Seeing the girl's deathly pale face, twisted with inner turmoil, Steve stepped forward. His light footsteps made Olga Marie shrink back, startled like a wild bunny.
Their distance narrowed. The invisible pressure from this absolute authority nearly suffocated her.
"It's not just satisfaction, Olga Marie," Steve's voice sounded above her, soft as a lover's whisper but as cruel as a poisoned blade. "Maybe he'll even… praise you?"
"Praise you for growing this much. For becoming the 'ideal state' he's always dreamed of seeing."
"Aren't you looking forward to—your father's first and last words of approval?"
Approval... that word stung like a poisoned barb. Olga Marie suddenly looked up, trying to read his face.
But his always-gentle smile was as unfathomable as the surface of a deep lake, revealing no real feeling.
In that moment of distraction, she felt something heavy pressed into her hand. The warmly glowing, golden card had been firmly placed in her palm.
It was utterly unique—a mix of metallic heft and the gentle warmth of jade.
The magic flowing across its surface seemed alive, seeping eagerly into her magus circuits.
She tried to shake him off in fear, but her body was frozen in place.
But the man, ignoring her, retreated five meters, adopting the stance of a bystander at a safe distance, still smiling as if the earlier ambush had nothing to do with him.
The choice is yours.
"If you want to use it, it's simple. Just infuse your magic."
His voice rang clear again, brimming with magical persuasion. "In that instant, you'll receive eleven years of memories."
"Your body will temporarily attain the successful form of the Animusphere family's ultimate test subject."
"You will become the finished product—the embodiment of your family's deepest wishes."
Your family's wish… Finished product… Father's approval…
This string of words was an irresistible curse, annihilating the last of Olga Marie's resistance. Her life had been devoted to these things.
She stared at the card. Its dazzling light seemed to be the only path to her dream.
Trap or devil's contract though it may be, she could not refuse it now.
"…I…"
She muttered to herself, her eyes growing empty yet resolute.
In the end, under the barrage of this complex, soul-shaking assault, the inexperienced eleven-year-old heir caved in to her deepest desire.
Hands trembling, she infused a trace of her own magic into the card.
Buzz!
The moment her magic touched it, golden rays shot up into the sky, turning the dark clouds ethereal and gold! A torrent of overwhelming mana blasted from the card and flooded her body.
"AAAAAAAH—!"
Olga Marie screamed as a wave of pain engulfed her. Enveloped in golden light, she saw countless images and emotions—memories flooding in like a burst dam. These were eleven years—and beyond—of Olga Marie's life.
Looking upon Chaldea, the false starry sky, the A-Team, the short-haired, respectful violet-haired girl, witnessing the Singularity F—the explosion that destroyed everything—feeling the despair of being thrown into CHALDEAS, the pain, the long, long hundred years of dissection and research, going mad, believing herself a true alien...
Then the scene shifted—she was reborn as the Alien God.
She remembered opposing Chaldea, forcing the Master into peril time and again.
She watched, finally, as the journey to restore frozen humanity came to its conclusion—saw the hesitation and resolve in his eyes, heard him call her name, and felt, at last, relief and satisfaction as she let him go with a smile...
The overwhelming flood of memories battered her, transformed her.
Within the golden light, her body changed. Bones stretched, muscles reformed, long silvery hair swayed, grown more brilliant. Her casual Gothic dress dissolved into motes of light, replaced by sumptuous black, white, and red garments that radiated an eerie majesty.
Behind her, a great halo—shaped like the stars—manifested slowly.
Her body, in that moment, drew close to a Servant's—a temporary form known as U-Olga Marie.
She wasn't as powerful as during Chaldea's final battle, being alive, but the majesty and divinity deserving of the UnBeast rank burned in her spiritual core.
The light faded. She opened her eyes.
No longer did they have the arrogance or confusion of an eleven-year-old.
Now they shimmered with the depth and transformation of one who has known countless battles and carried the world's burdens, only to return to nothingness in the end.
At last, she understood.
The cold, double-edged irony in this man's words: "The state your father would be most satisfied with"—
Ah, this was the finished product sought for so long. The ultimate being, embodiment of the Animusphere family's dream.
At the same time, she had become the very thing that defied her father's ideal.
Was this a success—or the greatest failure?
She also realized her supposed genius status was no different, at its core, from that of Mash Kyrielight—both were mere experiments meticulously prepared for a grand scheme, always expendable.
And she now saw even more clearly: her father was currently in Fuyuki with the Grand Servant Solomon, preparing an event known as Bleached Earth that would turn its back on the heavens and halt all of human history.
Countless truths weighed on her heart like mountains.
Yet curiously, she was neither crushed nor driven into despair.
Perhaps it was the perspective of a pseudo-Servant, or perhaps it was the warm memory of her Master saving her at the last moment, giving her strength to bear all pain.
She stood quietly, as if it took a minute—or ten thousand years—to understand.
Finally, her consciousness returned from those long, harrowing memories, and her gaze fell past the ever-smiling Caster, landing on a small figure behind him.
A six-year-old boy in a white Chaldea uniform, with black hair.
His appearance was quite different from the young Master she remembered.
But those calm, unyielding eyes, that serene composure even in the face of all this—she could not mistake him.
That was last Master.
Her Chaldean staff.
The foolish young man who would argue with her on the road, poke fun at her, yet trust her absolutely in moments that mattered most.
In the end, it was he—Fujimaru Ritsuka—the last and only human master in the history of mankind, who taught her the meaning of living.
And at the end of that Bleached Earth journey, once their bond was filled and she became the Alien God, the little director responded the only way her character could.
A beautiful, radiant smile blossomed on her face—gentle, brimming with infinite sadness and love.
She raised her skirt in a Servant's perfect lady's bow to the boy.
"Nice to meet you… or perhaps, welcome back."
"Master."
…