The metallic taste of blood vanished, replaced by a profound, suffocating silence. What should have been an excruciating agony of a shattered spine and ruptured eyes did not come.
Here, stripped of the flesh and borrowed body, only the spirit remained.
Ren Yamashiro—or should be referred to as 'his' real name—Kyrie, was now afloat an infinite expanse of nothingness.
There was no up or down, cold or heat—only the feeling of weightlessness and the sight of pitch-black darkness. He recognized this place immediately. The sensory deprivation even felt like a stark comfort after the climax of the Holy Grail War.
Long story short, he was back from where it all began.
"It's been so long, huh..."
Drifting in the dark, Kyrie's mind couldn't help but wander to the very first time he had arrived here, to what he considered to be the afterlife. Back then, he was simply a fledgling member of society, still wet behind the ears. He had just been an average guy, fresh out of college with a useless degree and a mountain of anxiety about the future.
And that future ended abruptly on a rainy crosswalk.
All he remembered was the blare of a horn, the crushing impact of a speeding truck—and poof.
Dead as one could be.
Waking up in complete darkness made him livid at first, only to be overwhelmed by the sudden stream of text flashing across his vision, alongside the sound of a synthesized voice that brushed past his ears.
[System initializing...]
[Host soul secured. Binding complete.]
[Primary Directive: Traverse designated realities. Complete assigned parameters. Only through the accumulation of completion points may the host be rewarded a second life and return to their original world.]
[If you are willing, please sign the agreement.]
[Yes] or [No]
It was a setup straight out of the web novels he used to read.
Before him was a translucent panel that closely resembled a holographic display from a sci-fi movie. Feeling giddy about his dreams coming to life at the time, he readily consented to the agreement.
From then on, the system granted him a unique, cheat-like ability to survive the impossible tasks ahead: the power to transform into, and utilize the abilities of, characters he had read about, watched, or played as in his past life.
Ren Yamashiro had just been the most recent character he had transformed into.
"Man, I was happy at first when I got her..."
Turning into a beautiful girl, and with powerful abilities to match, there was hardly anything to complain about.
Surely, right?
"And then I was told the setting was in Fate/strange fake."
He let out a dry, phantom chuckle that didn't vibrate in his throat—because he didn't have one.
A death sentence. That's what that was.
Even with the broken power of the Seventh Commander of the Govenment's Special Forces, being dropped into a sandbox with the likes of Alcides, a petty Goddess, and the literal King of Heroes and his boy best friend was no joke.
He had barely managed to survive by the skin of his teeth and a hell of a lot of strategizing, but even with all of that, it ended up culminating to his own 'death'.
"Still, it was worth everything."
Sigma...
The name of his former master surfaced in his mind once again—a man who was both lucky and unlucky at the same time.
Lucky, because he had summoned a Servant who knew the timeline of events.
Unlucky, because he had participated in a war he never should have been part of.
Kyrie was already doing him a solid by sparing him the fate of becoming a lancer. By taking the place of Watcher, he had essentially turned a hapless mercenary into a man who stood a fighting chance—even if the price paid was gruesome.
Just the memory alone made him shudder involuntarily. He could still feel the phantom sensation of those gold-and-crimson eyes bursting under the overwhelming pressure.
The thought even made him pause.
Without the rush of adrenaline, the psychological toll of having his guts spilled was starting to catch up with him. The small sense of accomplishment he once felt had faded away, and his mood sank.
Ultimately, he decided it was better to simply forget about it.
"System," Kyrie called out, shoving further thought aside. "Give me a status report."
A familiar, melodic chime echoed once more.
[ Mission Log: Snowfield ]
Primary Objective: Divert the Fate of 'Sigma' — SUCCESS
Secondary Objective: Seize victory in the Holy Grail War — SUCCESS
Synchronization Level: 100% (Ren Yamashiro)
Reward: 50,000 Completion Points
Status: Template 'Ren Yamashiro' has been permanently archived in your personal collection.
[ New Directive ]
World: Type-Moon, Fate Universe
Timeline: Ancient Mesopotamia (Uruk Era)
Warning: High-Lethality Environment Detected.
Emergency Template Loading...
Reading the content of the string of panels, the fingers that was tapping on the screen froze.
Usually, there was a brief period where he could relax and prepare before the jump, but it seemed like the case wasn't the same this time.
The current situation had caught him off guard.
"Wait, wait," Kyrie felt the familiar, violent suction of an inter-dimensional travel beginning to take hold. "It's Fate again? And in Mesopotamia? You're throwing me into the Age of Gods already? At least let me spend some points!"
The system did not even consider humoring his request.
In an instant, all of his lost senses came rushing back, the sudden flood of sensation—weight, temperature, and sound—overwhelming his mind and washing it blank.
Then a pinprick of white light appeared at the far end of the void, expanding rapidly as it surged toward him like a tidal wave, swallowing both the darkness and his consciousness along with it.
When the world finally stopped spinning, the first thing he felt was a cool breeze. It carried the scent of cedar and damp earth, rustling through a dense canopy far above.
To say that it was rather abrupt would be selling it short.
But after accumulating experiences across different universes so far, he wasn't that surprised anymore.
Patting his cheeks to psych himself up, he began to look around.
"Where am I exactly?"
As he spoke, he found himself standing amidst a lush, ancient forest, surrounded by towering trees.
"Is that... Uruk?"
Not far away, the high walls of an early civilization rose against the horizon—Uruk, in the dawn of the Age of Gods.
It was just as he guessed.
But as he approached the gates, the guards recoiled immediately.
Their eyes were filled with a primal terror that surpassed any fear of war or famine. They barred the entrance, pointing trembling spears in their hands.
Kyrie—now inhabiting the form of Castorice—looked down at her pale, slender hands.
A heavy aura of death emanated from her very pores. In the game, it was kind of like an absolute boundary that forbade any living being to walk into her vicinity, causing even the large patch of grass beneath her boots to wither and crumble into ash within seconds.
She was currently a walking embodiment of death—an affront to the living world.
"I see," she muttered, her voice sounding hollow.
"So it seems I'm not welcome."
There was a few thousand years left before Chaldea arrives.