"...mongrel mage..."
The oldest king had fallen.
Seiji Fujiwara watched in silence as the headless corpse slowly dissolved into golden motes of light, scattering on the night wind.
His face held neither sorrow nor joy.
As if he'd merely crushed underfoot a bug that had been a little louder than most, but nothing more than that.
And with this, the Fifth Holy Grail War was over. Every last "piece" had been cleared from the board.
The entire board, along with the board itself, had become his and his alone... his spoils of war.
...
The night wind, carrying a faint scorched smell of post-battle smoke and dissipating magic, swept away the last specks of golden dust that had been the oldest king.
After the ultimate violence and the higher-order conceptual erasure, the clamorous battlefield returned to a stillness that set the heart trembling.
The sky no longer rippled with dense golden waves; the earth no longer wailed where Ea, the Sword of Rupture had torn it open.
All that remained were the leveled ruins of Ryuudou Temple, like a skeleton gnawed by some massive beast, and that "demon king's castle" that had stood unshaken through battle after battle as if mocking everything around it. Einzbern Castle cast an ever colder, deeper shadow beneath the chill moonlight.
A breathtaking Holy Grail War that had swept across the entire city and bound up the fates of countless heroes and magi had, just like that, drawn to a close.
No victor stood center stage to receive the cheers, because the true victor had long since folded the whole stage and the seats of the audience alike into his own pocket.
[Fifth Holy Grail War: all hostile targets eliminated.]
["Mythic Collapse" World, Phase One "Clearing" mission complete.]
[Calculating world control level... Current control level: 65%.]
[Opening Phase Two mission: "Usurpation of the World Core".]
In Seiji's mind, the system's cold, flat chime flowed past, like the final tally and data summary for some large-scale live-action dating-sim.
His face showed neither the wild elation of a mortal who'd won an earth-shaking victory, nor the relief of someone who'd survived an apocalyptic crisis.
There was only... the matter-of-course satisfaction of a veteran player who'd cleared every red dot on the map, beaten the story's final boss, and watched the ending cinematic.
Everything within his grasp, everything a foregone conclusion.
"Is it over?"
Medea's voice trembled with the uncontrollable tremor of one who'd narrowly escaped death.
She looked at the apocalyptic scene around her, and at that man's terrifyingly calm back, her heart filled with lingering dread and an adoration so fervent it bordered on faith.
In the instant Ea had been swung a moment ago, she, a great magus of the Age of Gods, had felt what true "powerlessness" and "finality" meant.
She'd thought everything would return to nothing, herself and the meaning of her existence she'd only just found along with it.
But her master, with a single word, the simplest of syllables, had made that world-destroying "phenomenon" vanish into thin air.
What kind of power was that?
It had long surpassed the domain of every god she knew of!
This was an authority that defined the world and rewrote its laws!
Seiji didn't answer her pointless question.
His gaze fell on the ground beneath Ryuudou Temple, on the enormous cauldron of black mud now fully exposed by the collapse of the mountainside, like a festering wound in the planet itself.
There lay the greatest "spoil" of this war, the most crucial link in his plan, the hinge between what came before and what came after.
"Alter." he said flatly.
"Yes." The pitch-black King of Knights appeared at his side like his most loyal shadow, silent and soundless, not a ripple stirring in her golden eyes.
"Guard this spot. Anything, man or ghost, whether it's the flies of the Mage's Association or the tentacles of the Counter Force, anything that tries to come near here... kill it."
"As you command." Alter's reply carried not a trace of feeling, clear and concise.
She turned, her tall figure standing like a statue at the edge of the ruins, the pitch-black demonic sword in her hand humming faintly, her cold golden eyes sweeping the darkness, becoming the most reliable and most terrifying gatekeeper.
Seiji paid no further mind to anyone. His figure descended slowly, finally alighting lightly beside that pool of black mud churning with Angra Mainyu.
This congregation of curses, which he'd once forcibly suppressed with his "authority," had grown restless again now that it had lost Gilgamesh, its last "outlet for venting." Bubbles swelled across the surface of the black mud, as if it were loosing a soundless roar.
"What a restless little battery."
Seiji stretched out his hand, feeling the vast malice pouring toward him, enough to corrupt any hero and drive any saint to madness.
He could even pick out, within it, countless fine fragments of souls wailing, brimming with pain and hatred.
[Mission objective: Fully devour the Greater Grail system and convert it into the Host's exclusive organ and energy core.]
"Make a wish?"
The corner of Seiji's mouth curled into an arc of utter contempt.
"That's something only lower lifeforms do, the kind so incompetent they have to beg outside objects for help... why would I be interested in that?"
"What I want has never been the fruits of victory handed to me by someone else."
"It's to tear the fruit tree out by the roots, and turn the whole orchard, deed of the land and all, into my private back garden... absolute ownership!"
His words fell.
Without the slightest hesitation, he strode forward, walking straight into that pitch-black mire capable of devouring gods and defiling Heroic Spirits!
"Master!"
In the distance, Medea cried out, nearly throwing caution aside to rush forward.
But the scene she'd anticipated, of him being defiled, devoured, twisted into a monster, never came.
Seiji walked into the black mud as if walking into his own warm swimming pool.
That viscous fluid, brimming with curses and malice, not only failed to erode him, it parted around his body and flowed gently, you could even say ingratiatingly, like subjects beholding their sovereign, like a river meeting its source, opening a path for him.
"Come."
Seiji stood at the very center of the black pool, spread his arms wide, and an almost intoxicated expression appeared on his face, one that embraced the whole world.
"From today on, you grudges with nowhere to go, you curses cast aside by the world, you soul fragments steeped in negative emotion..."
"You'll all have a new name, a new home."
"And that is... me!"
[System command: Initiate "Usurpation of the World Core"!]
[Setting the Host's existence as highest priority, overwriting the Greater Grail's core concept!]
[Beginning fusion!]
A thunderous roar tore through the night!
The entire cauldron of black mud boiled in an instant!
No longer a disordered churning, but a vast, pitch-black, counterclockwise vortex that stirred the Spiritual Veins of the whole city!
At the vortex's center stood Seiji!
Magic too immense to calculate, mingled with all the human malice, twisted wishes, and echoes of war that Fuyuki City had accumulated over sixty years, became a raging torrent, pouring frenzied and greedy into his body!
This was an act of absolute suicide.
Any magus, even a legendary sorcerer of True Magic, faced with such a vast flood of information and magic, could meet only one fate: their soul burst apart, their consciousness assimilated, until they became a thoughtless monster knowing nothing but how to spread curses.
But Seiji was no magus.
He was a "player."
And the system was his strongest "firewall," "antivirus software," and "super digester."
[Detecting massive redundant information (soul fragments, fragmented memories)... beginning filtering... formatting... converting to pure spiritual energy...]
[Detecting conceptual conflict (Angra Mainyu VS Absolute Authority)... beginning assimilation... overwriting... rewriting...]
[Detecting ownerless magic... beginning absorption... converting to Host's exclusive magic...]
[Reconstructing Host's Magic Circuits... no, using the Host's soul as the blueprint and the Grail's framework as material to construct an entirely new, living, walking Grail!]
Seiji closed his eyes, immersing himself in this unprecedented metamorphosis.
He could feel his own existence being raised and expanded without limit!
His perception spread like a virus along the network of Fuyuki City's Spiritual Veins, reaching into every corner of the city.
He could "hear" the expensive gemstones in the Tohsaka family's underground Workshop humming from the violent upheaval of the Spiritual Veins.
He could "see" the Matou family's decayed Magic Crest wailing in terror under the pressure of the new "king."
He could "touch" the dreams of every sleeping citizen. If he wished, he could turn this city into a nightmare or paradise from which no one ever woke.
This city was becoming his body.
The laws here were becoming his will.
The moment the last drop of black mud melted into his body like a weary bird returning to the forest, Seiji slowly opened his eyes.
In the depths of those pitch-black eyes, hundreds of millions of stars seemed to be born and die, and all the world's sins and punishments seemed to be reflected within them.
He was no longer simply "Seiji Fujiwara."
He had become a living thing that walked this world, a flesh-and-blood...
"Grail."
...
When Seiji completed his fusion with the Greater Grail, the entire world had become something altogether different in his eyes.
He no longer needed his eyes to see; the physical phenomena of light and shadow had become utterly meaningless to him.
He no longer needed his ears to hear; the vibration of sound waves seemed so inefficient.
If he willed it, his "consciousness" could shroud the whole city in an instant, like an omnipresent god.
The flow of the Spiritual Veins was his breathing; the tides of ether were his heartbeat.
This feeling of turning a modern metropolis completely into his own "domain," of controlling everything, set every cell in his body trembling. It was a pleasure called "authority," more intoxicating than conquering any peerless beauty.
But this was not yet the end. You could even say it was only the beginning.
Devouring the Grail had only granted him top administrator privileges over this world's "local network."
Next, he would do something more important, more interesting, and of far greater long-term value: laying his hands on the "internet" that connected all worlds.
"Medea."
"Here, my master." The witch of the Age of Gods had long been waiting at his side. She looked at her master now, the fervor in her eyes nearly overflowing.
In her eyes, the aura radiating from Seiji had completely surpassed any of the chief Olympian gods she knew of.
It wasn't mere strength, but a sublimation at the level of "essence," as if he himself were a living "law."
"Build me a barrier that shuts out all prying eyes. Use every bit of knowledge you have. I want this space to vanish from the world, temporarily, at the conceptual level. I don't want to be disturbed by those two irritating system administrators, Alaya or Gaia, while I work." Seiji issued the command.
"Yes!" An excited flush rose to Medea's face. This was her master acknowledging her ability!
She began to chant at once, and with the magecraft mastery of the Age of Gods, supported by the inexhaustible Spiritual Veins of this place, she unfurled a top-tier barrier that warped space itself.
Seiji nodded in satisfaction and sat down cross-legged.
He closed his eyes and sank his vast consciousness, now fused with the entire Spiritual Veins of Fuyuki City, fully into that complex "system" he'd just merged with.
The Grail, in its essence, was not merely a wish-granting machine located in Fuyuki City.
It was a "terminal," a "port."
A terminal connected to that place beyond the world, the one that recorded every legend of every hero, that stood outside the timeline, the eternal hall: the Throne of Heroes.
Every Holy Grail War sent an "application" through this terminal to the Throne of Heroes, verified permissions, then downloaded the "data copies" of heroes (Saint Graphs) like installing software, and finally shaped temporary "bodies" (Servants) for them in this world.
And now... this terminal, this port, this downloader, bore the surname "Fuji."
"System, parse the connection protocol between the Grail and the Throne of Heroes. I want all of the underlying code."
[Command received, parsing...]
[Protocol type: High-dimensional information directed-transmission protocol, version: 3.14 FuyukiCustom.]
[Encryption method: World-law-tier conceptual encryption, mixed with the planet's Counter Force dynamic key.]
[Parsing... 10%... 30%... 70%...]
[Using the Host's current Grail privileges, partial verification bypassed... parsing complete! All information on this protocol acquired!]
"Good."
Seiji's consciousness became an invisible blade of pure information, flowing back up that unseen "network cable" woven from magic and law!
He could not, and did not intend to, invade the "Throne of Heroes" itself. He knew his own limits well enough.
That place was the core of the world's laws, the assembly of countless myths and legends, the "ultimate database" maintained jointly by Gaia and Alaya. With his current power, forcing his way in had only one outcome: being ground to dust.
A clever hacker never attacks the heavily guarded core of the server.
Instead, he installs a "backdoor program" of his own at the "interface" where users log in.
[Locking onto the Fuyuki City Greater Grail summoning protocol interface!]
[Beginning implantation of the Absolute Authority conceptual brand! Packaging it as a harmless verification patch!]
Seiji's consciousness became countless "viruses," too minute to detect, attaching themselves to every line of "code" in this summoning system.
He didn't alter the summoning process, didn't modify the summoning list. He merely added one small, extra "step" in the final millisecond before the Saint Graph data finished downloading and was injected into the Servant body.
This brand normally had no effect at all. Colorless, odorless, formless, it would be noticed by no one. Even the Throne of Heroes itself wouldn't react, because it was disguised as a normal "authentication" stage of the Grail system.
But!
From this day on, any Heroic Spirit, whether ten years from now or a hundred, summoned into this world through the system that was the "Fuyuki City Holy Grail War"...
From the very moment they descended, would have, silently, in the deepest part of their Saint Graph, a highest-priority mark belonging to "Seiji Fujiwara" stamped upon them!
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