The Present, Snowfield, Meat Processing Plant
The battle between the gargantuan, mechanical Heroic Spirit and Alkeides had left the meat processing plant in ruins.
Thanks to Francois Prelati’s Noble Phantasm, however, it was apparently restored.
In its distorted space, the mage who was Alkeides’ Master—Bazdilot Cordelion—was collecting elements that had not been destroyed to begin with and rebuilding a simple workshop in the meat processing plant.
His subordinates—Scladio Family mages—whispered to each other as they watched Bazdilot, who was using magecraft to contact someone via a communicator, from afar.
“Hey . . . when does Mr. Cordelion sleep?”
“You don’t know? He’s special. I hear he can get by with a few seconds of sleep a day.”
“. . . Seriously? I could see him managing for a few days like that with magecraft, but . . .”
“That’s not all. He eats the bare minimum, too. Rumor has it he went thirty days without food or drink hunting down and dealing with a hostile magecraft-user who’d holed up in a snowy mountain workshop.”
The mages watched their superior at work with frightened eyes.
“Thank God he’s on our side . . . Even when he faced down that creepy Heroic Spirit, he didn’t give an inch.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what kind of mages the other Masters are, but I can’t even imagine him losing.”
Even among mages and magecraft-users, they were nearly strays. Their positions in the Family weren’t especially high, either.
But a mature man’s voice, which, unlike theirs, was perfectly calm, rang out in the meat processing plant.
“No . . . Mr. Cordelion isn’t invincible. He’s been beaten a few times, and he doesn’t make a secret of it.”
It was the man who had been working under Bazdilot the longest.
He had come to replace the man who had been replaced by an enemy mage and held a fairly high position in the Scladio Family, although Bazdilot still far outranked him.
The veteran magecraft-user elaborated on Bazdilot to his juniors.
“He’s nearly died fighting Holy Church executors, and a freelancer named Shishigō outwitted him once. Magalo or Der Familie gouged out one of his lungs, and Brother Degras burned most of his Magic Circuits. I think he fought to a draw with Wu from the Marvel Company . . . This was before he joined the Family, but I hear he expected to die when he went up against one of the more infamous Clock Tower organizations—Sponheim Abbey, I think.”
“I-Is that so?”
“The scary thing about him is that none of that put a crack in him mentally. It didn’t matter if he had his organs rotted or his lover’s head dumped at his feet—he never turned a hair. The person who dumped that head probably hoped to cast something on him while he was shaken . . . but that didn’t pan out for them.”
The mage spoke matter-of-factly while lighting a cigarette.
“. . . What happened to that mage?” One of the underlings swallowed hard and asked.
“The same thing. He just stuffed them into that machine and turned them into a Mana Crystal, the same as all the others. Of course, they bawled more pathetically than the rest.”
The man’s gaze rested on the hulking machine developed by the mage Atrum Galiasta to convert human life force into Mana Crystals. It has been damaged in the battle with the gigantic Heroic Spirit the day before and was currently inoperable.
Still, that was not a problem—they had enough crystals stockpiled to enable Alkeides to use his full strength for the duration of the Holy Grail War.
“You see, he’s sacrificed his own life and family to the big boss, Galvarosso Scladio . . . I’ve never seen him cry or . . .”
The man had been speaking matter-of-factly, but at that point, he suddenly cut himself short.
Bazdilot had left his seat at the communicator and begun walking toward a storehouse deeper inside the meat processing plant without his noticing.
“Mr. Cordelion . . . What is it?”
The subordinate mages wondered what he could want in the storehouse, but they had not received orders about it, so they remained on standby.
Then, after a brief interval . . . Bazdilot emerged from the wide-open doors of the storehouse.
His mage subordinate’s eyes widened at the sight of him.
Their surprise was due to the instrument he carried in his right hand.
Of course, an ordinary instrument would not have been so shocking.
In fact, even a shamisen made of human skin would have surprised them less.
The type of instrument was the issue.
The instrument clutched in Bazdilot’s hand was larger than his entire body—it was a grand piano.
“. . .”
Silence fell between the mages, who were unable to keep up.
?
Oh, it’s . . . a piano? Huh?
At first glance, it looked as if he were dragging the black mass, but he was holding it off the ground with the strength of one hand.
It must have been the result of using reinforcement or domination magecraft to alter his own body.
The mages were unable to follow Bazdilot’s use of this disproportionate, superhuman brawn for the bizarre purpose of carrying a piano. The better they grasped the situation, the deeper their confusion.
He continued to walk, advancing toward an enormous freezer manufactured to fit the meat processing plant.
“M-Mr. Cordelion?! What’s going on?! Is the, um, piano . . .”
They knew that the piano had been placed in the storehouse for some reason.
They were aware that playing the piano was one of Bazdilot’s talents, but none of them had understood why he would bring one to a place like this.
To begin with, bringing a piano into a freezer seemed unlikely to do anything but significantly shorten the instrument’s lifespan.
A tuner or pianist would probably faint at the sight.
The mages were so confused that such irrelevant concerns crossed their minds.
As they began to wonder if it might be some kind of Mystic Code disguised as a piano, the expressionless Bazdilot began to speak.
“It seems that Mr. Scladio . . . Don Galvarosso has passed away.”
“. . . What?”
This time, time ground to a halt in the mage’s brains.
Leaving the stunned mages behind, Bazdilot opened the freezer doors and vanished into a forest of suspended beef.
The door closed, and the freezer was locked in darkness.
The placement of the jet-black grand piano in its center caused alien “blackness” to eat away at the world of red flesh and white fat.
The tennis-court-sized freezer was brought into an eerie harmony, as if it were a work of art.
In its center, the still expressionless Bazdilot placed his hands over the keyboard and held still.
There were not even clouds of white breath around his face; it appeared he had stopped breathing.
Silence and stillness combined to make the frozen air pierce the mage’s skin with increased keenness.
After a full minute of stillness so complete that it seemed even time had frozen . . . Bazdilot, his breathing still stopped, began to glide his fingers lightly over the keys.
“Hey, what’d he mean, the don is dead?”
“Wait.”
One of the mages waiting uneasily outside made gestured for silence and strained his ears.
He heard . . . a carefree piano tune from the other side of the freezer doors.
The beautiful, ephemeral melody made the hearts of the bewildered men as calm as the surface of a clear stream.
“. . . A requiem . . . Is that . . . Lacrimosa?” The veteran muttered.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In his twilight years, the great composer had begun a great work that one of his students had taken up and completed after his death—Requiem.
The tune was one of its sections—Lacrimosa.
Their hearts captivated by the sounds of the piano, grief-stricken yet filled with tenderness, took in the meaning of Bazdilot’s declaration that Galvarosso Scladio was dead for the first time.
They had no choice but to take it in.
“Mr. Cordelion . . . For the don . . .”
One of the low-ranking members grew teary-eyed as he listened to the playing that escaped the freezer.
They had heard that Galvarosso likely did not have much time left. Bazdilot must have brought the piano with him to Snowfield so that he would be ready to play the requiem whenever the news reached him.
The men etched their respect for Bazdilot’s resolve and for the way he had expressed his mourning for the don without turning a hair into their minds as they stood and let his playing wash over their souls.
If anyone else had witnessed the scene, they would still have wondered if it really made sense to bring the piano, but Bazdilot’s men were past caring about such things.
They were simply reaffirmed in the belief that their superior was extraordinary in everything he did.
Still, why go out of his way to play in the freezer?
By the time that question resurfaced in their minds, the performance was coming to an end.
After a brief silence, the large doors of the freezer opened.
“Mr. Cordelion!”
Several men ran up to him to ask the details.
“When did the don . . .”
Then, their words stopped.
And not just their words.
Time froze for the men. They stood, rigid, unable to continue.
This was not the time or place to question Bazdilot.
His face itself was its usual non-expression brimming with machinelike murderousness.
But in contrast . . . the interior of the enormous freezer behind him had become a red-black hell.
Red and black.
The interior of the freezer was dominated by those two colors.
The dozens of animals worth of beef that should have been hanging up had all been knocked off their hooks.
Some chunks of meat had been smashed into the walls, flattened until they resembled red insoles. Other had been shredded into ground beef, bones and all, and scattered over the floor.
In places the torn meat had rotted, dissolving into red puddles that looked like blood, while in others the bits of meat had been scorched to ash.
Something like dark-red mud was writhing between the scraps of meat, as if it were scavenging the destroyed flesh not as foodstuffs, but as bovine corpses.
“Eep.”
One of the underlings sank to the ground.
They were all mages or magecraft-users after their fashion.
The appearance of the freezer would not have been enough to frighten them.
But when the haphazard, inexhaustible magical energy that oozed out of the room, like a child had thrown a tantrum and poured all his strength into a mixture of bloodlust and animosity, hit them, they could not suppress screams.
They were terrified.
Terrified of their superior, Bazdilot Cordelion.
Terrified of his rational abnormality that had caused such an atrocious rampage of magical energy while playing such a beautiful tune—and yet confined it entirely to a single room.
Bazdilot glanced at his collapsed underling before turning to survey the freezer, as expressionless as when he had entered it.
“. . . I see some got on the piano.”
A few shreds of beef had splattered on its legs.
The dark-red “mud” was completely avoiding the piano. It looked as if there were a ward set around it.
A moment later . . . the piano instantly sank into the sea of mud and entirely vanished from sight.
Bazdilot shut the freezer doors and walked into the center of his workshop as if nothing had happened.
Then, in place of his subordinates, who were still frozen in place, his Servant, who had remained incorporeal up to that point, materialized and spoke.
“That was somewhat unexpected.”
“. . . What do you mean?”
“That you take an interest in music.”
Alkeides avoided touching on Bazdilot’s emotions, simply expressing his surprise that his Master could play the piano.
Bazdilot answered the avenger dispassionately.
“I accepted training to assist with mental tuning . . . Mr. Scladio just happened to hear and take a liking to it.”
After a brief pause, he added his reason for playing just then.
“I promised that I would play a requiem . . . if the worst happened.”
Bazdilot turned to face Alkeides and asked a question of his own.
“You seem to have recovered from your physical injuries. It looked like you took quite a beating.”
“It’s no cause for concern. Although facing pursuit from Rider . . . the queen of the Amazons in that state was troublesome.”
Alkeides was one of the few participants in the battle on Main Street the day before who had not vanished and remained in Snowfield.
The previous night, when the “black smoke” that overflowed from the hospital had been about to envelope him . . . Alkeides had summoned four of the Horses of Diomedes, one of the powers of his Noble Phantasm King’s Order, sent three into the black smoke as decoys, and succeeded in escaping the scene on the back of the fourth.
He had, however, suffered an attack from Rider—the Amazon queen Hippolyta—who had chosen that moment to appear, and sustained injuries.
Both those and injuries and the hydra dagger wound in his side had now completely vanished.
The “demon” power he had stolen from Berserker was currently contained within him. At first glance, Alkeides looked as he had immediately after being summoned and transfigured.
Bazdilot, however, dispassionately asked about the other side of his Servant.
“How many more days can you last?”
Alkeides answered with surprising alacrity.
“I can remain sane for another three or four days.”
“I see. That erases our advantage over the fakes . . . No, given that being overtaken by madness won’t destroy you on its own, we still have the upper hand.”
Alkeides had indeed been poisoned with hydra venom.
He had used the vile sludge to consume it and prevent his bodily destruction . . . but that deadly poison, which had led to his own death and indirectly driven his third wife to suicide, had still been taken into his body.
It was the influence of King’s Order that kept it from eating away his flesh.
He had drawn out the power that he had taken from the Erymanthian Boar.
It was not, however, the boar’s own power.
The boar was not the greatest thing he taken and conquered during that expedition.
It was the thing Alkeides, during his penance, had taken from his mentor Kheiron.
It was none other than Kheiron’s immortality.
Kheiron, a centaur bestowed with the power of immortality, had been struck by hydra venom due to a stray shot from Alkeides.
The pain had been so intense that, unable to bear it, Kheiron had surrendered his own immortality to Prometheus and ended his life.
Therefore, while Alkeides had lost the twelve substitute lives that his proper Spirit Origin possessed, he did possess a single substitute lifespan, Kheiron’s immortality until it was ceded to Prometheus, as one of his Noble Phantasms.
Activating it, however, meant nothing less than experiencing the same pain Kheiron had suffered.
At that very moment, that ceaseless agony—the same agony that had led him to choose death while alive—continued to torment him. He was currently cancelling it out by transforming that pain and suffering into strength through the influence of the “mud.”
“Do you regret it? Killing your mentor?”
“. . . Were I to obey my heart, having given myself to vengeance, I ought to rejoice that I was able to liberate my mentor from immortality, a vile curse of the gods.”
After that evasive answer, Alkeides continued:
“. . . The mud is winning at present, but this venom is the symbol of my death. Little by little, it is eating away root not of the body, but of the mind of my Spirit Origin.”
But he showed no fear of that.
Despite the mitigating effect of the “mud,” an agony beyond any ordinary toxin was coursing ceaselessly through his veins. And yet, Alkeides maintained his usual mental state, forcing himself to endure out of his lust for vengeance.
That, however, would only last the number of days he had just told his Master.
“That will be enough. You just have to obtain the Grail before you’re finished.”
Bazdilot’s statement prompted a questioning response from beneath Alkeides’ cloth.
“. . . I thought you had no interest in the Grail itself.”
“If my master had simply died of natural causes, I wouldn’t.”
Bazdilot’s eyes narrowed slightly.
He rarely showed emotion, but his voice was dripping with hatred and something approaching bloodlust.
“. . . Some of the Family’s mages didn’t know when to stop . . . They copied my master’s personality into several other people’s brains . . . but all those ‘substitutes’ died as well. And from different causes.”
“Oh?”
“That means that their deaths weren’t a chain reaction caused by the side effects of magecraft. Someone else intervened. I have a good idea what organization would do that just now.”
Bazdilot then swallowed his hatred and wrestled the maturing “mud” into submission through superhuman force of will as exhorted his Heroic Spirit.
“When you obtain the Holy Grail, use its power to show them to your heart’s content. Once you’ve destroyed this country and crushed it beneath your feet . . . take back the name you cast off and show them all. By overturning common sense and exterminating Mystery, the name you detest—Herakles—will be dragged through the mud and perish along with Hera herself.”
“. . . That goes without saying.”
That day, that moment . . . an evil possibility for the United States was born.
If Bazdilot were to obtain the Holy Grail . . . its power would be used to exact his revenge on the state.
That would mean nothing less than becoming a “sacrifice” to grant his own wish using the might of Alkeides infused with the full power of the Holy Grail.
Faldeus had made only one mistake.
He had guessed—wrongly—that Bazdilot Cordelion was an unfeeling mage—a mage’s mage or magecraft-user who would make the concealment of Mystery his highest priority. That a mage who had been a cog in one large organization would, once that organization’s leader was gone, turn to whatever other organization could offer him the most in order to fulfill his ambitions as a mage.
Of course, Faldeus had intended to kill Bazdilot. The instant Bazdilot showed signs of doing anything of the kind, Faldeus would have exploited the opportunity to finish him off.
But that was a misreading—one that Faldeus had made because he was a mage himself.
He was right that most of the Scladio Family’s mages were either using Scladio to further their own research, looking for ways to reach the Root alone, or else magecraft-using mercenaries who would join whatever organization offered them the best support.
But the remainder, including Bazdilot, were different.
There were a very few driven by ways of thinking that were un-mage-like—and yet not those of ordinary people.
Even among that minority, Bazdilot Cordelion had put down exceptionally deep roots in the Scladio Family.
His disposition made it difficult to understand . . . but was becoming something other than a mage. In his mind, the Family already took precedence over the Root.
Bazdilot was not a mage.
He was not a magecraft-user.
He was not a clergyman.
His soul had put down roots in the community called the Scladio Family.
Those roots were deep and tangled.
So deep and so tangled . . . that a mage like Faldeus could not hope to understand what drove him.
Faldeus did not know that yet.
Originally Posted by successor of the Matou family
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