The piece of white branch that had pushed out of the hole quickly grew over a meter long and sealed the hole completely, blocking the black mud inside.
Everyone was shocked by the branch. None of them knew what it was.
"Oh? A white branch came crawling out of the Great Holy Grail's hole. Blacksmith, looks like you know what it is," Gilgamesh suddenly appeared next to Tia.
Tia jumped in surprise, but then realized what was happening. Her face only grew worse, because there was no way she could explain to Gilgamesh what that white branch was.
"I don't know… but it makes me feel really uncomfortable," Tia said casually, not knowing how to bluff her way through. And in truth, she really had been feeling uneasy for a while now, though she didn't know why.
"Hmph! Trash, hiding things from me in front of the King," Gilgamesh scolded, using an insult he hadn't said in a long time. But he didn't push further.
Why would that branch appear here?
How could it possibly be here!
Who planted it? And inside the Great Holy Grail, no less!
If just a small hole could let out a branch like that, then what in the world was growing inside?
Right now, Chaldea hadn't even been established yet. Even the Earth model, CHALDEAS, was only in prototype form, and the rest didn't exist at all. So how could this thing show up here at this time?
Unless… that!
El-Melloi II, Waver now as Zhuge Kongming, had come here with Gudako and Mash to the Fourth War era. Chaldea really had made contact with this point in time.
But if that were true, it only raised more questions.
The Chaldea that was built didn't belong to this world, but another one. Yet in that other world, Chaldea detected this world's Fourth War as a Singularity, crossed over, solved it, and then left.
But in fact, after Chaldea returned, that Fourth War Singularity itself continued on, and more events unfolded.
The ending was never fully explained.
And now, with the existence of this white branch, Tia could only imagine that maybe something else happened afterward, so the Singularity didn't really disappear. Maybe something even caused time to repeat, and someone planted this inside the Great Holy Grail.
In short, Tia's mind was racing with wild guesses, not knowing if any of them were right.
But the scene itself was terrifyingly quiet. In the vast underground chamber, the only sound was the faint wriggling of that white branch.
The hole it blocked didn't stop there. It was slowly twisting.
The branch still looked like it was growing longer, but for some reason, it seemed to be dragged backward by something, so to the naked eye it still looked only a meter out of the hole. Because of the branch rubbing against the hole's edges, the distortion grew worse. The black mud of All the World's Evil began to seep out again, dripping down the tall stone pillar and pooling at the base.
But as more cracks opened along the edges of the hole, the white branch also thickened, and gradually blocked the mud again.
"Looks like that All the World's Evil can't get out at all. Is that white branch here to help us?" Alexander the Great asked curiously, unaware of the truth.
"Tia, what exactly is that white branch?" Waver turned to her and asked.
"Master, it seems that white branch really is helping us seal All the World's Evil," Lancelot added.
"Tia, was it you who put that white branch there?" Even King Arthur asked her.
But Tia still didn't answer them. Instead, he kept thinking in his heart about what to do—should he cut down the tree, or should he block the evil of this world?
At that moment, Irisviel slowly woke up in Emiya Kiritsugu's arms. She shakily stood up.
"No… can't…" Irisviel came to her senses and spoke, but her body was extremely weak, and she was gasping heavily.
"Can't what?" Emiya Kiritsugu, who had been by her side all along, asked directly.
"We can't let the evil of this world out, right? We know that very well!" King Arthur nodded.
"No! We can't let that white giant tree come out!" Irisviel, having recovered a little, finally managed to finish her words.
"What? A white giant tree? Where is it?" King Arthur was stunned by Irisviel's words. He then instinctively looked toward the hole, his brows furrowing. "Do you mean that?"
Irisviel nodded. "Just now… the Servant's soul inside me was pulled out by the Greater Holy Grail. The evil of this world, Angra Mainyu, told me that seven years ago someone planted a white sapling inside the Greater Holy Grail. It has been crazily absorbing the Holy Grail's power. Even Angra Mainyu's black mud of evil couldn't endure it and was almost completely drained. What we're seeing now as that bit of black mud is actually Angra Mainyu, who lost his form and turned into mud in order to escape from the Greater Holy Grail. Since it's his true soul, the tree couldn't absorb him."
"Seven years ago?" Waver tilted his head and instinctively glanced at Tia, since Tia happened to be seven years old.
"White giant tree?" Alexander the Great tilted his head too, just like Waver, but instead of linking it to Tia, he was simply curious about what that white tree really was.
"Brat, still not planning to say what that white tree is?" Gilgamesh questioned Tia again. "Seven, what a fine number."
Gilgamesh lifted his chin, looking at Tia with delight.
Tia's face grew darker and darker. He suddenly realized why Gilgamesh hadn't stopped them from destroying the Greater Holy Grail—it seemed Gilgamesh had already set his amusement target on him.
"That name… it's called the Fantasy Tree," Tia said with a serious look.
"Fantasy Tree?" Lancelot repeated doubtfully. "Never heard of it."
"What good is a name, brat! This king wants to know what it does! Why did this king feel an aura from that branch that's even more dangerous than the evil of this world? Last night, when I had just forced the truth of the Holy Grail War out of that priest's mouth, even the Will itself suddenly came to me, trying to grant me the power of the Grand Archer to wipe out the human evil that's about to appear!" Gilgamesh roared furiously at Tia.
(End of the Chapter)
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