Next day.
I walked through Medea's workshop right beneath our home, her steps guiding us toward a secluded section of her temple.
A long wooden cabinet with multiple smaller sections flanked my left, rare and mystical ingredients displayed across each shelf, removed from their storage containers for some ongoing project.
To my right was an enormous parchment pinned across the whole wall, and on it were hastily written magical calculations and theorems from the Age of Gods, still dripping with wet ink.
My gaze flashed past those calculations and landed on the vague outline of a person drawn between two long theorems. That figure's face was covered by black-inked tattoos, holding onto another vague silhouette with pointed ears as multiple golden streaks surrounded them from all sides.
I turned my eyes away from it and slowed my pace slightly, falling a step behind Medea.
"So... how is she?"
Her shoulders tensed slightly at my question.
"Not good, Master. I can still help her hold on, but for less than two weeks at most." She explained as we reached a door covered with multiple magic circles.
With a swipe from her, those circles rotated once, and the door opened on its own with a click.
I followed her inside.
The room itself was pure white, covered with tiles of the same color from ceiling to floor. At its centre was a bed, and on that bed lay a child, looking at nothing with white hair and blank, unresponsive crimson eyes.
"She is at her current limit, Master. It's been hours since she stopped responding. Look." Medea said, stopping beside the bed to gesture at Illyasviel's fingertips, where golden veins stretched all the way to her elbows.
I looked at that, and then at a medical cart nearby. It was full of potion bottles, most already empty.
"These pseudo-potions of immortality are losing their effect with each successive use. Before, they could at least keep her conscious for half a day. Now, they barely last hours."
She snapped her fingers, and a magic circle appeared above Illyasviel, flashing a light straight into her eyes.
The homunculus didn't even blink. Her pupils did not dilate, irises reflecting no light.
"Honestly Master, we should just let her turn into the Lesser Grail and be done with it." Medea's two fingers came up, rubbing her forehead. "It's more of a headache than she's worth. Besides, she was going to die soon anyway."
I remained silent for a moment.
My eyes catalogued her current state. Her body was breaking down under the weight of those Heroic Spirit souls stored inside her. After some time, she would fully turn into an object for storing souls with no consciousness left.
"I became what I am now because I chose it. Maybe I would've been someone or something else if I had chosen so. But in the end, I had a choice."
I brought a hand to Illyasviel's eyes and closed them.
"Did she want to become the Lesser Grail?"
My question made Medea go silent.
"From how she reacted, she never had a choice."
She clicked her tongue, reminded of her own unpleasant past.
"Tell me, do you want to help her?" I asked, bringing my face up to look into her eyes.
Her gaze shifted from left to right, a single foot tapping the floor unconsciously, fingers curling into fists.
She had been projecting a front since we entered this room, likely to avoid burdening me with new problems so soon after the war.
"Haah... you're so annoying sometimes, Master." Medea sighed, breaking eye contact to look down at her curled fingers.
"... Fine. I want to save her. Not because of compassion or anything else. I want to save her because she reminds me of my past. Saving her would give me the satisfaction of saving myself. And I'm a greedy witch. I want to feel satisfied and good."
I processed her words in a second.
"I see."
"What about you?" she asked, snapping her gaze back up at me.
"Artoria wouldn't like someone she showed mercy to die."
A vein pulsed at her temple as she grit her teeth.
"Artoria, Artoria, it's always Artoria with you, Master!" Medea's hands shot forward, gripped my collar, and shook my whole body.
I tilted my head mid-motion. Dilated pupils, flushed skin, grip tightening. Her data was compiled and categorized in milliseconds: "Jealousy".
"Not only Artoria. You too want to save her, so we have two reasons now." I said, already concluding that my words would pacify her.
Her shaking only increased, hands sliding from my collar to my coat, shoving and wrenching with even more force.
Hm?
"Say my name first, then Artoria's." she demanded with steel in her voice.
I looked at her face, then her hands, then back to her face.
"We will save her because you want to."
The shaking abruptly stopped. Her hands went slack on my coat and she brought her forehead forward, collapsing it on my chest.
Three seconds later, her voice came out muffled from my chest.
"Good."
...
Inside the workshop, within an adjacent room, Medea traced a ring in air. Two magic circles rotated to life on the floor, rising from below as two chairs materialized beneath them.
I settled into a chair and crossed my legs, resting an elbow on my thigh with my knuckles holding up my chin.
She took the seat beside mine, hands folding neatly over her lap.
"So, then... Master, have you thought of any way we can save her? I don't see a path forward, even with all my magic." Her voice was low, her gaze drifting downward as if she couldn't bear to look at my face.
I brought my free hand up and unfolded a single finger.
"The first method is simple." A pause. "We use one of the Heroic Spirit souls stored inside Illyasviel and find a way to merge it with her, turning her into a homunculus-Heroic Spirit hybrid."
Medea's ears twitched, then immediately flattened. "A band-aid. The other three souls would still tear her apart from inside."
"Correct. She might last longer, but she will eventually meet the same fate."
Her shoulders sagged at my words, though she perked her ears again, waiting for me to continue.
I unfolded a second finger.
"The second method is equally straightforward. My Reality Marble acts as a smaller version of the Throne of Heroes, allowing me to summon projections of every Ultimate whose talent I possess."
Medea flicked a finger, and a notebook and pen flew into her grasp from nearby.
"I can perform the same surgery that gave me every Ultimate talent on myself, using Illyasviel's genetic material to gain a new talent like [Ultimate Einzbern] or [Ultimate Homunculus]."
She was scribbling furiously in her notebook now.
"That way, I should be able to summon her projection as an Ultimate. From there, we can use a small amount of mana from the Grail to incarnate her as a human, while her homunculus body continues to store those souls and can be used to open a path to another world."
"But Master, your Reality Marble is still healing!" Her pen froze, ink bleeding a blotch onto the page. "Won't adding a new variable be like dropping a destabilizer into an already unstable solution? If it shatters—"
"It would set my recovery back. Possibly for a year." I finished for her.
She furrowed her brows.
"Absolutely not! You're still injured, Master. Even if you look fine on the outside, you're still healing. We are not following through with this suggestion." Medea snapped her book shut forcefully, glaring at me.
"Besides, Artoria's [Avalon] is still with us. It should be able to do something to help," she pointed out, offering her own idea.
I shook my head. "[Avalon] is powerless here. Even if it heals her body, it cannot protect her from the conceptual weight of those Heroic Spirit souls crushing her consciousness. It can heal, but her mind will just break and heal repeatedly, a cycle of ruin and repair."
Finally, I unfolded a third finger.
"This is the last method I could find. We build a puppet body before Illyasviel fully turns into the Lesser Grail, take her to Justeaze, and have her use what she calls the Third True Magic to transfer Illyasviel's soul from her homunculus body to the puppet, essentially giving her a new life."
"...This might be possible," Medea murmured, bringing a finger to her chin.
"It will depend on how fast you can create a puppet body," I noted her reaction, shifting my knuckles.
"Hmm... I would need blueprints detailing how the Einzberns create their Homunculi, as well as materials that might not have existed in my era."
I leaned forward at her words.
"Meaning you need Einzbern blueprints and the structural compositions of materials they use to create their Homunculi?"
"Yes." she affirmed.
"For your [Item Construction], I presume?"
A nod confirmed it.
One second of silence. Two. Three.
"Do you think you can get those things in under a week, Master?" Medea asked, her nails digging into her notebook.
"You already know the answer to that." I said calmly.
Her grip on her book loosened, shoulders relaxing as the tension bled out of her body.
"Of course I do."
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[5 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Wohoo! We're going to Germany, and maybe across the world to hunt for different materials.
Tell me...
Who wants to blow up the Eizbern's castle?
...
Bro... where is my mind? I uploaded the chapter ahead of this one. Whew, caught it quickly.