Chapter 58
Steel scratched the concrete floor, the wind sweeping across the roof as Rin's hair fluttered with it. Beside them, Assassin dropped Gray to her feet, Add grumbling as he finally stopped rattling around in the cage from the large jumps they had made to reach the rooftop.
"This is the place you wanted to go to?"
Gray had let Rin set the place where they could talk, in order to make her more comfortable and prove that they weren't going to ambush in a prepared location. As a result, they had arrived at Center Building, the tallest building in the Shinto district, overlooking the distinctive red bridge of the city four kilometers away that served as it's signature landmark.
Rin nodded.
"So, why do you want to forge an alliance with me?"
While she wasn't completely against the idea of an alliance, there was no reason she should ally with the representatives of the Mage's Association, and they hadn't given her any incentive yet. She also felt that Archer was strong enough, and thought the battle with Lancer earlier had shattered her preconceptions regarding duels between Servants, she was still confident in Archer's abilities.
Gray recognized this, and prepared to reply the way her mentor had told her to.
"We're prepared to offer a sizable amount of gems as a token of our trust and sincerity."
Pulling out a velvet bag drawn shut with a golden cord of thread, the contents of the bag clicked against each other as Gray thrust it towards Rin, with the recipient almost dropping the bag from how heavy it was, in spite of its deceptive appearance.
"Y-You're giving all this to me?"
She drew the thread to open the sack, and put one arm into the dark opening of the sack to draw out one of the precious stones stored in it. Holding up the stone to the moonlight, it sparkled under the light, refracting the rays between its lustrous facets, each side perfectly regular to form a hexagon, a white glow emanating from the opaque body of the gem. The surfaces were polished to an abnormally high degree, likely through the use of magecraft, and Rin could feel how sharp the edges were just by rubbing it with her fingers, her flesh running past the smooth surface like wind on water, the material hard and unyielding.
The gem was a top-grade product, perfect for her magecraft, to the point that she could almost feel it begging for her to pour energy into it.
She was stuck in a daze for a moment, staring at the priceless gem, before she quickly put it back in the bag, and then withdrew another one. The process repeated several times, until she was finally satisfied, putting the drawstring bag into Archer's hands as she faced Gray again.
"Hmph, since I accepted your gifts so graciously, I'll at least hear you out, but don't think I'll be bought so easily." However, the blush gave her away.
"So easy."
"She's easy."
"This girl is too easy."
Add, Assassin and Archer had the same thought simultaneously while looking at her face, whilst Gray carried on without noticing it.
"Un, I'm glad you've accepted our gift. The purpose of the alliance with you, the representative of the Tohsaka family that is the Second Owner of the land, is to unravel the mystery behind the Holy Grail system and the problems that have been plaguing the Holy Grail War for a while now. We have discovered traces of a foreign element inhabiting the Greater Grail, and we intend to use the Fifth Holy Grail War as our chance to inspect the Holy Grail, and if possible dismantle it if the need arises. To analyse the Grail, we will need people of expertise and that are familiar with the land and the system, so to this end we have decided to form an alliance with you Tohsaka-san."
Originally, they shouldn't have known at all about the presence of corruption in the Grail. However, this time a certain doctor had tipped off El-Melloi, or to be more precise, his Servant had. After leaving the train, he had consulted with various professors, before calling for a meeting with the relevant people and presenting his "evidence" to them, a souvenir that the doctor had picked up when he had inspected the Grail earlier, just like what Francesca Prelati had done.
And now, the evidence was shown to Rin as well, in order to prove to her that they weren't just checking the Grail on a mere whim or as cover for their true agenda.
When Rin saw the object that Gray unwrapped after retrieving it from a sealed wooden box, her hair stood on end, her eyes riveted on it as Archer narrowed his eyes at it, his eyes running over every detail on the plain, but deadly blade.
It was a crude knife, no larger than a steak knife, with a wooden handle roughly fashioned like a makeshift job, the blade hardly sharpened at all, with the gray surface mottled and dull, unable to reflect the moonlight like Archer's twin blades could. But while it could not reflect, it could certainly absorb, the light seemingly twisting and scattering around the blade, almost as if it was made of smoke, but one blink from Rin dispelled that illusion, returning to its original solid form. Still, it seemed to make the light undulate around it, even though her eyes were telling her it was solid and that the blade was merely too dull to reflect light.
"What is that?"
Rin whispered, her attention focused on the blade that prompted an inexplicable sense of dread deep in her gut. Even as she spoke, sweat rolled down her back, the chilly night air suddenly dropping in temperature.
Gray struggled to keep hold of the knife and not drop it out of disgust and physical reflex, her gag reflex triggering the moment it was unwrapped as a horrid stench hit her nose, before it suddenly disappeared, leaving her stomach to roil and turn in confusion. Even with the sealing strips of fabric preventing direct contact, she could still feel something akin to the sensation of an acid burn where it rested on her palms, the pain throbbing as it spread bit by bit, cell by cell.
"Ngh, it's a, it's a knife filled with the presence that inhabits the Grail."
The doctor had taken a certain amount of soil and processed it until he had the concentrated grudges, then he had stuck a piece of metal into the shapeless black mud and soaked it there, before finally constructing it into a knife, in order to test the capabilities of the curses that had caught his interest.
It took Gray an enormous amount of effort to push down the bile rising up her throat, her face turning even paler than it was until she looked like a ghost, her forehead damp from sweat as her body started trembling. As if reacting to her physical distress, the blade seemed to start to emit black smoke, the stinging pain on her palms intensifying.
*swish*
Assassin's hand darted out in a blur, pinching the end of the white fabric to wrap the knife with a flick of the wrist, the fabric twisting around the knife until it was securely wrapped up, and then she grabbed the box on Gray's waist and deposited it inside, ignoring the black patches that had suddenly appeared on the originally pure white cloth, and closed the box's lid securely.
Gray swayed to the left once the knife was sealed, her legs buckling beneath her as they almost gave up, but she managed to catch herself in time, with Assassin's arm wrapped around her waist to support her as well.
"That's, *ha*, that's the reason why we decided to investigate the Grail."
Rin gulped, her hair still stiff as the goosebumps all over her body refused to go down. Despite its plain appearance and underwhelming size, the knife had been enough to almost make her shoot a Gandr at it by instinct, and seeing its effect on Gray was enough to convince her on how dangerous it was. Even just by looking it from a few meters away was enough to make her feel uncomfortable, and she could only imagine how Gray had felt when she held the knife.
Still, she hadn't completely lost her wits, and she could tell that the knife was endowed with some kind of curse or grudge that gave it those properties, though it was absurdly strong to be able to influence the two of them like this. Just being in its presence was already enough to make them react physically to it.
"That was just a knife stained by the residue left behind in the last war by the entity we suspect is currently inhabiting the Greater Grail." Gray finally caught her breath, and continued talking.
It was just a stain?
That was an alarming thought. Rin wondered how she had missed something so big like this, which was literally lying right under her nose in the lands she was supposed to watch over as the Second Owner.
"We also suspect that the reason anti-heroes from the Throne have been able to appear is because of the entity in the Grail that has corrupted it's functions, and it could also affect the final wish granted by the Grail when the final victor appears."
Finally, Gray looked in the direction of the forlorn, abandoned park erected in the Shinto district.
"We also discovered records of a great fire here, and after investigating the area and taking samples, we compared the residual curses in the area to the knife and found that they were almost identical."
Rin's face turned somber as she remembered the tragedy that happened in the last war.
Gray turned back to her.
"In order to prevent further large-scale incidents from happening, we hope to work together with you to uncover the truth behind the Greater Grail. Will you become our ally?"
Rin lowered her face to the floor, her mind running through the implications of what she had just seen, and the potential dangers it posed to the war, as well as the risks and benefits of allying with Gray.
A moment later, she looked back up at Gray and held out her hand.
"I will become your ally to reveal the problem behind the Grail, since I was negligent in my responsibility as the Second Owner and failed to discover this."
Gray shook her hand in return, her pale white hand brushing against the delicate fingers of Rin's.
"I look forward to working together in the future."
She gave a smile of relief, glad they wouldn't have to fight.
Rin wondered why she was smiling so brightly at her, the smallest hint of a blush entering her face.
"W-well, we can reconvene at a later date to discuss the alliance and our opponents. Until next time."
Archer picked her up in a princess embrace, leaping the roof in one massive bound and gliding through the night sky, high above the sleeping populace.