A spear-thrust arrived first—cold, sharp, and murderous—then came like a dragon bursting from the dark.
A silver flash cut through the night.
Waver was still busy with his own deductions, head lowered, thinking out loud about the identity of the silver-armored knight—completely failing to notice the air around that man had already frozen solid.
The moment Gilles heard Waver's careless words—words that dared to drag him, a man steeped in sin, into the same breath as the eternally pure and radiant Jeanne d'Arc—whatever little restraint he had left shattered on the spot.
The madness inherent to the Berserker Class detonated.
His reason evaporated—ascending straight to an EX-grade collapse.
His body moved faster than thought.
Almost purely on instinct, he hurled the fleur-de-lis banner lance with every ounce of strength he'd ever possessed. The throw came with no warning, no telegraph, no hesitation—so fast that even Waver and Iskandar didn't react in time.
In a blink, the silver point was already at Waver's throat.
A hair's breadth more, and it would have pierced clean through—ending him instantly.
The divine bulls roared a warning.
Iskandar snapped awake to the killing intent, yanking his sword free in a desperate, rushed draw and swinging at the lance mid-flight to knock it aside—
But his body simply couldn't keep up.
As a Rider, his close-range agility was only D.
His blade was too slow.
The silver streak passed his sword like it wasn't even there, streaking straight toward his Master.
"Duck!" Iskandar bellowed.
Clang!
A burst of sparks exploded in the air.
At the very last moment, a yellow demonic spear cut across the trajectory and caught the banner lance head-on—deflecting it away with a hard, ringing impact.
Diarmuid—fastest on the field—had made it.
At a distance of mere centimeters from Waver's neck, he managed to intercept, his Gáe Buidhe bracing perfectly against the incoming strike.
"Thank the gods… I made it," Diarmuid breathed.
Waver, meanwhile, hadn't even properly processed what happened. Two streaks of light flashed in front of his eyes—then a chill of death grazed his throat like a blade of ice.
His legs gave out. He collapsed onto the chariot, voice trembling.
"W-what… was that…?"
"Are you hurt, boy?!" Iskandar demanded, far more concerned with Waver's condition than any explanation. His Master had just brushed the gates of the underworld—if Diarmuid hadn't been there, that throw would've killed Waver outright.
"I… I'm fine… but… I almost died, didn't I…?"
Waver's fingers shakily touched his own neck, needing to confirm it was still there before he could even breathe properly.
"Hah! You pissed yourself?" Iskandar mocked—then reached down and patted Waver's soaked clothes, checking for injuries. When he confirmed it was panic and not a wound, the tension in his shoulders finally loosened.
"I— I did not!" Waver flushed red, mortified. "That's sweat! I just— I just sweated a lot!"
"All right, all right," Iskandar said, unusually gentle, his huge palm ruffling Waver's hair. "My mistake. My mistake."
Then his expression hardened.
"Stay behind me. Because now… I'm going to punish a coward."
He planted himself before Waver like a wall, turning toward the man who had thrown that spear.
His smile vanished.
What replaced it was fury—raw, imperial, and absolute.
"Rider…" Waver murmured from behind him.
Iskandar's sudden shift—his protection, his calm reassurance—pulled Waver's frantic heart back from the edge. For the first time since summoning the loud, shameless red-haired brute who ate his food and played games all day, Waver felt something he hadn't expected to feel.
Safety.
As if, so long as this man stood in front of him, no danger could reach him.
Was the earlier frivolity just a mask?
Was this the true form of a king?
Iskandar raised his voice, wrath rolling like thunder.
"Despicable rat who dares to strike from the shadows—have you prepared yourself to die?"
He was a king with the breadth to welcome heroes, a man who loved gathering great souls beneath his banner. But kindness was not weakness, and generosity was not permission.
A king's duty was to give his followers certainty—to make them believe they could stand behind him without fear.
And now, right in front of him, someone had tried to kill his subject.
It wasn't merely an offense.
It was blasphemy.
It was the ultimate insult to a king's authority.
Across from him, Gilles de Rais no longer had the capacity to hear reason.
"Damn you, filthy little magus!" he screamed, eyes drowning in madness. "How dare you insult the great Jeanne—how dare you! You should die! All of you should die!"
While Iskandar was still shielding Waver, Gilles had already snatched up his banner lance and charged—colliding with Diarmuid in a fresh exchange of steel.
And in that violent scramble, Diarmuid felt it clearly—felt the berserk pressure, the madness in the gaze—
His eyes widened.
"So he's… Berserker."
That explained the abrupt turn. The sudden, irrational attack. The ignition of insanity at a single name.
Jeanne d'Arc.
So this man—whether he was her ally, her follower, her shadow—was unmistakably bound to her legend.
A crucial clue.
But Iskandar didn't care about nuance.
Attempted murder was attempted murder.
And that alone was enough to warrant execution.
"You're the one who should die, coward!" Iskandar roared, leveling his sword at Gilles, ready to bring the divine bulls and the chariot's might down in tandem with Diarmuid.
"Wait, Conqueror King," Diarmuid called out sharply. "That strike—he didn't do it with a sound mind."
If it was Berserker madness driving him, then the betrayal wasn't truly the man's will.
Diarmuid—knight that he was—felt the weight of that.
More than that, he felt something familiar inside the other man: obsession, faith, a cause worth throwing one's life away for.
They were—strangely—alike.
He wanted to defeat Gilles fairly. To end him with a knight's blade, not with a numbers advantage.
Under normal circumstances, Iskandar might have laughed and agreed.
But not now.
Not after Waver nearly died.
He rejected it instantly.
A fair duel or not, the punishment would be delivered.
"I swear," a voice chuckled from the sidelines, amused to the core, "this is getting better and better."
Cú Chulainn—still the unclaimed free agent—was grinning like he'd been handed a festival.
Over there, Arthur and Gilgamesh were tearing the night apart.
Over here, this mess had erupted.
This Holy Grail War was absurd in the best possible way.
By all logic, Cú Chulainn should have sat back and watched—let them thin each other out, let the field become clearer.
But why would he?
He wasn't some passive observer.
He was a born fighter.
And if the party was this good, he was absolutely joining in.
He flipped forward in a clean somersault, landed lightly, and twirled his wooden spear in a series of flashy, effortless flourishes. Then he planted it behind him and grinned at Diarmuid and Iskandar.
"Alright, alright. If you're short on opponents—bring me in. We'll split into one-on-ones. Fair, right?"
He pointed between them.
"Come on. Who wants me?"
And just like that, the first night's chaos locked into a complete, ridiculous battlefield.
Saber Arthur vs Archer Gilgamesh
Lancer Diarmuid vs Berserker Gilles de Rais
Rider Iskandar vs Caster Cú Chulainn
The first night—at the seaside park—had turned into something that looked like a final-day showdown.
In the shadows, every Master watching through familiars went pale.
This was not how any of them imagined the war would begin.
Elsewhere in Fuyuki, inside an ordinary residential building—
Kenneth, who had set up a simple hidden workshop and kept himself concealed, watched the seaside battle through his familiar.
His expression shifted between light and dark—calculating, tense, unreadable.
He had only sent Diarmuid to clean out Assassin's rats and rendezvous with Rider and Waver.
Instead, every faction had converged, and every Servant had found a duel.
A full-scale brawl.
On the very first night.
This was beyond anything he'd anticipated.
And the deviations among the Servants were even more disturbing.
Rider: Iskandar.
Lancer: Diarmuid.
Archer: Gilgamesh.
Saber: Arthur.
Those aligned with what he knew.
But he couldn't accept the rest.
The Arthur in his memory had been a woman—so why was this one a man, and why did he feel even more monstrous?
And Gilgamesh, too—something about him was different.
As for Berserker… Kenneth had at least pieced that together.
A man tied to Jeanne d'Arc, carrying a fleur-de-lis banner spear—this could only be Gilles de Rais, the "Bluebeard" the Church had once hunted down in coordinated force.
The face didn't match perfectly, but Kenneth was certain it was the same spirit.
Only this time, Gilles wasn't Caster.
He was Berserker.
And he wasn't "Bluebeard," either—he looked like he'd regressed to his era as France's marshal.
The "Caster," meanwhile, was Cú Chulainn.
Had Berserker and Caster swapped in this iteration? Had Kenneth's old assumptions been wrong from the start?
Hypotheses stacked up in his mind—fast, sharp, relentless.
He had thought a combined strike—Diarmuid and Iskandar together—might let them remove the weakest-looking target first.
But then Cú Chulainn inserted himself.
Now it was one-on-one across the board.
And none of these Servants were lightweights.
Every duel on that field could go either way.
Even with Diarmuid restored to a stronger configuration—his sword retained alongside his spear—Kenneth couldn't call any outcome "certain."
And when he saw the numbers Gilles was putting out—how grotesquely strong the "French marshal" appeared—Kenneth's mind went blank for a heartbeat.
It made no sense.
In technique, Diarmuid should have been superior.
Yet the raw parameters… were wrong.
Something was deeply off.
Too many things were off.
Kenneth kept watching, carefully, suspiciously, grinding through possibilities.
A decisive battle now was nothing but gambling—throwing away every strategic advantage of Class and terrain, leaving everything to brute force.
In his eyes, that was stupidity.
And besides—
Time was running out.
He glanced at the clock on the wall.
It was 4:00 a.m.
Fuyuki would begin moving soon. If Servants kept trading blows, the damage would become impossible to cover up.
Whether he liked it or not, he needed to pull back.
The first night was too short to settle anything. He needed more data.
He was about to issue the order—have Diarmuid withdraw with Waver and Rider—
When—
Click.
A crisp sound.
The entire living room, the entire building—went dark.
"A breaker?" Kenneth muttered, unbothered at first. He immediately fed mana into the room, restoring the lights with magical power.
Then his eyes snapped to the window.
Something was wrong.
Only this building had lost power.
The surrounding towers were lit as normal.
Someone had done this on purpose—to force him to reveal himself.
He realized it in an instant—
But he didn't get a second.
At the edge of his vision, a projectile—trailing flame like a meteor—launched from a building across the street.
It smashed through his magically reinforced window with a shriek—
And screamed straight into his room.
Boom!
A blossom of red fire detonated in midair.
And in that one instant, the half-asleep city of Fuyuki was finally, violently awakened.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 90)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 95)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 80)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter70)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter70)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter50)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter60)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 20
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 20
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