Medea, mage of the Age of Gods.
One of the three most dominant Servants in the Fourth Holy Grail War ten years ago, she stood alongside Lancer Diarmuid Ua Duibhne and Archer Gilgamesh as legends of that conflict. Each of them had reached the apex in their own way.
The Lancer had the best luck. An extraordinarily high ceiling.
The Archer had the highest raw power. The ultimate expression of what a Servant could be.
The Caster had the most complete toolkit. The pinnacle of pure lethality.
Even ten years later, after the Three Founding Families and the Holy Church had compiled a full account of the battles and records of the Fourth Holy Grail War, many mages still shuddered at the name of Medea of the Age of Gods. A single Servant who killed seven people, including rule-breaking participants.
Overwhelming in close combat, relentless with wide-area magical bombardment, capable of taking out the highest-stat Berserker in a direct melee, carrying inherent curse-type abilities and field-manipulation magecraft, and even demonstrating the adaptability to modify modern military weapons and attach anti-Spirit damage effects to them. To summarize it all in two words: absolutely broken. She had rightfully earned the title of Servant Killer.
Oh, and what about Saber? Did the Saber-class even have a meaningful role in the Fourth Holy Grail War?
Lower stats than the Berserker, worse in close combat than the Lancer, weaker hard stats than the Archer, useless in group fights compared to the Caster, outclassed in support and mobility by the Rider.
She was the quintessential "decent but not remarkable" unit. The type who sits at the same dinner table as the Assassin. Perfectly fine, just not exciting.
It sounded exaggerated, but the Saber class's reputation had genuinely taken a hit after the Fourth Holy Grail War. Her performance simply couldn't support the title of "strongest class." The consensus was: if you had money, go for Lancer or Archer. Even a budget player running Medea got more mileage out of it.
That was precisely why, after Matou Sakura had attempted to acquire Medea's catalyst only to be told it had already been purchased, she had grown genuinely worried. She had even gone so far as to warn her sister Tohsaka Rin to stay out of the Fifth Holy Grail War.
The best card had been taken. Even the Matou family hadn't been fast enough to secure Medea's catalyst. A declining Tohsaka family certainly wasn't going to.
Their participation in this war was essentially volunteering to be cannon fodder.
If Rin absolutely insisted on entering, there was nothing Sakura could do about it. She would simply have to drag her into the anti-Medea alliance after the war began.
Of course, that wasn't to say Sakura had no confidence in herself. She had already decided which Servant the Matou family would summon, and the corresponding catalyst was already on its way from Europe. Combined with the Matou family's unique cursed seals, there was a real chance of summoning the creature from Greek mythology that the catalyst corresponded to.
But Saint Graph limitations were what they were. There was no guarantee what form it would arrive in after being filtered through the Holy Grail War system. It was still wise to prepare for the possibility of facing a Servant with a ceiling-level Saint Graph perfectly suited for the war.
"Aaaargh!"
"What did I just turn down? Thirty million yen! One million a month in spending money! And unlimited resources for magecraft training on top of that?!"
Stepping out through the Matou family's front gate, Tohsaka Rin walked down the street with both hands pressed to her head, looking deeply regretful.
Everyone knew that Jewel Magecraft was extraordinarily expensive. Even the lowest-grade magical gems she used for training still cost two hundred thousand yen each on the open market. That was why years of training had steadily bled the Tohsaka family dry, and why she had ended up taking part-time jobs just to get by.
And now look at what she'd done. She had turned down thirty million yen that required nothing more than a signature, then gone and defiantly declared war on her own little sister.
She had come here to convince Sakura to visit their father and mother just once. How had it deteriorated into this powder-keg of a confrontation?
If Sakura resented her for this, if Sakura actually came after her on the first night of the Fifth Holy Grail War with a Servant at her back, Rin's journey in this war might be over before it began.
"Mother, I've let you down."
Thinking of how her mother Tohsaka Aoi would once again have to put on a brave face and pretend everything was fine while quietly hurting inside, Tohsaka Rin wiped her faintly red eyes and felt the weight in her chest grow heavier.
Ever since her father had been paralyzed ten years ago, six or seven year old Rin had inherited the title of Tohsaka family head. Together with her senior at the Church, Kotomine Kirei, she had tried to hold the family together. But both of them were financial disasters. Even with the Church's supplementary funding, she had never managed to make ends meet properly.
She was basically sitting on her hands watching the family fortune drain away, reduced to splitting a single gem in two just to stretch her research. Her magecraft progress had been agonizingly slow.
The one thing she seemed to have any unexpected talent for was Baji Quan. In just ten years of occasional practice, she had gotten good enough to beat the average mage senseless in hand-to-hand combat. Other than that, she genuinely couldn't figure out what she was good at. Her management of the family ley lines was patchy at best, and she still hadn't figured out why the Roomba refused to eat dog food no matter how long she left it out.
"I will win this. I'll fulfill the Tohsaka family's dream. I'll make up for Father's regrets. Even without a proper catalyst, the Servant I summon will be the best Servant!"
She wiped her eyes one more time with her sleeve.
After jogging for about half an hour, having spent the entire run mentally pumping herself back up, Tohsaka Rin finally arrived at her current part-time workplace: the café section of the newly rebuilt Hyatt Hotel in Fuyuki City.
This was Fuyuki's main commercial street. Ten years ago, the original Hyatt Hotel had caught fire and collapsed following a gas leak incident. In the aftermath, the Fuyuki City government had pushed a series of new policies to prevent developers from fleeing the reconstruction zone. Funds had been allocated to rebuild many of the city's key facilities, including the Hyatt Hotel. The rebuilt version wasn't quite as grand as before, standing at only around twenty-five floors, more of a commercial building than a proper luxury hotel.
Today was Saturday. No school. And since Tohsaka Rin was perpetually broke, she had to work. Through a connection with Kotomine Kirei, she had been placed as a waitress at this café.
"Rin, why are you only getting here now?"
Her classmate Kotone, who also worked there, looked up with some concern when she saw Rin strolling in at nearly two in the afternoon.
"Sorry, sorry. I stopped by the care facility to see my family and accidentally missed the midday train."
That was a lie, of course. She never took the train. She couldn't afford that luxury.
Running was good exercise.
"Oh, okay. Go get changed then. It's been pretty busy today, we're getting a bit overwhelmed."
"Mm..."
Sensing that the slightly absent-minded Kotone wasn't going to press further, Rin quickly slipped into the staff room, changed into her uniform, and hurried out front.
She was too proud to want her classmates seeing her work part-time jobs, but Kotone was her closest friend. And besides, Kotone had apparently suffered some nerve damage in the fire ten years ago and had always had trouble with her memory. So Rin had never bothered being too careful around her.
The main reason she kept this job, though, was the pay. It was exhausting, yes. But the hourly rate was fifteen hundred yen, and working Saturday and Sunday afternoons from two to five every week came out to roughly thirty thousand yen a month.
If she lived frugally enough, she could cover her own living expenses for an entire month without touching the family's funds.
"Welcome. How can I help you?"
Ding-dong.
"Two omurice with ketchup, two juices. Also, this place is way too loud. Do you have a private room? I'm catching up with a friend, I don't want to be bothered."
"Sir, we don't have private rooms. The walls are built with soundproofing materials. If you'd prefer, we can find you a quiet corner away from other customers."
"Ugh, that's annoying. Can I just book out the whole place? What would that cost?"
"...?"
Oh, you absolute rich kid.
You want to rent out an entire café just for two omurice and some juice?
Tohsaka Rin forced herself to maintain a smile, her expression barely concealing the involuntary twitch at the corner of her eye, as she looked at the young blue-haired man in front of her who radiated "second-generation rich" from head to toe. There had been a time when she herself had been that wealthy. Now she was reduced to serving people like him.
"Shinji, you don't have to be so extravagant. We can just find a regular restaurant and eat something simple. The prices here..."
But before Rin could explain that no, you cannot rent out the entire café, a red-haired boy in a school uniform came sprinting breathlessly through the door.
The moment she saw him, Tohsaka Rin instantly ducked her head.
She made sure he couldn't see her face, because she recognized him.
They were at the same school. They'd talked before.
"What do you mean extravagant? We haven't seen each other in years, Emiya. Don't hold me back. Eating at a street stall for a reunion like this is just insulting. Are you saying our friendship isn't worth taking seriously?"
"No, that's not what I... it's not like that..."
"Then stop arguing. I'll handle it. It's been so long, let me make the call here."
The blue-haired boy in the black hoodie waved a dismissive hand.
Then he grabbed the red-haired boy he'd called Emiya by the arm and found a quiet corner table to sit at. He didn't have many real friends in Fuyuki City. Most of his connections were the kind built on money. Only this boy named Emiya was someone he genuinely liked.
And when it came to friends, he was always generous. He didn't want him feeling like he wasn't worth the effort.
"Everything on the menu, drinks included, bring us one of each. Don't make my friend wait too long, or I'll leave a complaint."
"Understood, sir..."
Tohsaka Rin kept her voice low and quickly relayed the order to the kitchen.
Once she had confirmed that both of them had settled into their seats without recognizing her, she let out a quiet breath of relief.
Who was that with Emiya? It wasn't Ryuudou Issei. Was there someone like that in the high school section?
"Shinji... Matou Shinji?"
Searching through memories from elementary to high school, Tohsaka Rin finally latched onto a name. It had been back in middle school. After the great fire had destroyed the red-haired boy's home, she hadn't seen the occasional childhood playmate again until they wound up at the same school years later, along with the boy from the Matou family who was always somewhere nearby. But different classes, combined with the sensitive relationship between the Tohsaka and Matou families, had meant they never interacted much.
Matou Shinji and the red-haired boy had been close, clearly the kind of real friends you didn't often get. If Shinji hadn't dropped out right before high school, the three of them probably would have ended up at the same school together.
"How much he's changed..."
Tohsaka Rin murmured quietly to herself. She hadn't even recognized him at first. The Matou Shinji she remembered had been a bookworm, always buried in whatever he was reading, scribbling notes in the margins, completely ignoring what teachers said, and yet somehow finishing every midterm in the top five in the year. A genuine academic overachiever wrapped in a rich kid persona. The type who could waltz into Tokyo University.
But the Matou Shinji in front of her now had something of a delinquent's edge to him. His whole manner, the way he talked and moved, gave off the impression of someone much more seasoned by the world.
She almost hadn't placed him.
"It's been almost three years, hasn't it? You're still the same hopeless blockhead you were in middle school, Emiya. I can't see any growth at all."
Matou Shinji slouched in his corner seat, hoodie still up, and gave his friend a teasing grin.
Three years since he had left. Coming back to Fuyuki now, the changes in the city had thrown him completely. It had taken him quite a while just to locate where Emiya's house was. Half the landmarks he remembered were gone, the roads had changed. Modern society, he supposed. Even this city had moved on.
But his friend here hadn't moved on at all. Still the same good-natured, gullible idiot he always was. Shinji had barely said a word before Emiya came out without even questioning whether it might be a trick.
If you put a personality like that somewhere like Myanmar, or the Middle East, or the Golden Triangle, you'd be dead in a week.
"You shouldn't be saying stuff like that when you're only seventeen yourself, Shinji."
Emiya Shirou gave a helpless sigh.
"Age is just a measure of experience, really. Once you've seen enough, age doesn't mean much. Take an old man who's spent his entire life in one village and never gone anywhere, versus a middle schooler who's traveled all over the world. Who has the broader perspective?"
Matou Shinji shook his head with a mild smile. Conventional thinking was always frustrating like this.
People always pulled out age as a trump card, as if getting older granted you the right to lecture people younger than you. But modern society moved fast. Anything that couldn't keep up with the times got left behind. It was the young ones who actually represented the future.
His friendship with Emiya Shirou had been an accident. In middle school, Shirou had been asked to single-handedly rebuild the signage for a cultural festival overnight, and Shinji had happened to still be around at that hour and just watched the whole thing. He had told him, plainly, that those people were just using him. They thought he was someone who would agree to anything, and he didn't actually have to put up with unreasonable requests like that.
But Shirou had gone ahead and done it anyway, the big idiot. Which was genuinely painful to watch.
And that was how it started. Back and forth, they had ended up as good friends, constantly getting into trouble with older students.
Shirou was a good-natured pushover. Shinji was not. From behind the scenes, using the Matou family's influence, he had quietly and socially dismantled every person who tried to take advantage of Emiya Shirou before he eventually left Fuyuki.
"You're using that overly-mature voice again..."
Emiya Shirou sighed again.
"Right, Shinji, where have you been all this time? I went to the Matou house to find you, and Tsuruno-san said you weren't home, that you'd gone abroad. He seemed really angry, said you'd cut ties with him."
"Off chasing my ideals, obviously. You know what I always wanted, Emiya. Staying with the Matou family, I could never have made it real. I had to go out and broaden my knowledge, find a way to make it happen."
"Did you find one?"
"Not yet. It's not that simple. Natural talent is what it is. No matter how hard I push or how stubborn I get, I can't force a miracle into existence just through willpower."
Matou Shinji exhaled slowly as he said it. He had known his situation from the old Matou family records since he was young. Congenital incompatibility. Blocked Magic Circuits. Born with no magical ability whatsoever. Not even a trace.
If he had been the Matou family's heir, he might have waited for the Fifth Holy Grail War and tried his luck at entering as a participant. But he wasn't. His sister Matou Sakura was leagues ahead of him, and the Matou family's participation slot was always going to belong to her.
Every conventional path was sealed off. Knowing he could never reach the beauty of magecraft through normal means, he chose to carve out a dangerous road of his own. He had cut himself off from the Matou family and renounced that bloodline, laying the groundwork for acquiring an entry as a participant in the Fifth Holy Grail War through alternative means.
Beyond that, he had traveled the world, using money as a key, searching for any other way to address his physical limitations.
He had gone to Kyiv, the ancestral homeland of the Matou family, and lived there for half a year.
He had sought out legendary sites said to hold miracles, wandered through them, and found every single one to be a complete lie.
He had gone to the Middle East and Myanmar and the Golden Triangle to forge his will, and nearly gotten himself killed in the process.
He hadn't known what to do, because some things were simply determined from birth. No amount of effort or force of will could change that. In the end, half-mad with frustration, on the eve of his return to Fuyuki, he had made one last desperate decision: he would stop trying to remain a powerless human being.
If only a miracle from the Holy Grail could make his dream real, then he would throw everything he had into its path and become a devoted worshiper of magecraft.
"You know what, Emiya? Sometimes I genuinely resent a certain older woman I met when I was a kid."
"Why did she have to show me something that transcendent? Why did she tell me my dream wasn't impossible to reach? Why did she give me hope?"
"I feel like I'm living worse than a stray dog right now. Homeless. Completely alone. And yet for some reason, I'm enjoying every bit of it. I keep sinking deeper, believing it was all worth it. Because only by becoming this kind of wreck did I finally get a real chance at chasing my ideal."
Matou Shinji picked up his bitter coffee and took a quiet sip. He didn't resent Matou Sakura for taking everything from him.
It was fair. Her talent was greater than his. The better things should go to the person who deserved them more. He only resented himself. Why was his talent so poor? Why didn't he have even a single usable Magic Circuit, not even the smallest fragment of magical ability?
He would never forget that afternoon. The silver-haired, red-eyed saint who had conjured a spirit with nothing more than a casual gesture.
He hungered for magecraft. He craved it the way that saint had wielded it, the way Matou Sakura used it, the way even that old monster Matou Zouken pursued it. To become part of the world of those who chased the Root and sought the truth of existence. That was his obsession. That was the defining ambition of his life.
"You still have a family, Shinji. Tsuruno-san and Sakura are both waiting for you to come home."
Emiya Shirou, not understanding any of the deeper context, could only offer that much.
"Emiya! You have to understand, ordinary people live and die without leaving a single mark on history. Humans are small and fleeting, but truth is eternal. It is always there, just waiting for someone to discover it and give it meaning. And whoever discovers it will exist alongside it, forever!"
Matou Shinji's eyes turned sharp, almost fevered, as he grabbed Emiya Shirou by the shoulders and rose to his feet.
Emiya was the only person he genuinely cared about. Unlike Sakura and Tsuruno, who had become enemies and rivals in the pursuit of the Grail, he truly hoped this person could walk alongside him. Not just as a friend in the mundane world, but as a fellow traveler in the world of magecraft. A companion united by shared purpose.
"Shinji..."
"Ha, never mind, Emiya. I was just messing with you. Not bad acting, right? Ha, got you there, didn't I?"
Of course he knew it was impossible. Emiya Shirou was an ordinary person. He would never understand what it meant to want to become a mage.
Their friendship was always going to be surface-level, in the world of the living, not in the hidden world beneath it.
Mages, every last one of them, were irredeemable lunatics.
"Right, Emiya. I heard there's going to be overnight maintenance on the gas pipes in Fuyuki. Try not to go out after dark for a while, just stay inside."
Matou Shinji leaned back and slipped the warning in with casual ease.
Getting Emiya out here had mostly been for this. The Fifth Holy Grail War was about to begin. Once night fell, it was a battlefield between mages and Servants.
He didn't want his friend getting caught up in any of it. Because Emiya was the one person who reminded him he had once been a complete human being.
"Gas maintenance? What's that about?"
"You know how it is with Fuyuki. Some contractors always cut corners."
"Okay..."
"Anyway, don't go out at night. Call me if anything comes up. And for the time being, try not to spend too much time around Sakura. Stop going to the gymnasium to practice high jump. She's had a habit of lurking there watching you since middle school