A rooftop of a high-rise commercial building several hundred meters away from the Matou estate.
Tohsaka Rin leaned against the concrete railing, gazing intently toward the darkened residential district in the distance.
“Archer, what do your eyes see?” She glanced at the tall, white-haired man standing at her side, his crimson mantle fluttering softly in the night wind.
After sunset, troubled by Surtr’s bizarre inquiries regarding Sakura, Rin had brought Archer here to conduct reconnaissance.
To avoid being detected by enemy bounded fields, she hadn’t dared approach too closely, relying entirely on Archer’s exceptional long-range Clairvoyance.
“Caster and her Master have breached the Matou residence.” “Assassin materialized at the front door to execute his Noble Phantasm…
and then…
then he was instantly obliterated by Caster’s Master.” Archer’s usually smooth, cynical voice actually stammered as he recounted the impossible scene unfolding through his vision.
Even though the clash occurred near the foyer, the shattered double doors had provided Archer with an unobstructed, panoramic view of the carnage.
“Are you playing a joke on me, Archer?” Rin’s jaw dropped as she rounded on her Servant, her aqua eyes wide with disbelief.
“Assassin unleashed a sure-kill Noble Phantasm, only to get one-shot on the spot…
by a human Master?!” She understood every single word individually, but strung together in a sentence, it sounded like pure, unadulterated madness.
Even though she hadn’t yet crossed blades with a foreign Servant in this war, the classified grimoires left behind by her father made it crystal clear: Servants were transcendent mythological familiars that modern magi couldn’t dream of contesting in direct combat—let alone against an activated Noble Phantasm.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me, right?!’ “Unfortunately, every word I spoke is the literal truth.” Archer sighed, his expression tinged with rare helplessness.
“That Master is a complete, unquantifiable aberration.
Not only does her physical combat prowess defy all known logic, but she carries a colossal greatsword that radiates the conceptual weight of a genuine Noble Phantasm—though she barely even used it aside from swatting Assassin’s strike aside.” “She carries a Noble Phantasm too?!
Is that woman a Master or an eighth Servant?!” Rin clutched her throbbing forehead, thoroughly losing her mind.
Where on earth did such a freakish Master come from?!
“I’m afraid we must treat that duo as two high-tier Servants operating in tandem.
And with the caster being an Age of Gods sorceress, if we allow her to entrench a Territory Creation workshop, dislodging them later will become practically impossible.” Archer’s expression hardened into pure, battle-ready solemnity.
“If the opportunity presents itself, we had best eliminate them before their stronghold is complete.” “You sure make it sound easy.” Rin rubbed her temples.
She was well aware of the strategic threat, but if eliminating a pair of god-slaying monsters was that simple, she wouldn’t be sweating bullets right now.
A tense silence fell over the skyscraper rooftop.
“Hold on.
Caster has just emerged onto the mansion roof.” A moment later, the battlefield dynamic shifted.
“Her Master is nowhere in sight.
This might be our golden window.” After tracking the estate for another few seconds without seeing Surtr follow, Archer’s eyes sharpened.
“From this vantage point, I can heavily compromise Caster before her Master can intervene.” Bearing in mind the instantaneous spatial transfer granted by Command Spells, Archer refrained from guaranteeing an absolute kill.
“Wait, isn’t this timing a little too convenient?
Could it be a deliberate bait?” Rin wasn’t some rigid, archaic knight bound by chivalric honor against an opponent vastly superior in raw parameters, long-range ambushes were standard tactical doctrine.
Yet the opportunity felt almost too clean.
“A valid concern.
However, Rin…
have you forgotten my designated Class?” Archer gave a confident, self-assured smirk, conjuring his iconic black composite bow into his grip.
“Right.
You’re an Archer.” Rin clapped her hands together in realization.
An Archer’s supreme advantage was untouchable engagement range even if it was a trap, snipers didn’t need to fear close-quarters ambushes.
“Then let’s take the shot.
If we can knock Caster off the board right here, it’ll solve a massive headache.” “Understood.” Drawing the bowstring taut, Archer nocked an arrow woven from compressed magical energy.
Target: Caster.
Meanwhile, inside the devastated Matou residence.
Following the pungent scent of malice, Surtr arrived before an unadorned wooden cellar door.
With a casual flick of flame, the door disintegrated into embers, revealing a steep stone stairway plunging into the subterranean dark.
A nauseating, suffocating miasma drifted up from the abyss, accompanied by the faint, wet fluttering of countless chitinous wings.
No prizes for guessing: the infamous Matou worm pit lay right below.
Surtr snapped her fingers lightly.
The dancing crimson embers orbiting her shoulders sprang to life, coiling into twin fiery serpents that hissed and surged down the stairwell like living magma.
Regardless of whatever horrors lurked in the dark, sterilizing the path with divine fire first was always the correct procedure.
Consider it an aggressive spiritual purification.
Clack…
clack…
clack…
Her leather boots struck the stone steps, echoing cleanly through the damp cavern.
After descending for barely a dozen seconds and swatting aside a few scorched bugs, Surtr stepped out onto a broad, elevated stone platform.
The underground abyss was instantly illuminated by the roaring glow of her flames.
Leaning against the railing, Surtr surveyed the subterranean chamber, her brows knitting into a deep scowl of profound revulsion.
The structural layout of the pit was deeply unsettling.
The surrounding cavern walls were carved into thousands of honeycomb-like square recesses, resembling the brood chambers of a nightmarish alien hive.
At the bottom of the pit, a thick lake of cursed black mud coated the cavern floor, studded with thousands upon thousands of glistening, pearl-white insect eggs.
Thousands?
Tens of thousands?
Or perhaps hundreds of thousands?
The numbers were literally dizzying.
The entire subterranean cavern had been perverted into a grotesque industrial incubator for mutant familiars.
And right in the center of the mud pit rested a gargantuan, bloated crimson-and-black monstrosity that occupied nearly half the chamber.
It was a swollen, repulsive queen insect with stubby, vestigial limbs and an engorged, translucent abdomen.
Through the pulsating membrane, thousands of wriggling larvae and eggs could be seen shifting beneath the surface.
Undoubtedly the mother queen bred exclusively for rapid population output.
‘Utterly revolting.’ Even setting aside the corrupting influence of the Grail’s mud, the visual horror alone was enough to test anyone’s sanity.
Surtr had never been particularly squeamish around insects, but she had a strong feeling she was going to have severe bug-related PTSD after tonight.
As her boots crossed the stone platform, a lone Crest Worm slithered out from a crack near the ledge.
From its squirming mouthparts, Matou Zouken’s raspy, distorted voice hissed into the air.
It seemed the old coward no longer dared manifest a humanoid avatar before her.
“Caster’s Master…
is there truly no room for negotiation between us?
Surely there is no fundamental enmity separating our houses.” “Assassin has already perished by your hand.
There is no need to drive an old man to absolute extinction, is there?” Zouken attempted to barter for his survival.
In his calculations, beyond being rival participants in the Holy Grail War, they held zero personal grudges.
Now that his Servant was eliminated and he was effectively disqualified from the war, tearing his ancestral estate down was completely irrational.
“If you stay your hand, we can forge a mutually beneficial alliance.” “Spread before you is the culmination of this old man’s ten years of meticulous bio-crafting.
With my tactical backing and resources, securing the ultimate victory in this Holy Grail War will be a trivial walk in the park for you.” The squirming worm locked its beady eyes onto Lævateinn resting in her grip.
That was an authentic, high-grade Noble Phantasm without a shadow of a doubt.
A Master wielding a top-tier Noble Phantasm while commanding an Age of Gods Caster was an undisputed heavyweight contender for the Grail.
Zouken’s opportunistic mind was already calculating how to leech onto her coattails.
Unfortunately for him, Surtr had zero interest in entertaining the ramblings of a parasite.
“I don’t make deals with dead people.” Flicking her thumb, a wisp of flame flash-fried the squirming worm into a puff of smoke.
“Insolent little brat…
don’t you dare get cocky!” Zouken’s enraged shriek echoed from another crevice across the cavern, delivering the standard parting screech of a cornered villain.
Yet this time, he wasn’t merely barking empty threats.
Across the vaulted ceiling, glowing orange runes ignited one after another as compressed magical energy rapidly reached critical mass.
The old cockroach was preparing to detonate the entire subterranean foundation!
Worse, his true objective was blasting the containment barriers wide open, unleashing hundreds of thousands of mud-infused parasites into Fuyuki’s civilian districts to cause mass chaos while he slipped away in the confusion.
An utterly venomous, scorched-earth play.
‘In that case, I just need to incinerate every single bug before your bombs can go off.’ Seeing right through his desperation, Surtr flipped her grip and drove the flaming greatsword straight down into the bedrock, letting out a sharp, resonant command through the rising inferno.
“Lævateinn—!”