"Lancer, it's time to go!" At this moment, Kayneth glanced at Matou Sakura, who had just been taken away by Tohsaka Tokiomi, and spoke to Diarmuid.
"Yes, Master!" Diarmuid nodded, then turned to King Arthur and Alexander the Great, saying, "King of Knights, King of Conquerors, the next time we meet might very well be as enemies."
With that, he left together with Kayneth.
"The one summoning sea monsters, Gilles de Rais, still hasn't been dealt with. The war between us won't truly restart until then," Alexander the Great said. "Alright, we should be going too."
At that moment, King Arthur suddenly looked toward Tia and said, "Thank you."
Then she also left.
Tia was a little confused. Did she really do something worth King Arthur's thanks? Scratching her head, she couldn't figure it out and decided not to dwell on it. Instead, her thoughts turned back to the pile of Noble Phantasms in the grass.
"Lancelot! Don't forget to bring back all those Noble Phantasms!"
Even now, Tia was still hung up on that.
After Lancelot loaded the pile of Noble Phantasms onto the ox cart, Alexander the Great and Waver finally realized what Tia and Lancelot had been talking about.
"Tia! You actually brought all those Noble Phantasms back? Are you crazy? If that... King of Heroes sees this, he'll cut you down for sure!"
"Hahaha! This little brat Tia is really interesting! You actually picked up all these Noble Phantasms. What, can you really figure out their true names?" Alexander the Great asked, looking at the treasures.
"That's exactly why I did it," Tia nodded.
Yes, the whole reason Tia picked them up was to analyze their true names.
She grabbed one of the treasures, the magic crest on her arm lit up, and her mana started to analyze it.
Seeing this, Alexander the Great didn't say much more. He simply drove the ox cart back.
After a while, Alexander suddenly asked, "Hey, little brat Tia, let me ask you something—what wish do you want the Holy Grail to grant?"
Still focused on analyzing the treasure in her hand, Tia replied without even looking up, "I don't have one. I don't need the Holy Grail to make my wishes come true. That mud only kills people—it stopped being a wish-granting device a long time ago."
"Tia, what do you mean by that? What's wrong with the Holy Grail?" Waver was startled by her words and quickly pressed her for answers.
"Sigh..." Tia put down the treasure and explained, "The Holy Grail was corrupted long ago by All the World's Evil."
Alexander the Great also looked at Tia, listening intently.
"Sixty years ago, during the Third Holy Grail War, Angra Mainyu was summoned to the Einzbern family as an Avenger-class Servant through an illegal summoning. But in truth, Angra Mainyu was just an ordinary young man from a Zoroastrian village in the Middle East.
The villagers, in their foolishness, forced the name of an evil god onto him, making him bear the sins of all mankind, and then killed him.
Because of this, Angra Mainyu's actual combat ability was very weak. He was defeated early in the war. But since his nature as a Servant was born from the villagers' wish for human evil, when he was absorbed into the Holy Grail, the Grail detected that wish and actually granted it—though only within the Grail itself.
The reason the Holy Grail pulls in Servants is because that was the Three Great Families' plot from the start.
The true purpose of the Holy Grail War is the Three Great Families' ritual to open the Root. The Servants are summoned only to serve as sacrifices. Even the reason Masters are given three Command Seals is because the third one was meant for ordering the Servant to kill themselves. The other Masters brought in are just pawns.
Even if someone does win in the end, their wish still won't be realized—not with the current Holy Grail. The Holy Grail War is nothing but a giant scam. The corrupted Grail brings only ruin, not hope. The Einzbern homunculi were created as containers to hold the mana from sacrificed Servants for the Greater Grail's summoning ritual—they were only given consciousness on top of that."
"So you're saying the original Holy Grail really was a wish-granting device," Alexander the Great said heavily.
Tia froze for a moment, then nodded.
She hadn't expected Alexander the Great to immediately pick out the most important point.
"I see... then my wish can never be fulfilled after all..." Alexander the Great sighed.
The mood grew heavy, though for Tia, it really wasn't a big deal. After all, there were other ways to keep a Servant around.
Before long, Tia arrived home.
She still hadn't forgotten to have Lancelot bring the pile of Noble Phantasms through the door.
Tia opened the door, let Lancelot drop the Noble Phantasms at the entrance, then had him return to spirit form. After changing her shoes, she started hauling the treasures into her room trip by trip.
When her mom and dad saw Tia come back, and especially noticed what she was carrying, they were completely stunned.
"Tia, are those Noble Phantasms you brought back?!" her dad exclaimed.
"Where did you get so many Noble Phantasms, Tia?!" her mom asked in disbelief.
"Picked them up," Tia answered without slowing down, still ferrying the treasures inside one load at a time.
"Picked them up?" Her parents, now curious, walked over to the door to see the pile of Noble Phantasms stacked there. Her dad spoke up, "You can just pick up Noble Phantasms? Who's so rich they'd toss these things away?"
"That Gilgamesh," Tia stopped for a moment and said, then kept running back and forth with the Noble Phantasms. "Uh~ no, I mean the King of Heroes, Gilgamesh the King of Heroes."
"Is that so~ so it really is Gilgamesh~" Tia's mother muttered something vague.
But Tia didn't notice at this moment. She had already gone back to her room and started trying to analyze the Noble Phantasms.
She picked up the one she had already analyzed on the ox cart earlier and continued. Soon, Tia noticed that this particular Noble Phantasm seemed to have some kind of anti-demonic attribute.
After a while, Tia finally finished analyzing all of its properties. So, she put the Noble Phantasm aside and started trying to use her Magic Crest to directly recreate it from the Origin.
Mana in Tia's body poured wildly into her arm with the Magic Crest, and under the effect of the Origin, the shape of the Noble Phantasm gradually began to appear.
As Tia's mana kept being consumed, the Noble Phantasm she was making became more and more complete. Finally, with a buzzing sound, the one she created was finished.
Tia let out a sigh of relief, and the newly made Noble Phantasm slipped from her hands, clattering to the floor.
(End of The Chapter)