Technician's Order!

by Worldbringer of Joseun

In between being a hero and searching for a way to get to Saber, Shirou Emiya got a job as a technician at Chaldeas Security Organization. What is not to like? Very good pay, help save the world, and use his abilities as both a repairman and a magus. It has all the advantages he could want. Too bad his Spiritron Dive ability is too low to be a Master while others fight in Fuyuki.

13. Checklist 12: Quick and Prompt Response

Going to give a bit of forewarning.

In my version of Shadow Servants, each Shadow Servant does not have their Noble Phantasm(s). That means that Archer is much weaker than canon (fortunately). If I didn't hit Archer with a nerf bat, I'm pretty sure that he could have beaten the pair. Mash is too inexperienced to fight Archer and Caster's only weapon is his staff and runes.

And Archer has Rule Breaker, which would easily destroy Caster's runes.

So I took away Unlimited Blade Works from Shadow Servant Archer.

That doesn't mean Archer is weak. Oh no, he still has Eye of the Mind (True) which allows reversals if there is even a 1% chance of victory for Archer.

And Archer is very, very good at fighting.

---

Checklist Item 12: Respond to Emergencies Quickly and Promptly

Antarctica, Chaldea, 2017

Shirou, eyes closed to aid his focus, was performing Structural Analysis on the generator that had so frustrated Nadja Haase.

Interestingly, Nadja's banging on the generator had shook the wire that had originally been disconnected back into place.

Which was great. One problem solved. Unfortunately, the solution had also knocked two separate wires loose.

One step forward and two more back. Wasn't that life?

Shirou could bang on the generator until it worked again…

But he'd rather use a different method. This way he could be sure that he wouldn't shake other wires loose while trying to bang the wires he wants back on. And he definitely would prefer a much more elegant, comfortable, and less likely to depend on luck method.

Namely a screwdriver, a toolkit, and his two gloved hands.

Funny how that even in a cutting-edge research center, observatory, and staging area for saving humanity, the oldest and more primitive methods were still the most viable.

Though, the quality of the toolkit was much higher than what he used back in his high school days.

Shirou had a guess that it might be that Chaldea had a much high budget than Homurahara Academy.

Something about a budget on the scale of a country rather than a small segment of the Japanese budget for the education system.

Eh, thinking about it won't get the generator fixed, Shirou concluded as he unscrewed the outermost layer.

As he started to search through the innards of the machine, he heard the automatic door open behind him.

Shirou tensed up. He didn't know who was coming through the door. Was it the demon? Was it someone else?

Only one way to find out and Shirou wasn't a coward.

The red-head turning white turned his head to look behind him.

It was Nadja, the German magus, hands holding some type of sandwich with a thermally insulated bottle hanging from the belt around the waist of her white knee-length skirt.

She swallowed the bite in her mouth before waving, sandwich in her other hand. "Hello!"

"Hello," Shirou subtly relaxed as he nodded back in reply.

"Hello again," Harmen Poole, an African janitor, said from the different generator that he was working on, instruction manual open in front of him.

Harmen hadn't talked much with Shirou today. Partly because he was reading the manual to try and figure out how to correctly diagnose the machine he was working on.

As for Nadja, Shirou wasn't very surprised to see Nadja come back from her break so early. She, like everyone else here in Chaldea with a few exceptions such as old man Ullr who kept on falling asleep at his desk in the archives, had a relentless work ethic. Even Shirou fit in the pattern which was why he didn't have a nickname like in his high school days. He hadn't stood out.

And unless she was a sleeper agent who didn't know that she was compromised, Shirou didn't think she would attack him. Not when she would be the first suspect.

As she walked over, Shirou sniffed the air and eyed the food in her hand, wondering what she was eating. A large bread roll sliced in half with plenty of ham, cheese, egg, lettuce and maybe some salami if he was smelling correctly.

A belegtes broetchen, if Shirou remembered correctly. A German sandwich.

At the thought, Shirou had to fight down a touch of nostalgia. Illya had liked having those, homemade of course, for their picnic lunches when she and Taiga dragged him along for an outing or to explore the city.

Refocusing his attention, Shirou's tired mind realized that Nadja was still walking towards him.

"Hey, while you're eating that, could you please not come here?" Shirou asked politely.

"What?" Nadja stopped, frowning as she eyed him. "Why?"

"Bread crumbs," Shirou promptly responded. "They're a pain to clean out and if you don't then they lead to problems like insects or mold. Not to mention they like to get into hard to reach places and those spots tend to be the last place you want to mold or insects to come. Like right next to an live wire."

"But doesn't Chaldea implement a cleaning process on everyone and everything that enters? I thought it was effective down to the bacterial scale." Nadja asked as she backed away to lean against the wall with her broetchen still in hand.

"Uh," Shirou stalled.

He had honestly forgotten about that. And he hadn't seen any mold or insects anywhere in Chaldea in the several years he had worked here, so it obviously was working.

That and Antarctica was slightly hostile to most insect and plant life.

"Then it is not needed," Shirou concluded. "All right, is there something you need?"

"No," Nadja said, much calmer than when she had called him down here. A break and some food had done her some good as Shirou could see. It didn't help the dark circles under her eyes but everyone had them now. "I just wanted to see what I could learn by watching you. But if you say that this is a good habit to have, then I'll learn it."

Shirou shrugged and turned back to what he was doing. Up to her what she did with her time. But he kept an ear open for anything suspicious.

He didn't want her to sneak up on him or anything. In case she was hostile.

A few moments of silence passed as she opened up her bottle to drink whatever the contents were and Shirou continued his work.

"So. Just going to be blunt here," Nadja started somewhat awkwardly but completely determined to move past it. "What was the problem and how do you fix it?"

"Hmm?" Shirou replied somewhat startled at the interruption. "Oh, a wire had gotten loose from its mooring. But you knocked it back into place with your banging."

"What, really?" Nadja asked startled. "Harmen told me not to do that as he thought it would damage the equipment more than it would fix it. And it still wasn't working so I thought he was right."

"Well, you also managed to knock two different wires loose with the same banging so..." Shirou trailed off with a slight smirk as he teased the woman.

"Urk!" she coughed. "Sorry!"

"No worries," Shirou waved it off. "Both of you are right. It does fix devices but it tends to damage them as well."

"How does that work?" Nadja asked curiously.

"No clue," Shirou shrugged. "Never used it."

Shirou could feel the stare on the back of his neck.

Shirou shifted, slightly uncomfortable. He didn't know why she was staring at him- Oh.

"Structural Analysis was always good enough to tell me what had gone wrong in the device," Shirou explained to her unasked question. "though, I do think that percussive maintenance might work if you can't identify what was wrong. The Fujimura often used it when they couldn't figure out why something wouldn't work. But they also tended to break it if they hit it too hard and it left dents."

Especially one enthusiastic tiger themed teacher and big sis in particular who never stopped to think if it would be a good idea to use her shinai and full strength blows as a substitute for a wrench.

…

How odd. Shirou usually felt like someone was going to attack him whenever he thought about Taiga in that way.

Maybe Taiga was distracted with something? Probably Sakura's cooking. She had gotten very good.

"Alright," Nadja nodded. "So per- per- what was it called again?"

"Percussive maintenance," Shirou repeated as he physically found the first wire.

"So percussive maintenance is banging on something until it either breaks or works. And it is the most basic way but unreliable?" She asked questioningly.

"Or until you give up and go to someone who knows what to do," Shirou commented, not trying too hard to hide his smirk.

"Hey!" she frowned. "Don't mock me. The instruction manual said to ask for help that if I couldn't find what was wrong."

"Sorry, sorry," Shirou apologized. "But yes, it works. More reliably on older things than the newer technologies but that is the basics of it."

"So what should I do if I want a better method of fixing it?"

"Well, the first step is to find out what is wrong," Shirou answered, finally finding the wire and running a gloved finger down it until he found the spot in question. "Speaking as a magus, Structural Analysis is the most useful shortcut in this field. Without it, it can take hours to find the problem."

"Structural Analysis," She repeated to herself. "Just to confirm, that's the mystery that allows a magus to understand a physical structure correct? The most basic of material transmutation?"

Language barriers were a pain to get around. Shirou knew that all too well. Especially for magus terms across languages.

For some reason, magi tended not to write thesauruses to tell the name of their mysteries in different languages. And rarely did the different languages have a similarly translated name.

Shirou guessed it might be that magus feared that other magus could steal or reverse engineer their mysteries if they gave out too much details. So they gave somewhat poetic or confusing names to anything they invented.

Just made translation more of a pain.

"Yes."

"Alright, so using magecraft on repair work is best done by material transmutation," Nadja concisely spoke into her communicator. Probably using the voice record function.

Either that or she was repeating things for the fun of it.

"What do you do after that?" She asked.

"Depends on the problem," Shirou grunted as he finally got a stubborn screw unloosed. "Sometimes it is a material failure and you need to fix it. Sometimes it is alignment and you just need to nudge it back into place. Sometimes something is missing so you need to replace it."

"After diagnosis, tailor the solution to the problem," Nadja repeated. "At least three types of problems: material, alignment, and absence."

She paused for a moment to swallow a gulp from her bottle before continuing. "Was this an alignment problem?"

"Yup," Shirou said as he reconnected the wire. "By the way, percussive maintenance is best suited to alignment trouble."

After Nadja repeated that into her notes, she asked. "So how do you fix the next part?"

"Here, I have to manually reattach the wires," Shirou explained as he finished connecting the wire. "So the next step would be access the problem area. If you damage the device while accessing it, you will have problems."

"I can do without the sarcastic comments, thanks," Nadja riposted before summarizing for her recording. "Then you fix it?"

"Yes," Shirou answered as he started on the second wire. "Solve the problem as it were."

"And then you reattach everything and get it back to normal," Nadja said as she referred to the removed covering next to Shirou. "I assume that is the last step?"

"Actually, no." Shirou responded. "Then you test it. If it works then you are done. If it doesn't then-"

"-Start back over at step one," Nadja interrupted. "Huh, pretty straightforward but it can become complex due to multiplicity of options?"

"Yes," Shirou said as he finished up. The second wire just need some electrical tape so it was over with quickly.

"Alright," Nadja concluded as she took a gulp from her bottle.

"So, Shirou, why don't you work here full-time?" she asked suddenly.

"Hmm?" Shirou said, looking up from reattaching the screws in the covering. "Oh, that's because I have two dreams that I want to fulfill."

"Two dreams? Not just one?" Nadja asked in surprise. "What are they?"

"Well, first I want to be a hero of justice and save everyone."

At that, Nadja snorted and gasped out some laughter.

"Wait, really?" she asked in amusement. "it isn't enough to be saving all of humanity by working here, you also want to be a superhero?"

"Yes. Its my goal and dream." Shirou confirmed. He didn't mind how everyone thought his dream was stupid or laughable. He would still be serious about it even if no one else was.

"And what do you mean by 'everyone'?" she asked. "You have to throw me a bone here because you can't mean everyone, right?"

"Yes, exactly that, everyone." Shirou confirmed.

"Even the murderers, the criminals and serial killers?" she asked skeptically.

"Yes." Shirou responded in full seriousness. "Even they need to be saved."

"You've got to be joking. At least you are working here, where that is possible if we correct the Singularity," Nadja said as she shook her head, disbelief and mirth in her voice. "Well, what's the other? Colonize the moon?"

"No, but that would actually easier," Shirou denied as he got up and turned around. "I will be with Saber again."

"Wait, the Saber in Fuyuki? The one that protecting the source of the Singularity?" Nadja asked, brows furrowed in worry, one last bite of sandwich left in her hands.

"No," Shirou explained resolutely. "My Saber. The one from my Fifth Grail War. She would never do what the Singularity's Saber is doing."

"Okay," Nadja said. "So you are trying to make it onto the Throne of Heroes then?"

"Saber's situation is complicated," Shirou said as he moved over to the breeder generators for the Fire of Prometheus. "She is actually in Avalon instead."

"Avalon," the German magus mused before suddenly sitting up. "Wait, you mean the Avalon on the Reverse Side of the World?! The Avalon that only has two human inhabitants, King Arthur and Merlin! That Avalon!?"

"Yes," Shirou admitted.

Nadja slumped back, staring at Shirou like he was crazy. "You are crazy if you think you can go there. You actually have a better chance of entering the Throne of Heroes than Avalon."

"I will accomplish my dreams," Shirou said resolutely. "I will strive to save everyone and I will find my way to Saber."

Nadja was silenced at that.

"Shirou, those are great dreams, but stupid," the woman said after a while. "First, your saving everyone dream. It's a nice dream but reality simply doesn't work that way. Sacrifices have to be made. I'm not just talking about magecraft here, but also the nature of life itself."

"You see, in order to live, things have to be sacrificed. For example," she held up the remainder of her broetchen. "In order to make this, dozens of stalks of wheat were sacrificed just to make the flour. Stalks whose seed was ground up and prevented from being planted. And for me to eat the ham, the pig had to die. Same for the salami. To get the cheese, a cow's milk, the source of life for her young, was converted through some process into cheese. The egg of a chicken was taken so that instead of nurturing a young life inside, its shell was cracked and contents mixed and cooked. And the lettuce was just living in its field until one day the farmer came and ripped it from the ground."

"All of those animals and plants died so that I could have a sandwich. So that I can eat it and have the nutrients and carbohydrates and all that stuff that I need to live for another day. If I didn't eat, I will die. If I do eat, they'll die," She continued, letting her belegtes broetchen rest in her lap. "So what should I do? Should I sacrifice them? Or me? Either way, something has to be sacrificed. That's just the way life works."

"You can't save everyone. To do so is beyond even a miracle. You'd have to, I don't know, redesign Gaia or the entire universe even if you want to give it a half-way decent chance."

"Maybe not now, but someday I will be able to save everyone." Shirou responded.

"Riiight," she drawled, eying him suspiciously. "And let's not talk about the more realistic- which I can't believe I'm saying because this requires at least one miracle to even make possible- dream of meeting your former Servant again."

Nadja shook her head, head down. "Geez, why don't you do something more realistic like search for a route to Akasha or something."

Shirou shifted uncomfortably.

Illya had told him and Rin the secret and true purpose of the Grail. The Fuyuki Grail had been built to allow the Eiznbern a way to the reclaim their long-lost True Magic via a route to Akasha.

In other words, Shirou had found one of the coveted routes to Akasha that every magus was looking for, that they spent generations simply laying the framework and foundation for their descendants to achieve. And then he destroyed it.

Fortunately, neither Nadja nor Poole noticed Shirou's unease.

It wasn't easy trying to save everyone. So far, Shirou hadn't succeeded even once in the last decade. There was always someone who lost their life in a situation. But Shirou had improved to the point that he was able to take down more people without needing to kill them in a fight.

But he would succeed someday. Saber never gave up on her kingdom until the cost was her honor and his life. And that had been for a wish that would have doomed her kingdom.

Once she had realized that she didn't need her wish, she had gone back.

And now she was waiting, waiting continuously for him in Avalon.

Shirou will find his way there. He will search endlessly, he swore it.

---

Singularity F, Fuyuki, 2004

Olga glanced up from the rubble stone she was currently carving runes onto.

While Mash rested and caught her breath from the exhaustive training, Olga had sought for some means to avoid being weak and helpless again.

She wasn't a real Master so she couldn't use Servants to fight this battle.

She was a magus, a high quality one with the Animusphere crest, a crest that had been built over centuries, no thousands of years, by her talented ancestors, but given the last three enemy Servants were Berserker, Archer, and Saber, all of whom were practically immune to magecraft due to Magic Resistance or was just overpowered Heracles, anything she could do in combat would be inadequate to harm, much less kill the hostile Servants.

But she could provide some form of support. Especially if she prepared beforehand.

As she was an Animusphere, with all the power that the name entailed, she had many options of how she could prepare support.

Unfortunately, with the Evocation-Invocation Engine undergoing repairs, most of those options were entirely unfeasible. Without her workshop, the best option left of the sorry bunch was to craft one-time-use runes that could distract an opponent or make something to strengthen Mash.

But Olga's pride refused to let the only Servant under her command go into battle with shoddy workmanship. And the only materials that could be made into something was the measly skeleton's bones.

Not quality materials worthy of being associated with her family's name.

No, such things would have to wait until she could access her workshop or get one of the employees to do it. Maybe Drake could point out-

Olga winced as she recalled that her head of Human Resources had been in the command center when the attack had happened. And he had been senior to Romani Archaman.

Her handpicked, elite staff was in ruins!

Olga pushed aside the grief and anger, long practice coming to her side once more.

Well, just like how she led Chaldea for the past three years, there was nothing for it but to move onto the next thing and find time later to grieve.

Maybe she could find some powerful Mystic Codes in their archives. Root knows that they had plenty of stuff in there.

But she hesitated to give anyone permission to enter those sections of the archives. Not while she didn't know who had set the bombs.

As for where they came from, Olga had a suspicion.

The archives had a significant amount of combat materials. Most of it unknown and unavailable to the lesser workers. Those materials included a large number of explosives in case they needed an expansion of the facilities or in a Rayshift.

Olga suspected that the saboteur had somehow found out about the explosives, maybe by examining their supplier's records or sneaking into accounting. And then they stole the explosives and planted them.

More worrying to Olga was the fact that the explosives were on the low end of the dangerous materials in the archives. Low end enough that the Archives didn't report the movement of the materials directly to her.

No, what concerned Olga was the dangerous stuff.

Her father had had one of the top secret and legendary Atlas's contracts. A contract that allowed him to make demands and bargains with the secretive Atlas Institute. Trades that could and had provided Chaldea with advanced technology.

Not all of which was safe.

But those items were monitored and their condition reported directly to her. And she had received no such report of anyone even looking at one of them.

Olga reeled in her wandering thoughts, recognizing that she was concerning herself over matters best dealt with later, and returned back to carving and infusing Dagaz into the rock.

Curse this Singularity and all that had gone wrong with it! She had been pushing herself to make sure this First Order had gone off smoothly and then this had happened!

Her records indicated that the Holy Grail War was supposed to fully start in a few more days as they had taken care to Rayshift into the summoning stage of the Grail War. They had been prepared to force compliance from the overseer if, for any reason, he didn't assist in eliminating the cause of the Singularity.

Instead, they found a Grail War without any Masters and Saber somehow doing necromancy on defeated Servants.

The only upsides in this mess were that the Demi-Servant experiment had finally produced a result and they had one of the last two Servants from the Grail War on their side. In addition, Saber's need for recovery from the exertions of bringing down most of the Servants made it so that this wasn't a hopeless enterprise.

Of course, Olga glanced over to Mash who sitting against the wall as she rested and ate of the food that Ritsuka was handing her, Chaldea's side was recovering too.

But they had a major advantage.

The commoner, Ritsuka.

Saber didn't have a Master. Meaning that she had to bear the brunt of her own upkeep, which was dependent on the high atmospheric mana available to both sides.

And while Mash and Caster shared a Master, no Master in Chaldea would have strained at supporting one Servant, even the complete novice shouldn't. Unless it was a monstrously powerful one like Heracles! And even then, part of FATE's function was to be like the Grail and provide magical energy to the Servant to ease the burden on the Master.

As a result, Olga was confident that Mash, who basically generated most of the energy she needed herself instead of depending solely on the Master, and Caster would be able to be back at full strength before Saber could be.

She glanced one last time at her handle on the two Servants, making sure that he was doing alright.

Was he paler than earlier?

Dagaz finished and imbued, ready for a pulse of prana to trigger, Olga got up from the ashy ground, brushing it off her dress and tights.

If her last Master was not doing adequate maintenance on himself, she would have to make sure he did. Right now, he was all she had and if he pushed himself too hard, then she would lose the Servants too.

"Doctor, are you checking vitals?" she asked, not really trusting that oaf to be doing his job without supervision. "Ritsuka looks paler than usual."

She heard the beep of the comm before the hologram of Roman came out of her communicator.

"Huh? Ah…" The doctor's eyes were running rapidly over the data sheets but she had predicted correctly. He hadn't been keeping an eye on the vitals.

"Yeah, this doesn't look good. It's because of the unexpected Servant contract. His brain isn't accustomed to it," The doctor diagnosed. "His circuits were opened only a few days ago and they are running near at full capacity right now. According to the enlister's notes, Ritsuka only knows how to switch them on and off. He doesn't even know how to use either prana or od."

"This was why I didn't want to use him," Olga snarled under her breath. "A complete novice that doesn't even know how to maintain or prepare himself properly. He'll fail when he's needed most."

"Now, now, Director," The doctor lightly objected to her. "He's doing his best. And with us catching it this early, there shouldn't be any lasting damage to his circuits. We could even call it a warm-up. We'll just have to make sure that he rests as well as Mash before continuing on. Caster is still keeping watch right?"

"Yes," Olga shortly replied. She hadn't liked how this Servant does things. Pointing out her inaptitude as a Master, trying to kill his Master just to bring out a Noble Phantasm without a guarantee of success, and hitting on anything female that moved, it was a wonder that he even had a legend in the first place! "But regardless of Ritsuka doing his best, if he does it incorrectly, it will only do more harm than good."

"True," Archaman acknowledged. "But at least we will have some good in this mess."

"Romani."

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

She did not need that slacker to point out how bad the situation was. That a Master who didn't even know how to use his magic circuits was her only tool left.

She was an Animusphere and she would do her best in the circumstances she was given. Even if the situation was more likely to drive her insane before she achieved anything at all.

"Ritsuka!" she barked out in her best command voice as she got to a range where she wouldn't have to yell.

The boy jumped but it was slow. Dozens of precious microseconds passed before he noticed and responded. He really was in poor condition. Why hadn't he told anyone?

Ah, right. Completely untrained novice.

Olga didn't bother to push down the stab of irritation. She had been an elite in her younger days and having to work with an unskilled, untrained, inexperienced, and untalented novice annoyed her.

And she had no need to play nice.

"Why didn't you inform me of your condition?" she demanded as she came to a halt, hands on her hips, in front of him as he and Mash scrambled to their feet. "If you are weakening like this-"

She gestured to his pale complexion and slightly unsteady stance. His eyes were slightly dilated too now that she could get a better look at him.

"-then you should have informed either me or Romani that supporting four Noble Phantasms in a short frame was affecting you. Yes, Kyrielight needed the practice," she waved away his protest before he could even open his mouth. Mash wilted as she realized that Ritsuka had borne the brunt of the energy demand for both her and Caster's Noble Phantasms. "But we are about to go into battle. If you are not in condition to fight, then you should remove yourself from the battlefield now."

The boy blinked at her.

Olga's irritation spiked again.

"Kyrielight!"

"Yes, Ma'am!" Mash stood to attention. Good, just as would be expected of one of Chaldea's A team elites.

"Get the Doctor's instructions on what to do," she ordered. She didn't have time to micromanage them. It was Romani's job to look out for their health anyway.

"All right, you'll want some warm tea with lots of honey. He needs sugar, preferably natural-"

Romani's voice continued instructing both Mash and Ritsuka on how to alleviate Ritsuka's condition as Olga returned back to what she was doing. Mash would probably have to get Caster to make some fire. Neither Mash's wind element nor Olga's earth element lend themselves well to heating up water and Caster obviously held a great affinity for fire.

As for the battle ahead, Olga didn't like the need to take a longer break now.

But there wasn't a better choice. They needed to get Ritsuka's energy back up so he could better support his Servants, including their mana recovery rate. Saber was recovering as well, if at a slower rate than Mash and Caster.

It all came down to time. Everything did. Would Saber be able to marshal enough power to force her mad Berserker to hunt them down? Would Saber gather enough strength to fight them off herself?

Or would Chaldea be able to take advantage of Saber's current weakness before the opportunity expired?

If Mash, Caster, and Ritsuka managed to recover enough energy to overpower the powerful Saber, they could rush Saber and defeat her, thus securing the Grail for themselves. And as a nice bonus, they would terminate Berserker Heracles before Saber could overpower his madness and use him like she had the rest of the Servants.

Far more importantly, once they won, Chaldea would be able to find the source of the Singularity, neutralize it, and return in success despite malicious action in the heart of their security.

And it would be under her leadership.

Let the detractors argue against that!

---

"All right," Caster said to the group as they gathered around the front gate. "Shouldn't have to say this but everyone's eaten, drunken, pooped and peed? No need for another stop?"

The Olga lady's orange eyes glared at him. Her carried stash of dried fruits had been plundered and most of the scavenged food and water consumed.

But the party was in good condition now. Ritsuka was able to think clearly and looked healthy. And Caster could feel a better flow of energy from him now.

"All right," he shrugged. You had to ask those kinds of things before taking a group of rookies anywhere. Else, it would take forever to arrive. "Let's go!"

He spun around, cloak fluttering around him as he set off down the road to the entrance to the temple.

They had to enter the mountain the proper way, else the spiritual barriers would weaken him and Shielder.

But given that the mountain was protecting the Grail, it made sense for it to be protected against Servants.

But now those same defenses were part of what made Saber like a bear in her cave.

As Caster strode out the gates of the school, three sets of footsteps followed behind him.

Caster grinned.

Finally, this aberration of a Grail War would end!

He was a Servant, a weapon to be used, not to fight on its own like this!

Of course, the rest of his current companions would have more to travel, more to fight through. But that was their path to walk, not his.

He would just serve as a guide for this section before seeing them off to the next step of their grand journey.

After all, in order to be a legend, you had to walk where no one had gone before, where no guides existed.

Because you would be the one to open the trail to the teeming masses of humanity behind you.

He wondered what it would be like. Was this the first part of Mash, Olga, and Ritsuka's legends? Was this the endeavor that made the legend of the red-head who was even now in Chaldea?

Caster let those thoughts slide over him and he left them behind.

It wasn't his business. He had his role to do. They had their paths to make. For now, they coincided. And who knows? They might end up on opposite ends of the battlefield at some point.

If that happened, he would wish them luck but let the best man win!

---

As the group left the school, Mash kept her guard up while being conscientious of how much she was drawing from her Master. She shouldn't drain him until he was exhausted again. Also, she had to keep an eye out for Berserker, Archer, Saber, or any more wandering monsters.

At least, that was what she was doing until Olga asked a question.

"Ritsuka, what is Mash's Magic Resistance?" the director asked.

"Magic Resistance?" her Master's confused voice came in reply

Olga audibly sighed. The Director was being a mix of rude enough to sigh to his face but polite enough not to berate-

"Ugh, you just don't know anything do you?"

-Ritsuka like she just did.

"Senpai, Magic Resistance is a skill often found in the Knight classes, Saber, Archer, and Lancer as well as Riders," Mash informed her Senpai. "It grants protection against magical effects but it is different from the normal magus ability to resist magical energy in that it nullifies the spell rather than reject magical energy. A strong Magic Resistance can even cancel the spell outright."

"Oh," Ritsuka said simply as he continued walking down the streets. "So how would you rate your magical resistance?"

"You should at least be able to find that out yourself," Olga complained as she chastised the Master. "You are a Master, you have the authorization to use the your communicator to get a direct report from FATE on the complete abilities of any Servant or Noble Phantasm you know the True Name of."

Out of the corner of her eye, Mash saw Ritsuka move his sleeve back to reveal the communicator on his left wrist and begin to fiddle with it a little.

"Honestly, if you were even half-way trained, you wouldn't even need the communicator to find out a Servant's stats and abilities," Olga grumbled. "No, don't press that button! Do you even know how to read! Hit 'back'. Now, click that one, yes, the one that says 'FATE', aaand that one."

Ritsuka's communicator now was projecting a small hologram with the image of Mash, her class, and her stats. Interestingly, it displayed her True Name as Mash Kyrielight, despite FATE being the system to summon her Heroic Spirit.

But it was displaying her Noble Phantasm as blank. Meaning that despite it having the name of Lord Chaldeas, it wasn't the True Name of her Noble Phantasm. It was just a working title, one meant for her to use but not one that would release the full potential of her Noble Phantasm.

"Um, it says 'A rank'?" Ritsuka read off from the holographic screen after scrolling down to her Class Skills.

Mash had to admit, she was kind of curious as to what skills she had. There were quite a few on that list.

"Impressive," Caster said. "I figured it would be at least B rank after it dispelled that last fireball as soon as it met her. But A rank means that she won't need to worry about any but the best of Casters."

Ritsuka still looked confused.

"A Servant's stats are measured as a category. E rank being the lowest but still about 10 times to 20 times an average or normal human. D rank is about 20 times to 30 times, C rank is about 30 times to 40 times and so on to A rank which is the highest at a minimum of 50 times a normal human. There is also EX rank, but that is specifically for abilities that aren't measurable, like if the stat was simply that overpowering that it can't even be compared to humans or just is strange."

"Ah. But what does that mean for magic resistance or riding?" Ritsuka asked curiously as he read the class skills that Mash had.

"A skill's rank basically determine how much of an effect it has. The rank of a skill like Magic Resistance influences how much it nullifies of a spell, corresponding to the level, magical energy, and the length of an aria for the spell. An E rank magic resistance would only be able to nullify a small portion of a spell but not the spell itself. In terms of practicality, E-rank Magic Resistance would reduce the damage from a similar E rank spell but do almost nothing against a B-rank or C-rank spell."

"And A-rank Magic Resistance means that not even an A rank Mystery, even if it was a full ten count aria or a Greater Ritual, would be able to affect her if she denied it," Olga cut in. "It means that Mash is almost immune to Magecraft. Caster here would be unable to beat Mash without using his Noble Phantasm."

"Yup," Caster admitted cheerfully. "Casters suck by the way. We have to create our own weapons to be able to fight on par with other Servants. Either that or take the loser's way of not fighting a fair fight. But I don't have either the item creation skill or the materials to make a new Gae Bolg so I make due with my runes, staff, and Noble Phantasm."

A distant roar ripped through the night sky, causing the group to freeze at the surprise of hearing something other than each other or the crackle of fire.

"What was that?" Ritsuka asked fearfully.

"Berserker," Caster said grimly. "He still howls his rage. Not sure what set him off this time but he's still pretty far away. We shouldn't have to fight him."

The group, their good spirits quieted by the reminder of their great foe, scurried on up the mountain towards the Greater Grail in silence.

---

As the group followed Caster who led them up some stone steps before stepping off into the fire ravaged forest full of ash and burned trees, the group was silent.

Berserker was somewhere in the woods south-west of here. And Archer was somewhere around here.

Neither one was one that they wanted to meet, especially here where the terrain would favor Archer.

That didn't mean they didn't have their own thoughts though.

Ritsuka was still grappling with the revelation after revelation he had just received. That famous people of legends and history could be resurrected as Servants and were trying to kill him. That Mash, the strange young girl who was shaping up to be a good friend, was one of them yet not one of them. A Demi-Servant, not that he was sure what that meant. That magic was real. That wish granting tableware actually existed and in Japan of all places.

Honestly, he would have expected Western Asia due to the myths of the Holy Grail and wish-granting genies originating from there.

And he was also still struggling with the realization that he could die. That at any moment, if Mash failed or died, then he would die too.

All in all, it was enough for any man to grapple with.

Olga was considering how to deal with the Association, the U.N., and Chaldea's sponsors. Who she should talk to about what and what the likely effects would be. What would let her keep her Chaldea?

She didn't have time to rest. She had to keep working. She had to get support in refurnishing Chaldea with acceptable and extraordinary geniuses who were reliable enough to actually obey her.

Mash was jittery. She had been a bad draw on her Master's Circuits and Caster's words about her failing and him dying had struck her in her heart.

And in the back of her mind, she was still reeling from the discovery that Ritsuka admired her.

Out of all that happened, her becoming a Demi-Servant, her Rayshift into the past without a Coffin, participating in the Grail War, and that Heracles was an opponent if they didn't sneak past him, the most amazing thing to her was that Ritsuka actually admired her.

She couldn't say how much that affected her. She couldn't even comprehend it. The concept was just- foreign to her.

So even as her eyes jumped from place to place, looking for any signs of Archer, Saber or Berserker, Mash resolved to protect her Senpai. To keep him safe from all harm.

And she knew that her resolution would be tested shortly.

---

As the group approached the entrance to the cave where the Greater Grail was, Caster kept his senses open for any sign of Archer. You miss him fight once and the next thing you knew, there's a large 'kaboom!' and a hill is gone. Which was what had happened to the hill Archer's Master used to be on.

But Caster had to admit, he was enjoying today. Sure, there were fires and the sky was completely overcast with the smoke from those fires and the sun was down, but still, it was a good day.

He has already had two good fights and was headed for two more with a band of allies at his back.

What more could a guy ask for?

Well a good barrel of ale would be nice but-

Caster's eyes caught something and he held up his arms to stop the group.

The illusion of the cave entrance being stone was still in place. Naught that a moment's work could dispel.

Except there was a hole now. Not a large one but it ran across the entire rock face. And Caster would reckon that the hole was under the illusion too.

Caster made a quick Ansuz rune, emphasizing revealing truth and light rather than fire, and the Bounded Field supporting the illusion vanished.

Caster scanned the revealed opening, eyes narrowed as his suspicions were confirmed. The cave entrance had signs of recent construction. The top of the cave looked like someone had cut their way through solid stone with the resulting rubble scattered across the cave floor. Most of it had been gathered into small piles for a man to stand on while carving the ceiling, probably with swords.

What was Archer and Saber doing?

The Grail informed him that humanity of this time period would either use drills or explosives to expand openings. And the Second Owner would certainly not allow people to enter the cavern complex of the Greater Grail, magus or otherwise.

Heck, part of the Bounded Field was meant to repel people without circuits from going near the entrance.

The only options left was that a magus, who before vanishing with the rest of the world, had decided to expand on a secret area that only the Three Families would have known of-

-or the Servants felt that the height of the cave was insufficient for their purposes. But it looked like it had been two meters tall before one of them started to start carving. Why would they need to expand it closer to three? And in the middle of a Grail War?

Caster stared into the cave, hoping for something to reveal itself. Some clue to reveal the path of his enemies.

"What is it?" Ritsuka asked, fear in his wide eyes.

"Someone's been here," Caster responded tersely, his mind focused on trying to read the actions of his foes. As far as he could see, the rubble from the ceiling covered the ground, all the way back to where the tunnel curved, after which he couldn't see anything.

So the construction was deep. Were they trying to move something large to the Grail?

And he couldn't hear anything that sounded like ongoing construction either. All was quiet. Except for a recent bellow of Berserker's grief, rage and madness from the nearby forest.

Heracles certainly had a pair of healthy lungs if they were able to hear him from here.

"Of course someone's been here!" Olga hissed. "This is where Saber is!"

"No, Saber couldn't do this. She's too short," Caster replied, mind focused on what Archer was trying to do by doing this. And where that man was. "Only Archer could have done this. But there is no reason for Archer to do this. The man is tall, but not this tall."

Archer was just under two meters tall, and dwarfed Saber by at least a head. And right now, Saber would need to stand on tip toes and reach to touch the ceiling with the tip of her sword. And even without the construction, Saber's sword wouldn't have been slowed down by the ceiling. Excalibur would just carve through it like it was air.

There just was no point to making this.

Which made Caster worried.

But if Archer was who Caster thought he was, he might have a Noble Phantasm that could need this much room. Weren't tanks or artillery around that size?

But if so, then why hadn't the Shadow Servants used a single Noble Phantasm? Assassin could have used his Noble Phantasm in their ambush. Lancer had a Noble Phantasm or two which could have reversed their fight on the bridge.

Lancer's Benkei Butsu Noble Phantasm alone could have allowed Benkei to block the fireball that Caster had used to incinerate the former Servant. That Noble Phantasm manifests one to seven copies of Lancer who could have taken the fireball in his place.

But Lancer hadn't. He could have invoked his Noble Phantasm to block the fireball as it was too close for him to dodge but not too close that he couldn't block. And even earlier than that, Lancer could have used his Pilgramage of the Five Hundred Arhat Noble Phantasm to kill everyone. Shielder could have survived maybe but for the Master and the magus, it would have been almost impossible to escape the Noble Phantasm that forcibly dragged people along with the pilgrimage of five hundred Buddhists on their coffin-like boats to the Pure Land, never to return.

No, in all the battles Caster had seen and fought in, not one Servant had used a Noble Phantasm after Saber killed them.

Maybe Caster was missing something? Was Archer special and got a loophole?

Caster wished that Archer's legend gave some details on what Noble Phantasm he had, but the probable Counter Guardian didn't have a legend. Without a legend, Caster had to make assumptions about what was available to the enemy.

What could need 2-3 meters?

Caster didn't know, there was just too many options in this modern era but he figured that it probably wouldn't be good.

"Is it a trap?" Ritsuka asked, brows furled in puzzlement. "Should we wait out here then? Or is there a back door?"

"No, this is the only way to the Greater Grail. Unless the young lady has another Noble Phantasm that can dig through a mountain?" Caster cocked an eye at the small Demi-Servant.

"U-Um," the girl stuttered. "I don't know?"

She took a breath before continuing. "I don't think I have another Noble Phantasm but isn't having multiple Noble Phantasms a mark of a great Servant?"

"Nah," Caster disagreed. "The two most powerful Servants in this war were Berserker and Saber. And they only had one Noble Phantasm apiece when they clashed. The others have more Noble Phantasms and are trickier to fight. I saw Archer use something like five or so."

Archer's Noble Phantasms included a missile that had a resemblance to Caladborg, his twin scimitars of Kanshou and Bakuya, some sort of seeking-missile-thing, and a shield. And then there was that anti-Thautomolagy Noble Phantasm that Archer had pulled out to smash through his barrage of fireballs when they had fought in the school yard before the Singularity started.

Right before Archer's younger self had come and Caster had pursued him to-

Aaaah, shoot.

He had played right into Archer's hands back then, hadn't he? Recreated Archer's past onto Archer's younger self and all.

Here he had been smug that he managed to force a draw with the guy despite a bad match-up…

"Five!" Olga yelped. "Almost no Servant has five Noble Phantasms! It is rare to encounter one with more than two! Who is Archer?"

"A Servant without a legend," Caster replied. "Someone who will create his legend in the future. Or, more accurately, is creating his legend right now, both now before the Singularity and in Chaldea's time."

No need to give spoilers. A path was to be journeyed on, its pleasures to discover and its hardships to endure. He was a druid, not a bard. And as a druid, he couldn't do the journey in their place. It simply was his role to make sure that they can walk the path and help them on it. As Chaldea's guide, he would give them the warning but not the discovery.

Olga, Mash, and Ritsuka blinked in surprise. In Chaldea, Roman and most of the workers also were stunned.

A modern-day Servant?

"Impossible," Olga snapped. "Heroic Spirits can't be created in the modern era much less-"

"That's wrong you know," Caster remarked. "Oh sure they don't have nearly as many Noble Phantasms and they tend to be a tad weaker than older Heroic Spirits, but new Heroic Spirits and Counter Guardians are formed all the time. Archer here is not so strong but he is a very, very tricky fighter. Definitely capable of holding his own among us."

No, he was not smarting over being manipulated like that by Archer. The jerk.

"Really?" Mash asked, wide-eyed. "There are new Heroic Spirits? But Lord Tellintroth of the Clock Tower said in his rebuttal to Animusphere's 1935 "Discourse on Servants" that the lack of Noble Phantasms in modern society means that no new Heroic Spirits can form."

"And who are you going to trust?" Caster snorted in amusement and increasing boredom with this line of conversation. "This Tellintroth guy who doesn't have a link to the Throne of Heroes or me? There have been several heroes formed in the last few centuries alone. A lot of them are men of science such as Da Vinci, Edison, and Tesla but several monarchs, soldiers, warriors, and assassins have ascended to the Throne. They just need to be famous enough that people write them down in the history books and tell their stories from generation to generation."

"But that doesn't work as a distinguishing factor," the white-haired lady replied in a huff. "There are confirmed Heroic Spirits that wouldn't have inspired anyone such as Assassins and there are some people who inspired millions but aren't Heroic Spirits. The qualifications for being a Heroic Spirit ought to be if a person left a mark to inspire people."

"Eh, don't sweat the small stuff," Caster shrugged it off. Did it really matter what made a Heroic Spirit a Heroic Spirit? Either you were one or you weren't. After that, it was all academic.

The lady huffed but quieted down.

Finally. Magus tend to be very prickly if you disagreed with them and they were wrong. And until you did, they just yakked and yakked and yakked.

And he needed quiet to listen for Archer.

But the only Servant he could hear was Berserker, his cries and lamentations echoing through the forest up to the mountain.

"All right, let's get going," Caster said as he came to a decision. "We don't want to be out in the open with Archer around. Not that he is any easier to fight in close combat, but we'll stand a better chance at retaliating."

"Why is that?" Ritsuka asked. "Wouldn't archers be easier to fight in close combat?"

"The guy is able to class as a Saber with his swords and he was good enough to hold back against me earlier in the war. Probably could even pull off a Shielder or Caster if he wanted," Caster said as he walked forward, the rest following behind him. "Not sure about the other classes, but the lack of information I have on him indicates that Archer might even be summonable under Assassin. Probably a sniper type of Assassin."

"So whatever you do, don't let down your guard Shielder," he concluded. "If you aren't ready to protect your Master or the lady at a moment's notice, they'll get an arrow smack between the eyes."

"What about yourself Caster?" Mash asked, face serious.

It was rather cute. Like a child trying to wear their father's shoes and armor.

"I have Divine Protection from Arrows," he said dismissively. "He'll have to pull out a powerful long range Noble Phantasm to even hurt me. And I don't think he can after Saber killed him. Even if he could, he won't with the mountain and the Grail as collateral damage."

"Then by all means, let's go!" Olga snapped as she hurried forward and out of the open space. "I didn't come this far only to die to a simple arrow!"

The group picked up the pace, running into the cave and away from where Archer could pull out his most dangerous Noble Phantasms if he still had them.

Caster paused right before entering the cave and looked back over the burning city with Berserker loud roars in the background.

They didn't have a better option but here they were, diving headfirst into Archer's trap. Better to spring the trap early than to give him the time to put the finishing touches on it.

Caster didn't know what Archer was going to do, but if he had decided to switch over to construction work in preparation after Shielder came, it probably wasn't going to be good.

---

Mash looked around her in slight consternation.

The group had been walking through the cave complex for several minutes now. Archer's demolition of the ceiling had stopped about two twists of the corridor back, relieving the group that Archer was out of position for his trap.

But Mash was realizing something now that Archer's work had stopped.

The cave walls, the facility for the Greater Grail, looked like they hadn't been carved out. In fact, they resembled some of the caves that she had seen in the simulation room when the Masters had been training for underground investigations.

"This place looks like a natural cave," the girl pointed out, "Did this always exist in Fuyuki City?"

Olga nodded once as she eyed the walls herself.

"Probably, it's half natural, half man-made. It's an underground workshop that was expanded by mages over a number of years." The oldest human present clicked her tongue before dismissing the walls and turning towards Caster. "Anyway, Caster. I forgot to ask you something important. Do you know Saber's True Name? It sounded like you'd fought several times."

"Yeah, I know it," Caster frowned at the unpleasant memories. "Anyone who gets hit by Saber's Noble Phantasm will find out her True Name. The other Servants were all defeated because Saber's Noble Phantasm was that powerful."

"A powerful Noble Phantasm, is it?" Mash turned to look at Caster in curiosity. What Noble Phantasm could be strong enough to take out Heracles as Berserker? It had to be at least an A rank Noble Phantasm and Noble Phantasms were almost in their own league in the ranking system. "What was it like?"

"You should know. It's was the boy's Servant," Caster walked on silently for a bit before answering. "No one? Really?"

"I've already called Shirou up to the command center for this final part of the First Order," Roman popped in as Olga's communicator started projecting the blue toned hologram. "He's on his way now."

"You are doing this without consulting the assistance of a local?" Caster raised his eyebrow skeptically.

"Shirou is our only technician," Roman protested half-heartedly, obviously agreeing somewhat with Caster. "He and the other mechanically inclined are running around trying to fix the most important things that are too hard for everyone else to do. He's too important for us to have him sit in a chair up here all the time!"

A low grumble echoed into Roman's mic and the man winced as he managed to step on the pride of every magus in the room with him.

"So that was why his workshop had so many machines," Caster mused out loud. "I thought it was strange that he had so many projections and modern devices side by side in there."

Mash started. Caster had been into Mr. Emiya's workshop!? That was a major surprise. Even in Chaldea, a magus rarely allowed anyone into their private workshop.

Oh wait, Caster had fought Mr. Emiya. Mr. Emiya had probably retreated to his workshop for some Mystic Code or such and Caster had followed him in.

Caster shrugged, putting aside. "Welp, it is the sister sword of the Sword in the Stone. It's the most famous sacred sword in your time period. Its name…"

"No way!" Mr. Emiya yelled, the communicator popping up and spitting out a hologram of him, standing mid-way on the stairs, evidentially having just arrived in the command center. "Saber would never do this!"

"Coming from you who had the dream cycle, that is rich. But regardless of the near utter worthlessness of your opinion, this isn't your Saber right now."

A strong, male, but somewhat familiar voice came from behind them, causing Mash to whirl around in surprise, chastising herself for not noticing someone sneaking up on them.

Behind her stood a tall man, arms crossed, black mist bleeding off of him. Yet despite the black mist puffing out to hide him, Mash saw a drop of blood drip down from left arm held at his side and fall to the ground before puffing away in a cloud of smoke.

"Arrrcherrr-" Mr. Emiya growled as he stared at the Shadow Servant.

"But yes, her Noble Phantasm is the Sword of Promised Victory, Excalibur." The man said as he disregarded the technician in Chaldea who was glaring at him. "Wielded by King Arthur, the proud King of Knights."

Mash gasped even as she heard Olga and Ritsuka gasp behind her.

King Arthur. And Excalibur.

She couldn't believe it!

She was actually going to see King Arthur, the legendary king of Camelot and King of Knights!

She was so excited!

She would get to meet him- no, her wasn't it? Mr. Emiya and Archer both referred to Saber as female. Which to be honest, was a large shock to the Demi-Servant. To think that the paragon of chivalry had been hiding her gender…

Oh, and Mash was going to have to fight her, wasn't she?

Mash was going to face King Arthur. As Saber. With only a Caster as an ally and a Noble Phantasm without a True Name.

Saber, who had almost won a Grail War by herself with the only one to escape was Caster.

Mash swallowed hard.

Oh, this was going to go really bad. Could she even protect against Excalibur?

"Move, move, move!" Mash heard Olga hiss as the sound of two pairs of feet scampered behind her. Mash turned to glance back, seeing Olga start to push Ritsuka who quickly joined her in running to hide behind a large rock, Fou at their feet.

Oh good. If Archer was anything like some of the faster ranged fighters that A-Team had faced in the simulation training, good cover would do a lot to help them survive any shots that Mash couldn't block if Archer managed to get a clear shot.

Those simulations had been initially quite frightening as their opponents were surprisingly devasting if you couldn't use cover or protection against them.

With her Master and friend now safe behind cover, Mash was glad for her shield that dwarfed her. She could easily hide behind it and prevent Archer from hitting any part of her.

He was a Heroic Spirit of the Bow. He probably could shoot the wings off a fruit fly at a hundred paces.

Mash would expect no less than that from an Archer Servant.

"Well, look who it is," Caster taunted Archer. "I didn't expect one such as you to decide to be a mere follower."

"I don't recall becoming the follower of anyone," Archer rebutted, the clouds of black mist hiding his expression although he looked like he was staring at the hologram coming from Olga's projector. "I am just here to bring the mastiff to heel and chase away unwanted visitors."

"HEY!" Caster yelled.

"I'm sorry, did I offend you?" Archer insincerely apologized. "Would you like some roasted hound? I'm sure I could have a dish whipped up in just a bit. You could even provide the fire. Or the meat. The guard dog is more valuable than you after all."

Ugh. Mash grimaced as she remembered one of Caster's titles, the Hound of Ireland, and the geas that he had taken to not eat any meat from a dog after the incident when he promised to be like a man's guard dog to pay for killing the dog in a fight. Disgusting. Who would want to eat dog? She had never seen one before but the photos of puppies that she had seen were very cute.

And to insult Caster like that… Is this what Heroic Spirits are really like?

"Oy. And you think you can beat the pair of us?" Caster narrowed his eyes as he challenged the other long-range combatant. "Let's just end this here and now and move the pieces forward."

"From the way you talk, I think you understand the circumstances but aren't explaining it to anyone," Mash could barely discern from the black mist Archer's head shifting from staring between Caster and the hologram of Mr. Emiya. "Yet you are still absorbed by your own desires…"

Archer trailed off, obviously contemplating something.

"Well, I'll just have to knock some sense into you and hope that it reaches the idiot over there," Archer concluded as his hands moved away to suddenly grab a pair of black and white scimitars that lacked his misty obscuring cloud but still bore the feeling of powerful magical artifacts. "Knowing you both, I'll have to make this as hard as I can to pound it through the rocks you use as skulls."

"You and me both, buddy," Caster said, slamming his staff into the rock floor. "I'm going to enjoy beating you after that bit of clever trickery you pulled at the schoolyard."

"Hey, young lady!" Caster yelled suddenly. "Deploy your Noble Phantasm now! You don't want him to have a straight line at ya! He can project weapons so he's never unarmed!"

Mash started at the sudden yell but quickly released her Noble Phantasm, slamming her shield into the ground as she yelled "Lord Chaldeas!"

Only for her eyes to widen as she saw Lord Chaldeas form with a thrown sword stuck in the middle of the shield Noble Phantasm, sword tip suddenly less than a mere meter from her face.

Archer had thrown his sword?

Mash couldn't think of any Heroic Spirit that had thrown their sword in their legend but hadn't Caster said that Archer was a Heroic Spirit from the future?

The sword broke into shards of black and blue mana, followed by the two other swords which were aimed at both Olga and Ritsuka until they had hit the shield.

That was close. A second later and the first sword might have hit her. And the others would have hit her Senpai and friend.

But the way the sword had dissolved… Was the sword a projection? Not a Noble Phantasm but an illusionary construct of a powerful Mystic Code? Was that even possible?

Mash wondered why someone worthy of legend and fame would choose to use fake weapons but then again, she was a Demi-Servant, which could be compared to a man-made fake Servant depending on your definition and interpretation of Demi-Servants. And using projected missiles would definitely save on the cost of ammunition for Archer.

But Mash didn't have time to ponder this.

Archer was already moving, dashing around the edge of her Noble Phantasm while Caster's fingers flew around, drawing runes to prepare for Archer's assault.

In the scant two seconds since the fighting started, the Archer Servant had dashed from the curve of the cave behind them to the edge of the shield.

And right before he stepped out, Caster let the runes flash and send a round of fire forward.

Archer couldn't stop or backpedal in time before the fire would reach him.

Instead, the already dead and defeated Servant brought up the new copies of the Mystic Codes he was holding before the fire was upon him.

Mash's Servant level eyes adjusted to the brightness of the fire in time to widen.

Archer was dancing among the fireballs.

His two swords were batting away fireballs like they were rubber balls instead of deadly spheres of flame and what fire he didn't dodge, dispelled upon hitting him.

Caster's runes were insufficient to harm him. Caster would need more time to invoke more powerful spells that could overcome his Magic Resistance.

Time that only Mash could give him.

---

"Tch!" Caster clicked his tongue as he realized why Archer had favored using those swords against him. The Married Swords of Bakuya and Kanshou, a pair of Noble Phantasms meant to be wielded together, raised the physical resistance and magical resistance of their wielder.

And Caster had only invoked C level runes against Archer. With Archer's now C level Magic Resistance, the runes were insufficient to harm him as long as he kept both swords in hand.

In order to overcome it, Caster needed to either disarm him or throw B level runes at him.

The problem was that he would need something like four seconds to pour enough power into a series of rune glyphs to get it up to B level.

If he was as good as his teacher, Caster could have used one hand to write a sequence of runes to keep him busy while his other hand crafted a rune spell strong enough to blast through his magic resistance.

But Caster wasn't at that lofty heights of runes. He could only work on one rune at time, even if his speed at making runes allowed him to produce several in a second.

His teacher had painfully drilled that speed into him.

Okay, what other options did he have?

To fire off his Noble Phantasm would take almost as long as writing out a B level rune. Time that Archer wasn't going to allow him. And the low tunnel would collapse on everyone before the Wicker Man could finish emerging.

But time definitely looked like the bigger concern as the sword wielding Archer was moving straight towards him.

Until the young lady charged at Archer, forcing the swordsman to spin around and focus on her.

Caster let the fireballs stop. With their levels of Magic Resistance, he might as well be shining a lightbulb into their eyes. Besides, the young lady hadn't dismissed her Noble Phantasm and it was now interposed between him and the two Servants.

Besides, Caster needed to concentrate on making something strong enough to kill Archer. His Noble Phantasm was too big for this small tunnel.

Hand weaving through the air, Caster focused his magical power onto the runes emphasizing power and strength as he poured his energy into the construct.

Good thing the kid was rested up. This was going to take a small chuck of Caster's reserves.

Caster kept an eye on the fight as Archer overwhelmed Shielder.

The girl wasn't bad, she just didn't have the skill and experience to overcome Archer's fast paced aggressive fighting style. And skilled dual wielders had the unfair advantage of being to strike in two places at the same time, much harder for a single large shield to block.

Especially as Archer was much taller than the young lady with longer arms which granted him a large area in which he could strike.

It was all the girl could do to make sure that Archer's questing arms couldn't reach over her shield and stab her in the head.

But she was managing to hold her own-

Caster almost winced as Archer finally maneuvered Shielder out of her stance and into a bad one. One that Archer ruthlessly exploited by bringing up a foot and kicking her shield back, even as his arms snapped to the sides, throwing the blades around both sides of the big shield mirroring Mash's smaller one, which she resolutely was still holding onto.

Archer on the other hand, used the kick to propel him towards the edge of the shield, intent on getting around it and to Caster before he could invoke the runes.

All of which had transpired in about two seconds.

Oh yeah, Archer's skills included Eye of the Mind. He could plan out the battle and predict their moves before coming up with an optimal solution.

An annoying skill that Archer had achieved through nothing less than less than surviving a large amount of battle experience.

Caster knew that the swords were nothing less than an attempt to buy time. Time in which Archer could use to get in close and fight where Caster's Protection from Arrows would not be able to protect him from Archer's projectiles.

Caster's Protection from Arrows urged him to fire off the runes to stop the two projectiles. And the Shadow Servant's hands were empty now, meaning that his magic resistance had dropped again.

Caster changed the next few runes he was writing, causing the spell to fire off early at C rank rather than B, aimed straight at the empty-handed Archer.

Only for Archer to suddenly be holding the two swords again, raising his Magic Resistance to be immune to C rank magecraft just before the fireballs hit.

Oh come on! Caster complained in his mind. The two flying swords still arching towards him, pulled by their attractive properties towards one another and their momentum forward. Shouldn't the guy only have one iteration of a Noble Phantasm!

Actually, Caster realized as his hand holding the staff swung up and knocked away the two swords, these swords were weaker than when they had first fought.

They were still C ranked but now they were barely C ranked, hovering just above D rank instead of their earlier solid C rank.

Which means that something had changed.

Caster's mind flew down the possible paths even as his hand started writing runes again mid-air, other hand ready to engage Archer in melee combat with his staff.

What could have done it? If Saber had given Archer back the Noble Phantasms when she rezzed him, Archer's shouldn't have suffered any drop in power.

And then a memory flashed into Caster's mind, some of the teachings of his teacher as she discussed how she had created Gae Bolg before she realized that he was nodding off to sleep. She hadn't been appreciative of that as the following pop training session showed. And now he wished he had paid attention as he could have used the Item Creation Skill to make himself a new spear in this Grail War.

But returning to his stroke of inspiration, what if Archer's Noble Phantasm wasn't a bunch of weapons?

What if Archer's Noble Phantasm was production of other Noble Phantasms?

A Noble Phantasm to make Noble Phantasms.

If so, that would explain how Archer had so many Noble Phantasms and why they didn't match up to legend. The weapons weren't Archer's Noble Phantasm. They were a creation of Archer's Noble Phantasm. And the information on Noble Phantasms from the Grail would not include it as the Grail only gave summaries of Servants, not details and only if your already known information included a True Name.

Which means that right now, Archer didn't have his Noble Phantasm, whatever it was. Instead, Archer was just using his skills, which probably were the real life skills that had earned him that creation type Noble Phantasm, to bypass his lack of a Noble Phantasm and create the weapon Noble Phantasms without using the creation Noble Phantasm.

Probably his Clairvoyance skill combined with Magecraft skill and all the extremely well-done projections that Shirou had had in his workshop shed.

After all, magecraft was a way to imitate and reproduce what used to be miracles.

It wasn't quite that exact, but the Servant summoning ritual was a product of magecraft not True Magic. So, whatever a Servant did should have a way to accomplish in reality, even if that method in reality was incredibly unlikely or not able to be done nearly as efficiently, quickly or powerfully as a Servant could.

Caster didn't care much. He was a Caster but that was because you didn't say "No" to Scathach when she decided to teach you something.

But if Archer's mortal self had managed to find a way to use modern magecraft to reproduce the effects of Noble Phantasms, then Archer probably had just fallen back onto that method instead of using his Noble Phantasm.

Cu Chulainn grinned.

As he told Chaldea, Heroic Spirits and Counter Guardians were still being formed in this era as well as in times of old. They weren't as strong power wise when compared to heroes from the Age of Gods but they could still hold their own.

The main advantage they had was that they got access to almost everything that their ancestors had learned.

Reproduction of ancient feats was something that definitely seemed characteristic of a modern Heroic Spirit, with modern era being so focused on discovering laws and engineering mass production methods to make what was once incredible now ordinary.

Case in point, flight. Back in his day, you had to have had a very good relationship with a magus or god or in order to fly through the air. Well, unless you were thrown by someone really strong. Which was hilarious to watch by the way.

But his Master had kept an eye on a nearby airport where dozens of flying machines landed daily, each carrying what could be a small village's worth of people.

And she had called it a small airport. Meaning that there were airports out there that probably had entire cities worth of people flying into and out from there every single day.

Archer might have used the abundance of information in this age to accomplish his feat.

Now armed with information on his mysterious foe, Caster was a step up from earlier in the Grail War.

Archer must be one of those dangerous pioneer types. The original kind of person, who didn't need to depend on his Noble Phantasm to be dangerous because their Noble Phantasm wasn't a gift from someone even stronger. Such as Scathach, himself, and Gae Bolg. Caster would never be able to beat Teacher partly because she taught him everything he knew. Archer might be the same and be the someone even stronger.

At least Archer wasn't Scathach. The Grail War would already be over if she was a participant.

Having reached a conclusion, Caster reviewed the information he was using. Archer must have had a Noble Phantasm but lost it when Saber killed and revived him. However, the man was good enough with his skills that he could skip the Noble Phantasm. But since Archer was the origin of his Noble Phantasm, Archer would be capable of reaching it again given time and resources.

The man had to be proud of a feat like that and the kid probably was working on it back in the future. But given his pragmatic fighting style, Archer had kept quiet about it in order to deny him, the Caster with superior magecraft abilities, a way to counter it.

A tricky fighter for a tough fight but Cu Chulainn knew how to beat people like that.

Hard work and guts.

Caster also reckoned that if he had, say, a day or so, he could come up with something that would dispel or transform the Noble Phantasm projections back into either ether or mana. Would have been harder against the Noble Phantasm production line thingy but given enough time in his Territory, Caster thinks that he could have made the territory created by his B-ranked Class Skill, Territory Creation, hostile to the products of Archer's Noble Phantasm.

But Archer, who was now less than 3 meters away, swords held at the ready, was unlikely to give him even five seconds, much less the time to establish a Territory.

Caster's grin widened. This would be a good fight! His Caster class restrained his desire for combat and encouraged a more mental and spiritual form of conflict but Archer was a good foe for that too!

"HRRAGH!" Mash yelled as her shield, held over her head, came down towards Archer as she jumped from the other side of the room.

Shielder probably used her high Strength stat to get a good kick off from the wall that Archer had kicked her into.

Archer swerved aside, another sword thrown into the air towards her unarmored legs. Shielder hastily brought her shield down to block it, repelling the sword.

Then Shielder landed, knees crouched to absorb the force. And immediately spun around, causing the other sword striking towards her undefended arm to scratch along her armor.

And Archer's empty hand dropped towards her head, bar of light in his hands quickly shimmering into a replica of a Noble Phantasm.

But she hoisted her shield up, barely making it in time to block the sudden deadly weapon.

Only for Archer to drop to the ground, blades chucked towards Caster, as his empty hands grabbed her shield and one leg swept towards Shielder's.

Shielder tried to backpedal but it was too late and Archer too fast. He grabbed the blunt edges of the shield with his bare hands even as his leg swept Shielder's out from under her.

And then in a few quick jerky movements he wrenched the shield away from both of Shielder's hands and threw it down the tunnel.

---

Antarctica, Chaldea, 2017

Shirou watched as the Servant he knew the least about completely overwhelmed and outclassed Mash Kyrielight.

"That's a Heroic Spirit from the future?" Lyra Hook hissed from her station. "Root, he's brutal."

"Yeah," Shirou replied tightly. "He managed to hold off Berserker and kill him several times."

But that was all Shirou knew about Archer. The man had an understanding of Projection that was almost professional.

And Shirou couldn't understand Kanshou and Bakuya's history with Archer, not really. He subconsciously had copied the blades from when he had first seen Archer wield them and over the years, Shirou had analyzed their history, but nowhere in the Married Blades history had Archer ever laid his hands on the blades.

Instead, what Shirou got was that they had existed near each other in some form of storage room or museum until suddenly they had some runes and wards carved into them in a completely different place and time, improving their capabilities as dangerous Noble Phantasms. After that, the blades were placed into the ground in some space not quite on Earth but not quite completely separate from the outermost texture either. Then without being drawn from the ground, a copy is made and they jump time and space again as they are projected into reality, ready to fall into Archer's hands.

Yet Archer fought like he had been using them for years, despite lacking any history with them.

Archer had been mysterious like that. Shirou got more information off of Medea's Rule Breaker and he had only seen her alive for less than two minutes before Gilgamesh killed her.

But with Caster's information, Shirou could guess that somehow Archer had stumbled upon or had been taught the exact same branch of magecraft that Shirou was discovering. The art of tracing, projection, alteration, and reinforcement that drew strength from the system of thaumatology based off of Unlimited Blade Works (Rin's words, not his).

Probably meant that Archer had learned it from Rin or one of her descendants. Shirou didn't have an apprentice, probably never would, and Rin was the only other person to have learned how to do tracing. She had practiced it until she could take projection to a level beyond other magus (namely Luvia Edelfelt) but she still needed the object she was copying nearby so she could directly feed a structural analysis into the projection.

Shirou noted to tell Rin to be careful about who she taught tracing to. Yeah, Shirou had to admit (grudgingly, he still didn't like that arrogant man)[MS1] that Archer was a good person. Not everyone would sacrifice themselves so that his Master and another Servant-Master pair could escape from Berserker.

But it kind of irritated him that Archer was using the same branch of magecraft that Shirou did.

Was this the feeling of pride that Rin had spoken about?

Shirou didn't have pride, or he thought he hadn't.

But this stinging emotion wasn't jealousy or envy. He had felt those before and they felt different than this irritation.

Maybe he just wanted vengeance on the guy who believed that Saber would be part of something as horrifying as this. Saber wouldn't have done that. But this feeling didn't match what Shirou had heard people describe wanting revenge like.

More like he didn't want to share with him. Or that Shirou's usual generous nature didn't want to extend itself to Archer.

For some reason, Shirou just couldn't bring himself to approve of Archer.

But since Archer was from the future, that meant that Shirou wasn't following Archer. Instead Archer had followed Shirou. That made Shirou feel somewhat better about all this. But he was still annoyed that he had someone like Archer who had learned from him.

Shirou could accept making the magecraft that Archer had learned and used much better than he could accept that he owed that guy for pioneering his magecraft. Even with the tip that Archer had given him.

But, as Shirou watched Caster pause crafting his runes long enough to attack Archer with his staff so that Mash could roll from her disadvantageous position towards her shield, Archer obviously was several steps beyond Shirou in that field of magecraft.

He could barely read the history of the Married Swords right now but from what he saw in the projected video from the Singularity, Archer was projecting them without Unlimited Blade Works. He was just using pure memory and experience to trace copies that Shirou's skills could only manage with Unlimited Blade Works.

"Okay, Shirou," Roman said tightly, voice and mind obviously strained as he watched the girl he was parentally affectionate towards narrowly escape from a dangerous Servant who had easily disarmed her. "We are up against Archer. What do you know about him? Is he the same from your Grail War?"

"Yes," Shirou said confidently. "He is the same Archer. But he was the only Servant whose True Name and abilities I don't know. All I know is that his favored swords are Kanshou and Bakuya and that he was strong enough to kill Berserker several times."

"What?" Roman said, surprised as he turned to Shirou. "How did a Servant from the future manage to hold up against Heracles of all people?"

"Pure swordsmanship combined with the ability to project Noble Phantasms, I think," Shirou answered slowly, trying to recall what Illya had said about Archer. "Archer had at least six different weapons, each A ranked. But no one ever learned his True Name. Even Berserker's Master never learned it despite seeing his Noble Phantasms."

"What?" Roman asked, completely startled. "How can you not know a Servant's name after seeing their Noble Phantasm? Knowing one leads to knowing the other."

"I don't know," Shirou honestly answered. Rin said she didn't know. Illya hadn't known. And Archer's projections didn't say what Archer's name was. And no one else who had met Archer had survived the Grail War. "Illya- I mean, Berserker's Master said that he matched Berserker and had an unknown identity. He didn't use any active Noble Phantasm abilities, just used their status as A rank Noble Phantasms to hurt and kill Berserker. Then she enraged Archer's Master and they got to squabbling again."

Shirou wasn't ashamed of his relation to Illya but Rin had warned him to keep it on the lowdown. Apparently, the Eiznbern were some sort of big name in homunculus production. Simply buying a single one cost a fortune and many magus could try to exhume Illya's grave in hopes of learning something about the Eiznbern secrets.

Rin had also mentioned something about them going after Shirou's life but that wasn't important.

Shirou watched as Caster managed to use his staff to block Archer's strikes, wielding it not too differently than how he had used Gae Bolg defensively. Occasionally Caster threw in a strike meant to crush one of Archer's limbs or his head but Archer always blocked or avoided them.

The stalemate continued until Mash managed to get to her shield and pick it up again. Before running back into the fray.

"So anything we can use against him?" Roman asked, frustration evident in his voice. "They are barely holding their own right now!"

"Um," Shirou racked his mind. What could beat Archer?

Archer's legend and weaknesses was hidden from everyone.

Shirou could imagine a weapon to beat Archer but given that it had been Archer to teach that to him, Shirou would venture that Archer would imagine a weapon to beat that weapon until Shirou imagined a weapon to beat the new one and it would just continue on and on.

But Caster and Mash couldn't do that. All they had was their skills and Noble Phantasms.

"He's not very good at grappling," Tom Nawakowski spoke up.

Shirou and Roman turned to him.

"When he twisted the shield out from Mash's grip, he did so by a rather crude method," Nawakowski explained, his eyes still focused on the screen where Archer was controlling the flow of battle such that Caster and Mash were barely avoiding getting into each other's way. "It wasn't well done, more like it was something that he had seen done once and imitated from memory. So if they could disarm him or fight him without his weapons, he should fall pretty quickly."

"He can't be disarmed," Hooke sniffed. "Remember? Caster said that he projects his weapons. Probably why he keeps on throwing them before they break down naturally. Not a bad method for an Archer who needs disposable weapons. His foes can't use them against him because they'll break down too fast."

"Oh yeah," Nawakowski said. "Any idea if he would accept a challenge to hand-to-hand fight or a brawl without weapons?"

"He is extremely pragmatic," Shirou said, calling upon his memories of his and Archer's few short talks and the fights Archer had fought in front of Shirou. "He and Saber didn't like each other because he viewed honor as a thing that would get in your way."

"So we could strike at the bonds connecting him to his Master?" Roman asked, interested at having something they could do.

"Not when Saber is doing necromancy on him," John Erwing rebutted. "He can't break away from her will since she could just sever the flow of energy to him."

Shirou accepted the word of the first generation magus. Shirou hadn't studied necromancy.

"But Archer has Independent Action," Hooke pointed out. "He can survive without a source for a limited time. Long enough to make a contract with Ritsuka at least."

"But that would be if he was a normal Servant," Erwing replied. "He's already been slain by Saber so having her stop her necromancy would just return him to a state of death as his Spirit Origin is already disrupted."

The silence indicated that no one had considered that obvious fact.

Shirou certainly hadn't. He hadn't even known about Spirit Origins until he was reading papers about Servants and Heroic Spirits.

Shirou winced as Archer pounced on one of Mash's mistakes again. Archer was being plain brutal on the poor girl. He kept on finding new and different weaknesses and using them to nearly kill her. Only the fact that Caster could supply pressure with just his staff while his runes floated behind the group kept the young girl alive.

But the wounds were accumulating on both Caster and Mash. A cut here, a slice there. Caster's robes had nearby been cut in two as barely dodged a slice from Bakuya.

And they hadn't even landing a telling blow on Archer. Mash was slower than Archer while Caster was about just as fast. But Caster lacked the strength to make a telling blow and had to cover Mash. Meanwhile, Archer was just avoiding all of Mash's blows or blocking such that the force didn't transmit well.

If Shirou had to guess, Archer was faster than Mash but weaker in strength. Meanwhile, he was as fast as Caster but Caster was weak enough that Archer didn't have to worry about the strength of his blows.

But Archer was using Caster's need to protect Mash against them. He would feint a strike at Mash only to strike instead at Caster. And every once in a while, he would make a potshot at Fujimaru and Animusphere. He couldn't do it often as managing the two Servants required his constant attention but he was controlling the flow of battle much better than Mash and Caster were.

Archer probably figured that he could deal with Mash solo without risk. But Caster was a danger to him.

All Archer needed to do to win was to kill Caster. Once Caster was down, the others would soon follow. They wouldn't be able to harm him and Mash just couldn't win against Archer. Only her high Endurance was keeping her in the fight as a normal human would have bled and weakened from her numerous cuts.

"The only thing that could let them win is if Caster can finish his runes," Shirou concluded. "If he can use magecraft against Archer, they might be able to win."

"Yeah, Mash has A-ranked Magic Resistance," Roman brightened up as he remembered that fact. "Only an EX rank spell could harm her. Archer is bound to have lower Magic Resistance since he is from modern times. Alright, quick question. What can they do to give Caster a few more seconds to finish his runes?"

Silence fell.

Shirou thought frantically. What could they do to help Mash?

The only option Shirou could think of was to deploy to the Singularity, run to the fight, fight Archer with the same magecraft that Archer used, and keep Archer busy enough that he couldn't attack Caster.

"What if Mash used her Noble Phantasm?" Choejor, the cook from Tibet, suggested. "It looks like should give Caster more time if between Archer and Caster. He have to go around."

Then Shirou noticed something.

"Hang on," Shirou said, eyes narrowed. "Why is Archer bleeding?"

"Huh?" Roman turned to Shirou in confusion. "He can't be bleeding. They don't have an edged weapon nor hit him anywhere on his body yet."

"But his left arm is bleeding," Shirou rebutted, more certain as he watched the arm more carefully, noting the more solid pieces of mist that flew off of him like blood. "And he isn't using it to block Mash's blows."

"He's right!" Nawakowski exclaimed after a few moments of carefully examining Archer's image. "Archer is bleeding on his left arm!"

"So that's his weakness!" Roman exclaimed. "They have to strike his left arm until he can't use it anymore. Then Caster can retreat and finish his runes."

Might work, Shirou supposed as Roman paged Fujimaru to share their conclusion. But that wasn't what Shirou was worried about.

Who had injured Archer?

Was it one of the already defeated Servants, Saber, or a monster?

Shirou didn't know. Only Saber and Berserker had ever managed to harm the Servant of the Bow.

Gilgamesh could have but no one had seen any sign of him nor had Caster mentioned him. Did he not exist in that world?

---

Singularity F, Fuyuki, 2004

Caster narrowed his eyes as he dodged another blow and weaved his staff forward to block Archer's other strike against Mash while she was off balance from the previous flurry.

He didn't like this. Archer was having them dance to his tune. And while Archer wasn't holding back anymore, the man was managing to inflict little cuts that would sap away at their strength.

If only he was a Lancer, Caster lamented. Then his Endurance would be much higher and his Agility much faster.

Suddenly, a very loud and guttural roar echoed down the tunnel. The tunnel that led to the outside. The tunnel that Archer had just used to come in after they had walked through it.

"You absolute madman!" Caster yelled as he spun his staff to block a pair of blows aimed at Mash while she had been distracted by the surprisingly close sound. "You lured Berserker here!"

That explained why Archer had spent so long on expanding the height of the ceiling! Berserker was two and a half meters tall. And he was strong and tough enough that no one would have been able to get inside after he was put outside.

You entered the cave and you would attract Berserker's attention. Then he would rip you to pieces as soon as you discovered him.

"Of course," Archer was probably smirking under that obscuring cloud. "We have the best guard dog in the world. Why would we want to use a second-rate one like you? Could you keep out even one door-to-door salesman?"

"He has Madness Enhancement!" Caster cried out, trying to appeal to Archer's sensibilities. "You bring him here and he'll keep you stuck in here!"

"A real pity that this group of salesmen didn't get to meet the good guard dog," Archer sighed. "All you needed to have done was rest at the school for 10 more minutes and you could have met the dog. I am told he loves strangers."

"Stop using dog analogies!" Caster yelled. "And the only thing he would love to do is rip us limb from limb!"

"He doesn't bite," Archer pointed out. "He doesn't have rabies like a certain Lancer in front of me. Oh wait, you aren't Lancer. My apologies for mistaking you for a dog."

"Is this because I tried to kill you for watching that fight?" Caster asked, furiously parrying a couple of blows. The annoying Archer was hitting a new low for him with these taunts. "I didn't know you were a magus!"

"Oh, no. I don't need a reason to do something hilarious after all. And we wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't failed back then," Archer said darkly.

The later part didn't make sense but Caster didn't have time to think about it.

He had to hurry up. All this fighting was probably getting Berserker worked up. And once Berserker burst into the fight, it would all come down to a game of tag.

With Berserker as 'It' and tagging being read as smashed to a pulp.

The only advantage they had was that Berserker was so tall that he wouldn't be able to see anyone as his head would be in the ceiling. And with his B-ranked Madness Enhancement on, Berserker probably couldn't even realize that he could bend over.

Which means, he had to do something really risky before Berserker joined in.

"Use your Noble Phantasm!" Caster barked out, scrapping his on-hold rune scheme behind him in order to sketch a rune that exploded in a wave of force, rapidly pushing him back and the young lady in the other direction as she let it though her Magic Resistance.

"Lord Chaldeas!" Shielder widened her eyes even as she instantly obeyed.

As the shield spring up between him and Archer, Caster wasted no time in sketching a new set of runes even as two more swords bounced off the inside of the larger shield before colliding on Mash's smaller shield.

Whew, he was glad that worked. Noble Phantasms could be funny sometimes. Might have only blocked one way.

But this was his only shot. He wouldn't get another chance. This would have to be B-ranked if it killed him.

Well, not if it killed him. He couldn't let Saber win so he had to survive. Hopefully his Protection against Arrows would help him here. He didn't count on it as the skill was giving him the feeling that this was the wrong course of action to avoid getting hit by ranged weapons.

Caster also hoped that Shielder didn't die here.

It would be too much like that group of students dying in the war against Medb because his body needed to rest and they fought to the death in his place.

He always regretted that. They shouldn't have had to die for his weakness. And he didn't want a repeat.

---

Mash was breathing heavily as she kept the shield up.

She knew that she wasn't very good at combat yet but this was ridiculous!

Archer wasn't even a melee fighter and he was utterly trouncing her by virtue of his combat experience.

Mash had a long way to go before she could hope to match a real Servant.

But she needed to focus. She couldn't let Archer get a clear shot on Caster.

And there he goes again, throwing the swords so that they would curve around the Noble Phantasm like a boomerang.

Seriously, what got Archer his classification as an Archer?! Did he keep the Guinness World Record for most swords thrown in a minute for over a century or something? It was ridiculous!

But Mash couldn't do anything about that. Archer was running straight at her, determined to take down her shield so he could reach Caster again.

Mash readied herself to receive his blows. As long as she kept the Noble Phantasm up, Archer would have to throw his swords around it, giving Caster some time to finish his runes.

And then Archer was upon her.

His twin swords slammed into her shield, but Mash's strength allowed her to not lose any ground.

Before the reverberations of the blow even faded from her shield, Archer was coming around the left side of her shield, trying to outmaneuver her.

Mash gritted her teeth. She couldn't let Caster become exposed to Archer.

He was counting on her.

But neither could she let Archer stab her while keeping her shield up.

She wanted to live for a bit longer. She wanted to see the sky.

And if she died, then the Noble Phantasm would fall and Archer would still kill Caster.

So Mash spun the shield towards Archer even as she leapt backwards, keeping the shield firmly in her hand.

Her Noble Phantasm followed, keeping Caster behind it.

Archer suddenly jumped back throwing a pair of swords on another boomerang course around the larger angled shield.

Mash swiveled her shield to the front again, causing the swords to bounce off of the inside of her Noble Phantasm.

And her eyes widened as she saw Archer's already previously thrown sword get pulled towards Caster's back from when he had knocked them astray.

The swords had an attractive property to each other! Archer could use the swords on this side to control the swords on the other side.

And Caster couldn't turn around to block it without having to stop writing his runes!

As she opened her mouth to shout a warning to Caster, she saw Olga grab something and throw it with all her might towards one of the swords aimed at Caster's back.

As Olga's small rock hit the sword, it flashed a symbol, Ehwaz, if Mash remembered her Norse runes correctly. One of its meanings was for 'pull'.

And suddenly the sword dropped as gravity increased its pull on the flying weapon.

The sword hit the ground and pulled the other swords towards it, causing the one aimed at Caster's back to veer off course until they broke down into mana.

But by that point, Archer had already thrown two more pairs of swords in a boomerang fashion again around the shield Noble Phantasm. And now he was running towards Mash, fully intent on taking her down so he could get at Caster before Caster could finish his spell.

Two seconds down. If Caster managed to continue writing even as four swords converged on him, then they could finish the spell and finally kill Archer.

Mash hoped so.

She didn't know how long she could hold out against Archer by herself.

---

Olga breathed in as she shakily reached down to grab some more of the runes she had prepared.

What had she been thinking! She had interfered in a fight between Heroic Spirits! If Archer managed to actually attack her, she would be dead in an instant!

But it was a calculated risk. If Caster died to a blade he didn't see coming or had to spend a second to defend himself instead of finishing his runes, then Mash would die, barring a miracle, and it would take Archer only a short time to dispose of herself!

But now more of Archer's thrown swords were arcing around the shield towards Caster. And Olga didn't know which one she could hit with a rune.

And she didn't have very many Ehwaz runes. She had gone for a variety of runes, reasoning that she might need any of them to deal with threats that Saber put in their path.

But she had a few Dagaz runes. She could use one as a flash grenade to give Mash some time against Archer. Archer probably had really good eyes to be able to see long-range so causing a bright flash of light would be devastating to him.

She reached down to her pouch which now held the runes she had made while waiting for Ritsuka to recover.

Thank goodness she had stopped early. If she had tried to finish the last couple of runes to bring it up to a complete set, they would have arrived late and ran straight into Berserker!

Hefting the small Dagaz rune in her hand, Olga drew back her arm, focusing on pouring her od into it so that it would go off at a certain time.

Once she infused enough energy into it, she threw it forward and above the rock she was using as cover.

Olga watched with bated breath as the small rock, something that wouldn't trigger anyone's magic resistance as it wasn't being used directly against a Servant, flew through the air, passing Lord Chaldeas on the right.

The rune should activate on the opposite side of Mash where only Archer and Caster could see it before detonating in a burst of bright light, hopefully stopping Archer but letting Caster continue writing blindly.

He was trained by Scathach, queen of the Land of Shadows. And as Caster, he should be able to write the runes in his sleep, much less while blinded.

But a stun from the Dagaz would only last for a few seconds before they could see clearly again.

Olga hoped a few seconds was all that Caster needed to finish the runes.

The thrown rune was almost in position when Olga realized that the rune would blind her and Ritsuka as well if they were staring at it.

She grabbed the boy's head and forced it down and behind the rock, even as she popped her own behind it as well.

Olga saw the air flash white as the Dagaz rune fulfilled its purpose and shone into the eyes of everyone who was looking at it for a brief moment.

As she blinked away the afterimages cast by the reflected light, Olga decided that maybe she had put a bit too much power into it.

But curious as to how effective it was, Olga quickly but cautiously popped her head back up to see how it had worked.

Archer was engaging Mash in melee combat again. Caster was still writing runes.

But Caster had used his staff to bat away only half of the four swords flying at him.

The other two had landed on his leg and on the arm holding the staff, forcing Caster to drop the staff as that hand lost its strength and to shift his weight onto the only good leg left.

Her little rune hadn't changed anything, she realized as Archer kicked Mash's shield, sending her flying back a short distance. It might have actually made things worse for Caster.

Archer spun around and sprinted towards Caster, aiming for one of the sides of the Noble Phantasm, making sure to throw a pair of swords at Mash behind him. Probably to keep Mash from moving the shield to block his course.

Mash swiveled her shield around so that the long end would be on the side, allowing her to repel the swords but still keep the barrier up between Caster and Archer.

And at the end of the fourth second since Caster had started writing runes, according to Olga's very precise and accurate sense of time, Caster opened his mouth and yelled, "Flip your shield around!"

What was he doing? Wouldn't it be better to dismiss the shield altogether?

Archer skidded to a halt and reversed course, heading straight towards Mash.

Oh, Archer was going to use Mash as a shield! His Magic Resistance wasn't up to handling Caster so he was going to make sure that Mash took it instead of him.

Well, joke's on you Archer! Mash has A-ranked Magic Resistance. She's immune to any magecraft that Caster could use!

Mash immediately obeyed Caster, spinning the shield around until the shield was behind her back, her Noble Phantasm also now on the other side of her.

Leaving Archer open to Caster who now had a clear line of fire.

Archer, who in response, dove behind Mash without attacking her and sprung back up while bending his knees and his back until his head was lower than the top of Mash's shield.

Oh. Mash's Magic Resistance would protect anyone behind her from Caster's runes.

This could be a problem.

---

Archer was rather uncomfortable right now.

For one thing, slouching like this to squeeze behind the shield of a girl much smaller and slimmer than he wasn't good posture. For another, he could feel the heat of the fireballs coming his way. For a third, he was dead all over again. And like his last death, he had only gone to a worse place.

Ah well, at least this way Saber was only having him kill Caster and the Chaldeans instead of thousands. A small improvement.

Now if only killing the group didn't mean killing all of humanity, life would be great.

Shielder, the young girl fighting using inherited skills and techniques which were not well suited for her female and slimmer frame resulting in weaknesses and exploits galore, was now his only effective option against Caster.

He couldn't move fast enough to get to the other side of her Noble Phantasm. And even if he could, the barrage would last long enough that the girl could take it down leaving him vulnerable all over again only in a worse position.

No, his only option was to use Shielder herself as a barricade.

Either Caster would fry her seconds before frying him in the widespread area of attack or her hopefully higher Magic Resistance would nullify the spell.

If the first, then they had no way of winning against Saber. Caster wouldn't be able to beat her with her no longer holding back. She would kill him even if it meant breaking her Spirit Core to power Excalibur.

No, the only hope the Chaldeans had of winning was to use Shielder to block Excalibur.

Archer wished he still had Unlimited Blade Works. But Saber's necromancy was inadequate to restore him back to full strength. Part of him and the other Servants were lost and Saber had chosen everyone to lose their Noble Phantasms.

Well, not everyone was obedient, Archer reflected, thinking of his own Independent Action and Berserker's choice to enter Madness Enhancement. Saber could force obedience onto himself but Independent Action meant that he got some choices about how to carry out her orders.

For example, he could decide to kill the invading Shielder by taking advantage of every one of her weaknesses. That way, if she somehow won, she would be able to review this experience and be tougher to kill in the future.

And if she was tougher to kill, Chaldea would be more likely to survive and succeed in their Order.

And the first fireball descended upon Shielder.

And Archer approved.

Shielder's Magic Resistance instantly dispelled the product of Caster's B-ranked runes. That meant that she would be better able to survive. However, it was the fact that the neighboring fireballs flew past her instead of dispelling along with the first one that really got his approval.

A sea of fireballs was useless if all you needed was to dispel one and you wipe out the entire group. If Caster had done that, Archer would have leapt over Shielder, planted some swords in her back or head if she failed to dodge, and then kick her in order to get a boost in speed towards Caster while ensuring that she couldn't use her Noble Phantasm to block his path again.

But Caster wasn't that big of an idiot. Despite his best efforts at trying to be.

Archer honestly didn't know how Caster was creating such a large disassociated group of fireballs all from the same runic scheme. Nor did he care.

He just had to figure out how to win.

Saber's command wouldn't allow him to just die. He had to put forth his best effort into fighting. But he also needed to make sure that his opponents were ready and able to take down the upcoming threats, starting with Saber.

He had Independent Action and was firmly on the side of humanity. Did anyone expect him to not be secretly rooting for Chaldea?

So Archer plotted and planned. Serve Saber, obey her orders, make 'accidental mistakes' that would lead to her downfall such as 'forget' to structurally analyze the history of the Demi-Servant's shield, and teach as much as he could to the Master, the director, the Demi-Servant and his younger self in the future as he could.

He also kept in mind that he would only have a few seconds of defiance before Saber noticed and silenced him.

He would have to make those seconds count.

But until then, he would teach Shielder.

Current lesson? Don't assume that they will let up even in a situation when their life depends on you.

Or in other words, people are stupid. Stupid enough to attack a shield utilizing Servant who was their only protection against another enemy's fireballs.

Fortunately, this situation was her specialty, he reflected as her shield repulsed his shoddy copies of Kanshou and Bakuya. A straight up fight where the opponent couldn't dodge or use Agility but instead had to power through her strength.

Not likely to happen with his lesser strength, he mused as the fireballs flew past him on all sides, including above.

However, this was an opportunity. Shielder would live or die depending on how well she could pressure him. If she could force him to dodge to avoid a blow or knock him off to a side, she would win.

If she failed to force him out before the fireballs died down, then she would probably die.

Right now, she was striking at his feet. A good tactic as it left herself protected but he had to respond and dodge. If she managed to pin his foot, then she could rotate her shield and use the wings on the side of her shield to knock his head into the fireballs.

Her earlier simple tactic of step to the side had already been foiled by his superior agility as he had followed her steps as fast as she had made them.

But she was somewhat disappointing. The fastest good tactic here would be for her to throw herself backwards.

If she lay prone, then he would have no way to block or dodge Caster's fireballs as long as she kept her shield and Noble Phantasm facing upwards, incidentally protecting herself from any last ditch maneuvers he could make.

But he couldn't suggest that. It would leave her depending on an enemy's good will in the future.

And only idiots clutching to honor or ones that liked her would give her that good will.

No, better to give her a harder time now so she would be prepared for the ruthless enemies of the future.

An alternative tactic for her was to have her Master recall her using his Command Seal. That would leave him completely vulnerable to Caster.

It would cost a Command Seal though, which was a bad idea. To use one when she had two good tactics that wouldn't use that precious resource would be wasteful.

Her final tactic was to charge forward as fast as she could until he hit a wall and then for her to dodge diagonally forward until she was next to him and not providing cover for Caster. All it would require would be for her to dismiss her Noble Phantasm so that she didn't crush the walls.

Honestly, this would be the tactic that he would recommend. It cost the least in resources for her, resources that could later be used against Saber, and it would take advantage of the confined space they were in.

But she was still striking at his feet, forcing him to dance while trying to strike past her shield-

Suddenly, she stopped and planted her shield into the ground.

Why would she do that-

Archer's eyes widened before narrowing under his covering of corrupted magical fog-like energy as he felt heat.

Heat on his back.

Heat that was getting stronger.

Like the fireballs were coming from behind him now.

And the fireballs weren't remote controlled else Caster would have already curved them around Shielder.

Oh, he didn't know that the inside of Shielder's Noble Phantasm reflected magical projectiles too.

Clever of them.

His Eye of the Mind skill couldn't find a way out of this.

Archer gave his silent approval. If they could pull out surprises like this against himself, who had fought in more battles than half a dozen Heroic Spirits put together, then they might just stand a chance in the upcoming challenges.

Now, what should he say to prepare the group for the future?

And then the reflected fireballs hit and Archer felt his body burn as hot as the fires that shaped his first most memorable experience in life.

Ironic that this third life would end in fire like how Shirou Emiya had been born inside the fires of Fuyuki.

---

Mash exhaled and inhaled rapidly as she watched Caster's continuous stream of fireballs finish and die out, leaving behind only Lord Chaldeas and a burned husk of pure black.

The body looked familiar. Maybe because he looked a bit like Lancer? Both had been so tall that Mash had to crane her head up to look at him and, like Lancer, the man had just been so surprisingly fast. Slower than Rider had been but still much faster than Mash could move.

Also, Archer was charred black and brown now, just like Lancer had been.

"Well done, Child of Light!" the corpse said as his body started to break apart into magical energy. "Who knew her Noble Phantasm could be utilized that way! Beware-"

The man's words cut off as his head and lungs vanished into the black sludge and corrupted magical energy that the other Shadow Servants had been made of.

Mash sighed in relief and collapsed onto her shield, using it to prop herself up.

That had been too close. If it hadn't been for the reflective properties of Lord Chaldeas, Archer might have won.

She watched as her scratched and scarred arms trembled as they laid on her shield.

Who was that? The man had evidently been a master swordsman. He was good enough to go sword to staff against Cu Chulainn! It probably would have been a different story if they had fought in Ireland where Caster would have been stronger, but still.

Was he really a Heroic Spirit from the present and future? His skills with the sword would have better fit in with those of old rather than the modern age.

"Yeah, we'll beat the Sacred Sword. Leave it to us!" Caster jerked his thumb back to point at himself. "The young lady and I'll take her down!"

Mash felt a warm glow in her heart at Caster's declared belief in her. But they barely beat Archer-

"I'm glad you trust me," Mash managed to say as she caught her breath. "But do you really think I can guard against it?"

She paused to catch her breath and to turn around to stare Caster in the eyes, noticing how her trembling seemed to double in her arms as she contemplated fighting Saber. She was shaking so bad that Caster seemed to be wavering where he stood. "I've heard about the sword of King Arthur. I'm still shaking from Archer. I don't think I can take on Saber. My fingers are trembling just thinking about it…"

Caster glanced towards her arms clutched onto her shield before looking behind her with a frown. Meanwhile, his good hand sketched runes over his sliced open leg and arm, healing them with high level magecraft.

Behind him, Fou leapt over the rock that Olga and Ritsuka had been hiding behind and scampered over to Mash. Mash was shaking so bad that Fou seemed to be vibrating in place as he looked up at her, meowing "Fou? Fou, fou, fooouu. Fou!"

It was like he wanted to reassure her and warn her about something different.

"Thanks Fou," Mash expressed to the small creature who just darted around to the back of her knee and was jumping to headbutt it repeatedly. "But I don't even have my True Name yet and King Arthur defeated not only Archer by herself but also Berserker. And Excalibur-"

The comm suddenly bleeted before spitting out an image of a frightened Roman.

But before he could say anything-

"▂▂▂▂▃▃▃▃▅▅▅▅ーーー!"

Mash's head whipped around as she realized what she had taken for shaking wasn't only her body's adrenaline decrease.

It was the rumble of a charging monster.

Mash jumped back towards her Master even as the wall near her exploded outwards.

And as the stone fragments, rocks and boulders bounced off her shield, armor and skin, Mash's eyes widened as she saw what had just came through.

A monster. One that just broke through the wall like it was tissue paper compared to the stone physique of its body. Muscles that looked like it had been carved out of granite on thighs and arms, each one thicker than her entire body, and a body so large that the bottom of his chin was all that Mash could see of his face that was plowing through the stone ceiling. And unfairly, even with the ceiling slowing him down, the being moved faster than any living thing had a right to.

And along with the black mist, the giant wore an aura of screaming bloodlust, the urge to destroy, and the immense magical pressure of what had to be the strongest Servant.

Mash didn't need to be told who this was. This could only be one person.

Berserker. Berserker Heracles himself.

Whose arm alone probably outweighed her, shield and all.

Which arm she got to see way too close as one fist slammed right into her shield that she was holding onto.

Mash must've blacked out under the force of such a strike because her next remembered sensation was the pain of her back hitting the stone wall on the other side of the tunnel.

Mash coughed and gasped, blood speckling her lips as her wounded body protested the treatment from the giant.

How can we defeat Berserker? Her mind and heart screamed through the wooziness of her thoughts. He's so strong that even blocking one of his blows was enough to nearly kill me!

And then Mash's body remembered that gravity was a law and she fell to the ground amidst the screams of humans facing a monster out of nightmare.

In a daze, Mash realized that it was Ritsuka and Olga screaming.

"▂▂▂▂▃▃▃▃▅▅▅▅ーーー!" Berserker bellowed, his enraged voice drowning out the screams of everything lesser, including the sound of Mash's own heartbeat as it drummed in her ears.

Then silence. Complete and utter silence.

Mash woozily tried to raise her head but failed as her body didn't seem to be responding right.

In fact, it felt like she was in the middle of an earthquake with everything shaking as the wrath of the Son of Zeus raged all around her.

Mash now understood why both Mr. Emiya and Caster had been hoping to not face Berserker.

To face an opponent who seemed about as stoppable as a typhoon…

Mash didn't want to fight!

She didn't want to be here!

She didn't want to die!

Abruptly, she felt hands on her body and her eyes widen in terror even as her breathing broke into hyperventilation.

It had to be Berserker! He was going to crush her!

She didn't want to die like a crushed grape!

She didn't want to die! She didn't want to die! She didn't want to die!

Mash thrashed, her formerly immobile body now responding to her panicked commands.

She had to escape! She had to survive!

One small hand landed on her cheek and she turned to bite at it, hoping to get Berserker to LET GO!

Only for her bite to land on Ritsuka's thumb.

Mash paused as her terrified brain realized that it wasn't Berserker who was holding her.

It was her Master.

Ritsuka's extremely wide bright teal-blue eyes, his pupils enlarged, stared into hers even as his mouth opened and closed, saying something that Mash could not hear.

Mash watched as time slowed to a crawl, watching as his eyes widened even further, tears starting to pool into his eyes and his mouth to open like he was trying to scream in pain, only for Mash's deaf ears to not hear anything.

And in a moment of clarity through the storm of her terror, Mash realized what she had in her mouth.

It was her Master's finger.

Immediately, she yelped, opening her mouth, and drew back, body breaking free of Ritsuka's grasp while letting his thumb, which was now bitten all the way through the skin and muscle only to stop somewhere around the layer of bone, go from her mouth.

She stared at it in horror.

She could taste his blood on her tongue.

She had just bitten Senpai's thumb.

She had nearly chomped her Master's thumb.

She had almost ripped off Ritsuka's thumb with her mouth.

Oh, the horror! Oh, the humanity!

What had she done!

Mash tried to crawl backwards, to push into the wall and away from the most horrible thing she had ever done!

How could she have bitten Senpai?!

He had reached out to save her. He had tried to save her from being under the rubble. She was alone and he gave up his chance to escape to spend time with her in her last moments. It was for him that she had taken up the contract with the Heroic Spirit.

And she had just betrayed him.

But her arms collapsed, refusing to give her support, turning on her like she had on her Master.

All she could do was stare wide-eyed at her Master's thumb that she had nearly torn off.

Ritsuka shook, or was it her shaking? Mash realized that her trembling was increasing even as she faced what she just did.

He reached out for her but Mash, in a burst of speed she didn't know she had left in her, threw herself to the side, crawling backwards until her back met a boulder.

But her Master followed her. He came closer, hands outstretched until he stopped and hid the injured hand behind his back.

Mash could only stare at the uninjured, outstretched hand, the one that still had a thumb. The one that she hadn't nearly ruined.

It was getting closer and closer.

Mash trembled as she stared at it, her mind not working, her emotions only being a mass of sheer, utter terror.

And the hand, the uninjured hand, landed on her arm.

Mash closed her eyes. She didn't want to see his face. She didn't want to see the betrayal on his face. She didn't want to see how he looked in rage and anger for what she had just done to him.

So Mash was completely surprised to feel herself being hoisted up and for the arm to go around her back.

Her eyes snapped open as she spun her head sideways to see Ritsuka, one arm around her, his other pressed to his side. He was hauling her down the tunnel, away from the mad Berserker.

Why? Why was he carrying her? Hadn't she hurt him? Hadn't she turned on her Master like a Stray Servant? Like a failure?

But he was. He wasn't letting her go even as he half-stumbled, half ran away.

Mash couldn't understand. After what she had done, after attacking him, thinking he was Berserker, why was he slowing himself down? Why had he come for her? Why was he saving her?

"Why?" she demanded in utter confusion only for her ears to detect no sound. "Why?"

Ritsuka didn't answer. Just continued his awkward run towards the Director, who was running ahead of them while awkwardly carrying Mash's shield.

Mash half-wanted to stop right there and wait for Berserker to kill her. Anything to avoid the shame of confronting the reality that she, Mash Kyrielight, had attacked her own Master.

But Berserker was behind her.

And she had no desire to be anywhere near that monster of a Servant.

---

As Ritsuka ran down the tunnel, injured hand to his side, other arm wrapped around Mash in order to carry her, his thoughts replayed the last few seconds.

He remembered wondering why everything was shaking. Wondering what that odd rumbling sound was.

And then the giant Servant had burst through the wall like it was a wave of water instead of solid stone. And immediately smacked Mash straight into the other wall.

He remembered watching Mash cough up blood as she fell to the ground.

He remembered hearing a pair of screams only to realize that they were from himself and Olga.

He remembered Caster shoving the two of them away from where they were as Berserker charged them like a train at full speed, his head carving a trench through the stone ceiling, sending rock shards ahead of him like a spray of miniature bullets.

Ritsuka remembered Caster almost instantly creating a floating rune where they had been standing. He remembered watching Berserker smash that rune like it was made of cheap glass even as Caster dodged the giant's fist only to get knocked back by the sheer force of the air displaced by the arm.

But not before Caster's staff finished the rune that it had been sketching on the floor.

And as Caster's staff went flying in the grip of Caster, who like Mash, slammed into a wall of the tunnel, the tunnel went utterly silent.

Not silent like the grave but completely silent. Like someone had erased all sounds. Even his saliva tasted like everything had gone flat.

He couldn't hear his own scream even as his lungs and throat pushed air out.

He couldn't hear the roar or rumble of the giant.

He couldn't hear the sound of rocks hitting each other as the rocks that Berserker sent flying hit and bounced all over the tunnel.

And most importantly, Ritsuka's eyes told him that Berserker went still.

He didn't move. He didn't attack. He didn't rampage or strike. He didn't even twitch a muscle.

The giant went completely still and looked like a statue that someone had forgotten to finish carving with his head still in the ceiling. And as Ritsuka watched, Berserker's skin started to generate the dark cloud of miasma that all Shadow Servants produced. Only now instead of leaving it behind him like an airplane trail in the sky, the dark cloud covered Berserker.

Within just a second, the giant had turned from a murder machine into a black statue that radiated black smoke. A pillar in the middle of the tunnel. A pillar at the end of a trail of pure devastation, littered with large cracks where Berserker had either stepped or smashed.

Ritsuka remembered Olga running away. Then out of the corner of his eye, she had stopped and ran back only to start shaking him until he could rip his gaze away from the ominous shadowy pillar that would become the future star of his nightmares. He remembered her pointing over to Mash and her shield, embedded into the wall next to the Demi-Servant, and gesturing at her.

At first, he had stared blankly at the younger girl. Then his brain kicked back into action and he started to worry that Berserker had killed Mash.

And then Mash had breathed and that worry evaporated.

It took another round of emphatic gestures from the director until he finally got the idea to pick Mash up and run away.

He remembered following her to Mash, remembered going over to Mash to see if she was alright while the director worked on removing the shield from the wall that Berserker had slammed it into.

He remembered his foolish decision to shake her to see if she was alright.

To be honest, Mash didn't look good. Blood and scrapes and cuts littered her all over. It was harder to see where her arm didn't have blood covering it than where it did. Her armor had rock dust all over, her head was smudged with blood and dirt, and she was trembling violently, mouth jittering like she was cold.

But it was her eye, her eye that was not covered by her bangs, that should have warned him.

Her purple pupil had expanded until it covered most of the eye and it was darting around in an unfocused manner. Almost like she was having a stroke, not that Ritsuka had ever seen someone have a stroke.

He remembered trying to shake her, to try to get her to look at him.

He remembered watching her eye widen ever further, her trembling increase. She looked like a very scared animal. Like she was in the middle of a panic attack.

So he laid his hand on her cheek to get her to look at him.

And he remembered her expression of pure terror right before her head spun and bit him.

He remembered the fire of pain rising up from his thumb even as the upper part of his thumb went numb like it was frozen.

He remembered Mash's expression of terror turn into shock and horror.

He remembered her try to get away, try to run only to discover that she couldn't, that her back was already to the wall.

For a long second, Ritsuka contemplated leaving Mash there. To take his revenge for her attacking him and nearly severing his thumb while he had only sought to help her. To abandon her there with monstrous giant.

But that was just the pain talking. He couldn't abandon the younger girl there. Not with Berserker nearby.

And he had blinked as Mash scrambled away so fast that she became a blur. When he turned his head to follow the blur, he found her, trembling and scared like a lost little kitten, up against a boulder that Berserker had knocked loose when he had barged through the wall.

Getting up, he reached out again, keeping both hands in sight even as she trembled more and more with every step he took.

Only to realize that her visible eye was focused on the bitten hand. The hand that she had injured. The one that she clearly felt guilty over.

He quickly hid it behind his back but it didn't alleviate Mash's trembling. All she did now as focus on his uninjured hand.

As he knelt next to the terrified-out-of-her-mind girl, she closed her eyes obviously awaiting some form of harm.

All Ritsuka could feel was sorry for her. Even as his thumb bled and fire from his nerves echoed up to his brain, he couldn't help but think and feel sorry that Mash was suffering as badly as he was.

But he couldn't try to reassure her yet. They had to get out of here before Berserker decided to resume killing them all!

"Come on, Mash," he said gently, even though not a single sound came out of his mouth. "Let's go."

With that said, he grabbed her and hoisted her up, wrapping his uninjured arm around her back so that he could part-carry, part-hoist her down the tunnel towards safety, following the director who was running ahead of him with both of her arms around Mash's shield.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ritsuka saw Caster drawing a series of runes into both the air and the ground, adding more runes to an outline of a large cube centered around Berserker.

Ritsuka hoped that whatever it was, it would work.

If he ever saw Berserker again, even if it was in a future life, it would be too soon.

He never wanted to see or experience anything like that again.

---

As Caster walked out of the tunnel into a natural cave, he saw the shaking and traumatized group waiting for him.

The boy and girl were beside each other, lying against a rock which they were using as a backrest.

Their boss was on the other side of the cave, conversing with the blue illusion that was displaying two people simultaneously, the former Master of Saber and the weakling in charge.

"Welp, I am sooo glad he doesn't have Magic Resistance," Caster shuddered at the close call with Berserker even as he walked up to begin healing the injured. Which was pretty much all of them after Berserker had shot rock pellets everywhere in his charge towards the two magus. "I have to say, without his Madness Enhancement active, I don't think I could have done that."

"What was that rune?" Olga asked, breathing heavily. "How did you stop him?"

"It was for an illusion," Caster explained as he sketched green runes for healing over Mash's badly wounded body after examining it admiringly and whistled. "Man, she's definitely first rate. I didn't think that her smoking bod would have survived that. Even A rank Endurance wouldn't be able to survive a surprise attack from that guy while he has Madness Enhancement active."

"Berserker has A+ strength without Madness Enhancement. Means that instead of having 50 times the strength of a normal human, he has something like 100 times the strength of a normal person. And Madness Enhancement kicks that up a notch or a few," Caster explained to Master's befuddled expression that changed to horror as he followed Caster's explanation. "Anyway, the rune was for an illusion that tricked his mind. It was the only thing that could have worked against him. Berserker has False Eye of the Mind, which means that he could detect danger by pure instinct before anything can hurt him. And with Madness Enhancement on, he is more dangerous than ever. And just to make killing him suicidal, he has Battle Continuation. Even if I managed to kill him, he would live long enough to kill us all."

"The tricky part was his Divinity. His Divinity means that he has supremacy against, well, everything. Even if the illusion worked, he could break out by sheer force of will. Or even by accident really," Caster cracked his neck and sighed before continuing. "Which was why I silenced the entire area. I couldn't have something set him off again."

"I have gone berserk like that before," he admitted to their questioning stares at him. "Well, not quite like that, definitely no bursting through solid walls, though I kinda wish I had. Would have made for a great tavern story."

Caster rubbed his chin with one hand, wondering how many drinks he could gotten for retelling the experience in a tavern back in his day. Probably enough to keep drinking the night away from all who heard it.

"Get back to the explanation." Olga said through gritted teeth.

"Jeez, you're a pissy one aren't ya?" Caster asked before backing down as she raised one arm like she was about to strike him. "Welp, anyways, when you're berserk like that, you can't feel anything. No pain, no sensation, nothing. All you are going off of is your eyes, your ears, your nose and your gut instinct."

"But look around ya," Caster waved around to the cavern that the tunnel had deposited them into. It looked like the people who had carved the tunnel had ran into a natural cavern with a high ceiling and they just incorporated it into their tunnel before continuing on through the other side of the cave. "Well, not here obviously but back there Berserker's head was up in the ceiling, among the rocks. He couldn't see or smell anything. Obviously, he was just using his instincts and hearing."

"So I tricked his instincts into thinking that nothing dangerous was here. And while that was in effect, I silenced everything so that he couldn't hear anything. Without those two senses, all that was left was his Madness Enhancement, which cut his rationality down enough that he couldn't even consider hunching over so that he could see or smell."

Caster grinned and tapped his nose. "All I had to do was cut off the outside world from affecting him. Without anything to set him off, he will never come after us. He wouldn't be defeated, but Saber already beat him. We're just fighting his necromanced corpse. As long as it is out of action, it doesn't matter whether it is dead or simply isolated."

"What if Saber tries to get him to attack us again?" Ritsuka asked in a rush. The boy was pale with fear and was shivering on the rock he was sitting on while holding his thumb in his other hand.

Good question. Caster approved of the boy's thinking. Saber definitely could give telepathic commands to her raised Servants. That was the type of questions the boy needed to be thinking about.

And how did his thumb get like that? It looked like a dangerous beast had bitten down on it only for the kid to be lucky that it hit the bone instead of cleanly severing it at the joint.

Checking on the status of the rune healing the girl, Caster reached out and sketched a rune of healing over the boy's thumb.

Say what you will, but thumbs were rather handy things. Hard to use a spear without one.

The last Master nodded in thanks for the healing, his face relaxing as the pain started to vanish.

"Can't on Berserker," Caster freely admitted to his current Master's question. "The guy has such a high Divinity and a high Madness Enhancement that if he chooses not to obey, there is nothing they can do."

"Illya said that Berserker didn't do well with rules," Shirou said from the hologram projection that had been conversing with Olga before Caster caught up with them after layering a sensory isolation Bounded Field around Berserker. "He was basically meant to break any rule he encountered through sheer power. Not so good at anything delicate but perfect for a Grail War. She could only control him because he wanted to protect her and her family did special 'enhancements' on her so that her Command Seals could control him."

"Berserker's Master?" The white-haired lady questioned with a look in her eye. "Do you know if she would be interested in joining us? If she could control a Servant like Berserker, then Chaldea definitely has a place for a top tier Master like her."

"She's dead," the former red-head said harshly. Ouch, stepped on a landmine, didn't ya? Probably died tragically, Caster would guess. People like the kid didn't respond like that unless it was a harsh experience. "Her lifespan was shortened in exchange for her abilities. She died years ago."

"I see," Olga sighed. "Well, I guess I'll have to look for new Masters somewhere else. Do you know of any other Masters from your War that might be interested?"

"Um," Shirou hesitated. "Maybe. The only other survivor could probably be convinced to join if the paycheck was large enough."

"Very well," Olga ordered, brightening up at the potential Master she could soon be recruiting. "You'll be giving us his name and contact information as well as a referral. We need to start rebuilding our Master team as soon as possible."

"Do you want me to get that information now?" the wimp, Roma something, on the other side of the time gap asked.

"No, I'll take care of it," Olga sniffed. "You wouldn't be able to fast track the request and you don't have the political connections to get it wrapped up before the Mages Association and the UN comes breathing down our necks."

"Excuse me, I don't want to deny the additional help," Shielder interrupted the older lady's conversation. "But shouldn't we first plan on how we're going to deal with Saber? I mean, she killed Berserker after all and we barely even survived escaping him."

Her Master nodded in fervent agreement.

"Well, we already have an advantage here," Caster said with some surprise. Didn't the girl see it? Couldn't she see what she was capable of? "You're basically perfect for the job."

She didn't believe him. He could see it in her face, the poisonous doubt that would impair her and lead her to die in a stupid manner.

"That shield" Caster jabbed emphatically at the shield laying on the other side of the young lady. "will never shatter. If you were to lose it would be because you messed it up. Not even the Sword of Victory will be able to break it so the only way your Master will die while behind it would be because you let it go."

He ran his hand through his hair trying to think about how to make her see sense.

The girl was a worrywart. Maybe she would need something else to focus on?

"Listen. Don't think about beating the Sword. All you need to think about is protecting your Master." Caster said in full seriousness before cocking his head challengingly. "That's right up your alley, no?"

The girl went silent. Her eyes wide and enraptured like he had just delivered to her the words of his father, the god Lugh.

But Cu Chulainn had never been comfortable with extremely devout folk.

"Well anyway," he coughed as he finished healing Shielder's wounds. "Leave it to me to finish off Saber and just do what you need to do."

"Thank you," Mash said gratefully. "That advice will be of great help."

Mash had no idea how valuable that advice would be in the upcoming years.

---

Berserker Heracles under Madness Enhancement is scary. I think Mash would have preferred a Berserk Cool-Aid Man to have burst through the wall.

But I tried to show how (semi-)normal people would react to having Berserker suddenly appear and try to kill them. Which includes having Mash break down into a panic attack and act irrationally. I didn't like having her bite Ritsuka either but everyone there except for Caster was out of their minds in terror or madness.

As for Cu Chulainn's thoughts on Archer, it mostly is because Caster is misreading Archer. They had a very different fight before the Singularity with Caster having to use runes and his staff instead of his spear. A fight that left a different impression on Caster than what his canon self got about Archer.

For those wondering, the status menu is a cross between Fate Stay Night's version and Fate Grand Order Servant profiles. It is a canon ability that Rin instructed Shirou on and gave him a training tool for (I think, the wording somewhat implies it). But since FATE was made to be compatible with digital formats, the information shows up in digital form, looking pretty similar to the FGO profiles but the organization of the information bears more of a resemblance to Fate Stay Night.

By the way, does anyone know how to get a Berserker scream on this website? Fanfiction's document manager won't accept what I have for it.

Thanks to Shadyxlr and Eiskralle1 for helping to beta read.

---

Preview:

"YOU KILLED MY CHEF!" Saber Alter howled as her sword lit up with her magical reserves.

Saber threw herself forward, blasting towards Caster who was starting to sweat as he realized why, out of all the Servants, Archer alone was kept so close to Saber.

"FOR THE HAMBURGERS!" She yelled as she brought her sword down in a large two handed-swing down on his head.

THUNK!

Mash stared at the split in half Servant.

"Um, Senpai? Are you sure that we shouldn't have done anything?" she asked the person who had grabbed her arm when she had moved to protect Caster.

"Food is serious business," a somber female voice said.

Mash was startled as she turned to look.

Where she had thought was her Master was instead a woman in a tiger jumpsuit.

"Who are you!"

"THE ONE HERE FOR THE FOOD!" the tiger woman yelled before she stabbed forward with her tiger paw shaped weapon. "FOR MY PERSONAL CHEF!"

And this is why you don't stand between a woman and her next meal.

Especially if she was a glutinous female in Shirou's life.

Wait a second…

That's the omake not the preview!