After finishing his battle report to Fiore, Archer left her room and returned to the private chamber that had been assigned to him. The Millennia Fortress was large, more than spacious enough to grant private quarters to all six Servants. Darnic, the man who led Yggdmillennia, had participated in the Third Holy Grail War, and therefore understood Servants far more deeply than the average Master.
He understood clearly how wounding a Servant's pride or damaging their dignity could corrode the relationship between Master and Servant, causing discord and diminishing overall combat strength. Because of that, his consideration toward the Servants was thorough.
In particular, the Servant bound to him—
Vlad III
Lancer of Black
—was a trueborn king.
Failing to grant him even a private room would be grounds for getting one's head cut off on the very first day.
And so, each Servant had been given their own chamber.
How they used these rooms was left entirely up to them. Some, like Caster, never left their workshop. Others, like Saber, remained permanently beside their Master. Archer, because his Master was a young woman, happened to use his room more often than most—staying close enough to respond instantly if anything happened while simultaneously reviewing the documents Darnic had provided.
These documents were reports smuggled out of the Clock Tower by Yggdmillennia's embedded agents—information on enemy magi.
Necromancer.
"Shishigou Kairi… a death-mage, hm,"
Archer murmured.
The Master of Red's Saber.
A hitman sent by the Mage's Association.
A freelance magus who had experienced many literal battlefields while earning bounties with his skills.
It seemed the Association had indeed sent a capable operative.
Death-mages required corpses—many corpses—to practice their craft. Naturally, they frequented places of slaughter. If one also operated as a freelance bounty-hunter, their combat experience would be on an entirely different level from ordinary magi.
Fiore herself had seen her share of danger, but it was only logical to assume that Shishigou, who had lived through real battlefields, far surpassed her in terms of battle instinct.
Suddenly—
Archer sensed the presence of a Servant beyond the door. He turned his eyes toward it.
A knock followed.
"Archer? It's me—Rider. Is anyone in there?"
So the visitor was Rider.
"No, no one."
With his reply, Rider opened the door and stepped inside—carrying a naked boy slung over his shoulder.
"Rider… This is not a place for smuggling in guests, you realize."
"It's not like that! And I'm a guy!"
"A joke. But even so… carrying a naked boy around in full view is, well… impressive."
Archer said this lightly, though he had already deduced most of the situation. He showed Rider to the bed, and Rider laid the boy on it.
"A homunculus? What exactly is the meaning of this?"
The boy's skin was pale as snow, his hair a silver-white. No doubt the eyes beneath his closed lids were red.
"He collapsed in the hallway, so I helped him," Rider said cheerfully.
He didn't spare a single thought for consequences.
In his mind, the moment he felt the desire to help, the decision had already been made.
"So he escaped from the tank."
"Looks like it. Caster's chasing after him right now."
"Hm. Managing the homunculi for mana supply is his job. But even so, him personally chasing after one that escaped is… unusual."
Mana-supply homunculi.
One of Yggdmillennia's secret strategies, developed primarily by Gordes, the Master of Saber.
In a standard Holy Grail War, the Master must supply their Servant with all the mana required for their every action. This meant enormous burden on the Master, and frequent limits to the use of Noble Phantasms—massive mana consumption made repeated use impractical.
But Yggdmillennia had altered the system.
They split the Servant's mana requirements between the Master and a sacrificial homunculus. The Master supplied only what was necessary for command and regulation; the homunculus provided the rest.
Homunculi could be mass-produced with sufficient resources—they were convenient, disposable batteries.
And within this fortress, that was precisely how they were treated.
Which made Caster's behavior all the more suspicious. He disliked interacting with people; why chase a single escaped homunculus?
Archer checked the boy's pulse.
"The pulse is normal. But the magic circuits show signs of overload. He must have tried using magecraft he wasn't accustomed to and lost control of the mana. The bruising on his veins is from it rampaging through the bloodstream."
"Wow, you're pretty knowledgeable, Archer. Were you a doctor or something?"
"Nothing like that. I've simply experienced similar things. The immediate issue is exhaustion. Even a short distance is a long journey for someone who's barely walked. If he collapsed in the hallway, he likely pushed himself until he couldn't move."
"I see… he's basically a newborn baby," Rider said, nodding sadly.
He gazed at the homunculus with a gentle look.
"So, what do you plan to do, Rider?"
"Plan?"
"About him. You can't leave things as they are."
Caster was already searching. Hiding the boy inside the fortress had limits.
"Homunculi are short-lived. Even the Einzbern creations can't live like normal humans. And he wasn't designed to live at all. Three years at most."
"Three years… that's pretty short."
Rider looked at the boy with a somber expression.
"But three years is enough to find a reason to live."
Despite everything, Rider said this with his usual optimism.
Archer sighed.
Life span wasn't the only issue.
They would need to escape the fortress… then survive outside.
One might argue Rider should take responsibility—he saved him, after all. But Rider and Archer were Servants. When the Great Holy Grail War ended, regardless of result, they would vanish. They would not exist three years from now.
But Rider already understood this, and even so, he would focus on the immediate moment—saving the boy in front of him, without concern for the future.
"Good grief. Rider, do as you like—just don't forget your role as a Servant."
"Of course! That's what I was summoned for."
Rider declared this with his usual sunny smile.
In the end, Archer chose to let the homunculus go.
He had no duty to report this to Caster. More importantly, he had his own thoughts regarding the entire system of using homunculi as sacrificial mana sources.
From a strictly strategic and combat-oriented perspective, it was a highly effective system.
But emotionally… he found it distasteful.
Just sentimentality, really.
The only reason was that the sister he failed to save had been a homunculus. Nothing more than a leftover shard of a past he had already cut away.
Still… Fuyuki's Grail, an Einzbern homunculus, and now Tohsaka jewels too, hm.
This worldline was not his original one.
A parallel world where none of Archer's grudges existed.
That being the case, perhaps pursuing the Holy Grail in a more honest manner wouldn't be so bad.
Even so, hearing words tied to his old world—Fuyuki, Einzbern, Tohsaka—made him feel faintly ticklish.
Leaving Rider and the homunculus in his room, Archer spirit-form shifted and wandered the fortress halls. The Masters who had watched his battles all night had already gone to bed. Only the patrolling wraiths and homunculi moved through the corridors.
As he walked, he spotted a sliver of light leaking from a doorway.
It was the private room of Caules Forvedge Yggdmillennia—Fiore's younger brother and the Master of Berserker.
Moved by simple curiosity, Archer knocked.
"It's Archer. May I enter?"
"A-Archer!? Ah—uh, yeah, sure, come in…"
Caules sounded panicked, clearly startled by the unexpected visit.
Like his sister, he was hardly the typical image of a magus. Amused, Archer stepped into the room.
"My apologies for the late hour. Your door was slightly ajar, and light was spilling out."
"Guess I didn't close it properly."
Scratching his head awkwardly, Caules tried to compose himself.
"Where's my sister?"
"Fiore is asleep. And you, at this hour, should be in bed yourself."
Archer's gaze shifted to the object Caules was sitting in front of.
A computer.
"Up late browsing the Internet? Appropriate for your age, though perhaps not the healthiest lifestyle."
"What—hey, it's fine! It's not a big deal."
Caules pouted defensively.
Unlike most magi, Caules' thought process was close to that of an ordinary person.
Magus families respected mysteries and looked down on science, treating technology as inferior to magecraft. Inside this fortress, the only ones who understood computers were Caules and Celenike—though Celenike only studied them as potential mediums for black magic. Caules was the only one who used one as a hobby.
"Uu…"
The groan came from beside him—his Servant, Berserker.
A girl in a white dress, visually adorable yet visibly studded with mechanical parts across her body.
"So this is Berserker. A woman, surprisingly. Not the bride, I take it?"
"Yeah, I thought that too, but apparently she's the real deal."
"I see. Well, I suppose such anomalies are not rare."
"Dude, at least pretend to be surprised."
Her True Name was Frankenstein.
A synthetic human, a universal symbol of artificial life. Hollywood had turned the monster into a cultural icon, but a female Frankenstein? Caules could not remember such a depiction.
Her legend was relatively recent in terms of mystery, her stats unimpressive even as a Berserker.
Still, Caules considered her the ideal Servant for him.
Her Noble Phantasm—
Bridal Chest: The Maiden's Chastity
—absorbed excess mana floating in the atmosphere and reused it. For a magus as inexperienced as Caules, his greatest anxiety was mana supply, but this Noble Phantasm solved it entirely.
Archer silently acknowledged that even he had initially been surprised that Frankenstein was a woman—but this kind of discrepancy was commonplace to him.
"Such things are normal for Heroic Spirits."
"No they aren't!"
"Some figures recorded as men were simply women who cross-dressed in life and were remembered incorrectly. It is hardly unusual."
Archer said this casually while observing Berserker.
Caules shot him a deeply suspicious look.
"Yeah, no. I don't buy it."
Archer ignored his disbelief.
"By the way—may I use that?"
He pointed to the computer.
"It's usable, yeah."
"Good. There is something I would like you to search."
"Uh… what?"
Caules stared at him like he had just spoken in tongues.
"You're a Servant. You use the Internet?"
"Is there a problem? For quick information, this is faster than opening a book."
"Well… yeah, but still…"
Caules typed reluctantly, still staring as if seeing a mythical creature.
"You're seriously the weirdest Servant I've ever heard of."
A Servant whose Master didn't know their True Name, whose stats were as low as Berserker's yet whose combat ability was monstrous.
Fiore had bragged earlier that Archer brewed excellent tea.
Now he was casually demonstrating computer literacy.
"Understanding things like this… that's what surprises me."
"Magus or not, one must adapt to science to survive. Cities overflow with surveillance cameras. Magecraft may deceive human eyes, but it does not fool cameras. Correct?"
"Uh… well, yeah. That's… actually true."
Spells that cloud human perception did nothing to machines.
The lack of scientific literacy among magi was a constant threat to secrecy—though very few magi acknowledged this.
"So? What did you want to look up?"
"Fuyuki."
"…Ah. Makes sense."
Caules nodded.
Fuyuki City of Japan—the birthplace of the Holy Grail War.
And this Great Holy Grail War was founded upon the theft of the Fuyuki Grail.
Of course Archer would be curious.
Caules typed rapidly and brought up search results.
"If you'd like to handle it yourself, I don't mind. You know how to use it, right?"
"I am familiar with the basics."
"Right… sure…"
Still unnerved, Caules ceded the seat.
Archer sat and navigated the computer with no hesitation—operating the mouse smoothly, skimming webpages, jumping back and forth.
"Archer… do you maybe have a computer-skills Skill?"
"There is no such Skill. Don't be ridiculous."
"You're the last person who gets to say that."
A magus using a computer wasn't strange.
A Servant using one was downright bizarre.
"So? Did you find what you wanted?"
"Yes. I merely wished to see the cityscape. That alone was sufficient."
"Alright then. You done?"
"Yes. Thank you for the assistance."
Archer stood and headed for the exit.
Just before leaving:
"By the way—this may sound unnecessary, but staying up so late is unhealthy. Rest when you should."
With that, he slipped out.
"Uii…"
Berserker tugged on Caules' sleeve, conveying mild displeasure.
"You jealous I talked to Archer?"
"Uu."
She nodded.
"We're not enemies right now, so it's fine."
Caules leaned back in his chair.
Dawn approached at last, and sleepiness finally came.
Too late, but still—time for bed.
As he climbed into bed and began to drift off, a thought surfaced:
So… what is Archer, anyway?