Chapter 15
Once more, Illya woke up on a cold metal floor. Cold, filtered air drifted in lazy gusts from a vent above her, and she recognized the holes in the ceiling, now haphazardly patched up with sheets of metal. The lights were dim, but the room was so small she could still barely see everything. Sitting up, she looked around to see if she could find Berserker.
She didn't have to look for long. Right behind her, bound to the wall with several heavy metal beams pounded into the wall and chains encircling her arms and legs, was Berserker. The pipe was still embedded in her stomach, Berserker's natural regeneration constantly trying to heal her but failing, the flesh almost squeezing the pipe as it tried to close the wound. There was a large pool of fresh blood on the floor from the dripping pipe, with red rusty stains surrounding the pool. Illya also noticed some sort of catheter in Berserker's arm hooked up to a small device with a small tank, a counter showing foreign symbols of some sort.
Berserker didn't seem to be conscious, taking shallow breaths while her eyelids remained firmly shut. She looked even paler than usual, if that was possible, and her hair hung in limp strands across her face, the shadows making her seem gaunt and frail.
Even though Illya wasn't someone who often felt pity or sympathy, seeing her Servant in such a state still felt wrong to her. She'd only known her for a few days, but she could already tell that Berserker wasn't a bad person, and would at the very least follow her commands, although her reliability was still in question. Being stuck here, stabbed with a pipe to a wall and further imprisoned with drugs and bindings didn't sit right with her. Still, she was only an observer to her past memories, so she might as well be a ghost, unable to interact with her in any meaningful way. All she could do was watch as events played out by themselves.
Minutes passed with nothing happening, and Illya's turned to what had happened before she had fainted. Actually, she realized she had been fainting quite a lot these days. Even with the expected burden of supporting Berserker without the Grail's help, she was still fainting at a rather disturbing rate in the past few days. It was almost as if somebody was cursing her to faint, but that couldn't possibly be true. Almost no one knew of her existence outside of the Einzberns, with the Tohsakas and Makiris being the sole possible exceptions.
Still, her fainting certainly had placed a large burden on Berserker. They had been surrounded on all sides by homunculi, with no escape in sight. To make matters worse, the infamous wolf pack she had heard about since she was young had made their way towards them, attracted by their scent. She had heard that the wolves would eat almost anything, but that they particularly favoured Einzbern mages, their being one of their earliest tastes of flesh that contained Mystery for the wolves.
Would Berserker even make it out? Having to carry Illya would limit her strength, as she'd have to be careful while wielding her lightsaber, and she'd have to watch her back diligently as Berserker's physical ability might surpass the homunculi individually, there was a very real possibility that they could overwhelm her with sheer numbers. And if the wolves caught up to them, there was no telling what could happen. A pack of apex predators that displayed high levels of coordination and intelligence with anti-magic capabilities and enhanced physical attributes could prove extremely problematic for Berserker, even if she unleashed her Noble Phantasm. She'd heard tales from her father before he'd left, of how he'd assessed their threat level, and just decided to leave them be. He didn't want to bring any unforeseen hazards on the Einzbern castle if he left before completely wiping them out.
Hmmm, actually Berserker couldn't use her trump card either, now that Illya thought about it. If she did, Illya was likely to simply spontaneously combust from the heat generated from her Magic Circuits, and Berserker would lose her anchor to the world, losing before the Grail War even began. That meant Berserker was handicapped in more ways than one, and now Illya was seriously starting to worry about them. Would she die unconscious while a wolf ripped out her throat in reality?
Just then, the door to the small room opened, allowing more light to pour in, almost blinding Illya after she had adjusted to the darkened room. Standing in the doorway, was Lancelot.
Holding a mop and a bucket, as well as several capsules and vials. Putting down the capsules and vials first, he then started dipping the mop into the bucket of water and cleaning the floor, wiping it with the perfect amount of strength and speed that the floor was entirely clean of blood in mere seconds, even the rusty stains from before disappearing. Illya watched the entire process in awe, the peak of household cleaning that even the specially designed household homunculi in the Einzbern couldn't hope to reach. His grip, stance and technique were all honed from years of experience in cleaning during his years in the D.A.R.K. Rounds, as part of his role of being the perfect knight. After all, cleaning was also a war waged against dirt, bacteria, dust and all forms of uncleanliness as the enemy.
After cleaning, he went to inspect the wound on Berserker's stomach. Illya's brief moment of hope that he would pull out the pipe was quickly extinguished when he instead pushed the pipe further in, causing a sudden flow of blood from the pipe to gush out.
"I'm sorry my King, but there was no other way to disable the Altreactor in your body."
The Altreactor?
"When you were created from the X factor obtained from Mysterious Heroine X, our sworn enemy, Alternium crystals were implanted into your body in the hopes that it would become a potent source of energy for defeating MHX once and for all. Nobody knew exactly what would happen, but in the end the results of the implanted crystals surprised us. Instead of becoming a direct source of energy, they instead helped to convert calories into magical energy. In other words, the more you ate, the stronger you became."
Lancelot paused, staring at her stomach.
"This energy conversion seemed to be all-mighty, the only limit being how much you could consume. However, in due course we found out that there was a weak point. Since the Alternium crystals refined calories into magical energy, we decided to scan your stomach, and our theory was proven to be correct. Most of the Alternium crystals had congregated in your stomach and intestines, almost completely taking over the rest of the digestive system as well. There were trace amounts in other parts of your body as well, but they mostly served as conduits to transfer magical energy to the rest of your body."
"So if your stomach was hit, pierced or damaged in any way, the energy conversion function of the Altreactor would be considerably impaired, thus weakening you. Of course, this weakness was easily remedied by training you to reach the peak of your potential, allowing you to block, deflect or dodge any attack aimed at your weak point. Of course, this almost meant that to keep you confined, one had to somehow stop the Altreactor in your stomach from functioning, or at the least slow it down to a certain degree. Originally there were drugs and magical rituals to achieve that, but since I don't have either on hand right now, I had to make do with whatever I could find, hence the pipe through your stomach." Scratching his head, Lancelot looked down in shame.
"Even though I know you wouldn't die from this as long as you were supplied with the minimum amount of calories and nutrients needed through the catheter, it still pains me to do this to you. Well, at least the painkillers should help numb the pain."
Kneeling, he bent down and pushed some buttons before popping out several cartridges out of the device, slipping the capsules and pouring the liquid from the vials into them before reinserting the cartridges.
"I came down here because we're about to reach our destination soon, so I'll remove the pipe now and let you heal. The sedatives should keep you asleep well after we've left, so we'll loosen your bindings as well." Saying so, he pulled out the beams and chains that crudely wrapped around her entire body, then gripped the pipe with one hand firmly and pulled it out slowly and precisely, making sure not to widen the large hole in her stomach. A torrent of blood and water burst out right after it left her stomach, along with pink scraps of her intestines, and mixed with them some small fragments of reddish-blue crystal. The acrid scent of digestive juice filled the small room in an instant, making Lancelot wrinkle his nose.
"Oh, and one more thing before we leave. Originally when we created you, we placed the Alternium crystals evenly throughout your body. But somehow, a certain voroid in our employ messed up the nutrients that should have been supplied to your gestation pod, and instead fed you highly concentrated ■■■■. This probably proved too stimulating for your juvenile digestive system, so in response the Alternium crystals traveled to your stomach to reinforce its functions and convert the food into energy, preventing the death of the host body. As a result, you gained the ability to transform calories into magical energy."
With that randomly timed origin reveal that felt underwhelming to Illya, he left. In another corner of the universe, the voroid "K6-X4", a.k.a. "Black Knight-kun", experienced a malfunction in it's speech box and emitted a sound similar to a sneeze.
"I wonder if Ecchan is talking about me." The thought flashed through his processors as he continued gaming on the VR headset he had recently bought, engrossed in "Professor Tokiomi and the Space-Temple of Doom! (Based on true events)".