The first thing the Magus Killer and his wife demanded was a place to stay for the night.
For a moment, I didn't understand and looked around, but all that remained of the Einzbern Castle was a landscape of total destruction. I had no choice but to guide them to the workshop where Aoko-nee and I were staying.
"What do you plan to do now?"
"…The Caster camp and Tokiomi Tohsaka have likely already surmised that the Einzberns have been eliminated. Caster possesses Clairvoyance, after all. And that old man from the Matou family has probably guessed as well."
"True. They are clans that have lived in this spiritual land for over a hundred years, after all."
The decisive reason I hadn't initially targeted the Berserker, Assassin, or Lancer camps was that I was wary of Kiritsugu Emiya backstabbing us.
Since I was in a position where I couldn't allow a single person to die in this Holy Grail War—myself included—his propensity for surprise attacks was nothing short of a nuisance.
"First, it would be best to leave Caster for the very end."
"…Given how things have turned out, wouldn't it be better to win over the King of Heroes first?"
"No, Tokiomi still holds three Command Spells. Don't forget, Nee-san, what we're doing is ultimately the act of closing the 'Path to the Root.' If we demand that of Tokiomi, regardless of what the King of Heroes says, he might use a Command Spell."
Even Saber, who possesses high Magic Resistance, could not withstand two Command Spells used by Kiritsugu.
Moreover, the Gilgamesh summoned now is of the Caster class. Of course, it's a different story if Gilgamesh has a way to block the interference of Command Spells with the Noble Phantasms within his Gate of Babylon, but that's merely a possibility.
For a definitive answer, we must eventually draw all the Masters to a meeting table.
"The Rider camp is the simplest. The King of Conquerors won't back down from a challenge. On the other hand, Kayneth El-Melloi… he maintains a strict lord-vassal relationship with Lancer."
"Magi are like that. If he's a Lord of the Clock Tower, he'll never step into the limelight; he'll use a 'fisherman's profit' strategy, waiting for others to eliminate each other."
"Exactly. So… we attack them first."
If we defeat Lancer first and then succeed in persuading Rider… a total of four Masters will be gathered in one place.
Once that happens, no matter how much the Overseer supports them, they won't be able to resist recklessly.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the Master of Lancer, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, who had established his base in a Hyatt Hotel suite, was slowly sketching out his future plans.
"The Einzberns have been attacked."
"…How can you tell?"
"It is a simple thing, Lancer. Coming to a completely unknown foreign land and failing to set up even basic scouting measures is the height of folly. However, they are the Einzberns after all; it seems unlikely that those who monopolized the Saber class would be eliminated so easily."
"I see."
Initially, Kayneth had found it difficult to trust this Servant, Lancer.
Who could trust a Heroic Spirit who claimed to have no wish for the Holy Grail and only desired to offer loyalty to his lord?
But even so, Kayneth trusted the three Command Spells on the back of his hand and his own meticulous preparations.
"Look, Lancer. Is there any flaw in my defenses? I am asking this not as a Servant, but as a Spearman."
"…It is difficult for me to judge, but unless one is a Heroic Spirit of the Staff with deep profoundity in magecraft, or possesses an Anti-Fortress Noble Phantasm that destroys everything including space itself, even a Heroic Spirit superior to myself would find it difficult to guarantee their safety. For a Master, it would be out of the question."
"Haha! Then there are no problems worth mentioning."
A twenty-four-layered Bounded Field. Three magical furnaces tuned specifically for his use. Dozens of evil spirits and wraiths released in advance. Furthermore, there were Mystic Code-class magical traps he had crafted himself, and even the hallways had been transformed into an Otherworld through prana projection.
Of course, when Lancer said, 'Even a Heroic Spirit would find it hard to be safe,' he meant it under the premise that he would personally go out to intercept them, but Kayneth didn't particularly care about such details.
In any case, he was fully prepared, and the other Masters were beginning to tear into each other.
As proof, look. Hadn't the Einzberns already taken a hit?
"Now then, it's time to start observing the other camps."
Just then, the hotel telephone in the corner began to ring.
Kayneth, who was completely ignorant of machinery, struggled with it for a few moments and was about to ignore the call when his fiancée, Sola-Ui—who acted as a sort of 'path' supplying Lancer with magical energy—clicked her tongue and handed him the receiver.
"Acting like such a big shot as a Master when you can't even do something like this."
"…Hmph."
Kayneth, his pride stung by his fiancée's mockery, took the phone and began to vent his irritation.
"What is it at this time of night? I believe I gave explicit instructions not to be disturbed."
However, instead of the voice of a trained hotel employee, the voice of a young boy whose voice had just begun to change echoed from the other side.
[Umm, sorry, but the hotel staff and all the other citizens have already left this hotel.]
"…Are you a Master of the Holy Grail War? I heard rumors of a magus suffering from dwarfism, but it seems you're just one of the younger magi. You look even younger than my student."
[Correct! You know why a Master of the Holy Grail War would contact you like this… don't you?]
"Of course. Do you intend to challenge me? I shall gladly accept."
It is human nature that if someone has prepared something robustly, they eventually want to use it.
Although his foolish student had yet to show up, Kayneth heartily welcomed the challenge of another moth flying into the flame.
"Since you are still a young Master, let me teach you properly… what it means for magi to kill and be killed by one another. As your senior in the world of magecraft, that is."
[I look forward to learning from you, Lord El-Melloi.]
* * * * *
After hanging up, I spoke to Archer.
"I wonder how a man who speaks like that will react when I later tell him I'm a Third Magician?"
"…I don't know much about True Magic, but wouldn't he be flustered? Master."
"I suppose so."
Right then, a thumping sound echoed from the ceiling of the hotel lobby where Archer and I were standing, and soon, something translucent began to pour down.
Archer quickly plucked the string of Failnaught to cut them down, but instead of falling to the floor after being sliced, they writhed and began to divide.
"…Oh dear, these are Specters."
"Specters?"
"Annoying magical beasts that existed in ancient Britain. They are a bothersome lot that roam in a spiritual state and take on flesh when they prey; they are a unique species that multiplies no matter how many times you cut them."
"If their bodies are made of magical energy, I can—"
"No, there is no need for that."
Tristan, with his bow slung at his waist, dashed forward and began to crush the writhing, dividing Specters with his bare fists and legs.
Once he had completely snapped the neck of the last remaining Specter, he picked up Failnaught again and began to scan the surroundings.
"…You can fight hand-to-hand too?"
"How would one fight if they lost their bow? Every Knight of Britain learns bare-handed brawling as a basic requirement. Sir Mordred was the most proficient. Additionally, among Sir Percival and Sir Gareth who used spears, Sir Gareth learned how to use a straight sword directly from the King, and we gathered at least once a month for sparring sessions."
True, I didn't think the Knights of the Round Table, who were the elite of a Britain that was essentially a den of inhumanity, would be good at only one thing.
But then why was their cooking so terrible…
"Anyway, let's start heading up."
"Very well. I shall take care of the magical beasts that launch surprise attacks."
* * * * *
To simply catch Kayneth, I didn't need to use a difficult method.
I could just blow up the entire hotel.
But the reason I didn't use such a method was simple.
Firstly, it was because of Kayneth's situational judgment.
Although many ignored him, thinking he made poor decisions in the Fourth Holy Grail War, he sometimes made the right calls.
Representatively, there was how he activated Volumen Hydrargyrum to keep himself safe even before the hotel collapsed, and how he used an abandoned factory as a temporary shelter to avoid being discovered afterward.
If I collapsed the hotel, he would immediately activate Volumen Hydrargyrum, maintain an iron-clad defense to protect himself and Sola-Ui, and then try to intercept us with Lancer. Or perhaps he would try to fight me with Mystic Codes I didn't even know about. He might even go into complete hiding.
Furthermore, the biggest issue was whether he would properly cooperate with me.
My relationship with Kayneth wasn't a one-time thing; it was necessary for building long-term ties with the Clock Tower. To do that, I needed to play by his rules—those of a man with a 'Magus's mindset'—at least to a certain extent.
"But…"
"To the left, Master!"
"…Isn't this a bit much?"
Kayneth's defenses were truly immense.
They weren't joking when they said the cost of filming a Hollywood movie was invested into these defenses. At this point, I felt like I understood why Kiritsugu had just chosen to collapse the hotel.
Archer intercepted all the wraiths and ghosts, but the problem was the hallways that had been turned into an Otherworld where one couldn't tell direction, and the twenty-four layers of magical barriers surrounding them.
If Archer unleashed his Noble Phantasm, he could handle it easily, but since we didn't know when or where Lancer would snipe us with Gáe Buidhe, unleashing a Noble Phantasm seemed like a foolish choice in many ways.
"This seems even more impressive than the Einzberns."
"…Shall I unleash my Noble Phantasm?"
"No, Archer, keep focusing on Lancer's position. I have another way to handle this."
I pulled a small glass bottle from my coat.
It was one of the Great Three Ploy Kickshaws, 'Flat Snark,' created by refining the oil extracted from the fat of a Log-God's ship that Aoko-nee had destroyed previously.
This familiar, specialized in dominating a territory by turning a specific space into a world of fairy tales, seemed like it would be effective at seeing through the complex maze Kayneth had seized and turned into an Otherworld.
"Come forth, Flat Snark."
It was, in itself, like a Bounded Field.
The passage where front and back were indistinguishable just moments ago turned into a neat path like a flowery road in an amusement park, and the hotel rooms from which ghosts and wraiths had been emerging turned into fairy-tale castles.
The dark, skeletal wraiths all turned into pumpkin fairies with pumpkin heads, and evil spirits like ghouls began to turn into candy or adorable fairy-tale monsters that would appear in a children's book.
"…How…"
"What Kayneth deployed is a type of makeshift Bounded Field. As a Lord, his skill was certainly impressive… but even so, it seems he can't quite beat the Mystery of Fairy Tale Magecraft, which is over a thousand years old."
The very first piece of magecraft common sense I learned from Alice-san.
If Bounded Field magecraft clashes, the stronger Bounded Field devours the weaker one.