Welcome back to a new chapter! Here's yet another world-building one, showcasing what's different from Lostbelt 6. Hope you enjoy!

Some good discussions are in the following Mailbag. Check it out!
superpierce: Natural. This is an AU where it just happens, for plot reasons. Lore-wise (and this is a bit of a spoiler), SHIROU's interference with the origins of the faeries and Britannia as a whole caused random mutations to occur throughout certain bloodlines, which can most recently traced back to Nero (you'll see what's different with her later on, aside from her marriage to Boudica in this reality). Several centuries later (and undoubtedly several incestuous relationships), a hermaphrodite is born.
JhosyLephor: Glad you liked it! The next few chapters will focus back on world-building and character development, making the overall pace of the story rather slow. I've got a smut one lined up after that, though.
King0fP0wers: Doesn't he always?
98kazer: Understood. Thanks for your readership all this time! I'll see you in (maybe) a few years when I'm moving on to the next one.
Ultimate Warrior of Zera: The answer's more complicated than that. In previous and future chapters, I've indicated Morgan's upcoming multiple personality disorders, which she solves by making herself 6 people. Some of them adore Altria, some of them see good in Altria but also how malleable she is, and some of them have evil intentions for her. Which Morgan shows up in this chapter... you decide.

"This is the meatpacking district, and over there's the freshwater fishing processing plant, and close by is the street food stalls… where only the freshest ingredients are used!" Completely unlike her usual demeanour, much to onlookers' amazement and shock, Pandora excitedly drags me along the busy marketplace. "Come on, let's get something to eat! You must be hungry, no? O' great hero…!"

The scenes around me, while quite familiar, is a touch too overwhelming for my still-developing senses. I love cheating with Reinforcement to ensure I get the best product whenever I'm shopping for fresh stuff like this, but that's a skill taking years to solidify and apply effectively. As a habit, though, it's very hard to control, which is why Pandora's yapping is getting quite irritating.

I can tell she means the best for me, disregarding even her reputation – if what I manage to eavesdrop from the whispers around us is true – but what's 'best' in her overly-subjective perception for my needs isn't necessarily correct. In fact, it feels very much like being forcibly taken through an inflexible guidebook on how to raise human toddlers… written by faeries.

…which, now that I think about it, is very likely the main source of Pandora's knowledge regarding humans anyway. Ditto the people around me, though the 'history' I manage to left behind seems to protect me from the intensity they'll use to gaze upon any other human.

It's not long since consuming human meat raw is prohibited, after all.

Nowadays, they get their supply from a specialized purveyor dealing with captured war slaves and death row criminals over from the Outside World. Yes, this won't last forever, but since that side is still far from the civilized, peaceful modern-day world 'Shirō Emiya' will be used to, it's a system which runs well for the foreseeable future.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! This drink is recently trendy! Have some!" Pandora shoves a leaf mug into my hand, before rushing off to pay what I presume she impatiently ripped out of the seller's own. "Be right back!"

I highly doubt her claim regarding 'trendiness', because the non-existent queue in front of this drinks vendor consists solely of advanced-age faeries. And because they can live centuries, they're must be really old. The snickers I immediately hear around me confirms my suspicion.

Hey, I'm not judging.

- Slurp.

"Pretty good," I admit. Sometimes old-fashioned is best, hm? "Can we market this as a Bloody Mary? Or will I get copyrighted?"

It's a tomato drink. Not tomato juice, surprisingly, but closer to a consommé instead. Shocking, because I know full well how much of a hassle it is to work in a street food environment, and how easy the 'juice' option is.

And yes, it's a drink which shouldn't exist in this Texture yet, unless the seller is ORT in disguise. Which I highly doubt. For one, it's chilled with regular [Ice] Magecraft, and not the suspiciously-beautiful crystals it should produce just by shitting daily. And it's impossible to hide from me, given the Heroic Vessel program is created specifically to kill beings like it, and the mere distance of an entire continent is enough to alarm me of its approach, much less only several feet away cowering at Pandora's rather forceful payment method.

Aside from me pondering whether there's an imported contraband case here or not, I notice yet another thing.

There are no children my age running around what should be an even livelier scene – meaning I'm now bearing the brunt of the gazes.

'Iyaaannn… D-Don't look at me that much; I'm shy!' Merlin's imaginary coquettish voice rings in my head in a case of 'what if'.

Pandora took me straight into what I presume to be Fang Clan territory, judging from the ratio of beastfolk walking about. The faerie clans have socially developed more than I thought and from what Merlin have taught me, meaning there's also a considerable number of other faerie clan members mingling among us. It's harder to spot considering the sheer average physical size of the Fang Clan, their towering and girthy builds making me feel like I'm walking among brick walls covered in various types of fur.

The infrastructure is also amazingly well-integrated, regarding the needs of a lot of different beastfolk. An easy difference I spot is the sheer size of everything, made to cater even the most well-built of faeries. With this child body of mine, it actually hurts my neck craning over every little detail. Using my mystical senses don't help much, either, because the cacophony I was complaining about earlier translates linearly with what my Pure Eyes and other Reinforced senses will pick up. The most intense is the smell – not the rank, foul scent people in the Outside World associate with vermin, but the heavy Conceptual Weight of [Fauna].

To simplify it greatly, it's the pheromones which are making me dizzy. Forcing an underaged body into heat never ends well, especially in male ones. I'm already well-experienced in this era's accepted sexual norms from the dangerous gazes of both Merlin and Tonelico towards this small body of mine, though thankfully they still keep their hands to themselves. I worry about when I grow up a bit more, though…

"I'm back! Let's continue!" Pandora's chirpy tone interrupted my musings. As before, she takes my hand without asking and begin to drag me along further. "We're going to a place I'm most proud of!"

What to think about this girl, I wonder? In terms of looks, she's certainly not that special – and I have my fair share of blondes with Gilgamesh, Tonelico, and EMIYA's various experiences with the many, many versions of Altria across realities – and her body is stuck in that awkward zone of puberty. Not mature enough, yet developed enough one can tell she's no longer a child. The result is the gangly, slightly disproportionate form of a developing teenager, though she's far from unattractive, of course.

From my observations, even though it's not long since mass uncontrolled public human consumption – which basically just means any human will be torn apart upon sight – went out of fashion, I and Pandora are generally well-treated without any prejudice or hidden agendas. I was fully prepared to harm this young body by casting Unlimited Blade Works to protect her if we were genuinely targeted from the shadows… only to remember her self-regeneration is far stronger than mine, even with my soul transformed by the Heroic Vessel procedure and my tendency to spam things until they work. Which means only I am in danger this whole time – not that I'm completely helpless, despite the little amount of real training I've put myself through.

Strong as they are, my [Sword] is sharper than anything. Even if it – and I along with it – breaks, it'll make sure to kill everything in front of me.

But my observations about her personality are the ones truly intriguing.

From what I gather – both from onlookers and her momentary exchanges with Merlin – she's far from this extroverted girl she's intentionally projecting in front of me. Thing is… I'm not even sure which part of her bipolarity is her true self, or if she really just has a split personality and both the cheerful and murderously serious parts of her are true. I genuinely don't remember what she was like when she was freshly departed from the Greek pantheon, when she was picked up by Cernunnos, when I was inadvertently shielding her with my own body.

Heck, I don't even remember my own self at that time, as my sense of self hasn't developed that well, certainly far behind the growth of my own strength as a warrior. Nor did I have time to pay attention to Cernunnos, because Velber's Conceptual Weight was so massively threatening my focus was directly channelled into finding ways of driving it away.

From the memories of 'Shirō Emiya', he had experience in dealing with overly-friendly characters, whether it's natural or faked. And I came to the former conclusion regarding Pandora precisely because of these memories, leading to my current confusion.

So, which one is it? Pandora, the first [Maiden]? Or Pandora, Cernunnos's [Priestess]? Not that both can't be true – Tonelico is a good example of making everything true, no mater how deep her deception runs – but I'm just mulling.

"A school!"

"Huh?"

- …

Pandora has her arms spread wide, proudly showing off what's most definitely not the result of her own work. It's a differently-decorated teleportation station, installed separately from the five 'gates' connecting the Fang Clan's territory to the other five. For one, it's certainly more normal-sized compared to every single architecture I've observed in this place, as Pandora's below-average height doesn't look so out of place beside it.

"…so that's why I don't see many children running about," I conclude, after a few seconds pass in silence. "A centralized education institution… Certainly a fine idea to maintain control."

And by that, I mean taking every single child hostage. When all parties' offspring are at the mercy of another, higher-ranked existence, they certainly can't engage in the strenuous conflict of the past. Much like the Outside World, the faerie clans often warred against each other, training and sending those children to fight their battles so a vague superior could reap the results far from the frontlines.

The school, teleportation stations… This 'globalization' efforts are certainly the most effective. "Who proposed it? …could it be Miss Pandora?!"

I inject some more glee and respect into my gaze, just to pander to her hospitality so far. It works against Merlin and Tonelico; why not this girl in front of me?

…oh, I can see her nose elongating. Well, at least I'm genuinely impressed. I know very well how hard it is to bash heads together and make the tough decisions, both from my own experience with Gilgamesh and other missions, and my constituents' memories.

I let myself be dragged into the portal, a flash of light forcing me to close my eyes momentarily as I ponder how different this reality is to the information I received from Alaya.

Everything's generally centred around their relative lack of antagonism towards humans. There are several probable unconfirmed causes for this, chief among which must be Pandora's influence. After all, despite her immortality, she's infinitely closer to humanity than faeries, no matter how much she despised her creators. In fact, she may see humans as fellow siblings mistreated by the Greek pantheons, and it's not hard to imagine her sympathizing with their plight.

However, no matter how good a politician she is – and in my point of view, she's no better than this terrible ol' me – it's impossible to get the faeries to cooperate if their old fears still reign true: their weakness to iron.

Across their existence, the faeries have always used other metals to do the same requirements as we humans first did during the start of the Iron Age. Weapons, architecture, hand tools… The abundance of Magecraft aiding their metallurgy meant there's no need to expend resources to mine the relatively-inaccessible iron ingots deep in the planet's belly, as they could simply enchant weaker, more malleable, and easily-acquired metals to achieve the same strength and hardness, purely because those metals channel Mana much better than human iron. As such, this weakness – more akin to poison, honestly – was discovered much too late after both races' cultural identities have formed. Without cooperation from the start, the two sides naturally grow to hate and fear the other: the faeries warily eyeing humans' iron, while humans jealously coveting faeries' gems and enchanted metals.

So how did they acquire this… immunity to iron? Ferrum, in the tongue of Britannia's past conqueror, and a term still widely used today.

Apparently, from me.

…more specifically – or embarrassingly – from the body I inhabited to fight Velber off. As a 'great hero', that corpse was buried with full honour… which then contaminated the faeries' lands with my Origin, [Sword]. Historical records noted symptoms eerily similar to radiation poisoning suffered by the faeries who handled my burial, then those who lived around the cemetery. However, none of it was fatal, and it was treated as a mild outbreak of an unexplained disease. By the time more invested scholars spent the time to study this curious phenomenon, my old body has long decayed and naturally ingested by Cernunnos, while any spiritual information left behind in [Imaginary Space] being immediately concealed by Alaya.

In fact, it's gotten to the point only beings like Pandora and Cernunnos were able to resist this historical correction and remember what I did – admittedly far better than even my own memory, it seemed – and other living beings in that era simply had their perception of 'someone did something' completely censored. While Tonelico and Merlin now know, I'm undoubtedly going to be forgotten by their descendants, with perhaps the first generation being an exception.

Such is the price to pay for being a Heroic Vessel. Not that I mind; fame and ego just get in the way of the mission. If the people around me can be saved and smile as best they can throughout their improved life, then that's all the rewards I want.

Much like the remnants of Mycenaean and Roman cultures, the 'school' – I bracket that word with parentheses because it's just a technicality, according to my modern understanding and knowledge of how a learning institution should be – was located in a semi-open space. In my opinion, it's not necessary because climate control Magecraft has long become popular, becoming the most profitable Magecraft monarchs and rulers demand of their court magi, so there's no real need to shield the children from the elements.

Besides, the six faerie domains' seasons are somewhat controllable, so long as their worship of Cernunnos is stable and the big guy itself doesn't have mood swings. From what I gather, it never does so, even when Pandora pranked it several times when she was 'young' to elicit any sort of reaction out of the unbelievably phlegmatic, yet inhumanely kind, Divine Spirit.

The other reason how humans are now more easily accepted by faeries – at least those who provide clear economical and societal benefit – is also Cernunnos's indifference towards… us. While this may seem like a stance of neutrality which can be easily manipulated and swung this way and that, its Conceptual Weight is so great even the slightest personality trait, in this case [Agape] towards all living beings without discrimination, influenced a whole race.

Well, they're technically living on top of its body, so it makes sense it can influence faeries so easily.

…and what kind of people is most susceptible to this? Children, of course. Their parents might have radical thoughts and tendencies, but after nearly 5 millennia of constant influence, those negative things naturally died out as the new generation replaced the old. And all this is done unconsciously by this furry Divine Spirit, showcasing its passive strength.

'If only it bothered raising a hand to help me all those millennia back…' I sigh, remembering my efforts to protect this continent-sized soft target lounging around behind me as I faced Velber. Cernunnos either had terrible sense of self-preservation, or its intelligence was very, very low in the past. 'But then, various Divine Spirits have different specialities…'

For example, Cernunnos' mechanical capabilities are clearly inferior to those Divine Spirits in the Greek pantheon, owing to their differing origins. However, their Conceptual Weight may not be higher or stronger – merely different abilities. Ditto my [Sword] is naturally much more suited to combat than Pandora's [Hope], but her self-regenerating ability is far superior than mine. Tonelico's skill in magical combat surpasses Merlin, but it's not like her pure theoretical knowledge has surpassed the succubus.

Seeing the school's decorative architecture, it really does show Pandora is the person mainly responsible for its conception. And by that, I mean the seamless transition and deep understanding of different design languages throughout the ages, as there are the floor cushions of East Asian traditions, the geometric marble small constructs and semi-circular floorplan of Hellas, the rigid furniture of Rome, the controlled wilderness crawling around strategic spots of Britannia and the Celts, etc. Only someone with her immortality – a long life without the slightest spiritual deterioration – could perfectly marry various cultures in such an aesthetically pleasing way.

This is recess time… not that school time is rigorously enforced into a strict schedule like modern times. To be honest, it's more akin to several conjoined informal lessons than a proper curriculum, because despite the relative stability of the faerie culture, professional teachers are still far and few in-between, mostly reserved for the highest levels of royalty and nobility, only appearing in this centralized school when they're free and willing.

Besides, much like in most fantastical situations, it's very hard to organize everything with combat classes in the mix. While most children I see running around are far too young to be considered potential warriors – much younger than even Altria, from what I heard – it's still a sign of how meritocracy was still the rule of the land, as their training starts very early. While physical bullying is strictly discouraged, a form of social ladder still exists according to one's abilities. Those weak enough to be unable to fend for themselves are the pariahs, facing social discrimination.

I sigh when this easily-noticed fact is already apparent. At the very least, I harboured hope this was a place of innocence and pure learning, but the faeries' culture and societal cues are imprinted too deeply into their souls to prevent this premature showing. Cernunnos does act as a balance – a very heavy counterbalance – but its positive values must be contrasted by negative ones for some sort of balance to exist in the first place.

For instance, the Germanic barbarian tribes' and the Anglo-Saxons' habit of plundering, sacking, war, and general mayhem. These might appear as an extreme negative trait… when viewed from one perspective – the victims'. To them, it's merely a way of life and how each born individual pulls their weight in the world, tested by the rigours of blood and flame and steel. In a society where rigid political and judicial structure are impossible, this is the only way for some sort of [Order] to establish itself: survival of the fittest. To them, the Romans and Britons are nothing but fat, lazy sheep who've drowned in their own bureaucracy, corruption, and false ideals, and a scourge to be erased from the planet. Indeed, long-established societies, such as modern nations, are nothing but a drain on nature's resources, so some culling will be necessary.

Unfortunately, most take that word – 'culling' – too far with their narrow-minded nature, and turn it into something extremely negative.

If this is the compromise necessary so the six tribes can live in relative harmony, then I'll take it.

What I can't take is the ensuing hour or so, when a realization dawns upon me.

My right arm is being pulled with such force it genuinely can pop out of its socket, even with Reinforcement. My palm is feeling something so divinely soft and large it has no place on a child's body, much less a girl not much older than me. She's tall, though – about half-a-head taller than me – with a wild mane of blonde hair cascading down her neck and onto her upper back. Gallant and tomboyish, Fang Clan features are apparent on the girl, particularly the two budding horns on her head.

Her heterochromatic red-and-blue eyes are glaring daggers straight at someone else beside me, with her firmly declaring, "He's strong, so he's going for a spar with me. Piss off."

My left arm is grasped by a pair of dainty-looking arms, and while I don't feel this person can match the former in terms of outright physical strength, the amount of solid shadows binding both her and the left side of my body proves enough of an anchor to fight against the pull. Of course, it results in me being stretched in two directions, about to be torn perfectly in twain. Voluminous red hair – much more vibrant than my rather dull copper shade – hangs down her back, though it's much harder to pin down which clan she comes from because her features, while beautiful, are somewhat generic of most faeries.

Still, what's not generic is the familiar tsun-tsun tone she's using to fight back against the blonde girl. "W-What?! Don't misunderstand; I'm just pitying you! Don't go with this gorilla! Save yourself! I-it's not like I'm w-worried about you or anything…" she says to me, ignoring the former's words.

- Squeeze…

- Nom.

Meanwhile, a pair of even stronger– and even smaller – arms hugs my neck, as a small faerie used it to hang from it onto my back. My whole head is being play-bit by an abnormally flexible jaw, which actually doesn't really hurt because her teeth is still tender. Vestiges of white hair frame both our faces, but I'm too distracted by the amount of childish slobber she's putting on me. Without even looking, I can tell she has strong dragon ancestry from her spiritual 'smell', which somewhat explains this immature behaviour.

I can only sigh, correcting myself as I'm about to be torn into three pieces instead.

This isn't a school…

This is a fucking zoo.

"BREACH! BREACH! BREACH!"

"Enemy attack! They're fuckin' here already!"

"Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Intruder alert! No; there's spies! Be careful!"

Tonelico slammed her staff's butt onto the ground, immediately transforming the raw earth beneath her into ultra-tough mid-grade ceramics. She could both feel and hear the enemy's projectiles bouncing off it – merely enchanted arrows and energy beams – before a predictably heavier ammunition smashed through it.

- Bang!

Still, she didn't panic, having already accounted for the momentary loss of sight caused by her impromptu shield. The [Water] around her was doing the sensory heavy-lifting, informing her of every carbon-based lifeform and distinctive inanimate objects around her, while a magus's typical magical senses complimenting that. If Shirō internalized that as 'smell', then she was more typical of a classically-trained magus who relied on skin palpation or 'touch'. The different pressures spiritually enacted upon every inch of her being were the building data blocks of an imaginary 360° projection inside her head.

The ceramic shield shattered into several large sharp pieces, intentionally designed to do so, revealing a giant energy cannonball about a foot from her face. Yet, what should be a fatal sight just… wasn't, as the projectile simply…

- Plop!

…sank into an invisible ripple mid-air, just before it managed to touch Tonelico.

"Water Mirror."

The next instant, somewhere distant, a large explosion rocked the battlefield.

- BOOM!

"Did I put in too much Reinforcement…?" She pondered seriously. After all, in the midst of a chaotic war, every drop of energy must be spent efficiently. Investing in a large-area spell which only killed one or two just wasn't worth it. "I should research on a bigger and more efficient version… Preferably something which can teleport a giant beam…"

Tonelico maintained a steady jog, as it's a typical rookie mistake for a magus to stand still and bombard things from afar with Magecraft. One, the distance itself became a problem if one couldn't verify the lethality of the spells, which lent into the efficiency problem of wasting Od and Mana mentioned earlier. Two, mixing martial arts and Magecraft had become the norm after the great Tuatha Dé Danann Scáthach pioneered it in this part of Europe, and popularized by many of her students along the ilk of old Hellenistic heroes from the Mediterranean. Plus, it's Merlin personal style, and as her best student, Tonelico followed suit, even if their eventual 'finished' movesets were very different.

The shattered shards of the ceramic shield rotated lazily around her, fully under control instead of being smashed into nothingness, before suddenly gaining speed and whizzed horizontally everywhere, slicing through a mixture of ice golems and Draugr effortlessly.

"Break!"

Right after those cleaver-like shards passed through enough enemies, Tonelico enacted Broken Phantasm and overloaded them, exploding every single one and sending bullets of hardened ceramics into the rest.

'This is bad…'

Indeed, while she was relatively unharmed, less could be said about the King Clan's response forces. Being taken by surprise by a terror-based attack plan, which entailed of strategically-smuggled explosives and weapons to strike when Knocknarea's guard was at its lowest… which was naturally at the eve of her total victory against the opposition party. While she's a brilliant enough military and political leader to prevent the whole King Clan losing too much manpower in its civil war, its strength undoubtedly took a hit.

…and by who else? The Anglo-Saxons weren't just trying to invade their way through Britannia's Outside World, but its Reverse Side as well.

A very good decision, mind. They certainly weren't going to repeat the same mistakes as the Romans, who failed to conquer Hellas' Reverse Side and ended up having its own pantheon sublimated by Zeus and the rest, giving them a new lease of life as Jupiter and his brethren. From there, the 'new' pantheon steadily removed all traces of its predecessor, lead by Romulus, to the point most Roman way of life was nothing but an improved copy of the Greece it had just recently conquered back in the day. One must be thorough in its conquest like YHWH, who'd fully replaced every single deity in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas in both the physical and spiritual plane.

Tonelico was still at the periphery of the battle, as the 'prison room' she was moved into after her last verbal spat with Knocknarea was located somewhere at the edges of her palace grounds. The attackers obviously struck at crucial points first, aiming to directly bypass all established defences and harm the figurative soft underbelly, so the main halls inside the castle would've been the most dangerous place to be. She was fortunate in that aspect, then, because the attack occurred when she was still sleeping. Only the loud sounds and great shift in ambient Mana alarmed her of what's going on, her body unable to react any faster because it happened quite far away. If there's any direct killing intent aimed at her body for a personal assassination, then she would've been able to react no matter how far the curse's caster was, but because the attackers clearly didn't even know her party was here inside the palace compounds, they're relatively safe during the opening skirmish.

And now she's marching towards the centre of the action.

Not by choice, mind – she had little desire to ensure Knocknarea was completely unharmed. Other than the slim possibility the attackers could actually hurt the pink-haired queen when Tonelico herself could not, Knocknarea wasn't such a precious figure to her new plans Tonelico had to go out of her way to do that. No, it was… personal pride, to put it bluntly.

Grimr was undoubtedly the traitor. And Tonelico had brought it – he – into the castle complex, regardless whether it's under Knocknarea's orders they were brought in. There was no way she and Totorot, by association, could escape the following post-battle persecution if she didn't contribute something good enough to the defensive efforts.

- _▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄██████████████████████!

'A troll?!' Tonelico stared at the incoming roar, rushing and trampling over soldiers from both sides towards her, perhaps attracted to the high-level Thaumaturgy she was executing. 'How bad must Knocknarea's defensive screening be?!' She complained.

It's easily as tall as a three-story house, with large, curvaceous tusks jutting out from its jaws' sides. While bald on top, a suspiciously well-groomed and -decorated beard hung in front of a burly chest and bloated, yet muscular stomach. Its entire body was actually clothed – a rarity, and enhanced the suspicion in Tonelico's mind – with durable kilt where several bags hung, likely its provisions rather than the macabre uses stories about this being propagated.

Oh, and it used what looked like a ritualistic stone totem pole as a weapon. Yes, not the expected club, but what humans constituted as a tower. Naturally, the best way to use such a blunt instrument was to slam its butt down atop Tonelico's head.

- ███!

'Was that… a war cry?' Tonelico pondered, drawing the eerie calmness of her other selves to drown out the immature warrior's screams inside of her. That's the advantage of her current cloning experiment, and the main difference between hers and the others: to multiply one's spiritual strength while maintaining the physical one, if not combining that as well. 'They're intelligent?'

Still, it's not as if she's an inexperienced warrior princess who's frozen in the face of the first significant danger she encountered. Casting an [Earth] spell would take too long because of her different elemental alignment, so she drew forth all the moisture around her into several thin, ultra-compressed sharp needles to pierce the incoming masonry, which was twice her height in width alone.

All around them were naught but corpses… so crimson needles would have to do, the iron content in the blood Reinforced to the maximum so as to give a structure to the makeshift spears.

- Bang! Bang! Bang!

She's not expecting it to hold, merely to give her several more seconds of both movement and casting time. As the needles broke one after another in quick succession, the troll stumbled in its steps when unseen crimson spikes pierced its foot. Before it could scream in pain, Tonelico had finished charging the Pendragon Clan's iconic [Light]-affinity cannon made of magic energy, and blasted its head off with one mental command to her staff.

- Pshoo!

It didn't quite do that – complete skull evaporation was a very hard thing to achieve instantly – but at least it's lethal. Tonelico leapt onto its falling body, using it as a springboard to save herself the effort of jogging the next several dozens of yards. Launching herself into the air and controlling her descent with a rudimentary flight Magecraft, her Od rushed out of her every pore as she finished constructing several magic calculations and Single-Action spells simultaneously.

"Die!"

- Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

A living turret shooting out auroral beams of light… was what she became. Her long staff shot and waved forth as if it's a spear instead of a magical conduit, and she herself was more in an infantry's stance than a typical magus's one like Merlin. Short spear or club training was very much in line with an adventurer's self-defence repertoire, after all. With every blur, a supersonic light beam tore through the dragurs and various stone golems. Tonelico's brows started to sweat under the concentration necessary to consume the least amount of Od from within and use the best available Mana around her, combined with the light physical exertion her Magecraft demanded. Yes, she's as well-trained as a girl her age was, but she's not a frontline specialist, so she had to make sure her physique wouldn't falter midway to her destination.

"Stay alive, please, you annoying brat!" She grunted through gritted teeth, blasting yet another pack who'd overrun an unprepared portion of the King Clan's defensive line. "Sorry, no time to heal all of you!"

Tonelico sorted the options available to her, mentally simulating a match against every most probable worst-case scenario.

The Pendragon Clan was unique among its peers in that it still retained much of its inheritance dating back to the Age of Gods. While other ruling families focused on worldly materials, the Pendragon invested much of its resources to ensure its treasures were usable by at least a member of the latest generation. While those other families had artefacts at the level of strong Mystic Codes, Tonelico's family had objects at the level of Noble Phantasms.

The two distinctions were technically one and the same, with two significant differences: age and Conceptual Weight. The older an object was, the stronger the Mystery it held, but to fully utilize this potential, its Conceptual Weight must be maintained. If an object was just placed as decoration, it'd lose the latter attribute with each passing year, as it required absolute [Belief] to charge up to its original level, much less to improve it generation upon generation. This maintenance was akin to a family's Magic Crest, which would atrophy, die, and go extinct if neglected for even a moment. The universe itself was constantly acting upon it, becoming the eroding force stripping away all mystical power, bit by bit.

It was this phenomenon which originally drove humanity to completely abandon Mystery and the Moonlit World, and relied entirely upon their scientific progress to weaken Magecraft as much as possible. In this spectacular showcase of ego and confidence, they assumed things created by their own hands, under their own brand of madness, were eventually more reliable than things which would blindly follow the universe's natural order, with their individual esoteric rules and regulations.

Aestus Estus. Unpromised Victory. Galatine. Wynebgwrthucher. Carnwennan. Prydwen.

These were the items currently inside her father's secret bunker, stored there in case there appeared a kinsman able to use them. Shamefully, he himself could not even lift these objects owing to his absolutely abject level of spirituality – the main reason he concocted the plan with Merlin to completely distance the Age of Heroes and Age of Man using Altria's [Fate] – but they're carefully maintained by a group of priests and priestesses personally selected by the white-haired succubus, to ensure both loyalty and secrecy.

Then, there's the final one born into Tonelico's body: Rhongomyniad.

Regarding this… only Merlin knew. Perhaps she'd told Pandora or Shirō already – Tonelicon wasn't sure, and neither was her other bodies – and it's an object of utmost secrecy. It only 'awakened' when she's a few years old, when Uther had already cast she and Altria out of Castle Camelot to live as commoners.

The Noble Phantasm of the [End]. Naturally, its strongest Origin was… [Apocalypse]. Once its used, it'd speed up the upcoming destruction of the world via dimensional annihilation of the barriers between not just the Reverse Side and Outer World, but also every other detached one, creating a true [Chaos] on the planet. The shockwave alone would instantly kill regular humans around the strongest distortion points, and the guaranteed aftermath was the eventual extinction of humanity, reverting the planet to its primordial state, when TYPE-EARTH was still an unintelligent, instinctive creature floating around in the universe.

In its compact lance form, it's tremendously powerful… if Tonelico had the figure of a cavalrywoman, that was. Even her main body, Morgan the [Maiden], found it hard to build muscles as easily as their little sister, Altria, so the burden of just activating this Noble Phantasm would be excruciating. She couldn't envision an adult self which could wield it safely without transforming her entire being first, so it's something she preferred not to touch.

As a result, she had already started another Magecraft project alongside the finalization of her [Transference] Origin, which was to create a spell perfectly duplicating Rhongomyniad's abilities. There's so much ways this could be pursued, and she's still in its earliest stages, but it's promising.

An ultra-long range, cross-dimensional strategic annihilation Anti-Beast spell…

Very promising, indeed.

Still, just because she couldn't use it, didn't mean others thought the same of themselves. Rather, they would think so highly of themselves they'd immediately plan on kidnapping and dissecting her if they knew of its existence and presence, aiming to wield such a power for their own needs and desires. This was why Merlin had shown a rare serious expression when she recognized Rhongomyniad inside Morgan, and had nearly forced a soul geas to ensure both their lips were sealed even under magical interrogation.

After all, it was the complete opposite of the only Pendragon Clan's Noble Phantasm not of its own make or possession.

Avalon.

While that… thing, which was currently used by Merlin as a central locus of her realm, symbolized [Harmony] and [Construction], Rhongomyniad was nothing but a tool of [Separation] and [Destruction]. Even compared to the mystical sword Shirō's previous self wielded to repel Velber, this lance of hers was indeed too bloodthirsty and unruly, with none of the beauty or glory Pandora claimed she had witnessed all those millennia ago, or the calming utopia of Merlin's flower garden.

It made this situation Tonelico's in more precarious. After all, if she fell here and had her body taken away to be studied, it's a great chance to rob Rhongomyniad away without even involving her other five selves. This was the main risk of her cloning technology: the strength and flexibility it granted were balanced by the glaring security holes built into its system. She'd managed to uncouple [Death] from the process, so one's demise wouldn't affect the other in the slightest, but other attributes were still works in progress.

- BOOM!

She forced herself to jump back, avoiding a sudden eruption from the ground below. Among scattered remains of Draugr and golems, she saw…

"You're… not Norse," Tonelico observed, incredibly alarmed. "Has the Land of Shadows fallen, then?"

- ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄████████████████████████████!

A tremendous roar shook both the air and ground around her, which wasn't just the vibrations of a vocal cord, but also a [Space]-based conceptual attack.

'Spacequake?!'

She dropped her staff to one side, then slammed both palms to the ground, frantically summoning the thinnest, yet densest film of water all around her.

"Ugh!"

Some of the impact was teleported away with her Water Mirror, but the rest went through the incomplete Bounded Field and smashed into her body, sending her crashing into a nearby rubble. However, knowing who her current opponent turned out to be, she couldn't afford to take a breather even for a second, and had actually extended her fingers mid-flight to summon her staff back to her hand even as she was flung backwards. Upon contact, and before she could fully fell all the pain across her body, she already fired off a counterattack – a version of the multicoloured aurora-like beam she used earlier, but concentrated and twisted around each other to create the best Anti-Unit effect this spell could do.

"Aurora Photon Ray!"

Centuries ago, when the Roman Empire was still at its height, only a select few individuals could hope to threaten its hegemony all by themselves. One was the famed general Hannibal, who used equal parts of his own military might and cunning nous to constantly harass and outmanoeuvre the Romans at every turn. Impressive, even more so when he was fully human.

The other… not so much.

In fact, it's Shirō's old nemesis. As he was able to be reborn into a new young body every few generations, so too could Velber do the same to its agents. While of course this occurrence couldn't be as frequent as Alaya, it's still within its might to reproduce a close enough effect to maintain a grip on Earth's situation. This being then took on the identity of Attila the Hun, the Scourge of God… and the person whose Noble Phantasm Tonelico was cheaply reproducing right now.

'I'm merely taking an inspiration! Totally not ripping her off!' She excused internally.

Records of Attila the Hun's battles – or, to be more precise, massacres – were aplenty, and easily available for both Merlin and Morgan to learn.

The spell blasted out of her staff's tip and destroyed the rubble which was about to partially bury Tonelico and obscure her vision, leaving a nice gap from which she could observe the effect.

The multicoloured beams fused into a rainbow drill, rocketing towards her opponent's massive frame… and splashed off, looking just as weak as a bucket of water against it.

- ████▄▄▄▄▄▄_...

"Crom Cruach…!" She grunted out when she heard a slow, low rumble emanating from the serpentine form.

It was provocation. Simple as that. "Weak," it said.

- Drip.

A stream of blood was flowing down her forehead, partially covering her eyes and forcing Tonelico to furiously shake her head inside the crater she'd been smashed into. With a trembling body, she used her staff as a walking stick to get up to her feet. Panting, she asked harshly, "Hah… Hah… Hah… How much is the Norse paying you, you traitorous snake?! Though I shouldn't be surprised; your personality is infamous…!"

- ▄▄███!▄▄███!▄▄███!

'This bastard is laughing…!'

Well, it could afford to do so because it's so much stronger than Tonelico, as the sudden blow across her body attested.

Her torso bent into nearly a right angle as its tail smacked it square on, instantly depriving her of her consciousness.

"What's wrong? Scared now?"

Knocknarea folded her arms across her petite chest arrogantly, facing the three women flying in front of her in her usual haughty manner. Countless Norse soldiers – Draugr, wolves, Hel-Walkers, Wulvers, etc. – laid all around her in piles, clearly dead. There was no sight of King Clan soldiers, as they all knew their first priority whenever an attack like this to occur was to safeguard the civilians and clear a path for evacuation.

There was no need to protect their leader. She's much, much stronger than them to the point they'd just get in the way.

Compared to the situation outside, however, it's conspicuous how small her ambushers were. Probably because the enemy couldn't sneak in larger beings with higher firepower like the trolls and ogres Knocknarea could see rampaging outside, clashing with her generals.

…and, despite the chaos, she could tell they were winning. Or, at least, able to force a stalemate.

She glared at the three women. "Bring Odin here himself if he wants my head. The three of you? Just you? What a joke!"

Her powerful legs tensed, before digging into the rubble underneath her and kicking up, sending giant chunks of stone far faster than anything the trio could fire off. However, the advantage of flight was clearly evident when they could simply lazily evade the scattershot attack. It was strong enough to blow away the hoodies covering their features, revealing a set of black, pink, and blonde hair for each of them.

"Haha! Slowpoke!"
"Stay focused, Hildr."
"…be quiet, you two."

All three spoke at the same time, much to Knocknarea's annoyance. Of course, she wasn't idle even after the strike, as her body flickered nearly as fast as the stones she shot off, using the stragglers as stepping stones so she could reengage the trio in aerial combat.

Her fist shot towards the chirpy pink-haired one, but a spear of [Light] blocked it with the flat. A pair of threes immediately surrounded her, thrown by the black-haired and blonde one, but Knocknarea easily front-flipped in mid-air, using the contact with Hildr as a fulcrum. Of course, her attempt to use this annoying one as a shield was for naught when Hildr simply folded her wings and sharply dropped down, leaving Knocknarea open again to further assault.

The stern-looking blonde – Thrúd – had already closed into hand-to-hand combat distance, the trio showing the perfect teamwork they'd consistently displayed since the start. Instead of starting with a stab of a [Light] spear, she instead spread her wings as far out as possible and spun, using every momentum she'd generated as a faux-roundhouse chop with her feathers. Knocknarea parried it diagonally upwards with an elbow, and instantly counterattacking with a straight kick, but the gloomy one – Ortlinde – met her leg with her own, precisely kicking at her knee joint to kill her power and knock it aside.

When the King Clan Head was about to regroup and compose herself, she felt a rush of air coming from underneath, forcing her to tilt her face back to avoid a [Light] spear about to uppercut her right in the face. She glared at the grinning Hildr, already gaining altitude after her earlier manoeuvre, before forcibly clapping her hands together and explosively displacing the [Air] around her, pushing her whole body backwards to avoid Thrúd's and Ortlinde's scissoring slashes.

- …

Then there was silence.

Knocknarea glared once again, balancing herself atop of a floating piece of rock. "What are you waiting for?"

The three Valkyries – die Walküre, in their native tongue – remained flying there, no longer engaging once she stopped, even though it should be a prime opportunity.

…of course, the conclusion came to her fast enough. "You're stalling."

The air rippled around her as she imposed her Conceptual Weight and Element onto the world.

The King Clan didn't have any noteworthy physical characteristics or Sorcery Trait. The Wind Clan had their powerful Average Ones. The Fang Clan with their variety of beneficial bestial traits. The Wing Clan with their [Space] Magecraft. The Mirror Clan with their [Clairvoyance]. The Earth Clan with their innate strength and [Earth] Magecraft. Even the secretive Rain Clan, Avalon le Fae's royal guards, had their specialties.

For eons, their name, 'king', only denoted their bloodline relationship with a past ruler – the only Avalon le Fae who left behind descendants. The latter wasn't inherited, but chosen directly by the planet through various Textures, and so the clan didn't truly hold any real prestige among the six faerie clans, where strength was the only thing respected. Yes, there wasn't any conflict among them for as long as anyone remembered, but make no mistake: if Cernunnos wasn't around, they would've been among the first victims of an all-out war.

That was, until Knocknarea was born.

Every faerie was born with a purpose. Some bled into their abilities in the forms of their Origin and Element. The Wing Clan prisoner and ex-leader, Aurora, was born to 'be the most beautiful', while Ainsel, the Mirror Clan Head, was born to 'see the farthest'.

Whether it's luck or destiny… no one knew, but the King Clan certainly celebrated when Knocknarea was born to 'be peerless'.

Her Element was the simplest, yet the most powerful – true to the word 'peerless'.

[Force].

It was, indeed, that simple.

Pure, unrelenting force tore apart the space between her and the trio, the displaced air so potent it actually sounded like a massive explosion. Was this not the definition of that word?

She didn't even have to move, allowing her to maintain her default and favourite pose: muscled legs spread apart shoulder-width, arms confidently folded in front of her chest, her scarf billowing in the wind. Yes, movement helped to ease the directional focus, but her talent was such this limitation was more of a formality than anything – all it took was a bit more mental effort at this point.

This was the strength which propelled her into King Clan leadership despite her young age, and the strength which forced all the other faerie clans to respect them, out of fear General Knocknarea would be sent to deal with them. A walking weapon of mass destruction who could kill without carrying any cold weapon, emitting magic energy signature, or any other preliminary warning anywhere, anytime. The best assassin against a large force.

Perhaps one weakness she had was her comparatively normal physique, but even this was tempered constantly by applying this [Force] across all her musculature the moment her control reached a fine enough level. Additionally, its application relied entirely on her senses, so she honed that too against her kinsmen any chance she had.

…and that's about all the weaknesses she could think of herself. Given her age and position, there's no way she could ask another to verify if there's actually a blind spot she missed – they'd rather outright assassinate her with the chance. She planned on Tonelico… or whatever name this girl's main soul had, being this figure who could share her burdens and receive the incredibly heavy responsibility associated with gaining her trust, but…

- Boom…! Boom…! Boom…!

In the distance, she could see a jet-black gigantic dragon suddenly rippled out of the earth, the visible part of its body aboveground had a thickness twice the height of a normal house. She could sense Tonelico's magic output flickering over there… but she chose not to divert any more attention or resource over there.

Not until she smacked this grating trio's asses for daring to represent their boss, instead of him being here himself.

Oh, well… The plan on searching for a confidant continued, then. If Tonelico perished here, then all the worth she amounted to was only that much.

The Valkyries had already flashed out of the way of Knocknarea's attack. While it's completely invisible and silent – at least before the air the [Force] passed through shimmered and vibrated – for them who had centuries of shared combat experienced across ages and bodies, it's elementary to judge where the King Clan leader's killing intent was aimed.

But before she could decide on which 'sister' to chase after, a flash of grey-white fur caught her attention… mostly because of how unusual a shape it was to see amidst all this chaos.

'A dog…?' Knocknarea observed. 'Wasn't it… the pup Tonelico's party brought?'

- Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!
- Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!

Then, two separate crows loudly cried over the battlefield overhead.

Merlin was no stranger to pain.

One must be, to pass the time as an immortal. She'd experienced it all in her various stages of life: as a naïve, foolish young girl falling into nasty men's traps; as an overconfident magus, defeated by a combination of strength and cunning; as an unsuspecting mother figure, comically brutalized and killed over and over by her charges because she annoyed them too much.

Shamefully… even as an old lady in despair, wishing to end it all, inflicting all that pain onto herself.

Nothing worked.

Yes, the pain was there, but there was no sweet release awaiting her at the end. Upon that realization… she changed. From a relatively normal girl – albeit a half-succubus – to the eccentric person she was now… because why not? It's not like she had anything to lose. A living being's seemingly limited personality was only such because they feared its death, after all. The [Death] which would rob their finite lives the ability to emote and react and feel and respond.

For her? it's no more difficult than turning a page in a book.

…yet that, too, could be a weakness, if there's an opponent skilled enough to take advantage of it.

- Puchi.

"Uuu… U-Urgh… Gghhhbuuuruuu…"

All which came out of her throat was a wet gurgle from the blood and bile rising through it. The air which was supposed to create a better, clearer sound was instead felt coming out of the metal shaft in her chest, wheezing and pumping futilely against it instead of where it should be.

A strike precisely aimed to rob someone's capacity of speech, inflict the most physical pain, and conveniently just missing the heart, leaving Merlin alive to enjoy every single second of it.

Her thin arms grabbed the weapon, though not in an attempt to dislodge it. She wouldn't claim to be a great warrior, merely someone skilled enough in swordsmanship to mentor Altria and Morgan every now and then, and naturally didn't have a hope in hell to compete in physical strength against the person who'd just nailed her onto the wall of her own tower, leaving her pristine white magus robes and the flowers surrounding the two of them crimson red.

The same colour as the weapon… a spear.

[Why?]

Merlin had to resort to telepathy to say what she wanted. In reality, it's better to converse across mental spaces anyway, so it's more difficult for the other party to deceive her.

"Why not?"

The reply was done in a cold, gallant female voice, with a Conceptual Weight exceeding Merlin's own behind it.

"The war has been going on for several decades. Are you blind to it, Flower Magus?"

- Puchi.

The crimson spear was roughly pulled out of Merlin, leaving her body slumping down her tower's smooth walls and producing a trail of blood down it.

But before her head could weakly follow her body's momentum downwards, a powerful hand grabbed her by the jaw and suspended her entire being mid-air. As she was pressed back onto the wall, a beautiful, long-haired face approached. Even as it was as emotionless as possible, it did manage to be incredibly menacing.

[Then… so are you, Scáthach.]

"We'll see."

The Queen of Shadows let Merlin go… before she swung Gáe Bolg horizontally, separating Merlin's head from her body.