After entering the forest, the group found themselves in an environment even more treacherous than expected.
The howling blizzard drowned out every sound, and with each step, their feet sank ankle-deep into the snow.
Fortunately, Shirou always carried the Einzbern family's heirloom cold-resistant Mystic Code whenever he traveled, allowing him to shut out the cold completely.
Shirou, Rin Tohsaka, Luviagelita, and Yvette continued deeper into the forest.
Luvia tossed out a gemstone and infused it with Mana. The gem became a medium for a detection spell and flew toward the center of the Child of Einnashe.
"Was the terrain here always this mountainous?"
"It's easier to understand if you think of this place as the interior of a Reality Marble," Shirou said.
The true Forest of Einnashe appeared for only a few days every fifty years, like a Reality Marble that transcended the norm.
The Child of Einnashe was similar, but it was widely accepted that the same phenomenon could never manifest twice. Presumably, a single manifestation exhausted all the Mana it had stored.
That was why Luvia had not understood Shirou's insistence on destroying the Child of Einnashe.
After all, it would disappear on its own after a few weeks if they simply left it alone.
"No, that isn't how it works," Shirou explained.
The Child of Einnashe would die after manifesting once only while its mother remained alive.
Now that the Church had destroyed Einnashe's main body, allowing the Child of Einnashe to continue feeding and growing might result in it developing into a new Ancestor.
"I see. Then we really can't leave it alone."
Shirou had previously learned about the structure and hierarchy of vampire society from Natalia.
The vampires in this world were divided into seven tiers.
Tier I: Corpses.
They could not act independently and relied on commands from their progenitors, moving like marionettes. Without orders, they remained in a corpse-like state and could only sustain themselves through bloodsucking or blood transfusions. They were the lowest-ranking soldiers.
Tier II: Ghouls.
They possessed instincts but lacked any clear capacity for thought, merely imitating the appearance they had possessed in life. Because their brains had decayed, their thirst for blood was even stronger than that of the Dead. They were classified as soldiers among the Dead.
Tier III: Undeads.
They could independently disguise themselves and live among humans, though their ability to think was inferior to when they were alive. They did not fear sunlight, but they required regular preservation treatments. They were considered higher-ranking soldiers and marked the starting point of true vampires.
These first three stages all fell under what people commonly understood as ghouls and zombies.
Tier IV: Nightkins.
They were the equivalent of knights in the vampire world. They retained their personalities from life and possessed superhuman physical abilities, but suffered from constant cold and thirst. They could survive independently of their progenitors and represented the dividing line between humans and vampires. Only one in a thousand could advance to this tier.
Tier V: Nightmares.
They were the equivalent of high-ranking knights. In addition to the abilities of Nightkin, they could wield Curses or supernatural powers inherited through their progenitor's blood, allowing them to operate independently.
Tier VI: Lesser Dead Apostles.
They were completely independent and could create offspring, though they could not produce individuals of the same rank or higher. They posed a threat comparable to a fortress, could overrun entire villages, and were classified as disaster-level beings.
Tier VII: Greater Dead Apostles.
Recognized by the Twenty-Seven Ancestors and granted further supernatural abilities, their very existence could contaminate an entire region. They far surpassed Lesser Dead Apostles in scale and represented the highest class of Dead Apostle.
Tier VIII: Successors.
Talented vampires designated by an Ancestor as their successor. They possessed vast territories and enormous wealth, making them the princes and princesses of the vampire world.
Tier IX: The Twenty-Seven Ancestors.
The undisputed kings of the Dead. The manager of the Rail Zeppelin carrying the Mystic Eyes was one of them.
Would the Child of Einnashe be considered a Tier VI Dead Apostle, or perhaps one approaching Tier VII?
It was somewhat troublesome, but completely insignificant compared to the person Shirou had encountered the night before.
If the two were compared side by side, Rozay-en would probably fly into a rage.
Hmm. It should be just right as a practice opponent for them.
Shirou quickly reached a decision.
"I understand, but I'm having trouble using the Greater Source. Is even the air different inside this forest?" Luvia asked with a frown.
"They say that inside the true Einnashe Forest, connecting to the Greater Source is impossible. In a way, it's a Magus's natural enemy."
"Ugh, that puts Magi at far too much of a disadvantage. My Mystic Eyes have been unstable for a while now. Just keeping them active is exhausting~"
Yvette raised two fingers beside her eye patch in her signature peace sign.
"In that case, let me see what I can do."
Shirou walked over to the girl with the Mystic Eyes.
"Yvette-san, may I see your Magic Crest?"
"Of course! And you're supposed to call me Yvette-chan. Now, take a look!"
The pink-haired Lolita raised both arms and lifted her pink Twin Tails, revealing her pale neck.
Different Magus lineages transplanted their Magic Crests into different parts of the body. The Tohsaka Family's was on the forearm, while the Lehrman Family's was on the neck.
"Ah♡"
Yvette let out a soft cry, her cheeks flushing as Shirou placed his palm over the spot where her Magic Crest was located.
Anyone would have trouble holding back a sound if someone of the opposite sex suddenly touched their neck.
"Amamiya!?"
"Shi-Shirou...?"
Rin Tohsaka and Luvia stared with wide eyes.
Yvette gave them a mischievous smile.
"Oh, Shirou-sama~ Doing something like this out in public... We should save it until we're back in our room~"
"Be quiet."
Shirou closed his eyes and focused.
What he was about to perform was the most fundamental technique in the world of Magecraft, Reinforcement Magecraft.
This time, however, Shirou was not reinforcing an iron pipe. He was reinforcing the Magic Crest inside a Magus's body.
Ever since Makiri had explained the concept of Magic Crests to him long ago, Shirou had wondered something.
At their core, weren't Magic Crests essentially precision devices, much like household appliances?
Shirou excelled at channeling the Mana generated within his body into external objects to reinforce them temporarily.
No Magus surpassed him in that particular technique.
It was not because Shirou possessed especially sophisticated skills. It was because he excelled at analyzing an object's internal structure, its circuits.
The circuits inside an electric heater were not all that different from a Magus's circuits.
"Basic framework, elucidated."
That was right.
As he was now, he could do it.
"Constituent materials, elucidated."
He allowed his Mana to flow naturally.
"Basic framework, modified."
Before him was a Magus's Magic Crest.
It possessed centuries of history and embodied the accumulated effort and wisdom of more than a dozen generations of the Lehrman Family.
Shirou had always respected things with a long history.
As a first-generation Magus, he understood better than anyone that the achievements of modern Magi had not been built overnight.
That was why he had to handle it with extraordinary caution and care.
Injecting his Mana into something other than his own body was like mixing poison into it.
To prevent that, to turn the poison into medicine, he had to understand the target's structure perfectly and channel his Mana only into the available gaps.
Reinforcing a Magic Crest was hundreds, even thousands of times more difficult than reinforcing an ordinary object.
"Constituent materials, reinforced."
Shirou felt deeply grateful to Ayako Mitsuzuri for forcing him to join the archery club.
Without her persistence, his archery skills would probably have deteriorated rapidly. Magecraft and swordsmanship already occupied almost every moment of his day.
Thanks to his practice in the archery club, Shirou could maintain a state of absolute calm and clarity even now.
"Entire process, complete."
A sharp crack rang out, as though something had shattered, and Shirou slowly exhaled.
"Huh? Wait, why does my body suddenly feel warm?"
Yvette stroked her neck, her cheeks growing flushed.
"Th-This is...
"Shirou-sama's Mana is flowing into my Magic Circuits and strengthening my Magic Crest... It feels s-so good~~~~~"
Yvette went limp in Shirou's arms, her eyes narrowing blissfully as she rubbed her tightly pressed legs back and forth.
"...Whoa."
Rin Tohsaka and Luvia stared in stunned silence.
"Amamiya... When did you learn how to do something like that...?"
Rin bit down on her thumb in frustration.
Reinforcing Magic Circuits was completely unheard of!
Who did he think he was, some kind of nanometal from the Age of Myths?
And yet Shirou had succeeded.
Just how much precision in Magecraft did it take to accomplish something like that?
Rin Tohsaka considered precise control over Magecraft her greatest strength.
That assessment was entirely accurate. Her precision was unprecedented, and even across the Clock Tower's two-thousand-year history, it would have been difficult to find anyone who could rival her.
In terms of combat style, Luvia was a genius who excelled at sustained, overwhelming bombardments using vast quantities of gemstones. Rin Tohsaka, meanwhile, was a genius capable of achieving decisive results with only a few.
Yet even Rin Tohsaka was stunned by Shirou's miraculous technique.
Reinforcement Magecraft capable of strengthening a Magic Crest, even if only temporarily, held enough value to transform the entire world of modern Magecraft!
A Sealing Designation. No...
Depending on how things developed, he might even receive the Clock Tower's Grand Rank, just like Touko Aozaki...!
Meanwhile, Luvia was focused on an entirely different matter.
"D-Does it truly feel that good?"
She swallowed audibly.
Shirou pulled Yvette away when she tried to take advantage of the situation, then turned to the other two.
"All right, next."
"Huh? M-Me too? No!"
Rin Tohsaka took a frightened step backward, but it was already too late.
"The Tohsaka Family's Magic Crest is on this arm, isn't it?"
Shirou grabbed the girl's wrist.
"Eeeeeeeeeek!"
Rin Tohsaka's scream echoed through the blizzard-shrouded forest, though it soon turned into gasps that sounded far more pleasurable.
"That should do it."
After the Lehrman Family's Magic Crest, he reinforced those of the Tohsaka and Edelfelt Families as well.
Perhaps because it was their first time, the side effects were rather intense.
Shirou looked at the three girls, whose faces were flushed as they fidgeted awkwardly.
There was no helping it. He would have to let them rest for a while.
What Shirou had primarily enhanced was the efficiency of their Mana circulation.
The strongest modern Magus he knew, Aoko Aozaki, was a prodigy in that field, so Shirou had chosen to reinforce them in the same direction.
Next time, he could try enhancing something else. Hmm, perhaps he could use Sakura as a test subject...
Rin Tohsaka shot him a vicious glare.
"Don't you dare lay a hand on that child!"
"...Tch."
After resting for half a minute, they resumed their journey.
Shirou's Reinforcement not only allowed the girls to move freely through a space that was almost another world, it also seemed to fill them with confidence.
At this rate, even a Man-Eating Forest was nothing to fear.
Just as that mood began to settle over the group, they finally drew the enemy's attention.
Shirou stopped walking.
"Prepare for battle."
The three girls beside him nodded in perfect unison.
Shirou stared into the depths of the forest and said, "I'm not going to interfere. You can handle this thing yourselves, right?"
"Mm."
"Understood."
"Leave it to us!"
After traveling with him all this way, the girls had vaguely sensed that Shirou was on guard against something.
In that case, they would deal with the Dead Apostle obstructing the train's path!
Without warning, the forest itself began to move.
The branches bent like whips, carving sharp arcs through the air toward the group.
"Gandr!"
The demonic branches looked capable of piercing a human body as easily as a sheet of paper, yet Rin Tohsaka tore them apart with ease.
The pitch-black curse bullets she fired possessed an overwhelming density, completely unlike her usual curses.
Shirou often compared Rin Tohsaka's curse bullets to sniper rifle rounds capable of effortlessly shattering brick walls. What she was firing now, however, could no longer be called bullets. They were genuine rocket shells.
Rin Tohsaka had never spent Mana with such reckless abandon before.
After all, the Tohsaka Family's Magecraft was inseparably linked to gemstones. Even the Mana consumed by firing curses had to be replenished with gemstones on the battlefield.
Rin normally reserved those gemstones for attacking.
After receiving Shirou's Reinforcement, however, she no longer had to worry about balancing recovery and offense.
Black curses worthy of being called rocket shells poured continuously from the twin-tailed girl's fingertips, obliterating every vampiric branch that rushed toward them.
...My body feels so light.
My Mana has never flowed this smoothly before.
Rin Tohsaka was not the only one who felt that way. Yvette and Luvia had the same thought.
"Rin-chan is really fired up! All right~ I can't let her outdo me!"
Yvette tore off her glowing eye patch.
The eye hidden beneath it was not made of flesh and blood, but a ruby that shone with a crimson light.
"Ta-da~! Yvette's Enhanced Mystic Eye, Flame Burst Edition! Here I go!"
BOOM—!!
The empty air erupted into flames.
The waves of incoming branches danced amid the blaze together with the snow driven by the wind.
Following Yvette's gaze, a violent vortex of flame melted the ice and snow and burned every nearby branch to ash.
Was that... Noble Color?
Shirou had crammed as much knowledge about Mystic Eyes as he could aboard the train, and he could now roughly distinguish their ranks.
A Mystic Eye enhanced with a gemstone had actually reached the level of Noble Color. Judging solely by her skill at enhancing Mystic Eyes, Yvette was even better than Touko Aozaki.
"Hehe! It's all thanks to the power of Shirou-sama's love!"
Yvette flashed a V sign.
"Don't stop. Keep moving!"
Rin Tohsaka crouched down, and an emerald glow of Mana enveloped her long, slender legs.
She reinforced her body with Magecraft, then launched herself forward and began sprinting across the snow.
The others followed close behind.
Faced with even more vampiric branches, Rin Tohsaka brought out her best martial arts techniques.
"Hah!!"
Her limbs hardened like steel, smashing not only the branches but the entire tree to pieces.
Snow scattered through the air as her black hair streamed behind her.
The girl raced across the snowy ground at full speed.
Her movements were sharp, steady, and naturally fluid, making her resemble a human red whirlwind.
"All right, time to switch!"
Without hesitation, Yvette thrust a finger into her eye socket.
She replaced her gemstone-enhanced prosthetic eye with the smooth efficiency of chambering a bullet.
This time, it was iolite.
The gemstone was believed to heighten intuition. Sailors had once used it in place of a compass, and it was regarded as a spirit stone in ancient Scandinavian legends.
"Ow! That hurts... This way!"
Yvette located the tree that served as the Child of Einnashe's Core.
At this point, no number of deadly branches could stop their advance.
The tangled branches intertwined in layer after layer, surging forward like raging waves and sweeping aside the snow. They resembled an enormous python, but Rin Tohsaka and Luvia's combined assault reduced them to ash.
"This is it!"
After passing through the twisted forest, the group finally saw a tree of extraordinary size.
The vampiric branches had grown even more aggressive as they approached, which only confirmed that this was the enemy's weak point.
"Huh...? Luvia?"
Luvia stepped out of the formation alone.
"Leave the rest to me."
The golden-haired girl placed one hand on her hip and made her declaration with absolute confidence.
She raised her other hand. The Mana gathering at her slender fingertips had risen to a level capable of killing a Phantasmal Species.
At the same time, dozens of gemstones flew from her dress one after another.
She still had that many in reserve?!
Rin Tohsaka's eyes nearly popped out of her head.
There was no telling how many gemstones Luvia had hidden inside her dress, and any one of them was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now, the collection of gemstones worth millions resonated with their mistress's aura. Each shone with its own light as they slowly formed a vortex of Mana.
"Now, please enjoy the Edelfelt Kaleidoscope."
The words the girl whispered with a smile were also the name of the spell.
Brilliant, kaleidoscopic Mana. This was the secret art from which the Edelfelts drew their confidence.
"Call."
At her command, the dazzling gemstones and Luvia's Mana compressed to their absolute limit at her fingertips.
"Lead me!"
Light engulfed the world.
The brilliance radiating from Luvia and the gemstones resembled a kaleidoscope.
That intense, searing heat became a beautiful reaper of death. It pierced the howling blizzard and rained down upon the Man-Eating Forest.
The sight could only be described as a saturation bombardment.
Even a descendant of the Twenty-Seven Ancestors was completely incapable of resisting. It could do nothing but endure the one-sided devastation.
"...Phew."
Luvia pressed a hand to her ample, heaving chest and gazed with satisfaction at the wasteland before her.
Everything around her had been blasted away by the attack. Not a trace of the Bloodsucking Forest remained within a hundred meters.
"Well done."
Shirou placed a hand on Luvia's shoulder, and she gave him a graceful, captivating smile.
"You deserve some of the credit too, you know. Hehe, we really are a perfect match, Shirou♡"
Yvette touched the Mystic Eye she was using for detection and looked back in the direction they had come from.
"Now that the Core has been destroyed, the forest's activity has dropped sharply... At this point, it no longer poses a threat."
The Child of Einnashe was a plant rather than an animal, so destroying its Core would not eliminate it completely the way beheading a human would.
Even after the main body died, the remaining forest would continue to exist for a while. However, it was already on its last legs and had lost its extraordinary power, leaving it as fragile as a Ghoul.
The girls breathed sighs of relief.
"Phew... We're finally safe."
Safe?
Shirou frowned.
"Is something wrong, Amamiya?" Rin Tohsaka asked.
Shirou calmly surveyed their surroundings before speaking.
"If the Child of Einnashe is already dead…"
"Why hasn't the blizzard stopped? Why is it getting even stronger?"
"The ability to create ice and snow was supposed to be one of its supernatural powers, wasn't it?"
"!"
At the boy's words, a terrible chill ran through everyone.
Could this blizzard, powerful enough to swallow an entire city, have nothing to do with the Child of Einnashe at all...?
Just then, a muffled thud came from behind them.
"Huh...?"
A pale hand wrapped in flames emerged from the raging snowstorm.
Rin Tohsaka tried to move her legs, only to find herself rooted to the spot.
It was not the effect of Magecraft. It was the instinctive terror humans felt as prey.
The pale fingers shot toward the girl's neck.
"...!"
An instant before they touched her skin, Shirou brought down the Blades of Chaos and severed the hand.
"Are you all right, Tohsaka?"
"Thanks! You saved me!"
Rin Tohsaka bit her lip and recovered from her shock. She moved behind Shirou and raised her hand, ready to fire another curse bullet.
Luvia and Yvette hurried after her, assuming combat stances without daring to make a sound.
"Ah... So cold..."
A young man emerged from the increasingly violent blizzard, dressed like a medieval noble who had stepped out of a film.
His elegant Western clothing was paired with a rugged fur cloak. Silver hair fell to his shoulders, and his blood-red eyes were dull and lifeless.
On closer inspection, his right arm, which Shirou should have severed, was completely intact.
He possessed the form of a human man, but he was clearly no human.
"A Dead Apostle...?"
Yvette's voice trembled, as did her legs.
Her Mystic Eye burned with excruciating pain, as though it were suffering a violent rejection reaction.
Only now did she understand that the young man before them was the true cause of the blizzard.
She could sense that his level of danger existed on an entirely different plane from the Child of Einnashe.
Compared to him, the man-eating demonic forest was utterly insignificant.
"Mm..."
At the same time, Luvia finally understood what Rin Tohsaka had experienced when she was attacked.
Everything had frozen, both her thoughts and her body.
She felt as though she could not move even a single finger.
How wonderful it would have been if she could blame it all on the cold.
She might have been able to deceive others, but she could never deceive herself.
Luviagelita Edelfelt.
The girl who always carried herself with grace and confidence was now trembling so violently beneath the enemy's killing intent that she could barely move.
"Guh...!"
Even her humiliated groan was soon swallowed by the storm.
"Are you a Tier VIII Dead Apostle?"
Amid the group's stunned silence, a clear young voice rang out.
It carried with such force that it seemed to declare that only his words mattered. Not even the blizzard sweeping across the world could drown it out.
...Shirou?!
The girls looked over in astonishment and found the red-haired boy standing there as though nothing were wrong.
A bead of cold sweat ran down Rin Tohsaka's face.
Amamiya... Even under this kind of pressure, you can remain completely unfazed?
"Hey, I asked you a question," Shirou prompted impatiently.
"..."
The Dead Apostle dressed like a gothic noble slowly opened his mouth.
"My name is Vlov Arkhangel."
"I am the nineteenth of the Twenty-Seven Ancestors, as you humans call us."
"?!"
The girls gasped, too stunned to speak.
He was a Dead Apostle.
The highest rank among vampires, a Dead Apostle.
He was an Ancestor.
The highest rank among Dead Apostles, an Ancestor.
The girls clenched their teeth.
So this was one of the legendary kings of the Dead Apostles. He was truly that powerful.
"I thought you were Tier VIII. I never expected you to be one of the Tier IX Twenty-Seven Ancestors."
The red-haired boy, Shirou Amamiya, scratched the back of his head sheepishly.
"Sorry, I got it wrong."
"But you can't blame me entirely. I mean, you just look so weak."
***
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