However, all resistance proved futile before a top-tier Heroic Spirit fighting without reservation solely for revenge—especially an Avenger with counter-attributes and special attack effectiveness against "Magicians."
Flames consumed the magnificent sorceries, and the banner shattered the firm defenses. Her figure moved among the enemies like a dance of death. Lord after Lord fell in despair; their pride, their sorcery, and their Inheritance were incinerated into dust before Jeanne's pure and savage fire of vengeance.
This was not a battle; this was a judgment, a Blood Reckoning delayed by hundreds of years, personally executed by the "Witch."
When the last Lord (perhaps the White-Haired Elder who had scolded her initially) turned to ash in the Karmic Fire, his unwilling roar abruptly silenced, the top of the Clock Tower temporarily fell into a deadly silence. Only the low hissing from the Cthulhu Avatar in the distance and the crackling sound of the burning city served as background noise.
Jeanne stood alone amidst the corpses and scorch marks, the dark red banner pointing diagonally toward the ground. The Karmic Fire slowly receded around her. She breathed lightly, looking up at the sky shrouded in smoke and darkness. An ineffable complex emotion flashed in her ice-blue eyes: was it relief? Emptiness? Or the bewilderment following the fulfillment of great vengeance?
Kanjuro's soft applause broke the silence.
"A magnificent revenge drama, Jeanne. Do you feel better now?" His voice carried a hint of subtle probing.
Jeanne did not turn back, merely responding faintly. Her voice carried a trace of fatigue, yet it was exceptionally firm:
"The grievance is settled. Next, it is time to fulfill the Contract with you."
"Contract?" Kanjuro chuckled aloud, as if he had heard an interesting word. He stopped and looked sideways at the Saint (or rather, Witch) beside him, whose body was still wreathed in lingering Karmic Fire and cold resolution.
"What Contract?"
Jeanne turned around, her ice-blue eyes piercing through the London night sky, locking firmly onto Kanjuro's amused smile. Her voice was calm, yet carried the certainty of someone who had undergone profound change: "I had already signed a Contract with you, and although London has fallen this time, it is undeniable that you also helped me... take revenge." Her words paused slightly on "take revenge," where the pleasure of the reckoning intertwined with a deeper sense of nihilism.
Kanjuro's smile deepened slightly, carrying a languid air of knowingness. "Ah, you mean that." He shrugged. "We both got what we wanted. You got the stage to settle Old Grudges, and I enjoyed this grand 'performance.' It's fair, isn't it?" He paused, his gaze sweeping over the devastated top of the Clock Tower and the Cthulhu Avatar still rampaging in the distance. "Well, since the matter is settled here, we can leave."
He took the first step, and Jeanne silently followed half a step behind him. The dark red banner vanished soundlessly from her hand, as if she were retracting all outward emotions.
The two walked past Claudia, who had been standing still as if she had lost her soul. The beautiful woman in the Wheelchair had slightly disheveled Blonde Hair from the hot wind, and tear tracks were still wet on her pale face. Her Emerald eyes reflected the burning city below, empty and lifeless. The moment Kanjuro brushed past her, he stopped again. Without looking at her, he used his characteristic tone, a mixture of gentleness and cruelty, to ask the question that had long been swirling in her mind:
"Now, do you still think I am truly kind, that I genuinely wanted to help you?"
Claudia's body trembled almost imperceptibly. She slowly turned her head, her gaze not focused on Kanjuro, but still fixed on the sea of fire in London, which he had personally ignited and which had now turned into an Inferno. She remained silent for a long time, so long that the surrounding clamor seemed to have faded away, before she finally spoke softly in a fragmented, almost dreamlike voice:
"I don't know..." She took a deep breath of the scorched air, her voice carrying a resigned weariness. "But no matter what, I... still cannot bring myself to hate you."
Having spoken these words she herself couldn't understand, she stopped looking at Kanjuro and made no other gesture. Instead, she used her slender, pale hands to forcefully push the wheels of the Wheelchair, carrying her broken body and even more broken heart, moving step by step, firmly yet solitarily, in the opposite direction from Kanjuro, slowly heading toward the depths of the Ruins. Her silhouette, stretched long by the firelight, was filled with endless desolation and resolve.
Kanjuro watched the gradually receding silhouette in the Wheelchair. His usual smile faded, and a fleeting, extremely subtle complexity, unnoticed even by himself, flashed in the depths of his eyes.
Kirei Kotomine, who had been standing silently like a shadow, now stepped forward. His black Priest's Robe swayed slightly in the wind, and his face held a calmness that was almost pleasurable, stemming from his insight into human nature. He followed Kanjuro's gaze and spoke lightly: "Isn't she different from other women?"
Kanjuro withdrew his gaze, reverting to his nonchalant demeanor, and nodded. "Yes. She is indeed different from other women." He paused, his tone carrying an ineffable amusement. "She doesn't even have hatred for me; she just feels... she misjudged the person." As if this were more interesting to him than pure hatred, or perhaps, it brought him a slight surprise.
"Indeed," Kirei Kotomine interjected, his voice smooth yet hitting the core truth. "Because you were deceiving her from the start."
Kanjuro smiled noncommittally, neither admitting nor denying it.
Kirei Kotomine bowed slightly, his posture respectful but without much genuine fear. "Esteemed Mr. Kanjuro, this feast has been very beneficial to me. May I take my leave now?"
"You may go." Kanjuro waved his hand casually, as if shooing away an insignificant fly.
Kirei Kotomine bowed again, then turned and disappeared with a few swift movements into the shadows beneath the Clock Tower, as if he had never been there.
After Kirei Kotomine also left, Jeanne slightly frowned, looking at Kanjuro. Her tone held a mix of confusion and vigilance: "You just let him go? He is not an easy person to deal with, especially since... he seems to derive pleasure from this pain and destruction."
Upon hearing this, the corner of Kanjuro's mouth curved into a cold, all-controlling arc. "Of course I know what kind of thing he is." He gazed in the direction Kirei Kotomine had vanished, his eyes flickering with calculation and manipulation. "Part of the purpose of everything I did today—the slaughter, the summoning, and allowing you to complete your revenge—was to make him see clearly, to make him personally experience—"
He turned back, looked at Jeanne, and his smile became cruel and delighted: "He, Kirei Kotomine, has always just been my toy. I gave him the chance to witness ultimate chaos and suffering; I let him taste the madness that nears the Root, but all of this originated from my will. If I want him to live, he can barely survive; if I want him to die, he will turn to dust in the next moment. My goal is this simple. Letting him leave is merely winding up the toy, allowing him to take today's 'harvest' and continue to spread more... 'fun' for me in this world, in his twisted way."
His words drifted away in the night wind, carrying undeniable authority and bone-deep malice. Jeanne looked at Kanjuro like this, eventually just nodding silently, saying nothing further.
The two no longer lingered. Their figures melted into the darkness, leaving the still-wailing, burning city behind, taking with them only the towering flames, the whispers of the deep sea, and the lonely sound of a Wheelchair rolling over the Ruins, gradually fading into the distance.
Returning to the temporary residence on the edge of London's ruined district, Kanjuro's outward composure completely vanished. The night was deep, yet he was wide awake, pacing restlessly in the room. In his mind, Claudia's hollow yet strangely calm eyes echoed repeatedly, along with her final words—"No matter what, I still cannot hate you."
This was wrong. It completely defied logic, and even more so, the laws of human nature that he controlled.
He, Kanjuro, had long regarded so-called love and affection as the cheapest, most ridiculous illusions. He played with hearts, manipulated desires, and enjoyed the thrill of tearing apart others' emotions and carelessly piecing them back together. Claudia should have been a relatively special one among his many toys, but ultimately, she was just a toy.
He meticulously planned the lies to approach her, using the power of the dark bible and the curse of the spear of longinus to amplify her physical and emotional dependence. He was certain that after such a thorough "desire test," no woman could escape that kind of degradation; she would inevitably cling to him like a vine, unable to leave or let go.
But she hadn't.
She saw through the lies but chose silence. She endured the deceit and exploitation, witnessed the mountains of corpses and seas of blood he created, and was even personally pushed by him into the abyss of despair, yet she still failed to breed the hatred he expected. She simply... left. She departed with a calm bordering on pity, and that phrase, "cannot hate," which irritated him deeply.
"Why?" Kanjuro slammed his fist against the wall, and the hard stone instantly cracked. He felt an unprecedented irritation and vexation, as if his meticulously designed script had been torn open at the end by an insignificant character in the most unexpected way. He did not believe that unconditional affection existed in this world—feelings that could survive betrayal and injury, especially when directed at a complete villain like him.
"I don't believe it..." he hissed softly, a trace of obsessive madness flashing in his eyes. "Something must be wrong. It must be an act, or maybe the curse left some after-effects..."
An extreme and dark thought sprouted in his heart. He decided to conduct a final test—one so cruel and thorough that it would make even himself feel like a beast. He wanted to tear apart all her pretenses and force out the truest reaction deep within her heart. He had to prove that her so-called "cannot hate" was nothing but self-deception, or perhaps a more sophisticated form of disguise that he hadn't yet recognized.
As night deepened, inside a small, cold shack in the ruined district, Claudia sat alone in her Wheelchair. Wrapped in a slightly thin, old blanket, she gazed up through the shattered, glassless window frame, quietly watching the few stars faintly visible through London's smoke-shrouded sky.
In her mind, Kanjuro's figure surfaced uncontrollably. Not the demon who summoned Cthulhu and destroyed cities, but the man from the beginning—the one who cared for her meticulously when she was sick and fragile, who looked at her with eyes so tender they could drip water. The way he carefully blew on her medicine before feeding it to her, his tired yet persistent profile while guarding her bedside late at night, the occasional child-like dependence he showed... These images flowed like a warm current, washing over her cold heart again and again, causing an uncontrollable rush of sorrowful tenderness.
Even when she recalled that night, remembering his possessiveness driven by a certain motive, a blush involuntarily crept onto her face. It wasn't merely a physical sensation, but a genuine attachment and longing that rose from the depths of her heart. She clearly knew how terrifying he was, his cruelty, his lies, yet strangely, fear did not dominate. What remained was a complex, inexpressible sorrow, and... a tiny, inextinguishable spark that she herself couldn't explain.
Just then, with a "creak," the dilapidated wooden door was violently pushed open.
Claudia subconsciously turned her head. When she saw the Familiar yet strange figure in the doorway, a flicker of surprise crossed her eyes, immediately transforming into a deep pool of calm. "Why are you back?" Her voice was very soft, devoid of emotional fluctuation.
Kanjuro was expressionless. He approached step by step, his shadow completely enveloping her. He did not reply, but suddenly reached out and fiercely grabbed her slender, fragile neck, lifting her slightly off the Wheelchair!
"Ugh!" The sudden sensation of choking made Claudia painfully furrow her brow. Her hands weakly grasped his iron-vice-like wrist. Her face quickly flushed red, but aside from the physical pain, there was surprisingly little fear in her eyes—instead, there was a sense of... understanding and sorrow.
"Are you going to kill me?" She struggled to squeeze the words out of her throat, accompanied by a sigh of acceptance. "If you want to kill me... then kill me."
Kanjuro stared intently into her eyes, trying to find even the slightest trace of resentment, anger, or plea for mercy in that calm, azure lake. But he failed. Her gaze was so pure it unnerved him, even carrying a sense of near-liberation.
He raised his other hand, condensing magic power and radiating a brutal aura, almost ready to violate her in the crudest way, destroying her last shred of dignity, just as he had done to other women who defied him. He wanted to see her scream, see her cry, see her expose the ugliest, most intolerable side of herself before him, like everyone else.
However, his hand hovered in mid-air, as if bound by invisible chains; he couldn't bring it down no matter what.
After a stalemate that lasted for an unknown duration, Kanjuro abruptly released her neck. Claudia slumped back into her Wheelchair, clutching her throat and coughing violently, her pale face flushed with an unnatural redness due to lack of oxygen.
Kanjuro irritably retreated a few steps, heavily seating himself on the room's only dilapidated wooden chair, his gaze sharp as a knife, fixed firmly on Claudia.
"You genuinely don't dislike me at all? You don't hate me?" His voice was hoarse, carrying an urgency he himself hadn't realized.
Claudia caught her breath, raised her eyes, and looked at him calmly, shaking her head gently: "No."
"Then do you still love me now?" Kanjuro asked the question almost grinding his teeth.
Claudia barely hesitated. Her azure eyes looked straight at him, and she clearly uttered one word: "Love."
This single word struck Kanjuro's emotional defenses like a heavy hammer. He sharply drew a breath, as if unable to breathe, and roared, "I don't believe it!"
He abruptly stood up, strode in front of Claudia, and without explanation, placed a hand over her forehead. Magic power surged. He activated the Eye of Truth, intending to directly peer into the deepest, truest thoughts of her soul and tear away all pretense!
However, under the extraordinary vision of the Eye of Truth, what he saw was not complex calculations or false performances, but a spectrum of emotion so utterly pure, so warmly scorching. At the core of that spectrum, the truth description of "Love" was clearly reflected:
[Eternal deep love for one person, meticulous care, the heart overflowing with warmth. A small kindness is engraved for a lifetime; once this heart is given, it is eternal and unwavering until death.]
Watching this concise yet weighty description, the brutality, irritation, and disbelief on Kanjuro's face receded like a tide, leaving behind only a blank, almost rigid calm. He slowly withdrew his hand, stepping back once, then again.
He knew he had lost.
He hadn't lost to some powerful force or sophisticated scheme, but to this emotion—the simplest yet most resilient feeling—which he had long since discarded and dismissed as nothingness.
He turned around expressionlessly and walked toward the door.
From behind him came Claudia's soft voice, carrying a hint of concern, as if he were just leaving for a journey: "Be careful on the road."
Kanjuro's steps paused slightly at the doorway. This ordinary expression of care, heard at this moment, stung him more than any curse. He suddenly remembered something, or rather, the remaining wicked nature that refused to admit defeat drove him to make his final, most devastating counterattack.
He did not turn back, but merely left behind a bone-chilling sentence, spoken in an understatement, as if discussing the weather:
"But I don't love you."
The instant the words fell, it was as if the faint sound of something shattering could be heard.
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