Chapter 40: Merli: It's Over!
In a forest some distance from the Matou estate, Merli, who had just fled the scene, sat on a tree branch, her beautiful eyes glowing with a bewitching purple light. She seemed to be gazing at a place far, far away, her legs swinging leisurely back and forth, muttering excitedly to herself. "Yes, just like that! Bite her! Use more force!"
Suddenly, the sound of crushed leaves echoed. A jet-black figure stomped on the ground from a great distance. A cloud of vapor from the counterforce exploded under her feet, and she shot forward like an arrow, appearing before Merli and slashing down with her sword.
Swoosh!
The moment the black blade crossed Merli's pale neck, her body dissolved into a shower of flowers. When the petals fell to the ground, they reformed into her figure.
"My, Artoria, what are you doing?" Merli complained, but her hands moved without delay, a wooden staff appearing as she pointed it at Artoria's landing spot.
Artoria, having landed, turned with incredible speed without the slightest hesitation. While still in the motion of turning, she stomped on the ground and shot towards Merli like an arrow again, letting the ground where she had just been explode. This time, her longsword slashed towards Merli's waist.
CLANG!
At the last possible second, Merli's staff blocked Artoria's sword. In the next instant, the sound of countless metal clashes echoed between them, the light of their swords filling the dark forest.
"Don't be like this, Artoria," Merli whined. "If you keep bullying me, I'm going to get angry. I'm really going to get angry! Artoria! You wouldn't want Iri to find out about you secretly eating Jiuan, would you?"
An exceptionally fierce killing intent flashed in Artoria's eyes. Though she didn't know how the other woman knew about her secret snack behind Irisviel's back... as long as the person was dead, they couldn't talk!
Artoria stomped on the ground, gripping her sword with both hands and slashing diagonally upward at Merli's neck. As usual, Merli's slender arms and pale, small hands, which looked like they had never held anything heavy, held the staff and easily blocked her sword.
And then... BOOM!
A black and red light instantly engulfed Merli's body. The light dissipated. Looking at the empty space before her, now just a hundred-meter-long black trench in the ground, Artoria's eyes grew colder. That white-haired woman isn't dead.
Just as she was about to continue the chase, she suddenly stopped. In the next second, a figure holding a blood-red and a yellow long spear had already rushed to her side, swinging its weapons down at her.
"Heeheehee, you're still too naive to kill me, Artoria," Merli chuckled to herself, strolling through the woods, sensing the mana fluctuations of Artoria, who was now caught in a surprise attack far behind her. She looked quite pleased with herself.
But in the next moment, the sound of chains echoed. Before Merli could react, several chains had already pierced her limbs, hoisting her into the air.
"Mongrel. Keep running for me, why don't you?"
Looking at Gilgamesh standing on a tree branch, her blood-red eyes reflecting Merli's image and filled with暴虐 (tyranny/brutality), and behind her, over a hundred gleaming golden Noble Phantasms emerging from the Gate of Babylon, enough to turn her into a pincushion... the smile on Merli's face completely froze.
"It's over."
The north wind howled, whipping the coat of the person standing on the mountainside. Tokiomi's steady gaze seemed to penetrate countless spatial barriers, falling on the lively battlefield next to the Matou estate.
"It has begun," he said.
Standing behind him, Kirei suddenly spoke. "The Hundred-Faced Hassan, Diarmuid, and Kiritsugu Emiya have begun their siege on the King of Knights."
"How foolish," a mocking smile appeared on Tokiomi's lips. How could he not know what Kiritsugu and Kayneth were thinking? They were just planning to get rid of him after dealing with Lin Jiuan. "But they never thought that my goal was not to eliminate that monster."
As Gilgamesh's former Master, no one knew her power better than he did. To think they could kill her with just three Servants? What a joke. And without dealing with Gilgamesh, how could they possibly deal with that monster that even the being who resurrected him feared? As for getting revenge on Lin Jiuan?
"Kirei, how are things on your end?"
"I've already had Assassin dispatch some of her personas to handle it secretly."
The Holy Grail requires a sufficient amount of magical energy to manifest. And that energy requires a certain number of defeated Servants to return to the Grail. But who said the mana had to come from defeated Servants? For that existence, he had already broken the rules. Humans and Servants were both just 'batteries' to him. It's just that humans provided a small amount of electricity, while Servants provided more. But no matter how little, if the quantity was large enough, it could completely match several Servants. To allow the Grail and the existence within it to manifest, Tokiomi had devised this battle plan.
On one hand, unite with as many Servants as possible to besiege others, making sure as many as possible are eliminated. On the other, have the Hundred-Faced Hassan secretly capture the citizens of the city, using them as batteries to feed that existence.
"And then..." Tokiomi seemed to already envision the scene. He spread his arms, closing his eyes in satisfaction. "It will be the time for me to realize the ultimate, centuries-long wish of the Tohsaka family. It will be the time for me, Tokiomi Tohsaka, to reach the Root!"
The hatred of having his wife stolen, being killed, being cuckolded to his face... how ridiculous those once-maddening hatreds seemed now. Only his current self was a true magus, a magus truly qualified to reach the Root!
"The Root?" Kirei looked at his teacher's back and suddenly let out a soft, disdainful laugh that was lost in the wind. My teacher has gone mad. He didn't know if it was the shock of his wife's betrayal at the time of his death, or if his mind had been corrupted by the innate evil within the Grail. Or perhaps, this was simply a monster wearing his teacher's skin.
But Kirei understood. The resurrected Tokiomi was not the same man as before. But so what? A Tokiomi like this was far more interesting. Kirei was also eagerly anticipating it. Not reaching the Root, not making a wish upon the Grail, but to see... the birth of All the World's Evils!
That scene... will surely be very joyous.
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