Chapter 249: El-Melloi II's Shock, Chris's Surprise Attack! (Patreon)

Faced with Jester's provocation, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka simply stood where he was, expressionless, ready to make his move.

In a ritual like the Holy Grail War, where only one winner remained at the end,

most of the time, what Servants pitted against each other was never just raw stats. Information was always what mattered most.

Who knew what bugged Noble Phantasms the other side might be hiding up its sleeve to make your life miserable?

And in that department, they were absolute cheaters.

Take the high-ranking Dead Apostle in front of them, Jester. He had originally been a woman, but thanks to an ability called Six-Link Male Guise, he carried six red Concept Nuclei inside his body.

Each one corresponded to a completely different body, soul, and set of abilities, which was the same as having six separate lives.

Even better, so long as the other party consented, a destroyed nucleus could be replenished.

As for the Servant he had summoned, Zealot...

She hadn't inherited the true "Hassan" title because she lacked a founding skill, but she was the ultimate patchwork monster, able to perfectly reproduce the curse-killing secret arts of all eighteen generations of Hassans.

Rushing into a fight with these two with zero information would have made it easy to get blindsided, or to fail to finish them off cleanly and leave trouble behind.

But unfortunately for them.

These people had read the backstory.

"Heh heh... What, so scared you can't even speak? Little mice from a foreign land."

Seeing Ayanokōji standing there in a daze, Jester's mouth curled into a wicked smile.

Zealot, wrapped in a black robe, had already leapt down from the upper floors.

"For my lord...!"

In midair, her mana began to boil. She meant to combine "Delusional Poison Body" with "Unfeeling Patrolling Spirits" and set off an indiscriminate, area-wide poison gas explosion!

Since the Command Spell was forcing her hand, she'd simply carry out the order at two hundred percent and exploit the loophole...

and in one go, curse-kill every human here, her own Master Jester included, inside this cloud of poison!

Watching the toxic miasma fall from the sky, Jester laughed instead of getting angry.

"Heh heh... What a disobedient, pretty little puppy."

Blood-red flames surged up around his body.

His fusion of wind and fire magecraft took shape rapidly at his fingertips. He meant to conjure a blood-flame tornado to burn Ayanokoji Kiyotaka to ash, then go back to enjoying the thrill of his love-hate dance with his own Servant.

But Ayanokoji Kiyotaka merely curled his fingers.

"Zero, Zero-One, move."

"Understood."

A blended voice rang out.

The Parasyte on his right arm had fused with the Venom. It drove straight through the skin of Jester, whom they had pinned in place, and slithered along his sinews into his body!

"Shhk—!"

"What...?!"

The maniacal grin froze on Jester's face.

In the next instant, the Ki that Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had cultivated inside his own body, stacked through layer upon layer of buffs, cut in.

Jester's magic circuits were severed and his mana circulation fell into chaos. The blood-flame tornado that had been about to form collapsed on the spot, like a machine with its power cord yanked.

But that still wasn't the deadliest part.

With Parasyte Zero's precise perception, combined with Ki, the Venom tendrils darted through Jester's body and zeroed in on the red Concept Nuclei hidden in its various corners!

"Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!"

Four crystals shattered in succession.

"This body of yours—guh, hah!"

Jester coughed up a mouthful of black blood, his bloodshot eyes full of disbelief.

Not only had the other side forcibly severed his magic circuits, but out of his five remaining Concept Nuclei, four had just been crushed?!

And while Jester was being taken out in a single blow, Zealot's poison cloud had already closed in over everyone's heads.

"Tch... fine, whatever. Kouenji!"

Ryuuen grumbled, but activated [Sianweistan] anyway.

With bullet time engaged, time turned viscous in his senses.

Before the miasma touched the ground, he had already become an afterimage, carrying every surviving police officer in the ruins, everyone except the Executor Hansa, out of the gas's range.

At the same moment.

"Heh heh... Leave it to me, Ryuuen Boy."

Kouenji swept back his blond hair, and his body elementalized on the spot.

Boosted by the power of the Hogyoku, the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's might was driven to its peak.

"Rumble—!"

Several violent bolts of lightning crashed down from the sky. The scorching heat and electric field instantly purged the poison gas Zealot had spread, leaving nothing behind.

Then Kouenji raised a hand and pointed one finger at Zealot in midair.

"Apologies, Assassin Girl."

"One Hundred Million Volts: Divine Judgment."

A dazzling pillar of lightning pierced Zealot's body!

"Aaaaagh—"

Even a Servant, without specialized magic resistance, would overload from taking a hundred million volts head-on, to say nothing of Jester, who had his hands full just keeping himself alive.

Smoke curling off her entire body, Zealot simply conked out and fell into the ruins like a shooting star.

Standing to one side, Hansa Cervantes, the Holy Church Executor, had watched the whole fight from start to finish and couldn't help raising an eyebrow.

"Lightning... Has some great hero out of myth descended upon us?"

Hansa stroked his chin and muttered to himself in confusion:

"But I didn't sense a trace of mana. Natural lightning, perhaps? A Heroic Spirit of recent times?"

Katsuragi Kohei, standing nearby, caught the look in Hansa's eyes.

He ran a hand over his signature bald head and explained with a calm, offhand air:

"Don't get the wrong idea. Just like Kanzaki told you earlier, we're ordinary human beings."

"Ordinary... human beings?"

Hansa's mouth twitched, and he looked at them the way one looks at a rare animal.

"Ordinary humans who call down a hundred million volts of lightning? Or remodel their bodies into mechanical monsters? Or grow tentacles from their hands and eat Dead Apostles raw?"

"Honestly..." The priest sighed. "If I couldn't smell that nauseating Dead Apostle stench on any of you, I'd have taken you for heretics a moment ago."

"Zzzt."

The lightning faded, and Kouenji Rokusuke touched down.

Having confirmed through the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's innate Mantra that Zealot had lost the ability to fight, Kouenji dropped his elemental form and turned to Hansa:

"Heh heh... Strictly speaking, Father, you're not wrong."

"But we are genuine humans. We only turn into this on the rare occasions when perfection is called for."

Hansa gave a slight nod, dropping his habitual cynicism, and looked thoughtful.

"In that case, are you 'humans' with such abnormal combat strength here as Masters, taking part in this ritual as well?"

"Let me introduce myself first. I'm the overseer of this Holy Grail War, Hansa Cervantes."

Not far off, Orlando Reeve, the sheriff of Snowfield, pushed himself upright with the police officers' support.

"I'm the sheriff of Snowfield, Orlando."

"I'm deeply grateful for your help just now, but... in this Holy Grail War, I will never yield!"

Kouenji Rokusuke gently shook his head and was about to say something.

Ryuuen had already sighed impatiently and cut in:

"Save it, Mr. Sheriff."

"What bullshit Holy Grail War? Whether you win, or the Dead Apostles win, or some other damn thing wins, or whatever the hell those undying old mages behind you are after, none of it means anything to us."

Ryuuen curled his lip in a cold smirk. "That busted cup and the so-called Third Magic can't solve the problem we're facing anyway."

"We came all this way just to find one specific item in this dump of a city. And while we're at it..."

"we're going to kill every Servant the Grail summoned."

"Kill... all the Servants?!"

Hansa's face went blank with shock. Clearly he hadn't expected these people to be this arrogant.

After all.

Only a short while ago, on the outskirts of Snowfield, two near-divine Servants had just fought a world-shaking battle!

Noble Phantasms colliding, powerful enough to tear apart heaven and earth and drain the color from everything...

And they wanted to wipe out beings of that caliber?

For a moment Hansa couldn't tell whether this group was simply overconfident.

Or whether these "spoilers" would drag this already deformed Holy Grail War into an uncontrollable abyss.

But before Hansa could sort out his tangled thoughts,

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, standing beside Jester, suddenly narrowed his eyes.

Because he'd sharply sensed it: the presence of his father, Atsuomi Ayanokōji, which he had been quietly keeping tabs on, had vanished into thin air!

Going by the timing, he had most likely used that One Ring.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka worked through the possibilities in the back of his mind.

At the same time, he felt a flicker of curiosity about an item that could block detection.

So as not to let pointless chatter slow things down, Ayanokōji stepped forward, cut off both sides' probing, and went straight to the point:

"We know the truth hidden behind this Holy Grail War."

"We have no interest in which side wins in the end. Our only demand is to kill every Servant and take what we need."

As he spoke, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka turned his gaze on Orlando, whose face was full of wariness:

"But I've thought it over. Our purposes differ, but at this stage our goals actually line up with those of your officials."

"Maybe we can cooperate."

"Cooperate?"

Orlando froze, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword.

…

Meanwhile.

On a bustling street several kilometers from the Snowfield police headquarters.

Atsuomi Ayanokōji, who had slipped away to act alone under the pretext of "observing anomalies in the Backrooms world," was now wandering aimlessly through the crowded street.

On the index finger of his right hand sat a ring, glowing with a dim golden light.

When he'd first obtained the ring, Atsuomi Ayanokōji's plan had been perfectly clear.

He'd meant to use these marvelous items from the Backrooms to drastically raise his standing in the political world, and even become the key leader who would "save the real world."

But he had overestimated a mortal's willpower to resist temptation.

The moment he put on the One Ring, everything changed.

His ambition was amplified without limit, yet it no longer pointed at his original political blueprint. All of it was tied to this cold ring.

He grew suspicious and short-tempered.

He'd have been happy to keep the One Ring coiled in his palm all day and never let anyone so much as glance at it.

Still, reason kept tugging at him.

He knew very well that the world he lived in had long since been told outright by the Black Sphere's presiding god that it wouldn't last much longer.

Between his body's instinct to survive and the dark whispers of the One Ring, Atsuomi Ayanokōji soon reached a decision.

Either he'd continue along his planned course, doing everything possible to protect the world while also keeping his One Ring safe;

or he'd pick a suitable world and flee.

Run to the ends of the earth with the One Ring and race the rules of the Backrooms in a footrace...

Of course, with a man as thoroughgoing a utilitarian as Atsuomi Ayanokōji,

an adult naturally didn't choose.

Grab both, and make both strong!

But with time pressing and not enough energy to cover both fronts,

Atsuomi Ayanokōji naturally thought of two people: Ryuuen and Chris.

That Ryuuen kid was ruthless enough. He was perfectly suited as an investment to grow stronger, and as a hub for keeping reality stable once Atsuomi left his own world.

And Chris...

The Map of Mountains, Rivers, and the Realm in his hands could take him unharmed to other Backrooms levels and help him scout the perfect backup escape plan.

The trouble was, this place called Snowfield clearly didn't meet his standard for a "pure land."

According to the intel [Rasiel], Hiyori Shiina's artifact, had analyzed:

even without these Heroic Spirit Servants killing each other over the Grail, this world still had mages and Dead Apostles lurking in the shadows who treated humanity as weeds.

Worse still, far off in the Crystal Valley of South America, a Mercury Ultimate One that could destroy this planet at any moment lay sleeping!

Staying in a world like this gave him no sense of safety at all, even with the One Ring on his finger.

Worse yet, Chris wasn't here right now.

He couldn't hide inside the absolutely safe Map of Mountains, Rivers, and the Realm, and with an ordinary human's constitution, he couldn't stay in the Mirror World for long.

To save his own skin, he could only use the One Ring's invisibility to roam around the vast city of Snowfield, staying as far as possible from the lunatics hunting Servants, Ryuuen and Arisu Sakayanagi's crowd.

"Endure for now... and avoid their edge!"

…

Not far from where Atsuomi Ayanokōji lurked invisible, at the entrance of a large shopping mall,

Flat Escardos, Master of Berserker Jack, disguised as an ordinary boy, was being stopped by a local reporter, a goofy grin on his face.

"Excuse me, young man. What do you make of that huge meteor-impact-like commotion on the outskirts of Snowfield just now?" The reporter held out her microphone, all excitement.

Flat scratched his hair and gave an utterly guileless, silly grin:

"Ahaha... Oh, that? I think some famous director was probably shooting a Hollywood special-effects blockbuster!"

"The film industry's really advanced these days, you know!"

Having dealt with the reporter, Flat turned to head back to the inn where he was staying.

He needed to email his teacher far away in London as soon as possible, to report the "good news" that he had successfully summoned a Servant.

Just then.

With a roaring engine,

a flashy, nouveau-riche luxury convertible happened to drive down the street in front of the mall.

It rolled right into the reporter's camera frame.

In the back seat, wearing modern casual clothes, golden-haired and red-eyed Goldie rested his chin on one hand, bored, watching the scenery go by.

As the sports car passed Flat,

Goldie casually turned his head and shot a cold glance at Flat and the reporter who hadn't gone far yet.

Just a single exchange of looks.

Yet Flat, still standing there, felt his heart clench hard.

As if the slightest thing that annoyed the other party would get him blasted to scrap in an instant!

Fortunately, the King of Heroes didn't seem interested in a nobody like him.

He soon withdrew his gaze, and the sports car roared off, leaving only a trail of exhaust.

Not until the car had completely vanished from sight did Flat let out a long breath, as if pardoned from execution, and turn to flee this den of trouble as fast as he could.

But he'd barely taken two steps.

Arisu Sakayanagi, who had been waiting in the shadows for some time, wasn't about to let this key "contact" walk away so easily.

After all, a Clock Tower student like Flat would, by and large, still follow the magical world's iron rule that "mystery weakens as the public learns of it."

So making contact right on the street beat turning up at his door alone by a wide margin.

"If I'm not mistaken."

Arisu Sakayanagi's clear voice rang out behind Flat:

"you're the famous Flat Escardos, student of Lord El-Melloi II, aren't you?"

Flat's steps halted.

Though thoroughly puzzled, his magus's instinct told him that being called out by his full name at a sensitive time like this meant that staying put would very likely drag him into unpredictable trouble.

But hearing the name of his beloved teacher, Waver, and combined with his own damned curiosity...

Flat, sure enough, couldn't hold back.

"Huh? You know my teacher?"

Flat scratched his head and instinctively turned to look at the petite girl in the white beret in front of him, and the girls behind her with their varied expressions.

That one look was all it took.

It made Flat suck in a sharp breath!

Because Flat was himself a vessel, specially made by the magus family Escardos to nurture the new primate "Tia" sleeping within him.

At the soul level, he'd been remade by a thousand-year-old Magic Crest.

That modification made his vision prioritize the flow of mana and the aura of souls.

In Flat's usual sight, the features of ordinary humans were mostly just blurry, shifting blobs of mana color.

That was why he was so addicted to movies, because only on the screen could he see normal "human faces."

But now?

Here on this unfamiliar street, he could clearly see the specific faces of these people before him, with no mana-color blobs covering them at all!

But how could that be...?!

Flat's first thought was that the glittering king had scared him into hallucinating.

He rubbed his eyes hard and opened them again.

There was no doubt. Those were human faces!

"Could it be..."

A bold idea popped into Flat's head.

He didn't even bother to hide it and blurted out:

"Are you... life from outside the realm, like Tia?!"

"Did you come to take him home?"

Hearing this wildly imaginative guess, Arisu Sakayanagi wasn't especially surprised.

After all, before the operation, Hiyori Shiina had already used an item to look into these Masters' backgrounds.

The girl simply shook her head with a light laugh:

"What an imagination you have, Flat."

"As for our relationship to the Tia inside you, I'm afraid... we're not even as close as that giant spider sleeping in the Crystal Valley of South America."

Hearing this, Flat stroked his chin thoughtfully:

"So you're not aliens... but you still know about Tia's existence so clearly."

"The more I think about it, the only ones who could manage that would be that person's disciples."

Flat's eyes lit up. "Wait, are you disciples of Lord Zelretch?"

"If you're students of the Wizard Marshal, it's no wonder you know such secrets."

Arisu Sakayanagi shook her head with a smile again, not directly explaining who she was.

She merely offered a casual reminder:

"Who we are doesn't really matter."

"But don't you magi have an iron rule that ordinary people must never discover the existence of magecraft?"

Arisu Sakayanagi glanced around the street. Not many people were out, but passersby still came through now and then.

"Is it really fine to discuss all this out in the open?"

Flat froze, then slapped his thigh in sudden realization:

"Aaah... Oh no! Now that you mention it, there is a rule like that!"

"Whew, good thing that reporter already left. If this got filmed and broadcast, my teacher would kill me..."

Flat raised his hands in a flustered scramble:

"Uh, give me just a moment, please. It'll be done in no time!"

With that, Flat began weaving a spell right there, with no qualms at all.

He finished it quickly too. From then on, in the eyes of ordinary passersby, nothing they talked about inside would be noticed in the slightest.

Amasawa Ichika, standing behind Sakayanagi, raised an eyebrow at the sight.

When reviewing intel on Berserker Jack's Master earlier, they'd already learned that because of the peculiarity of his Magic Crest, Flat lacked the ordinary magus's ability to store and call up fixed spell formulas.

Every time he used magecraft, it was like building a brand-new spell from scratch on the spot.

Even so, Flat could finish this kind of spell quickly all the same.

'If we could make use of this guy... we might save ourselves a lot of work cleaning up the Black Mud.'

Amasawa Ichika calculated silently in her heart. 'Or better yet, use his hands to cripple those Servants and turn them straight into Class Cards?'

But on second thought, Amasawa Ichika shot the idea down.

Never mind that Flat hadn't even graduated from the Clock Tower yet and hadn't even earned a formal magus rank.

The only reason he was worth her group's attention at all was largely the new primate "Tia" inside him.

And Tia... would only break out of its cocoon at the instant Flat truly died.

'Right. Business first.'

Amasawa Ichika put away the dangerous glint in her eyes, stepped forward, and said with a beaming smile:

"Senior Flat, as far as we know, you came to Snowfield to join the Holy Grail War behind the back of your teacher, Lord El-Melloi II, sneaking out on your own. Is that right?"

Having finished setting up the bounded field, Flat clapped his hands clean and nodded frankly:

"Yep. My teacher's been so worn out lately, I wanted to win the Grail and give him a surprise!"

He studied Amasawa Ichika with curious eyes:

"So what about you? What are you here in Snowfield for?"

"It's really dangerous around here, but I don't seem to see your Servants hiding anywhere nearby..."

"Don't tell me you came specifically to tattle to my teacher? Or to steal my Command Spells!?"

Arisu Sakayanagi smiled faintly and took the floor back:

"Wrong."

"Mainly, we want to establish contact with your teacher, Mr. Waver, behind you."

"In a sense, our interests don't conflict."

"After all, the Snowfield Grail is currently at risk of contamination by the Black Mud, and we have no intention whatsoever of claiming that busted cup for ourselves."

Hearing this, the confusion on Flat's face deepened:

"No interest in the Grail? Then what are you doing wandering around here?"

Amasawa Ichika smiled.

"We're looking for something that was lost."

"And while we're at it..."

"we're completing a temporary exam, one we assigned to ourselves, that decides whether we live or die."

…

Soon after.

Far away at the Clock Tower in London, Lord El-Melloi II, also known as Waver Velvet,

sat in his office and picked up a transoceanic call from his headache of a dunce student.

When he heard over the phone that this brat Flat had actually slipped off to Snowfield in North America without a word, not only getting himself dragged into the Holy Grail War but already summoning a Servant...

Waver felt his stomach acid churning wildly, his blood pressure nearly breaking through the threshold of a cerebral hemorrhage!

"Flat! You idiot! Do you have any idea what you're doing?!"

Waver clutched his aching stomach and raged impotently on his end of the line.

But before he could finish his scolding,

Flat, on the other end, suddenly mentioned a detail in an odd tone:

"Teacher, Teacher! Don't be mad yet! I actually met a bunch of really strange people."

"They don't have even a trace of mana on them, but they could call out my full name correctly, and they even know lots of top-secret intel that even the Clock Tower's Lords might not know!"

"And... they're right here next to me now, saying they have something very important to discuss directly with you."

Hearing "no magic circuits, yet they know secrets," Waver's hand on his stomach paused slightly.

With a Lord's keen instinct, he pushed down his fury, and his expression turned cold:

"Put them on."

A faint rustle of static came over the line, and then Arisu Sakayanagi's composed voice traveled across the airwaves to London:

"Pleased to meet you, Lord El-Melloi II."

"To save everyone's time, I'll keep this short."

"The King of Heroes Goldie, the one you've been so fixated on... has already descended as a Servant onto the battlefield of this Snowfield."

"What?!"

Waver's pupils contracted sharply, and the hand holding his cigarette trembled.

But he'd been through the baptism of the Fourth Holy Grail War, after all, and after a brief shock he regained his composure at once.

He instinctively assumed that this crowd of unknown origin had dug up his past somewhere and fabricated a lie specifically to lure him into the game.

In the face of Waver's silence,

Arisu Sakayanagi merely gave a soft laugh and dropped a nuke outright.

"Lord El-Melloi, do you think we'd need to deceive you with a lie that could be punctured so easily?"

Arisu Sakayanagi's voice dipped lower:

"Or have you forgotten the pact of lord and vassal you made with the King of Conquerors, Iskandar, on the bridge in Fuyuki City all those years ago?"

"...!"

At those words, Waver, far away in London, felt his mind go "buzz" and turn utterly blank.

That was the most treasured secret in the depths of his heart. Apart from Goldie, no one else in the world could possibly know such a detail!

"Who... exactly are you?"

He shot up from his office chair and nearly roared his orders into the phone:

"Flat! Listen to me. Whatever these people are, you stay right where you are, this instant, and don't you dare do anything rash!"

"I'll... I'm flying to Snowfield tonight!"

Listening to the busy tone of the hurriedly cut-off call,

Arisu Sakayanagi tossed the phone back to Flat with satisfaction, a victorious smile curling her lips.

And behind the scenes.

Seeing that Arisu Sakayanagi and the others hadn't revealed that Heracles had been contaminated by the Black Mud, Chris couldn't help nodding.

After all, there was no use telling Waver this intel.

It would only reach the ears of Doris, the Master of Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, and Rin Tohsaka.

True, in the original myths, Hippolyta was at most a roadside stop on Heracles's Twelve Labors.

But with Heracles's personal charisma, once Hippolyta learned that this respected great hero had been contaminated by the Black Mud and lost a hero's pride and true self...

she'd definitely rush off at once to fight the Avenger to the death and try to "knock some sense into him."

If the situation really developed that way,

it would do nothing for Ichinose and the others' plan.

As things stood, their primary target to focus fire on wasn't the already-corrupted Heracles.

It was the goddess Ishtar, who hadn't yet fully built her temple to restore her full strength, and Goldie, the King of Heroes!

After all, even though Ishtar was still suppressed by the modern world's texture and couldn't recover her Age of Gods power to summon the Bull of Heaven,

the divine beast Humbaba she'd brought under her control along the way, plus the Uruk duo's world-wrecking stats, were enough to pose a huge threat.

Though there was almost no chance of them teaming up, mind you...

Anyway, there was no way to deal with that time bomb, Avenger Heracles, for the moment.

So naturally, they could only use the Uruk faction as their first test of the blade.

Besides,

with the epic battle between Goldie and Enkidu on the outskirts of Snowfield as groundwork,

all they had to do was drop those two names at the right moment while dealing with the other Masters, and forming a temporary alliance wouldn't actually be hard.

Only, what Arisu Sakayanagi and the others hadn't anticipated was...

that in order to keep this "test" from becoming a one-sided stomp, and to keep these high schoolers, who'd been handed an all-seeing wallhack, from getting too comfortable,

Chris, that black-hearted presiding god, had also quietly given Ishtar a little "cheat" behind the scenes.

In the original setting,

for Ishtar to display her full power, she had to build a temple and forcibly twist the surrounding world texture back to the laws of the Age of Gods.

And that process was extremely tedious.

It required the Lesser Grail, serving as her descended vessel, to provide base mana, plus subduing Humbaba to draw mana from the Cedar Forest, and even continuously absorbing the mana and ley line energy overflowing from the Servants' clashes throughout the Holy Grail War...

That long loading bar would basically only finish, and barely, once the seven-day Holy Grail War was past its halfway point.

Even by the standard of a regular seven-day Holy Grail War, those few days weren't actually that long...

But with Hiyori Shiina running a full-map wallhack through [Rasiel],

if Ishtar were allowed to collect mana at that sluggish pace, her temple likely wouldn't have its foundation laid before this crowd of students bulldozed her as a team.

To keep up the pressure,

Chris had drastically raised the efficiency conversion ratio at which Humbaba and Ishtar drew and absorbed mana.

He'd even secretly set a countdown node for the completion of her temple.

As for the exact completion time?

Naturally, it was timed for the climactic moment when Avenger Heracles and glittering Goldie first clashed!

By then,

the enormous mana overflow from two top-tier Heroic Spirits trading blows would become the perfect energy pack to fill the last gap in Ishtar's temple.

The Age of Gods would return.

Only then would the real test of these students' resolve truly begin.

…

As the gears of fate quietly sped up,

the night receded and dawn broke.

When the first ray of sunlight pierced the clouds and spilled over the somewhat desolate outskirts of Snowfield,

Honami Ichinose and Suzune Horikita had only just stepped into the hospital building where Tsubaki Kurioka lay.

Pale Rider, being the embodiment of plague as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, had no physical form and existed as a pure concept of plague, something like a spirit entity.

To show they meant no harm, and to avoid an indiscriminate counterattack from Pale Rider on contact,

Honami Ichinose had, before coming, bought a pile of plush toys and beautiful picture books that girls like from a nearby mall, paying out of her own pocket.

She hoped to convey her goodwill to Pale Rider, who guarded this sleeping girl.

After all, if a battle broke out in a place like this, it would inevitably hurt Tsubaki Kurioka, lying in her sickbed like a candle in the wind, a second time.

Only, in the little while they'd dawdled picking out suitable gifts,

Heracles, completely fallen and twisted by the Black Mud into the Avenger Alcides,

finally set foot upon the yellow-brown wasteland.

With the keen senses and freakish eyesight honed over a lifetime of training, enough to make him a Grand Archer candidate,

Alcides slightly raised his head, his gaze crossing a distance of more than ten kilometers.

His eyes locked onto a girl far away in a conference room of a skyscraper in central Snowfield, standing behind Goldie and overlooking the city.

Tine Chelc.

Goldie's Master.

Even though she was only a child, still underage, and even though in life the great hero Heracles had an absolute bottom line against harming women and children,

at this moment, with his heart filled with vengeful obsession and the Black Mud, he'd long since cast aside such pointless honor.

Alcides drew his bow and nocked an arrow.

"Die."

Without hesitation, Alcides released his fingers.

And in the Mirror World, Hiyori Shiina, who had been monitoring the whole board through [Rasiel], was the first to catch the development.

'Heracles has made his move!'

'The target is Goldie's Master!'

Hiyori Shiina's heart began to race.

She knew full well that, given the King of Heroes's arrogance, anyone daring to assassinate his Master right in front of him would surely be met with retaliation.

And with these two's strength, a real fight wasn't going to end easily!

It was exactly the perfect opening in their earlier plan to weaken the enemy's combat strength!

After a moment's thought, Hiyori Shiina swiftly tore two pages from [Rasiel], wrote the latest intel on each, and handed them to Amikura Mako and Kei Karuizawa, who were on standby beside her.

"Mako, Karuizawa."

"Heracles is about to fight Goldie."

"Quick! Go pass word to Sakayanagi, Ryuuen, and the others, and tell them to act according to the original plan!"

Amikura Mako and Kei Karuizawa took the slips of paper.

The two didn't waste time asking for extra details. They nodded firmly, turned around at once, and vanished into the mirror world.

And at this very moment,

far away in the world of Chainsaw Man,

as the instigator of it all,

Chris was floating in midair, watching with great interest, ready for the show.