“What was that just now…?
Magic?!” Illya’s ruby eyes widened to the size of saucers, staring dumbfounded at the three-meter-tall magma phantom hovering behind Surtr.
What kind of ungodly magecraft could physically deflect Berserker in a direct, head-on collision?!
With Illya’s visual perspective, she couldn’t catch the microscopic intricacies of the clash, naively assuming the molten giant behind Surtr had delivered the crushing blow.
“No.
This is definitely not magic.” Surtr shook her hands casually, adopting an utterly deadpan, serious expression.
“This is my Stand, [Molten Core Giant Shadow].
Individuals who command entities like this are known as Stand Users.” “Stand…?
Stand User…?” Completely alien terminology flooded Illya’s aristocratic homunculus brain, short-circuiting her thoughts.
“My Stand is vastly superior to any ordinary Servant.
If you know what’s good for you, be a good girl and back off.” Surtr gave a dismissive flick of her wrist.
“Lies!
My Berserker is the strongest in the world!” Illya snapped out of her daze, vehemently yelling back.
Scanning Berserker’s spiritual core, she confirmed that aside from a scorched imprint across his abdomen, the demigod had suffered zero structural damage.
For a monstrous hero like Heracles, a minor surface burn wasn’t even a scratch.
‘See?
That so-called Stand is nothing special after all!’ Illya concluded with childish arrogance.
“Hmph!
Cheap parlor tricks won’t save you!
Berserker, crush her!” Following her furious command, the black demigod gripped his stone broadsword with both hands, lunging forward into another ferocious charge.
“Tsk…
you really don’t know when to quit, do you?
In that case, don’t blame me for unleashing my ultimate, forbidden secret technique.” Miss Surtr clicked her tongue in annoyance.
Entering a prolonged slugfest with Heracles without proper tactical setup was a massive headache.
Yet reality didn’t bend to her personal convenience.
Left with zero choice, she prepared to deploy her absolute trump card.
Pulling Lævateinn from her spatial inventory with her right hand, she opened their telepathic contract link and belted out a frantic mental SOS.
‘Emergency!
Medea, are you alive?!
Come save your defenseless Master!’ BOOM—!
A catastrophic tempest of black and crimson violence detonated across the avenue.
The reinforced asphalt roadway was pulverized into gravel beneath their thundering footsteps.
Roadside trees toppled, concrete barriers disintegrated, and the ferocious shockwaves radiating from their clash swept through the suburban block like a localized category-five typhoon.
Meanwhile, atop the roof of the adjacent commercial building.
Waver Velvet stood frozen by the parapet, the burning cigar pinched between his trembling fingers nearly dropping to the floor.
While he couldn’t track every supersonic movement exchanged between the two monsters below, during a brief, bone-crushing weapon lock, his eagle eyes caught an unmistakable crimson emblem glowing on the back of the red-haired girl’s hand.
A Command Seal.
The undisputed mark of a Master.
Which meant…
the entity trading earth-shattering blows with the Greek demigod Heracles was not an eight-class rogue Servant, but an authentic, living Master who commanded a Servant of her own!
‘Holy shit…!’ Waver couldn’t hold back a stream of curses in his heart.
What kind of cursed, unhinged anomaly had this Fifth Holy Grail War become?!
Was Masters personally beating the tar out of top-tier Servants considered standard operating procedure in this era?!
Had his own thaumaturgical knowledge base become completely obsolete, or was this girl running a patch version five hundred years ahead of humanity?!
Subconsciously reaching up to massage his violently throbbing temples, Waver desperately prayed that he was merely suffering from severe sleep deprivation.
Otherwise, how on earth could such an absurd, logic-defying monstrosity exist?
Though to be fair, this wasn’t even the first time he had witnessed an overpowered Master in the past twenty-four hours.
While Surtr was conducting her “scientific bath research” last night, the Holy Grail War had officially kicked off across Fuyuki.
Waver—a reigning Lord of the Clock Tower—had crossed paths with Lancer’s faction during a routine nighttime patrol.
Even though both Masters originated from the Clock Tower’s elite circles, they held zero personal camaraderie.
Following a curt exchange of greetings, a lethal skirmish had erupted on the spot.
What followed was Waver’s humiliating, speed-of-light defeat.
Fragarach: The Gouging Sword of the War God.
Facing that ultimate, causality-reversing counter-attack Mystic Code, Rider hadn’t dared deploy his supreme Reality Marble at all.
That pair—from the combat-specialist Master to the Irish demigod Servant—was outrageously, disgustingly lethal.
Had Gray not intervened with the Holy Lance at the critical moment, this esteemed Lord of the Clock Tower would have suffered an embarrassing round-one elimination, packing his luggage and flying back to London on the exact evening he arrived.
He had originally assumed Bazett Fraga McRemitz was an isolated, freakish anomaly.
He never imagined a second, even more terrifying monster was walking the streets.
Not only was she trading blows head-on with a behemoth like Berserker whose raw physical parameters could sweep six standard classes, but that greatsword in her grip…
No matter how you analyzed the conceptual weight, that was a genuine, apex-tier Noble Phantasm!
Since when had divine Noble Phantasms become wholesale dollar-store merchandise?!
Did everyone in Fuyuki have one in their pocket?!
Waver had spent a solid decade preparing for this Holy Grail War.
He had brought along top-tier alchemical grimoires and Mystic Codes hoarded over the years, shamelessly abused his executive Lord authority to smuggle a portable mana reactor to power Iskandar’s Saint Graph, and even brought Gray—a combatant capable of unleashing the Divine Construct Rhongomyniad with parameters rivaling a top-tier Heroic Spirit.
If this were an online RPG, his loadout would be considered full endgame god-tier gear, intended to deliver a crushing dimensional reduction strike against rookie Japanese magi.
Yet the second he stepped onto the battlefield, he realized his ‘godly gear’ was barely entry-level starter equipment.
The parameter inflation in this war was completely out of control.
Inhale…
exhale…
After repeating deep breathing exercises several times, Waver finally forced his frantic heart rate under control.
Now was not the time to lament the enemy’s absurdity exploiting this observation window to dissect their structural flaws was his duty as a tactician.
However, with his frail mortal eyesight, he couldn’t track the supersonic exchanges between the two titans below, only able to infer momentum during momentary weapon collisions.
Currently, Berserker seemed to hold the offensive initiative, relentlessly hammering the red-haired girl with his stone broadsword.
“Rider, what do your warrior instincts tell you?” Waver turned toward Iskandar.
He was an academic scholar, not a frontline commander consulting a veteran conqueror was essential.
“Mmm…” Rider stroked his bristling crimson beard with a massive paw, his sharp eyes narrowing into slits before delivering his tactical assessment.
“That red-haired lass isn’t fighting at full throttle.
While she appears pressed on the defensive, every single parry is executed with surgical precision.
She possesses the poise to launch a devastating counter-attack at any second, yet deliberately refrains from doing so.” “It feels as though she is intentionally stalling for time.” ‘Stalling for time…?’ ‘Why?’ The tactical question echoed through Waver’s mind before a sudden revelation struck him like lightning.
Since that girl was a Master…
Where on earth was her Servant?!
“Rider, do you pick up any spiritual signature of her Servant?!” “Negative.
Zero traces.” Rider shook his shaggy head.
Either the Servant was cloaked in spirit form, or they weren’t on the premises at all.
Waver’s brow furrowed tightly.
Eliminating the confirmed Lancer, Rider, Berserker, and the recently deceased True Assassin, the only remaining vacancies were Saber, Archer, and Caster.
A Servant that didn’t take the front lines in an open street brawl was almost certainly an auxiliary spellcaster—the Caster class!
Waver was intimately familiar with the initial Master assigned to Caster in this war he had crossed paths with Atrum Galliasta at the Clock Tower, only to receive word upon arriving in Fuyuki that the oil magnate had already met a gruesome end.
Which meant Caster had been re-contracted by this red-haired monster.
Thanks to his prior conversations with Atrum, Waver knew Caster’s True Name.
Medea of Colchis.
A sorceress who stood at the absolute pinnacle of thaumaturgy even during the mythological Age of Gods.
Berserker was currently being pinned down by the girl in melee, which meant Medea’s covert target could only be…
Waver’s gaze snapped toward Illyasviel von Einzbern, who was gradually distancing herself from the melee zone.
Meanwhile, down on the shattered boulevard.
‘Hey, Miss Medea, are you on site yet?!’ Surtr barked through their telepathic tether while batting aside Heracles’s whirlwind of heavy stone slashes.
‘I require approximately sixty seconds.
Please endure for a moment longer, Master.’ Medea’s flat, unbothered voice echoed in her mind, making an unreasonable request with the deadpan tone of someone who couldn’t care less about her Master’s physical safety.
Since the witch had the energy to crack snarky remarks, Surtr knew she was in position.
Surtr was definitely not the type to play punching bag indefinitely.
Since Heracles refused to disengage, she would gladly treat him to a taste of Muspelheim’s hospitality.
‘Sixty seconds, huh?
Fine by me.’ Surtr gave a subtle mental nod.
Compared to other Heroic Spirits armed with complex conceptual Noble Phantasms, Berserker was remarkably straightforward.
No esoteric insta-kill curses he was purely an unstoppable stat-check juggernaut.
Yet Surtr’s raw physical parameters were on par with his own, making standard parrying relatively comfortable.
As long as she wasn’t gunning for an instantaneous kill and merely focused on defense, enduring a minute was trivial.
‘Once you’re in striking range, give me the signal.
I’ll detonate one of his resurrection lives with Lævateinn, and you execute Rule Breaker during his respawn vulnerability window.’ Even though Heracles possessed twelve resurrection lives, there was a momentary thermodynamic latency during his biological reconstruction.
That split second was their golden window.
Even if Illya panicked and burned a Command Spell to recall him, it would be too late.
‘Oh, and Berserker’s Master is the living Lesser Grail.
Try not to snap her neck in the process.’ Surtr reminded her Servant.
‘Understood, Master.
However, I have an urgent operational development to report.’ Atop the roof of an adjacent building, a dark-hooded silhouette phased into view, her violet eyes locking onto the three figures observing from a distant balcony.