Kariya groaned as he roused from sleep, rubbing his face as he did so. Instead of feeling soft flesh, he felt a hardened, metallic palm. He almost panicked before remembering the aftermath of yesterday's battle where his hands had mutated after using Monstrous Strength. Nevertheless, the shocking sensation jolted him awake, causing him to sit up as his groggy and exhausted mind adjusted, sharpening the blurry world around him.
He blinked.
This wasn't anything he'd expected to wake up to. His clothes, those tattered, battle worn, sewer filth stained hoodie and pants, had been completely repaired. He was sitting on a king size bed, its mattress a clean, soft velvet that sunk like marshmallow, making him feel like he was suspended in an air of comforting warmth.
He got off the bed, his muscles sending quakes of pain, dull but persistent, pulsing in so many spots of his body that he felt like his whole body was one giant bruise. He grimaced, but adjusted in short order - the pain was a pinprick compared to what his worms could dish out anyway.
His feet landed on beige carpet, so well groomed that it almost shone. The room around him was the epitome of Western luxury - the type he'd only really seen in movies.
"How wonderful it is to see you all fixed up," said Watcher, manifesting in front of Kariya. Now that he was right in front of Watcher, he could appreciate his servant's height: Watcher was like a shadow cast by a tree, looming more than a meter above him.
"Watcher, what happened?" asked Kariya. He could recall that he had blacked out when an Assassin had slammed a dagger flat on the back of his head. What he was curious about was how he had survived.
Watcher clasped its hands together. "Oh, my Master, how brilliant, how valiant, how utterly heroic you were! Standing firm against the endless tide of evil, you wielded your holy sword and fought till death was one finger away from taking you!"
Kariya clicked his tongue. "I don't need any of that. Tell me what happened."
Watcher landed a grasping hand on his shoulder. "When your consciousness faded, I had almost believed you dead, but alas, Fate is no match for you! A rule-breaking Master with four servants, bloodthirsty and mad for the Grail, annihilated the Assassins attacking you."
Watcher placed a second hand on Kariya's other shoulder, facing him with that shadow blotted, darkness patched circle that it called its face.
"I, as your most loyal servant, the minstrel to tell your legend, saw that this Master, so awash with greed, would have immediately torn you apart if he had seen that you were a Master. So I used the one ability unique to me, and transported you away."
"And what ability would that be?" asked Kariya, wanting to get a better understanding of his Servant's capabilities. He hadn't had the time yesterday to check his Servant's status, he had just believed that Watcher was useless based on its own words.
Watcher was silent for a few seconds.
It laughed. The laugh had a deep, guttural reverb to it, distorting it so much that Kariya couldn't help but shudder when it assaulted his ears.
"Forgive my voice, I am just feeling so excited about recent developments," said Watcher.
"Your inspiring display of heroism yesterday was touching," Watcher continued. "So touching, that it lets me now unveil one of my abilities. I used a Skill, my Master. It is called Independent Manifestation."
Kariya crinkled his forehead. "Independent Manifestation?"
Watcher let go of Kariya's shoulders. "Think of it simply as teleportation."
Kariya nodded. "What are the rest of your abilities?"
The next instant, he found Watcher's finger resting on his lips, its sickled claw prickling the tip of his nose.
"Such bold questions, my Master. I have a permanent ability to conceal my status to any Masters, even you," said Watcher. "Alas, that ability is not mine to de-activate. I am quite the shy one, you see. However, if you progress as a hero, as the servant Berserker, then I, too, grow with you, revealing my abilities as your strength grows."
Kariya nodded only after Watcher's finger receded.
"And the sword?" he asked. There was no question that the sword, despite him being an amateur with it, was an incredible tool. With it, maybe, just maybe, he could face up to Tokiomi.
Watcher shoved a hand into its cloak, its absurdly long arm disappearing in black folds like it was sucked into a different dimension, and drew out the longsword.
"I would never deign to leave my Master's Noble Phantasm lying in some dirty sewer," said Watcher.
Kariya took the sword in his grip, turning it over in his hands, feeling his growing familiarity with the blade's weight. He rested the sword on the bed, and noticed with a sidelong glance that the inkblot of black that decorated the blade's cross guard had expanded, almost painting over the gold.
Odd, but unimportant.
"So," said Kariya, turning to face Watcher again. "Where are we?"
"My teleportation was much too unreliable for an outstanding Master such as you," said Watcher. "I warped you away onto the riverbank, and from there I carried your body, that heroic, battle-scarred body, quite the distance, passing over modern landscape into a forest until I found this mansion."
"Mansion?" wondered Kariya. He'd never recalled a mansion in the area. He tried tracing what path Watcher had taken. If Watcher encountered forest, then that meant he had walked straight East from the Southernmost point of Mion river. In that forest was-
"The haunted house?" said Kariya.
Watcher shrugged. "It does not seem haunted to me. Rather comfortable and luxurious, no? Fitting for a hero of your caliber."
There was something important about this place. Kariya knew that. Yet he couldn't find what it was. The harder he searched in his mind, the faster that memory fled. He looked at Watcher, and the memory escaped, fleeing into the dark depths of oblivion where memory went to die.
"My Master, it seems that you are still struggling with your wounds. You will find a meal befitting a hero downstairs," said Watcher.
Kariya sighed. Breakfast would be more productive than trying to catch a random memory. Thinking of a meal brought his hunger, which had been buried down by survival instincts and adrenaline, to surface. He hadn't had a proper meal in a while. A day? Two?
He didn't know, and that in of itself was a worrying thought. He needed to eat to pick his energy back up, to give his new body the material it needed to evolve.
He walked towards the room's door, an oak masterpiece lacquered to a polished shine, and opened it. A sudden, curious thought nagged him.
"Wait, you can cook?" he asked.
Watcher tilted its head, its tophat fighting gravity and drooping down. "Oh, was that a surprise? Of course! Like I have said, I have all the tools needed to fashion you into the finest there is."
Kariya nodded, and took a step out. He breathed in the woody, almost antique smell of the home, feeling it fill his lungs without scratching pain in his throat. He took another step, appreciating the lack of a limp. He stretched, feeling all of his muscles working, albeit weighted by pain, like he had underwent an intensive workout.
He was leaps and bounds ahead of his past self, that pain addled, half broken thing he had called his body. And he had Watcher to thank for this. Despite Watcher's oddities, despite the mysteries still surrounding it, he couldn't help but feel grateful.
"It's a bit late to say this, but thank you, Watcher," said Kariya.
Watcher bowed.
"By the way, Watcher," said Kariya.
"Yes?"
"Doesn't someone own this house? I heard it was abandoned, but seeing how well its been kept, I doubt it."
"Don't worry about that, my dear Master. I have dealt with all trivialities. Anything that happens in this house will all be to forward your growth as a hero."
Kariya shrugged, walking out and closing the door behind him.
Tohsaka Tokiomi was the quintessential magus. He was the type of person to put family name above family members. He considered the 'Tohsaka' part of his name infinitely more important than the trivial 'Tokiomi' part. And above all, his stubborn determination, as potent as a starving dog's grip on a bone, let him stick to his personal code with an iron will.
That sheer determination let him, born with mediocre potential, achieve a respected status through hard work. And it was that status that allowed him to proudly be elegant. He had earned the right to be elegant, after all, putting in a hundred times more work than anyone else of his status.
Elegance in everything - that was his motto.
Yet there was one field where that motto failed him: modern technology.
Tokiomi made huge, exaggerated turns with the steering wheel in front of him, as if he didn't trust that his car, a beaten up rental, could actually move with just a slight prompting. He cringed as the car's wheels screeched as they tried performing an absurd turn.
The car behind him honked, like it was mocking him. He ignored it. The complaints of the rabble were nothing to him. Instead, he practically crushed the acceleration, zooming through a red light
The annoying whistle of a police siren sounded nearby, and he shook his head. Commoner rules were truly indecipherable. It wasn't like he couldn't drive. Aoi had described his driving as 'acceptable', after all. It didn't matter that right after his life threatening display of skills, she had suggested that she take over any and all matters involving driving.
He sighed. The real reason he couldn't drive was because obvious. This rental car was nothing more then mobile scrap metal. He couldn't drive around with his luxury model since that would bring about too much attention, but he truly believed that if he was behind the wheel of a luxury car, he would perform far better instead of crashing something worth far more.
A few close crashes and hypnotized police officers later, and Tokiomi found himself in front of a forest. He parked his car on someone's porch and got out, reading a letter written with so many curves and flairs that half the paper seemed to be made of squiggles.
The Edelfelts had contacted Tokiomi, complaining about one of their inactive mansions being broken into. Despite not being occupied for seventy years, the Edelfelts still poured in money to keep the house running, even hiring one of the cleaners for the Grail War as a gardener and house-cleaner. Tokiomi could understand that sentiment. Maintaining one's property was a sign of dignified elegance.
What Tokiomi couldn't understand was how anyone had broken into the house. Any magus that could fight past the guardian ghosts, dozens of unique traps, and jewel golems would almost be deserving of the mansion. From the letter, it was apparent both the defenses and the familiars had been dismantled by an attacker. What seemed more probable to him was that the Edelfelts were trying to save face, and that the reality was that after being neglected for so long, the house's magical attributes had shut down.
He strolled through the forest, his ruby tipped cane, the most powerful mystic code in his arsenal, resting in his hand. The Einzberns had their own castle, and Waver Velvet was still living in the Mackenzie household, but he couldn't discount the possibility that one of the Masters had broken in, even if that chance neared zero.
It was more likely that some robber had sneaked in after seeing an unoccupied mansion. Even so, Tokiomi did have his duties as the Second Owner of this land. He was obligated to investigate the potential of a random Magus coming in and trying to set up an illicit workshop.
Several minutes later, and Tokiomi found himself in a clearing. In front of him stood one of the Edelfelt mansions that had been used in the past Grail War - a three story tall red brick cube lined with rows of large windows. Ivy, thick and tangled, curled around one of the mansion's brick walls, layering its faded, aged red with a lively green.
It was a bit too antique in design for Tokiomi's tastes, but it was a respected family's choice, so he acknowledged it. He wasn't here to judge house design anyway.
Tokiomi strutted forward, then hit what felt like an invisible wall. When his body made contact with this barrier, a ripple coursed through it, making it visible for just a second before fading. In that second, he glimpsed what appeared to be a spider web pattern.
Tokiomi stroked his goatee. A rogue magus? An uncouth one too, setting up a boundary field and workshop without even notifying the Second Owner.
"Intensive Einascherung"
The ruby topping his staff turned ten shades brighter, shining not red, but hot orange like the sun. A stream of flame, wriggling like a snake, lunged from the gem, slamming into the boundary field. The flame thinned as it spread across the defensive dome, forming a coat of writhing heat so hot that the air around it distorted.
As expected, the flames burned out on the dome, shrinking as they hogged all the oxygen around them to kindle their unnatural heat. Tokiomi hadn't hoped for the flames to melt the barrier, all he needed was a clear line of sight. He scrutinized the barrier, now visible under the damaging stress of fire.
"Incredible," Tokiomi remarked, watching the spider web dome like a child absorbed with a movie. Even if he had cast Intensive Einascherung a hundred times, he doubted anything would change. The caliber of mystery used for this defense was easily in the realm of high thaumaturgy, perhaps even above that.
Whoever had constructed this defensive web in the span of a single day without alerting anyone would be a mighty magus indeed. A magus of this status meant that Tokiomi would have to attempt contact through an official invitation to the Tohsaka estate for a cordial discussion of property rights.
Tokiomi turned around, planning to have Kirei make immediate arrangements so that he could tie loose ends together before scheduling his meeting with the Einzberns at the church for an alliance. His brows raised when he found himself face to face with a man shaped piece of the night. The man wore a jet black Armani coat over a royal purple silk shirt, with a shining sable tie curled around his neck. Spider black dress pants and shoes, polished to a sparkle, rounded out the man's attire.
The man stood with ramrod straight posture, his broad shoulders stiff and imposing. His face, hidden behind the shade of a broad rimmed tophat, had native African features. Tokiomi performed an elegant bow, his hand flourishing towards the man in invitation.
"I presume you are the Magus who has established this workshop?" asked Tokiomi.
The man nodded. "That would be so. What business do you have snooping around my territory?"
Tokiomi cut his bow and met the man's gaze, which was a bit difficult to do considering how tall the man was - he must have neared two and a half meters in height.
"I am the Second Owner of this land. I am afraid you require my permission to set up a workshop."
"Oh? My apologies," said the man. "You see, I am not directly affiliated with the Mage's Association and its traditions. Forgive my ignorance."
Tokiomi waved the apology away. "There is no need for forgiveness. We are both Magi, no? Let us settle this matter with elegance - perhaps over some wine."
The man smiled, and so did Tokiomi.
"If it is wine you speak of," said the man, grinning with a flash of white. "Then I invite you to try from my collection." He pointed towards the Edelfelt mansion.
Tokiomi hesitated, calculating the chances of him taking a knife to the back.
The man shook his head. "Don't worry. Setting up this barrier has taken almost all of my magical energy. I have nothing to fight you with, not to mention I do not want to make the Association an enemy."
Reasonable. Tokiomi nodded.
"Then let me lead the way," said the man. "I would be a failure of a host if I could not make your stay the most comfortable it can be."
Tokiomi watched as the man stepped forward, tapping the barrier, causing a doorway shaped space to open up. The man walked through it, and bid Tokiomi to follow with an eager wave of his hand. This man was elegant, and Tokiomi could appreciate that.
When Tokiomi passed through the doorway, the barrier reformed, the spider web weaving again as it closed off the mansion from the rest of the world. He watched the whole process, intrigued by the artistry of magecraft required to fashion such an intricate boundary field.
"I must say," observed Tokiomi. "This boundary field is superb."
Only silence heard that compliment. Tokiomi turned around, confused. Nobody was there. His grip on his staff tightened, the ruby glowing in alarm. He thought of his magical trigger - a lit match - and opened his circuits, feeling pain, hot and burning, spread through his body, working him into a light sweat.
He cursed his naivete, but only for a moment. He had Archer, after all. The King of Heroes would need less than a minute to reach his side, and then no Magus on this whole green and blue earth could touch him. His command seals emitted a low shine, prepared for usage if the situation worsened.
The man appeared on the mansion's rooftop, looking down at an unaware Tokiomi. He undid one of the buttons of his coat, and his whole body exploded into a dancing swirl of shadows. When the vortex settled, Watcher stood there, tapping its fingers together as it watched Tokiomi so tense with anxiety.
"Round two," said Watcher as it snapped its fingers.
Tokiomi pressed a sweaty hand to his head. None of his mental communications were going through to Gilgamesh. Something was jamming his link with the King of Heroes, but even when he used a quick divination spell, he couldn't find the source.
He balled his hand, the one with the command seals, into a tight fist.
Kariya gulped down his food without chewing. In part, because he was hungry, but mostly because he doubted it was edible if he could taste it. Watcher's idea of a "meal fit for heroes" was just a big slab of fire roasted meat. Roasted might be too tame of a word. Toasted was more like it.
Some parts of the meat block were chewy and raw, others were so thoroughly toasted that he was eating more charcoal than flesh. It was like Watcher had no idea how a human being ate and cooked the meat as an afterthought. The fact that the meat was presented on a jewel encrusted, ebony wood dining table highlighted how out of place the 'meal' was.
Kariya still ate, tearing chunks from his meal with his hands, now clawed just for that purpose, and stuffed them into his mouth. With his hands as they were now, he couldn't use cutlery. Either they'd snap the moment he tried putting strength into his fingers, or his claws would get in the way.
He felt Watcher materialize behind him.
"Great food," lied Kariya.
"Thank you Master, but I have terrible news," said Watcher, the rattle in its voice louder than usual. "We are under attack."
Kariya bolted to the front entrance, a sandpaper smoothed, cedar doubledoor, and pressed his eye against its dark glass peephole.
"Tokiomi!?"
Kariya waved an open hand at Watcher.
"My sword."
Watcher drew the sword out of its cloak again, and handed it to Kariya. The cheap hoodie donning knight demanding his weapon from his demonic squire: the whole exchange had an air of absurdity about it.
Kariya's hand closed around the door handle, and he pulled, opening one half of the doubledoor while tearing the handle straight off. He threw the handle aside and leaped out the door, sprinting towards Tokiomi with his sword overhead.
He saw Tokiomi blink hard, as if he was trying to shake away a hallucination. Seeing that usually reserved, rock solid attitude quiver, Kariya felt energized, his steps growing wider and wider as he closed the distance to his mortal enemy.
Kariya didn't react when Tokiomi exhaled, his tense shoulders settling into ease and his blue eyes regaining their elegant, composed stare. He didn't react when Tokiomi pointed the jeweled cane at him, the ruby generating a swirling helix of crimson around it.
"Feuer sammelt. Asmodeus Anrufe. Flammende nova," Tokiomi chanted in high speed, his words mixing into a stream of incoherent garbling.
Kariya felt the wind knocked out of his body as a mass of fire and wind exploded like a grenade right in front of his chest, roaring out a deafening crack as it blasted him straight into the brick wall of the Edelfelt mansion. He dropped to his knees, but did not fall. He would never fall in front of this man again.
He clutched his chest, the front of his hoodie incinerated into nothingness. His hands had a metallic coldness that soothed his scorched skin, and he rested there, taking shallow breaths, eyeing Tokiomi with a vengeful glare.
"Absurd," said Tokiomi, his brows furrowed. "That was a three verse spell, an explosion calling on the mystery of the flame demon Asmodeus, and yet all it did was knock you off your feet."
Kariya smiled as he trudged forward, his steps slow but precise.
"Nothing you do will hurt me now, Tokiomi." Kariya pointed his sword at the Magus. "You lost the chance to kill me, and now I'm here to repay the favor."
The glow on Tokiomi's command seals dimmed. He evidently saw no need for them against an opponent of Kariya's caliber. The Magus shook his head while drawing something on the grassy ground with his cane.
"I thought I had taught you a severe enough lesson," said Tokiomi. "But it looks like I was too lenient. Was the pain of burning alive not enough to show you the errors of your ways?"
Kariya's breaths were regular and steady now. His charred chest was healing, its burned skin sloughing off to reveal pink, fresh skin that quickly hardened into the indomitable armor that guarded his insides.
"Error? My ways?" Kariya spat. "Don't make me laugh, Tokiomi. The only one here who needs their head checked is you."
He charged again, his steps faster and stronger than before.
Tokiomi lifted his cane, revealing the magic circle he had drawn, an intricate pattern of interlocking circles. Willing magical energy into it, he chanted.
"Schmelze. Erodieren. Unterbrechung," said Tokiomi, each word expanding the magic circle until it had expanded a dozen meters wide, its bright red lines engulfing the green lawn in a sheen of apple-red light. "Let the hellish fires of damnation and the righteous flames of heaven join together."
Kariya was close now, just a few meters away from lopping off Tokiomi's arrogant head. Tokiomi felt a vast amount of magical energy leaving him as he readied his spell. He tapped the ground with his cane, and the ground melted.
It melted so fast that Kariya sunk like a concrete block, engulfed in the whitish-orange moat of molten rock. He was waist deep in heat incarnate. He flailed around, trying to keep himself from going under, his movements sluggish as the huge weight of the earth was still compacted in its molten form. He looked up at Tokiomi, floating in the air with a spell, and knew he couldn't reach him.
The liquid rock seared Kariya's skin, sending plumes of smoke billowing from his charring flesh. He did not melt. His skin, hardening every time it healed, was now reinforced to the point that it did not turn into an organic goop under the molten embrace.
As long as Kariya could move, he would. The pain was enormous, ringing in his head like a hundred sirens, but that alarm pushed him, giving him the raw, berserk determination to try and swim out of the pool of scorching minerals.
"I did not imagine you would fall this low," said Tokiomi, watching Kariya's morphed hands splashing about. "Even lower than before. You've willingly allowed yourself to be a lab rat for a Magus's experiments?"
Was that how Tokiomi explained his new-found power? Kariya laughed in his head, as opening his mouth now meant swallowing white-hot rock. He pushed through the sea of of lava, his flesh liquefying and hardening from regeneration in an endless cycle.
"You turn your back on your family's traditions, and now you use the Matou bloodline's absorption trait to take in foul, foreign magecraft," Tokiomi proclaimed, his voice stern and lecturing. "Just how far into heresy can you go, Matou Kariya?"
Tokiomi aimed his cane at Kariya.
"Intensive Einäscherung"
A serpentine length of flame poured from the cane, wreathing Kariya's upper body in a fluttering coat of fire. Kariya didn't care. He kept walking, each of his steps slow as they struggled against the thick, heavy tides of lava until he finally reached the magic circle's end. He pulled himself up, out of the pit of lava, and dragged himself onto the lawn.
The fireball did nothing to his upper body aside from turning his clothes into cinders. His skin was so durable that the flames actually burned out on his body, unable to use the unyielding flesh as fuel. His lower body, however, was a different story. Having been exposed to the lava pit, it was just a mass of bare muscle, pink and fleshy with strips of visible bone poking out. Layer by layer, his titanium skin had been stripped away until all that was left were his soft muscles, which now sputtered ablaze as smoldering molten rock plastered on his legs caught oxygen in the air.
Kariya pulled himself forward with his arms, his sword still in his hand. His exterior might have been fine, but his innards had boiled under that insane heat, leaving him functionally dead, only moving forward through sheer force of will. As long as his brain was intact, as long as he could muster up the goal of "I must kill Tokiomi Tohsaka", he could move.
But thoughts alone wouldn't win battles. Kariya's lower body would take several minutes to recover. In duels where a few seconds of lapse meant death, minutes meant a firm death sentence. His brain, muddled by the smoke and heat, could only dance around the past, bringing up hated memories of Tokiomi as fuel to keep his life's fire kindled. He was essentially unconscious, hanging onto neural activity with threads of hate.
Tokiomi hovered in the air, feeling air currents flowing in just the right arrangements to suspend him. It was like being in zero gravity, and controlling the spell was similar to an astronaut mastering movements in the weightlessness of space. It was evident from his ease of manner that he was a master in this craft.
He started chanting rapid fire, loosing an endless stream of single action spells. Black sigils manifested on Kariya's body with each chant, racking up until there was more black than skin on his naked body.
"That's enough."
Tokiomi stopped chanting, jolting his body towards the location of the voice. It was the same Magus from before. Standing upside down from the top of the spider web dome, like he was stuck to it. Somehow, the tophat managed to stay on the man's head.
"Conversion, eh?" commented the man, pointing at Kariya's body with his chin. "I'm assuming you were going to convert those low rank curses into something more explosive?"
Tokiomi raised his eyebrows. This Magus had exceptional insight - he was not to be taken lightly.
"I realize that you have invested quite a bit of time molding your subject," said Tokiomi, directing his cane at Kariya. "But isn't it quite unreasonable for you to expect me to spare that abomination after he attacked me so brazenly?"
The man laughed. "Indeed, that is true. But after pouring in so much work to make the strongest Master possible, I cannot help but try and save my new familiar."
"Master, you say? So you came here to participate in this ritual?"
"That's right. I couldn't get any command seals, as you would have expected. So I had to settle with helping a proxy."
Tokiomi cocked his head. "While it is true that Matou Kariya retains his command seals, his Berserker-class Servant has already perished. A Magus of your caliber could have easily stolen the seals."
"That wouldn't be satisfying on my own end," responded the man.
"Hm? What does 'your end' entail?
"I am a creator above all else. This web you see around you should be proof. What I want is to create the greatest puppet in existence."
Tokiomi nodded. "I see now. You want to test the limits of your Magecraft, using Matou Kariya as your puppet familiar to see how well he performs."
"That is correct," said the man as he rubbed his hands together. "What greater testing ground is there than a battlefield? And what greater battlefield would there be other than the Holy Grail War?"
"Your ambitions are admirable," responded Tokiomi. "However, I cannot risk Matou Kariya becoming a thorn in my side yet again. As the Second Owner of this land and participant in this ritual, I must disassemble your puppet."
The man held up a hand towards Tokiomi, bidding him wait. "Perhaps this can be settled with a deal. An exchange, if you will. I will offer my part of the deal first. Here-" He pointed behind Tokiomi.
Tokiomi turned around, his circuits still open and prepared against stealth attacks. He saw a video projected on the dome. It was a short one, just a few seconds long, but its contents had him holding his hands to prevent them from shaking.
"One Master controlling four Servants? But how?" asked Tokiomi, his mouth agape.
"I don't know," responded the man. "However, I have managed to bug them with a surveillance familiar that even Servants will have difficulty probing out. I trust further information would be useful to you, no?"
"That would be true," said Tokiomi, his mind wandering as he tried figuring out how this massive anomaly had slipped under his and Risei's radars. "What do you want in return?"
The man held up a finger. "First, I want you to spare my familiar here, of course."
Tokiomi nodded.
Two fingers held up. "Second, I want a guarantee that your Servant, the King of Heroes, will never target my familiar or even care about his or my actions."
Silence.
After a few seconds, Tokiomi nodded again.
"However," said Tokiomi, "At the end of the ritual, when only the King of Heroes stands strong, I must have Matou Kariya destroyed. Matou Kariya also may not directly clash with me or anyone affiliated under me for the remaining duration of the war. That is the only way I can be assured that he will not interfere with me in the crucial final moments of this ritual."
"Accepted," said the man. "Make exceptions for spider shaped familiars in your estate's boundary field. You will be receiving reports of my spying soon."
The man waved his hand, and a doorway shaped cut in the barrier opened behind Tokiomi. The man jumped from the top of the barrier, shooting straight down before flipping and landing on his feet, right next to Kariya's prone body.
Before Tokiomi left, he needed to ensure the deal's validity.
"Should we sign Geasses? Perhaps exchange a blood seal?"
The man shooed the suggestion away. "No such need. You are the one with negotiating power here, no? The threat of the King of Heroes will be more than enough to keep me from breaching the terms of this deal, while all I can do is stop giving you information. I do not wish to force an unfavorable contract with you - I did say that I would make things easy for you as your host, no?"
Tokiomi smiled.
"Then farewell. If I could have that report before the sunset, that would be splendid."
He left, deactivating his levitation spell, landing on the soft forest floor and strolling into the thick of the forest.
Watcher ripped off its disguise, sending it scattering into grains of shadow that dissolved in the wind. It gathered Kariya into its arms and walked back into the house, humming a pleasant and upbeat tone.