The deafening buzzing of the mutant insect swarm reverberated through the claustrophobic living room.
The moment Surtr and Medea crossed the threshold, they had walked squarely into the monsters’ predetermined kill zone.
Matou Zouken lurked within the ceiling shadows, gazing down at the trapped intruders with predatory glee.
Even if a fragile, low-stat Caster managed to react in time, her defensive options against a mud-infused swarm specifically engineered to corrupt spiritual cores were practically non-existent.
And while the red-haired girl might possess rare pathogenic bloodline magecraft, against Cursed Arm Hassan’s instantaneous, sure-kill Noble Phantasm, she would be executed before a single spell could leave her lips.
“Checkmate.” Zouken peeled his shriveled lips back into a grotesque smirk, practically drooling as he anticipated the moment he would claim Surtr’s boundless, youthful vitality for his own.
Amusingly enough, Surtr was feeling the exact same sentiment.
Even with Hassan’s cursed Shaytan arm poised for the kill, not a flicker of panic crossed Surtr’s eyes.
Instead, her lips parted into a wildly excited, predatory grin.
If the assassin had chosen to stay cloaked in the shadows, flushing him out would have been a tedious chore.
Now that the bastard had personally delivered himself to point-blank melee range, everything became remarkably simple.
A sudden, suffocating blast of scorching wind flooded the icy living room.
An overwhelming, volcanic heatwave invaded Zouken’s senses.
Even though his rotting flesh had long lost all sensitivity to natural temperature shifts, an agonizing, phantom burn flared across his nerve endings as cold sweat drenched his robes.
‘What on earth is this…?!’ The question had barely formed in his mind before his entire world was dyed in an apocalyptic, blinding crimson.
Fwoosh—!
Distorting space itself under the sheer pressure of heat, an ocean of roaring hellfire exploded outward with Surtr at the epicenter, instantly engulfing every square inch of the living room.
The mutant insect swarm didn’t even have time to shriek.
The moment Muspelheim’s divine flames grazed their carapaces, both the insects and the cursed black mud circulating within their bodies were flash-vaporized into sterile gray ash, filling the air with an acrid, singed stench.
The sheer, catastrophic scale of the flames sent ice-cold terror plunging straight into Zouken’s decaying heart.
Those bio-weapons were his magnum opus, bred through decades of black mud cultivation to boast maximum resistance against all forms of modern magecraft.
Yet against this terrifying inferno, they couldn’t even survive for three seconds.
What kind of ungodly, primordial fire was this?!
On pure instinct, Zouken scrambled to abandon the room.
Yet a searing agony flared beneath his feet.
Looking down in horror…
A single tongue of crimson flame had already latched onto the hem of his dark gray kimono.
Like dry kindling meeting a raging wildfire, the blaze consumed Zouken’s entire body in a fraction of a second.
“Gaaaaahhhhh—!” A bloodcurdling, gargled shriek tore from his throat before being abruptly choked into dead silence.
At the end of the day, they were nothing more than maggots festering in a dark gutter.
Before the crushing might of absolute, primordial power, not even a single ripple could disturb the tide.
Incinerating Zouken’s puppet was merely a trivial opening act.
Surtr didn’t even spare a glance at the old parasite before the stray embers reduced him to cinders on their own.
Her entire focus remained locked onto the black-robed shadow lurking ahead.
Lævateinn was already thrust into the hardwood floor, its broad, heavy blade pinning down a grotesque, crimson monstrous hand like an immovable hydraulic press, preventing it from advancing a single millimeter forward.
Legend held that Cursed Arm Hassan had sacrificed his own right arm through an ancient Middle Eastern curse, grafting the demonic arm of the evil deity Shaytan in its place.
By using ether clods to craft a mirror-image duplicate of his target’s heart, crushing the phantom duplicate would instantaneously crush the victim’s true heart.
It was an extraordinarily lethal, high-tier conceptual curse.
Yet unlike Cú Chulainn’s Gáe Bolg which manipulated causality to guarantee a strike, Cursed Arm’s Noble Phantasm possessed zero auto-homing properties.
To trigger the curse, he physically needed to make contact with his quarry first.
And if he couldn’t touch them, the technique was utterly useless.
If Surtr could still get ambushed when she already knew the exact vector and mechanics of his attack, she might as well pack her bags and go home to sleep.
Seeing his opening strike parried effortlessly, Assassin made an immediate decision to disengage.
Unlike reckless berserkers who charged blindly into battle, he was a true, disciplined assassin.
The red-haired girl before him was an absolute aberration—not only had she conjured a colossal greatsword radiating Noble Phantasm-tier divinity, but she had intercepted his fatal thrust with casual ease.
Contesting her head-on was suicide.
His assassin instincts screamed at him to retreat, and his body acted instantly.
Yet someone who had deliberately laid a trap wasn’t about to let her prey slip away into the night.
That three-meter-long, stretched-out crimson arm had instantly transformed from a lethal weapon into a massive liability.
A slender hand wreathed in roaring fire clamped down onto the sinewy wrist like an iron vise.
A wave of blistering heat surged up Assassin’s arm, followed by a colossal, irresistible physical force dragging him forward.
He struggled frantically to wrench himself free, but it was like an ant trying to budge a mountain.
Even Lancer had been forced to backpedal before Surtr’s monstrous brute strength ragdolling a frail Assassin required zero effort.
Like a helpless rag doll at the mercy of a hurricane, the dark figure was yanked violently through the air toward Surtr.
In his panicking vision, a pale, porcelain palm rapidly expanded until it engulfed his entire face.
Then, she slammed him into the floorboards with catastrophic force.
Boom—!
The emaciated assassin was driven straight through the timber and embedded deep into the concrete foundation.
Crack!
His consciousness shattered in an instant.
A sickening crunch echoed through the foyer as his skull mask—and the skull beneath it—cracked into dozens of bloody shards.
Not that the distinction mattered anymore.
A burst of crimson fire erupted from Surtr’s palm, washing over Assassin’s shattered head before engulfing his entire spiritual body in pure inferno.
Before the ashes could even scatter across the crater, a series of crisp system notifications rang out in her mind.
[Defeated: True Assassin (Cursed Arm Hassan)] [Reward: Primogems ×100] [Eliminated Crest Worms: 210] [Reward: Primogems ×21] [Current Primogems: 421] ‘What a pitiful payout.’ Never mind the insect fodder even though Assassin wasn’t considered an apex Servant, bagging a full Heroic Spirit only netted a measly one hundred Primogems—way lower than quest payouts.
‘Why is there such a massive gap between kill drops and quest rewards?’ Surtr questioned in her mind.
[The core function of this system is realizing desires.
Combat drops are merely incidental supplementary bonuses.
Think of it as the difference between clearing primary story quests and cracking random overworld chests.] The system offered a logical explanation.
‘Fair enough.’ Surtr accepted the reasoning.
She had no real choice anyway.
Though if that was the case, her desire to seize the Greater Grail only intensified.
“Medea, seal the perimeter outside.
Don’t let a single one of that old bug’s spare bodies slip away.
I’m going downstairs to purge the black mud at the source.” Surtr instructed her Servant.
That cursed mud was far too volatile to leave festering incinerating the entire batch was the only way to prevent nasty surprises down the line.
With an Age of Gods Caster standing guard outside, Zouken’s escape routes were completely blocked.
“A-Ah…
right away, Master.” Medea nodded numbly, still visibly shell-shocked.
The entire skirmish had unfolded with dizzying speed from the moment they crossed the doorway to Assassin’s demise, barely thirty seconds had elapsed.
Yet a genuine Heroic Spirit had just been crushed into paste with bare hands by her own Master, while the mud-infused swarm had been flash-fried alongside him.
While Assassin wasn’t known for high parameters, he was still an authentic Heroic Spirit summoned by the Grail.
And that mutant swarm—even Medea would have needed multiple high-tier bombardment spells to sanitize them, yet Surtr had evaporated them like dry grass.
Gazing at the destructive crimson embers floating around her Master, Medea had to admit: the girl carried the title of the Fire Giant for good reason.
“Did you catch that, Medea?” Seeing the witch staring off into space, Surtr waved a hand in front of her face.
“Yes!
Seal the exits and eliminate any fleeing familiars.
I have it memorized.” “Good.
Keep your guard up against sneak attacks.” “Rest assured, Master.” Medea’s tone regained its usual confidence.
Now that she understood the enemy’s tricks, suppressing them was trivial.
“Oh, and if possible, try to leave the finishing blow on Zouken’s main body for me.” “Even a mosquito’s leg counts as meat, after all.” “The…
finishing blow?
Understood.” “Please exercise caution as well, Master.” Though slightly bewildered by the bizarre gaming terminology, Medea didn’t question it, dematerializing into golden spirit particles to secure the courtyard.
Once Medea departed, Surtr turned her gaze toward the darkened cellar stairs.
Hoisting Lævateinn onto her shoulder, surrounded by dancing flames, she walked down into the subterranean abyss where the stench of malice was thickest.
Deep in the subterranean basement of the Matou estate.
Zouken’s hunched, skeletal frame materialized atop the raised stone dais once more.
While his outer appearance looked unchanged, the spiritual vitality radiating from his frame was noticeably far more decrepit and hollow.
While he could technically survive indefinitely so long as his core soul worm remained intact, that was purely theoretical.
Every time a major flesh avatar was incinerated, a chunk of his irreplaceable life essence was permanently shaved away, pushing him ever closer to the grave.
The lingering terror from being roasted alive compelled him to retreat to the deepest, most fortified sanctum in the entire manor.
‘What on earth were those flames…?
An ancient mystery inherited from the Age of Gods?!’ Zouken’s voice quavered with undeniable dread.
He never wanted to experience the agony of having his soul scorched again.
The intruders’ combat power far exceeded his worst projections, but he tried to reassure himself—he still possessed thousands of crest worms, the black mud pit, and his lethal Assassin trump card.
The enemy was a Servant as long as Hassan landed Zabaniya on her chest, no matter how miraculous her magecraft was, she would— His train of thought snapped in half.
As if a cosmic pause button had been struck, Zouken froze stiff on the platform.
Just a split second ago, the spiritual command link tethering him to Assassin had vanished into thin air.
‘Are you out of your mind…?!
How long has it even been?!’ An Assassin boasting A-Rank Agility and max-level Presence Concealment had been wiped out of existence before he could even activate a Command Spell?!
What kind of ungodly monster was walking through his front door?!
With his entire upper-floor swarm ashified, Zouken couldn’t see what had transpired in the foyer, but his instincts screamed that the red-haired demon was responsible.
The phantom burning sensation seemed to flare across his skin once more, and the image of Surtr expanded into an insurmountable, terrifying nightmare inside his rotting mind.
His wooden staff tapped frantically against the stone pavers, laying bare his frantic panic.
Five hundred years of grand ambitions, ruined in an instant before the Holy Grail War could even officially begin.
Resentment?
Absolutely.
But it was completely swallowed by an overwhelming, primal terror of death.
He had to run.
Matou Zouken was terrified of death beyond all else otherwise, he wouldn’t have degraded himself into a repulsive parasite for half a millennium.
Yet how could he escape?
There were two monsters blockading his estate.
Step…
step…
step…
The moment the thought crossed his mind, heavy, deliberate footsteps resonated from the stone stairwell above, accompanied by a wave of suffocating, volcanic heat rolling into the cellar.
She was already here.
Zouken whipped his head toward the entrance, his boots instinctively dragging him backward until his spine struck the edge of the stone platform.
Looking down, a roiling sea of mutated black mud bubbled beneath the pit.
Looking up, heavy fissures were already spreading across the subterranean ceiling.