["Are you serious?"]
Romani's eyes widened. For some reason, he thought Shirou wouldn't actually attack.
["Are people outside all this terrifying?"]
His fingers left afterimages as he lamented, ["Flip the table the moment words don't match?"]
"Fujimaru, Mash!", Olga Marie turned around.
In the end, Mash still didn't use her Noble Phantasm.
She firmly believed that Senior Emiya wasn't an enemy.
The Rayshift officially began.
To Shirou, at this speed, his sword could have pierced through the three of them in an instant.
Unfortunately, he really only meant to scare them. His true target was someone else.
At that thought, he couldn't help but sigh, "What a pain. Can't you be a little more rational?"
Just as the torrent of steel was about to strike the three huddled together, the aim shifted.
The blades pointed at the Greater Grail above.
Anyone who was targeted by that deadly rain of swords would instinctively feel their pressure multiply.
But this time, the target only snapped his fingers lightly.
The space twisted.
The Noble Phantasms vanished without a sound.
As if they had been absorbed into another dimension.
"So it really is," Shirou wasn't surprised. Coming before the three, he was already irritated, "How much longer are you going to keep clinging together?"
Realizing she was completely unharmed, Fujimaru Ritsuka lit up with joy, "I knew Senior Emiya wasn't that kind of person."
"Emiya, are you okay?", Olga Marie looked at Shirou, whose skin had been twisted and corroded by the curse.
'This time, he really does look like one.'
"I'm fine. I won't die," Shirou spoke the truth. He really couldn't die.
A mere lethal curse was nothing.
Clap! Clap! Clap!
Clear applause rang out above the Greater Grail.
Seeing that the three still needed some time before the transfer completed, Shirou could only sigh helplessly.
He had wanted them gone sooner, but in the end, they still ran into this.
"My, my, such a touching performance of self-sacrifice."
The man standing above the Grail spoke leisurely, "I didn't think there would still be surviving humans in this world… is it thanks to Saber?"
"Professor Lev?", Mash was the first to sense something was wrong.
"That voice…", Olga Marie looked up.
"Lev!", She called out joyfully, wanting to run over, but someone caught her by the collar.
"This really is farewell," Holding Olga Marie, Shirou gathered the last of his dwindling magical energy in his hand, keeping it in reserve.
"Fujimaru, although I didn't intend it to turn out this way, I really do hope you'll learn to make decisions more decisively."
"Senior Emiya," Fujimaru Ritsuka felt a strong sense of foreboding.
The Rayshift was reaching its end.
"What's wrong, Emiya?"
Olga Marie, gripped by Shirou, remembered she didn't know Lev and quickly explained, "Lev isn't an enemy, he's—"
"Olga. Your body being blown apart and then luckily transferred here is one thing, but that someone would even risk their life to save you…", Descending from the sky, clad in a green coat, top hat upon his head, standing before the Greater Grail, Lev finally revealed his true self.
"An unexpected person appearing, an unexpected situation unfolding, it really pisses me off!", The hands clasped behind Lev's back tightened. His expression twisted into a ferocious grin.
"Emiya Shirou. Master of Saber in the Fifth Holy Grail War. I didn't expect my carelessness to let you make it here."
"I thought leaving you alone wouldn't matter. That a mere human with second-rate magecraft was nothing. Yet you've produced such a miracle. No, more accurately, you yourself are a complete aberration."
Lev slowly raised his head, "And you, Romani. I clearly told you to come back to the Control Room immediately…"
He sighed as though enraged, "Really, one unpleasant thing after another. This has gone far beyond my patience."
"Lev, you!", Even Olga Marie, thick-skinned as she was, realized something was wrong now.
Lev smiled cruelly, "Speaking of which, you don't know the tragic state of Chaldea yet, do you?"
He snapped his fingers. The void above the Grail twisted, and an orbiting celestial body appeared, "the Sun."
Of course, calling it the Sun was only because it resembled it.
Its true form was an artificial planetary body.
Chaldeas.

A model simulating a planetary environment, its function was to observe the flame of human civilization.
A celestial sphere built by copying the soul of the planet itself. The planetary consciousness.
Its ability was to simulate Earth a hundred years into the future, monitoring its changes to predict crises that could lead to human extinction.
Which meant, originally, it should have been a blue planet.
But now it was devoured by raging flames.
The light representing the soul of humanity had vanished completely.
This meant that humanity had utterly lost its future.
"No way!", Olga Marie looked as though she were seeing something impossible, nearly collapsing.
"Tell me it's fake, Lev?"
Lev sneered, "It's real. For your sake, I even connected space-time to show you."
"As long as the Grail exists, this sort of thing can be done."
Of course, it also required one condition.
A rare magical attribute, Imaginary Numbers.
Put simply, a prowler who can slip their hand into the gaps between dimensions.
That's why Shirou's Noble Phantasms had just been swallowed into another dimension.
His eyes paused on the glowing crystalline object in Lev's hand.
No wonder he hadn't seen the Grail's core. It had already been taken.
This Grail's core wasn't the Greater Grail of Fuyuki, but the Holy Grail Fujimaru's group was meant to retrieve.
The Greater Grail of Fuyuki had just been used by Shirou to make his wish, a crude imitation of the Heaven's Feel.
It only allowed the soul to remain stable, not dissipating without a body to anchor it.
But it wasn't a long-term solution.
A drifting soul always needed a body, a kind of anchor, to hold it.
After all, it was a corrupted Grail. Bearing its curse to this extent was already Shirou's limit.
Not to mention, even the true Heaven's Feel, the Third Magic, still required a body.
So he couldn't expect too much.
The only reason it had worked was because of his prior experience with such things. Otherwise, Olga Marie truly would have had no choice but to wait for death.
"Ah, right. I haven't introduced myself," Lev placed a hand to his chest, praising Mash, "As expected of a Demi-Servant. You sensed that I'm not of the same dimension as humanity."
He gave an elegant gentleman's bow, completely at odds with his expression, "My name is Lev Lainur Flauros. I was dispatched as supervisor in 2016 for the purpose of handling you humans."
Finishing his bow, he straightened, "Are you listening, Dr. Roman?"
["Professor Lev."]
Romani's voice came through the communicator.
"Since we were once colleagues in magical research, I'll give you one last piece of advice."
He spread his hands, "The future hasn't been destroyed. It's just been burned to ash, like this world's Fuyuki City."
"This, Shirou Emiya, should be something you understand well."
Lev looked down at him condescendingly, "Chaldea only survived because of the magnetic field of Chaldeas."
["So that's it,"] Roman said solemnly, ["The reason we couldn't communicate with the outside wasn't because of faulty equipment. It was because all the recipients of our transmissions… had ceased to exist."]
"Ah!"
Hearing that, both Fujimaru Ritsuka and Mash were struck dumb, their faces filled with disbelief.
Olga Marie had suspected it from seeing Chaldeas.
But she still couldn't understand.
"Why, Lev?", She demanded, "Why would you do this?"
"Why?", Lev shot back, "You really ask that?"
His face twisted with anger, "Because humanity's very existence is meaningless! Because you're incompetent! Because you've lost the favor of the King!"
As he shouted, his rage-twisted expression suddenly curved into laughter, "To burn away like scraps of paper, leaving only the last bit of residual heat, that's all you're worth."
The ground began to quake.
Lev looked at Shirou with contempt, "How pitiful. If you'd been burned alive directly, you wouldn't have to face this cruel truth. But since you've managed to survive, what does it matter if you won the Grail War? In the end, you'll still be absorbed back into history."
"No, that's not it," Lev laughed madly, "For the sake of saving someone irrelevant to yourself, even the proof of your existence in this world will vanish!"
"Yes, the world of a corrected Singularity will return to its proper track. But the dead remain dead, that doesn't change, even if history is rewritten."
"Emiya!", Olga Marie's breath caught.
She knew that once a Singularity was repaired, history would return to its normal course.
But she hadn't realized that those who died within the Singularity would also remain dead in true history.
Didn't this mean Shirou wouldn't survive the end of this Grail War at all?
Once again, she showed an expression of refusal to accept.
"I don't understand, you…"
What was she supposed to say? She couldn't get any words out.
Her chest hurt unbearably.
"Senior Emiya!", Fujimaru Ritsuka stammered incoherently, "That's not what you said! Didn't you say you'd return to your own life?"
"..."
"Really," Shirou smiled, soothing her, "I'll live properly. As long as you keep moving forward, someday, we'll meet again."
"As for now…"
The Rayshift completed.
At the last moment, the three saw Shirou's smile.
RUMBLE!
Cracks split across the ground.
Not surface fractures, but signs of the crust itself breaking apart. Like the shell of an egg shattering.
"Tch!", Seeing this, Lev's face darkened, "Only reaching the limit now? Damn Saber. Even after being given the Grail, she still tried to maintain this era. And with you appearing, it wasted much of my effort."
The reason he hadn't struck at Olga Marie earlier was because Shirou had been watching him closely.
As a non-combatant, he still held some caution toward Shirou's displayed strength.
[A/N: Though truthfully, who knows what Lev's power is… As a Pillar, he shouldn't be weak. But in the Grand Temple, he didn't really show anything either.]
"Still, no problem," Lev turned, preparing to leave, "You'll be buried with this era anyway, becoming history."
"I think you've misunderstood something," Releasing the magical energy he had been gathering in his palm, Shirou's tone was calm, "The reason I sent Fujimaru and the others away wasn't just because I was worried about them."
"Hm?", Lev suddenly had a bad premonition.
Shirou said, "Knowing that Saber was trying to maintain this era, how could I let her efforts go to waste?"
His magic circuits opened.
"Sorry about this. I'll be maintaining this Singularity for now. So I can't let you take the Grail's core."
"My body is made of swords!"
The incantation of Unlimited Blade Works was recited.
"Damn it!", Lev's expression changed. He cut off the space-time link with Chaldeas, planning to flee.
But found his feet entangled by a great blackened hand formed of mud.
"What?"
Under Lev's horrified gaze, fire devoured the edges, the setting sun replacing the blaze.
Countless swords stood tall.
Shirou drew a blade.
"Lev… or should I call you by your true name, Demon Pillar Flauros."
"You have a Grail, and I have a Grail. Let's see just how many of my swords your magecraft can swallow."
As Shirou spoke, every Noble Phantasm within his Reality Marble was summoned forth.
And this was only the first wave.
Seeing the sky filled denser than rainfall with blades,
Lev's face turned green, utterly broken, "EMIYA SHIROU!!"
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