All the true ancestors were gathered, preparing their next move. Caster, before leaving with Assassin to try and eliminate any Servants he could find, had warned them that the clock tower would most likely attack their location.
Suddenly, they sensed a slight disturbance in the air. They stared at the entrance as a magic circle formed on the ceiling. A badly wounded Caster stepped through the circle, and if he failed to overcome its resistance, he would be presumed dead.
Caster fell face-first to the ground, remaining motionless for a few seconds before raising his head.
"I'm back, and I'm only slightly injured, so I need some rest. I'll take a short nap." With that, he let his head hit the floor, leaving the room unsure of what to do next.
"Should we help him?" Rita asked, looking at Altouge, since Caster was her Servant.
She just glanced somewhat irritated at Caster, telepathically communicating with Assassin.
While Altrouge's expression shifted from rapid to fearful to understanding to panicked, among other emotions, upon hearing what had happened from Assassin, Rita and Alcatraz could be seen poking Caster with a stick.
"Are you sure he's resting and not dead?" Alcatraz asked, examining Caster's battered body.
"If he were dead, his body would be disappearing, but it's still very solid; besides, I see that he's regenerating very slowly, however stiff he is," Rita replied as she continued poking Caster's ribs, watching for any reaction, but Caster didn't seem to be breathing.
Rizo, Tatari, Chaos, and Calhin watched this, waiting for Altrouge to stop making a strange face and whispering.
...
Marisbury entered the room to find a badly injured Caster sitting in a chair, his breathing slightly ragged.
"When he felt his mana being drained repeatedly, I thought it was you using your Heroic Treasure, but it turned out to be Rider who used it to boost his defenses and avoid being incinerated," the mage remarked, looking at his servant.
"How is he?" Caster asked simply.
"Just like you, temporarily incapacitated. It will take some time for him to recover, so we can't use the sperm whale for the ambush, but at least we have the captain to help us coordinate," Marisbury replied, sitting in a chair near Caster.
Caster felt the gaze of the clock tower lord upon him.
"If you want to tell me something, just say it," Caster said.
"I was just thinking, I never imagined anyone would leave you in that state," Marisbury said.
"You overestimate me; after all, I'm just a caster, nothing more," Caster said humbly.
But from Marisbury's perspective, it wasn't so; the one he faced was Solomon, the king of Israel, who had gained wisdom from the biblical god himself, the so-called king of sorcery, a top servant; it should be very difficult to leave him in that state.
"Who did you fight?" the master finally asked.
Caster just stared at him for a moment before looking ahead.
"Dante, son of primordial Greek chaos," Caster replied, making Marisbury tense up a bit.
"It doesn't make sense; Dante shouldn't be strong enough to do this to you," the mage retorted, since he had met Dante when he was still in the clock tower.
"That's because at that time, it's most likely that his power was sealed, since the Counterforce and Gaia wouldn't leave an atomic bomb lying around the world knowing it could explode at any moment. If they left it unchecked, they must have put a safety mechanism in place to prevent it from exploding," Caster explained, leaving his master perplexed.
Marisbury knew that Dante was somewhat restricted, but he hadn't expected it to be this restricted.
"But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have been able to respond to him in a way that, perhaps, was not very simple, but you could have," Marisbury argued.
"That would have been the case if Dante didn't have those problematic abilities," Caster countered.
"Like what?" the magician asked.
"Like being able to manipulate dark energy and dark matter," he replied, letting his master's imagination run wild.
Narrator's POV
As you know, Devil Fruits are a Logia category, meaning they can contain elements of nature that are essentially unordered in the human mind. Therefore, dark matter and dark energy can be easily categorized as such.
This is mainly because no one knows what dark matter and dark energy are, since they don't interact with light. However, their existence is known, so even though their composition is unknown, they could very well be an element, an interaction between various subatomic particles, or something similar.
Dark matter is what holds the universe together, giving it immense gravitational force; hence, the power to attract and control gravity.
Also, because dark matter manipulates at the subatomic scale, it could find connections between objects or simply nullify them by intercepting them, similar to other Devil Fruits.
Meanwhile, dark energy is what accelerates the universe, causing it to expand; some scientists even call it vacuum energy.
If the Devil Fruit is the elemental manipulation of what cannot be seen, darkness, or in other words, what does not interact with light, then technically it can also manipulate dark energy, which is essentially cosmic energy.
This is mainly based on mystery, since all that is known is that it is energy. However, we can deduce that the Yami Yami no Mi not only absorbs but can also repel it, which is why it cannot become intangible.
We can also say that it complements the ability to cancel other Devil Fruit powers and possibly other abilities, such as magic itself, since it alters an energy source that could be in your house, your room, or even in the air, as no one can perceive it, since space is never technically empty.
Since dark matter and energy are invisible, the fruit represents it as a black miasma similar to fire.
As a fruit, it manipulates gravity, functioning at the subatomic level—an invisible energy that no one knows exists. One can be quite imaginative about the fruit's limits, hence the possibility that the user can also create black holes. Some of these are artificial, created by manipulating gravity in conjunction with the fruit's own observations. However, if gravity is overloaded along with dark energy, a real black hole could technically be created.
To summarize, the Yami Yami no Mi creates and controls an exotic dark field composed of modified dark matter, capable of generating extreme gravity and localized expansion. Dark matter and dark energy complement each other; one cannot interact while the other can, but one cannot be controlled while the other can.
Regarding storage, the fruit creates an artificial singularity of dark matter whose collapse is prevented by dark energy, forming a stable internal space where the absorbed matter can be stored almost indefinitely.
(Note: Remember that this is just my own theory, which I had to research to understand how dark energy and dark matter work and explain in a way that at least most of what I explain can be understood).
Third-person POV
Marisbury considered all the implications of this, only to glance back at Caster's body.
"I imagine you're not in any condition to intervene tonight," he asked, testing the waters.
"Not as a fighter, but as support, I can do something," Caster replied, getting to his feet.
"What do you plan to do? Wouldn't it be better if you stayed here and recovered?" the mage suggested.
"That's what he's hoping for," he stated, making Marisbury frown.
"What do you mean?" he questioned.
"Dante. He needs to know about the attack on his base." Those words made his master tense up. "He's also hoping I stay here so he can kill me."
"Wait," Marisbury exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "You mean...?"
"That Dante attacked the clock tower. That's exactly what I mean," Marisbury finished, saying what he was about to say. "We need to talk to the other masters and lords of the tower; this incursion is more complicated than we thought it would be."
...
Dante's POV
My head was throbbing. When I opened my eyes, I saw the most beautiful sight in the world.
"Why do you always lose an arm when you fight?" Kiss-shot asked playfully.
"It's a bad habit, because when I'm in a defensive stance, I tend to concentrate everything on one leg or arm, depending on the attack I'm facing; that's why the arm I use as a shock absorber takes the most damage. By default, I end up losing it, but I keep the other one and some other parts of my body stable," I replied, slowly getting up. I saw that my body was completely healed, but the phantom pains were still there.
I stretched and felt my bones and muscles realign. I'm already a bit of a masochist; I'm so used to pain, but that doesn't change the strange sensation of your bones shifting back into place.
"What are you planning to do?" Kiss-shot asked, looking at me.
"I have to talk to Altrouge about his contingency plan for the attack on the clock tower," I said simply, opening the door. The moment I opened it, sunlight hit me and my body instantly burst into flames.
I slammed the door shut, almost breaking it, just to look at Kiss-shot, who was looking away.
"I forgot to desynchronize our souls so you'd stop being a vampire," she commented, playing with her hair.
I just looked at her, a little tired; this was something I always did when I was badly hurt. We synchronized our souls so my vampirism would spike, practically turning me into a vampire with the same abilities as Kiss-shot. This was so I could regenerate quickly.
Our souls are practically permanently linked, but not completely synchronized, mainly so I don't become a vampire and can walk in the sun. The more we synchronize, the more we share; by default, I become a vampire of the same type as her.
...
"The one you've all been waiting for has arrived," I said, bursting into the room. There they all were: my daughter, the true ancestors, and the other Servants whom no one remembers at this point.
"Well, you're alive," Altouge said sarcastically, his voice dry with humor, looking at me.
"You won't get rid of me so easily now, and if I go, I'll do it with a grand spectacle, fireworks and all," I said, puffing out my chest.
"I thought you'd already done that," Vlav remarked, tossing me a newspaper.
The moment I saw what it said, I gave a wry smile.
Natural disaster or something more? A massive explosion creates a rift with a radius of about 5 kilometers. A government experiment, or is Mother Nature announcing the end of the world?
"This is too small; when I die, I must do something more majestic and grand," I said, hiding my nervousness since, luckily, the truth was kept secret, or there would have been many problems, not only for the mages of this world but for me as well, since Counterforce and Gaia might try to punish me by mistaking me for someone who wants to destroy humanity and the world.
That would bring many problems.
"Idiot," Altrouge roared, throwing a keyboard at my head.
"My keyboard," Alcatraz exclaimed, only to fall asleep upon seeing that his keyboard was broken. "It was a limited edition."
"And what brings you here? If you're just here to cause trouble, then leave. We don't need you here. The adults are talking," he said, sticking out his forked tongue.
"But you're the youngest one here, so if anyone should leave, it should be you," I remarked, shrugging in confusion.
"You'll be..." Altoruge growled, but I just snapped my fingers and stopped everything I was doing, momentarily unleashing Conqueror's Haki.
Everyone had been calmly watching the interaction between Altoruge and me, as if it were a fire, but what I did suddenly made them serious.
"She's not here to play this time," I said seriously, abruptly silencing Altoruge's scolding, since she saw my expression and realized I wasn't angry, or at least not the whole time.
"I imagine it has something to do with the attack the Clock Tower will launch against our base, right?" Calhin asked.
"Exactly," I declared, sitting down in a chair and looking at everyone. "As you know, in this Holy Grail War, there are at least three people who can see the future, but we can rule one of them out because this Holy Grail War is special."
"Why is it special?" Rita asked.
"Because I'm here," I replied.
I heard Altrouge snort and Libra shake her head; I simply ignored them.
"That aside, basically, I know what the clock tower will do, while they must know what you're likely to do. The problem is twofold," I explained, holding up two fingers. "The first is that clairvoyance, however powerful, isn't perfect or 100% accurate, and the second is that, since each side sees the future, it will change as they make the best decisions for their side, affecting the future."
"Hmm, are we going to talk about space-time paradoxes?" Archer questioned, not far away, not very keen on following this line of thought.
"Not quite, but it's more complicated," he answered.
"How complicated?" Altrouge flipped the switch.
"The thing is, I know what they're going to do, but they also know what we're going to do," I said. "But I also know that they know what I know, and they also know what I know about them."
"I don't like where this is going," Alcatraz said.
Basically, they don't know what I'm going to do, but they actually do know what I'm going to do, so they'll do something else, but they don't know that I know they knew, so I'll change those things, but they also know that I know they knew that I didn't know what they would do, but what they don't know is that I did know what they're going to do, because...." I couldn't continue, as Altrouge threw a monitor at my head.
"Can you summarize it?" Altrouge asked, somewhat annoyed.
"My monitor," came Alcatraz's pitiful whisper.
"Basically, meticulous planning doesn't do much good because they'll probably have a general idea of what we're going to do, and vice versa; "I know they'll send their three Masters with their Servants, leaving one behind."
"Why would they leave some behind?" Saber asked the first time she'd heard that, I think.
"Because it would be too many to send all four Masters, so I propose that when the Clock Tower invades here, a small group of Servants attack the Clock Tower," I said. "That way, since they know we'll do that, they'll leave one Master with two Servants to protect the place, lessening the burden of the number of people they'll send."
"But from a logical point of view, it will still be the same since they won't have Servants to attack and we won't have Servants to defend," Vlav complained.
"That's not the case; the idea I proposed to the group is that I want to eliminate their Caster, and right now they're not in good condition to fight, so if they leave them to defend, I might eliminate them, since the idea is that I'm going to attack no matter what, so some of the Servants who will attack you won't be able to perform at their full potential," I explained.
"I imagine that's not all, right?" Rizo questioned.
"I imagine that's not all, isn't it?" "Exactly, one of those accompanying me will also be the Serbian, since his Noble Phantasm will wreak havoc on the clock tower. The idea is that the tower's mages will communicate with those who came to attack them, forcing them to divide their forces and send some of their allies back to the clock tower," I declared. "Furthermore, one of the heavy hitters will most likely remain in the clock tower, and that's where I come in to eliminate him, increasing our chances of victory."
The room fell silent.
"Your idea isn't bad; in fact, it could be quite feasible. If you do that, we would only need to survive, not kill them. Just holding out would be a victory for us, which is easier. And if what you say happens, then it will be easier to kill some of their Servants or Masters," Chaos added.
"Exactly, and we have two possibilities: either his caster is in the clock tower, which is already an advantage since I can surely kill him if I play my cards right, or he's not there, and I think I can take care of whoever is left protecting the clock tower," I finished explaining the plan, looking at Altrouge.
She just sighed.
"Do what you want," she said, giving me her approval.
...
Third-person POV
"So you'll stay here?" Bazett asked, looking at Reines.
"Yes, since Dante will surely come to attack the tower, and that man knows how to destroy all the defenses of this place, as he was one of those who helped reinforce them. Therefore, we absolutely need one of us here," Reines said, his face contorted with displeasure.
She never thought Dante would be summoned as a Servant, and especially that he would cooperate with the true Ancestors.
Solomon had already explained why he was doing this, but it didn't erase the bad taste in his mouth.
"Are you sure you're alright?" Bazett asked again, only for someone to place a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry, you won't be alone," a larger voice said from behind Bazett, revealing the martial Zelretch looking at her. "I'll be the one to face Dante, because when he finds out I'm here, he'll come looking for me directly."