"About the leylines… or rather, the dragon veins… the family's old archives actually recorded them."
Uesugi Etsu explained, perhaps noticing the look of disbelief on Genji's face—a "How come I, the Emperor, didn't know about this?" expression—which drew a dry chuckle from the old man, tinged with embarrassment.
"That mirror world you mentioned does indeed exist. It's like the reflection of this city, a parallel space to the real world but completely different."
"I originally thought that place had long been forgotten in the corners of history, fading away with time. I never imagined that this so-called Holy Grail War could drag such a ghostly place back into the light."
Decades ago, during his stint as the most irresponsible Shadow Emperor in the history of the Orochi Eight Families, Etsu had stepped into the family's hidden library many times, poring over those thick tomes—until the day he fled, when he set fire to the entire archive and burned it all to ash…
After all, he was the Emperor; there could be no family secrets from him. He'd memorized most of the legends and records in great detail.
In Etsu's memory, Yoru no Shokuhara—the so-called "mirror world" of Takamagahara—though named the "Land of the Dead," was in truth a prison. A prison meant to hold those Dead Apostles whose bloodlines had gone berserk beyond control.
Modern-day Orochi Eight Families, working with the Secret Party, had established a Japan branch and an Enforcement Bureau to scientifically and strictly manage unstable hybrid bloodlines. But in the distant past, things were very different.
The ancestors of the Takamagahara Orochi Eight Families, faced with such uncontrollable kin, chose an extreme alternative—through cruel alchemy, they transformed them into a special type of being, then cast them into Yoru no Shokuhara.
The basic steps of this alchemy were to first drain every drop of the hybrid's blood, then fill the veins with regenerative mercury. Mercury, a metal solvent, would be infused with "death metal," which, through slow circulation, replaced all the bones in the body with death-metal elements. The mercury was then drained, and the refined blood returned.
After many such treatments, a living alchemical construct was born—like a corpse guardian, immune to pain, tireless, with a copper head and iron bones, functioning without muscles or organs, moving forever on bone and tendon alone.
The ancestor-alchemists had hoped this could turn berserk hybrids into reliable fighting force. But they underestimated the persistence of draconic bloodlust.
Even the refined blood coursing through their bone cavities retained those genes—it could not be erased. These beings could not be controlled; they slaughtered all living things indiscriminately.
In the end, all such creations were thrown into Yoru no Shokuhara, imprisoned forever. Later generations of alchemists never found a way to fix the berserk problem, and the place was sealed off, left only as a tale in the archives.
Though the Orochi Eight Families knew of the mirror world, they never tried to excavate it. To reach such an ancient ruin, you'd have to dig hundreds of meters down, and no one could guarantee the massive alchemy array sustaining it was still functional.
Etsu remembered Yoru no Shokuhara so clearly because, during his reign, someone had once proposed releasing the ancestors trapped inside to gain absolute wartime advantage.
Even the radicals at the time wouldn't back such madness—because it didn't take much thought to realize that if those monsters were freed, their first targets wouldn't be the enemy, but their own kin!
And who knew how many monsters had been sealed there over the ages? Tens of thousands? Millions? Releasing them would cause an unprecedented human catastrophe.
So, having witnessed the insanity of wartime, Etsu chose to burn the archives on the day he fled. This ensured that neither Masamune Tachibana, the later head of the family, nor Genji, the current Shadow Emperor, would know that beneath their feet lay such a vast mirror world.
Even now, he merely confirmed its existence to the younger ones, without revealing the full details.
Shirou blinked. "So this mirror world was built upon the dragon veins long ago. Why would you know this, Master Etsu, but Genji doesn't?"
Seeing Etsu's embarrassed face, Genji suddenly recalled something and gave a resigned shrug. "Yeah… I think I know why. The day my father fled, he personally burned the archives to ash."
No wonder he'd never even heard of the archives—most likely they'd been wiped out in that fire, and the scraps that survived wouldn't fill a bookshelf.
"…You burned them?" Shirou was at a loss for words. Other people fled to see the world, and if things didn't work out, they could still go home to inherit billions. Master Etsu's escape was the real deal—making sure to leave no way back.
"Pfft… incredible! That's so you, Master Etsu!" Charlotte covered her mouth, laughing through her fingers, openly mocking the old man who had just been lecturing her. "Don't tell me you burned everything? You didn't even leave anything for the next generation?"
"Yeah, all of it. I heard the elders say the family lost countless priceless manuscripts that day," Genji sighed. "I'd thought it was just due to the passage of time—but no, it was because Father torched them."
"Wow, cool! That's like the ultimate biker gang exit!" Charlotte clapped in mock admiration.
"Ahem!" Sensing the conversation was heading toward criticizing his "great deeds," Etsu coughed sharply to change the subject.
"In any case, all I can say is that this place truly does exist, sustained by the underground dragon veins. As far as I know, there are monsters in there, but the Shadow Servants you mentioned—that's new to me. Must be a distortion from the Holy Grail War."
What worried him most was that the Yoru no Shokuhara had changed—meaning something had gotten inside.
He remembered the dragon veins that sustained it had been built around the corpse of a god. Later, that corpse parasitized Susanoo, becoming Yamata no Orochi, before being sunk into the deep sea along with Takamagahara by Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi. Since then, Tokyo's dragon veins had run unattended for thousands of years.
And since the place was sealed, no one could come and go freely—except one kind of being: "God."
In the past, the unattached Etsu would have bought a ticket to Lyon and been gone. But now, his children were here.
His eyelids drooped as he recalled the fire of his youth.
No choice—at a hundred-plus years, he was still in his prime. For the sake of his descendants, he'd fight!
After a brief discussion, and at Shirou's suggestion, Etsu agreed to consider the Holy Church's offer—not to join them, but to persuade them to join.
After all, the Grail was turning into a "Black Grail." The Church would never allow their sacred symbol to become a cesspool. If they could be rallied under banners like "The Lord's Glory Shall Not Be Defiled," they could be put to work.
Genji also promised Shirou that he would mobilize family resources to investigate strange incidents and use their geological institutions to search for an entrance to the mirror world.
The group then split up, except Genji, who stayed with Etsu in the church.
"Son, you didn't come here just to talk about the Holy Grail War, did you?" Etsu quietly closed the yellowed pages of the Bible, his gnarled fingers tracing the worn cover.
"Tell me—what's troubling you enough to come to me? No matter how many years have passed, and no matter how late it is to make up for the child support I owe you, at least in life experience, I can still help you."
"Yes… it's something very difficult," Genji admitted, his grip whitening on the pew's armrest. "By duty, I should make a decision. But emotionally… I can't, because it's someone very important to me."
"Oh, that's the problem? Then you've come to the right person!" Etsu's eyes sharpened like blades. "When it comes to matters of the heart, you can't hesitate! Life's great decisions must be taken seriously! What you need to grab, grab it—don't wait until it's gone to regret it!"
"One sentence! So many beauties love fools, so many fools don't cherish them! Crude words, but true!"
"…Huh?" Genji was dumbfounded. "Father, you're misunderstanding me. I'm talking about my 'old man'…"
Genji recounted the events of the previous night's summoning and relayed Masamune Tachibana's "life story." Etsu listened in silence, pondering.
"You said that Masamune claimed his mother was from the Tachibana branch family, named Tachibana Misa?"
"Yes. Is there a problem?"
"Of course there is. I don't recall the Tachibana family having anyone by that name."
(End of Chapter)
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