"Wake up... Hurry, wake up!"
Luvia slapped Rin Tohsaka across the face.
"Mmm... Huh...?"
The girl blinked and gradually regained consciousness.
"Finally. Honestly, this is why I keep saying that members of the Tohsaka Family only know how to hold everyone back..."
Ignoring Luvia's complaints, Rin Tohsaka sat up, brushed the snow from her clothes, and asked, "Where are we?"
"It appears we've been separated from Shirou-sama."
Yvette removed her eye patch and gazed into the distance with her glowing, jewel-like eye.
"This place has already become some kind of otherworld. Even my detection Mystic Eyes are completely useless here."
"The Idea Blood..."
Rin Tohsaka muttered under her breath.
The reason, the Principle, that made the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostles enemies of human history.
A seed containing what Magecraft theory called a World Egg, a Texture Rule that imposed its own physical laws.
A Principle was not merely a transcendent power. It was said that its manifestation changed according to the characteristics of the life-form that possessed it.
Unlike a Reality Marble, which could only erode the world for a limited time, this was a Great Mystery capable of completely transforming the world into another realm.
"We need to get back to Shirou as soon as possible... Anfang!"
In the middle of speaking, Rin Tohsaka abruptly raised a finger.
With the incantation, she fired a magical bullet formed by compressing an extremely concentrated Curse.
The projectile vanished into the blizzard, followed by the sound of it being knocked from the air.
Luvia glared in that direction and shouted, "Who's there?"
Several seconds later, more than a dozen figures emerged from the blizzard.
Rin, Luvia, and Yvette all held their breath.
The reason was the overwhelming stench of blood. Every one of them was a Dead Apostle.
At their head stood an aristocratic-looking man with a goatee. His crimson eyes settled on Rin Tohsaka.
"An excellent reaction. Do human Magi possess such keen combat instincts at such a young age, or are you simply exceptional?"
"Oh my, you're impressed by something so trivial? There certainly are a great many sheltered vampires in this world."
Luvia's confident remark drew the Dead Apostle's gaze toward her.
"..."
The Dead Apostle was inwardly startled.
The black-haired girl was already exceptionally talented despite being only a teenager, yet the blonde girl beside her was in no way inferior.
"Huh? What did you just say?" Rin frowned irritably.
"I said that was nothing special, Tohsaka."
Luvia covered her lips with the back of her hand. "For a barbarian from the East, I suppose you're passable... Ohohohoho."
"Hey... This really isn't the time for you two to argue."
Yvette stared at them in exasperation. "This man... might actually be stronger than the Ancestor we encountered earlier."
It was difficult to believe, but that was the judgment of her Mystic Eyes.
This Dead Apostle was stronger than Vlov Arkhangel.
He lacked Vlov's oppressive presence, which could directly crush an opponent's will to fight, but his Mana as a vampire existed on an entirely different level.
This man was an Eighth-Tier Dead Apostle.
"Oh, you're quite exceptional as well. Was it that peculiar eye that allowed you to accurately gauge your enemy's strength?"
The Dead Apostle smiled soundlessly as he stroked his goatee.
"I thought White Wing had merely sent me to assist Nrvnqsr Chaos with some troublesome, thankless work, but who would have imagined…"
"Hmph. Fortune truly smiles upon me. To encounter three such extraordinary prodigies at once."
"Young and talented Magi like yourselves will undoubtedly grow into exceptional Dead Apostles after being transformed into vampires."
"And when someone with more than a hundred descendants says so, you can be certain I am not mistaken."
"...!"
At his words, the girls immediately tensed.
More than a dozen Dead Apostles stood behind the goateed man. They were undoubtedly his descendants, his children.
He intended to turn Rin Tohsaka and the others into members of that group.
"Since you young ladies will soon become my daughters, let us begin with a proper introduction."
The Dead Apostle placed a hand over his chest, unilaterally declaring his intention to make them his descendants.
"My name is Louvre. I come from Norway."
The instant she heard the name, Luvia's breath caught.
Rin Tohsaka noticed her reaction and quietly asked what was wrong.
There was not a single Magus from Scandinavia who had never heard the name Louvre, the Dead Apostle of the Lake.
He was a great vampire noble who had lurked within the dense mists of Norway's lakes for centuries, coveting a seat among the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostles.
Even among the Dead Apostles, he was an ancient being whose history could be traced back to an Ancestor.
Louvre had originally been a human transformed by a Fallen True Ancestor for amusement, so he did not possess a Principle.
Even so, Luvia had heard the horrifying legends surrounding him.
He had drained sacrifice after sacrifice of their blood, claiming nearly five thousand lives.
Including the victims he had infected, that number grew several times larger.
Whether in quality, quantity, or the strength of the heretical and magical arts through which they depended upon one another, his lineage fully justified his reputation as an immortal monster known as the Transcendent Among the Transcendents.
Several centuries ago, the Church's Executors had hunted Louvre down and seemingly destroyed him in a lake, yet he had miraculously survived.
From that point onward, Louvre became obsessed with creating descendants, something in which he had previously shown little interest.
Under the protection of the White Wing Lord, the leader of the largest Dead Apostle faction, he had continued to prosper for five hundred years.
Louvre relentlessly preyed upon Magi.
He did not believe his current strength was worthy of a place among the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostles. He estimated that he would need at least another two hundred years before he could attempt to challenge one of the Ancestors.
To occupy himself during those two centuries, he fanatically plundered the Mystic Codes and Conceptual Weapons of Magi, transforming those with exceptional talent into members of his own lineage.
The result of five hundred years of accumulation was a vast family numbering well over a hundred, along with a trove of Magecraft legacies that even the Daemon Summoner Merem Solomon would envy.
Compared to the wealthy and ancient Dead Apostle of the Lake, Vlov, who had murdered his lord and usurped his position, was nothing more than an inexperienced brat who had become one of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostles through sheer luck.
"Louvre... Wait, is he the Dead Apostle that the current Barthomeloi failed to subjugate!?" Yvette exclaimed.
Barthomeloi?
Even Rin Tohsaka, who lived far from the center of the Magecraft world, had heard of that exalted family.
It was the oldest prestigious house in the Clock Tower, one of the Three Great Noble Houses, and the leader of the Aristocratic Faction.
As one of the Twelve Lords, it governed the Department of Policies and effectively ruled the Clock Tower.
The current head of Barthomeloi was a prodigious young woman who had inherited leadership of the family from her father at the age of fifteen.
Barthomeloi Lorelei.
She was the second and current Marshal of Magic since the Second Magician, the Queen of the Clock Tower hailed as the pinnacle of the modern era.
Just as the title "Queen" implied, she reigned over the very summit of the Clock Tower.
However, she possessed one deeply ingrained vice.
No, it was not hers alone.
It would be more accurate to call it a hereditary obsession of the entire Barthomeloi family. Every member of the clan was fiercely hostile toward vampires.
Barthomeloi Lorelei had previously defeated two of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostles and handed them over to the Church's vampire hunters.
Rin Tohsaka was stunned.
Even a Magus that powerful had failed to defeat the vampire before them?
Louvre smiled.
"The young lady of Barthomeloi is certainly powerful, but she is far too proud."
"The sight of her charging into my stronghold alone, only to plunge into the abyss, was truly amusing."
"But I shall save that story for later, once you have become my children."
With those words, Louvre raised his hand.
The dozen or so Dead Apostles behind him launched their attack on Rin Tohsaka and her companions.
...
One against three, huh?
I've been in a similar situation before.
That time, I was surrounded by a descendant of the Six Sages of the Atlas Institute, an Age of Gods Magus from the Wandering Sea, and a Xian from the Summit Court.
Had Wuzhiqi been there in her true form rather than her Solar God form, and had Ziz fought seriously, I probably would have lost.
Compared to that battle, this one seemed even more dangerous.
Nrvnqsr and Vlov still confronted Shirou head-on.
After declaring that she would make Shirou her servant, Rita Rozay-en had withdrawn to the rear and was now watching him with her alluring red eyes.
Was she preparing something?
The only possibility Shirou could think of was something like loading her Mystic Eyes.
He had no time to consider it further. Countless pitch-black creatures charged at him through the blizzard.
Every one of them was larger than an African elephant, the largest land animal alive, yet they moved faster than cannonballs. Their demonic silhouettes flashed through the storm as they hurtled toward Shirou.
"————"
Shirou remained perfectly still.
The Beasts streaked across the ground, leaving horrifying claw marks in the earth as though Dragonkind had torn through it.
More than a dozen Beasts frantically descended upon Shirou while he was fighting Vlov.
Then the attack ended as swiftly as it had begun.
Emerald light flashed.
A corresponding number of long swords shot out from behind Shirou, piercing every monster in an instant.
"————What?"
A faint tremor entered Nrvnqsr's voice.
He could still control the projection of his swords in the middle of this blizzard?
The reason a newcomer like Vlov had been permitted to participate in the hunt for Crimson Moon's Mystic Eyes was that his Principle, Freeze, was exceptionally effective against Shirou's fighting style.
By creating an otherworld filled with a howling blizzard, it could rob Shirou's rain of swords of both power and accuracy. It was practically his natural enemy.
How had Shirou overcome the environment?
Nrvnqsr unleashed another wave of Beasts.
The instant a lion leaped above Shirou's head, a massive sword flew from empty space and split it cleanly from head to tail.
Just as a leopard's claws were about to reach Shirou's face, a long sword pierced its skull.
A tiger was sliced in half as easily as a clay figurine.
Every Beast that attacked met the same fate.
Birds of prey diving from the sky, grizzly bears as large as hills, sharks swimming through the earth, and elephants whose footsteps shook the ground.
In the end, not a single one managed to touch Shirou.
Every Beast reverted to black slime the instant it approached him.
"————Ah."
Nrvnqsr finally realized what Shirou was doing.
As a scholar and Magus, he possessed no natural talent for combat. Even so, after repeatedly testing Shirou's defenses, he had figured it out.
Shirou waited until the enemy was directly in front of him before launching his weapons, relying solely on their initial burst of acceleration to shoot down the Beasts at point-blank range.
That minimized the blizzard's interference with his attacks.
"..."
The principle itself was simple, but just how much confidence did it take to pull off something like that?
Shirou gripped the chain and swung the Blades of Chaos like a flail.
"Ugh!"
Unable to close the distance, Vlov was forced back yet again. Shirou then fixed Nrvnqsr with a glare from his blazing golden eyes.
"!"
His bestial instincts made the black Dead Apostle recoil sharply.
But it was already too late.
The Blades of Chaos Shirou had been whirling had reached their maximum speed.
"——————!"
The flying chain blade sliced diagonally through Nrvnqsr Chaos's entire body, splitting him in two from shoulder to waist.
"Aaagh!!"
With a shrill scream, Nrvnqsr leaped backward.
Half his body from the shoulder down to his waist was gone, leaving behind a perfectly smooth cross-section.
The severed portion fell into the snow.
Although Nrvnqsr Chaos already understood how powerful Shirou Amamiya was, he had still underestimated him.
Even while being attacked by two of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostles at once, Shirou could still mount a counterattack with ease.
But an injury of this severity was nowhere near enough to kill one of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.
Nrvnqsr Chaos reappeared in the blizzard as if nothing had happened.
Like the corpses of his Beasts, the severed half of his body dissolved into black slime and returned to him.
"Haa... Haa..."
Shirou steadied his breathing as a dull pain spread through his lungs.
The Einzbern Family's ancestral cold-weather Mystic Code had stopped working moments ago.
Even a masterpiece of alchemy could not function for long in temperatures of one hundred degrees below zero.
"I admit that I misjudged you. It is truly difficult to believe... that a mere human could possess such immense power."
"You certainly live up to your status as the inheritor of Crimson Moon Brunestud's Mystic Eyes. Had any other Dead Apostle come here today instead of me, you would likely have killed them already."
There was not the slightest hint of exhaustion in Nrvnqsr's voice.
That was the difference between a highest-ranking Dead Apostle and a human.
For ageless, immortal beings like them, the concept of stamina had never existed in the first place.
On top of that, Nrvnqsr Chaos was an aberration even among the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostles.
"Is that your Idea Blood?"
Shirou asked while staring into the pitch-black darkness beneath Nrvnqsr Chaos's coat.
He was stalling for time to recover his strength.
The tactic would probably be useless against a perceptive warrior like Vlov, but it could work on a self-important Magus like Nrvnqsr Chaos.
"To discern my true nature at a glance... You are the first person in several thousand years to do so, Shirou Amamiya."
Open admiration appeared on Nrvnqsr Chaos's stern, corpse-like face.
"Should you care to remember it, take note of the number of Beasts within me."
"Expressed in human numerals, that number is six hundred and sixty-six."
"Heh. That is the amount of chaos contained within me."
Heinrich Zepter's madness was insignificant compared to Nrvnqsr Chaos's.
Shirou asked in a grave voice, "While you were still human, did you fuse the factors of more than six hundred Beasts into your own soul?"
Nrvnqsr Chaos nodded. "Precisely. It resembles the Earth of Creation or the Primordial Sea."
"I did not transform other animals into my flesh. I enclosed their genetic factors within Chaos and used that Chaos as my body."
"Nor do I possess anything that could be called a familiar. What exists within me is a collective of six hundred and sixty-six Beasts, along with six hundred and sixty-six lives."
"It makes no difference whether this body is cut in half or my head is shattered."
"I am one, yet I am also six hundred and sixty-six Beasts."
"To destroy me, you must annihilate all six hundred and sixty-six lives within me in a single instant. Otherwise, it cannot be done."
The Lair of the Beast King.
The Idea Blood possessed by Nrvnqsr Chaos.
It had originally been a Reality Marble concealed within his own body, allowing it to evade the world's correction.
Within him, the factors of 666 Beasts formed a vortex, effectively granting him 666 lives.
He could use the 666 Beast factors within his body to create Beasts, then release them to scout, attack, or devour humans.
Because he had already fused completely with those Beast factors, the Beasts he released were parts of his body rather than familiars.
The Beast factors within him possessed no fixed form. Even if one of the Beasts they formed was killed outside his body, it would not truly perish as long as it returned to the chaos at his core and reverted to its original state.
Therefore, to kill Nrvnqsr completely, all 666 lives had to be annihilated in a single instant.
Accomplishing that was as absurd as destroying an entire continent.
Shirou drew a sharp breath. "What exactly are you?"
"What am I? The question itself is meaningless."
The black Dead Apostle spoke slowly.
"What stands before you now is not an individual."
"The personality known as Nrvnqsr no longer exists. Rather than an individual, I am more accurately described as a collective."
"...Admittedly, from the perspective of you humans, a life that has become something like this has already lost all meaning to its existence."
"The Magus who originally sought eternal life sank into the deepest reaches of the Primordial Sea long ago."
That was the truth of Nrvnqsr Chaos.
Because his existence resembled the primordial Chaos of the universe, the Church had bestowed that name upon him.
"But do you not find it magnificent? Within me swirls a Chaos that could become anything."
"It is a miniature world comparable to the dawn of creation itself."
"Like the tree of Earth's entire life system, this Chaos, from which any manner of creature might be born, contains unimaginable possibilities."
"Before I disappear, I must witness with my own eyes what I will ultimately become."
"You really do love the sound of your own voice. Were you a professor at the Wandering Sea when you were alive?"
The corner of Shirou's mouth curled upward.
Thanks to you, I've finished recovering.
At present, he was merely an ordinary person who had trained since childhood.
His aptitude was exceptional for a first-generation Magus, but it still fell far short of the Clock Tower's aristocrats.
Under normal circumstances, once Shirou exhausted his Mana, he could only replenish it through Mana Transfer.
But now he possessed a new ability through his contract with the Saintess of the Winter, Justeaze.
As both Shirou's familiar and the Third Magician, Justeaze possessed an inexhaustible supply of Mana.
Her output efficiency was laughably poor, but in terms of total quantity, her reserves far surpassed even the Heart of Albion.
After Shirou became the master of the Saintess of the Winter, an invisible causal Line connected them.
Even with the entire Eurasian continent between them, Justeaze could sense Shirou's call and send her Mana into his body through that causal Line.
During the Fourth Holy Grail War, Lady Avalon had supplied Shirou with Mana in the same manner.
After experimenting with Justeaze, he discovered that she could do it as well.
Although the Saintess of the Winter's Mana output efficiency was said to be extremely low, that was only when compared to ordinary Magi.
As it happened, Shirou was only a third-rate Magus. No one was better than him at stretching a tiny amount of Mana as far as it could possibly go.
"!!"
Nrvnqsr Chaos's eyes widened.
A golden radiance bloomed in the palm of Shirou's right hand.
The light was unbearably dazzling to a vampire. Vlov raised an arm to shield his eyes.
"What... is that...?"
"Killing all six hundred and sixty-six lives at once? There's no need to make things so complicated.
"I'll just vaporize your entire world."
Shirou raised the ultimate, most powerful sword he had completed through Projection.
"————Enuma Elish (The Star of Creation that Split Heaven and Earth)!!!"
***
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