74: You lost it!? How do you lose something like that!?

"Anyway, nice work surviving out there, kid - guess this makes you two for two on dealing with Reality Marble ambushes, huh?" Cu Chulainn says with a laugh, and I wince as a recollection of agony shudders through my organs and muscles.

"O-oi, can you do me a favor and not bring that horrible experience up?" I ask. "Just because I survived doesn't make it fun to remember."

"Ha! You're no fun, Master." the Caster shakes his head with an unrepentant grin. "You don't see me freaking out when people talk about how I died."

Our argument is interrupted as Professor Velvet exhales a large cloud of smoke - Hey, his cigar's already almost gone!? Professor, are you really gonna be okay!? - and speaks up. "I'll keep it brief since I don't want to linger on past trauma - Francois Prelati. You didn't number him among our enemies or allies. Considering that you were kidnapped by him, I'm assuming the former, but that he was able to get Napoleon's ear implies that at some point at least he was considered the latter. How does he play into everything?"

I grit my teeth as my heart pounds in my ears, and for a moment, I can see the punchline. 'Professor Velvet's head suddenly falls off. The illusion fades, and I find myself in the tunnels beneath Paris once more, with no company save Prelati and his mocking laughter.' - that's the scenario that plays out in my mind.

But it doesn't happen. Eventually, my breathing steadies, and I open my eyes again. "...Enemy. He was an enemy, no doubt about it. He caused some trouble for Dark Jeanne too - he said he stole her Caster's Spellbook, and…" -and he "helped" us reach Paris. But that's not what makes me trail off. What makes me trail off is-

Demon God Bael.

The very reason Prelati had been summoned to this singularity in the first place, the one good thing that I knew he had done for us.

What the hell happened to Bael!?

I know from my second loop at Chaldea that death of the host won't necessarily kill a Demon Pillar right away - they can last at least long enough to fireball me.

I know that Prelati's illusions end upon his death. That's why Satella showed up at the end of last loop, and why I was released from his fake reality marble in this one. So Bael must have seen through the illusion when Prelati died.

So where the hell is he!?

…No, this is stupid to panic about. The answer is right in front of me.

"-He said he had trapped the Demon God Pillar Bael in an illusion too, but it didn't show up when he died, so that was probably just a lie." I finish. But does that make everything else a lie too? That seeming insider information he revealed when he was torturing me, was it just to toy with my emotions?

"That's a very specific bluff." The Professor points out. "Just how well known is it that these Demon Pillars are involved at all?"

"...At the very least, it would have to be known to whoever was given the Grail in the first place. But I'm pretty sure Dark Jeanne hates his guts. He did goad her into getting burned, after all." I say.

"...No, you're making a mistake there. There's no reason to assume that she's the original holder of the grail." Professor Velvet replies. "Occam's Razor doesn't apply when magecraft is involved. The question is never 'whodunnit' or 'howdunnit', but rather 'whydunnit'. In this case, that means: 'Whose wish on the grail is for Jeanne d'Arc to return and take her revenge on France?'"

"Wouldn't that still be the dragon witch…?" Merry asks.

"Possibly." He answers. "But that doesn't feel quite right. Like putting a round peg into a square hole. The peg fits. It fits and goes through the hole, but I can't ignore the perfectly sized square peg sitting in the background." He pauses to take another drag of his cigar, and then jolts as the flame reaches his fingers, tossing it to the ground with a scowl. Grumbling, the Professor reaches into his pocket and pulls a second cigar from a case.

"Oi, Master, I'm not too sure on the etiquette here, but people aren't supposed to chain smoke cigars, right?" Cu Chulainn stage whispers to me.

"Well, the professor has a difficult job…" I say with a nervous laugh.

"Shut up. I need- shit." His lighter slips from his hand, and as he reaches down to pick it up, I realize that he's trembling. Carefully, he picks it up, lights his cigar, and takes another long puff. "When I was a young man, I participated in the Fourth Fuyuki Holy Grail War."

"So you're a veteran, huh? That's probably how you ended up as a candidate to become a Pseudoservant in the first place, right?" Cu Chulainn notes.

"Probably." He admits, and then falls silent for a few moments, taking a deep breath to steady himself. "...Gilles de Rais was the Caster Servant of that war. To be honest, I'm not certain what to even expect from a berserk version of him - he was mad enough as it was. But I know that his wish was to restore Jeanne d'Arc to life - and after mistaking Saber for her, and seeing that his wish had been granted, it seemed his wish simply became to commit as many atrocities as possible."

"So he could be the real culprit, you're saying?" I ask.

"It lines up in my mind better. For Jeanne d'Arc, the ones who humiliated and killed her were the English. Certainly, she must have known she was betrayed by the French - but it wasn't a face to face betrayal. The mere refusal to pay a ransom - learned secondhand from her captors - is that enough to make her first enemy upon her return as a villain France? The whole of France?" Professor Velvet asks. "But as for Gilles de Rais - he didn't witness her death. What he witnessed firsthand was the failure of the French to save the girl he admired. And then he went mad, driven onward by the taunting of Francois Prelati, and made himself an enemy of France, perhaps of humanity as a whole. In the end, it was the French who killed him. For Gilles de Rais, it's only natural that France would be his target. So the question becomes - Master, you've met Jeanne d'Arc. The one not summoned by the enemy, I mean. This level of indiscriminate carnage - is she capable of it?"

"...If I'm just going off the normal Jeanne, no. There's no way that's possible." I answer. "And Dark Jeanne… to be honest, it's not like she's been acting revenge-crazed. She keeps saying she is, but-"

A flash of a memory cuts through my mind - a conversation, leading to a completely idiotic decision.

"So, Monsieur Whaler, tell me - what do you make of that dragon witch?" A massive man in an even larger tricorn hat asked.

"Whatever that girl be, 'tis no Avenger. Were that the case, her hands would be stained most of all - but she delegates! She allows others to commit vengeance in her stead, and lurks within her castle!" 'I' spat in reply.

"So her heart's not in it, huh? To be honest, that Alchemist said something about her being compelled into this whole business." The man replied, stroking his brown beard thoughtfully.

"And thou wouldst trust that creature's judgment?" 'I' asked, rolling my eyes. Was this really the man who conquered all of Western Europe save Britain? Why was he acting this naive?

"Of course not! But, if you think it might be the case, then that changes things." He replied, pursing his lips.

"In what way? Even if she is under another's control, what canst thou do about it? Tis impossible for thee to march into Orleans and free her." 'I' sighed.

"Ooh la la! I believe you said a new word to me there, Monsieur!" He said, a fearless grin stretching across his lips.

"What-?"

"That word, 'impossible' - I've never seen it in my dictionary." Napoleon said in a low voice, materializing a massive cannon and pointing it experimentally in the direction of Orleans. "What does it mean, exactly?"

-And then he marched off to Orleans, despite Ahab's protests, and got himself killed.

"-Is something wrong, Master?" the Professor asks.

"No, it's… I'm pretty sure that Napoleon came to the same conclusion." I say. "That Dark Jeanne wasn't our real enemy in this singularity, I mean."

"That's wrong." He replies firmly. "She might not be the root cause, but she's still a 'real'... enemy…" He trails off as his eyes widen slightly. "Actually… what if she isn't 'real' at all? Gilles de Rais receives the grail from the Demon Pillar, and uses it to create a Jeanne d'Arc that matches his delusions, leaving behind a weakened True Jeanne as a waste product - how does that sound to your clairvoyance?"

"...And returning to the start of this conversation, Prelati learns of the Demon Pillars from Gilles de Rais, before eventually betraying him for his own amusement." I conclude. "In other words, he was never Bael to begin with, and it was all a lie?"

…Even then, didn't he know too much for that to be true? He seemed to understand all of the motives of the supposed king of Demon Gods, after all. Is Berserk Caster coherent enough to have dragged all of that information out of whoever gave him the Grail - Amdusias, I guess? Or was he just making that stuff up as he went!?

Prelati, Prelati, Prelati… you piece of shit, come back to life so I can strangle you again! I bet you made this as confusing as possible on purpose, you bastard!

"...Let's assume that it was a lie for now. So the timeline is probably something along the lines of-"

"Francois Prelati is summoned by the planet to help humanity in the Singularity. He talks his way into Gilles de Rais's camp, using the long friendship between the two of them. He learns about the demon pillars, steals Gilles's Noble Phantasm, and returns to the side of humanity, where he 'helps' in such a destructive fashion that he ends up getting Napoleon killed and almost getting Ahab killed. Then he meets me, tries to 'help' in a similar way, and I kill him when negotiations break down."

"You're sure that he had Gilles de Rais's Noble Phantasm?" the Professor asks.

"...Yeah. He used some captured wyverns to create sea fiends, back when he was working with Ahab and Napoleon." I answer.

"He used wyverns to do it!?" His eyes go wide, and he grabs me by the shoulders.

"Y-yeah." I respond, a bit caught off guard.

"...During the Fourth Grail War, Gilles de Rais used exclusively kidnapped children as fuel. I had assumed that was a restriction on the Noble Phantasm, not…" His arms drop to his side.

"Just his own sick preference, huh…?" Cu Chulainn says.

"Or Prelati just taught him wrong, for his own amusement." I note, grimacing.

Professor Velvet scowls, taking a drag of his cigar. "-Either way, that raises another damn possibility. That Demon God Bael is absent because he's already been disposed of, used as a supplement for that fucking book. In Fuyuki, Caster used a few hundred children to summon a Fiend dangerous enough that [Excalibur] was needed to put it down for good. With something on the level of Bael…"

"...I guess we've found Ahab's 'White Whale', then." I snarl. Of course. That explains why Prelati was so eager to have him kill Fafnir with his Noble Phantasm - his harpoon kills him too when he uses it; if he used it on a red herring, then Prelati's Secret weapon would be unstoppable. "So there's some rogue sea monster somewhere now…?"

"Probably not." Professor Velvet says. "If Gilles de Rais's work is anything to go by, he could just store the power of its sacrifice in his spellbook - he summoned his big monster after Rider and I had already destroyed his workshop. In which case, the question becomes - who has Prelati's Spellbook now?"

"I'd like to say 'It vanished with him when he died', but there's no way we're going to be that lucky, is there?" I sigh. "But in terms of people who can use it, it should just be Gilles left, right? Lancelot could use it to hit people with, I guess…"

"No, there's one more." He says, casting his spent cigar to the ground. "You killed Francois Prelati, the servant. But remember, the year is 1431 right now - what about Francois Prelati, the living human?"

A/N:

In which Waver uses previous knowledge and his own intuition to preemptively figure out the twist at the end of canon Orleans in the first fifteen minutes of his summoning. He is a detective, after all.

To be clear, he didn't trust Prelati a single time in the brainwash loops, but his advice to Subaru was always to command spell kill him the first moment he got a chance, and somehow Subaru was never able to get enough command spells (because Prelati was rigging the random encounter table)

We'll get back to the action at some point, I promise.

As a side note, Merry has spent this whole chapter totally lost on what they're talking about and too scared to ask questions.