- Shinji -
"N-no… please… I h-have already done everything you told me. It just isn't working." The man in front of him begged.
Shinji wasn't in a good mood.
First his hunt for Rin had been fouled by the sudden intervention of that monster, a servant which he later found out.
His newly gained powers were nothing in front of that servant.
They couldn't even put a scratch on the beast.
Had it not been for that girl commanding the servant being distracted by Tohsaka, he would have died for real.
No.
He couldn't die.
Not when his dream was so close to him.
He was going to win this Holy Grail War and he was going to become stronger than anyone else… stronger than Tohsaka, stronger than Sukuna, stronger than that servant who beat him up and finally, stronger than that… that baldy!
Fortunately, it seems that the number of magus in the town was suddenly increasing. It wasn't unexpected but rather something they had planned.
Sukuna had started killing people in the town while not hiding the fact that these are supernatural incidents. They had done this to attract more magus to solve the situation so that they could then capture someone else and make them help him enter the competition.
During these hunts, they had discovered more information about the Holy Grail War as well as its history.
The Holy Grail War was a ritual established in the 1800s in Fuyuki City, by the Three Founding Families of Tohsaka, Matou, and Einzbern.
His own family, specifically that old man, his grandfather had started this ritual.
Shinji hadn't realised how old that monster in the basement truly was.
Even Sukuna had laughed wildly when he found out about him saying that he would have been a decent curse user had he been in his world.
The purpose of the competition is to win a Holy Grail. Seven magi are chosen by the Grail as Masters and, with support from the Grail, allowed to summon seven Servants to do battle. The winning pair, supposedly, will claim the Holy Grail and use it to grant their wish or wishes.
The ritual's true purpose is to use the combined magical energy of seven fallen Servants to burn a hole in reality, a gate to reach something called Akasha, that place which has all the knowledge and power of the world.
However, the ritual's very premise is flawed: only a Spiritual Body like a Servant, not a flesh-and-blood Master, is capable of grasping the Grail and completing the ritual. As such, the final Master, instead of sacrificing their own Servant to perfect the Grail and reach the Root, must keep their Servant alive to claim an energy source that is much weaker, but still capable of granting far-reaching wishes to the final Master and Servant pair.
This meant they needed to summon a servant and also needed to keep them alive till the end just so they could have their wish granted. There were however several problems with this.
The servant could have their own wish so they needed to have their command seals left over to command them in the end or they could just make their own wish.
Too bad not everyone who came here knew this.
After not finding anything substantial from the first two people, they had targeted someone they thought would know more about the ritual, a member of one of the founders, Rin Tohsaka. Unfortunately, that was messed up by the Einzbern girl.
Still, it looked like their luck was with them as the person they found today seemed to be a magus who had actually sneaked in, aiming to participate in the Holy Grail War too. This one actually wanted to mess with the Grail directly to increase his chance of winning and that's why he had far more information than anyone else.
With his help, they had directly found the place with the Grail, unfortunately without the energy of the servants, this was useless.
"Yes yes… and I am happy with your information. That's why you are still alive. Keep answering my questions and you will keep living." He smiled. "Now tell me, how do I summon a servant and enter the Holy Grail War?"
"I-I told you already. It is not working. Either you have no affinity to summon servants or… or…"
"Or what!" He roared.
"All the servants have already been summoned."
"What?!"
"That's… that's the only thing I can think of."
All of a sudden, Shinji's mind went blank.
No.
This couldn't happen.
He couldn't lose this.
This was his chance to finally become a magus, finally have what was rightfully his.
Grabbing the man by his collars, he lifted him up and glared at him. "There must be a way. There must be another way for me to enter. Something… anything!"
"I…"
"Tell me or I will cut you to pieces and feed them to you!" He roared.
He looked terrified but suddenly his eyes widened as if remembering something… "I… there… there… is something I read… from the files of the Clock Tower… about a failsafe in the Holy Grail… something called the… Apocrypha Protocol."
- Waver Velvet -
"Did you find anything?" He asked, looking around the place.
This place brought back memories… both good and bad.
But this was a place where he had wanted to return.
Still, until recently, he thought he would miss the time period for the Fifth Grail War due to his work.
But perhaps it was fate or just good luck that had brought this case and him back to this place again. Recently there was an incident about someone breaking into his quarters while he was absent to steal research data about the Holy Grail Wars. Apparently utilizing a family heirloom to break through its defenses, which then brought him here to this current case, hoping to catch a serial killer and a thief.
He checked the remains of the Matou estate which had been sealed by the resident magi and church a while ago. The stench of the cursed ritual could still be felt here.
The killings had started almost immediately after this accident happened and they were supernatural in nature too.
By now, everyone was sure that these two incidents were related and thus he had come to visit this place.
Unfortunately he found nothing.
He remembered that Kariya Matou had participated in the Fourth Holy Grail War as the master of Berserker. Later he had received the news that he had died a short while after the finish of the Fourth Holy Grail War.
A while later, his elder brother Byakuya Matou passed away and now even the two kids, Shinji Matou and Sakura Matou were missing, probably dead.
With them away meant all sources of information they could have obtained about the incident were gone, leaving them with a dead end.
Over the last two months, the number of deaths had only increased.
Just the number of reported deaths were above seventy by now and they still didn't find any clue about the person involved, except that the kills are all done by cutting the targets and several things around them.
Whoever the attacker is uses blades or spells which emulate sharp blades.
These blades were sharp enough to cut through rocks and trees without any difficulty. He had observed the places and everything was cut cleanly, as if a hot knife through butter.
Coupled with the curses in the place indicated the possible presence of a Dead Apostle, maybe even a Dead Apostle Ancestor, which made the matter far worse than normal. But none of the known ones have exhibited such traits before.
He had arrived just this morning and the people of the Church would be arriving here soon too.
"No, Sir."
"Where are the rest of the operatives from the Clock Tower?"
"They are at the hotel or out patrolling although…" The magi in front of him hesitated.
"What?"
"Some of our operatives have gone missing recently, Sir." He said after some hesitation.
"What! When did that happen? How many and why wasn't this reported first?"
"Two of them disappeared over the course of the last two months. We didn't discover this first because they were the first ones to arrive here and worked independently. They only contacted us when they found anything so it took us some time to realise that they were missing. When we discovered this, we decided to report regularly at the end of the day."
He fell silent at the news.
Was it really a Dead Apostle or Ancestor?
As they were talking, another magus came in quickly.
"Sir, we have discovered traces of fighting nearby." He reported.
"What kind of fighting? Describe the scene."
The Fifth Holy Grail War was in progress so fighting was not uncommon. It could very well be a fight scene between two masters and their servants, mistaken for the killer's attacks. This made tracking the killer even harder during the Holy Grail War.
"Cuts. It was as if someone cut the surrounding areas. Rocks, trees, even a cafe was cut apart. The attacks were just like that of the killer. This time, the range was quite high, but we didn't find any bodies."
"Lead me to the place." He quickly got up and commanded and looked at his apprentice who was wearing a hood, giving her a quick nod.
They quickly rushed to the place where the attacks were found and began investigating. The attacks did look similar, confirming that they were most probably from the same killer.
But in this case, the range of the attack… it was almost as if the killer was chasing someone… which was weird as they had killed the targets directly in all the previous entanglements. If someone could run away from them or even put up a bit of resistance then, they had to be someone from the supernatural side too.
On going further, they found a place with a crater in the ground and the chase seemed to have ended there.
A crater.
It was different from other attacks.
Was the killer actually attacked by someone else?
There weren't any reports.
But this crater… it wasn't something made by normal magus.
Was this perhaps the work of some servant?
He will have to ask.
"The arbiter of the Grail War this time… it is Kirei Kotomine, correct?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Then let's go to the Fuyuki Church. We have some questions to ask."
Just as they were about to leave, he sensed something, a familiar feeling on his hands and froze as he lifted his hands.
There, on the back of his hands, was a black symbol.
A Command Seal.
But how?
- Interlude (Silas' Revenge) -
"Silas-sama! I heard that you wanted to meet me." The woman in front of me greeted me enthusiastically.
Black hair, golden eyes and a pair of curved horns which seemed like a crown on her head, but most of all that enchanting face. Truly succubuses were something else.
Lucky Ainz.
I smiled politely at her.
"Hello Albedo-san. Yes. Ahahahaha how do I say this… I heard a lot about you from Ainz and thus I wanted to meet you."
"Oh! Ainz-sama has been talking about me? What did he say? Does he like me? Does he want me to do anything for him?" She asked quickly, almost jumping across the table to my face.
I pulled back a bit, forcing my lips from twitching at her enthusiasm.
Alright, now I understand why Rimuru and Ainz get jealous of me at times.
Being on the wrong side of this situation is not a good feeling.
Fucking Ainz… next time he calls me a Harem Protagonist, I would make a bone-soup out of him.
"Ah, well, he speaks good about you. It seems he is… interested in you in a… ah, romantic sense."
"Really?!"
"Oh yes. Absolutely. I know him very well. It was mostly about you and a few times about another girl, a vampire…"
"Tch… that blooksucking… cough… my apologies, Silas-sama."
"Ahahahaha no need to apologise. I understand your feelings. If I am being honest, I actually support you. I think you would be perfect for Ainz." I smiled at her as a wonderful smile bloomed on her face.
"Really! Silas-sama thinks so?"
"Absolutely. I think you two would look cute together."
"Ehehehehe."
"Well, if you want, I could… hmm, I could give you some advice regarding how to win Ainz's heart, you know?"
"Eh… will you do that, Silas-sama?" She asked, her eyes shining as she gazed at me with what seemed to be all the hope in the world.
Please don't do that.
"Hmm, just… just make me a promise that whatever is discussed here will remain a secret forever. No one else should know about it."
"I promise." She replied instantly.
"Good. In that case, I will tell you about a secret hobby of Ainz." I smiled and began telling her of my plan.
This is something I had planned for a while now. In fact, I had been planning this right after the Comiket event.
It's just that with the Mysterious Ice Devil incident and then everything else, I kinda got side tracked.
Still, that didn't mean I was not doing anything.
The first step in taking revenge is to collect information.
As the saying goes, 'Know your enemy and know yourself and you will win a thousand battles'.
I talked to the maids of Nazarick about Ainz and Rimuru's life in their world. The things that they did there everyday, how they interacted with everyone and what people thought about him.
During this, I discovered an interesting tidbit about Albedo and Shaltear who were both vying for the attention of Ainz.
I had a bit of an idea about the situation from what Ainz had told us before but this was a literal gold mine.
As soon as I found out about this, I formulated a plan.
"Really? Ainz-sama likes that? Do you think he would like it if I did that to him?" She asked, almost innocently.
"Well, he is very shy about his… hobbies so you need to be a bit forceful in your approach." I explained.
She nodded attentively. In fact, all that was left were a pair of glasses, notebook and a pen and she would look like a model student right there. Actually screw that, she actually did summon a pen and paper and started making notes.
"Finally, in doing all this you will need a few things."
"Yes."
"First are ropes."
"Hmm hmm, ropes."
"Then comes… blindfolds,earplugs, ballgags, candles, stra… no no, that's a bit too much for the first time." I decided to leave that aside due to him using the Wish Spell to help us out. The list went on. She copied everything but then she suddenly stopped.
"Umm, Silas-sama."
"Yes?"
"But what if I do something wrong?"
"Hmm, a valid concern. But no one masters things on their first try. We all start learning from somewhere. Still, if you are afraid… I might have a solution for that too." Here, my smile widened, as I took something out of my pocket and placed it on the table in front of her. "This is something called a camera…"
This revenge will be glorious.
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Author's Note:
I am back with another chapter of 'Isekai Restaurant'.
Sakura and Rin finally had their talk.
Rin as always messed up due to her dumb way of talking and her ineptitude when it came to emotional matters.
As a consequence, Sakura is now angry and wants to participate in the Holy Grail War too.
As for the servants summoned, there is a reason for every summoning which we will see in the later chapters.
The summoning of Stheno might seem odd to some people but trust me, it was done after some thought and wasn't as random as some might think.
So the Soul Society Arc is in full swing while the Holy Grail War is gathering heat too.
Clock Tower, Church, the Magus Families, Fraudkuna and the Restaurant group are all in without even knowing who is going to fight whom.
And then Shinjikuna goes ahead and does something crazier.
How will the Fifth Holy Grail War in Fyuki City end?
We will see in the next chapter.
Enjoy the new chapter.
Good Day, Peace Out.