Fuyuki City, Ryudou Temple...
Speaking of which, this was still the first time Guinevere had stepped into this temple. In the Fourth Holy Grail War of her world, the closest she had gone to this place was the Great Cavern at the foot of the mountain.
At this moment, under the moonlit night, Guinevere was using a broom reinforced by Medea to poke the floor.
And after trying it herself, she was completely certain that the floor of Ryudou Temple was not as sturdy as in her original memory. It was just the hardness of an ordinary stone floor.
"Lia, you said you wouldn't come, so the King of Knights summoned to this worldline should be the one from my original memory, right?"
The night courtyard was occupied by Guinevere alone; after establishing the Master-Servant relationship with Medea, her first order was to keep watch near the temple gate.
In Medea's words, she didn't expect much from Guinevere's combat abilities, but as an Assassin, Guinevere could always sound an alarm before other Servants arrived at the door.
And Medea trusted the Assassin's detection capabilities; she didn't want Guinevere to be too close to the living quarters behind the temple.
"How greedy, this foolish Witch."
In Guinevere's memory, there were two versions of the process of Medea and Souichirou Kuzuki forming their contract.
One was that after she killed the original Master, before she disappeared, she was simply picked up by Souichirou Kuzuki.
The other was a special addition from the anime after the Fifth Holy Grail War's UBW route came out: after Caster killed the Master, she was also severely injured by the arriving Lancer Cu Chulainn, and after being picked up by Kuzuki, they completed the contract with the actions appropriate between a husband and wife.
"Foolish Witch, you have me standing in the wind by the front gate while you enjoy yourself with your Master. Are you really that starved? Hmm, that's not quite right. Kuzuki isn't a Magus; he's just providing mana to Medea. So, is this Mana Supply through bodily fluids? Do the fluids of an ordinary person even work?"
How long had she been sweeping with the broom? Guinevere didn't keep track, but by the time she'd complained to herself about it, the front courtyard of Ryudou Temple was already spotless.
With a light leap, she jumped from the courtyard onto the roof of the temple gate, sitting down to gaze at the full moon.
The moonlight was beautiful tonight, but she had no one to share it with. She'd been away from the King of Knights for less of half a day, and she was already missing her. Though she knew perfectly well that her main body was still with the King of Knights, both still in the Throne of Heroes, sharing a sweet and intimate bond.
"Fuck!"
Placing the broom by her side, Guinevere let out a rare curse. Her main body and her separate self were both her, and they would merge again after she returned, but that didn't stop her from feeling this annoyance right now.
"Will he come? That old worm of the Matou family?"
In Guinevere's original memories, the Fifth Holy Grail War in Fuyuki City had three possible routes. The first was the Saber route. But with Guinevere present, there was no way she would let the future follow the Saber route. Therefore, she completely ruled it out.
The second was the one she'd just been thinking about, the UBW route, or rather the Rin route, where Medea was supplemented with Mana Supply. However, the true beginning of this route would still have to be after the protagonist of the Fifth Holy Grail War, Shirou Emiya, completed his Servant summoning, so it didn't have much to do with Guinevere right now.
The third was the Sakura route. The second-largest singularity of this route was the Old Worm, Zouken Matou, personally participating in the war. Using the Assassin originally summoned by Medea as a sacrifice, he summoned the new Assassin whose True Form was Hassan of the Cursed Arm.
Thanks to this, Medea also died somewhat early, and her corpse was even turned into a puppet by the Old Worm.
In other words, if the Old Worm didn't come here to launch a sneak attack before Shirou Emiya summoned his Servant, then it could basically be confirmed that the future was not the Sakura route.
"Bah, what am I thinking? Since I've been summoned here, then the Fifth Holy Grail War here should be the Guinevere route."
The night was lonely, and Guinevere thought about many other things. For example, when she asked Medea to help her reinforce her broom and said she knew a little bit of swordsmanship, Medea's pause and disdain.
For example, when she thought of Shirou Emiya, she also thought of the little brat in her world who had completely taken Illya as his younger sister. It was completely because of her efforts that the Shirou Emiya over there knew absolutely nothing about magecraft.
"Speaking of which, that side should be approaching the same point in time, shouldn't it? Rin and Luvia even accepted a mission from the Old Man of the Jewels, saying they'd take two wands to wrap up the previous Holy Grail War or something."
At the thought, Guinevere naturally smiled. Her other self was far stronger than she was here. If she hadn't wanted to let Rin and Luvia grow, her other self wouldn't need any wands and could have finished wrapping up the remnants of the previous Holy Grail War in a single day.
She shook her head, pulling her thoughts back together, for at the foot of the hundred-odd steps of Ryudou Temple, a certain bald old man radiating the scent of decay had truly appeared there.
"Since you've come all this way, won't you leave your life behind?"
Because the Master was an ordinary person, Medea could only receive a normal mana supply from him, which further meant she couldn't provide Guinevere with sufficient mana.
Of course, just as in Guinevere's memories, Medea had still set up magic circles throughout Fuyuki City that could drain the life force of ordinary people, using them to replenish her mana.
The problem, however, was that Medea had only recently contracted with Kuzuki, and the magic circles she had set up still needed time to achieve their full effect.
In Medea's own words, she was only slightly draining their life force and didn't intend to suck people dry directly, at most just making a large number of ordinary people be hospitalized for a while.
Of course, of course. Whether Medea truly possessed a spark of goodness, or was simply worried that being too direct would provoke the Church into a full-scale siege, depended entirely on how one viewed her.
"I asked you," Medea said, "you all seem to enjoy playing the stoic, silent type. Do I really have to repeat myself?"
Her grey hair spilled over the nun's habit she wore. Though she sat with a casual, almost insolent slouch, her presence radiated a lethal threat that the Old Worm could feel in his bones.
Standing at the foot of the hundred steps, the Old Worm felt a sudden, inexplicable shudder ripple through his swarms. An instinctive terror warned him: Step forward, and you'll be wiped out. Step forward, and we're all dead.
"Little girl," he managed to croak out, "will you answer me a question? What is your Class?"
The figure before him was a Servant—that was certain. The one who summoned her was a Caster—that was also certain. After ruling out the Lancer who had pursued the Caster and the Rider summoned by her 'granddaughter,' only four Classes remained. Yet, facing this woman, the Old Worm dared not guess.
"It's Assassin!" she replied.
"Assassin?"
An Assassin was meant to be a maggot wriggling in the shadows—a creature of stealth and subterfuge. What kind of Assassin would challenge her so openly, so brazenly, in the light of day?
A feint? A bluff? A trick?
If I move, I'll die! If I move, I'll die! If I move, I'll die!
Reason and instinct constantly clashed, but in the end, his desire for immortality suppressed everything else. The Old Worm had already deduced that this Assassin would not leave the mountain gate, and he couldn't risk giving her any opportunity to lure him away. Thus, he withdrew with a sense of relief, already resolving in his heart that he could no longer entrust Sakura's Servant to some useless fool.
After seeing this Assassin with his own eyes, the longer he looked, the more he felt that this was likely his last chance to participate in the Holy Grail War.
He, Zouken Matou, seemed destined to never have the chance to survive in the shadows again.
Meanwhile, at the mountain gate, Guinevere watched the Old Worm's departure with a sense of helplessness. After all, her current body was indeed very weak. Medea's order to guard the gate was more than just a verbal command; this mountain gate also served as the anchor for her summoning.
For the time being, she truly couldn't leave the vicinity of the mountain gate.
"With a start like this, it seems I can only wait and hold onto hope."
Gazing at the moon once more, Guinevere laughed aloud. So what if her stats, skills, and Noble Phantasm were all terrible? Her swordsmanship would not fade in the slightest because of such things.
She still possessed the intense confidence of a true master.
"My sword will be the one to sever the fate of this war!"