I'm Not A Master, I'm A Director
Chapter 382: The Curtain Rises. Thunderous Applause Belongs Here!
Although Jeanne and her party had successfully landed on the Hanging Gardens, that only meant they had completed the first stage of the operation.
Next, they would have to defeat Amakusa and his Servants, then shut down the Greater Grail and bring this Holy Grail War to an end.
It could be said that the real battle was only just beginning.
However, before that…
"Ugh… bleh—" Σ_(꒪ཀ꒪」∠)_
Kairi Sisigou slumped over the railing of the Hanging Gardens, retching nonstop, only a step away from vomiting up his entire digestive system.
Despite his big build and rough appearance, Kairi was actually quite conscious of his personal image in everyday life.
But right now, forget maintaining dignity in front of the ladies, he didn't even have the mental capacity to worry about whether his puke might land squarely on the head of some unfortunate pedestrian hundreds of meters below.
"Master, you're seriously pathetic," Mordred said with a look of pure disdain, waving her hand as if trying to fan away the sight.
"Bleh… give me a break… how is a normal human supposed to compare to Servants like you…?"
Kairi's face was deathly pale, making him look genuinely pitiful.
In preparation for the fierce battle that was guaranteed to happen tonight, Kairi Sisigou had equipped himself with as many defensive measures as possible before boarding the plane.
But no matter how prepared he was, he wasn't a professional pilot—and he certainly hadn't undergone G-force training. During the aerial combat earlier, his organs had nearly been shaken out of place.
Thankfully, his pre-set defensive systems had done their job, sparing him from any real injuries. He was just horribly airsick.
As for why Kairi was vomiting this spectacularly…
That was because when Mordred responded to Jeanne's Command Spell, she had yanked her Master out of the cockpit, slung him over her shoulder, and flown him over.
That kind of acceleration…
"Being strapped to the outside of a space shuttle during launch probably feels like this… bleh… I think I finally understand why astronauts ride inside vehicles instead of being directly exposed to the air… bleh…"
He barely made it halfway through his self-deprecating commentary before clapping a hand over his mouth again.
"Hahahaha."
Outside the big screen, the audience burst into laughter at Kairi's exaggerated expressions.
"This is hilarious. That middle-aged guy actually has a cute side," someone commented.
"Yeah! I thought he was the perpetually serious type. Didn't expect him to be comic relief," another agreed.
...
And that wasn't all—standing nearby, even Amakusa was pointing at the screen, laughing out loud.
"Didn't know you had such a talent for comedy, old man."
Kairi, being mocked by his own ally, could only wear a helpless expression.
Indeed, compared to his image throughout most of the film, the sight of him clinging to a railing and vomiting added a significant comedic flair.
While it made his character feel more fleshed out and approachable, Kairi himself wasn't exactly thrilled about being branded as the "funny one."
What made it even more frustrating was that the decision to include the vomiting scene had been his own.
During filming, Shinji had felt that simply having the group exchange dialogue in such a stiff manner lacked impact.
This scene required Kairi and Astolfo to temporarily withdraw due to poor condition, creating the perfect opportunity for Jeanne and Mordred to face off one-on-one.
But no matter how hard Kairi tried to act "unwell," it just didn't feel convincing enough.
In the end, he'd suggested it himself.
"Why don't I just… throw up a bit?"
Shinji thought the idea had real potential. He even specifically instructed Kairi to lean into the slapstick angle—after an intense action sequence, a bit of comedy would help the audience relax.
And so…
That was how this scene came to be.
Judging by the results, it was clearly a success.
But Kairi couldn't help feeling it severely damaged his tall, tough image.
Still, hearing the audience's laughter and overwhelmingly positive reactions, he began to think that maybe this slightly goofy, comedic edge actually suited him pretty well.
'…This is probably a good thing, right?'
A hint of doubt surfaced in Kairi's heart.
However, on the big screen, the protagonists didn't have the luxury of hesitation.
"Um… what do we do now?" Mordred asked, looking troubled as she turned to Jeanne.
"I'll stay here with the old man," Astolfo volunteered, raising a hand cheerfully.
"That fight earlier was way too intense. I need a breather too."
"Alright. Then that's the plan."
Jeanne nodded. She knew every second counted now.
Just moments ago, a spine-chilling surge of magical energy had erupted from deep within the Hanging Gardens, a clear proof that Amakusa had already activated the Holy Grail.
Although there would be a delay between the Grail's activation, the deployment of the ritual, and its completion, Jeanne estimated they had at most one hour to stop that priest.
"Let's go, Mordred. We need to reach the heart of the castle as fast as possible!"
Jeanne tossed aside the broken half of her flagstaff and charged deeper into the castle together with Mordred.
However, the moment they entered the interior, both Jeanne and Mordred sensed two enormous sources of magical energy and immediately split up.
They didn't know which one was the castle's core and which was the Greater Grail. But both were targets that had to be dealt with, so they simply took one each.
Separated from Mordred, Jeanne sprinted through the castle corridors. The stone-paved passage seemed to stretch endlessly forward, as if it would never end.
Even so, Jeanne was certain she was nearing her destination. She could already sense the presence of the Greater Grail. That alone confirmed she was on the right path.
Unlike the wide, open platform at the top of the gardens, this corridor was extremely narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side.
In contrast, the ceiling was so high it vanished into darkness.
This long, cramped, and shadowy space stirred unease among many audience members in the theater. A bad feeling crept into their minds.
Shinji Matou is definitely up to something.
Sure, this was a big-budget commercial film—not a cult horror piece—but Shinji's track record was anything but reassuring.
Leaving aside the distant Heaven's Feel routes, just earlier during the battle at the Yggdmillennia castle, those vampire jump scares had nearly made everyone leap out of their seats.
By this point in the story, only the Red faction's Caster had yet to make a proper appearance.
Yet, to the audience's collective surprise, even when Jeanne finally reached the end of the seemingly infinite corridor and stood before the massive door at its terminus, that mysterious Caster still hadn't appeared.
"What's going on here?"
Shibamatsu frowned in confusion. He'd already braced himself for a Shinji-style jump scare, heart prepared to leap into his throat—
And yet, nothing happened.
Wasn't that just playing with people's emotions?
That Caster had supposedly gone rushing out in a frenzy after hearing Jeanne was coming, and yet hadn't even tried to ambush her?
Or had Shinji predicted the audience's prediction, deliberately crafting this atmosphere to keep everyone on edge, using tension itself as the scare?
"Is this… the thousand-layer mind game between director and audience?"
Once again, Shibamatsu found himself in awe of Shinji Matou.
On the big screen, however, Jeanne had no concern for what audiences in another dimension were thinking.
She, too, found the absence of the Red Caster suspicious.
The enemy was undoubtedly plotting something, but with the Holy Grail right before her, how could she afford to stop?
"…I need to be careful."
Casting aside her hesitation, Jeanne reached out and pushed the door open.
Creeeak—
The massive door opened with surprising ease. No traps. No magical locks. Nothing.
"This place is—"
Jeanne scanned her surroundings.
It was a vast, mortar-shaped space, so enormous that its edges were nearly impossible to see.
Despite the sheer scale of the chamber, her eyes were immediately drawn to the colossal Greater Grail installed at its very center.
At the same time, she sensed the presence of a Servant.
"Only one… Shirou must have already entered the Greater Grail. Which means the only one left is—"
"Come out already. Red faction Caster."
"Oho! Ohoho! Even if you didn't call for me, I was going to come out on my own!"
A man appeared before Jeanne.
He wore relaxed, medieval aristocratic attire, held a pen in one hand, and had a thick book tucked under his arm.
Staring at Jeanne with fervent, almost unhinged excitement, he declared:
"Rejoice! Blending devotion, spirit, sincerity—and all sorts of other things besides—my manuscript is finally complete!"
Jeanne did not respond to the man's Woz-like proclamation of celebration. Instead, she froze in surprise at his true name.
"Shakespeare?"
Although Laeticia wasn't great at math, her humanities grades were solid.
Influenced by her JK host, Jeanne naturally knew that this great British literary master had left behind quite a few "works" related to herself.
She had long since grown used to the British habit of smearing her name, but Shakespeare's plays still made her uncomfortable—both psychologically and physically.
Interestingly, Jeanne and Shakespeare were standing quite far apart, and the Bard himself was one step higher than her.
This made the scene resemble a stage performance, as though Shakespeare were standing on a theater platform, putting on a play just for Jeanne.
Especially when he bowed deeply in greeting—almost identical to an actor acknowledging applause at the start of a show—the theatrical vibe became overwhelming, further reinforcing the audience's sense of watching a live drama.
"Delighted to make your acquaintance, sweet country girl from France—my little cocotte!"
Crack
Jeanne stepped forward hard enough that the stone tiles beneath her metal boots shattered.
"Oh my, how rude of me. I seem to have relapsed into an old habit," Shakespeare said, pressing a hand to his forehead as if troubled—though his tone carried none of the remorse his words implied.
"Indeed, I am the Red faction's Caster. Are you disappointed? But, Jeanne d'Arc… between heaven and earth exist things utterly beyond the imagination of our philosophy."
"That sounded incredibly convoluted. Was that even English?" Fujita complained, scratching his ear.
Because studying magecraft required it, Fujita's English was actually pretty decent. Which was precisely why Shakespeare's dialogue on screen sounded so awkward to him.
"That's because it's theatrical English from Shakespeare's era," Alice muttered, resting her chin on her hand.
"Modern English is heavily influenced by his plays, but the vocabulary and grammar are still quite different—"
She paused mid-sentence, tilted her head, and stared at Fujita with open disdain.
"Aren't Renaissance-era English magecraft texts written exactly like this? Don't tell me you've never read them?"
"Who pays attention to stuff that old…" Fujita muttered, averting his gaze guiltily, unable to meet Alice's eyes.
"Illiterate," Alice concluded coldly.
The older a document was, the greater its research value—this was the prevailing academic belief in the magecraft world.
While the Department of Modern Magecraft was actively challenging that notion, that didn't mean they ignored ancient materials.
So Alice's assessment of "illiterate" was, by no means, exaggerated.
Thankfully, Fujita was thick-skinned. Alice's criticism went in one ear and out the other.
Besides, the movie had subtitles. Even if the dialogue sounded unpleasant, he could still understand it by reading.
That said, he suspected he'd never get used to Shakespeare's deliberately archaic speech.
"Illiterate, huh…"
Li Ri'ang, seated at the far end, turned pale when he heard that.
When it came to studying, Li Ri'ang was just like most people—once he started working, anything outside professional knowledge became mutually unfamiliar territory: you don't know me, I don't know you.
Even after becoming a magi (at least in his own opinion), he had started studying again, including plenty of English materials.
But thoroughly reading Shakespeare's works? That was still far beyond his current level.
"Should I… start learning Old English?"
Not only would it help with magecraft research, it'd be perfect for showing off and picking up girls!
Most young women these days had a touch of artsy romanticism, if he could casually flex with original Shakespearean English, wouldn't he be swimming in admiring gazes?
While Li Ri'ang was busy fantasizing about stylishly showing off, on screen, Jeanne, utterly unable to tolerate Shakespeare's intentional flaunting of archaic speech, charged straight at him.
"I'm sorry, but I have no interest in listening to your nonsense!"
Jeanne shot forward like a bullet toward the "frail scholar" standing before her.
Now that Shakespeare's identity had been confirmed, Jeanne had no intention of wasting any more time.
Heroic Spirits of the writer type usually possessed Noble Phantasms that materialized their stories.
The most common form was summoning heroes from their own works into reality.
Even if limitations from mana supply, Saint Graphs, or other factors prevented those summoned characters from operating at one hundred percent of their original strength, as long as they could defeat the enemy, that was enough.
And the more famous the writer, the more characters they could summon—and the stronger those characters would be.
If her opponent was Shakespeare, the most renowned playwright in England, then the number of characters he could summon would be beyond counting.
It might even be possible for him to summon a version of "Jeanne" from his own plays to fight her.
With that in mind, Jeanne had absolutely no intention of standing around politely and waiting for Shakespeare to activate his Noble Phantasm.
Even if she was confident she could deal with whatever "babies" he summoned, wouldn't that still take time?
And right now, time was the one thing Jeanne lacked the most.
"Hahaha~ come then! I shall have thee meet that man whom thou find dear yet full of hate. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player... That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. First—'"
Shakespeare showed no fear as Jeanne charged toward him. With exaggerated flair, he raised both arms high, the thick book that had been tucked under his arm now held aloft.
"—Folio!'"
He loudly chanted the true name of his Noble Phantasm—the collection of plays published after his death.
"Tch—has the Noble Phantasm already activated?!" Jeanne frowned and accelerated even further, drawing back her fist.
If the Noble Phantasm was already in motion, then she'd knock this man flat before it could fully take effect!
Without her flagstaff, and unwilling to release her second Noble Phantasm, Jeanne could only rely on fists and kicks as her means of attack.
But that was fine.
Even if she couldn't compare to a certain Iron-Fist Saint, Jeanne was confident her punches wouldn't disgrace any saintly title!
Just as Jeanne's fist was about to pierce straight through Shakespeare, the playwright's Noble Phantasm activated.
The world around Jeanne sealed shut.
The script was complete.
She would now be forced to perform the story written for her—on his stage.
"Damn it!"
Jeanne found herself standing in a fog-filled white world. There was nothing around her—nothing at all—save for the boisterous, gleeful laughter of that penniless writer echoing in her ears.
"Come now, my play begins! Take your seats! No smoking! No photography! No rude or vulgar outbursts!"
"The world is in my hands—this is my stage!"
"And now, the curtain rises—offer thunderous applause! Hahahahaha!"
As Shakespeare's opening monologue rang out, the fog slowly began to fade.
"Huh…?"
The scenery before Jeanne gradually solidified.
A nostalgic scent of grass brushed past her nose.
"This… this is…?"
Her eyes widened.
"My hometown?!"
<+>
Tn: I updated the story once every 2 days, but if you want to see more chapter of this story ahead of time, please go to my Patreon.
Latest Chapter: Chapter 429: Another Poor Kid Who Gets Sold and Still Says Thanks[1]
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