Compatibility counters.
That was the only explanation Miss Illya could come up with for what was happening.
Ever since the Fourth Holy Grail War, she had carried one specific exploitable weakness: the skill derived from her nature as the bearer of the World's Evil could be countered by Heroic Spirit Servants with the Counter Guardian attribute. Whether or not the opponent possessed a designated skill that targeted her specifically, simply being a Counter Guardian was enough to impose a severe disadvantage against her.
In other words: she could trade blows head-on with Karna the Lancer, Karna could beat the red Archer in a direct confrontation, but the red Archer in turn could directly counter her. As if the Fifth Holy Grail War had been designed with some kind of balance in mind, the Grail system had very thoughtfully laid out a food chain.
The red Archer might not be able to beat anyone else, but he could beat Miss Illya.
And Miss Illya might be able to beat almost everyone else, but she couldn't beat this red Archer.
Counters reign supreme. Bane attributes that wreck even divine beings had always existed in the world of magecraft.
Take Francesca, for instance. She could fight Heroic Servants one-on-one, and even a first-rate Heroic Spirit might not be able to see through her illusions. And yet Francesca simply could not beat Zouken Matou, no matter how hard she tried. There was simply no escaping that wretched counter relationship.
It just so happened that this particular counter relationship had now landed on Miss Illya's head. If she still had the Minor Grail Heart skill from her Assassin-class days, she wouldn't be getting countered across the board by a Counter Guardian. It would be more like a Fire-type taking double damage from a Grass-type in Pokemon, but the Minor Grail Heart wouldn't be classified as a Psychic-type that gets countered.
But she was no longer the Assassin class. She was the Saber class, having consumed the World's Evil. In other words, in exchange for the normal double Counter Guardian counter she would have faced before, she had traded up to a quadruple counter (the equivalent of taking Ice and Grass type damage from a Counter Guardian), and in exchange she had gained a base-state power that far surpassed the Assassin class as long as she wasn't being hit by a Counter Guardian bane.
Great power always came paired with certain risks and gaps.
Against any Heroic Spirit Servant, divine-attribute Servants included, her every blow landed as a critical hit.
A Counter Guardian-attribute Servant's every blow against her also landed as a critical hit, and on top of that it could reduce the damage she dealt.
"Truly my spectacular out-of-spec Luck. A Counter Guardian showing up in the Fifth Holy Grail War."
Counter Guardians were not supposed to exist in a normal Holy Grail War. They were agents of the World's Will, scavengers and enforcers, special Heroic Spirit Servants nearly impossible to summon even with a relic, subject to the vague and intangible jurisdiction of the Restraint Force.
Watching her own continuous attacks fail to leave so much as a surface scratch on the red Archer, Miss Illya immediately recognized his nature.
And the more she thought about it, the more she felt a growing frustration with her own luck and circumstances.
The World's Evil. The malice despised by the world itself.
A sin that was never meant to be born.
Ten years ago, in order to cling to survival long enough to reach the opening of the next Holy Grail War, she had schemed to consume the World's Evil that was Angra Mainyu inside the Grail, and in doing so had also inherited the World's Evil's identity. Simply put, she had also inherited its nature of being something that must not be allowed to descend. The Luck stat on her panel, which had broken through the lower limit possible for a Heroic Spirit Servant, was proof of that. Both the Grail ritual and the world itself wanted her dead.
Her continued existence in this world was not permitted. The path she wanted to walk would be met with obstruction at every turn. And now even the World's Restraint Force's part-timers had come to participate in the Fifth Holy Grail War.
Obviously targeting her specifically. Wanting to bring an end to this bearer of the World's Evil.
She was even starting to wonder now whether, just to kill her, the spec level of the Heroic Servants in this Holy Grail War might be unprecedented, each one summoned precisely because they possessed the capability to kill her.
"But that's what makes it interesting. Without carrying weight on your back, how could you ever appreciate how beautiful happiness truly is?"
Miss Illya pressed a hand lightly over her visor, letting the corner of her mouth curl upward just slightly. Yes. This feeling right here. This despair. She needed this sense of urgency!
Just like the urgency of the Fourth Holy Grail War, the urgency that reminded her she was still alive!
The urgency that pressed down on her until she couldn't breathe, and yet told her she could still fight for what she wanted!
Miss Illya smiled. A charming arc at the corner of her lips.
Kill.
Kill.
Kill.
If her Master won't let me live, I'll kill my Master. If a Heroic Servant won't let me live, I'll slaughter the enemy. If the Grail ritual won't let me live, I'll tear the Grail apart. And if the whole world wants me unhappy, then I'll kill until only I remain in it, and redefine for myself what unhappy and happy even mean.
There is always a road ahead. There has never truly been a dead end in this world, only people who have despaired of their circumstances.
The answer to any problem lies within our own hands. She did not understand what it meant to give up.
To discover yourself, to know yourself, to rely on yourself. That was what had allowed her to keep killing all the way to the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War as the weakest Assassin-class Servant.
The persistence that recreated miracles and epics, again and again.
"Karna can reduce the damage I deal. You can reduce the damage I deal. He can cut it down to one-tenth. So how much can you cut it down by? Compatibility counters? Bane attributes? I've never believed in those. Back at the very beginning of the Fourth Holy Grail War, when I faced the Golden King Gilgamesh alone with nowhere to retreat, I never once thought any counter advantage was going to give me a realistic hope of beating him at his peak in a direct fight."
The small black-armored girl muttered under her breath with a quiet, scornful little laugh, then swept the black blade forward once.
Yes, she could not defeat a Counter Guardian. Just as Cuchulainn in Celtic mythology could not overcome the wielder of the spiral sword. That was the nature of fate's bane and counter system.
But if she didn't even dare to face it head-on, if she wasn't even willing to take the first step, what right did she have to stand in this Holy Grail War?
Boom!
The concrete road surface was torn apart and shredded by released mana.
Besides, she didn't even need to beat the Counter Guardian. The familiars she had dispatched were already hunting down his Master with everything they had. And against that kind of half-baked magus...
Her spider familiars were a pure and overwhelming downgrade strike. Aside from a magus approaching Kayneth's Lord-level caliber, not one magus had ever been worthy of her serious attention.
"Rin! Have you left the residential district yet? Hurry up and leave! Use a Command Seal to recall me!"
"This black Saber has completely lost it!"
Can't take a little pressure, can you? What kind of Saber-class Servant tosses around mana beam cannons like basic attacks? Aren't those supposed to be a Heroic Spirit's ultimate moves?
The black-violet mana tore through the sky. A pillar of energy waves a hundred meters long enveloped the earth. The red Archer, whose mind had gone completely blank, gritted his teeth and drew on every drop of mana in his body without a second thought.
He still had trump cards, yes. But he couldn't chant High-Speed Incantation, and that particular Noble Phantasm required at least five stanzas of aria. Using it now would be suicide.
"Trace On."
A short magecraft aria began. Despite his earlier commentary about Three Knight-class Servants being unsportsmanlike for refusing close-quarters combat...
It was fairly obvious that this red Archer had more to offer than just a bow and melee skills.
"I am the bone of my sword... (Low)"
A pink sphere of mana rose from his raised palm. The red man's already-not-exactly-abundant mana took a further sharp dive, like pouring salt into an open wound. He could tell the Saber before him was definitely injured, but that hardly meant he was blind to the gap between them.
An old lion could still take a human's life. And this particular big cat had survived a bout with another lion entirely, making her more than capable of killing him dozens of times over before she went down.
"Seven Rings that Cover the Fiery Heavens (Rho Aias)!"
"Die!"
The rubble surrounding Miss Illya exploded upward into the air. The black-violet mana pillar slashed down from her hands and brought it crashing apart like a collapsing twin tower, sweeping away all resistance!
It was the dark obliteration driven by mana. It was a force even more savage and surging than the head-on Mana Release clash with the Son of the Sun God, Karna. Her stamina and vitality were depleting quickly, but her mana was inexhaustible, an endless well. The bane of the compatibility counter had not driven her back. If anything it had made this stubborn little girl even more feral. So what if the attributes countered her? In the Fourth Holy Grail War, plenty of people had countered her. Just about every Heroic Servant had a fair chance of killing her. But in the end, the only one who survived to the last was her alone!
Kotomine Kirei had taught her that a person's heart and their surface were never the same. Matou Kariya had taught her that betrayal was simply the norm. Tohsaka Tokiomi had taught her that the line between enemy and ally could shift in an instant!
Ten years of suffering inside the Grail had taught her that if she didn't want to be the one in despair, she had to be the one dealing despair. If you think others are evil, that just means you aren't evil enough yet. When you become the greatest evil in the world, any dead end looks routine, just something to glance at and laugh at like a child's squabble.
To overcome your enemies, to defy your fate, to guard what you believe in... and you will overturn everything.
"Get down!"
Several hundred meters of street were pierced through by the black pillar. The mana pouring out triggered an explosion beyond imagination. Purple light and the atmosphere contracted and expanded together.
The gale flattened dozens of uninhabited buildings along the sides of the street. The park at the far end of Fuyuki City erupted in a roaring mushroom cloud. Darkness and flame spiraled rapidly upward, trampling the rule that the Holy Grail War was supposed to be a secret ritual like a piece of garbage.
The entire residential street was destroyed. The Fuyuki City municipal park, along with every tree and blade of grass within it, was reduced completely to ash. If Kotomine Kirei hadn't placed a civilian-dispersal bounded field here ahead of time, before ordering Karna to come and silence any witnesses, the casualties from this single strike would have been astronomical.
Heaven and earth shook with the thundering impact. Matou Sakura felt as though her eardrums were going to rupture.
She slammed herself down on top of Tohsaka Rin, driving both of them into a corner of the street, and used Imaginary Number magecraft to block the blast wave of fire rushing toward them from a distance.
"Sakura... why are you here..."
"Are you out of your mind? Tohsaka Rin, you just took a beating at the hands of the white Lancer not long ago. How did you have the nerve to charge into the battlefield of a Saber who could fight that Lancer one-on-one, and bring your own Servant along with you? Can't you see that the Servant you summoned is simply not on the same tier as those two monsters?"
"But, but, as the administrator of Fuyuki City, I can't just stand by while innocent classmates..."
"Which is exactly why I keep saying you are completely unsuited for this Holy Grail War! You should have taken the money I gave you and gotten out of Fuyuki City from the start. This is a brutal magecraft ritual that a half-baked magus like you has no business participating in!"
Looking like she'd rolled through a pile of ash, Matou Sakura threw aside all decorum befitting the head of the Matou family.
As the black light gradually faded and she sensed that still-terrifying mana signature in the distance, she unleashed a torrent of furious scolding directly at the Tohsaka Rin beneath her.
She genuinely had not expected her sister to show up here. After her sister had taken a loss against the white lancer early on, she had assumed the next few days would be quiet. After all, the battle situation at that point had clearly left the red-bodysuit Archer at a disadvantage.
But then, well. What she'd arrived to find at the residential district was her sister being chased down and cornered by six high-intensity spider-type familiars.
Familiars of that grade clearly had Agility stats at Heroic Spirit D-rank. Her sister's gemstone magecraft couldn't even tag a single spider's shadow. She'd been running the whole time using only Reinforcement magecraft to boost her body, punching and kicking three of them to death with her bare fists. But those spider familiars had been consuming their own dead to grow stronger.
By the time Rin had killed the fifth one, the last remaining spider familiar had to have been packing at least double D-rank Agility and Strength, and E-rank Endurance. Her knuckles were bleeding by that point and she still couldn't put it down. The stat figures that some absolutely unhinged game designer must have typed up while drunk were enough to make even Sakura's scalp tingle just looking at them. That thing wasn't just a summon or a familiar anymore. It was rapidly approaching the level of a bottom-tier third-rate Heroic Spirit Servant.
If she hadn't arrived in time and ordered her own Servant to kill the spider familiar that had swollen to about a meter in size, Rin's body would have been cold for half a night by now.
"I still had reinforcement mana left! I wasn't without a way to fight back against that familiar!"
The thoroughly-scolded Tohsaka Rin pushed back with a flash of temper.
And honestly, looking rough as she had while fighting it, knuckles split and all, the familiar had nothing but raw stats with zero technique or intelligence. Given a bit more time, with the right use of terrain and her Baji Quan proficiency, she might not have been without a chance to take it down herself.
"Sure, and while you were spending all that time taking it down, the mana burst that just tore through the entire street would have burned you to ash without leaving a crumb! You don't even have basic situational awareness? So this is the new head of the Tohsaka family, just a muscle-brained gorilla woman."
Matou Sakura laughed out of sheer exasperation, quickly climbed off her sister, and dusted herself off.
Honestly, she had been genuinely surprised by Rin's performance. That close-quarters skill and fist technique had left even her stunned for a few seconds. She herself would not have said she could suppress those silk-thread familiars with magecraft alone, and yet Rin had punched and kicked three of the spider's eight legs completely off. Give her a little more time and there might actually have been a real chance of a reversal.
But there was no way she was going to admit that out loud. She knew Tohsaka Rin's personality.
She got inflated too easily. The type who just needed a little sunshine to bloom bright. If Sakura told her the close-quarters combat was impressive, Rin would probably swell up enough to go pick a melee fight with a Heroic Servant by tomorrow, creating an even more dangerous scene than tonight's.
"You..."
Tohsaka Rin bit down on her teeth, face flushing red with anger, but forced herself to swallow it:
"Then why are you here? Matou Sakura, head of the Matou family. Has the Matou family's business expanded to the point of taking over the Tohsaka family's role as Fuyuki City administrator now?"
"Hmph. That's none of your concern. Predictably, your Servant has completely exited the field after that last strike. Since you are no longer a participating Master in this Holy Grail War, you naturally have no standing to hear anything about my plans. I only exchange pleasantries with magi of equal standing."
She seemed to be offering herself an explanation of why she had bothered to save Tohsaka Rin at all.
Matou Sakura gave a cold sniff, not bothering to engage with her sister's childlike tantrum, and basically told her she was no longer a participating Master and to get away from this battlefield as soon as possible.
Then, without a backward glance, she closed one eye, shared her Servant's vision through their master-servant link, and ran toward the direction where the mana heat haze hadn't fully dissipated yet. Honestly, her own mood was not great right now, because while she had managed to save Tohsaka Rin, her senior was still somewhere out there with an uncertain fate.
But there was nothing she could do about it. As the current head of the Matou family, no matter how worried she was, she had to put the Matou family's interests first. Like immediately stopping this pointless, meaningless clash from escalating further.
Pale moonlight broke through the clouds and fell across Matou Sakura's cheek as she forced herself to maintain a polite smile. She just hoped that Saber-class girl wasn't the type who was impossible to reason with.
Clang!
"Heh heh, what a frightening little kitten. It makes me want to tear her apart and ruin her completely."
From the dead angle in the rising mana smoke and heat, two blade-tipped chain weapons suddenly lunged out.
They met the black blade in a reactive deflection, sparks grinding between them.
Miss Illya planted her feet and pushed forward, locking almost chest-to-chest with the ambushing purple-haired girl with the eyepatch. The girl was a Servant with a very pleasing figure, a complete physical contrast to Miss Illya's compact, armored form.
The girl's lips were curled at the corners, like a predator eyeing prey, with a strange mix of brazenness and mockery that made anyone who faced her feel a creeping unease.
"Strength B. Endurance D. Agility A. Mana B. Luck E. Noble Phantasm A+?"
No, wait. Those were her surface stats. This one's true panel was far beyond what was showing.
But something is suppressing it. Or she's hiding her real values with some kind of special magecraft.
Skills include Divinity E-, and Monstrous Strength B, which means Strength can reach A-rank. Stats are quite close to mine. In close-quarters combat, my numerical advantage isn't that significant.
"Leave. Rider. I am not interested in wasting time on you right now."
"Heh heh haha, you could tell my class at a glance? You really aren't an ordinary Heroic Servant at all. No wonder you carry such a wonderfully tempting scent. Come to think of it, I'm getting a bit hungry. Where should I start eating you from, Saber?"
Boom!
The chain blades swept sharply. Mana erupted again without reservation. But after a series of consecutive battles and expenditures, Miss Illya clearly lacked the crisp, nimble edge she had possessed at the start of her fight with the Son of the Sun God Karna. With her stamina and vitality running low, the weapon she swung was at this range actually evaded by the purple-haired Servant girl through a light backflip!
Then the chain blades spun in midair. The purple-haired Servant girl dodged the blow while flying backward, then thrust her blade in return, aiming right for Miss Illya's eye visor with what could only be described as sadistic glee.
"You think you can eat me? Based on being a Chaotic Evil Servant? A cursed monster?"
The armored gauntlet came up. The black iron bracer blocked in front of her face.
The angled midair blade thrust was caught and deflected cleanly, without her shifting so much as a fraction of an inch.
"...What?"
The gliding purple-haired Servant girl seemed to pause. The numbers didn't add up.
When this girl was fighting the red Archer earlier, she had been getting her guard broken with seemingly no effort at all, right?
So why was it that every blow she herself landed couldn't leave even the faintest scratch on this armored bracer?
Something was off with this Saber situation. Was this a last-ditch rally, or had she activated some kind of recovery skill? She hadn't watched the entire fight, but she had seen a decent portion of the exchange between Miss Illya and the red Archer.
Theoretically, her opponent shouldn't be at this level of power. Was this really the same person who had been fighting that Archer? It felt like the girl had switched accounts somehow.
"My condition is poor. I admit that. But that doesn't mean you have any right to hunt me."
Boom!
After deflecting the attack, the black knight's fist fired in an instant with a rising uppercut!
The heavy blow connected with the purple-haired Servant girl's chest, and the mana behind it sent her hurtling from midair with a sonic crack, straight into a ruined building a hundred meters away!
What on earth?
When you kicked that red Archer earlier, you were clearly not putting this kind of power into it!
"Pfft... cough!"
Tumbling into the rubble heaped with broken stone and splinters, the purple-haired Servant girl looked at her chain blade, which she had put in front of her at the last second as a guard, and which was now bent ever so slightly.
Then she looked at the red Archer not far away, where a seven-layered pink-petal shield had just dissipated. He was alive, hadn't taken any critical damage, just weakened from severe mana overconsumption.
She dragged herself back to her feet through the sharp pain, wiped the blood from her split lip, and felt genuinely baffled.
Hold on.
The difference in fight intensity here was a bit too extreme, wasn't it?
"Is that all? You want to hunt me? Come back when you're showing your real face. Then maybe."
The grinding sound of knight's sword dragging along ground filled the air. Breath slightly ragged.
The heavily drained Miss Illya walked unhurriedly toward the red Archer and purple Rider, each step sending ripples of mana pulsing out through the earth beneath her.
Like a death god walking a battlefield and announcing the coming of death. Black and cold.
Seriously. She could live with struggling against Karna and the Counter Guardian, fine.
But what exactly are you, some kind of second-rate cookie, acting this brazen?
The black sword came up.
Miss Illya paused and let mana gather.
"W-wait! Wait!"
"Miss Saber, please wait! I am Matou Sakura, head of the Matou family. I am not your enemy. I came here only to invite you to join the Anti-Medea Alliance