Other Harem? To be honest, I'm not a harem fan. I respect the situation in Campione and the existence of Godou's harem, but in fact, I am quite uncomfortable with this (especially about his relationship with Athena...). Then I certainly will not create an additional harem.
Campione: Novel or anime? My main inspiration is anime. I know the novels a bit, but I am far from having read them all... actually I'm not very motivated.
What is Zero Dark? Read this chapter.
Are other Servants going to appear? Yes, read this chapter.
Does the Campioneverse have its own Moon Cell? No.
Why hasn't Shirou had a chance to shine yet? Because three days earlier he still needed help to walk. Because he is not able to use UBW. Because he has balance disorders etc... After his death at the end of Heaven Feel and his resurrection, it is quite understandable that he cannot (yet) fight at full power.
Now, you have to understand that Shirou's difficulty in adapting to his new body is just a scriptwriting excuse to keep him (temporarily) in a supporting character role because the first Arc (the arrival in the Campioneverse, the meeting between the goddesses of Fateverse and the Campiones) is centered on Godou and the Mesopotamian goddesses. I didn't want Shirou stealing the spotlight from them.
But, before continuing, ask yourself this question: What would Fate Stay Night (the original story) have looked like if Shirou had had a complete mastery of Tracing since the beginning? He would not have summoned Saber. He would not have interacted with Rin. And he would have foolishly confronted the Servants one after the other. There would have been no opportunity for the reader to identify with Shirou through his interactions with Rin and Saber or to see him in difficulty and therefore sympathize with him.
I don't like One Punch Man... The author created a satiric manga that readers did not understand and took to the first degree. And I certainly won't write my own version of this manga.
Sefar
In early spring, it was still cold in the mountains. In this splendid landscape, the shrine was on top of a long staircase of stone slabs that ended on a red wood Torii. Surrounded by a tiled scalloped wall, the shrine consisted of three low wooden and rice paper buildings surrounding a central esplanade decorated with stone lanterns.
No one ever came to this sparsely populated area west of Mount Fuji. As the crow flew, the shrine was not very far from Tokyo, but it could only be accessed by a winding road that meandered long between hills covered with thick forests.
However, since the morning, large sedans with smoked windows were driving up the road and parked in the parking lot at the foot of the stairs.
Men and women were getting out of cars. These important people climbed up the stair, escorted by bodyguards who were recognizable by their dark glasses and earwigs,
There, they were greeted by several Hime-Miko dressed in a white and green version of the traditional Maiden Shrine outfit. The newcomers were then guided to a meeting room where the VIPs already arrived and were waiting for them.
Seated in seiza on cushions arranged along the walls, they waited while discussing unimportant things: quarrels between services, modification of an ordinance, or a regulation.
From time to time, they looked with a little concern towards the sliding doors decorated with a painting showing cherry blossoms, a bridge, and travelers in kimonos. When the doors opened to let in four old men, the silence was immediate and all bowed respectfully.
These were the heads of the Four Families: Seishuuin, Kuhoutsuka, Renjou, Sayanomiya. It was their alliance that led to the birth of the History Compilation Committee in the Meiji era.
The co-leaders of the Committee sat on four cushions placed on the stage and one of them clapped his hands:
"All right, it's time to start. Kaoru Sayanomiya, your report."
The old man had addressed an individual who looked like a handsome young man with delicate features and red hair dressed in a business suit with a tie. Actually 'he' was... a woman... member of one of the Four Families. She was the Tokyo-branch chief. Like all local leaders, her task was to protect the inhabitants under her responsibility from supernatural threats and even to hide the simple existence of magic from the ordinary population. But in the last few months, her workload had increased drastically... as the Japanese Campione lived in Tokyo.
After coughing in her fist Kaoru began to recount events from the prediction of Yuri Mariya to the clash between the three Campiones and the three goddesses.
Kaoru Sayanomiya was finishing her report.
"... and the fight ended like this."
The first old man nodded.
"So the situation is under control?"
Kaoru nodded her head.
"For the moment... Seishuuin-sama. Goddesses and Campiones are always gathered in the Tsugaru Onsen. So we can only say that the crisis was over once they separated. All we have to do is pray that there is no more incidents."
There was a murmur of approving voices. Indeed, that was the most to fear.
The head of the Seishuuin family rubbed his chin.
"What are the casualties?"
"Thanks to the rapid response of Amajkasu-san, residents were evacuated from nearby homes and even part of the city of Kuroishi. What proved to be an unnecessary precaution, the goddesses and the Campiones... with the exception of Her Excellency Luo Hao... showed restraint and fought mostly in deserted areas. In fact, the only casualties are members of the Akiyama Study Circle. Unfortunately, none survived... there were 23 people there."
Some members of the Committee showed signs of annoyance or sadness. Failing to protect their fellow citizens was a mistake that left them in shame.
"What about material damage?"
"The destruction of the Circle headquarters as well as a tourist site, the 'Flower Hill'... " she paused briefly while several members of the Committee sighed about the 7th Campione's mania to destroy the tourist sites... "and several hundred hectares of forest burned, not to mention a meteoritic crater."
The members of the History Compilation Committee nodded. Yesterday, a meteorite hit Japan. That's what the general public learned from the event. The control of the media... and the use of hypnosis had prevented the truth from spreading.
"All right, Sayanomiya-san, thank you for your report."
While the young redhead bowed politely, her grandfather spoke.
"I think the most important thing right now is to learn more about the goddesses Ishtar and Ereshkigal."
Several members of the Committee approved.
One of the members had a file handed over to him by one of his subordinates. He opened it and displayed before him four almost empty files.
"This is what we have learned in the four days since the arrival of the goddesses."
He showed the photos taken discreetly the day before.
"They look like twin sisters, except for the color of their hair. One of the mortals accompanying them called the goddess Ishtar 'Rin'. We think this is the name of the mortal she occupies the body. Given where the goddess Ishtar first appeared, her physical appearance, and her name, we can assume that her avatar is a Japanese late teen. We have begun research to find this 'Rin'... for the time being without success."
The head of the Renjou family thinks for a moment before speaking.
"What about the mortals who accompany them? Maybe we need to focus on them."
The man bowed deeply.
"You're right, Renjou-sama."
He showed two other files, first pointing to the young man with red hair.
"Shirou Emiya, 17, is recovering from an injury, suffering from coordination problems, but he is certainly a skilled swordsman, archer, and mage. His school of magic is unknown, but he created in front of witnesses a bow and some magical swords whose nature is probably ectoplasmic. We assume that he was recently saved from death by the goddess Ishtar... a deduction based on what Emiya-san said to the knight Liliana Kranjcar. Only..."
He hesitated.
"We did not find any 'Shirou Emiya' in Japan. There is no record of a young man with that name, age, and physical appearance."
"His white wick is probably unnatural," remarked a member of the Committee.
"That's right, you mentioned a serious accident. It's probably a sequel," said another business manager.
"That's what I thought," replied the first man, "but with or without a white wick, I found no Emiya Shirou in Japan."
The head of the Kuhoutsuka family seemed intrigued.
"I'm much more surprised by the magic he used. I guess no one has ever seen anything like that?"
The members of the Committee exchanged glances, sighed, and shook their heads.
"I'm afraid not, Kuhoutsuka-sama."
The old man smiled ironically.
"Oh, an entire school of magic operating on an unknown principle and allowing destroying a Divine Authority... and no one has ever heard of it." He turned to the other heads of families. "I doubt that the development of such extraordinary magic could have happened in Japan without us noticing..."
The heads of the Seishuuin, Renjou, and Sayanomiya families nodded. Kuhoutsuka spoke again.
"What about the teen girl accompanying the esteemed Ereshkigal?"
With a gesture of his hand, the anonymous member of the Committee pointed to a picture of a teenager with a face without expression. She had long caramel-colored hair cut into fringe above her eyes... eyes that had the same caramel shade.
"Hakuno Kishinami, 16 ... probably mage... but no one saw her use magic. She bears the title of 'Sovereign of the Moon' and has a powerful magic ring called 'the Regalia'. From what we have learned, the goddess Ereshkigal and Hakuno-chan met... on the Moon."
Despite the movement of disbelief among the other members of the Committee, the man continued to speak.
"I got this information from Black Prince Alec. I understand this sounds strange to you, even... hard to believe, but that's what one Campione said. According to the Nobleman of God Speed, Hakuno Kishinami received this ring as a reward for some kind of ordeal organized by a lunar god."
One of the members made an ironic statement.
"All in all, I am not surprised that Black Prince Alec was able to inform us about this... Regalia."
Campione's irrepressible appetite for magical trinkets was known to all the magical associations of the planet, after all.
"Yes, but... "replied Kuhoutsuka hesitantly, "what do we know about Kishinami-san?"
The Committee's agent appeared to deflate like a balloon.
"Nothing, no girl with that name and that physical appearance exists in Japan."
The debates of the History Compilation Committee were going around in circles. Members were getting into a fight.
"... well, at least we're sure. The goddesses come from southern Japan. They first appear near Ushuki-shi on the island of Kyushu."
"But not the mortals, the goddesses were alone when they arrived. The reports of Yuri Mariya and Ena Sheishuuin confirm it."
"Indeed, Shirou Emiya and Hakuno Kishinami joined them before the goddesses went to Kuroishi."
"So the avatars of the goddesses come from southern Japan, and the mortals that accompany the goddesses Ishtar and Ereshkigal come from northern Japan."
Annoyed, Kaoru Sayanomiya shook her head.
"Am I the only one who realizes this is absurd?"
The young redhead had spoken loud enough to be heard despite the arguments. Several members stopped talking to turn to her.
"No one ever heard of them just four days ago. And not just them. This famous 'Regalia' or the magic school called 'Tracing'... they were also completely unknown to us."
Her grandfather looked at her with interest.
"What are you getting at, Kaoru?"
"Isn't it obvious? If you remove the impossible, only what are possible remains as unlikely as it may seem."
The head of the Sayanomiya family frowned.
"The impossible? You mean we couldn't ignore the existence of Regalia and this Tracing magic... at least if they existed?"
The old man had added the last words of a thoughtful tone and Kaoru strongly approved.
"Yes, everything happens as if the goddesses, the mortals that accompany them, the Regalia, and this school of magic appeared on Earth only four days ago... and that's exactly what happened, I think."
There was a moment of silent stupor then...
"They came from a parallel world!"
The notion was surprising, but not impossible. The Third Campione, Madam Aisha, had an Authority called the Fairy Corridor allowing her to create portals to other places and times, but with a severe limitation. Fairy Corridor was associated with an irresistible compulsion forcing the Godslayer to travel endlessly. After more than 150 years of wandering on the surface of the Earth, Madam Aisha had suddenly locked herself in a cave and hardly left it... This change of attitude had obviously surprised and intrigued the world's magical community. It had taken several decades to monitor and investigate her before discovering that, tired of always wandering the same world, the Mysterious Queen of the Cavern had used Fairy Corridor to reach parallel words...
The silence was interrupted by the thoughtful voice of the head of the Seishuuin family.
"No wonder the Golden Sword of the Warrior could not sever the divinity of the goddess Ishtar..."
"... because she was not the goddess Ishtar of our world," Renjou concluded.
Tsugaru Onsen, 2 km southwest of Kuroishi, Aomori Prefecture
Shirou Emiya looked at the two women with a slightly panicked expression. His look went from one to the other.
Wearing the light grey kimono provided by the onsen, Ishtar faced Erica Blandelli. Given her pride, the Italian woman had not refused the challenge of the goddess...
"I hope you are prepared, it is my duty to teach you humility, Lady Erica. But don't expect any pity from me, every mortal defying a goddess deserves exemplary punishment."
Erica replied with an arrogant smile. Like Ishtar, she was wearing a gray kimono.
"I am a knight of the Copper-Black Cross and a Disciple of Hermes. I have already faced goddesses, esteemed Ishtar. As you can see, I'm still here to talk about it."
The room seemed to be filled with electricity as the two women looked at each other with daggers in the eyes.
Sitting near Shirou, Godou watched the scene with anxiety.
"But who had the bright idea to make them drink sake?"
Shirou sighed and looked at the vending machine, now surrounded by empty cans of sake... several dozen empty cans.
"The vending machine doesn't ask if people are old enough to drink."
In the middle of the room, Ishtar stood ready. She had a particularly evil smile.
"All right, you really don't want to attack first? I won't want to look like bullying you."
The blonde knight replied with a smile devoid of sincerity.
"Please, Goddess of Venus, I would not want to appear to take an exaggerated advantage over you. In addition, you are my oldest of a few millennia, it is commonly accepted that one should respect one's elders."
Electric crackling occurred in the middle of the room where the gaze of the two women crossed. Hair ruffled by excess static electricity, Shirou and Godou smiled awkwardly.
"They frighten me."
"So do I."
Sitting next to her king, Liliana Kranjcar tried to reassure them.
"You make it sound like they're going to face off in a duel to the death... It's just a table tennis game."
Indeed, the two women were standing on both sides of a ping-pong table, racket in hand. At that moment, Ishtar threw the small white ball and hit it with her racquet... there was a kind of explosion and a sudden movement of air that made the kimonos snap and lifted the hair of all those present.
All eyes turned to the back wall. There was now a small black hole in the bulkhead and a trickle of smoke rising from it.
Very calmly, Yuri Mariya drank a sip of tea with graceful gestures before turning to Liliana. There was irony in her voice.
"Just a table tennis game?"
Erica's childhood friend/rival swallows.
"I take back what I said. Shouldn't we stop them?"
Godou had a tense smile, thinking back to his (disastrous) first evening with Erica at Lucretia Zola's home.
"I am a Devil King, an absolute ruler who has faced and defeated the gods...and, when she is in her normal state, I already have trouble having the last word with Erica. So when she's drunk..."
All eyes turned to Shirou.
The Faker grew pale.
"Squeeze in between them? Don't count on me!"
Is it surprising that Ishtar and Erica instantly recognized each other as rivals?
Rin Tohsaka's nickname was 'Red Devil'.
The Italian she-knight was called ' il Diavolo Rosso'.
Even in hell, the damned were not unlucky enough for there to be two Satan!
In a nearby room, Ena Seishuuin, Athena, Luo Hao, and Alexander Gascoigne played Mah-jong. An activity much less violent than table tennis... finally with two Campiones and a Heretic God playing together, the game was also very lively... but without material damage. In any case, there had been no man's death for the moment.
However, the most important was not around the Mahjong table. There were two spectators, Ereshkigal and Hakuno Kishinami. And they were talking telepathically.
[The Zero Dark?]
[Yes, that's what the Moon Cell said.] Hakuno makes a Head Tilt. [What is the Zero Dark?]
Then her expression suddenly changed, showing a little surprise.
[Are you okay?]
Indeed, Ereshkigal was red and coughing.
[Stop it!]
[Stop what] replied Hakuno, confused.
Ereshkigal sighed. How could she explain to the teen that she was too cute when she leaned her head to the side? Despite her appearance as inexpressive as a porcelain doll... or perhaps precisely because of it, Hakuno was absolutely lovely.
[Never mind. What did you want to know?]
[The Zero Dark] quietly repeated the Victor of the Moon.
[Ah that... I hope you like beautiful bed stories. ]
The ground was shaking from blows.
It was not the prolonged tremor of an earthquake. It was steps, huge strides that shook the ground at a slow pace.
Terrified men looked east, they could see her... the White Titan. A humanoid silhouette made of white light, competing in size with the highest mountains. Her head disappeared into the clouds.
The White Titan wasn't always this big. When she arrived, she was not to be more than thirty meters high. But she had ravaged everything in her path, devouring knowledge and magical energy... and her growth was the result of her excessive appetite.
Around her swarmed animals that had become gigantic. Taken by madness, the monsters attacked the men. They attacked the cities and ravaged the fields starving the survivors.
The heroes were fighting.
The cities hid behind their walls.
Kings gathered their armies.
But all this was in vain...
The heroes had perished.
The cities had fallen.
And the kings had fled with the remnants of their defeated armies.
Nothing could resist the overwhelming power of the White Titan.
Even Atlantis had already fallen.
The Twelve Machine Gods had faced the White Titan and succumbed. Their consciences survived, but with the loss of their true bodies, their powers were drastically diminished.
And as the World was about to perish, the World appealed to its greatest protector, the Bearer of the Sacred Sword.
A circle of invocation appeared on the ground.
Particles of prana emerged from it forming a human silhouette that soon became denser, becoming material and acquiring colors.
Now a little woman was standing in the plain.
She looked very young, a teenage girl with finely textured blond hair, resembling golden threads, gathered in a braid wrapped around the back of her skull. But, at the top of the head, a rebel wick formed an ahoge in the form of a question mark.
When she opened her eyelids, we could see two magnificent emeralds.
Her delicate face, as if sculpted in white ivory, immediately took on an expression both anxious and determined
The young woman was dressed in an old-fashioned dress, blue with gold braids, worn over a white petticoat... but under a very impracticable armor with a plastron decorated with blue enamel.
A Servant could be invoked at any time.
Also, Artoria Pendragon was not surprised to be thousands of years before her birth.
Only her mission mattered to her. A mission that was engraved in her during her invocation.
She raised her hands above her head and a magnificent sword appeared. The legendary King Arthur concentrated, feeling the mana pouring in. The Sword of the Promised Victory began to shine.
Around her, plants, flowers, and trees were surrounded by an aura of golden light. And every living thing released a kind of butterfly of light that headed towards Excalibur.
Real rivers of pixies converged towards the blade, transforming it into a torch of golden flame that now rose to more than thirty meters.
Suddenly, King Arthur took a step forward and made the gesture of striking, knocking down the sword to the ground.
"Excalibur!" she claimed, and her voice sounded more like a song than a war cry.
And the Sacred Sword unleashed a torrent of life generated by the Earth, nourished by the movement of the stars, the will of all humans past, present, and future... A Last Phantasm!
And the flood of light broke as a river in flood escaped the dam supposed to contain its fury.
The White Titan raised her hands in a pathetic gesture of defense. But half of her photonic crystal body - though harder than the diamond - was instantly disintegrated by the monumental discharge of energy, and the fragments collapsed on the ground.
The threat was defeated.
But the world had been ravaged.
The men born in fantastic cities, a mixture of magic and high technology, those men who had received the teaching of the Machines Gods, had almost all perished. The survivors, scattered, terrorized, traumatized, took refuge in caves desperately hitting two pebbles to make fire.
The Age of the Gods had ended, and with the end of the Age of the Gods, the flow of the Leys Lines began to dry up, the magic was diminished, and the mythological creatures began to leave the world to take refuge in Apocrypha.
[The White Titan was an avatar in the material world of Sefar or Velber 02, an Anti Cell, a weapon capable of destroying worlds. Sefar was sent to Earth by Velber 'the Harvester Star' a Photonic Crystal supercomputer that (on the operating principle) is identical to the Moon Cell Automaton. However, unlike the lunar computer, Velber does not just record, it plunders the knowledge of all the worlds it visits, wandering through the cosmos and returning to our galaxy every fourteen thousand years] explained Ereshkigal.
The goddess looked at Hakuno who listened without saying a word.
[When King Arthur destroyed the avatar of the White Titan on Earth, the original 'body' that had invaded the Moon Cell was temporarily knocked out by the shock. Taking advantage of this brief moment of vulnerability, the Moon Cell Automaton put Sefar to sleep and isolated her in an area held in quarantine, the Zero Dark.]
Kishinami nodded, showing by this gesture that she had understood the explanation. She was a woman of few words.
[The Moon Cell was right to warn you, especially since... the fall of Atlantis dates back to 14000 years. So Velber, the Umbral Star, is back in our galaxy. The time had come for a new harvest.]
Far from it, in England, a blonde teenager slept on a couch.
She spent most of her life sleeping. Suffering from a weak constitution, she hardly moved.
She was asleep...
—and she was dreaming.
She saw a medieval town under siege. Soldiers in chain mail or plate armor decorated with the red St George's Cross surrounded siege cannons that fired on the city walls. They were armed with halberds, longbows, arquebuses, and crossbows.
Then the doors opened. Led by a blonde standard-bearer woman, the defenders counterattacked. Their armors were embossed by the white St Michel's cross.
The dream changed.
An army equipped with brass armors and helmets advanced in a rocky plain, grouped in rectangles bristled with long spears, they fought an army much more numerous but made up of men dressed in trousers and colored tunics, wearing Phrygian hats.
On the right wing, a red-bearded colossus charged on a black horse, his red cape snapping behind him. A small cavalry was following him... breaking the ranks of their enemies, slaughtering them, and chasing them. The immense army collapsed, and the Great King fled on his war elephant...
Again, the dream changed.
This time a city appeared, surrounded by brick walls. In the center, was a ziggurat.
A voice shouted: "He is the king, he is the only king, all the treasures of the world are his, worship him, and admire him". Terrorized, the inhabitants bowed down before their tyrant.
On the upper terrace of the ziggurat appeared a man in golden armor too heavy, too beautiful to be worn by a mortal, his hair was blond and his red eyes had vertical pupils.
The dream changed again.
This time it was a city surrounded by walls in the middle of a temperate plain planted with orchards and fields. On the ramparts, a procession of Christian priests brandished relics of saints, calling for mercy from heaven.
It must be said that an army was advancing towards the city... no, a horde formed by thousands of horsemen dressed in leather, wearing fur hats and armed with composite bows.
At the head of the ravaging nomads, a woman almost naked, her brown skin was adorned with lines almost similar to printed circuits. Her long white hair was covered by a veil that made her look like a bride. She was waving a sword like a frozen rainbow.
Behind the horde, the horizon was on fire, not a field, not a village, not a city had been spared by the torches.
The young blonde woman woke up with a start. Her green eyes were magnified with terror. She shouted a name she had never heard before:
"Sefar!"
We were in the house of Alice Louise, better known as Princess Alice, the most famous of all the Hime-Miko. Her predictions were considered prophecies and had the reputation of always being fulfilled.
Author's note: I bet you recognized the Servants described in the last paragraph.