Note: This Chapter is Re-Translated on 6 / 15 / 2025
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Chapter 49: Arturia – Who Told You to Be Screaming Your Lungs Out in the Room, Master?!
"Urgh…"
Shinji groggily blinked open his eyes. He sat up halfway and scanned his surroundings.
"…My room? I'm in my room?"
He was lying on his bed—exactly where he should've been.
"…Did I drink too much again last night? Wait—again? Why did I say again?"
Gurgle~
A low, rumbling growl came from his stomach. He clutched his abdomen with a frown.
"…So hungry… How long have I gone without food?"
Rubbing his belly in pitiful agony, Shinji dragged himself off the bed with the grace of a dying animal.
"Maybe today's the day I try Kariya-ojisan's whole-roast beef special…"
Gurgle~
Another ominous squelch echoed out of his gut. Shinji froze mid-stretch, brows furrowing.
"…The hell?"
He looked down—and what he saw made his blood run cold.
His chest… was bulging.
Not in the "hey, I've been working out" way.
In the "something-is-wrong-and-this-might-be-how-I-die" kind of way.
"What the f—"
SPLURT!
A black, thorn-covered tendril burst out from his chest with a sickening sound!
Blood sprayed across the room like a horror movie set.
His vision swam red as he fell backward.
"▲?▼??▼?!!"
A hideous maw, all spikes and snarling tendons, peeked out and shrieked something incomprehensible at him.
"WAAAHHHHH!!!"
Shinji tumbled back, mouth bleeding, body convulsing uncontrollably.
In the final moment before his consciousness blinked out, he saw the thing slithering from his chest.
A writhing shadow of blackness—and then, disturbingly, a voice—
"HAHAHAHA! Isn't this, like, ultra COOL?! HAHAHAHA!!"
◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆
"LIKE HELL IT'S COOL, YOU CRAZY BASTARD!!!"
Shinji bolted upright from the sofa, fists clenched and screaming at the ceiling like it personally wronged him.
"Boss! Are you okay?!"
A startled voice called out from beside him—his secretary, Ophelia, was peering at him with deep concern.
His face was pale, his body drenched in sweat.
"Huff… Huff…"
Shinji didn't reply right away. Instead, he slumped back down on the couch, gasping like a man who had just run ten kilometers barefoot through hell.
"…What… the actual hell…"
He clutched at his chest.
No, nothing had really burst out.
But the skin beneath his fingers felt like it had been scorched—searing hot, like someone had branded him with red-hot iron.
"Boss, I really think we should stop this."
Ophelia placed her hands on his shoulders, her tone urgent and worried.
"Diving so deeply into your own subconscious… even just to observe possibilities… It's far too dangerous."
She bit her lip. "Do it a few more times and your mind might not come back in one piece."
Ophelia's Mystic Eyes were a subtype of Precognition—they let her observe future possibilities.
The nightmare Shinji had just experienced wasn't just a dream.
It was a vision—a glimpse into a possible future.
A future brought about by summoning a particular Heroic Spirit.
After all, some of the Servants from Fate/Zero were… let's say, mentally "off."
Especially Lancelot and Gilles de Rais—textbook lunatics.
Summoning them with their original class alignment?
Not. An. Option.
Sure, they had alternate class compatibility—but they were both Sabers.
Even with the expanded summoning system in Fate/Zero, thanks to Shinji's upgraded Grail tech, the basic structure of the ritual remained intact:
Seven Heroic Spirits. Seven classes. No duplicates allowed.
Considering the increasingly diverse lineup of Heroic Spirits in future Holy Grail Wars—rulers, aliens, and other bizarre classes—Shinji had already asked his dear grandpa and Irisviel to overhaul the Grail's summoning system.
But revamping the foundational layer of a magic ritual was no simple matter. Modifying it without changing the entire existing framework? Yeah, not happening fast.
Progress was crawling slower than a gacha dev team on a three-day weekend.
Old man Zouken made it clear:
"It'll take years, Shinji. You just sit tight and wait."
Well, Shinji could afford to wait.
But his Fate/Zero film?
No way in hell.
The deadline for summoning the new Heroic Spirits was fast approaching, and Shinji had no choice but to call in his secret weapon—Ophelia's Mystic Eyes.
If he couldn't change the ritual yet, he could at least peek at the future and figure out how not to die.
And boy, was that a smart call.
Even though what Ophelia's Mystic Eyes showed were just fleeting fragments, it was enough for Shinji to realize:
Summoning either of those two lunatics spelled total disaster.
If he summoned Gilles de Rais as a Saber, okay—less of a nightmare.
Sure, the Matou residence would be leveled when Berserker Lancelot clashed with Arturia, but hey, buildings can be rebuilt.
But Gilles as a Caster?
That's when things got truly cursed.
In that potential future, Shinji would either be eaten alive by sea demons, infested and turned into a mindless meat puppet by sea demons, or violently digested by sea demons.
He'd basically reenact every horrific background death from the Alien movie franchise.
To make matters worse, Caster Gilles wouldn't shut up.
It was always "Cool," "Cooooool," or "COOOOOOL!"
"Are you a Blizzard employee or something?!"
Shinji clutched his throbbing head, muttering to himself.
"Boss? Are you sure you're okay?"
Ophelia's hands wrapped around his shoulders again, worry clear in her voice.
The way he suddenly blurted that nonsense made her genuinely concerned for his sanity.
"…I'm fine. Just… not thrilled with what I saw."
He exhaled slowly, calming his nerves.
"No need to blame yourself, Ophelia."
He took hold of her soft, fair hands and gently pulled her slender figure into his arms.
"You don't need to worry. I'm done with deep diving for now."
He whispered the words right next to her ear, the warmth of his breath making her shiver slightly.
Yes—diving into future possibilities through her Mystic Eyes was dangerous.
While the visions weren't real, the feedback—emotional and magical—could physically harm the observer.
But the technique was undeniably effective.
Once he fine-tuned it, Shinji planned to use it as a means of pre-checking summon outcomes, to scout out whether a particular Servant was even worth the trouble.
"…Still, I think you should avoid doing it."
Ophelia looked up into Shinji's bright blue eyes, lips pursed in mild protest.
"It's really dangerous…"
Her tone turned sulky, her cheeks puffing up in quiet frustration.
Seeing Shinji in that much pain earlier had scared her—more than she cared to admit.
She wanted to be someone useful to him.
But not like this.
Not if it meant seeing him suffer.
To Ophelia, who had never been "needed" by anyone before, Shinji was… special.
And just as she was about to speak her mind—
Chu
Shinji leaned forward and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead.
Startled, Ophelia instinctively leaned back—almost toppling over—but Shinji's arm was already around her waist, steadying her trembling frame.
"…B-Boss, you're such a cheat…"
She murmured in embarrassment, face beet red, eyes wide with bashful indignation.
"Welp, I'm a big believer in efficient methods~"
Shinji chuckled, then reached up and gently patted her head.
Like always.
Like he knew exactly how to calm her down.
"So, Boss—have you decided yet?"
"I have. I'll summon Lancelot as Saber. As for the other one, let's leave it to Yan Qing, or we'll find someone else for the role."
Truth be told, Shinji really didn't want to dump Caster Gilles on Yan Qing too.
The poor guy was already the king of background characters—he had enough on his plate.
Giving him another major role just felt cruel.
"At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if he started splitting into multiple personalities like Hassan of the Hundred Faces…"
Grumbling about the mental well-being of his hard-working Heroic Spirits, Shinji reached out and opened his bedroom door, and was immediately met with—
"Ouch!"
"Oi! Stop pushing me!!"
"Get off me, you clutz!!"
—A chaotic pile of girls.
Face-flat on the floor.
One tangled heap of limbs.
Shinji stared down at the disaster in silence.
"…What the hell are you all doing?"
Rin let out a sheepish chuckle, eyes darting.
"Uh… We were just a little curious."
Sakura pouted and muttered, "Because, Onii-sama, you went into this room with Phamrsolone-san all sneaky-like… it looked kind of suspicious."
Medusa calmly adjusted her glasses. "I merely observed. I tried to stop them. Unsuccessfully."
Only pure, clueless Arturia blurted out the real reason:
"Because Master was screaming all kinds of weird things from the room, so they thought you were doing something really intense and—mmf!!"
Before she could finish, Rin and Sakura simultaneously slapped their hands over her mouth.
But it was too late.
Shinji had heard everything.
His eye twitched.
"…You all seem very free lately, huh?"
With a faint smile twitching at the corner of his lips, he said coldly:
"If you've got so much energy, how about finishing the jobs I gave you? Is all the prep work for the shoot done yet?"
"Yes, Boss!" × N
Like startled cats, the girls leapt up from the floor and scampered down the hallway at full speed, leaving Shinji standing there alone.
"…What a bunch of clowns."
He sighed.
Still, he couldn't help but smirk.
With the Servant lineup officially locked in, Shinji threw himself into the final pre-production phase of the Fate/Zero movie.
So dedicated was he, he even left the ongoing promotional efforts for Fate/Stay Night entirely to the distribution company.
For this next project, Shinji wasn't planning to half-ass anything.
From props, to set dressing, to scouting locations—he personally inspected everything.
He wouldn't micromanage every step, but every milestone would go through him.
Unless he gave the green light, no one could move to the next stage.
Script work was also one of his top priorities before filming began.
Sure, commercial films weren't documentaries—they didn't need to be airtight.
But that didn't mean logic should go flying out the window.
And for a movie aimed at the general public, the fewer plot holes, the better.
To make the characters' lines feel authentic, Shinji took a bold step:
He had each actor write their own lines based on the scene descriptions.
Naturally, all lines still had to go through his final approval.
After all, real-life conversation was different from movie dialogue.
In real life, you could waste words. In a film, every line must pull its weight.
Especially in a dense, plot-heavy movie like Fate/Zero.
You couldn't afford pointless fluff.
Thanks to all the experience he gained while prepping Fate/Stay Night, this time around, things were running like a well-oiled machine.
By the time summer vacation was nearing its end in 2003, Shinji was already ready to roll cameras.