to completely scatter the shots rather than deflect them.
But while he was doing it, Rin, Luvia, and many others with Gandr or similar attack methods opened fire.
The "wheels" swiftly circled themselves around Thia, skillfully ricocheting all projectiles and arranging the magecraft into the best possible vectors.
No matter how poorly aimed, the projectiles eventually homed in Thia's direction.
Being able to accurately reflect one type of Gandr is nothing special, but doing so with various kinds of magecraft required a rare level of control.
As Thia neutralized the incoming Gandrs and magical bullets, he spoke the name of the one manipulating the wheels.

"Org Rum…!"

Hearing his name, Org deployed more wheels.

The wheel-shaped Mystic Codes released from his hands rotated in high speeds, displaying magical energy afterimages as it did.
A facsimile of Projection.
The real wheels flew in circles, looking as if they had multiplied, and mixed with the fakes to weave a giant Bounded Field.
But this powerful "cage" of his was less of a magical wall and more of a physical one, meant to reflect any and all attacks coming from its interior.

"It was my sister who inherited the family's Magic Crest and I exist to be nothing more than the training wheels keeping her stable…"

It was thanks to his cage that the mages by his side could maintain continuous fire without hesitation.
They unleashed as much Single Action magecraft as possible, without bothering to aim.
A storm of varied techniques and curses.
But Org Rum's wheels brought everything together, altered the magecraft's quality and composition, and freely bounced back the shots so that everyone's attacks would converge on Thia.

"But our teacher's lessons inspired me toward a new goal… support magecraft capable of making me into training wheels for anyone, not exclusively my sister."

Thia didn't let it show, but he was vexed because he knew exactly how precise of a magical energy control that required.
This man named Org was the same as Flat and Rin—
A student who learned devilish techniques at the El-Melloi Classroom.

Org Rum had once given up on his mage identity.
He came from a family that used a unique magecraft with wheels. Due to a minimal advantage in amount of Magic Circuits and his studious personality, Org was considered one of the best candidates to inherit the Magic Crest. But after many intersecting schemes unfolded, overturning his favorable lead, his older sister Jean Rum was chosen as the Magic Crest's heir.
And, as the family head predicted, Jean Rum was able to draw the full potential of Magic Circuits on the Crest engraved in her. Her forceful yet delicate steering left Org behind in the race before he knew it.
Jean later became known by the moniker of Gale Wheel and regarded as the greatest in the history of the clan of wheel-using mages. And after earning this reputation, she said she'd search for Ivan the Terrible's library and went freelance.
Org knew he'd never be able to reach his sister's level, neither in magecraft capabilities nor in freedom of spirit.
He entered the Clock Tower resigned to spend his whole like as a spare for the case his sister met unexpected tragedy, but there he caught Lord El-Melloi II's eyes.

ーIn the world of magecraft, the wheel has many different meanings depending on the culture and religion… circulation and rebirth, alteration, harmonization, power at its purest, travel and exploration. What you can do depends on the context in which you use yours, but normally… front wheels and back wheels, not to mention additional pairs or training wheels, display greater stability when used in conjunction. Without the option to inherit the Crest, you're faced with a choice. You can take the mapped path of supporting the family head or, using the keywords of your magecraft… you can leave your trail marks on unexplored snow fields. The ability to create new contexts is a privilege of the talented.

Lord El-Melloi II spoke the word "talented" with some level of resentment.
The main weapons his student Org used to improve himself were his naturally studious personality and the extensive knowledge that came from his bibliomania, a habit learned from his sister. Due to those, he managed to leave his marks on untreaded land.
The cluttered El-Melloi Classroom faced all sorts of troubles.
Through his multiple experiences being strong-armed into these situations, he was forced to fight together with multiple mages, and along the way, he naturally left his tracks on the snow.
Time and time again.
And with enough time, the marked tracks become roads.
He perfected a new form of Wheel Magecraft that can support many others individuals with Magic Crests of different lineages, not only his sister, thus reaching the rank of Pride.

He's not special in this regard.
Naturally, only a handful of people in the entire world of magecraft obtained the title of Pride or higher through circumstances similar to his.
Pride is that valuable of a title to the Clock Tower.
But there's a place where the members of this handful gathered together.
The El-Melloi Classroom.
In the classroom, Org's case is one among many of his kind.
A lot of students faced the same circumstances: struggle due to an inability to notice their own talents.
Others were cursed by their talents.
Be it through the accumulation of small realizations or one grand lesson, they gained the means to break through the walls in their paths and climb to greater heights than they imagined.
This happened all the time in the El-Melloi Classroom.
Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone, as some, like Rin and Luvia, joined the class already with envisioned heights to reach.
Regardless, as a consequence of its alumni inevitably becoming high-ranking mages, the current El-Melloi Classroom has the open attention of every other faction.
This faction, considered a threat among the tumultuous Clock Tower, was now facing the monster named Thia.

"We don't believe we can fight you, who melted the North Sea's ice caps, head on."

Org's words were followed by a pair of twin sisters mocking Thia.

"Yup, nothing good's coming of it, y'know? We're just here to support Polyte."
"Mages gotta avoid these kinds of direct confrontations, for both side's sakes!"

Amidst their casual taunts, the twins expanded each other's magecraft.

"But, you should know it by now! We're very used to this kind of thing."
"Yeah, remember that time we threw hands with Touko? I thought the whole class would die!"

Many lineages had magecraft that let twin mages benefit from that trait. The Pentel sisters were one of them.
Other famous examples include the spell of Edelfelt family, popularly known as The Scales, and of a pair of brothers related to the Pentels, popularly known as Gum Brothers. Radia and Nazica's version of it regards the other sister as a mirror, and any magecraft that appears between the opposite mirrors is reflected by them, amplifying it through high-speed circulation and alteration.

"Well, the gist of things here is that if you pull off that advanced magecraft again, you blow this land up and we all die, am I right?"
"Which means we just need to stop you from using that and we're good… Hoy!"

The bullets that were mere Single Action spells momentarily expanded and occupied the space around Thia.
Their refined magecraft skills were a threat, but a very minor one if Thia was fighting them one on one.
But Thia knew that wasn't the case right now.
As proof, every time Thia tried to launch his magecraft at the ground to avoid the sliding wheels, a butterfly fluttered in its trajectory, altering distance and direction into something more undefined.

"I'm sorry, Thia Escardos.", dauntlessly spoke Werner, who could utilize magecraft on a similar level to that of a Servant by optimizing the conditions of the land he was on. "Honestly, in a fair fight, there's no logical way for us to defeat you, who survived fierce attacks from that incredible Lancer and is capable of destroying this entire land."

Countless more butterflies covered the ground as he spoke.

"Therefore, we decided logic has no place here… as we won't fight fairly."

They were in Snowfield right after Ishtar had begun to recolor the planet's surface texture and was prevented from finishing.
Here, where the difference between the real and the arcane was unclear enough due to this backlash, Werner's magecraft was at the best it's ever been.

"We might be an outdated form of humanity from your perspective…"

"…Hh! How much do you people know about the Escardos lineage…?", Thia asked after noticing his opponent figured out Messara Escardos's intentions.
But instead of an answer, Werner responded with a courteous bow and words of provocation.

"But do savor this full course of vain struggle from the mages you consider weaklings who won't survive the death of arcanity."

Werner's Papilio Magia blocked his attacks by making space ambiguous, and Org's Wheel Magecraft turned attacks he dodged into attacks that home into his back.
The paired mirrors of the Pentel sisters received support from Papilio Magia. Each other’s energy bullets were no longer the only ones amplified by the mirrors. They copied even Rin's and Luvia's Finn Shots as they entered the reflection.
Expectably, many members of the group were completely uninterested in being team players—but since their classmates understood their quirks, they knew how to exploit and incorporate their unique traits and make it part of their own magecraft.
The classmates fought over leadership without sabotaging each other's approaches, consequently dealing significant damage to Thia.
The situation clearly looked like a nightmare or some kind of joke, but in reality, they were very close to the worst match-up Thia could have.
He had the means to resist a one-on-one battle against a Servant.
It's a proven fact that he managed to hold out against Enkidu for some time, even if he was forced to use his trump card.
But in a situation with this much jumbled and complicated information, it becomes impossible to fully parse the flow of magical energy.
(Flat could…)
He remembered Flat Escardos and removed that thought from his head.
Thia wasn't clueless.
He knew that Flat's superior instincts and sensibilities made him better than himself at handling this situation, since Thia reacted to magecraft using thorough observation and calculations.
But he wouldn't cry over spilled milk.
Thia knew he wasn't in his element, so he exploded one of the "satellites" orbiting him, prepared to get hit in the process.
One of his objectives was to blow apart the magical energy constructions around him.
Because bullets of concentrated magical energy would just ricochet on the "sliding wheels" and "mirrors", he compiled complex magecraft into a special "mist" covering him in every direction.
This magecraft was lower on the power scale due to being compiled instantly, but its primary objective was being a smokescreen.
Thia spread the mist wider, hiding his figure and magical energy as he rose higher.
Flight magecraft is an advanced art comparable to magic.
It's normally something reserved to high-level mages inside the land they administer, but Thia could do it by operating multiple forms of magecraft with his transcendental magical energy control. That said, he couldn't reach the speeds of rule-breaking flight magecraft like Touko Travel or what he reached when Enkidu's cannon fire propelled him to the stratosphere.
Still, he didn't need that much speed.
It was easy to overwhelm them by shooting magecraft from the sky beyond their reach.
That was the winning plan Thia crafted while heading to the sky.

"...Mm?"

He felt a powerful gaze coming from the ground below and stared back.
The next moment—an impact ran from the ground to the sky, cutting off his mist and nothing else.

"Ah!"

Thia looked below in search of clues for how they were are able to pinpoint his exact location and how they were able to conjure magecraft strong enough to blow away his mist without any noticeable build up.
What he found was an alumnus transferred to Astromancy, Mary Lil Fargo; and the son of a first-class lecturer, Fezgram vor Sembren.
Mary, who can foretell his position by seeing the picture through the stars' perspective with a divination-based application of Astromancy, was pointing directly at him.

"Her observations can get that accurate…?"

She couldn't possibly have heard Thia's mumbled, but Mary spoke on the ground below like she had guessed what he meant.

"Obviously not, I only guessed your general location. So I asked him to clear the mist off of the entire area."

Fezgram responded next to her with a bitter smile.

"Though I can't do anything better than just clearing this little mist."

Like his father, his usage of magecraft uncreatively followed the textbooks to the letter. He used it to systematically make Mystic Codes float in a 30 m² area.
While manipulating countless Mystic Codes with the precision of a calculator in his magical energy control, the student who chose to explore the route of taking the by-the-books approach to ground-breaking levels spoke.
For the Sembren family, which specialized through generations in magecraft that delivered shockwaves, his Magic Circuits were an improvement over his father's, but his output had a peculiar quirk.
He was great at controlling countless instances of small-scale magecraft in parallel, but poor at pouring magical energy for one gigantic impact—until he, too, found his answer at the El-Melloi Classroom.
Fezgram's magecraft operated countless Mystic Codes simultaneously, cleverly overlaying tiny shockwaves together to ultimately generate overwhelming force at the target area from any direction of his choice.
Each individual impact he generated made virtually no difference on its own, but their raw energy amplified as they synergized and resonated with each other.
A phenomenon very similar to how in the seas, the impact of waves builds up on other waves to ultimately form a giant wave.
This does more than simply build up power: it slips past Thia's eyes by controlling countless magical energy currents too tiny for him to easily detect—And by converging all the shockwaves at the area Mary pointed to, he creates a dispersive energy that instantly clears away the fog.

"Well, not that I ever expected my magecraft to damage your barrier..."

The moment Fezgram said that, Thia felt his body restrained by shockwaves from every direction.

"…!"

Those shockwaves were not administered by Fezgram's magecraft.
They belonged to someone else, and operated like a naturally occurring power rather than as magecraft.
That much was already clear to Thia before Fezgram's next words reached his years.

"All it needed to do was let her lay eyes on you."

On cue, a voice filled with out-of-place cheer reverberated.

"Uh-huh! It's at these maybe-desperate-maybe-lavish times that it's important to remind everyone present that I'm a major character of the El-Melloi Classroom AND the teacher's mistress! The money and time I spent refining this can be paid out with everyone's grateful loyalty and Prof's body!"

Away from the group, Yvette L. Lehrman waved to Thia with exaggerated movements.
Ignoring the crowd of students telling her to shut up, the girl messed around, without ever letting Thia out of her sight.
She no longer had her usual eyepatch, its spot instead was occupied by a dense gold light.
Mystic Eyes of Compulsion.
They're Mystic Eyes that force specific actions on the stared individuals, and are one of the best techniques available to restrain someone's movement.
The bright light concealed her right eye socket, making it impossible to tell if her eye was an artificial one she personally polished from jewels or one she purchased on a Rail Zeppelin auction or some other supplier.
The Lehrman clan's artificial Mystic Eye manufacturing technique was so reliable that it was impossible to tell them apart looking only at their activated abilities.
But whether the eye was natural or artificial didn't matter now.

"If the power you used were the Mystic Eye of Distortion, you'd have ended me…"

As Thia had kept the threat of Yvette's Mystic Eyes in mind this whole time, he calmly mobilized the magical energy within him, altering his skin and the air around to have the same properties are as an anti-ocular Mystic Code—the Mystic Eye Killers.

"Mystic Eyes of Compulsion are extensions of Magic Circuits and a spell formula. You could catch Flat with them, but did you really think they'd work on me?"

Speed and ability to bruteforce solutions were Thia's elements, not Flat's.
Angry at how the wing missing from the pair kept returning to his attention, Thia rotated a satellite posthaste in order to shake off the thoughts.
He wanted to silence all the El-Melloi Classroom students below him, including Yvette, but it'd too dangerous to use the show of force that vaporized half of the North Pole.
If he used a pure destructive spell with high attack power, a few of the mages there would be able to decisively counter it.
(But… playing reactively is even more dangerous.)
Toosaka Rin was an Average One with a mechanism to respond to any spell in his repertoire, and Werner's Papilio Magia was another major problem.

(What am I supposed to do, then?)

Thia acknowledged that in his heart of hearts, he already knew the answer.
(Looks like we really are one and the same… I can't separate my heart from Flat Escardos.)
His magecraft of choice of Chaos Magick, what Flat did best.
It's a modern magecraft that tries to pick out the best from major systems all over the world, but its foundations are remarkably fragile, and normally cursed by its instability into not being able to enact great power.
But Flat's genius intuition allowed him to pull off building a specialized foundation and application from scratch, exclusively to the phenomenon he wanted to enact, circumventing all issues through bogus magecraft even he was unable to replicate. That was the reason why he was feared and called The Unwanted Blessing.
However—Thia worked differently.
He had memorized all foundations and applications that Flat had previously constructed, and his calculations were capable of reaching results similar enough to what Flat would arrived at intuitively.
And so, Thia tried to use the full scope of his ability to create chaos difficult to counter due to being impossible to comprehend.
While he was being freed from the grip of the Mystic Eye of Compulsion, Thia began charging one of the satellites orbiting him with magecraft simple but loaded with several different attributes.
He limited the range of his activated magecraft to the wasteland below him, where the ranks of the El-Melloi Classroom were distributed, and used the range restriction to increase its attack power.
Those who Flat called friends would be crushed by Flat's power.
(There's no point saying this to someone who is already dead… but sorry, Flat. I'm about to kill you in the truest sense.)
It would all end when he is released from the Mystic Eye and able to move again.
At that moment, his original spell A Clockwork Abaddon would settle his battle against Flat's life.
Thia was prepared to end it all—
But for one second, he was consumed by indecision and repentance.
That was ultimately fatal.

"...Mm?"

Thia noticed an incongruence.
Yvette should logically be aware that the effects of her Mystic Eye of Compulsion were being dispelled.
However, she continued to glare at Thia with a daring smile.
Scared of what might happen, Thia launched the still incomplete "satellite". And when he did—
His world was engulfed in intense light.

X 　 　 　 X

Half of the El-Melloi Classroom members were startled by the flash of light occupying their sight.
The few who understood what she did stared at Yvette with a face of "I didn't think you actually would".
What happened?
The event couldn't be simpler to verbally describe.

Yvette L. Lehrman shot an eye beam.

Nothing more.
There would have been nothing unusual about the scene if she were using offensive magecraft like her Mystic Eye of Blaze.
What made it abnormal was its inexplicable size and force. The immense power of the beam could probably melt a large tank or a jumbo jet in an instant, and on top of that, the strike still carried the Mystic Eye's original function of compulsion.
Even among the El-Melloi Classroom, few could readily accept the abnormality of the heaven-piercing beam that the lady in a pink gothic lolita dress fired from her eye.

"Girl… I know you said you'd do it, but really…? Are you insane?", Rin said to Yvette, flabbergasted.

Yvette stared at Rin after hearing the pot call the cattle black.

"What sane person would ever agree to come to this place? Ahahahaha! Nothing like a good laughter in times of pain! God, it hurts!"

The ashes of her right eye oozed out of its socket along with smoke and blood.
While Yvette wiped away the cinders of an eye so charred that it was impossible to tell if it was originally a real eyeball or an artificial Mystic Eye gem, she provided a proper answer to the question in many of her classmates' heads.

"You people know how our teacher is. He can't see anything without analyzing it and pestering us to try it."

That was enough of an explanation for all the classmates. They returned their gazes to the sky.
Lord El-Melloi II had a bad habit of analyzing magecraft on sight and passing it down for the student with the most adequate magecraft system to use, when he wasn't registering patents within the world of magecraft. Caules's Primeval Battery was an example of that.
This "it's your fault for not patenting it" attitude was a major cause for his epithet of Plundering Duke and the moral principle that let him convey the magecraft Yvette just used.
Luvia, familiar with what happened in a case a few years ago, named what this magecraft was based on.

"Preposterous… I cannot believe you genuinely pulled off the Mystic Eye Projector with your own eye…"

"Oops, stop there! Time out! No unlicensed namedrops allowed! It's just a parody! A silly little thing that bears no genuine resemblance to the Mystic Eye Projector! Are we clear? Nice, then this conversation is over! Back off! The last thing a Lehrman can afford is bad blood with Mystic Eye auctioneers!"

The Mystic Eye Projector was a piece of equipment of the Rail Zeppelin, a major Dead Apostle-operated Mystic Eye-collecting railway train involved in a past case with Lord El-Melloi II, his private pupil, Yvette, and Caules.
It is a secret art that consumes one of their stored Mystic Eyes as a bullet, rendering its internal Magic Circuits and Crest-like functions permanently unusable to explosively amplify the power of the Eye while also releasing a torrent of magical energy.

ーThere is no way we can do the same thing a superior Dead Apostle does. But that doesn't mean we cannot seek the same results. You just have to get to the bottom of this guiding idea of squeezing a Mystic Eye dry of its energy. The traditional Lehrman magecraft is ideal for this.

Remembering her mentor's words, Yvette tried to put on another Mystic Eye but couldn't.
"Ouch… Yeah, that's gonna stay unusable for a while…"
She put back her eyepatch, struck an idol pose, and talked to herself to pretend she was fine.

"Oh, Prof, you're definitely gonna find yourself stabbed in the back one day. Though that's rich coming from one of the fools that let you use her as your plaything!"

X 　 　 　 X

Meanwhile, the floating Thia suffered considerable damage. Not only was the impact of the energy torrent tremendous, but it also cancelled the Chaos Magick he was preparing.
Thia himself was unharmed, but the Chaos Magick, on the other hand, took a direct hit from the Mystic Eye of Compulsion's hex of "don't move", reducing it to a plain cannonball loaded with powerful energy.
He was lucky he had made progress in deploying his Mystic Eye Killer defenses. Had he taken the hit unprepared, he would have been unable to move for a few days, and worst-case scenario, his life functions could have stopped.

(But I still can move. The magical energy I poured hasn't scattered. If I reconstruct the spell fast enough…)

Thia's thought was interrupted by the sky suddenly getting darker.

"!?"

A giant serpent arrived to devour the land.
It was the huge venomous snake that attacked the Neo Ishtar Temple not long ago and was ultimately transformed into Ishtar's hammer.

"The Hydra…!?"
"Huhu, huhuhu. You're finally vulnerable."

One mage mounted the giant snake.

"Can't blame you for getting distracted. Yvette's eccentric like that."

It was a Roland Berzinsky—a snake charmer producing countless pseudo-snakes of magical energy from his feet to semi-fuse himself with the Hydra.
In the history of the lineage specialized in reptiles, the only one as compatible as this remarkable figure was the Silver Lizard—his absconding relative Rottweil Berzinsky.
His Hydra was just conceptual vestiges. All Roland's magecraft was doing was manifesting the tangled vestiges dropped from Ishtar's hammer.
The colossal serpent had already lost its deadly venom when exposed to Ishtar's divine aura, and furthermore, it had already become an empty husk by this point.
But it was still perfectly capable of swallowing Thia's small frame whole and slamming him to the ground before crumbling away.

"It really is anything goes with you guys… Enough!"

It took less than an instant for Thia to understand all that happened, and understanding it made him scream.
The emotions he believed to have suppressed lay bare.
He was also aware of his own abnormality.
(Agh, I can't do anything right. Not against them. Look at how much they throw off my rhythm, my mind, and my determination.)
The biggest obstacles to him weren't Enkidu or the Heroic Spirits fighting in the western sky.
The people he was confronting right now were a greater challenge than the powerful Heroic Spirits.
Sure of that, Thia tried to fire a "satellite" loaded with magical energy at the serpent. To blow everything away while his emotions were still heated.
But—the combat plan of the El-Melloi Classroom remained firm.
A simple back-and-forth engineered not to give Thia a chance to use any advanced magecraft, constantly stopping him at step 1.

"Pallida mors."

A muffled voice reverberated from an unknown direction.
Their next move was visible inside the serpent's open mouth.

"Ah!"

A shadow leaped out of the Hydra's jaws and charged at Thia like a cannonball.

"Enough?"

A hand with sharp claws and covered in sturdy fur split the "satellite" in front of Thia.

"Here's what the moron would have said about it."

The loaded energy readily dispersed and intensely expanded.
Amidst the flash of light, Thia's arms were grabbed. By a beautiful beast.

"He'd say… 'Rich coming from the guy who almost blew up Hollywood'!"

A giant biped wolf, resembling the mythical werewolf.
But he hadn't actually turned into a werebeast.
The apex of Beastly Magecraft was to make all watchers see an illusory beast by wearing magical energy so dense it becomes invisible—a state a group of mages refers to as Phantom Wolf Form.
And then Thia yelled.
As if to let loose what's been penting up inside him ever since he lost his other half.

"I knew you'd be here…!"

He screamed the name of the young genius whose talents matched Flat Escardos. The man who used to be called one of the "Twin Jewels of the El-Melloi Classroom".

"SVIN GLASCHEIT…!"

With their arms immobilized, Thia and Svin fell toward the ground alongside the Hydra's head.
But Thia wasn't afraid of the fall.
He had already experienced midair combat in his skirmish against Enkidu.

"Stop this tantrum… and listen to us!"

During their fall, Svin tightened his grip on Thia's arms.

"You can't pretend to be a serious guy after being together with the moron your entire life!"

His raw grip was enough to easily pulverize the bones of human arms and rip the hands off.
But Thia's body was already semi-fractured and forcibly stitched together into a humanoid shape with magical energy from the get-go.
Because there was magical energy compressing the parts into place, how solid he was depended on the amount of energy there.
He could remain hard enough to resist Svin's immense strength for as long as he still had the magical energy to spare.
Thia assessed this situation and calmly began formulating a spell—
But his body was thrown in the air while he wasn't expecting it.

"Kh… Huh…!?"

Another sharp attack hit his back while he was already in a precarious situation.
He took a look at the new shadow above his head—it was a second Svin clad in his Phantom Wolf appearance.
He had shredded the "satellite" before to camouflage the flow of magical energy from Thia.
In this window of opportunity, he controlled the magical energy clone he had previously left inside the jaws of the Hydra and took it out.
Furthermore, detecting its magical energy lead to others.

"You're still making more…", mumbled Thia upon watching the flow of magical energy while using magecraft to slow down his fall.
The Hydra was twisting its body like a spiral as it fell.
Countless Svin copies rose from its back. The pack of Phantom Wolves jumped off the falling Hydra, surrounding Thia in every direction.

"Hurry up, Svin. I can't keep this up much longer."

Roland, the pilot of the crumbling Hydra, asked with words, and Svin answered with actions.
The Phantom Wolves all stopped breathing at the same time—
and disappeared.
At their speed, human eyes couldn't even catch their afterimages.
His movement would still be outdone by a Servant specialized in speed, but wouldn't even allow a regular mage an opportunity to react. The flickering glimpses of his image became blades shining in the Snowfield skies.
In response, Thia accelerated the orbit of numerous "satellites" around him to see if they could repel the Phantom Wolves faster than human reflexes.
He shot the face of one of them, the one Phantom Wolf who rushed in for a frontal attack. And when he did—
The chest of the beheaded werewolf burst open, and a new arm grow out of the hole.
Hiding himself inside one of his own clones was a simple but effective trick.
The claws of the Phantom Wolf dug into Thia's throat by complete surprise.
Thia considered the possibility that the thrust to his throat could snap his neck and hardened it to the best of his magical reinforcement's ability—but as if they were waiting for this moment, the high-speed Phantom Wolf afterimages around him vanished all at once.
From there, the countless wheels that were hidden behind the werewolves come to view.
(Crap…)
The whole El-Melloi Classroom opened fire, violently shooting down Thia and Svin.

Thia crashed on softened ground. Svin stood up and looked at the boy still collapsed on the floor.

"You and Flat both look at magical energy too much."

But Svin also looked heavily damaged. He had been knocked out of his Phantom Wolf state and spoke to the crumbling Thia in his human form.

"So, no matter what, you would reflexively try to follow the energy trajectory of my movements that normal people can't even see. Annoyingly enough, Flat would have had some random idea to get himself out of this situation… but you're predictable. You smell like simple honesty. A straightforward and amiable smell, shrank and hidden under layers."

His reason to drop these apparent words of advice was that he needed to buy time to recover his magical energy and heal his wounds.
Perfectly aware of that, Thia still looked at Svin astonished.
"You're out of your mind...", he said.

"What do you mean?"

"You could have used a clone to hold me down at the end… Why would the real you need to get hit by the crew's back-up fire while falling with me…?"

"Using a clone would be begging for you to hack it. I'd rather not get attacked by a double-crossing copy of myself, thank you.", Svin spoke matter-of-factly.
Thia looked at the sky like nothing mattered anymore.

"You were the most difficult opponent among all the El-Melloi Classroom members here."

"Yeah?"

With a shrug, Svin sat next to the collapsed Thia.

"Can you already get up on your own?"

"Reconstructing flesh takes time.", answered Thia, assessing the state of his body in detail.
He was using magical energy to force himself to heal, but unlike the time he was shot with guns, this time the curse of compulsion from Yvette's Mystic Eye Projector lingered, making it impossible for him to heal instantly.

"This is your chance to finish me off and save mankind from a threat.", Thia casually said.

"Sorry, not interested.", Svin replied. "I'm only here to slug some morons inconveniencing my teacher."

"Are you including me in this?"

"Obviously."

"I can only think of one person who would have known about me… but he wouldn't blabber about it. How did you find out?", Thia indifferently asked the question on his mind.

Thia knew who every student here was.
But all he knew was information seen through Flat's eyes. He had never appeared even once. The only one with a chance of having figured out his existence was a red-haired superhuman who participated in what was essentially a Magic Circuit-sharing experiment. But even then, Thia didn't have any clarifying conversation with the red-haired superhuman, and more importantly, Thia hadn't detected him anywhere in the city.
Svin replied to the confused Thia.

"The sharper guys suspected it way faster than I did. I figured it out from your smell. You felt like an extreme danger mixed within his smell… That's why I advised him to destroy you."

"Hold on… You're talking about when you first met Flat…"

"But, for all that you smelled dangerous, you also smelled neatly put together. That smell intensified whenever Flat talked about himself like it was someone else."

"..."

"At first I assumed he had split personalities or a persona intentionally created with magecraft… but that didn't seem to be it. That's why I didn't trust you at first… neither of you, actually. You were clearly a bomb in a gift box, and if you weren't, you were still made of trouble… But the Professor knowingly accepted you as you were. In that case, I'd look bad if I didn't follow his example."

"Are you telling me Lord El-Melloi II was also aware of me…?"

Thia's voice was faintly mixed with emotion.
Noticing this minor change, seemingly combining shock and resignation, Svin continued.

"That confirmed it to me. As long as you're still around, we still haven't lost our stupid Flat…And the Professor probably also considers you a student."

"... Right… There's no way that teacher wouldn't have noticed…"

Thia stopped the "satellite" he was secretly charging with magical energy to strike back and watched the clouds, exhausted.

"You could destroy me so easily right now."

"I already told you I'm not interested. Do you want me to destroy you?"

"I…"

Right when Thia was about to answer, he saw a streak of light cross the sky.

"…?"

It only lasted an instant.
An extremely dense mass of magical energy flew westward toward the cumulonimbus, tearing the sky apart in speeds not comparable to light but still far quicker than sound.

Delayed shockwaves traversed the sky and earth, pushing back against the winds of the hurricane.
Thia assumed this was also the El-Melloi Classroom's doing… but the students were also staring at it aghast.

"What's wrong…?"

Thia, capable of seeing the flow of magical energy, took a second look at the abnormality.

He didn't feel any energy vestiges in the golden light's trail.
Something was operating that dense magical energy with the precision not to waste a speck.
That unidentified individual was trying to join the battle between myths unfolding west of them.

"Is that who I think it is…?"

Thia remembered a Heroic Spirit but wasn't too sure. In his memories, the Heroic Spirit he thought about had powerful divinity.
But, despite its impressively powerful magical energy, when looked at the light currently soaring through the sky—
He couldn't feel an ounce of the divine aura Ishtar, Alcides, and Rider were clad on.

X 　 　 　 X

Within the hurricane clouds

This battle was unlike any other.
It was a clash between two humans in appearance only. The power of nature colliding against human will in a scene right out of an epic tale.
In the storm, the Amazon horsewoman tried to open a new path to her fate.
The arrows from her bow cut the winds, rode the lightning, and pierced the rain.
Then, she swung her giant battleaxe on the path they opened.
All of that proved her strength and determination.
Blessed by her father Ares and by Artemis to whom she was given as a priestess.
Her experience leading the tribe as a queen and her pure study of martial arts.
Furthermore, the maximum back-up she could have received from her Masters.
She poured all that she was given and all that she built up into defeating Alcides.
Her Noble Phantasm: one battleaxe strike.
Her steed's hooves touch the floor at the same time as she swings down, with her enemy visible a few dozen meters ahead.

And now, a long straight wound was carved in Alcides's body.
The strike was capable of erasing part of the hurricane, not to bisect his body.
Nonetheless, Hippolyte certainly wounded the body she had believed to be invincible.
Hippolyte kept the pressure going.
She sought to keep this offensive momentum, but her arm stopped.
Her polished warrior instincts noticed something:
Someone appeared where they were—someone concealing immense power.

The same happened for Alcides. Instead of looking at Hippolyte, the one who put a huge wound on his body, he looked east.

"What's this…?"

Cold sweat ran down Hippolyte's back.
An unidentified presence was squeezing through the cloudy galestorm and getting inside the cumulonimbus.
It was a presence she knew she felt before.
But with one fundamental difference.
And before she could try to figure out what was it that wasn't like before—

Time stopped completely inside the clouds.

Hundreds of thousands of lightning flashes covered the cumulonimbus in white darkness.
It took one instant for the all the flashes to completely disappear, and the clouds to become a wall of darkness blocking the sun's light. At the top of the hurricane cloud, the sky was isolated from the central area serving as the eye of the whirlwind, locking the space around Alcides and Hippolyte in perfect dark.

(This can't have been Alcides. But who else other than Zeus could have instantly pacified so much thunderbolt?)
Hippolyte had many questions.
And the answer came in the form of a sound in the darkness.

The beautiful tone of a string instrument.
A singular sound, not part of any melody.
A purifying sound that clears the air. A timbre that presumably didn't belong in a battlefield.

"Was that… a lyre… or a harp?"

As soon as the trailing note reminiscent of an ancient instrument faded, something stabbed the ground on an area distant from Alcides and Hippolyte.
It shone golden light, purifying the floor like it was filtering muddy waters.

"A sword…?"

To answer Hippolyte's whisper, the sound reverberated a second time.
The sound practically had an attractive force that guided the listener's attention to the sky.
She couldn't tell how conscious Alcides was, but his face covered in Nemean leather was also looking at the sky.
Eventually, a small star gained life in the sky accompanying the echoing sounds—
And contrary to the sounds that reached the skies, the light fell to the floor.

It crashed in a different place from the previous sword. A spear clad in magical radiance that made one mistake it for gold.

One more echo, accompanied by another weapon descending to the floor.

As the process repeated, the interval between sounds grew shorter—eventually performing a melody.
Understanding what that meant, Hippolyte glared at the sky with a tight grip on her weapon.

She watched the moment one of the stars gained form in the pitch-black sky.
Far above her head, at the top of the closed cumulonimbus dome, shone a ring of countless lights.

"Gh…!"

Hippolyte and Alcides already knew what that meant.
They could tell that the light was not a guidepost to hope, but rather a despair-bringing radiance of judgment, because they had seen it in the northern canyons.

Seconds later, the starry sky came down.
The glimmer of death poured down within the hurricane clouds like a waterfall of light.

Hippolyte's bow rapid-fired arrows, offsetting the lights raining in her direction.
Alcides also swatted away the lights raining directly on him by swinging his heavy bow.

The meteor shower eventually came to an end, with plentiful crops of faint golden light spread around the two.
Whereas instead of wheat, it were the numerous armaments fallen from the sky that were planted there.

"Just what I thought it was…", Hippolyte groaned.

A feat from a Heroic Spirit she believed to be dead.
She couldn't imagine another Heroic Spirit in the same Holy Grail War would also be able to employ such ludicrous amounts of objects.
However, previously, the fired Noble Phantasms would immediately vanish to be continuously fired. This time, they remained stabbed on the floor, continuing to emit their brightness.
Numerous armaments disorderly pierced the ground, but it was evident that each of them carried qualities worthy of the Noble Phantasm qualification.
The visible roster included not only swords, axes, and spears, but also books, wands, and rings.

"Mm?"

They behaved similarly, but were not the same.
Disturbed by the uncanny discrepancy, Hippolyte got to hear the string instrument once more.
A singular sound, not part of any melody.
In the direction of the sound, she found a mini golden lyre rotating midair—and a short shadow floating next to it.
The trees broken by the galestorm piled up together when she wasn't looking, and a young boy sat on them.
"Hi."

A voice as clear as the lyre.
A Heroic Spirit with a voice matching his apparent age glanced at the horsewoman and the avenger.
Despite the completely different age, his face resembled the first loser of the Holy Grail War.
But he was different from that bowman.
Fundamentally different from that arrogant king.
As soon as Hippolyte reached that conclusion, the floating lyre sounded on its own, without anyone's fingers dragging its strings.

"Does this count as our first meeting?", the boy quietly mused in sync with sound of the lyre.

"My utmost respect goes to you, magnanimous heroes.", the boy stood up and courteously bowed.

His gesture had no traces of snideness or unctuousness. There were tangible implications that his respect was sincere.
From the moment he lowered his head, it was already proven he was not the archer.
After Hippolyte was convinced, the boy calmly raised his head.
And then, he said the following to the two figures in his eyes, with the same respect as before.

"To prove it…"

Next, every one of Noble Phantasms planted all over the floor unleashed their energy.
Their shine gave a new color to the cumulonimbus previously colored by the lightning.

"I bring you the end of times."

X 　 　 　 X

A few minutes earlier, Crystal Hill, top floor

"Is that true? Is he really awake?", Tine Chelc asked her suited subordinate on their way down the rooftop stairs.

The man was not her closest confidant. Her usual secretary and driver was currently on a mission to communicate with Rider's Master group.
But every subordinate was like family to Tine, and she regarded them all equally regardless of rank.
The ones who actually share her blood and the ones who wandered into the organization were all equal parts of the same magical faction and the same commune. One cooperative society rooted in one leyline.
One of the members came to call Tine while she was in the rooftop watching what was happening in the western sky.
According to him, Archer woke up and called for his Master.

"Me and the doggo will keep watch of the western sky. Since Archer is awake, I want you to go first and let him know we're not enemies.", said Doris Lusendra.

While Doris (one of Rider's Masters) and the silver wolf (Lancer's Master) stayed in the rooftop, Tine went to her suite, trying to control her racing heart.
There was only one Command Spell left on her right hand.
But she could indubitably feel her Heroic Spirit's presence through it.
If anything, it'd be reasonable to say his magical energy felt more active than it was when she sealed the contract.
(But…)
Something was weird.
Everything was overflowing, yet something was lacking.
Nonetheless, her heart was full of expectation.
She believed her desperation gambit brought her king back when he was falling into the underworld.
Therefore, she interpreted this powerful contradiction as the pulse connecting her to her Servant, and pushed open the suite's door with enthusiasm.

"Your Majesty! You're awa—"
Her words stopped partway.

"Hi, Master."

This greeting incompatible with her image of him confounded her very soul.
The figure by her suite's window looked nothing like the Archer she knew.
He was shorter and his face looked more youthful.
He seemed too young to be like the heroes in the picture books, but too grown up to be a child in need of protection.
His new form was perhaps comparable to an insect freshly hatched out of the chrysalis—taken from a moment he was equipped with all the experiences of larva and the pupa, but still had nothing added or subtracted to his completed body.
Judging by the quality of his magical energy and her subordinates' accounts, she speculated this Heroic Spirit was Archer revived from near-death.
But even after seeing him with her own eyes, Tine still wasn't certain that the one in the room was one and the same with her Servant: the Hero King Gilgamesh.
She was consumed by the sensation that she was next to "something" completely different from the king she knew.

(Who? Who is this person… This Heroic Spirit…?)

She couldn't feel anything resembling hostility.
On the contrary, boundless relief recurred in Tine's heart.
The girl never believed in the idea of a hero destined to defeat the big bad, but she couldn't escape the feeling that if such an adventure protagonist existed, that's what he looked like.
Her fantasy was tremendously out-of-place in the middle of the Holy Grail War, much less at a critical stage that would determine whether or not the city would survive. But Tine, as well as her every subordinate there, felt same thing:
They were in the presence of a hero.
Or rather, they were in the presence of the living definition of heroism.
Even his immature appearance concealed a hope for further growth. His looks suggested the gods were arguing that the image of perfection lie in incompleteness.
However—in contrast to his perfected looks, every smidgen of divinity was wiped off of his energy.
The overflowing divine aura from the moment of their contract was no more. The magical energy that symbolically pierced through the ages of man and gods was lost, giving room to signs of humanity refined to its highest purity.
Its qualities didn't match her own magical energy, which employed the land's leylines.
The best way to describe the sheer purity of his "humanity" is imagining that a baby was born with abundant magical energy and grew up without ever letting the world corrode him in any way.
The Archer that Tine once knew carried so much willpower that he instinctively compelled her to kneel, while the boy she saw made her whole body burst with deep aspiration to be like him.
Tine couldn't contain the relief in her mind—trust him and everything will go well.
Nonetheless…
That was all the more reason for Tine to feel unfamiliar. She didn't take another step.
(What am I anxious for? I know we're in the middle of an emergency, but am I really supposed to simply ignore this sensation?)
Fighting off her first impressions, Tine focused first on fixing her breathing rhythm.
She noticed she was breathing excessively, almost hyperventilating.
(The king I know…)
After long enough, she, covered in cold sweat, finally directed words at the "something" standing still in her room.

"Who… are you?"

The simplest question.
The picturesque Heroic Spirit answered Tine's question with a pleasant smile—like a comforting breeze running across the green land.

"I'm a Servant."

"..."

"A Ghost Liner under a contract to Master Tine Chelc."

A direct answer.
But Tine couldn't bring herself to accept it. There was no word she could profer.
After seeing her non-reaction, the boy-king resembling a white and gold flower continued.

"I came loaded with all the information about you."

"Came… loaded…?"

"Seems like the Hero King considered your every word and accomplishment after meeting him in the northern canyons something worth storing."

The Hero King. Him.
Seeing the boy-king treat the king as someone else, Tine grew more cautious, but still took the risk with a strongly worded question.

"One more time! Who are you? If you're not the Hero King, I'll need your name, if you please!"

Words with cold dignity beneath her age.
Tine knew better than anyone that this was camouflage hiding her uneasiness, and she expected the Heroic Spirit to have seen through it. Regardless, the boy-king didn't really change his expression. He answered with the same affable smile as last time.

"My name is the same as his, Master. But… Calling me by the name of the Archer Saint Graph would be inaccurate. The Class that represents my Saint Graph is, hmm… Well, I'd be the only one of my kind in this particular course of history, but here's a name you can use."

After letting his eyes drift into the distant sky, the boy-king announced the name of the container locking his Saint Graph.

"Alterego, the class of the distilled fragments."

[Formless Creature]

thanks for the christmas gift santamun

[Rafflesiac]

I wonder if Matsuoka will voice Thia as hell. If he does, he'll definitely nail it. It's funny how Gil being respectful and polite instantly freaks out anyone who's ever met him before.

[L.H.S]

Greatest chirstmas gift.

[Comun]

Matsuoka voicing Thia definitely feels a lot more guaranteed than, say, Seki still voicing Alterego.

[Rafflesiac]

I wonder who would. Maybe a newer VA like Otsuka Takeo or Amasaki Kohei.

[asterism42]

yuichi nakamura? since he voiced proto gil in the short

[Rafflesiac]

I can see his David voice fitting.

[Emeraldwolf]

Matsuoka voicing Thia definitely feels a lot more guaranteed than, say, Seki still voicing Alterego.

I always imagined Matsuoka doing a variation of his As Nodt voice for Thia, just less sinister.

[gtfrh99]

Thanks for the translation!

[Dark Squirrel]

Thanks for the translation Comun!

Teen Gil being polite is fun.

And as much as this is all about fakes and real, divine and human are also up there.

[Noa]

Alter Ego Gil being voiced by Proto Gil's VA would be fun.

[Comun]

I like the idea of Alterego having the same design as Proto Gil, but the vibes are two different for them to have the same voice.

[RCM9698]

Thank you so much for the translation, Comun!

So Thia's end seems to be part of the class instead of Flat.

ProtoGil looks a bit younger than regular Archer Gilgamesh, but he doesn't look like a (late) teenager. Alter Ego should be more in line with Artoria as a regular Saber, or maybe a bit older.