Soon, Tia and the others got to where the noise was coming from. They found it was an unfinished room, with a machine running inside.
"Huh? How did I miss that place before?" Katsushika Hokusai wondered. "Could it be we got here late and missed it? Maybe she already went to look?"
Tia looked at the machine, completely unable to tell what it was or what it did.
"Miss, we just can't control this machine, there's really nothing we can do," someone said to Ryougi Shiki.
"It's okay, just be careful not to get hurt."
Just then, Tia noticed the machine suddenly starting up. It then started spitting out balls of black fog, which scattered in all directions.
Tia suddenly realized that the black fog outside was coming from this machine. The construction site couldn't be entered from Ryougi Shiki's house, or probably from anywhere else. It was completely covered in black fog, but strangely, they could come and go freely.
This… is getting weirder and weirder.
"Senpai, after asking around, it seems that Emiya Shirou from this strange land is here," said a girl with short pink hair, one side covering her eye, wearing purple armor, and carrying a huge shield on her back, standing in front of Ryougi Shiki's house.
"I'm telling you, Mash, aren't you going to change your clothes? This is supposed to be Ryougi Shiki's house, and Emiya Shirou is said to be visiting, there won't be any fighting," said a girl with red hair, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, black shorts, black tights, and white boots.
That's right, these two are Mash and Gudako.
"But, along the way here, people have been saying I look cool and amazing, no one said I look strange," Mash said. "Also, isn't this the Fourth Holy Grail War? The same altered place we went to before. That's why I've been keeping this up. I thought we'd be fighting here, but there are so many normal people coming and going, it really doesn't look like there will be any fighting."
"Whatever, people in this strange land are weird anyway. It seems like they only have good thoughts, no bad ones, so no one will point you out. Let's go in," Gudako said, used to Mash's cluelessness. She had tried to convince Mash to change several times, but Mash had said there might be fighting. Now Mash realized she was wrong.
"Okay!" Mash nodded seriously, trying to hide her embarrassment.
Tia and Katsushika Hokusai didn't know anyone had arrived outside. They were still watching the machine spitting out black fog.
"I wonder if there's any way to stop this machine," Ryougi Shiki said, troubled, but still smiling, making her look like she was forcing a smile. "Otherwise, even if the rooms here are finished, they can't be used. People outside can't get in. My father is counting on me to let lots of people live here so he can do some special magic on me, saying it will let me learn powerful magic. My father said a monk in black clothes taught him to do this. So I wish someone could come in and get rid of this machine, but even though so many people have come, no one has actually gotten in."
Hearing Ryougi Shiki talking to herself, Tia suddenly realized that's probably why Ryougi Shiki wanted to open up her house.
A monk in black robes, doing special magic after lots of people live there, reminded Tia of the Ogawa apartment in the movie "Contradiction and Spiral."
More importantly, except for Ryougi Shiki's original house, the rooms built after are completely symmetrical, which made Tia feel even more that way. Tia hadn't paid attention to the room layout before, thinking it was like the inner palace. Then Katsushika Hokusai came and Tia almost thought the giant octopus was behind it all, so she didn't mention the symmetrical layout at all.
Now she finally understood.
She was misled by her idea of the inner palace. She thought it was that, but it wasn't. It was like the Ogawa apartment in "Contradiction and Spiral."
If that's the case, then the machine is suspicious.
In "The Garden of Sinners," Araya Souren, the mastermind in black robes, created the Ogawa apartment to get Ryougi Shiki's body and touch the Root after her origin awakened, so he could fulfill his wish. The person Ryougi Shiki mentioned is clearly Araya Souren. Now that Araya Souren has lost his bad thoughts and only has good ones, he's doing this to Ryougi Shiki's house for some unknown reason, but someone clearly put this machine here.
Thinking of Katsushika Hokusai, the giant octopus might have put the machine here.
Is the giant octopus… trying to save Ryougi Shiki?
Tia started to feel confused.
"Isn't this a good chance, Emiya Shirou?" Katsushika Hokusai said, excited, after hearing Ryougi Shiki's words. "I was wondering how to talk to him, now there's a chance?"
"But… there are other problems, and they're worse than the giant octopus," Tia said seriously.
Katsushika Hokusai almost took off her cloak.
"What problems?"
"It's not just one person doing this, it's two people. One person is tricking Ryougi Shiki into building more rooms and letting lots of people live there. The other person put a machine here to stop him," Tia said.
"What? How do you know? Right, Ryougi Shiki mentioned something else just now, do you know about that?" Katsushika Hokusai asked.
Tia nodded.
"A monk named Araya Souren wears black robes. In the future, he created a special apartment to get Ryougi Shiki's body, killing everyone in the apartment and turning them into some kind of special barrier. That apartment had a special structure. The monk in black robes Ryougi Shiki mentioned must be Araya Souren. The room layout here is also symmetrical, like that apartment, and they want lots of people to live here. So I suspect Araya Souren's purpose."
(End of chapter)
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