[Orange-Haired, Gold-Eyed Menace to Humanity]: @Everyone A group member’s in danger, get here fast.
At almost the exact same moment, Ritsuka Fujimaru — a girl who’d believed, until now, that she’d lived a completely ordinary life for over a decade — made the best possible call in an instant, even as the ground fell out from under her entire sense of her own past.
She opened the chat group.
The Middle Eastern teacher up front, mid-transformation, and her mask-wearing classmates all froze solid.
[The Tiger of West Junior High]: Whoa, first time we’ve ever had a mission everyone can join!
Ritsuka, you doing okay over there?
[Mala Donkey Head]: Being chased by the whole of human history sounds really dangerous…
is there anything I can do to help?
Ritsuka roughly relayed the situation, mixing in some knowledge she’d only just remembered.
That was enough to make every last member of the group instantly grasp the severity of it.
[Kansas Farm Boy]: No issue on my end.
I’ve got some confidence in my own strength.
[Not-a-God Yellow Weasel]: I’ve already found a way to slip past its notice.
Looks like it’s just the three of us heading out for now.
Nyos took Leon’s participation as a given.
Right after, Leon posted a screenshot that read “loading.”
[Due to resistance from an unidentified will within the target world, crossing over may take some time.]
[Viltrum’s Top Student]: @Orange-Haired, Gold-Eyed Menace to Humanity Is there anything on your end that could speed up our arrival?
Clearly, the idea of Servant summoning had crossed Leon’s mind.
Ritsuka fired back an image within a second.
[Suggestion for the target under rescue: You may search the map for a special descent channel, or hold out until rescue arrives.
The former may carry additional rewards.]
[Viltrum’s Top Student]: Any leads?
[Orange-Haired, Gold-Eyed Menace to Humanity]: Yeah.
[Viltrum’s Top Student]: Then go for it, Ritsuka.
Not once, from start to finish, had Leon said a single word of comfort — just questions, judgment calls, decisions.
Ritsuka said she had a lead, and he didn’t even ask what it was.
He seemed to trust she could pull it off more than Ritsuka trusted herself.
That was enough to fill in the last sliver of her hesitation.
“…Alright.
Let’s go.”
She closed the chat group, and time began to move again.
Her classmates’ clothes flew off them, revealing lean, black bodies underneath.
And at the front of the room, the teacher shot up past two meters, his shadow twisting into a robe, blue witchfire flickering under his hood.
“Menace to humanity — condemned to death…”
Hassans.
All of them.
Amid all this, Ritsuka Fujimaru calmly swallowed the Kikufuku she’d just torn open, the surge of stamina it gave her stamping down the physical panic response trying to take over.
Ding!
“Annihilate all enemies, in the name of the Lord!”
The classmate at the next desk over launched his attack.
Slower than she’d expected.
Ritsuka’s left hand caught the incoming dagger by the wrist, and her right hand snatched up a pencil, jamming it into the gap in his mask.
Using the opening, she stepped up onto the desk and flipped herself right out the window.
“It’s only the fourth floor.
Nothing to be scared of!”
As if she’d done it a thousand times before, the girl hit the ground in a perfect roll, not a scratch on her.
“May the soul drip like candy into pain — Delusion’s Heartbeat!”
A glowing arm burst through the roof of the school building, reaching straight for Ritsuka.
She rolled clear, only to be swallowed by a shadow the very next instant.
She looked up — a mountain-like weight bore down on her: the First Hassan.
Ding!
That same familiar bell rang out.
The shadow beneath Ritsuka’s feet expanded, and a Servant identical to her surroundings stepped out of it.
He blocked the enemy’s slash with his sword, a faint blue glow flickering in his eye sockets toward her.
“Go on ahead.
I shall see to it that every last counterfeit here loses its head.”
That was meant as comfort.
Just parrying that one strike alone made his body groan with a shrill, grinding creak.
The chase continued.
More and more familiar faces from her past twisted into Servants and came at her, and just as many shadows rose up in matching numbers to intercept them.
Ritsuka’s destination was the equipment shed — instinct told her that magic circle was the key.
But someone caught up to her.
“What a pathetic sight…”
“Ally of justice — this is where it ends for you.
Good thing I stopped being one of those a long time ago.”
The Archer of Black glanced down at the fading, red-clad Archer on the ground, then leveled his gun at Ritsuka Fujimaru.
“Enemy of good — I shall end the Menace to Humanity here.”
Confusion surfaced in his eyes; something, in what little was left of his mind, was fighting against him.
“But my soul is telling me…
it’s this side that’s evil.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the instant he reached that conclusion, he pressed one gun to his own temple and pointed the other at the pursuers.
“Go prove me right, Ritsuka Fujimaru.”
Bang!
That shot struck Heracles, and his own body, run through by a blade, crashed straight into the enemy ranks.
However unhinged, still a total stud.
You can always count on a stud.
Under the cover of Servants both familiar and strange, a battered, bloodied Ritsuka Fujimaru burst into the sports equipment shed.
She stumbled and fell, sliding her way toward the magic circle.
She pushed herself up, looked back at her pursuers through the doorway, and grinned wide.
It was the only expression she had left in her, honestly.
Her parents were fake. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Her sister was fake.
Her classmates were fake.
Her teachers were fake.
Even the school was fake.
Fake, fake, fake…
But I’m real.
And if I’m not — then I’ll make it true.
Ritsuka’s eyes hardened all at once, reflecting Heracles bearing down, Gilgamesh unleashing his treasury, and the approaching Old Man of the Mountain.
The red mark on her right hand — her Command Spell — flared to life, and the deep shadow beneath her spread out along the magic circle.
Unease, confusion, rage — every ounce of emotion she’d built up on the run erupted all at once.
“Come out!”
The girl screamed.
“Damn it — come OUT!”
The first to answer was Leon, crossing the boundary between two worlds to meet the Old Man of the Mountain head-on.
The beheading blade, an instant from cleaving into Ritsuka, couldn’t advance another fraction of an inch.
All because Leon slid past the blade and grabbed hold of that skull, halting the motion of the Thrice-Crimson Assassin-rank without the slightest effort.
“BOOM!”
The shockwave of his charge sent mats flying, bent steel frames, and even dented in a set of double doors.
Leon plowed a path through the crowd at speed with the King of Hassans in hand, crashing into the school building amid a storm of scattering Hassans.
A neat plume of dust puffed out of the windows, and the building slowly began to collapse.
The second to break into this world was Superman.
At this point, he still didn’t have his own suit with the S emblem — just a plain bodysuit for now.
Watching Leon barrel forward, his eyes were full of astonishment.
Same species?
This intense already, at eighteen?
His opponent was Heracles, whose Noble Phantasm — the shooting of a hundred heads — carved several sparks off that magnificently built body.
At the same time, a black-haired, tan-skinned young man with an androgynous kind of beauty, half a golden laurel crown on his head, stepped slowly out from the shadows.
The only flaw was that he couldn’t quite keep the corner of his mouth from curling up.
“No whispering from Them, none of that revolting stench — what a nice place this is.”
Too bad he couldn’t visit often.
Nyos glanced up, and with a snap of his fingers, a psychic barrier obliterated every last treasure launched from the Gate of Babylon.
Up on a streetlamp, the golden-haired Servant’s face flickered with anger:
“You dare treat my—Gilgamesh’s—”
“You’re Gilgamesh?
Then who am I?”
Nyos thought back to the weapons that had just come flying at him — every last one of them had felt a little bit like something else, too.
Could it be that here, this golden-shining fellow had a hand in absolutely everything?
Deeply unbothered by the hassle of it, he figured he’d just crush the man on the spot and take the reward back home to study.
Right then, sensing that the situation had changed, the will of this world finally started pushing back.
To be continued…