"Guinevere, how is it? Still can't fix her?"
"Well... it seems specialization really matters. Touko Aozaki's puppet-making skills are truly incredible. But if we can't fix her, we don't have to for now. We can just let Mordred return to the Throne of Heroes, and then have Sakura summon her again through the normal process."
"The only downside is that you'll need to summon and kill an extra Caster to maintain the seven-on-seven balance."
After the meeting in the dining hall, Guinevere, the King of Knights, Morgan, Sakura, Mordred, and Gareth all gathered in a bedroom.
By the end of the meal, not only had the other Master-Servant pairs left, but Waver had also packed his things and departed. Guinevere had even asked Waver to take Caren back to the Clock Tower first.
Losing the King of Conquerors again, and so early in the war, left Waver unable to even force a smile. By midnight, his demeanor had grown more somber, his brow furrowed with anguish, as if he'd eaten too many Golden Apples that were supposed to restore stamina.
Yet Waver wasn't completely broken. He vowed to train harder, to prepare himself for a third encounter with the King of Conquerors.
His obsession with the King of Conquerors rivaled Kirei Kotomine's fixation on Kiritsugu Emiya.
Back in the bedroom, after deciding to have Sakura re-summon Mordred, Guinevere personally extracted Mordred's Spirit Core from the puppet body. Mordred then manifested her Heroic Spirit body to bid farewell.
Without incarnation, relying solely on the puppet body for sustenance, Mordred's Mana consumption skyrocketed once she separated from it.
Summoning a Heroic Spirit outside of a Holy Grail War, without the support of the Holy Grail's Mana, was a Grand Magecraft that consumed an immense amount of Mana. Even with Sakura's vast reserves, she couldn't sustain Mordred's constant drain.
"By the way, Sister Morgan, can't you really prepare a new body for Mordred? Touko Aozaki's puppets are so expensive."
"Even with your share from the Clock Tower, you still think it's expensive?"
"You know the price, don't you? Besides, ordinary puppets don't need to generate their own Mana, and they certainly can't let Mordred unleash her full power."
Morgan glanced at Guinevere, who was just making small talk, then at Sakura, who was already drawing the summoning circle. Without denying the point, she puffed out her chest, the peaks beneath her white shirt rising prominently.
"If I were to provide the body, I'd face the same problem you just mentioned," she said. "A body perfectly compatible with Mordred would take a long time to cultivate. A homunculus I could create quickly would only be slightly better than what the Yggdmillennia Family can produce.
"But you don't need to order a new one. Winning this Holy Grail War and having the Holy Grail grant you and Mordred new bodies—that was your plan all along, wasn't it?"
As they spoke, Sakura completed the summoning ritual. The Holy Relic was a fragment of Mordred's Spirit Core.
Therefore, the summoning couldn't possibly go wrong. A Mordred supplied with Mana by the Holy Grail, with stats even higher than her puppet body, descended.
Upon her re-summoning, Mordred seemed to have gained memories from her other selves that had returned to the Throne of Heroes.
Unlike Guinevere, whose true form was rarely summoned, the King of Knights and Mordred could be summoned in their true forms relatively easily.
As a result, each time they returned and were re-summoned, they would gain more experience as if cheating, growing stronger with every summoning.
Guinevere herself didn't understand how the Throne of Heroes' memory inheritance mechanism worked. Some Servants couldn't recall the previous war, yet many others remembered being summoned countless times.
For example, Kiritsugu Emiya's current Servant, the Archer of Red who claimed to have forgotten his True Name, remembered being summoned countless times by the Counter Force to act as its "Sweeper."
"Mordred, does this mean you've gotten stronger again? Can you beat Achilles now?"
"Queen Mother! I won't lose so easily again, that's for sure!"
Mordred was proud but also willing to accept reality. If she truly couldn't win, there was no shame in admitting it.
Watching Mordred forge a new contract with Sakura, and seeing the King of Knights prepare to summon again using the magic circle Sakura had drawn, Guinevere felt she could already foresee which Bound Servant would answer the call.
For the Caster class, summoning based on affinity meant that two of the three most likely candidates were already present. It was highly unlikely the King of Knights would summon Morgan or Guinevere again.
Well then...
"It's been a while, Master Merlin."
Another one who was still alive, yet could be summoned as a Servant.
As the light of the magic circle faded, the ever-present Mage of Flowers waved away the smoke. Guinevere wasn't the only one unsurprised to see him.
"You old pervert, you actually bothered to leave your tower?"
"Now, now, Miss Vivian, don't be like that. When something important is happening, I'll come out to play myself."
Merlin was as handsome as ever, his tone as flippant as always. He called Morgan by her name as the Lady of the Lake. Fortunately for him, this world's Fou had been released long ago and had vanished somewhere. Otherwise, Fou would have surely flown up and kicked him right in the face.
A shame Fou wasn't here. But not a shame that Merlin had been summoned this time specifically to die.
"You old pervert, if you have something important to say, say it quickly. Then hurry up and die. You've surely foreseen the future of this summoning, so there's no need for us to waste our breath."
"Ahem, well, you see... what was it again? Wait, don't pull out your staff! I'll talk, I'll talk!"
Startled by Morgan's movement, Merlin turned to see even Sakura yawning.
They all knew him too well. His playful antics were utterly meaningless.
"Ahem, I came to tell you that my counterpart from another world was summoned directly by the King of Heroes while he was on his way to Uruk.
"For the past few days, he's been busy fighting an endless horde of Magical Beasts there. He asked me to ask you: do you want to be summoned by him in three days, or wait about seven days for Chaldea's Master to summon you?"
Merlin directed these words to Guinevere, and she was genuinely surprised.
Logically, the Merlin from the other world shouldn't have cared whether she was delayed here for three days or seven. He could always summon another Guinevere from the Throne of Heroes.
But he did care. Did that mean...
"You saw it, didn't you? That I'll have a major breakthrough in the next few days?"
"But... can't you see the future too? Look for yourself!"
"Merlin, dear!"
"Ahem, well, yes, there will be a major breakthrough. But you'll have to discover the specifics yourself. Once an unknown future becomes known, that unknown future itself might change."
Having said what needed to be said, and knowing that staying longer would only annoy everyone, Merlin deliberately dispelled himself. This used up Guinevere's last extra Servant slot, ensuring the battle would formally be a true seven-on-seven.
After Merlin vanished, Guinevere's mind went into overdrive, smoke practically billowing from her head.
In her view, the greatest prize of this Great Holy Grail War should have been the Holy Grail itself. But if that were all, this Merlin wouldn't have needed to make a special trip. So, why had he insisted she wait these few days?
After mulling it over, she eliminated numerous known Heroic Spirits from her list of possibilities. Then she recalled Gordes mentioning that his side's Lancer was Vlad III.
Their Assassin belonged to Kirei Kotomine, but all Gordes knew was that the Assassin was completely disobedient. Moreover, Kirei believed this Assassin was stronger than the King of Heroes.
"Could it be..."
Though Guinevere hated to entertain the thought, the name "First Hassan" surfaced in her mind.
The number of Assassins who could defeat the King of Heroes was vanishingly small.