The Matou Residence wasn’t far from Homurahara Academy, requiring less than a ten-minute taxi ride through Miyama Town.
“Right here is fine, driver.” Once a Western-style luxury villa came into view down the residential lane, Surtr called for the cab to pull over.
“Alright, that’ll be 2,600 yen, miss.” ‘Damn, that’s highway robbery.’ Surtr hesitated for a second as she pulled the paper bills from her pocket.
Converted to currency from her past life, that was well over a hundred bucks for barely three kilometers of road.
Her meager temple donation funds took another painful hit as the two stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“Pardon me, young ladies…
I don’t know what business brings you to this part of town, but there have been quite a few mysterious missing persons cases around this neighborhood lately.
You’d best not linger after dark.” Before pulling away, the honest-looking cab driver offered a well-meaning piece of advice.
‘No prizes for guessing who’s behind that.’ Surtr mused coldly.
That rancid old fossil Zouken had been feeding on innocent human vitality for centuries just to delay his inevitable rot.
Who knew how many lives he had drained over the decades?
Exterminating him a thousand times over wouldn’t even begin to balance the ledger.
“Thanks for the heads-up.” Waving goodbye to the departing cab, Medea promptly raised a hand, casting an invisible, high-tier Crowd-Repelling Bounded Field over the entire surrounding block.
The distant mountain ridge swallowed the final crimson rays of dusk, plunging the suburban streets into oppressive shadows.
This was the exact hour when the vermin of the underworld began slithering through the gutters—and the prime time for some pest control.
“What an utterly revolting stench.” Standing before the wrought-iron gates of the overgrown courtyard, Medea—who had donned her purple witch’s robe once more—instinctively pinched her nose, a look of profound disgust contorting her features.
While the estate’s architecture looked stately and lavish on the surface, an unmistakable, spine-chilling dread hung over the property.
Surtr could only vaguely sense that the air felt greasy and heavy, but to an Age of Gods sorceress like Medea, the structural reality of the estate was crystal clear.
Putrid, decomposing dark mana had soaked into every brick, timber, and grain of soil on the property.
It was like standing next to a mountain of rotting animal carcasses baking in the summer sun, radiating waves of nauseating, toxic fumes.
The entire mansion had been hollowed out into a festering breeding pit for predatory insects, provoking an even deeper revulsion in Medea than the twisted human lab of her previous Master.
“Hehehe…
it seems this humble old man’s modest magecraft has caused our lovely guests quite a bit of displeasure.” A damp, rattling voice hissed out from behind the heavy front doors.
Leaning heavily upon a crooked wooden cane, a hunched, shriveled old man draped in a dark gray kimono shuffled out onto the gravel path.
Completely bald, with sunken, skeletal cheeks and yellowed, predatory eyes, he offered the two uninvited visitors a sickening, toothless grin.
Magi inherently possessed an obsessive territorial paranoia, maintaining extreme vigilance against any foreign magus who dared trespass upon their workshop without invitation.
To say nothing of foreign Servants.
Neither Surtr nor Medea had bothered concealing their tracks, so it was only natural for Matou Zouken to detect their arrival.
At the exact same time, another system quest flashed across Surtr’s field of vision.
[Client: Matou Zouken] [Quest: Desperately seeks to attain true eternal life] [Reward: Primogems ×500] Surtr took a single glance and tossed the prompt straight into the mental incinerator.
Much as she craved Primogems, compared to helping this rotten maggot achieve immortality, she wanted to cremate him into sterile ash a million times more.
At least that would give her peace of mind.
Zouken’s hollow gaze lingered on Medea for a brief heartbeat before locking hungrily onto Surtr.
A foul, covetous glimmer flickered within his sunken eye sockets.
To a dying, rotting husk on the verge of total collapse, the boundless, volcanic vitality radiating from Surtr’s youthful body was an irresistible, fatal temptation.
Judging by her striking horns and atypical aura, she likely possessed some bizarre ancient bloodline—perhaps descending from a lineage of Hereditary Pathogen Carriers who passed down Age of Gods mysteries like a viral vector through their genealogy.
In fact, the stranger she was, the better.
If he could forcefully transplant his soul worm into her flesh and claim that boundless vitality for himself…
Zouken’s mood grew ecstatic at the prospect.
As for the hooded woman beside her?
Even if she was a Servant, she belonged to Caster—the historically weakest container in direct combat.
The old magus didn’t pay her the slightest respect.
“May this humble old man inquire what pressing business brings two such distinguished guests to my doorstep?
Why not step inside the manor so we may discuss it over tea?” Temporarily suppressing the ravenous hunger clawing at his gut, Zouken offered a greasy, hypocritical invitation.
“We were planning to head inside regardless.
Medea, blast him.” Surtr couldn’t be bothered wasting a single breath trading pleasantries with a walking corpse.
“Understood, Master.” Medea had been itching to tear down this eye-offending cesspool from the second she arrived.
Tapping the base of her bronze staff lightly against the stone pavers, a shimmering, pale-pink magic circle formed instantly in the air.
Boom!
A blinding, incinerating beam of High-Speed Divine Words pierced straight through Zouken’s chest, obliterating the wrought-iron gate and the old man’s body in a single flash.
The collapsed corpse immediately dissolved into a skittering swarm of grotesque worms, buzzing hysterically into the air as they fled back toward the mansion.
“Insolent little brats…!” Zouken’s furious, distorted screech echoed from every corner of the property.
The defensive Bounded Fields layered across the estate flared to maximum output.
A deafening chorus of insectoid chirping erupted from every shrub, gutter, and stone crevice as writhing black shadows poured outward, transforming the Matou residence into an ironclad fortress in the span of a breath.
The old bug was still alive.
Hardly surprising that cockroach of a magus was notoriously difficult to squash in one go.
However, connecting his defensive posture to the intel extracted from Shinji, whether he was genuinely holing up inside or deliberately luring them into a kill-box remained to be seen.
‘Stay sharp.
The bastard likely rigged the interior with nasty surprises.’ Surtr cautioned via their link.
‘Understood, Master.’ Medea nodded, turning her analytical gaze toward the shimmering barriers.
Before arriving, Surtr had given her a rundown on the old worm—a remnant magus who had desperately clung to life for over five hundred years since the founding era, capable of rivaling a Servant in his prime.
He had once been a noble idealist who dreamed of eliminating all suffering from the world, only to rot into a pathetic, soul-degraded abomination.
“Hmph.
As far as modern bounded fields go, this one actually has a modicum of craftsmanship.
It seems five centuries weren’t an absolute waste of time.” Medea scoffed openly, making zero effort to mask her contempt.
“However, if this meager barrier is all he has to show for five hundred years of research, it only proves his talent was third-rate at best.” Attempting to stall an Age of Gods sorceress who stood at the absolute zenith of human magecraft with a modern barrier was an insult to her craft.
After observing the mana flow for barely ten seconds, Medea glided forward and approached the perimeter wall.
A brilliant azure glow ignited at the tip of her staff.
Raising her hand, she tapped the barrier lightly.
Ping—!
Instantly, intricate glowing blue circuits spread outward across the translucent barrier like an electrical short-circuit.
Shatter!
Like a dropped mirror, the massive hemispherical dome enveloping the entire Matou estate shattered into sparkling motes of dust under Medea’s single touch.
The entire decryption took less than fifteen seconds.
While Surtr was confident she could smash through it faster with brute force, she definitely couldn’t match Medea’s effortless, surgical elegance.
“Shall we, Master?” Medea stepped gracefully onto the gravel path.
A massive swarm of razor-winged insects surged toward them from the shadows.
Medea chanted ancient divine syllables at a tempo far beyond human comprehension.
Swirling tempests of razor-sharp cyan wind wrapped around the two of them, effortlessly mincing the oncoming swarm into fine mist.
No matter how overwhelming their numbers were, mundane familiar bugs were nothing more than cannon fodder.
Under Medea’s micromanagement, not a single speck of insect bile managed to soil their clothes.
Surtr followed closely behind.
From time to time, subtle electrical snaps resonated around her as miniature magic circles materialized out of thin air, detonating the hidden explosive wards planted throughout the courtyard.
Medea moved like a master neurosurgeon dissecting a tumor with a scalpel.
In under two minutes, the intricate defensive network the Matou clan had spent five hundred years fortifying was completely dismantled.
The duo walked unhindered right up to the front entrance of the mansion.
‘Wait…
something’s off.’ Standing at the doorway, Surtr glanced back over the decimated courtyard.
Where was Hassan?
She had been keeping her senses on hair-trigger alert for an Assassin ambush, yet they had reached the core threshold without a single sneak attack.
‘It really is an indoor trap.’ Exchanging a quick nod, Medea stepped back and unleashed a concentrated beam of light from her staff, blasting the heavy oak double doors into splinters.
Pale evening light spilled through the shattered entrance, illuminating the dim, musty foyer within.
Stepping across the threshold, a rancid, suffocating stench vastly different from the insect swarms outside hit Surtr square in the face, causing her brows to knit tightly.
Worse, this oppressive, heavy malice felt eerily familiar.
She had encountered this exact conceptual aura barely an hour ago…
“It’s the Greater Grail…!” Medea gasped in realization.
“Master, the Greater Grail—no, the primordial curse of ‘All the Evils of the World’ is inside this house!” ‘Right.
That’s what it is.’ No wonder the stench was identical.
To think that old parasite had already harvested black mud from the Great Cavern.
“Let’s pull back—” Even without a host like Dark Sakura, the raw black mud was an absolute conceptual poison against spiritual Servants exposing Medea to it was far too risky.
Yet before either of them could pivot, Zouken’s gleeful, gloating hiss echoed through the hallway.
“Kukuku…
trying to flee now?
It’s far too late!” A deafening chorus of heavy, chitinous wingbeats vibrated through the air.
Countless mutant insects crawled out from the shadows of the floorboards and ceilings, their blood-red compound eyes casting an eerie glow over the entire living room.
If the bugs outside were disposable grunts, these horrors were elite bio-weapons.
Under normal circumstances, even mutant familiars posed zero threat to a Servant, but…
“These children were meticulously nourished with the sacred black mud.
I trust their appetite for a Servant’s flesh will not disappoint.” Zouken’s lips peeled back in absolute, unhinged triumph.
No matter how powerful a Servant was, a single bite from these mud-infused parasites would inject the conceptual taint directly into their spiritual core.
They were custom-built Servant-killers.
And once the Servant collapsed into black sludge, the lone Master left behind would be entirely at his mercy.
Surtr didn’t bother listening to his rant, grabbing Medea by the waist to charge backward toward the exit.
Yet at that exact split second, a silent, black-robed phantom materialized directly in the doorway, blocking their escape route.
The shadowed figure hoisted a grotesquely elongated, asymmetrical crimson right arm.
A rasping, hollow whisper drifted out from behind his skull mask.
“Noble Phantasm…
Zabaniya.” A sure-kill ambush!
The swarming shadows within the living room surged forward to engulf them from the front, while the cursed assassin struck from the rear—a seemingly inescapable death trap.
Yet beneath the encroaching darkness.
The crimson-haired girl’s lips curled into a broad, savage grin.
“Ha…