While I was pondering my prospects of becoming a slaver for the sake of my lust—though does owning a Homunculus count? They're not human. Ahem, pondering these important revelations didn't stop me from monitoring the situation in the yard, namely Rin teasing Shirou in both his aspects at once.
"Ahem, ahem—Shirou's fetishes are certainly interesting, but let's get back to business?" And waiting until everyone calmed down, I continued. "So, we'll change the future a bit. Fix the yard and head to the church, but don't reach it! That's important! Stop a couple of streets away, then turn and casually stroll to Shirou's house. On the way, you'll meet Illya and... Shirou, impress her with your charisma? Um, promise of family and brotherly love? Anyway, make an impression on her! You can tell her about me; the main thing is she agrees to a temporary alliance. Otherwise, alas, your chances are slim—no day for a new recruitment attempt; after that, you either handle this preparatory task. Or not, but I'll tell you the main goal—and knowing you, you'll rush straight to it each for your own reason, dying in the process—after which I'll summon the guardians and this city will be destroyed. Well, I've given the first task—good luck!"
And without waiting for new questions, I dispel the Glamour and fall backward off the fence, simultaneously going into Intangibility. Phew, seems like it went okay. A normal adult would've had tons of questions and dragged the conversation, which could've made me slip up. Luckily, I'm dealing with teenagers! And I didn't drag the talk long, mostly dumping info on them and not giving initiative.
Proud of myself, I went around the fence and climbed it aside, starting to observe the results of my actions. If you skip the rehashing of what I'd already said from empty to empty, nothing new came up. Though some of my words were confirmed, and they tried to beat the truth out of Archer-Shirou, who cited that yeah, something like that happened, but memory issues and such.
In principle, everything was going as I planned; Rin fixed Shirou's yard, which had me drooling. The way she scattered so many small, and sometimes stronger, repair spells so quickly forced me to seriously reassess my capabilities. Just roughly estimating the number of circuits she used on her side for small spells—it came out to under 30—and that's insane! My mage clone has a bit more, and she didn't even look tired! Which forced me to admit—selective breeding works wonders.
And think about hitting on Rin with lewd propositions after the war—why not? Strong, smart, beautiful—I could appreciate that in the bathroom. Why not an option for building a relationship? In the background, Artoria was given a yellow raincoat—the reason? As I said earlier, botched summoning or Shirou's weakness—because of which she can't go intangible, and walking the city in armor is too noticeable.
And so the "dream team" headed along the route to the church, and I followed. Walking, listening—mostly their talk doesn't interest me much, and I hear nothing new, except Rin shared that there's a weird barrier at school and we should ask me sometime—maybe I'll say something about it. In principle, sure—I don't mind, and that barrier bugs me too.
So the leisurely 15 minutes passed until they approached the church—and I tensed up. Plan's a plan, but if they decide to go in anyway and discuss me and my revelations with the local churchman—anything could happen. Most likely, they won't come out. So I had to run and stand in their path—in case they decide to go further, I'd have to appear and dissuade them. To my luck, Rin said the guy there isn't very pleasant and better not talk to him extra, so I exhaled.
Thus they turned around and headed back, but not even two streets later, Illya and Berserker met them. Oil painting—a little girl in a hat and coat. And next to her stands a jacked three-meter guy in just a loincloth-skirt and with a sword more like a club, whom the girl barely reaches the waist.
Personally, this mountain of muscle chilled me; he's taller and wider than me by almost twice! So this is what ordinary mortals feel meeting Primarchs in Warhammer 40k! From what I recall, it's Heracles? And he's conditionally immortal—12 lives for each feat, and one life regenerates per day. I can't even imagine how to kill this hunk—and Rin's comments that with some magic she determined he's nearly a hundred times stronger than Saber and could fight all Servants at once make me a bit down.
The only sane way to deal with him I see is snapping Illya's neck, waiting for him to berserk and weaken—but even then, I probably couldn't do anything to him! I mean, I have a knife and Axe, but even if he's lying still—I'd spend half an hour carving this PRIMARCH, and he surely has regeneration too! And yeah, he'd thrash during it! But I want his heart! I can't even guess what I could get from him!
But here, maybe try with a chainsaw... And I pondered that from him, you could harvest 12 hearts! Though in practice, I can't imagine how; I'm not even sure about 1! That feeling when you really want to but realize you can't handle it. Okay, I'm wise; I can tame my greed—as they say, greed ruins the sucker.
Illya waited a bit, letting us all appraise THIS, then decided to interrupt the discussion between Rin and Shirou on the theme—"go on, she's your sister!"
"Talked about everything? Good evening, little brother—I'm Illyasviel von Einzbern." Illya gave a light bow. "Good, now I'll kill you. Berserker, you're up."
And I teared up looking at this bloodthirsty concentrate of kawaii. Though watching Berserker casually swat arrows and simultaneously hurl Artoria down the street with a Shpala strike quickly cooled me—if this continues, Artoria will die ahead of time! And Shirou's cries of "Saber, no!" and "Illya, stop! We need to talk!" weakly helped change the situation.
So I had to take matters into my own hands and hurry to Illya in stealth; reaching her, I came from behind, applied Glamour, and put hands on her shoulders, making her flinch. "Illya, stop; you really need to talk to them."
The next moment, the hair on my nape stood up; Illya literally puffed magic—and following self-preservation instincts, I let go, went intangible, and literally fell backward on my back. Just to feel something pass through my head and see the huge Shpala sever my illusion's head from the body, which flew somewhere aside.
Holy shit, his reaction—good thing the Shpala serving as his weapon is just a plain Shpala, not an artifact! And he was almost 30 meters away just now, if not more! And yeah, Berserker stood nearby watching my illusion's head roll along the sidewalk.
Silence fell on the street, and I pulled myself together and crawled away on all fours. Then ran and stood between Illya and Berserker on one side and Rin and Shirou on the other. Well, that was close! So, pull it together—time to act!
I throw on Glamour and pretend to rub my neck. "Yeah, getting your head chopped off hurts, but no hard feelings."
"You're alive?!" Japanese MC trope.
"Who are you?" Illya.
"Yeah, alive; I told you you couldn't kill me. I'm Tedd, messenger of the Counter Force. And yes, Illya, sorry for invading personal space, but otherwise you probably wouldn't listen to them. And yes, you should listen to them and agree." And without waiting for questions, I drop Glamour and go intangible.
"And why should I?" Illya.
"Maybe because if I wanted to harm you, I'd just snap your neck before you could react—instead of giving myself away with words?" Seems like a solid argument to me.
After thinking a bit, Illya agreed to listen.
***
Read the story months ahead of the public release — early chapters are available on my Patreon: Granulan