The Present, Snowfield, Crystal Hill, Upper Floors
The flowers that bloomed the first time he met “her.”
What color had they been?
The upper floors of Crystal Hill.
The direct elevator to the top-floor suite was currently only usable by a select group of people, the official reason being damaged glass due to high winds.
Enkidu suddenly found himself reflecting on events from his life as he walked the red-carpeted hallway one floor below that led to the suite.
Reflecting on the flowers that had grown thickly deep in the forest where he had spent time with the being called Huwawa.
He remembered the color of the flowers that he had made bloom later.
He had made clusters of pale blue flowers bloom for “her.”
Enkidu would never recreate them on his own because there was no need, but if someone asked to see them, he could do so easily.
In the end, however, he could not remember the color of the flowers that had been with “her”—the personality that called itself Huwawa.
Why did Enkidu try to think of those flowers, which existed in a realm that was neither a record for his ‘completion’ nor a memory?
Enkidu self-analyzed the reason, immediately arrived at two answers, and lowered his gaze with a faint smile.
It was less a smile of self-derision than of pure nostalgia.
One reason was that he had learned that his former sibling—Huwawa—was manifesting in the world.
The other . . .
“It’s not about personality or the color of their souls. . . . Their transience might be a little similar.”
Enkidu continued to advance, sensing the presence of a girl in the inner recesses of the top floor.
“?”
He turned a corner and found several men and women in black eyeing him with confusion and alarm.
“Hey, who are you? Stop right there!”
“This area is off limits to . . . Wait. Bare feet . . .”
“Can this be real . . .? He’s not a mage. His magical energy is like . . . the Earth itself . . .”
“A Servant . . .? Don’t tell me that’s Lancer!”
Only a select few members of the organization occupying the suite were familiar with Enkidu’s appearance.
Only the ones who had used their familiars to watch his battle with Gilgamesh on the first day.
They had been told his distinguishing features, but none of them had expected him to just walk up to them in the hallway in broad daylight.
The magical energy that coursed through the Heroic Spirit’s body was both of the same type as the magical energy that flowed through the earth’s leylines and as peaceful as a calm sea. Many magecraft-users and mages would not be able to detect it, even at close quarters.
That was why, now that they had detected it, they understood.
It was like they had caught a whiff of seawater by the shore and suddenly realized that there was a massive whale in front of them.
It was too late to launch an attack. They doubted that anything they tried would have worked, even if they had struck first.
There was almost nothing that they, who had not made contracts with Heroic Spirits, could do. Their superiors had even given them strict orders never to engage a Heroic Spirit if one appeared.
They remained keenly aware of their holstered guns and offensive Mystic Codes, but not one of them reached for one.
The Heroic Spirit saw that and spoke with a smile.
The voice could be taken for male or female, but the Heroic Spirit’s sex didn’t matter to the black-suited guards.
Not only his physical beauty, but everything, including the magical energy they sensed from within him and the way he moved as he walked toward them, told them that this was a “perfect body.”
In the face of that fact, age and sex were trivialities. Types of curse or magecraft that varied according to sex would be meaningless before this mighty being regardless.
“I’m going through.”
The Heroic Spirit calmly said that short sentence.
“. . .”
The black-suited group, every inch of their skins breaking out in cold sweat, were powerless to do anything. They stood petrified.
As the Heroic Spirit passed by them, he lowered his gaze slightly as if in thought, paused, and said:
“You can relax. I haven’t come to fight. In fact, if you had chosen to fight, the thing you ought to be protecting might have ended up as collateral damage.”
“. . .?”
The looks on the guards’ sweat-drenched faces said that they did not understand what Enkidu was trying to say. He, still smiling, dispassionately stated the facts to them without a hint of irony or approbation.
“I mean that you didn’t make the wrong decision. So, you don’t need to feel responsible. . . . I hope that you will continue to make correct choices.”
Correct choices for whom?
They wanted to ask, but they could not get the words out.
They felt that the Heroic Spirit, who had done nothing but walk past them, had grasped their entire beings, and it terrified them—and then that Heroic Spirit glanced back at them and said:
“It’s all right, Master. I’ve disarmed all of the security systems in this hallway. . . . That means it’s safe.”
“. . .?!”
Master.
At that word, the guards’ tension reached its limit.
They were shocked to discover that the Heroic Spirit had disarmed all of their defensive magecraft without appearing to do anything, but the reason he had done so was even more troubling.
The fact that it was not just a Servant—a Master had marched in on them as well.
The leader they were supposed to be guarding had currently as good as lost her Servant.
If this Master had come to propose an alliance, would they just eliminate her once they realized the situation?
The worried group shifted its attention to the corner of the hallway.
A moment later . . . with slow, cautious steps, sniffing as it went, a sleek, silver-coated wolf rounded the bend.
X X
Crystal Hill, Top Floor Suite
“. . . Have you come to slay His Majesty?” The girl—Tine Chelk—quietly asked Enkidu when he opened the door.
There were more than ten of her black-clad subordinates in the room.
Like the group in the hallway, however, they were unable to make any careless moves when suddenly confronted with a Servant.
At nervous thrill ran through the room at Tine’s question.
The tension, however, was relieved by a few mild words from Enkidu, who stepped into the room with the silver wolf.
“That’s a correct inference for a Master in a Holy Grail War, but it doesn’t match the facts.”
“Then . . . have you come to execute me? I’ve disgraced His Majesty, your best friend.”
“That’s not right either,” Enkidu shook his head, still smiling but somehow dispassionate.
Tine’s attention was focused on Enkidu, but she was not looking at him.
She was in the middle of what was, in a sense, a sumptuous “mage’s workshop” furnished with the King of Heroes’ personal possessions, continuously channeling vast quantities of magical energy into the being who lay supine at its center.
“Your Magic Circuits . . . no, you yourself are linked to this land, aren’t you?” Enkidu sounded impressed.
“. . . I see. No wonder you have a similar aura. . . . Your people tried the same thing as the old gods.”
“. . .?”
Tine looked slightly confused by Enkidu’s strange remarks, but it seemed that she could not spare the time to pursue the question because she continued to direct magical energy into the center of the room without giving him so much as a glance.
“Do you know about me?”
“His Majesty calls you his friend.”
Tine still did not look at Enkidu. Every inch of her body was drenched in sweat as she manipulated extraordinary quantities of magical energy.
Nevertheless, she responded in a firm voice, apparently determined not to show weakness.
“I can only think of one Heroic Spirit that His Majesty would call a friend and who could also compete with him in raw power.”
“I wonder. That was probably true while I was alive,” Enkidu answered evasively.
The black-suited subordinates near Tine gradually began to move again.
“. . . If you don’t intend to fight, what are you doing here?” An elderly man warily asked Enkidu.
The suspicion in the man’s voice was faintly tinged with hope.
Enkidu guessed his meaning and shook his head apologetically.
“If you believe I have come to save King Gilgamesh, I’m afraid you will be disappointed.”
“. . .!”
Most of the room’s occupants looked discouraged by the Heroic Spirit’s words, and Tine’s shoulders trembled slightly.
The thing in the center of the room—the thing Enkidu was staring at—was indeed the King of Heroes’ “corpse.”
The Einzbern homunculus who Gilgamesh had called “Ishtar.”
Thanks to her interference, Gilgamesh had been pierced by Alkeides’ arrows, and then impaled by the gargantuan “something” that had appeared immediately afterward.
It was undeniably a fatal blow.
Worse, his body was being eaten away by some force, and his wounds continued to rot even while he was alive.
The only reason that his physical body still existed was that Tine was drawing massive quantities of magical energy from the leylines to hold his Spirit Origin in its human shape and keep it from disintegrating by brute force.
Surveying Gilgamesh in that state, retaining only the form of a Servant, Enkidu dispassionately stated his opinion.
“There are two venoms eating away at Gil’s body. If it were just the hydra venom, I could force open Gil’s treasury and probably find an antidote. He used to say that he was going to hunt the vipers at the world’s end one day, after all. His treasury might even yield a cooking utensil or two made just for them in addition to corpses and antidotes.”
Enkidu continued to speak casually, as if he were telling everyday jokes.
Tine gritted her teeth and responded with a tinge of anger, still not looking at him.
“Aren’t you . . . His Majesty’s friend . . .? How can you speak so calmly when . . .?!”
Her shout was too dignified to be the temper of a girl who was in some ways still a child.
Enkidu accepted it at her side. He stopped smiling, but his expression remained composed as he replied.
“It’s because I’m his friend.”
“What . . .?”
“Gil and I spent irreplaceable days together. We’ve already finished our eternal parting and the grief that came with it. The ‘current’ us are shadows burned into the Human Order. We may rejoice at our reunion, but we don’t need to grieve at parting again. I don’t believe that Gil would shed a tear if I were the one lying here on the verge of death, and I wouldn’t ask him to.”
“. . .”
Confusion suffused Tine’s profile.
She glanced at Enkidu just once, but her experience of life was too short to judge the truth of the Heroic Spirit’s words by his expression.
“I believe it will be difficult for you to understand, and I can guess your reason for directing your anger at me. So, if it will make you feel better, feel free to curse at me as much as you like.”
“. . .”
When she heard that, Tine turned her face fully toward Enkidu for the first time. Her eyes showed a range of emotions—anger, sadness, fear. Then, after a momentary look that might have been begging for help, she lowered her head and said frustratedly:
“No . . . it wouldn’t. . . . I’m sorry. . . . I’m . . . truly sorry. . . .”
A clear apology to Enkidu spilled from the lips of the mage, who was in some ways still a child.
“You aren’t the one I hate. . . .”
Massive quantities of magical energy coursed through Tine’s Magic Circuits. Every nerve in her body was beginning to groan in protest.
As she spoke, however, her face was twisted not with pain but with regret.
“I . . . couldn’t do anything. . . . I didn’t do anything. . . .”
Tine fell silent.
“You used two Command Spells, didn’t you?” Enkidu asked calmly, neither comforting nor blaming.
“. . .!”
Enkidu was looking at the back of Tine’s left hand.
The majority of her Command Spells, the mark of a Master, were faded. Just one remained.
“One to summon him back here, and another to attempt to heal him. . . . That was a good decision for a Master. Without it, there would have been no chance that Gilgamesh could maintain the form of his Spirit Origin.”
“You said that . . . there are two types of venom?” Tine asked without slackening her efforts to maintain Gilgamesh’s Spirit Origin. She seemed to be grasping Enkidu’s personality, because the side of her that had been built up as a mage began to show on her face.
“Yes. The other is closer to a curse than a toxin.”
Enkidu narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the wound gouged in Gilgamesh’s torso.
“. . . I suppose this is what they call ‘irony.’”
“?”
“I don’t suppose it was a rainbow-colored light that impaled King Gilgamesh’s body?”
“. . .! Do you know what that was?”
The scene of Gilgamesh being struck down replayed in Tine’s mind.
The seven-colored halo, distinct from the titanic mechanical “something.”
The way it had twisted into a shape like the tip of a rock drill and impaled Gilgamesh through the belly.
“That was the protection of the gods. It’s also a curse to the human race. . . . The light that was poured into Gil was one of them, a curse descended from Pestilence.”
“Pestilence . . .?”
“We should probably be grateful for the hydra venom. It and the pestilence are competing with and consuming each other. . . . That’s why the plague hasn’t spread from Gil’s body. If not for that, there’s a high probability that all of you, and probably me, would also be trapped in the abyss of death by now.”
Tine and her subordinates gasped at Enkidu’s casual statement.
“Oh, there’s no need to change his treatment. In my estimation, both the venom and the curse will disappear along with the Spirit Origin of the body called Gilgamesh. It’s not ‘his’ Spirit Origin anymore. The only thing here now is the corpse of an ancient human.”
“What was that thing . . . that metal giant? What do you know about . . .?”
“Let me see. Where should I start . . .?”
Enkidu lowered his gaze as if lost in thought, and then began to tell his reason for coming there little by little.
“I came here because I wanted to know a little more about all of you.”
“About us?”
“I mean, you tried to use Gil, and he spared your lives. I was curious what you were like. Gil was also curious about my Master, but . . .”
Enkidu smiled at Tine and continued without stating what his own judgment had been.
“Nothing would please me more than if we could work together. I also want to do all that I can . . . to remove that wicked deity from this stage.”
“. . . What deity? Do you mean that steel monster that stabbed His Majesty?”
“No, I mean—. . .?”
The next instant, Enkidu raised his head as if he had noticed something.
“There’s . . . someone here.”
“What?”
Enkidu slowly surveyed the surrounding space without answering Tine’s question.
“Is this . . . a human? No . . . it’s like a human, but . . .”
“Do you mean that someone is hiding in this room?”
Tine probed the nearby magical energy in confusion, but she could sense nothing of the kind.
Enkidu, however, seemed certain of its presence and wiped the emotion from his face as he said:
“No . . . they aren’t hiding. . . . It’s probably the opposite.”
“?”
“It seems . . . that something is trying to probe this place from the reverse side of the world.”
X X
A Closed-off Town, Crystal Hill, Top Floor Suite
“I knew it. This room looks like it has the ‘thinnest walls.’”
The Snowfield recreated inside the mysterious ward.
In the top floor suite of its Crystal Hill were Flat Escardos, Berserker Jack the Ripper, and the Holy Church personnel led by Hansa Cervantes.
“I see. . . . But what is this place? It’s the top floor of a hotel, but it doesn’t look like guest accommodations. It reminds me of a mage’s workshop, but the furnishings are too needlessly extravagant for that.”
Flat responded to Jack’s question by looking around the room in growing excitement.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of like a museum?! There’s pretty jewels and gold dishes and all kinds of amazing things!”
The space, which ought to have been the hotel’s most luxurious room, was decorated with countless sparkling treasures that looked brand new despite their antique style. The assortment really could plausibly be some kind of exhibit.
“I’ve seen these in the professor’s lectures. I’m pretty sure they’re treasures from somewhere around Mesopotamia, but . . . hmm . . . The way they’re made, they should have some magical energy stored inside, but I don’t sense any. . . . They don’t seem like fakes, but it’s like they’re empty shells. It’s weird,” flat commented as he stared intently at the furnishings.
“But if the walls are thinnest here,” Hansa cut in from behind him, “does that mean that altitude is the key?”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. . . . I’ve got a feeling that this place is uniquely in harmony with the world outside the barrier. Like both sides are connected, or . . .”
At that point, Flat shifted his focus to a point at the center of the suite.
To the middle of the largest room.
What looked like a magic circle of a system unfamiliar at the Clock Tower was drawn on the floor there, but the target of that magecraft was missing from its center.
“What’s this? I think it’s a circle for stabilizing something . . . but there’s nothing here.”
“From the looks of things, this must be some faction’s workshop after all.”
“I’m technically neutral. I can guess who it belongs to, but I decline to comment.”
Hansa went out of his way to explain something he could have easily left unsaid with a shrug.
Jack maintained the bare minimum of cautious attention on Hansa and the nuns who were inspecting the room as he continued.
“Could the circle be empty simply because they haven’t begun their ritual yet?”
“No. . . . It’s strange. I’ve got a feeling that something is already happening here, but . . . This circle really isn’t active . . . but this is definitely the place.”
Flat waved his hand over the center of the empty circle with a look of confusion.
“The reason this place has the strongest connection to the world ‘outside’ the ward—to the real city—is . . .”
Originally Posted by Spinoza
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