In the discipline of thaumaturgy, ‘Familiars’ broadly refer to biological or spiritual entities bound to a magus through contracts and magical formulas.
Ranging from mundane flora, birds, fish, and insects, all the way up to mythological Heroic Spirits and digitized artificial intelligences…
Practically any sentient vessel that can be commanded via a thaumaturgical circuit falls under the definition of a familiar.
It was an academic field boasting an exceptionally low entry threshold, yet an infinitely high ceiling.
Heroic Spirits were fundamentally supreme familiars.
Prior to this, Surtr had absorbed foundational familiar theory from Medea’s tutelage, making basic animal enchantment remarkably straightforward.
Before long, a small black wild bird took flight from the ancient eaves of Ryuudou Temple.
For simple aerial reconnaissance, elaborate alchemical rituals were entirely unnecessary plucking an ordinary avian from the mountain forest and engraving a simple sensory formula was more than enough.
Meanwhile, inside the temple workshop.
Medea—who was diligently preparing the catalyst modifications for Avalon—raised her chin and tracked the little black bird through her wraith network.
Watching that laughably crude, amateurish familiar formula, the Age of Gods witch could only sigh with fond amusement in all of Ryuudou Temple, only her dearest Master could produce something so unrefined.
‘Once this war settles, I must set aside dedicated hours to tutor Master in proper high-tier sorcery.’ Medea resolved silently.
On the other end of the connection, Surtr remained blissfully unaware that her future schedule had been claimed by a strict Colchian tutor.
At that moment, she was clumsily navigating her new avian scout toward downtown Fuyuki.
By the way, she had christened the little raven ‘Huginn’.
Since it was the very first familiar crafted by her own hands, bestowing a legendary Norse name felt obligatory.
There was zero esoteric significance behind it she just thought it sounded cool.
Because Huginn was merely a baseline animal vessel, Surtr could only issue simple navigational commands.
Yet the sensory feedback provided an extraordinarily novel experience.
Synching her consciousness into the bird’s optical nerve felt remarkably akin to wearing a high-end virtual reality headset.
Except that because it was an ordinary woodland bird, her peripheral vision and sensory bandwidth were severely constrained—feeling somewhat like wearing a heavy iron helmet with narrow eye slits.
It was slightly disorienting.
Moreover, high-tier Servant skirmishes didn’t necessarily produce city-level explosions every time, meaning passive aerial scouting might yield zero tactical results.
Still, she had initiated the flight with a playful, experimental mindset anyway walking away empty-handed wouldn’t bother her in the least.
Equipping herself with that casual excuse, Surtr guided Huginn on a lazy aerial patrol above the glittering nightscape of Fuyuki City.
Her initial destination had been the ruined boulevard from earlier to see how the Holy Church’s cleanup executors were covering up the crater, but before she could cross the river, a few familiar silhouettes caught her optical feed.
Fuyuki City, Miyama Town.
Inside a secluded, dimly lit public park barely half a kilometer from the earlier battlefield, the freezing night air was being torn to ribbons.
Red and cobalt silhouettes intersected in a blur of lethal choreography.
An ancient crimson spear and twin Chinese dao crossed in mid-air at supersonic speeds invisible to mortal eyes, showering the frostbitten grass with blinding sparks.
Every collision radiated an ocean of magical pressure that would make ordinary modern magi faint on the spot.
The atmospheric shockwave bursting from each strike matched the destructive output of a high-tier five-verse offensive incantation.
Tracking the flow of combat was utterly impossible for human eyesight.
Yet even a novice could discern one indisputable fact the red-coated swordsman was being systematically and overwhelmingly crushed.
“What’s the matter, Archer?
Skip lunch today?!” Lancer sneered with feral arrogance, his crimson lance—Gáe Bolg—unleashing a tempestuous barrage of thrusts that blurred into a wall of red afterimages.
There was zero verbal retort.
Engaging in battlefield banter was a luxury reserved exclusively for the victor controlling the tempo.
And Counter Guardian EMIYA possessed zero bandwidth for banter.
Merely parrying the Irish demigod’s ferocious onslaught demanded one hundred percent of his cognitive focus cold sweat soaked through his tanned complexion, veins throbbed violently along his temples, and his molars were clenched to the verge of cracking.
Kanshou and Bakuya were shattered into spirit particles, instantly projected anew, obliterated once more, and re-projected in an endless, desperate loop.
He had lost count of how many dozens of twin blades had disintegrated under the spear’s tip.
Despite fighting at the absolute peak of his defensive swordsmanship, the howling crimson spearhead had already carved several bloody lacerations across his torso and limbs.
‘Choosing to contest him in close-quarters melee from the start was a catastrophic blunder!’ Archer cursed bitterly in his heart.
He had fallen victim to the deadliest trap of all excessive reliance on past timeline experience.
Having personally lived through the canonical Fifth Holy Grail War in his mortal past, Archer believed he possessed an accurate benchmark of Cú Chulainn’s combat parameters, even accounting for a change in Master.
Furthermore, because his preferred combat style naturally inclined toward dual-wielding swordsmanship, he had charged headfirst into melee.
And the immediate consequence was total tactical regret.
The Lancer standing before him was astronomically more lethal than the hound he remembered—he was simply no match in close combat!
Ordinarily, a Master’s compatibility with a Servant merely influenced loyalty and mana efficiency unless miraculous conceptual boosts occurred mid-battle, swapping summoners should never cause such a reality-bending power disparity!
‘Why on earth is he this strong?!’ Archer was thoroughly bewildered.
The only visible anomaly was the demigod’s altered attire—his cobalt bodysuit was noticeably darker, adorned with intricate, ancient runic motifs that differed completely from the Fourth and Fifth War archives.
Could a cosmetic wardrobe change actually grant a combat multiplier?!
What an absolute joke!
Since when did Servants receive parameter steroid buffs just by changing skins?!
Archer had a thousand sarcastic complaints he desperately wanted to vent, but reality gave him zero breathing room.
He had to break line of sight and transition to long-range archery immediately, or he would be impaled through the heart in under ten exchanges.
While Lancer and Archer were locked in their ferocious duel, a lethal, one-sided pursuit was unfolding through the dense woods flanking the park.
Tohsaka Rin sprinted frantically between the frozen pine trees, her breath coming in ragged, steaming gasps as sweat beaded across her forehead.
Behind her, a sharply dressed woman in a dark burgundy business suit pursued her like a relentless demonic wraith, gliding over the snow-dusted forest floor at inhuman speeds.
Following a brief, five-second skirmish, Rin had immediately recognized the terrifying truth this opponent was completely out of her league.
Her entire repertoire of offensive jewel craft had failed to leave a single scratch!
She could only channel Reinforcement into her leg muscles, fleeing for her life.
Yet against that predator’s speed, getting cornered was purely a matter of seconds.
Gritting her teeth, Rin gripped a dazzling, golden-yellow jewel from her pocket, her heart aching at the financial expenditure.
Timing the woman’s approach with pinpoint precision, she whipped around and hurled the gemstone backward with all her might!
BOOM—!
The radiant glow of the jewel flared before Bazett’s eyes as seventeen years of compressed ambient mana detonated in mid-air, unleashing a localized tactical explosion that decimated the surrounding trees.
The concussive blast caused Rin’s footing to stumble, but the sheer thermal yield was undeniably magnificent.
‘Did that stop her?!’ Panting heavily, Rin whipped her head back to confirm.
What greeted her vision was a sight that froze the blood in her veins.
Stepping calmly through the billowing smoke and pulverized timber was the burgundy-suited enforcer.
Her arms were loosely crossed before her chest, emerald-green runic light flowing across her enchanted leather gloves, completely and utterly unscathed.
Total damage inflicted a slight speck of dirt on her coat’s hem.
“She…
she tanked an A-Rank blast point-blank?!
Are you freaking kidding me?!” Three consecutive waves of existential shock assaulted Rin’s mind.
That single gemstone was one of only ten family heirlooms painstakingly nurtured over seventeen years, possessing enough destructive energy to level an entire residential mansion to bedrock!
At that zero-range proximity, even if she deployed bounded fields, how could she emerge without a single singed hair?!
Why was this Holy Grail War crawling with absolute monsters in every direction?!
The staggering impossibility left Rin’s brain in a daze, yet her survival instincts refused to shut down.
With the enforcer closing the final three paces, Rin reflexively dropped into a low, coiled Bajiquan martial stance.
Unlike sheltered bookworm magi, Rin had drilled physical combat daily since childhood bolstered by Reinforcement magecraft, her hand-to-hand capabilities were lethal enough to shatter bone.
Furthermore, having been tutored in Bajiquan by Kotomine Kirei for years, her understanding of close-quarters striking was exceptionally sharp.
Channeling mana into her fists, Rin launched a lightning-fast counter-jab!
Yet the tactical outcome was brutally decisive.
As the Clock Tower’s reigning premier Enforcer of the Sealing Designation Division, Bazett Fraga McRemitz’s combat instincts and battlefield experience were light-years beyond what a teenage high school apprentice could dream of matching.
Effortlessly parrying Rin’s outstretched fist with the back of her left palm, Bazett’s right fist drove forward like an iron piston!
CRACK—!
A wave of suffocating, bone-crushing agony exploded across Rin’s abdomen, forcing a strangled, agonized gasp from her throat.
The defensive ward jewel concealed beneath her sweater shattered into powder with a concussive pop, sending the young heiress hurtling backward through the air like a kite with a severed string!
Meanwhile, atop Mount Enzou.
Watching the entire woodland beatdown through Huginn’s avian optical feed, Surtr couldn’t help but click her tongue in sympathetic pity.
‘Ouch…
that definitely broke a few ribs.’ Running headfirst into Bazett on night one was the definition of rotten luck at Rin’s current developmental stage, beating an elite Clock Tower Enforcer was ly impossible.
‘So Bazett really is on the board.’ Having theorized her presence earlier, Surtr wasn’t particularly surprised.
Her prolonged brawl against Berserker had forced her to postpone her afternoon raid on Fuyuki Church looking at the current dynamic, Kotomine Kirei had likely been counter-killed and buried by Bazett before he could pull off his canonical betrayal.
Just pondering Bazett’s conceptual trump card—Fragarach—gave Surtr a mild tactical migraine.
The only reliable strategy against a causality-reversing counter-weapon was having Medea distract the Enforcer from afar while Surtr executed a one-on-one duel against Lancer.
Speaking of the Irish hound, his combat performance tonight was equally astonishing.
Counter Guardian EMIYA was being completely dismantled in melee without the slightest room to breathe.
Lancer’s physical parameters were night and day compared to the skirmish two nights ago.
Excluding the possibility that Cú Chulainn had sandbagged during their first meeting, and factoring in his newly adorned dark runic battle garb, Surtr could only arrive at one logical explanation Saint Graph Ascension.
This was no mere cosmetic progression system from mobile games.
In real thaumaturgical physics, Ascension was a rare, forbidden ritual that allowed a Heroic Spirit’s container to draw closer to their primordial, living state in mythological history.
Age of Gods legends like Heracles and Cú Chulainn were inherently severely constrained when compressed into standard Servant classes thus, undergoing a Saint Graph Ascension yielded an astronomical multiplier to their parameters.
Factoring in Cú Chulainn’s supreme mastery of Primordial Runes, combined with the massive stockpile of Church Command Spells plundered from Kotomine’s corpse, executing an Ascension ritual was entirely feasible.
‘The troublesome contenders are getting even more troublesome.’ Surtr sighed inwardly.
Reality truly never ran out of wild curveballs.
‘Unless an unexpected miracle occurs, Rin is getting eliminated tonight.’ ‘Unless an unexpected miracle occurs…’