“Ow…
that hurt like hell.” Since the vertical drop was barely a split-second event, Shirou hadn’t sustained any actual injuries, but the stinging impact against the cold pavement was unavoidable.
Scrambling back to his feet, Shirou vigorously rubbed his reddened nose before locking his gaze onto Surtr.
“Um…
who are you, exactly…?” Subconsciously, he slipped into polite honorifics.
While the girl appeared to be roughly his age, the terrifying physical strength she had displayed was light-years beyond what any mundane human was capable of.
“My name is Surtr.” Surtr looked the teenager up and down as his pending system quest floated back into her thoughts.
‘Wants to become an ally of justice.’ A jackpot commission boasting staggeringly rich rewards, yet plagued by notoriously ambiguous completion criteria.
She had previously shelved it due to how annoying it seemed, but since fate kept throwing the boy into her path, taking a crack at it didn’t hurt she was killing time anyway.
‘System, what is the exact completion metric for this wish?
Do I physically have to babysit him until he saves the entire world?’ Surtr questioned in her consciousness.
[Whether the wish is fulfilled is determined entirely by the client’s internal psyche.
The moment Emiya Shirou genuinely acknowledges that he has achieved his ideal of becoming an ‘Ally of Justice’, the commission will be completed.] [The host must exert a pivotal, transformative influence during his ideological development.
The system will disburse tiered bonus rewards based on the profundity of your guidance.] ‘A pivotal influence?
Meaning what, exactly?’ [For instance: reshaping his philosophy on heroism, preventing him from retracing the tragic, self-destructive loop of Counter Guardian EMIYA, or guiding him to become a dedicated protector for a single individual.] ‘I see.’ In other words, she was being tasked with acting as his philosophical life mentor.
For a pragmatic brawler who preferred swinging a flaming greatsword over giving therapy sessions, this felt remarkably troublesome.
‘Hypothetically, what happens if I just have Medea rewrite his subconscious with high-tier suggestion magecraft…?’ Surtr’s mind instinctively drifted toward Medea’s earlier proposal, but before she could finish the thought, a massive, flashing red ‘X’ covered her field of vision.
[Notice: Psychic lobotomy and magical brainwashing are strictly forbidden.
Please refrain from attempting malicious shortcuts, Host.] ‘Hey, I was just exploring the parameter boundaries!’ [The fact that your first instinct was a psychiatric violation indicates a severe ethical defect in your operational mindset.] The system delivered a savage, deadpan critique.
‘My moral worldview is practically saintly, thank you very much.’ Surtr muttered inwardly.
She blamed Medea that witch’s corrupting influence was clearly rubbing off on her pure soul.
Her brief mental exchange wrapped up just as Shirou’s polite, slightly hesitant voice cut through the silence.
“Um…
hello.
I’m Emiya Shirou.
Thank you for grabbing me back there.
Was that little girl on the fourth-floor balcony safely brought down by you as well?” “Yeah.
I handed her over to the first responders at the perimeter.” Surtr nodded.
For saving the child and suffocating the apartment fire, the system had credited her with an extra fifty Primogems from the grateful residents.
Rescuing victims and bagging free currency with a casual flick of her wrist was a delightful mechanic she definitely wouldn’t mind more incidental gigs like this.
“That’s wonderful…” Shirou exhaled a long, genuine sigh of relief, his eyes shining with unadulterated joy for a stranger’s safety.
Meanwhile, Surtr was rapidly calculating how to steer the conversation toward his ideological flaw.
From her past-life knowledge of the Fate franchise, she knew this boy was a textbook pathological altruist, suffering from severe survivor’s guilt and an intensely distorted, self-sacrificing complex birthed from the Fuyuki Great Fire ten years ago.
To him, human existence only possessed meaning when he was shedding his own blood to save someone else.
Miss Surtr, an ancient fire-wielding calamity, couldn’t fathom such a suicidal, self-erasing mindset.
She was no licensed psychologist and had zero qualifications to perform cognitive behavioral therapy on him.
However, if her job was merely providing a few sharp reality checks regarding his “Ally of Justice” dream, she was more than equipped to drop some truth bombs.
Naturally, she needed a solid conversational hook first.
“Your name is Emiya Shirou, right?
You share a surname with an old acquaintance of mine.” Surtr casually remarked as she began strolling down the quiet residential street.
“A man with messy black hedgehog hair and the hollow, dead eyes of a corpse.
Named Emiya Kiritsugu.
Ring any bells?” Compared to awkward small talk about the chilly weather, bringing up a mutual acquaintance was infinitely more effective.
“Kiritsugu…?!” Hearing his father’s name spoken aloud by a mysterious, horned stranger, Shirou’s jaw dropped in sheer astonishment.
While the surname ‘Emiya’ wasn’t exceptionally rare in Japan, the specific physical traits she described were identical to his late adoptive father.
Though calling the man’s eyes ‘the hollow gaze of a corpse’ was a bit harsh—even if it was mathematically accurate.
“He…
he was my adoptive father!
Are you an old friend of Kiritsugu’s?” Shirou hurried to match her stride, thoroughly baffled.
The girl looked seventeen at most where on earth could Kiritsugu have met her?
“Not a personal friend.
Let’s just say I’m exceptionally well-informed regarding his career.
After all, his name carries quite a bit of weight within the thaumaturgical underworld.” Surtr’s gaze casually drifted past a stray cat lounging on a wall, gesturing with her chin for Shirou to walk alongside her.
“Weight…?
In the magus world?” Shirou’s curiosity was completely hooked.
Even though he had lived under the same roof with Kiritsugu for years, aside from knowing the man possessed basic magecraft, his adoptive father had kept his past life completely shrouded in secrecy.
“Mhm.
He was famously known as the ‘Magus Killer’.
A merciless, cold-blooded mercenary who resorted to sniper rifles, plastic explosives, and hostage executions to ruthlessly eliminate any target in his way.” Surtr summarized the legendary resume of the Fourth Fuyuki War’s champion.
“That’s impossible!
Kiritsugu was always gentle and kind!
He would never do something so monstrous!” Shirou’s voice spiked with defensive agitation, vehemently rejecting her description.
The Kiritsugu of his childhood memories was a peaceful, melancholic father figure who spent his days sipping green tea on the veranda.
He still vividly remembered the divine, transcendent look of salvation in the man’s tearful eyes when he pulled him from the burning wreckage of Fuyuki.
A man who harbored such a pure, naive dream of becoming a hero could never be a cold-blooded assassin.
“I’m merely stating historical facts.
But I won’t argue with your perception either humans are multifaceted creatures whose behavior shifts dramatically depending on their environment.” Surtr maintained a tranquil, unbothered tone.
“He was naive, he was ruthless, and he was gentle.” “In my eyes, he was a walking contradiction.
A tragic, broken soul who spent his entire life being tortured by an impossible obsession.” Surtr held out her right forearm.
A delicate, crystal-white dove drifted down from the winter sky, resting softly against her wrist.
“An obsession…?
What obsession did Kiritsugu have?” Shirou furrowed his brows, a heavy, anxious premonition clutching his chest.
“His obsession was that childish dream of ‘saving everyone and becoming an Ally of Justice’.
Since you inherited his estate, you should be intimately familiar with that phrase.” “B-But that was Kiritsugu’s grand ideal!” Shirou’s tone carried genuine indignation.
He couldn’t understand why this girl spoke of his father’s cherished dream with such mocking pity.
There was an ocean of difference between a noble ideal and a toxic obsession.
“Let’s test that with a classic thought experiment.
You’re familiar with the Trolley Problem, aren’t you?” Surtr snapped her fingers, dispersing the dove into wind.
“The ethical dilemma where a runaway trolley is heading toward five tied-up people, and you have the lever to divert it onto a side track to kill one person instead?” Shirou nodded.
“Precisely.
So, Emiya Shirou, which track do you choose?” “Why would anyone accept those choices?!
There has to be a third option to stop the train and save everyone!” Shirou blurted out almost instantaneously, his eyes blazing with stubborn defiance.
“A typical, naive civilian response.” Surtr nodded, entirely unsurprised.
If placed in that scenario, Surtr would likely brainstorm a few brute-force methods first, and if that failed, she’d simply let nature take its course without losing a second of sleep.
While her modern upbringing inclined her toward basic decency, she possessed zero emotional obligation to martyr herself for strangers.
“However, Emiya Kiritsugu was not a normal person.
Faced with that lever, he would pull it without a millisecond of hesitation, murdering the single innocent to preserve the five.” “That’s…
that’s not true…” Shirou choked on his words, his voice wavering with deep cognitive dissonance.
“That is the absolute truth of who he was.” Surtr gestured for him to keep his composure.
“Kiritsugu’s past trauma drilled a single, mathematical equation into his psyche: saving one side inherently mandates the slaughter of the other.
After decades of acting as an executioner, that utilitarian calculation became the fundamental law of his soul.” “Think back carefully.
Has he ever muttered something similar to you on the porch?” Shirou went completely rigid.
His throat felt as dry as sandpaper, because Kiritsugu had indeed whispered those exact, haunted words on many moonlit nights.
Whenever he recalled his father’s dead, hollow gaze staring into the dark, Shirou couldn’t deny the terrifying possibility.
Before passing away, Kiritsugu had confessed that he had abandoned his dream.
Was it because reality had crushed his spirit under the weight of those arithmetic sacrifices?
“That is precisely why I call it a toxic obsession.
A person pursuing a true ideal will relentlessly search for new possibilities, whereas a person consumed by an obsession will inevitably drive themselves into suicidal extremism.” Surtr laid out her final thesis.
Listening to her cold, surgical deconstruction, an icy shiver crawled straight up Emiya Shirou’s spine.
For some terrifying reason, it felt as though she wasn’t dissecting Kiritsugu’s corpse…
She was describing his own future.
“Then…
is there truly no way in this world to save everyone?” Shirou asked, his voice trembling with desperate yearning.
He had inherited Kiritsugu’s torch, yet he refused to inherit the bloody, utilitarian arithmetic that broke his father.
At least for right now, his young, unyielding heart still firmly believed that a miracle existed where nobody had to die.
“Why do you think Emiya Kiritsugu failed?” Surtr asked instead of answering.
“I…
I don’t know…” Shirou was utterly overwhelmed.
He had learned in the span of ten minutes that his saintly father was an international assassin how could he deduce the philosophical flaw of a Fourth War veteran?
“Could it be…
because he wasn’t strong enough?” Offering a tentative, strength-based hypothesis was the most natural train of thought for a teenage boy his age.
“Raw power was definitely a factor, but not even the gods of mythology possess enough omnipotence to rewrite the entire world through solitary strength alone.” While conversing, the two arrived before the entrance of a large municipal facility.
“However, in my personal opinion, his most fundamental flaw was far simpler…” Under Shirou’s thoroughly bewildered gaze, Surtr strode through the glass automatic doors, her languid voice drifting back over her shoulder.
“The man was functionally illiterate.”