Chapter 63: A Special 'Healing Magecraft'
"Emiya-kun, how much further do we have to walk? You weren't just talking nonsense earlier, were you?"
Tohsaka Rin, following behind Emiya Shirou, spoke with a trace of resentment. Looking back, she thought she must truly be crazy to believe Shirou's off-the-cuff claims.
She even believed that—though she didn't know how Shirou had done it—since the Ghost Mansion now belonged to the Mages' Association and served as a magical workshop for the Association's participants, it shouldn't be possible for someone to just slap the ground and accurately produce a "spirit photography" map of the enemy Master's location using spilled blood.
If finding a hidden magus were truly that simple, there wouldn't be a class like Assassin in the Holy Grail War—a class that lacks direct combat prowess but excels in infiltration, hiding, and tracking.
Not to mention, according to Shirou, the original Master of Lancer who was ambushed by Kotomine Kirei hadn't actually died. In Fuyuki City's weather, where it truly snows in winter, lying on a cold floor for several days while critically injured and dying instead of being tucked into a warm bed...
If someone could survive that, what kind of "female gorilla" species must they be?!
"You say that, Tohsaka, but your body followed me quite honestly, didn't it?"
Shirou said, "By the way, if you don't believe me, why did you follow me here?
Tohsaka, you wouldn't happen to be worried about me, would you?"
At this, Shirou turned his head with a smile and looked at Rin. "After all, if you really didn't believe me and still thought I was Lancer's Master, you wouldn't have come along."
In fact, far from following him, if Rin still believed Shirou was Lancer's Master, she could have taken the opportunity while Lancer was missing to capture Shirou on the spot.
The gap between a Servant and a regular magus is immense. Aside from the Fifth Holy Grail War—an "outlier" war where a bunch of "cheat" Masters capable of fighting Servants hand-to-hand emerged—most of the time, not even a Master in the highly professional Fourth Holy Grail War would dare claim they could take down a Servant personally.
Regardless of the complaints coming out of Rin's mouth, she had already made her stance clear from the very beginning.
"And it's precisely because you believe I'm not Lancer's Master that you followed me, worried that if Lancer finds out I'm still alive, he'll likely come back to finish the job, right?"
Shirou laughed. "Thank you, Tohsaka."
"Wh-what are you saying?" Flustered by Shirou's sincere gratitude, Rin's face turned red, and she subconsciously twirled a lock of her hair with her finger.
"I'm... I'm doing this to prevent you from escaping, Emiya-kun! That's right! Your suspicion hasn't been cleared in my eyes yet!
Even if you aren't Lancer's Master, I'm not doing this to protect you; I just plan to use you as bait to lure Lancer out!"
"Sure, let's go with that," Shirou replied nonchalantly.
With his past-life memories, Shirou knew very well that Rin was not a "traditional" magus. Even though she was born into a traditional magus family and raised by Tohsaka Tokiomi to be the family heir—meaning she understood the "underground rules" of the magus world perfectly—Tokiomi had died too early.
Since Kotomine Kirei was the "hands-off" type, Rin's actual values weren't very "magus-like" at all. Otherwise, in the original story, she wouldn't have exhausted nearly ten years' worth of accumulated mana just to give Shirou a new heart, even if Matou Sakura did have feelings for him.
Because of this, Shirou didn't take Rin's words to heart. However, Rin didn't see it that way; she felt like she was being provoked.
"What do you mean, 'let's go with that'?"
But just like the previous few times, Shirou accurately cut off her words. "Alright, we've arrived at the Ghost Mansion."
"Hey, Emiya-kun, don't change the subject! Could you please explain what you meant by—wait, the smell of blood?"
Rin, who had been somewhat persistent, immediately turned grim.
"Archer?"
"Nothing, Rin. I didn't see anyone entering or leaving this place earlier," Archer's voice came through.
"In other words, this smell of blood isn't from something that just happened," Rin nodded gravely.
As Archer's Master, even though Archer hadn't given her his specific details—using amnesia as an excuse—Rin knew a thing or two about his Clairvoyance being able to see very far after taking him on a scouting mission through Fuyuki's streets. Since Archer said he hadn't seen anyone suspicious approach recently, this likely wasn't a scene Shirou had fabricated just to convince her.
"Emiya-kun, I'm starting to believe what you said earlier."
A participant sent by the Mages' Association was suddenly defeated inside the Association's own workshop. Given the short distance between the Ghost Mansion and the Kotomine Church, it was clearly illogical for Kotomine Kirei, the supervisor of the war, to know nothing about it.
After all, given the alliance between the Tohsaka and Kotomine families, even if Kirei couldn't openly help her cheat, revealing a little information shouldn't have been a problem. Yet Kirei had said nothing. If not for Shirou, she wouldn't have even known a Master from the Association had been eliminated.
Looking at Bazett's body and her severed hand, Rin—who already didn't get along with Kirei—became even more wary of him.
Then...
She looked at Shirou, who had approached Bazett's side, with a face full of confusion. "Emiya-kun, what are you doing?"
"Didn't I say it before? I have a very special 'healing magecraft,'" Shirou said.