Chapter 48: Tōhsaka Tokiomi wants Kirei to adopt Kiritsugu's daughter? What a strange dream.
The Masters of this Holy Grail War have begun to take it seriously. Both Kayneth and Tohsaka Tokiomi have big problems, especially since Tohsaka Tokiomi's servant has died, but he himself does not intend to withdraw from the Holy Grail War to save his life. Instead, he contacts Kotomine Kirei, wanting to announce his withdrawal on the surface but actually makes a secret move.
However, Miss Illyasviel was not very surprised. Rather, she felt that it was reasonable and ought to be this way. This was how the Holy Grail War should be. Everyone was moving forward with their own goals in mind, and no matter how cruel the reality was, they would cheer for victory, even if the ultimate price might be their own life.
Using her skills to mimic a pure white dress and sandals, Miss Illyasviel tried her best not to attract too much attention.
Kotomine Kirei politely declined Tohsaka Tokiomi's request, but it couldn't be said to be a polite refusal.
Rather, it was said that Assassin had been seriously injured after the battle at the port terminal, and he had already used two Command Seals to save his life. If another Command Seal was used to make Assassin change the contract, some accidents would inevitably occur. After all, he had not told his Heroic Spirit about the relationship between Servant and Teacher from the beginning, and now it was so sudden that it might take some time to persuade him.
Tohsaka Tokiomi did not push him too hard, because, from his perspective, Assassin's only hidden ability was extremely terrifying, his basic attributes and Noble Phantasm level were not very good, and it was even possible that this hidden ability was his Noble Phantasm.
So he just laughed and said it was okay. He could wait a little longer. If it really didn't work, then forget it, because essentially he just wanted a hidden and maneuverable familiar. King Gilgamesh was dead, and his intelligence information was too backward. He couldn't always contact the church every time he wanted to obtain intelligence.
This made Miss Illyasviel, who was ready to kill Tohsaka Tokiomi immediately, feel a little doubtful because Tohsaka Tokiomi was too confident.
He was so confident that even she felt a certain fear.
He was eighty percent sure that there were lies in Tohsaka Tokiomi's answer to Kotomine Kirei.
It wasn't that Tohsaka Tokiomi had lost trust in Kotomine Kirei, but rather that he had become cautious as a gambler after facing up to the Holy Grail War. He trusted Kotomine Kirei but was also afraid that the news would leak out, so he didn't reveal all his plans. It was just his subconscious confidence as a noble that betrayed him.
Tohsaka Tokiomi is confident. Although Miss Illyasviel is not sure what kind of confidence Tohsaka Tokiomi has, she realizes that it might be dangerous if she wants to kill Tohsaka Tokiomi herself.
"You want to test Tohsaka Tokiomi? How? In everyone's eyes, Tohsaka Tokiomi is already out. Who would go against the rules of the Holy Grail War and kill him? Even a magi killer like Emiya Kiritsugu would not risk violating the rules of the Holy Grail War and the majesty of the Holy Church by messing with Tohsaka Tokiomi, an enemy who is completely out and has not yet formed a mortal enemy."
"Then find another reason, a reason other than the Holy Grail War, to stir up a new conflict."
"....Who do you want to test?"
"The Matou family."
"You want Matou Kariya to attack Tohsaka Tokiomi, but that's unrealistic. Matou Kariya has already realized something. He's no fool now. As long as you ask him to attack Tohsaka Tokiomi, he will definitely propose new prices and conditions. This is an uncertain factor."
"Not only does he have a conflict with Tohsaka Tokiomi, someone else also has a conflict with Tohsaka Tokiomi."
Moreover, this is a conflict outside of the Holy Grail War.
Such conflicts between magi would not make it difficult for the Holy Church to maintain the rules.
It can also successfully test out what cards Tohsaka Tokiomi has.
She can temporarily not kill Tohsaka Tokiomi, but she has plenty of ways to get others to kill Tohsaka Tokiomi. After all, she now has the support of the intelligence officer of the Holy Church, and she has a large advantage over others in terms of natural information.
Everyone is doing this, so there is no reason why she can't do it. It can even be said that as long as she wants to, the operations she can do are no worse than those of others.
"Master, tell Uncle Tohsaka Tokiomi tonight that I accidentally found out some secrets about the Matou family. The Matou family not only has water magecraft and butterfly magecraft, but also a kind of magecraft called insect magecraft."
"It also means that his daughter, Sakura Matou, may have been implanted with a crest worm that devours the host's mana and flesh by the Matou family. She lives a life worse than death every day in the Matou family. It is not like what the Matou family claimed to the public, that Sakura Matou was implanted with a magic seal. It is very likely that there are some unknown experiments on Sakura Matou."
This is what Miss Illyasviel told Kotomine Kirei before leaving the church.
The qualifications of these two children, Sakura Matou and Rin Tohsaka, are not ordinary. They both have talents that surpass many magi. The crest worms are used by ordinary people to change their destiny. There is no need to implant them in Sakura Matou who has good talent. Matou Kariya could not see this. He only saw Sakura Matou being tortured by the bugs.
But any decent magi would be able to see the weirdness in it. Miss Illyasviel could see it, and there was no reason why Tohsaka Tokiomi couldn't see it.
Before, she had deceived Matou Kariya, saying that Tohsaka Tokiomi might not know that this matter was just ambiguous. Matou Kariya insisted on believing that Tohsaka Tokiomi was a bad guy and she knew it, and there was nothing she could do.
In Miss Illyasviel's opinion, although Tohsaka Tokiomi knew about it, he probably didn't even know about the crest worms. That traditional aristocratic magi followed the implicit rules between magi too much, so it was hard to say whether he really knew about it.
Of course, Miss Illyasviel didn't really care whether Tohsaka Tokiomi would react.
The important thing is to let Tohsaka Tokiomi "know" and make him an insider.
It doesn't matter even if he acquiesced to this matter, after all, he was the first one to know about it.
This way she could stir up some small conflicts.
And who knows, maybe the balloon & the equipment could get him to take the opportunity to get rid of Matou Kariya.
Speaking of which, Kotomine Kirei seemed to be very enthusiastic about this plan and seemed to be looking forward to something. He even generously bought a small cake for Miss Illyasviel, which made Miss Illyasviel's ahoge shake when she went out...
"Where have you been? You've kept your brother in the dark. What is everyone doing?...!"
In the front courtyard of a luxurious manor in Fuyuki City, a little boy with short blue hair went crazy and threw things around.
He is the youngest of the Matou family, Matou Shinji.
Today he threw a tantrum at home as usual. Over time, it has become a daily routine and is just a form of compensatory behavior.
Since he was born, the bloodline of the Matou family had already ended. They, who had noble blood, lost their power, and the members of the Matou family gradually became "human beings." The only special thing left was the accumulated knowledge. The famous magi family of the past was destined to be exterminated unknown to the world in this far east.
He had heard about this fact since he was a child. The Matou family was a family that inherited secret rituals and was a very special existence, but that was now a thing of the past.
There is no one who can perform Matou magecraft anymore, and from now on he has to be completely human and have something to do with society. However, he doesn't think so. Indeed, the magic circuits and so on have been cut off, and he cannot practice the so-called secret rituals of magecraft.
The line of magi of Matou ended with his father's generation, and he knew that he was no longer qualified to inherit the name of Matou. However, even so, there were still records of Matou's secret rituals.
Only the blood relationship was severed, but the stored knowledge was not lost.
For Shinji Matou, that was something very "special."
You are different from others.
Matou is a member of the chosen family.
Even if he lost his magecraft power and could no longer be a magi, his value remained unchanged. As a child of this special family, he felt honored to be born special.
Although he is a flawed magi, he is indeed a child of the chosen family.
But... a new child had mixed into this chosen family at some point.
"Matou Sakura! Matou Sakura! Matou Sakura! Why are all the eyes on you? Why are you the only one who is given special care? Why can you come and go in the basement as you please and stay with my grandfather? Obviously, I am my father's biological son. Obviously, I am!"
The father brought the helpless girl back home and said he wanted to adopt her.
It was already a year ago.
The girl named Tohsaka Sakura became his sister from that day on. From the beginning, he hated his sister for no reason because he didn't want the special Matou family to be infiltrated by dissidents.
It feels like your family has somehow brought home a new family member to share the love you've received.
But as time went by, he began to admit that his sister, a girl named Sakura, was disobedient, mediocre, and only at the level of a watchdog. Hostility towards her existence was just a waste of time, and if he considered using her to order her around, that level of stupidity would seem cute.
He searched through books and wrote down the magecraft arts that could not be used. He considered himself to be the only heir of the Matou family and he was the only one who could enter the Matou family's study. As an adopted daughter, his sister would never be chosen as the heir and therefore had no qualifications to read the collection of books.
His self-esteem was greatly satisfied because his sister would not be able to learn the only remaining knowledge of Matou and would have to end her life as an ordinary person.
In a magi's bloodline, there can only be one successor.
Knowing this, he no longer had any doubts about educating his sister separately from himself. Since only one person could learn magecraft, it was natural that he and his sister would be separated.
That's right.
In this way, he felt sympathy for her.
Living in the same home, with the same family, feeling smug about being the only "special" one, and feeling sad for his sister who was not chosen, it was like the pity of a superior looking down on him, and for him, it became the most reliable "self-esteem."
The brother regards his sister as a defective product, and the sister is afraid of her brother and always lowers her head to avoid his sight.
Thinking that it was an action born out of shame, he verbally insulted his incompetent sister while at the same time caring for and teaching her.
Until.
Until he learned the truth that he didn't know.
"Liar, if it weren't for you, if it weren't for you..." Matou Shinji recalled the truth he discovered not long ago. After walking into the room where his uncle Matou Kariya often watched, he gritted his teeth at the fact that no one had ever told him.
That was a room he didn't know, that was the knowledge he had never been taught, and also, the talents he never had, all were in that room.
There was a familiar girl in the center of the room.
All around were black swarms of insects and the terrifying grandfather.
His father glanced at him as he came in, with a look he had never seen before, as if he was looking at someone causing trouble.
That was it.
Everything he believed in, everything that made him who he was, turned against him. It wasn't him who was special. It wasn't his sister who was isolated or to be pitied.
Then, the one who looks down and feels sympathy was not himself.
His life suddenly changed.
There was no need to hide anything anymore. His father's attitude shifted, and he began to care for his sister more than before. She said nothing, keeping her head bowed as usual as if she wanted to escape his gaze. Her demeanor and words remained unchanged.
"I'm sorry, brother."
Such words echoed often in his ears, filled with unwelcome sympathy.
The feelings he once harbored toward his sister were now mirrored in her voice.
"Ha—hahaha, HA...!!!"
Shinji Matou suddenly burst into laughter, finding the absurdity unbearable—so much so that it ignited a murderous impulse. He had thought of himself as the master, only to realize that he was merely a clown, while the pet animal, Matou Sakura, turned out to be the true inheritor.
Which of them was funnier? Himself or that girl?
It must be both.
As he walked back to the mansion, clarity dawned upon him. The world wasn't flipped upside down on purpose—his surroundings had always been this way.
What had been inverted was his own misunderstanding.
Though he believed he controlled the narrative, realization crept in: he was alone in his misery, as all affection was bestowed upon an outsider.
Grandfather only paid attention to Sakura.
Uncle Kariya only cared for Sakura.
During this time, Shinji became a mere presence in the house, noticed as little as air.
"Hahahahaha… Bastard, bastard, bastard! Wouldn't it be better if you just ignored me? Why sympathize? If you do that, there will be no hatred or hope left!"
The boy lay by the door, laughing madly. What purpose did he serve here?
Everything had been taken from him—his family, self-esteem—and the one who robbed him of it all offered sympathy. How ridiculous. Couldn't someone tell him his role in this family?
At least that would help mend his shattered pride.
"This should be the right place, Matou. Is anyone here? Could you open the door for me?"
Ding Dong.
Ding Dong.
Ding Dong.
With the ringing of the doorbell, a polite, gentle, and pleasant voice spoke from the front gate.
"?"
The blue-haired boy stopped laughing, frowned slightly, and stood to look.
A silver-haired girl with red eyes stood at the gate, tiptoeing to press the doorbell due to her short height.
She was stunning—a lovely figure dressed in a white dress and sandals, like an angel descended to earth, untouched by the world. At first glance, she radiated purity like a lotus flower.
There was an inexplicable charm about her that naturally elicited goodwill.
"Huh? Great, someone's here." Seeing the boy approach, Illyasviel hesitated briefly, then smiled innocently.
She bent slightly, placing her hands behind her back.
Dressed in white, blinking her enchanting red eyes, she asked politely,
"Excuse me, could you please inform Mr. Matou Zouken?"
"Mr. Matou Kariya's good friend, Caster, has come to visit the Matou family on the orders of the Master~"
Shinji Matou stood in stunned silence.
At this moment, he could only feel his heartbeat involuntarily starting to quicken.
(TL: Another one bite the dust~)