As the first rays of dawn filtered through the gaps in the curtains, gilding the messy hospital room in pale gold, Claudia slowly woke up. Her body no longer felt the heaviness and pain of previous days; instead, it was replaced by an unprecedented lightness and vitality, along with... the blushing soreness and satisfaction lingering after last night's frenzy. She turned her head and saw that Kanjuro was already fully dressed, sitting quietly in a chair by the bed like a handsome, silent statue, watching her thoughtfully.
Memories of last night flooded back like a tide, bringing a dizzying warmth and shyness. Her first time, and her reborn body, were both closely tied to the mysterious and powerful man before her. Gratitude, admiration, and a lingering attachment after her first taste of passion intertwined in her heart.
Seeing her wake up, that captivating, wicked smile habitually appeared on Kanjuro's face, but if one looked closely, they would find that the smile did not reach his eyes. He spoke, his voice carrying a hint of deliberate testing:
"It's dawn. If I were to leave now... would you try to keep me?"
He stared intently into her eyes, waiting for the expected tears, pleading, or the entanglement of using last night's tenderness as leverage. He firmly believed that after the intimate contact empowered by the [spear of longinus], no woman could easily let him go. The power originating from the dark bible would be like the strongest addiction, making her crave more and fear loss.
However, Claudia's reaction caught him off guard.
She was slightly stunned, her long eyelashes drooping as a clear sense of reluctance and gloom flickered across her face. But soon, she looked up at Kanjuro again, revealing a somewhat pale but incredibly sincere smile:
"Although... I really hate to see you go, Mr. Kanjuro. You saved my life, gave me a second chance at life, and let me... truly experience what it feels like to love someone. I will never forget this kindness and these feelings." Her voice was gentle yet carried a strange firmness, "But... precisely because of this, I shouldn't bind you. You have your own world, your own freedom. If I forced you to stay, then this affection would become a shackle instead of a gift. So... I won't force you to stay."
!!!
The wicked smile on Kanjuro's face instantly froze.
He fell silent. An indescribable, cold sensation welled up from the bottom of his heart. This wasn't right! This completely contradicted his calculations and the principles of the dark bible's power! Why? Why, after experiencing total possession and the peak of desire, could this woman still maintain such...'sober' letting go? That heartfelt gratitude and fulfillment, devoid of possessiveness, was like a sharp thorn piercing his long-held sense of absolute control over human nature.
His inner arrogance clashed violently with a wavering he refused to acknowledge. He didn't believe it! He didn't believe that this wager with Jeanne would end in defeat in such a manner!
He stood up abruptly, his movements carrying a hint of imperceptible stiffness.
"Fine, then I'm leaving." His voice still sounded calm, but it lacked some of its usual composure.
He deliberately slowed his pace, walking toward the door step by step. The sound of his leather shoes on the floor was exceptionally clear in the silent room. He was waiting, waiting for the expected tearful "don't go" from behind him. He could even feel that gaze behind him, full of attachment and reluctance... However, until his hand gripped the doorknob, there was still only silence behind him.
That silence made him feel more irritable than any plea to stay.
Just as he was about to turn the doorknob, he spun around abruptly!
All previous pretenses of gentleness were completely stripped away at this moment. His eyes became incredibly cold, swirling with a nearly hideous evil provoked by the unexpected. That look made Claudia shiver involuntarily.
"Eight o'clock tonight," Kanjuro's voice was icy and beyond question, as if issuing an absolute command, "Wait for me at the top of the London Clock Tower. I have something I need you... to witness."
This abrupt shift and the cold, commanding tone were worlds apart from the tenderness of last night and this morning. Claudia was frightened by the undisguised malice in his eyes, her heart filled with confusion and a hint of fear. But her gratitude and admiration for Kanjuro, along with that lingering, blind trust in 'hope,' made her suppress all doubts.
She simply nodded obediently, even with a hint of pleasing him, struggling to maintain the smile on her face:
"Okay. I'll be there on time."
Kanjuro gave her one last deep, indecipherable look, then yanked the door open, his figure disappearing into the shadows of the corridor.
Inside the room, the reborn Claudia touched the marks left from last night, her heart full of unease and confusion regarding the evening's appointment. Outside the room, Kanjuro's face was terrifyingly dark. Not only might he have lost a bet, but he also felt as if something he thought he firmly controlled had, for the first time, shown a deviation he couldn't understand.
Jeanne slowly stepped out from the darkness of the corridor, watching him quietly. Though she didn't speak, her ice-blue eyes seemed filled with a silent interrogation. Jeanne's words, carrying a hint of realization and faint mockery, fell like cold raindrops on the lake of Kanjuro's heart, stirring up ripples of irritation.
"It seems you've lost." She smiled lightly, her ice-blue eyes reflecting Kanjuro's uncharacteristically grim face. "I didn't expect that the Kanjuro who is always so calculating and toys with human hearts like they're in the palm of his hand would actually fail."
Kanjuro stopped in his tracks without looking back, his silhouette appearing exceptionally rigid in the dim light of the corridor. He remained silent for a few seconds before admitting in a voice that was almost a snarl:
"Yes, I admit it. I lost." There wasn't much defeat in his voice, but rather a coldness from being offended. "And I lost thoroughly, beyond my calculations."
He spun around abruptly, a near-obsessive fire burning in his eyes:
"But precisely because I lost, I must have her come tonight! I want her to see with her own eyes what kind of hideous monster the one she's grateful to—the one who supposedly'saved' her—actually is! I want to tear apart that ridiculous 'gratitude' of hers!"
Jeanne watched the almost childish destructive desire born of spite in his eyes and sighed helplessly:
"Don't belittle yourself further by trying to prove something in an even more extreme way, Kanjuro. Not everyone in this world can be easily manipulated and toyed with by you. There are always some emotions that will exceed your models."
"Hmph!" Kanjuro snorted coldly, his tone decisive. "Then you just watch from the side! Even if I lost the bet, I will make her hate me from now on, rather than holding onto that cheap gratitude mixed with the debt of saving her life! That's right, she's only grateful to me; that's not liking, let alone love!"
Jeanne listened to his near-obsessive analysis, her gaze complex: "Gratitude and liking... can't they exist at the same time? They aren't completely opposite."
"Of course they can't!" Kanjuro's voice rose sharply with a near-declaratory finality. "Once any emotion is mixed with something else, it's no longer pure! Love is love, desire is desire, gratitude is gratitude! They shouldn't be confused, let alone measured on the same scale! Dependency and so-called 'love' derived from gratitude are nothing but towers of sand, the greatest falsehood!"
Jeanne looked at his intense reaction thoughtfully, as if she had finally caught a glimpse of the deepest corner of his heart:
"So... is this what you've never believed in, what you've always been searching for, yet also what you trample upon in the most cruel way? A... pure emotion, without any impurities, that doesn't shift because of any external factors?" She shook her head slightly, her tone carrying a hint of fatalistic realization, "It is indeed... hard to find. Especially on this dark path you walk."
A cold and distorted sneer appeared on Kanjuro's face:
"Therefore, false things should be completely destroyed. Tonight, she will understand this principle."
...Night fell at the top of London's landmark—the Clock Tower.
The cold wind whipped, blowing the hem of Kanjuro's black trench coat. He stood alone at the edge of the tower, with the bright yet tiny lights of London below his feet. In his hands, he held a Grimoire emitting an ominous ghostly light—it was the codex of rlyeh (Book of R'lyeh) obtained from Caster Gilles de Rais. This book had now completely become a part of his power, a medium for summoning and controlling the unspeakable forces from the deep sea.
The sound of footsteps echoed from behind him.
Kirei Kotomine was the first to emerge from the shadows of the stairwell. His face appeared exceptionally pale under the moonlight, and he looked at Kanjuro's back with a complex gaze filled with wariness and a hint of imperceptible humiliation from being forced into this situation.
Immediately after, Claudia also came up. She had changed into a proper dress, and her regained health made her look radiant. Seeing Kanjuro, a joyful and expectant smile immediately appeared on her face as she stepped forward quickly:
"Mr. Kanjuro! I'm here! You said there was something you wanted me to witness, what... what is it?" Her voice was full of trust and curiosity, completely unaware of what she was about to face.
Kanjuro slowly turned around, his gaze sweeping over the two people before him—one was a puppet he intended to torment, and the other was the 'proof' of his failed bet.
He didn't answer Claudia's question, only curling his lips into a cold arc.
In the next moment, a sudden change occurred!
With Kanjuro as the center, cold and viscous dark magical energy surged out like a tide! Countless slimy, twisted, purple-black tentacles covered in suckers appeared out of thin air, wrapping around his body and dancing wildly around him like living things! The air became saturated with a bizarre scent of deep-sea silt and ozone, as if some ancient, terrifying existence was turning its gaze toward this place.
At the same time, the deep night sky behind Kanjuro seemed to be torn open, and the phantom of the eternal night treasury appeared once more! But unlike before, what emerged this time were not swords or Noble Phantasms, but even larger, more distorted shadows, like the limb outlines of some ancient deity, radiating a pressure that could cause a mental breakdown! A pitch-black, ominous light centered on the Clock Tower spread rapidly like a plague, shrouding nearly half of the London sky!
"Kanjuro! Are you crazy?!" Kirei Kotomine cried out in shock, instinctively taking a step back, his meager internal magical energy trembling under this terrifying pressure.
Meanwhile, Jeanne, standing a bit further away, watched Kanjuro's unheralded and massive-scale actions, as well as the faint commotion coming from the direction of the Magician's Association headquarters at the London Clock Tower. For the first time, her ice-blue eyes showed true shock and a hint of an ominous premonition.
"You don't intend to... summon that... here?"
The smile on Claudia's face froze completely. She looked at Kanjuro, who was wrapped in countless tentacles and seemed to have transformed into an abyssal demon god, looked at the darkness and omen shrouding the sky, and felt the terrifying aura that almost froze her soul. Her mind went blank. The Kanjuro before her was a world away from the gentle, handsome man in her memories who had saved her!
Kanjuro's gaze finally fell on Claudia's face, which was filled with terror and disbelief. His voice came through the squirming of the tentacles and the roar of magical energy, cold and clear, with a pleasure that trampled over everything:
"Witness it, Claudia. This is the real me."
"The salvation you thought you found was just a game I played on a whim."
"And that ridiculous gratitude of yours... is worthless before my pure 'evil'!"
He wanted to personally destroy all the beautiful fantasies she had built after her rebirth right in front of her. In the most direct and terrifying way, he would carve the name 'Kanjuro' into the depths of her soul in the form of a 'demon'! What he wanted was no longer gratitude, but... pure hate! Kanjuro's words echoed in the London night sky like a death knell. He no longer paid attention to Kirei Kotomine's pale and weak questioning, turning all his attention—a gaze mixed with malice, curiosity, and a certain obsessive desire for verification—toward the pale, trembling Claudia.
"No... don't..." Claudia watched the sudden chaos and screams erupting in the city below, and saw the various yet equally lethal dark creations and Noble Phantasm projections pouring out of the eternal night treasury, reaping lives like a reaper's scythe. She shook her head, tears streaming down her face, "Why do this... Mr. Kanjuro... why...?"
She couldn't understand how the man who gave her new life and brought her warmth and passion could turn into a demon god bringing death and destruction in the blink of an eye.
"Why?" Kanjuro acted as if he had heard the most ridiculous question in the world. He spread his arms as if embracing the bloody feast he led. "To let you see clearly! To see clearly that your so-called'savior' has such filthy and insane blood flowing in his core! To make you understand that your fragile emotions built on gratitude are laughable and pathetic before my pure, undisguised evil!"
He intended to use this most extreme and cruel method to thoroughly crush the 'affection' born of gratitude in her heart, forcing out what he truly wanted—a pure hatred unadulterated by any other factors, directed solely at his own 'evil'!
His gaze shifted toward the silent Jeanne, his eyes filled with inquiry and a sense of almost cruel experimentation.
"As for you, Jeanne... In the past, those who tied you to the stake and cheered as you were turned to ashes were the ancestors of these very people of Britain, were they not?" His voice carried a twisted logic. "Now, I am plunging all of Britain, and this capital they take pride in, into a sea of blood to 'avenge' you... I am merely curious: as someone who has experienced ultimate betrayal and pain, and who claims to have embraced the darkness, can you still maintain your damned composure in the face of this scene? Will you still feel a trace of redundant, nauseating sympathy for the descendants of these 'enemies'?"
Jeanne's body trembled slightly, and a violent surge finally rose within her ice-blue eyes. She stared fixedly at Kanjuro, her voice trembling slightly with suppressed rage:
"So... all this time, you haven't just been toying with them; you've been constantly testing and experimenting on me?! You want to see what exactly remains in this heart that you already consider fallen?!"
"Of course!" Kanjuro admitted frankly, a sinister smile of total control on his face. "Observing the fall and struggle of human nature is my greatest pleasure. And you, Jeanne, are my most special and interesting observation specimen. This is one of the trials! I want to know exactly where the bottom line lies after a so-called'Saint' has fallen!"
Finally, his gaze, like a cold blade, swept over the ashen-faced Kirei Kotomine.
"As for you, Kirei Kotomine..." Kanjuro's tone was filled with ultimate contempt. "The reason I still let you stand here and watch all this is simply to make you understand a truth more deeply—you Magicians, the power, bloodlines, and heritage you rely on, are no different from ants in my eyes. I can wipe you out like crushing a bug at any time, wipe out the Clock Tower, and wipe out all of London!"
He paused, his lips curling into an almost joyful arc:
"I don't kill you now, not because I can't, but because I don't want to. Because you, like the wailing masses in this city, are nothing more than a... toy I use for amusement, to validate my ideas. Recognize your place; a toy must have the self-awareness of a toy."
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