This was supposed to be the opening of a brutal battle.
Even Altria, temporarily weakened because her Master Eriyi lacked magical energy, had already drawn her sword and prepared herself. Her stance was tense, her focus absolute.
Yet the moment the King of Heroes, Gilgamesh, uttered his opening word, "Mongrel," the battlefield shifted in an instant.
Malrick quietly reverted his killing intent reflection ability to its default state and stepped forward.
"Mongrel?" he said calmly. "If you ask me, every uninvited guest standing here is trash."
"What blasphemy!" Gilgamesh roared. "You lowly commoner, how dare you…"
Thud.
The King of Heroes' fury spiked for a fraction of a second before his body collapsed to the ground. Golden light scattered as his form began to dissolve.
"Oh la la la," another voice rang out. "To be disrespected like this, that is a first for me…"
Thud.
Before the King of Conquerors could finish speaking, his head tilted and his massive body fell from his chariot. His Noble Phantasm followed, crashing down the hillside with his Master screaming helplessly.
It did not stop there.
Lancelot, who had just reached the temple gate, fell without warning. In the forest, Hundred-Faced Hassan collapsed as well, undone by a single surge of anger from one of his many personalities.
For a brief moment, the air was filled with drifting particles of light, remnants of fallen Heroic Spirits fading into nothingness across the temple grounds and surrounding woods.
"This…" Altria murmured, gripping her sword as she looked around, suddenly unsure where her blade should be aimed.
Thud.
Another dull sound echoed from the forest.
Matou Zouken, who had been secretly observing from the shadows, met the same fate. His hidden main body, composed of parasitic worms, lost all vitality at once.
Emiya Kiritsugu noticed the body among the bushes. He recognized the face immediately from the Matou family records and felt a chill run down his spine.
A single sentence had ended the Holy Grail War.
Once again, he was forced to acknowledge how utterly incomprehensible Malrick was, the young man who had once stormed Einzbern Castle without hesitation.
The blue silver giant faded away, returning Eriyi to her human form.
She jogged over to the shattered Noble Phantasm where Gilgamesh had fallen and reached out to touch it.
"Is the King of Heroes dead?" she asked, turning toward Malrick.
"He is," Malrick replied evenly. "He got too emotional and died of what looks like a cerebral hemorrhage."
Technically, that explanation was not far from the truth.
The others nearby exchanged stiff smiles, cold sweat forming on their backs.
Eriyi nodded seriously. "Then the King of Conquerors is dead too?"
"Yes."
"Is Waver Velvet dead?"
"He is alive," Malrick said. "Still crying somewhere in the forest."
"Then we won the Holy Grail War, right?" Eriyi asked, glancing at the Holy Grail with curious eyes.
Her tone was casual, as if she were asking about the plot after returning from a restroom break during a movie.
Malrick smiled faintly. "Do you want to make a wish too?"
"Can I?" Her eyes sparkled.
Instead of persuading her otherwise, Malrick gestured toward the Holy Grail. "It still has plenty of magical energy. After Saber's wish is granted, there should be room for more."
The wishing began.
Emiya Kiritsugu stepped forward first, stubbornly attempting to impose his vision of world peace upon the Grail once more. Even purified, the Holy Grail could not respond to something so vast and undefined.
Disappointment weighed heavily on his face.
Only after Eriyi reminded him did he make a concrete wish, restoring Irisviel and their daughter to normal human bodies and freeing them from their shortened lifespans.
Next came Altria.
She approached the Holy Grail with visible tension, sword held tightly in her hands. Fear lingered in her eyes, afraid her wish would fail just as Kiritsugu's had.
When her hand touched the Grail, she followed Malrick's earlier advice.
She wished to return to the moment she drew the sword from the stone, hoping to find a king better suited to rule Britain.
The wish had a clear path.
Brilliant magic descended from the hole in the sky, wrapping around her form and pulling her away from the modern era.
"Saber's wish was granted," Irisviel said softly. "She was only a child. That burden was far too cruel."
When it was Eriyi's turn, she shook her head and gestured toward Malrick instead, insisting he go first.
"You first?" Malrick raised an eyebrow. "That is unexpected."
He did not approach the Grail.
Instead, he guided a strand of his consciousness upward, toward the vast hole in the sky.
Before entering, he paused.
In the Type Moon world, the planetary consciousnesses, Alaya and Gaia, did not tolerate interference with the Root. Anyone approaching it risked being erased by Heroic Spirits dispatched to protect reality itself.
Yet no opposition came.
Instead, Malrick received a vague, unfamiliar message, its tone similar to the world consciousness he had encountered in other realities.
[Enter world, truth recognized, friend acknowledged]
He understood immediately.
His traversal ability always transmitted information to a world's governing consciousness. Unlike previous worlds, this one responded.
Since his existence posed no threat, Alaya and Gaia chose acceptance.
Malrick sent back a calm acknowledgment and entered the hole, reaching the Root.
The Root was darkness and color at once, empty yet overflowing with everything.
It was simple enough to reveal truth at a glance, yet so complex that infinite knowledge poured forth every second.
Any ordinary mage would be annihilated by the flood of information.
Malrick was not ordinary.
His soul, unified across countless bodies, existed at a cosmic level. The Root of this multiverse unfolded before him without resistance, its knowledge absorbed effortlessly.
Marvel's universal laws had already been mastered.
Now, another framework was being added.
Though smaller than Marvel's multiverse, Type Moon's structure offered entirely different principles, ones that expanded his understanding beyond a single system.
Every mystery was laid bare. Magic, physics, miracles, the Five True Magics, all were transparent.
Malrick remained exhilarated.
The sensation of understanding reality surpassed any intellectual achievement he had ever known.
Still, even with unrestricted comprehension, absorbing the knowledge of an entire multiverse took time.
He left a secondary body within the Root to continue learning, while a fraction of his consciousness returned to his main body.
Back at Ryudou Temple, Malrick opened his eyes after half an hour.
"I have reached the Root," he said calmly. "Eriyi, go ahead and make your wish."