Preapare for a somewhat confusing chapter
****
4.12 PM
BANG
"...Again." The boy raised his hand looking at the broken wooden knife. It's been hours since he started practicing, actually a normal magus would have exhausted his Od reserves long ago after using a spell repeatedly for hours. But that's nothing the boy had to worry about, everytime his reserves were getting low the king would just give him something to drink and he's back at top condition in around five minutes.
At first Gilgamesh was certainly finding the situation amusing but he started getting bored of it after a few times. Well, not that he ever thought the kid would succeed, especially when he was making him do a spell practice as he had to walk around to follow him. Only a genius magus could do something like that when he just started learning magecraft.
But that wasn't Gilgamesh's intent, from the start he just dragged a conversation for the sake of assessing the boy's mental condition and disposition after the morning… retching episode.
The whole purpose of having him do all this was just to keep on moving and thinking, he wasn't going to leave him time by himself without anything to do so he could just push out everything that might build up inside him. So letting him sit while he tried reinforcing seemed too comfortable in his opinion and the situation ended up like that, with him making sure it was just uncomfortable enough to not let him idle.
'I guess that's enough of that today. I will have him do something else, but what would be a good idea?' Gilgamesh was deep in thought as the matter wasn't exactly easy. He had to keep him busy but not in a tiring way so his mind was never exhausted.
They continued walking as the kid continued practicing Reinforcement and Gilgamesh thought of what to make him do next.
Then suddenly he felt a presence not too far away and he suddenly had an idea. 'I forgot about those mutts around. This is a Holy Grail War, even if I have no interest in it, the other Servants seem to still be kind enough to leave some toys around to keep the brat entertained with a little spectacle.'
"You can stop now." Stopping in his tracks, Gilgamesh addressed the boy. "You did enough of that, let's go do something else. We are going to watch a show now."
"A show?" The kid tilted his head in confusion. 'Is he going to make me watch Magi☆Mari or something?'
Gilgamesh still didn't elaborate though so he just followed him as he was led around the streets to a secluded alley.
"So, I believe I have ranted long enough about the strength of a Servant, but I have yet to show you what it means when they fight. I am going to quickly show you the gap on a practice target that just so happened to luckily be around the corner."
Stopping for a second Gilgamesh seemed to be pondering something before he opened a portal to his treasury and took out a black cloth and threw it to the kid. "Use this like a scarf, you can't take it off without permission."
"Ok." The boy did as instructed and put the scarf around his neck.
"Good, let's go. It's just around this corner." Gilgamesh urged the kid and as they took a turn what presented itself before them was a completely normal alley. Dirty and with trash lingering around but apart from that there was nothing strange about it.
"Don't be fooled by appearances, watch closely." Gilgamesh stepped into the alley before he stopped near a wall. He turned around and smiled at the boy as he raised his left hand pointing his thumb to the left at the wall.
"?" The boy tilted his head, not understanding. It was just a wall, there was nothing else there.
And then–
–BOOM
Without warning Gilgamesh's fist rocketed forward and struck the wall like a thunderclap. The shockwave cracked the concrete, sending fragments scattering around. But it wasn't the wall that was struck by his fist.
A puppet materialized from thin air from the rubble of the wall. It quickly jumped away from his enemy, It stood as tall as a man and with a musculature seemingly made from maybe a strange levigated wood or some metal, some wires were visible in some juncture as if they were the puppet's nerves or blood vessels. On top of his head and chest yellow clothes were tied in knots. And something that looked like a blue fire faintly emanated from his junctures.
"See?" Gilgamesh said, his voice casual as ever. "This little thing here was just hiding, that's why you couldn't see it before."
The puppet, now fully visible, realized the blonde man was an enemy and lunged at Gilgamesh with two short sickles in his hands.
WHOOSH
The puppet brought his sickles to Gilgamesh's head, it moved faster than any normal human could react in time to evade.
Gilgamesh didn't move from his spot. He waited until the very last instant before stepping aside with a simple tilt of his body, letting the sickles smash into the ground where he once stood cracking the floor.
"Bold of you to think you could hit me like that." Gilgamesh scoffed at his enemy mockingly.
The puppet didn't pause. Its arms twisted unnaturally as it immediately spun into a follow up strike, slashing upward toward Gilgamesh's side.
Once again, he didn't block, instead he took half a step backward, just a little distance away from the puppet. The blade whistled past his chest in an upward arc, missing his nose by a hair's breadth.
"Fast, isn't it?" Gilgamesh called over to the boy, not even glancing at the puppet as it launched into another flurry of strikes by twisting his arms unnaturally from his shoulder junctures. "It would gut even a normal magus before they could retaliate."
The puppet roared, its motions becoming increasingly erratic as it blurred with movement. Its strikes became a frenzy of spinning slashes as his sickles arched in the air, the flames emitted on the puppet's shoulder seemed to get bigger as his arms continued to spin faster. Sparks flew as steel scraped walls and stone all around the alley.
But Gilgamesh was untouched. He danced through the onslaught without raising any resistance.
"This puppet may be beyond a human in raw strength. A modern day magus could spend decades crafting something like this. And that's just for one such puppet. And yet, before a Servant–" Gilgamesh tone grew sharper as the whole atmosphere around him seemed to get more dangerous. "–even this is barely worthy of being called a toy."
The boy's eyes were fixed on the scene before him. He wasn't watching the puppet anymore, he was watching Gilgamesh. It was like watching a man fighting with a child, even without using any weapon or impressive move he could just avoid everything the puppet tried to do without much effort.
"Now." Gilgamesh sighed, his voice filled with disdain. "I've grown bored."
The puppet spun again for one final strike, limbs rotating at high speed, its momentum peaking as it came at Gilgamesh from both sides, like a closing guillotine.
A ripple tore the air open beside him. From the golden light of the Gate of Babylon, a longsword slid forward into Gilgamesh's hand. He caught it with a flick of his wrist as the puppet's sickles came down.
CLANG一一一一一一一一CRACK
It was a simple, clean motion. Whether it was the puppet's body or the two high spinning sickles nothing hindered the blade's path. Gilgamesh stepped past the puppet in a relaxed walk, as if nothing had occurred.
CRACK—THUMP
Behind him the puppet crumbled to the floor. Its severed arms hit the floor first. A second later the upper half of his torso fell as it freed the puppet's leg from its weight and collapsed.
The blue fire on his joints hissed and extinguished. Gilgamesh never looked back at the puppet. He let the sword vanish again into a newly opened gate.
"You understand now, don't you?" he said, turning to face the boy.
"Yes... there wasn't even a contest. It couldn't even fight back." The boy nodded and told him his impression of the situation.
"That's how strong Servants are and that puppet was even stronger than a normal human and could even kill an average magus. Also you have to bear in mind I'm no warrior myself, I'm not clueless about armed combat but I would never dream to face another Servant who specialises in Martial Arts in close combat for an extended period." Gilgamesh pointed out to avoid having the boy misunderstand the situation. "Also while one puppet like this is the equivalent of a lifetime of effort for today's magi it might just be a normal familiar for a Caster class Servant."
He turned his head pointing at where the shredded puppet lay dead. "And case on point, there is one Servant who has made thousands of such puppets just to look over the entire city."
The boy didn't answer right away. His gaze lingered on the broken machine. "Would a thousand of those puppets be able to defeat a Servant?"
"Defeat a Servant?" He repeated, lips curling into a smile. "Well, I guess the outcome would change depending on the Servant fighting them as Noble Phantasm might vastly change the outcome. However I'd say on average a thousand puppets would still lose against one Servant who fights them all without attacks that can destroy a great area, even if they would still probably injure their enemy or exhaust them to a great extent."
"So they can't?" The boy asked as he tilted his head.
"I guess not on average in head on confrontations. But if their owner fights in conjunction with them he would hold a great position of vantage against the enemy and ambushes are also an option." Gilgamesh's smile turned much more arrogant as he pointed at his face using his thumb. "Of course that doesn't apply to me. I would always win in whichever case."
"I see." The boy nodded at his explanation.
"Anyway that's it for today." The king declared the end of their exploration. "We are quite far from the hotel and you need to go to bed early, so let's start heading back. Tomorrow we will go around and deal with a few more of these puppets."
The boy nodded and followed him outside the alley, of course he didn't point out that it was still quite early.
***
5:03 PM — Minami-Senju, Tokyo
The sun hung low in the sky, painting the city in a burnished orange light. Minami-Senju carried on like any other part of Tokyo with steady foot traffic on the sidewalks, salarymen in tired suits heading toward home, the distant buzz of vending machines through glass doors, and the clatter of bicycle wheels and cars over uneven asphalt.
To the average pedestrian, the collapsed building nestled in the middle of an older block was an eyesore, fenced off with corrugated steel and bound by yellow and black hazard tape. A tarp had been laid over scaffoldings on one side in a half-hearted attempt to shield it from view, but the jagged skeleton of twisted metal and half melted pieces of concrete was still hard to not notice.
Despite the damage, no crowds had gathered for long. A few locals paused now and then to glance over and mutter something among themselves, some with concern, others just with idle curiosity, but they quickly moved on .
A man leaned on a vending machine across the street from the site, pretending to check the drink options. He inserted a coin, selected a canned coffee, and held the can against his jaw as if lost in thought. He was dressed like a regular office worker in a dark suit.
He turned his head slightly, then brought a burner phone out from his pocket and flipped it open. He pressed a number, no dialing needed.
"It's 5:03 PM." He murmured into the receiver as looked at his watch before glancing at his surroundings, his voice low and composed. "No change to the area. No unusual spiritual signatures detected, no confirmed magecraft activity. Civilians still keep their distance. No one fitting the designed profiles has approached the perimeter yet."
He paused, waiting for a reply. A faint voice came through the phone with a volume barely above a whisper. "…Understood." He replied, nodding faintly. "We'll hold the position until further notice. I'll make a trip around the area and return after changing attire."
He closed the phone and slid it back into his pocket. With practiced ease, he finished his canned drink and pushed off the vending machine mixing with the crowd before disappearing.
Elsewhere, a girl with a tan wearing a jacket lingered at a bus stop diagonally across from the ruins, earphones in, seemingly reading a paperback novel called "The Hated Fateless Slinger". In reality, her lenses were enchanted, filtering any heat and Od signatures beyond the average human parameters. She adjusted her glasses subtly, tracking the paths of pedestrians.
Two more watchers stood by an open fruit stand, exchanging idle banter with the vendor while their eyes remained locked on any passerby who lingered near the destruction.
The scene looked normal like it was another normal day, but the entire area was actually under constant watch. Just like some freelance necromancer and easygoing Saber guessed.
***
To the eastern part of Tokyo, near the Adachi Ward, lie many old residential blocks built decades ago. The area was packed in narrow streets and even some curbs were uneven.
In one of these blocks, four stories tall with crumbling paint and numbers worn off the doors, looked just like the average rundown building that could be rented at a very cheap price in exchange for the terrible building's condition.
However on the third floor, several of the one room units had been broken through and repurposed into a single, connected space. The walls between the units were crudely torn down to connect the areas together. The smell of dust and exposed wiring clung to the air mixed with iron and cheap disinfectant.
In what used to be a living space, a few old CRT monitors sat on a wobbly folding table, flickering with some security camera feeds. The boy sitting in front of it all looked extremely young, maybe seventeen or eighteen by appearance with pale skin and black hair falling just past his ears. He was dressed all in black from his shirt to his trousers, even wearing a pair of dark gloves on both his hands.
He would have looked like a normal teenager if not for the look in his eyes, so cold and sharp that it seemed like it could kill a person with just a glance. It was certainly not something you would expect to find in such a young man in this day and age.
A few others were scattered throughout the makeshift operations room, men and women of various age in plain clothes, none of them speaking unless absolutely necessary. The sound of pens scratching on paper and the low hum of the monitors were the only noise.
One man stood hunched over a stained folding table near the window, drawing red lines across a printed street map of eastern Tokyo. Colored pins were pressed into several locations. At the far end of the room, a young girl scribbled into a notebook, referencing a printed list of timestamped sightings pulled from the cameras.
Another man was holding a phone as he received a call. Once the call was over he went over to the boy to report the situation, he gave him a respectful nod, holding a small notebook in one hand.
"No changes at the site of last night's battle. People are still avoiding staying too much in the area thanks to the remnant of the half broken bounded field that was placed last night to battle the white haired Master. None of the ones passing through seemed like magi. Just salarymen, students and a few bums."
"I see." The boy didn't turn to look at him and just nodded in answer, his eyes still locked on the monitors.
"Should we start pulling the watchers back by nightfall?" The man unbothered by his attitude just inquired further instructions.
The boy finally glanced over his shoulder as he tapped the armrest of his chair in thought for a bit before answering. "No, leave them in place for now. In one hour switch them with team 3 though."
The man nodded quickly and stepped away.
The boy leaned back slightly in the rickety chair, his gaze drifting back to the flickering footage of Minami-Senju with hatred. "Did you find anything about the location of that man's new hideout?"
The man by the map exhaled through his nose, flipping a few pages of his own notes before answering. "Unfortunately, we still found nothing after that one sighting, we tracked five blocks south about twenty minutes after the fight broke off. So, he's probably hiding even during the day as his appearance does stand out a lot, especially here in Japan."
"If you found nothing just say so directly instead of repeating things like a parrot." The boy scoffed coldly at him in displeasure before bringing his attention to the map.
On it several locations were pinned down with different colors. Blue for the 37 surveillance points, yellow for the 53 minor disturbances....…..and finally one single red pin for the confirmed encounter against a Master and Servant on Minami-Senju. A printed photo was put beside it picturing a man with sharp grey eyes, broad shoulders and long white hair slicked back, biting on a toothpick.
"What about his Servant, did you gather any intel that could help us narrow down his identity?" The boy asked, still irritated that they hadn't found the man's whereabouts.
The man coughed trying to lessen the tension on himself psychologically before answering. "We are still gathering information based on his fighting style and appearance. For now, we believe he might be a heroic spirit from northern Europe."
He then brought out a few folders from under the table and presented them on the table. "We also started investigating his background, searching for some clues. And based on his last works as a mercenary during the past 4 years we have tried guessing if he could have gotten any relic that might have connection to heroes of such origins."
He tapped a line in his notes. "A few years back, he took a job recovering relics that supposedly belonged to an old Danish king and he may have had some further deals with the employers. We also suspect he might have used some Anglo Saxon or Celtic relics as he used to work around those areas when he first started his work as a bounty hunter."
"For now the heroes we believe the most likely to be that Servant's true identity are: Beowulf The Berserk, Fergus Mac Róich the Plain Cleaver, Hrolf Kraki the King of Berserkers, Grettir the Strong and Conall Cernach the Vengeance of Ulster."
"Gather as much information as possible on the possible Noble Phantasm of all of them."
"Yes, Master Julius." The man nodded and got back to his work.
Looking back at the man's picture the boy's, no Julius', eyes turned dark and brimmed full of killing intent.
[You sure look quite angry.] A mocking voice sounded in his mind, clearly a man's but the speaker was nowhere to be found in the room almost like he was invincible(invisible).
"Yes." Julius admitted. "Next time, I will make sure to kill him."
***
5:44 PM — Underground Jazz Bar
Yvette crouched near the back wall, her coat discarded over a chair. The sleeves of her blouse were rolled to her elbows, fingers smeared with chalk and a bag of jewels laid next to her as she drew symbols on the ground and walls.
Ever since she woke up she worked to reinforce the bounded fields in their base as Hector had suggested that the best course of action would be to, well, stay at home for the night. She did not take well to the fact that someone had roughly a thousand high performance puppets all around the city and ended up going on high alert, unlike her usual self.
She was the only person visible in the room as Hector retired to spiritual form to help his Master preserve magical energy and laze around as she worked hard.
But that didn't lessen the irritation Yvette felt. [You know, Lancer…you could at least try to be of company to your young and beautiful Master with some light conversation instead of acting like a mute.]
[Unfortunately, I am a complete novice in the field of magecraft apart from passive knowledge I gained for fighting it. So I wouldn't dare disturb your concentration Master. Don't mind and continue drawing in peace, after all, old guys like me tend to annoy young people, so don't worry Master I won't trouble you with my rambling and let you work comfortably.] Answered swiftly Hector through their mental link, doing his best to avoid any chore before nightfall.
Yvette's eyelids and lips twitch in frustration to his reply. 'Bastard, you acted so cool and collected yesterday night but now you are just being grumpy trying to nap while I work. And also did you not just nap after we got back last night as well? What are you? A bear?'
Yvette grumbled under her breath as she traced the last seal near the exit with precise flicks of her wrist, the rune flared to life with a soft blue glow before dissipating. She stood up, stretching her back and stared into the empty space near the couch.
"I'm starting to think that maybe it would not have been that much of a waste to use all that magic power to have you help me out on errands. After all, how could I ever be bothered by my incredibly strong and reassuring Servant."
[Give me a break.] Hector could only let out an exasperated sigh at his Master's antics.
"A break from what? Lazing around? You should instead…" And so Yvette went on rumbling to him due to her bad mood.
Unfortunately for Hector it's still quite some time until night especially in this season. So there is nothing that can save him from Yvette's scoldings. Though, had the circumstances been a bit different it would have been Hector who would have questioned Yvette's seriousness but at least for today Yvette transformed into a completely serious and efficient magus due to the puppets' threat.
But fortunately (or maybe not) for him by tomorrow morning she would have reverted back to her usual self, after all Yvette can't stay serious for more than a day in a row. If she did, then it would mean that she is in an extremely fucked up situation for multiple times in a row.
But that would not be the case, at least for today.
***
8:22 PM — Tokyo
And so, night finally came for the city of Tokyo.
If danger ever had a favorite hour, it would be after sunset. That quiet hour when shadows grow long, for the sun slips beneath the skyline of the city, leaving only the street lights and moonlight to illuminate the surroundings.
And during a Holy Grail War where the battlefield takes place during such an hour of the day, a night without battle is pretty much a dream.
***
9:14 PM
So during such a war, a night without violence should be a contradiction, an impossibility even. After all, such a conflict can only be won through the bloodshed of the enemy Masters and Servants.
***
10:41 PM
For this is the very nature of a war among magi. A battle where only the personal interest of the individuals takes precedence over any form of morality and decorum. For a magus there is no amount of lives that is not worth the cost if it means the realization of their ambitions.
***
11:27 PM
And yet-
***
12:03 PM
For tonight, not a single person made a move. For just this one night nothing stirred.
No blades drawn.
No person stepped forward.
The watchers kept watching.
The hidden kept hiding.
Even the occasional serial killers, robbers, yakuzas, vandals and minor delinquents seemed content to wait just one more day.
***
2:56 AM
And so the night came to an end in the most tranquil manner ever witnessed in a conflict of magi like the Holy Grail War. But whatever this was a good or bad thing is left to see for the future, after all.
A calm must always come before the storm arrives.
****
Author's note: Hello did like the chapter? if so leave a power stone.
Confusing chapter? hell yeah. As you all can see that are MANY obscure parts of all this war and i plan to slowly reveal each one of them as time goes on.
And yes hector was not the only dude fighting that night, the other fight happened around 2/3 hours later so it wasn't included when gilgamesh felt the first one. After all the city is much larger than Fuyuki and its dumb to think everyone would fight at the same moment and hour.
You will learn more about that battle in the future don't worry, it's just that I had no intention to waste more than 10 chapters on the Day 0 of the war, and now things quietened down for Day 1 which went along very uneventfully.
Why Gilgamesh didn't mention it? he just doesn't care enough and he is utterly uninterested in the war as i took inspiration form samurai remnanat but he sure wants to go grind whatever is blocking his clairvoyance.
Next chapter I'll introduce to you all a proper Original Character, Look forward to it.
Please leave Reviews and power stones