Chapter 197
"AaaAAAAhhhh!"
From the churning sea of filth within the Matou basement, Zouken's voice echoed within the vast space. It was far from fatal, but the exorcism had burned him like nothing else. As a spirit barely clinging to life, it was his Achilles heel. Within the myriad creatures, his mind shifted.
That insufferable Lord!
He remembered sensing the buried shells of deceased grasshoppers and dead butterflies while his familiars slithered through the dirt, but he failed to make the connection to that ritual they had attempted. Now, a solid chunk of his familiars were missing, and on top of the familiars wiped out by Rider when she was first summoned, he was in a bad position. He had never considered it before, but it was possible that he could actually run out of familiars to use. For a magus like him relying on quantity over quality, it was no laughing matter.
No, he needed to accelerate the plan by a few stages.
With the magical energy he'd accumulated over the past month with his indiscriminate attacks, he estimated he'd have enough to construct two, perhaps three Command Seals at most. Then, he'd have Rider engage one of the Servants and slay them, using a Command Seal as a booster, and he would use their container to summon another Servant as his own. Alternatively, he could target a Master directly and use his own Command Seals to supplant theirs to wrest control over another Servant.
In Sakura's body, the worms flexed, making her kneel on the floor at the sudden burst of pain from within.
"Master!"
Rider materialized and crouched over her protectively, one hand on her back. A pale sheen of sweat appeared on Sakura's forehead as she turned to her Servant.
"G-grandfather wants me to go down into the basement now."
Rider clicked her tongue in frustration, but all she could do was obey. Lending Sakura her shoulder, she supported the girl down into the loathsome bowels of the manor.
Outside, her brother was on his way home after getting the groceries and other necessities. Turning the corner to his house, he stopped when he saw someone standing right outside, looking straight at the Matou residence.
A priest?
Shinji stared at the man, a full head taller than him, and he noted the priestly vestments he wore. If he remembered correctly the man was also the overseer for this Holy Grail War. What was he doing here? Had there been some kind of rule change or special situation that needed him to come personally and inform them?
"Hey, aren't you the overseer for the war? Why're you here?"
The priest turned to look at the boy, his eyes drifting downwards to note the lack of Command Seals on his hand, before meeting his eyes.
"I have a simple matter to attend to here. It won't take long, I assure you."
Saying that, he launched his fist straight into Shinji's chest at point blank range. The grocery bags snapped at the handles, his fingers ripping the flimsy plastic as he went flying backwards at breakneck speed, until he ended up sprawled on the floor a full twenty meters away.
"Hm."
Looking down at his fist, Kirei was a little surprised that the punch hadn't gone straight through. His impression of the boy was that of a pampered, soft man-child, but the moment his fist connected he'd felt a solid wall of flesh protecting the boy's organs underneath the jacket he was wearing. Was he actually capable of reinforcement magecraft?
For a moment, he regarded the boy with sharp eyes, but his crumpled form showed no signs of stirring.
Well, it didn't matter if the boy lived or not. Turning away from him, the priest began to walk towards the manor.
On the ground, Shinji remained unconscious, unaware that Rider's strenuous and back-breaking training had actually saved his life.
Deep inside the underground area of the house, the first warning Zouken received of something wrong was the sight of the priest walking up to his house through the eyes of his familiars. His casual steps were at odds with his perfectly straight back, his emotionless eyes trained on the Matou estate. Without breaking stride, he reached into his cassock and withdrew a Black Key, hurling it straight at the familiar watching him. Years of experience, combined with raw intuition, allowed him to quickly cover the other spots of surveillance, his hands full one moment, empty the next.
All Zouken saw was a sudden blur covering the priests upper torso, and then the connection was cut. Shocked by the clear sign of aggression by the priest, he quickly mobilized most of his remaining familiars. In his mind, he scrambled to produce an explanation as to why the priest was suddenly attacking him. He hadn't even met the priest for years!
The door to the basement creaked open, letting in two young woman into the dark space that reeked of rank odors.
"Sakura?"
The old man formed himself a haphazard body, to make it more convenient for communication. The shifting, amorphous mass was abhorrent to look at, but it caught the duos attention easily enough.
"I came, as you requested."
The resigned voice stood in contrast to the disgust and silent fury etched on Rider's face, only held back by the constant threat hanging over her Masters head.
"I never called you here."
For the first time, Sakura heard a note of confusion and panic in her grandfathers voice.
"If you didn't, then who..?"
A brief moment of silence reigned between them, but then Riders eyes sharpened, and she wrapped her arms around Sakura's waist while her legs bent and pressed against the floor, feet leaving the floor in a jump that sent them flying over the pit and to the opposite side of the room. Turning around, she glared at the entrance they just came through.
Behind them, a shadow appeared in the doorway to the pit.
"Zouken Matou, Sakura Matou and Rider. My name is Kirei Kotomine, and I am willing to hear your confessions on this fine evening."
Stretching his arms in a gesture of openness, he smiled at them.
He had barely finished his sentence before a wave of black rose up and crashed down him, the impact sending bits of wriggling legs and chitin flying all over the place. The wave receded, revealing the priest to be gone.
Zoukens grimace turned into a full blow snarl, which remained the last expression on his face as his body disintegrated from the impact of several Black Keys blasting through the worms.
Behind the doorway, the priest stood unharmed, completely calm after backstepping the wave. Around him, bugs armed with blades and stingers slipped out of the cracks, a thousand lethal blades dripping with venom all aimed at one person.
In response, he bent his knees and lowered into a full squat, then jumped. The entire process took less than a second, but the speeds he reached were truly terrifying. It was like a cannonball being shot directly upwards, with a railgun. As if a bolt of lightning had fallen from the heavens in judgment, a straight hole had been bored through the entirety of the manor, letting the last rays of sunlight fall into the depths.
Sakura watched in awe, while Rider begrudgingly respected his level of skill and strength, which was absurd for a human. However, the only person who actually mustered a response was Zouken.
The Bounded Fields of the mansion activated at once, dyeing the air a malignant violet. Unfortunately, they were too slow to stop the man's ascent, and he rose well above the boundaries before inevitably stopping, arrested by gravity's embrace.
He hung there, suspended in midair for a few heartbeats, before his body began to accelerate downwards.
Zouken smiled, sure that he would be able to capture him once he fell into the Bounded Field below. The trait of absorption built into the sigils would lower all of his physical parameters, including the five senses, sense of direction and physical strength.
Abruptly, Kirei stopped falling.
Instead, he started walking on air.
He can walk on air?
Based on what Zouken had learned, the priest's abilities as a magus were mediocre at best. In that case, was this some sort of divine sacrament gifted to him by the Church?
In fact, the ability was a bastardized version of miracle that enabled walking on water. Kirei could physically run on water solely relying on martial techniques and his body, but to walk in air required him to use what little ability he had as a mage to condense a thin film of water in the air under his shoes, then enacting the miracle of water walking to give him a foothold. The condensation spell on his soles was a merely a trick, not even a third-rate spell by the standards of magi, but undoubtedly useful in combat when combined with the water-walking miracle.
He rarely used it simply due to the fact that the spell was horribly inefficient, consuming large amounts of od. He could absorb mana and cast the spell, but it would take too much time. Hence, the spell rarely appeared unless specific circumstances warranted it. In addition, he was stronger on the ground.
This fact was demonstrated when he landed just outside the Bounded Field, and then hurled a Black Key inside. The blade broke through concrete and plaster, traveling in a straight line through various obstacles until it buried itself within a worm, it's body carved with various sigils.
The Bounded Field, unable to affect non-human objects, flickered.
Several more keys quickly followed the first, each piercing a worm after shearing a path through solid walls. If they were stopped in their tracks, another Black Key quickly traced the same path until it reached a worm.
In a matter of seconds, the Bounded Fields foundations were torn to shreds, causing one of the cornerstones of defense for the Matou family to fall.
Zouken could only gawk, floored by the fact that he had found all the points without fail, and reached them as well with pure power. How did he know where all the sigil worms were?
The worms squirmed in agitation, but there was no point on dwelling further. The priest was leisurely walking onto the grounds again, and he knew that the priest was in league with the golden-haired Servant left behind from the previous war. There was no telling when that monster would decide to show up. He needed to pull out all the stops, commit all his forces here, and try to escape else where.
Several hundred beady black eyes among the thousands turned to regard Sakura, and her Servant Rider, both of whom were still in the basement.
Her presence here was the largest liability. Even if he managed to salvage some of his familiars from this fiasco, it wouldn't matter if his main body was harmed. For his own sake, he needed to get her out of here, so he could extract his familiars from here instead of committing them to defending his main body. He also wouldn't have to worry about collateral damage killing her, and by extension himself, if he was forced to fight.
"Riddderrrrr, evaacuateeee."
The rudimentary body could barely vocalize, but it was enough. The two departed through the broken hole, Rider summoning her bike to swiftly navigate the streets of Fuyuki.
All the while, Kirei didn't move a single muscle to stop them.
Once they were gone, a pile of worms appeared on the surface, facing Kirei.
I need to buy time.
The evacuation of his familiars here was underway, but it would take some time. At the very least, he wanted to stave off the priest by ten minutes or so.
"Priest, explain the meaning behind your actions!"
All traces of politeness were gone as he yelled at him, his entire body actually vibrating in sync as the worms shared his agitation.
The priest stared down at him and smiled.
"I came to pay you a visit, elder of the Matou's."
Eyes bulging out of his sockets, the old man spluttered.
"You come here, unannounced, trespassing into the deepest reaches of my Workshop, and then you smash a hole straight through the mansion, before breaking all the Bounded Fields set in place, and you call this a visit?"
"I was attacked first. It was merely self-defense."
"Your trespass was enough to warrant such actions."
Generally entering another magus's workshop was taboo, and there were usually defense of all sorts that made breaking in difficult, and leaving nigh-impossible. The fact that Kirei had walked in willingly spoke to his confidence and skill. It was also true however, that Zouken's Workshop wasn't as well-defended as most. Instead, his security lay in the decentralized nature of his familiars, allowing him to set up many mini-workshops that could act as failsafes in case of the Matou residence's fall. Those mini-workshops also acted as outposts for him to conduct his hunts, but after the culling of his familiars, he had no choice but to abandon most of them, lacking the strength to maintain them. Now though, he was sending his familiars back, completely abandoning the manor.
"The door was wide open. To me, it seemed like an open invitation to enter."
The priests insufferable smirk aggravated the older magus, but he held it in as he gauged that more time was needed.
"Enough. Tell me who ordered the attack. Was it the Church? The Clock Tower? Someone else, perhaps one of the Shinto sects?"
"I came of my own accord."
Zouken's eyes narrowed to slits. The priest wasn't answering his questions at all, providing vague responses at best, if not outright lies.
"Could I convince you to leave the premise, if possible?"
While Zouken had his pride, he knew that right now, it was better to resolve this peacefully. He didn't have much strength left to spare, considering the threat of the Clock Tower team breathing down his neck.
"What could you offer me, a man of the cloth?"
Kirei's smile widened.
"As you surely know, we have divorced ourselves from all worldly desires and wants, in order to better serve the Lord as his devoted servants."
If any of his former victims were here, they would have stared in disbelief at him, or started raging at the fake priest. Zouken himself only quirked an eye, unable to believe anything he'd just said.
Searching through his mind, he tried to think back on everything he'd managed to unearth about the priest. What was it…oh yes, he remembered something strange he'd seen when spying on the priest with his familiars, just after the previous war.
"Would you be in need of, children, perhaps?"
He still remembered the priest taking in many of the orphans left behind by the flames after the war, but to his knowledge none of them had been sighted, even during the casual surveys he had done regularly of the church the priest resided in. That being the case, he guessed the priest had some purpose in mind when he adopted the children, and they disappeared to serve it.
"Children? What makes you say that?"
Kirei entertained the magus's question with a twinkle in his eye.
"As a priest, it is your duty to help the lost lambs, isn't it?" A thick layer of sarcasm blanketed his words, but Kirei paid it no mind.
"Then perhaps, you would be interested in providing shelter to some of the orphans of Fuyuki?"
As he said so, Zouken checked when his familiars would arrive.
The priest played along with him, answering in kind.
"Of course. It would bring me no greater joy than to see the children safe and healthy beneath my roof. The house of God accepts all,even the abandoned."
For the first time since becoming a wraith, he had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at his proclamation.
"Very well, then I shall make arrangements to send them to your doorstep."
"Unfortunately, I have to turn down your kindness."
Thinking that he wouldn't have to resolve things by force, Zouken immediately stiffened at the priests words.
"The beds in my church are all full. I regret it my inability, but I am unable to take care of any more lambs."
Saying so, he pulled out a trio of red hilts, the blades shimmering into existence as he pointed them at Zouken.
"All I can do is offer you your final rites."
Before Zouken could register his movement, the silver guillotine descended on him. His body was split into four parts, two slim pieces diagonally disconnected from the rest of his body in from top left to bottom right. It disintegrated into a pile of worms at Kirei's feet, burrowing into the earth. The priest raised a foot and stepped on one before it could escape, putting more and more pressure on it until it burst, clear liquid and mushy innard soaking the dirt.
Internally, Zouken was relieved that the Black Keys didn't seem to have any special effects. True, there were quite a few worms in the false body that was sliced apart, but he didn't feel anything strange, like a direct attack on his soul during the exorcism. He'd heard that skilled members of the Church could apply different rites to the Keys, and manipulate them with sacraments, but it seemed that the priest above him hadn't done so. It meant he had a higher chance to escape before the priest used the rite.
Another Black Key slowly pierced through a worm which failed to escape, its tail sticking out of a shallow hole as the blade skewered it from above. Pulling it out, the priest stared at its thrashing form as it entered its death throes.
"I see, so the Black Keys won't have any effect on you."
The Black Keys relied on having a base human body, overwriting the bodies of Dead Apostles to return to their previous state by purifying it. In Zouken's case however, his human body was long gone, with everything composed of his familiars.
Beneath his feet, he started to feel the ground shake.
Jumping backwards to escape the ground that was beginning to cave in, he spotted a swarm of flying insects smashing the windows open and streaming towards him. As he was engulfed by the dark cloud, a wave of harsh metallic buzzing assaulted his ears, and then hundreds of razor sharp forelegs and stingers descended on him.
The cassock was sturdy enough to repel the insects, but his head and hands were naked. To mitigate the countless attacks coming from all directions, he twisted his body and began spinning. A rush of air swirled around him, disturbing the flight of the insects, and his hands lashed out around his head, catching any familiars that got too close.
Then, just as abruptly as they appeared, they vanished, scattering to the four winds and leaving an almost untouched Kirei standing at the edge of the lawn, a hole leading deep into the darkness gaping in the middle of the estate.
Walking towards the hole fearlessly, he peered down into the opening, floating dust hazing the shadows.
Then, a thin leg riddled with hair pointing downwards stepped through the dust. Eight eyes pierced the gloom deep within, then several more sets appeared further behind. Then several more appeared behind those. More and more lit up the darkness, until there were countless twinkling dots below, the rustling of bodies upon bodies echoing from below.
Reaching inside, Black Keys were once more withdrawn and placed into position, fanning out in his hands.
In the sewers several streets away, a horde of worms wriggled on their bellies across damp stone, the dull drone of insects accompanying them. This scene was replicated in several other obscure paths around the district that the Matou residence was located in.
Relieved, the elderly Matou borrowed the senses of one a familiar still remaining within the manor. When he open his eyes, the compound vision displayed countless amounts of gore, entrails and blood dripping from the ceiling, legs and crushed bodies turning into an unbroken carpet of the floor. The familiars fought on the corpses of their comrades, shrieking shrill cries or clicking before they were abruptly cut off by the streaks of red and silver that brutally smashed through their carapaces, sowing carnage wherever the lines traveled.
Disconnecting, Zouken couldn't help but mentally sigh. The fruits of his labors, the higher-end of his familiars, gone just like that. The power of an executor was truly frightening. Then again, he couldn't easily maneuver the larger familiars without exposing their existence to the general public, so all he could do was throw them at Kirei. The rest, like the bladed bugs and crest worms, could easily travel undetected, and even if they were seen, would still most likely be dismissed as some kind of rare insect.
After checking the Bounded Fields containing perception warding properties around the manor was still functioning normally, he started considering his next move. He was deprived the use of his primary Workshop, as well as a portion of his familiars, but still had the energy stockpiled from his recent hunts. Time wasn't a luxury though, since one of the brats from the Clock Tower had somehow managed to trace his connection to Sakura's body. He had since cut off the spell, and they would most likely end up at the Matou manor, which was a dead end. However, he didn't want to chance that they could cast the spell again and find his true body. Acting now and wiping out the Clock Tower team as soon as possible would be the best action. The priest was a danger, but so long as he didn't know about the worm in Sakura, he wasn't that much of a threat.
Or so he thought, but then he realized something was wrong when he reached out to contact his granddaughter.
She was on Mount Enzou, right next to the entrance where the Greater Grail was located.
His spiritual gaze drew back, suffering another bout of shock. He hadn't told Rider where to take Sakura, but why would they go all the way there?
His confusion swiftly turned to panic when the Crest Worms in her body all died at the same time.
Immediately, all the familiars he had been diverting to different destinations were rerouted to head straight for Mount Enzou, with no exceptions. Abandoning all thoughts, he spurred his fastest familiars, the flying worms sped through the hair as his scouts, their buzzing quickly filling ordinary citizens with panic as they thought swarms of hornets or bees were attacking.
Outpacing all his other worms, they arrived as a staggering horde of black dots filling the sky, streams of them flooding the woods just outside the illusory all covering the entrance.
In the eye of the storm were two girls, one clothed in a frilly maid outfit, the other in a light pink cardigan and white dress.
"Sakura, Sakura whats going on?!"
The first thing Zouken heard was Rider's panicked voice, and then he saw her kneeling on the forest floor, cradling Sakura's body to her chest.
"What happened to her?"
Zouken's body materialized form the swarm, rushing over to inspect her as soon as he could.
Rider's undercurrent of loathing that was usually present in her voice was gone as she quickly replied to him.
"I don't know, all she told me to do was to come here and stay until you came. Then she started convulsing and fell unconscious."
Zouken stared down at her as he stood next to them, stretching out his senses to the worm planted next to her heart.
"Arghh!"
He doubled over in pain, screaming as his temporary body dissolved once more into individual worms, unable to maintain his concentration under the sudden flood of malignance coursing through his mind. The insects, originally bobbing up and down as they hovered in place, suddenly plunged into chaos, some of them drunkenly swaying from side to side as they flew in aimless trails, crashing into each other, while others caught on the branches and leaves, twitching as they fluttered in the tight gaps without any sense of coordination. More than a few simply dropped like a rock, crawling on the ground with unsteady legs.
As all this happened, Sakura's body abruptly lurched in Rider's hands. Rider tightened her group on Sakura's body, trying to stop her from thrashing about and hurting herself as her struggles grew fiercer and fiercer. A dot of red appeared on the chest of her cardigan, and it quickly spread until the there was a tennis ball sized patch. Her chest swelled there, a tumorous growth trying to break through, and as Rider watched, she heard flesh tear and skin break beneath the thin layer of fabric. Before she could do anything, something broke out. The fabric ripped, the thing inside tearing out a hole as it melted a hole through, smoke rising from the singed threads. A scarlet mushroom-shaped head poked out, a slit down the middle emitting a thin squeal.
In an instant, Rider's worried face morphed into a frigid wall of rage. Her white hand shot towards the pitiful creature, ready to crush it into paste before she left the world.
A jet-black lance tore through her back, spearing her arm and stopping her from making any moves. It slowly lifted Rider into the air, and when she tried to push herself off the tip, red lightning coursed through her body, paralyzing her. Her Master's body slid to the ground, lifeless eyes staring up into the sky.
"Cease your futile struggling Rider."
The deep, regal voice came from behind, her voice an older version of Rider's own.
At their feet, the blood soaked worm struggled as it flopped off the cooling body, plopping onto a leaf and proceeding to crawl away from the two Servants. A winged familiar swiftly descended to lift it away from the ground and fly to safety, but it was struck out of the air before it could even reach the worm. Further attempts were dissuaded by a crackling cage of red lightning, charges of electricity reaching out and hopping from worm to worm when they got too close.
The shadow of a dark gauntlet fell over the worm, it's squeals doing nothing to deter the cold metallic claw from closing around it and lifting it up from the ground.
"So, this is the famed Matou Zouken."
Dull shades of brown like burned leaves stared down at the familiar wriggling in her hands. Turning it this way and that, she examined it curiously. Then, she popped it into her mouth and ate it, swallowing it whole as a bulge momentarily emerged on her throat.
"Hmm, tastes a little too salty. Would've been better fried."
Within her body, the mud consumed the worm, reaching out to the soul connected to it and devouring it as well, taking in every scrap of knowledge and skill that he ever possessed. He became the mud, and the mud became him, losing all sense of self as he was assimilated into the primordial sea of sin. In a few moments, Zouken Matou ceased to exist.
"S-sakura…"
"Ah, that's right. It'll be easier if we keep you around."
From the gaping wound on her chest, a slurry of blood and mud overflowed, covering her chest and staining her clothes. Thin streams of thick black fluid leaked out of her ears, eyes, nose and mouth, her skin turning a pale white. Within her body, the sludge formed structures, lines and shapes forming at a cellular level, patching together the torn edges of her body. From within the points where the crest worms used to be, hard crystals that resemble the worms were found, mud gushing forth from them and infecting every single cell of her body.
The mud's flow from her chest gradually slowed to a trickle, and then completely stopped, leaving only a patch of matte red showing from the hole left in her cardigan.
Rider stared in astonishment as Sakura rose, standing up as if she hadn't punctured her lungs, ribs and heart less than a minute ago.
"Lancer, please release Rider."
The lance slid out, eliciting a grunt of pain from the Servant.
As she watched, a change passed over her Master. Her already pale skin further whitened until it was a chalk white, with her signature purple hair bleaching out until she was like an alabaster statue, faintly glowing under the moonlight. Faint lines of red gushed forth across her body, primarily originating from the former wound on her chest.
Once the transformation was complete, she coughed up a little bit blood mixed with a strange deep violet sludge, and then she turned to face Rider.
Rider looked at her, but she couldn't find any trace of warmth in her eyes.
Slowly, she strode over to Rider and lifted her chin with one hand, smiling gently.
"Let's have fun together, Rider~"