Clang!
A steel bullet tore through the air, only to be blocked by a bird familiar that suddenly appeared out of thin air.
It was made from threads refined from mithril and fine steel, woven into the shape of a bird through advanced alchemy. It was a familiar that could autonomously protect its master.
"So there really is no room for negotiation!"
The silver-haired girl picked up her suitcase and ran quickly. A trail of sparks chased closely behind her. The magi hiding in the dark were highly experienced in combat.
They would not easily waste mana or Mystic Codes. Instead, they first used convenient automatic firearms to pressure the girl, forcing out her trump cards before using their killing moves.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
The bird familiars also fired magic bullets in succession. They had automatic targeting functions and could lock onto enemies regardless of darkness.
One familiar was not enough. The girl summoned another, but this one transformed into the shape of a shield and blocked in front of her, defending against attacks coming from all directions.
"Sword!"
This was the third familiar. It took the form of a gorgeous longsword, piercing through the darkness, breaking through the enemy's defenses, and successfully taking down one target.
But this seemed to anger the hounds. Rustling sounds came from the darkness as spiders the size of medium dogs dropped from the ceiling.
One of them nearly enveloped the girl, only to be pierced through at the critical moment by a bird familiar.
"This is getting… dangerous."
The girl forced herself to endure the burning pain surging from within her body, as if her nerves were being grilled on an iron plate. Her face turned pale, drenched in cold sweat.
Her alchemy was excellent, and her magic circuits were top-tier. Unfortunately, her body was far too fragile.
Once she used magecraft beyond her limits, it would gradually collapse… if this continued, she would be worn down alive by the enemies.
But she absolutely could not die here.
After so much effort… after waiting sixty long years, her family had finally reached the moment when the Greater Grail began operating again.
A new trial had arrived. This was the last chance to fulfill the destiny passed down through generations.
As a homunculus, she had been created precisely for this day.
"O gate, open!"
The shield familiar turned into a circular barrier to block the spiders' assault. The girl opened her suitcase, its outer shell automatically transforming.
After extending, it pressed tightly against the ground. Inside, crimson patterns emerged, forming an intricate magic circle.
The relic had long been prepared. It was the scale of the strongest Phantasmal Species. Though the randomness was high, anything related to "dragons" generally resulted in powerful Servants.
"I proclaim... ah!"
Buzz!
It was as if flames exploded inside her body. Her magic circuits forcibly drew out massive amounts of mana from her frail frame, like flesh and blood being crushed by a hydraulic press.
Blood flowed from the corners of her eyes, her skin split, her nerves burned out. Before she could finish more than a few lines, her right eye could barely see anything.
Even so, she had to continue.
"My destiny..."
BOOM!
Powerful wind pressure and heat blasted the familiars apart. The girl's chant was interrupted, and her body was sent flying like a puppet with its strings cut, collapsing weakly onto the cold ground.
…It's over.
The enemy were veterans, perhaps even participants in Subspecies Holy Grail Wars. They recognized the summoning ritual and intervened in time to stop it… The silver-haired girl closed her eyes unwillingly.
The rustling sounds drew closer. The ferocious demonic spiders extended their fangs toward her...
Buzz!!!
Suddenly, an intense white light burst forth from the magic circle. The arthropods, accustomed to darkness, writhed wildly as if scalded with boiling oil, rapidly retreating back into the shadows. The hidden "hounds" were also thrown into alarm.
'Damn it! The summoning ritual activated on its own!'
But it was already too late to escape. In the next moment, the world inverted. The ground looked as if it had been coated with a thin layer of ice, clear as a mirror reflecting all truth.
The darkness was completely swept away, leaving the hounds hiding within magecraft nowhere to conceal themselves.
Clang!
A short, crisp sword sound rang out, and the surroundings fell into total silence…
Then a mysterious figure lightly tapped down with his toes and landed gracefully on the ground.
"Let me ask you. Are you my master?"
"…Yes."
The girl barely propped up her upper body. With her still-functional left eye, she clearly saw the young man before her, while her magic circuits also conveyed the sensation of connecting to another existence.
A delicate and refined face, loose black Wu-style robes… an East Asian Servant?
At the same time, the young man was also observing his Master.
Although she was covered in wounds and blood stained her features, and her elegant white dress was torn to shreds, her original beauty was still apparent.
"…"
"My name is Sella von Einzbern… I am your Master!"
"Contract established~"
"Servant Berserker, Aizen Iori, racing forth from the Wheel of Restraint to protect you!"
———
[Author's Note]
For readers unfamiliar with it, and to avoid things feeling like filler, here is a free standalone chapter introducing the basic FA setting.
(There's no need to explain what a "Holy Grail War" is, right…)
Sixty years ago, during World War II, the Third Holy Grail War was held in Fuyuki City. But as everyone knows, without an accident, it wouldn't be a real Holy Grail War.
So, just as victory was about to be decided, one of the participants, "Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia (Millennium Tree)", accidentally discovered the hidden Greater Grail.
Then he made an extremely "genius" decision,
Instead of fighting for the Lesser Grail, the prize for the winner, he stole the Greater Grail that supported the entire system of the war.
The Greater Grail is the foundation for holding a Holy Grail War. It stores mana and supplies Servants with energy, with the Master's supply being only a small portion. The final "wish-granting device" is, in essence, the enormous mass of pure mana inside the Greater Grail.
Stealing the Greater Grail is roughly like a monkey breaking into the Tushita Palace and, instead of stealing the elixir, stealing the alchemy furnace itself…
At the time, he did this extremely secretly. Everyone involved was silenced, and no one knew he had hidden the Greater Grail in his homeland of Romania.
Over the following sixty years, Darnic secretly gathered the descendants of various mage families, expanded his power, and prepared to split off from the Mage's Association using the Greater Grail and Heroic Spirit summoning as his trump cards, standing toe-to-toe with the Clock Tower from then on.
However, this plot was exposed. Naturally, the Mage's Association could not tolerate anyone challenging its authority. They sent suicide agents to infiltrate Romania and tamper with the Greater Grail, and thus the Fourth Holy Grail War began.
This Holy Grail War was no longer a seven-person battle royale. Instead, it became a head-on confrontation between Darnic's Yggdmillennia family and the London Clock Tower Mage's Association.
Each side had seven Master slots. That meant there would be red and black factions, with a total of fourteen Master-Servant pairs fighting.
Setting aside how the Yggdmillennia family would internally allocate their Master slots, the Mage's Association put great effort into recruiting Masters. They were basically well-known elites within the circle, or mercenaries hired from outside, similar to Kiritsugu.
The Mage's Association's status had been challenged, so of course they went all out to establish their authority. They prepared the best relics, waiting to declare their dominance with an overwhelming victory.
On the other hand, Darnic was not afraid at all. The Greater Grail was right under his house. It was as if the trophy was already in his hands before the competition even started.
Additionally, he had prepared for much longer than the Mage's Association. He had found an almost invincible local Servant in Romania ahead of time as his trump card, namely Vlad III.
———
[Back to the Story]
'Who understands this? I've really hit rock bottom, folks!'
Iori had imagined what kind of Master he would be summoned by, but he never expected to encounter an Einzbern family that had already declined to the brink of extinction.
If this were the main Fate timeline, the Einzbern family would be a decent partner. As one of the Three Families, they could exploit system loopholes and had no shortage of funds, allowing them to prepare everything in advance.
On top of that, Einzbern female Masters were generally very attractive. Silver hair and red eyes perfectly hit certain tastes.
Whether it was an innocent one-year-old wife, a scheming tsundere legal loli, or a quiet, big-chested airhead girl… all kinds of traits were available.
Ahem! Of course, those were secondary. Iori was here to fight a Holy Grail War, not to go on blind dates. He didn't care about his Master's looks at all.
However, in this "FA (Apocrypha)" timeline, the course of the Holy Grail War was greatly altered, and the fate of the Einzbern family also changed significantly.
The current Einzberns had almost been struck from the mystic side entirely.
Back then, Darnic stole the Greater Grail. But this thing used the magic circuits of the Winter Saint as its core, with the Jewel Wielder as a witness, and was only completed after a series of complex magical rituals.
Its precision far exceeded what ordinary magi could comprehend, essentially equivalent to a particle collider in the physical world.
Darnic was an academic powerhouse himself, but trying to research this thing alone… sorry, impossible.
In order to obtain the original data, he chose to make a move against the main builders of the Greater Grail, the Einzberns.
The Einzbern family were very traditional magi, the type that valued research over combat. Their direct combat ability was average.
On top of that, Darnic was in Germany at the time and allied himself with a local organization with some influence.
With overwhelming manpower and resources, he easily crushed the Einzberns, seizing large amounts of data and homunculus cultivation methods.
After their homeland was destroyed, the Einzberns lost most of their financial resources and could only flee with a few precious items.
Over the following sixty years, the descendants of the Einzberns tried again and again to restart the Holy Grail War and fulfill the family's inherited destiny.
They even attempted to create another Winter Saint and Greater Grail, but that massive gamble, which consumed huge resources, ended in total failure.
After all this wandering, the homunculi carrying the Einzbern legacy had lost most of their bargaining chips and had even lost their value in the eyes of the Mage's Association.
Sella von Einzbern was one of the few homunculi created with the family's final resources. Her mission was to lie in wait until the day the "Fourth Holy Grail War" began, then obtain victory as a Master.
To complete this mission, her companions sacrificed themselves one after another, until only Sella remained as the last spark.
She was chosen because her magic circuits were the most outstanding among them, and her brain had sufficient capacity to store the Einzbern family's inherited knowledge.
Her weak physique was a major problem, and as a homunculus, Sella's emotions were far too rich… but in this timeline, the Einzberns no longer had the resources to create a perfect homunculus like "Irisviel".
Even this participation was extremely unexpected.
Although she went to the Mage's Association to compete for a Master slot, her chances were actually slim. Even the Three Families, including the Einzberns, had little hope.
Under normal circumstances, she would have been targeted by hound-like magi because of the relic she carried, then died in a London subway station, with the Einzbern lineage disappearing from the world of magecraft.
But Iori's arrival changed her fate…
"What should I do with you?"
In a hotel suite somewhere in London, Iori had changed into a proper black suit. Holding a glass of red wine, he stood by the window and turned back to examine the silver-haired girl lying on the bed.
Everything mentioned above had been "taken" by Iori for free from the hotel. Naturally, this didn't count as stealing. After all, when he openly took them, no one came to stop him.
"Your sleeping face is pretty cute."
Sella had barely treated her injuries enough to look fine on the surface, then came into the city and checked into a hotel. After that, she collapsed from exhaustion. It was even Iori who carried her to the bed.
The tall, well-proportioned silver-haired girl had now changed into a British-style lady's cloak, covering the bloodstains. Her fair and delicate face, eyes closed, looked like Sleeping Beauty waiting for true love's kiss.
But Iori knew that beneath that neat-looking disguise was a body in the middle of collapse.
This did not refer to skin, muscles, or organs, but to the mage-exclusive "magic circuits" and the nervous system temporarily acting as auxiliary circuits.
Homunculi generally had excellent magic circuits, and Sella was especially outstanding. But the body matched to them was far too fragile.
With the Einzbern lineage passed down to this point, almost all of their knowledge had been engraved into Sella's circuits and brain.
Activating them was like running aviation fuel through a normal car engine. If it didn't explode, falling apart was already lucky.
This time, Sella had overclocked her magecraft. Her body had suffered severe damage, and it was irreversible. As a homunculus, her lifespan had already begun counting down.
"Finally get into a Holy Grail War, and my Master turns out to be a porcelain doll that shatters at a touch."
Iori muttered to himself. "Should I just get rid of this one and find another Master?"
"…"
"Heh."
The black-haired boy placed his wine glass on a high stool and casually walked to the bedside. "I know you've been awake for a while. Too shy to face people? My Master~"
"…I was just judging whether I was safe."
Sella slowly opened her left eye and sat up, leaning against the headboard. She watched Iori cautiously, while deliberately hiding her right hand, or rather the three Command Spells on her right hand, at an angle he couldn't see.
"For the Berserker class, having reason like this really is unexpected."
"That's just you being too surprised. Once more and more strange Servants appear in the future, maybe Berserkers without reason will become the rare ones."
Noticing Sella's small movements, Iori smiled and spoke calmly. "Don't worry. I may not be some 'hero of justice', but I'm definitely not a great villain either. Since we've already formed a contract, I will protect my Master until you achieve final victory."
"That's for the best," Sella said seriously. "I will also honor the contract. Tell me, Berserker, what wish do you want the Holy Grail to grant?"
"A body," Iori answered frankly. "I want to live in this world in another form of life."
"I see… that isn't a particularly difficult wish. With the power of the Holy Grail, incarnating a Heroic Spirit is extremely simple. It doesn't even require consuming a wish slot."
Sella let out a breath of relief. "I promise you that your wish will be fulfilled when the time comes."
"Then, to build some understanding, let me confirm something as well..."