His words were met with different reactions from the two women beside him.
"Pfft, hahaha-hahahaha~" Tears almost welled up in Yae Miko's eyes. She was laughing from the bottom of her heart.
"This…" Ayaka didn't know what expression to make and could only manage an awkward but polite smile.
Miko, who had laughed until she was almost out of breath, finally calmed down, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "Why would you suddenly have such an idea?"
"To overthrow the Vision Hunt Decree... this is the most direct way, isn't it?"
Clear reasoning, straightforward logic—irrefutable! Muramasa said it with confidence because he had done something similar not long ago. The result had been twelve attacks to his spiritual core, enough to make an ordinary Servant disappear, and then being sent to an auction and sold for a good price of 110 million.
Hearing this further explanation, Ayaka relaxed. Why didn't you just explain it like that in the first place?
"If it's just to overthrow the Vision Hunt Decree, you don't really need to go that far…"
"I know." Muramasa had anticipated their reactions and added the second half of his thought. "When I was all alone, that would have been my first choice. But things are different now, and my strength is also an issue." Though he was a Servant specialized in 'God Slaying', that only meant he didn't need to consume extra magical energy when 'cutting'.
"It feels like you've been through a lot, Mr. Muramasa…" Ayaka read a different meaning in his words but felt that now was not the time to pry.
"When I have the chance, I'll tell you about it." As he spoke, he looked at the table and noticed the snacks were almost gone. "…" His eyes fell on the fox, who still had a sweet residue on the corner of her mouth, but his expression didn't change much.
"Ah, I'll go make some more," Ayaka, noticing the empty plates, quickly stood up.
"In that case, I'll go with you." Thinking of being alone with the fox, Muramasa chose to go to the kitchen with Ayaka. "I'd like to learn how to make those sweets as well."
"If you have such an interest, Sir Muramasa, I will naturally hold nothing back," Ayaka said in a slightly formal tone, and went to the kitchen with him.
For a moment, only Miko was left in the room. She didn't follow them to the kitchen. Her playful expression had faded. "Phew… so he saw through me." She had wanted to use an excuse to leave, but since he had already given her the space, she might as well use it.
Using the energy from the pastries, Yae Miko closed her eyes and formed a hand seal. A pink ball of energy condensed in her palms. In the center floated a chess piece-like object emitting a purple energy. It contained a status and authority far beyond that of ordinary things. It was also a 'magical energy organ', but the elemental power it contained surpassed that of a 'Vision' by countless times.
"Gather to one point, and release." She gathered something from within her body to her chest, then her red lips parted, and a wisp of black smoke floated out, flowing around the ball of light. The 'magical energy organ' then emitted a brilliant light, and the black smoke dissolved in its radiance.
"Phew…" After dissolving the black smoke, Miko was visibly relieved. "It's not easy to digest the pollution in those barriers. I don't know what Kitsune Saiguu…" Thinking of this, she fell silent, keeping the rest of the memory in her heart.
When she was introducing the matter to Muramasa before, she hadn't told him the whole story. It wasn't just Mikoshi Chiyo who had mentioned Tsurumi Island—it was also Kitsune Saiguu. To fight against that disaster, she had fought the dark power again and again. With each passing day, her state had changed slightly. Miko hadn't been able to do much back then, only listen to her increasingly incoherent words and watch her record other words in letters. And in those fragmented pieces, she had occasionally heard the name 'Tsurumi Island'. If only she had mentioned it, Miko would have just thought it was one of her many nonsensical ramblings. But when Mikoshi Chiyo later said the same thing, it made her connect the two.
No, not connect… but search. She hadn't just overheard it; she had found it after searching through countless diaries left by Kitsune Saiguu. The early ones were about her thoughts and worries about the changes in Inazuma under the disaster. The middle ones were much more agitated, and the last ones were just pure emotional release. Fragmented lines, handwriting so messy it looked like talismans. She didn't know how many days and nights she had spent before finding such a related name. But it wasn't over yet. There was still residual filth waiting for her to exorcise. This was just an aftershock of that disaster.
"Just a little more... at most three months, and I can go to that place." She muttered to herself in the empty room. A hundred years had passed, but these few dozen days felt harder to endure than she had imagined.
…
"You'd better have something important to say for calling me here." The man in the straw hat stood on the shore, facing a land that was both familiar and foreign to him. He had thought he would be angrier, angrier at the 'betrayal' he had suffered. But now, he seemed to feel only emptiness and boredom.
"Don't be like that, Scaramouche." The man with the sharp, beak-like mask came up behind him, his expression as if he were watching a farce, calling him by his later name. "Or would you prefer I call you by your other names? 'Kunikuzushi'? Or, 'The Balladeer'?"
Hearing those names, the man seemed slightly moved. He turned around, a hint of anger on his face. "Your mouth is as rotten as ever, 'Dottore'." Whether in retaliation or just as a normal form of address, he used the other's codename in the 'Fatui'.
"Don't make me repeat myself. Why did you call me here?"
"For no other reason than that there's an eyesore I'd like you to help me clean up." Seeing the farce progress to an important scene, his smile grew wider. "He's a rising new star of a smith in the nation you hate so much~ So, I immediately thought of you." His words were more exaggerated than usual, his tone and gestures emphasizing his attempt to pluck at the other's heartstrings.
"I'm not interested." 'The Balladeer' knew his character well. He knew this was just another one of his experiments.
"What if I say, in exchange—I can grant your long-cherished wish?" He held out his hand, and a projection of a 'magical energy organ' appeared in his palm. It was very similar to the one Miko held, yet slightly different. "Didn't you wish to ascend to godhood and rebel against 'Her'? Now, I'm giving you that chance."
Catching the key point, the Balladeer snapped his head around. The moment his eyes touched it, he could no longer look away from the projection, only murmuring, "A Gnosis…"
A black crow perched on a branch, silently witnessing the conversation under the night sky.
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