See for yourself how laughable your ending will be.
Give yourself an accounting.
When those words left Kiritsugu's mouth, Kayneth felt a quiet surprise. Because in his eyes, though Kiritsugu was a mage-killer without a shred of dignity, that stubborn dedication to an ideal was something worthy of a certain respect.
Setting aside the bias between their factions, Kayneth had always believed that ideals were precisely what drove human beings to grow and advance. Someone without ideals at all was something he could only truly look down upon, not merely mock with words.
But Kiritsugu now, genuinely, was strange. Kayneth mocked him.
But he would never mock the ideals of another person. Just as the Age of Gods mage Medea had once said: no matter how naive the ideal, simply being able to hold true to one's own heart already surpassed the majority of humanity.
"What wish did you want to make upon the Grail? Was it to peer into the Root, to accomplish some great feat of magic?"
"I wanted a world without conflict and contradiction. A world where something like Natalia's situation would never happen again. This world needs a greater justice. In a world filled with mages and Dead Apostles, the strife between people will never end."
"Ha. That is impossible, you filthy rat. Don't you know the lesson humanity has learned from history since time immemorial, which is to learn nothing from history at all?"
"...That is precisely why I pray for a miracle. The so, called all-omnipotent wish-granting machine."
Standing beneath an empty elevated bridge, looking out at the grand civic hall hundreds of meters away.
Kiritsugu ate his emergency ration biscuit and spoke without concealment, openly and honestly. His voice was tired, his eyes still as a deep well.
World peace. How many great figures throughout history had tried to achieve it, and yet in the modern era, conflicts in the Middle East were still ongoing. In the shadows, mages were still taking ordinary lives. No matter how much effort went into it, it seemed impossible to rewrite this reality. Humanity as a species, as a civilization, would never stop its conflicts.
No ideal, however beautiful, made enough difference. There would always be people viewing others through a lens of prejudice -- regional tribalism, European nations still imagining certain countries required braids, states still believing they were the greatest in the world, so many people finding a sense of relief by looking at those worse off than themselves rather than realizing that when you are tired you need to rest, not to search for self-worth by standing on the suffering of others.
"Miracles and magic require a price. A small magical ritual in this corner of the world cannot pay what is required."
Blowing in the cold wind, eating the now-cold lunch box Sola-Ui had sent over.
Kayneth, sitting in his wheelchair, did not mock Kiritsugu. Instead, from the perspective of a Clock Tower Lord, he offered a genuine answer.
"Praying that the so-called all-omnipotent wishing machine can stop and rewrite the strife written into human DNA is, at its core, no different from what your now-departed King Arthur tried to do in rewriting human history. It is complete and utter madness."
"Because the absence of conflict means only comfort. Comfort without pressure means no urgent drive to advance. Do you know when human technology developed fastest, when the Clock Tower's magical research advanced most quickly? It was wartime. Wars between nations. The overt and covert conflict between the Clock Tower and the Holy Church. These things you call strife were precisely what drove the advancement of humanity as a whole species."
Not to go far for examples. Just look at this Holy Grail War. If not for the pressure from the Age of Gods mage Medea and Gilgamesh being simply too overwhelming --
Kayneth, who refused to accept defeat, would never have gambled on the dual-class Heroic Spirit Servant, something the Fuyuki Holy Grail War had never before seen. And Diarmuid would never have surpassed his own myth.
That was conflict. That was pressure. Why did this Holy Grail War update its power level daily, with a new version every single day? Because the pressure on everyone was immense, and everyone knew that falling behind meant getting beaten.
Compare the night of the port battle to the later stages. Could you believe that the war where top-tier Heroic Spirits held absolute dominion on the first night was the same war that later required nothing less than a top-tier Heroic Spirit to be permitted at the table, with the same participants throughout?
"But that is not justice."
"Why doesn't conflict bringing civilization forward count as justice? It is simply the tide of history. What kind of justice are you seeking? Justice is just a word used by the victorious, and it depends entirely on your perspective. To me, Dead Apostles going extinct sooner is a form of justice. But to the Ancestors of the Dead Apostles, humanity going extinct sooner is justice for the Dead Apostles."
So with all these varieties of justice, did Kiritsugu really think the all-omnipotent wish-granting machine could give him the justice he wanted?
The Grail was not a person. It was just a magical ritual prize. It understood absolutely nothing about philosophical justice.
Even assuming the Fuyuki all-omnipotent wishing machine truly possessed some outrageous miracle-working ability, that miracle would most likely amount to a mirage, because justice was something humanity itself couldn't even define. What constitutes justice had never had an absolutely correct answer.
"Saving the majority. Abandoning the minority. That is what I consider justice."
Kiritsugu swallowed the last of his emergency biscuit and looked through his sniper scope at the masses of insects crawling across the civic hall's walls in the distance. Someone had clearly set up magical defenses.
Hundreds and thousands of insects of all kinds, and a few creatures several meters long that could only be detected through thermal imaging, lurking in the dark, defying biology in their size. Just looking at them was enough to make one's skin crawl.
Of course, insects alone were no particular concern. After all, flesh and blood could not withstand a tide of steel.
But the magical energy practically visible to the naked eye around the civic hall had already revealed that a mage had used the leylines there to construct a special barrier that conventional firearms could not break through, and had given those insects considerable enhancement.
"And if among that minority is yourself?"
Kayneth set down his lunch box.
"Then that is still a necessary sacrifice."
Kiritsugu answered without hesitation.
The minority includes himself, so be it.
Before meeting Irisviel, he had always been this way. Living like a machine running on pure reason, caring about himself not at all in any choice he made.
"Looking down from above -- who exactly do you think you are, Emiya Kiritsugu? Deciding others' lives at will, treating yourself as some kind of fair and impartial scale of justice?"
"I don't want to make any choice at all. It's just, if I am forced to choose, I will always choose the majority."
"...Nobody is forcing you to choose."
"If I could help it, I would want to choose less than anyone. You don't understand me, Kayneth. Just as I cannot understand how you, as a mage, care so deeply about your fiancée, to the point where you're willing to abandon reason and put yourself at risk for her sake."
Ha. Fair enough. You're quite foolish. But then again, so am I, aren't I.
Understanding sounds simple, but how many people in the world could actually achieve mutual understanding?
Kayneth snorted and let the subject drop. Having never walked in another's shoes, you couldn't counsel them on virtue. Their life experiences were entirely different. A Clock Tower genius and a mage-killer who had lost his family from childhood. It was entirely natural that Kayneth and Kiritsugu could not understand each other's circumstances or thinking.
Only Kiritsugu's desires gave him a moment of quiet puzzlement.
Because in Kayneth's view, Kiritsugu was no fool. So why did he believe so firmly that the so-called Grail could realize a miracle? The all-omnipotent wishing machine was just marketing, surely.
Like the rumor that there existed a Mystic Eye in the world capable of killing all things including gods. That kind of thing was just the gap between the advertised version and what you actually got.
Had Kiritsugu perhaps been misled by the Einzbern family's homunculi into actually believing the Grail could summon miracles? He was treating it with the gravity of something genuinely world-altering. The three magical furnaces alone that Kayneth had invested would have been enough to personally host a Holy Grail War in London.
But this puzzlement didn't last long. He had no real interest in the so-called Grail anyway.
What was this? A remote backwater in the Far East, and their all-omnipotent wishing machine was going to possess actual magic?
It was like a world champion going down to fight underground black-market boxing for entertainment, expecting terriers, and finding a ring full of Tysons with a final boss straight out of the impossible.
"A thrall-type magical barrier. Quite interesting. Simultaneously controlling familiars at this scale, while further enhancing them with leyline energy, it already has a faint echo of that Age of Gods mage Medea's familiar armies."
Picking up Kiritsugu's binoculars and observing the civic hall, Kayneth raised an eyebrow with mild interest. This didn't seem like an illusion.
Though it wasn't out of the question that Francesca Prelati had shown her face and recruited some outside help through sheer shamelessness, regardless, the civic hall was now extremely difficult to assault.
"The Tohsaka family controls Fuyuki's leylines. He and Francesca may have already reached an alliance."
"Difficult to deal with. This barrier is not particularly elegant in construction, but in my current state, breaking it in a short time would be hard. Having the leylines to draw from provides too many advantages."
"Just do your best. The plan from the beginning was always a frontal assault."
Kiritsugu's expression didn't change as he sorted through his weapons. With only one Heroic Spirit Servant remaining on the field, their side held an overwhelming advantage in direct combat power. There was no need to skulk around like before.
"Francesca doesn't know this kind of insect-controlling magic. And she wouldn't cooperate with Tokiomi Tohsaka. You understand that for traditional mages like us, outsiders who come to disrupt a magical ritual's proceedings have always been looked down on and rejected."
Besides, Tokiomi was Fuyuki's leyline administrator. Giving out the operational authority over his carefully arranged leyline-triggered magic was equivalent to digging his own grave.
That old monster was no kindhearted being. For her, the prerequisite of cooperation was an equal level of power.
And Tokiomi's magical ability, while not negligible, was still far too distant compared to a great mage. Their positions and personalities were naturally incompatible.
"But it's possible it's Francesca's illusion, that she manipulated Tokiomi..."
"Heh. You're not scared, are you? A mage-killer starting to fear mages?"
Hearing Kayneth's habitual cold mockery, Kiritsugu retrieved the binoculars from his hand without expression and walked forward. Whatever the opponent turned out to be, the plan would not change.
Besides, he noticed his own question was a stupid one. After the blow Francesca had taken in the afternoon, she was at death's door even if she had survived, let alone in any condition to manipulate the head of a magical family. Tokiomi was no Waver Velvet. Detection magic and familiar surveillance were immune to illusions. In her badly damaged state and without the support of a proper workshop, Francesca had absolutely no ability to get close to Tokiomi.
"Tch. Rude rat. After this Holy Grail War ends, I'll settle this account with you."
Kayneth clicked his tongue in distaste, then looked over at Diarmuid not far away.
Though when all was said and done, he had still accepted the favor of Kiritsugu's intervention.
Kiritsugu was at least something resembling a person. Francesca was just genuinely feral, doing anything for entertainment with no logic or restraint whatsoever.
"Lancer. Frontal breakthrough through those insect hordes. Draw all attention to the front of the civic hall. Leyline energy alone. Even if it can be drawn upon, it cannot summon more than a fraction of its potential. The breaking points of the formation are mostly in the positions I've marked."
"Small place, small ambitions. Since when does every nobody feel entitled to stand against a Clock Tower Lord?"
He tossed a schematic to Diarmuid with a casual flick of his wrist, then waved dismissively and let his fiancée Sola-Ui wheel him away into the darkness of the evening.
His Volumen Hydrargyrum was depleted and his body severely injured, so naturally he could not fight directly.
But the sharp eye of a Clock Tower Lord, he still possessed. This hastily set-up improvised workshop was just for show. It looked intimidating but was hollow at its core, all surface with no real depth, and as long as the magical arrays tethering the leyline were destroyed, those grotesque insects would never be able to penetrate a Heroic Spirit Servant's defenses.
Granted, in this period where every Servant's armor seemed to crumble like paper, one still had to consider who the opponent was. Against the Age of Gods mage Medea, the King of Great Britain Arturia, or the King of Mesopotamia Gilgamesh, armor like paper. But against a mere insect swarm, there was a world of difference.
"As you command, my lord."
Diarmuid knelt on one knee in respect, seeing the two of them off, then drew the crimson magic sword.
He had no objection whatsoever to the nominal transfer of control rights, even if it meant Kiritsugu eventually reaching the Grail.
Because as he had said, Kayneth's will was his will. If Kayneth felt he owed Kiritsugu a debt, then as a knight, how could he possibly obstruct his lord from repaying a life-saving grace? They genuinely did not care about the Grail.
With that thought settled, Diarmuid rose and looked out at the distant, dark civic hall.
Tonight's moonlight was bright. It would also be the Holy Grail War's last night.
Thinking about it, it was a little funny. Seven Heroic Spirit Servants, and the last one standing had come down to sheer luck.
If his luck in the banquet battle had been just slightly worse -- if the Age of Gods mage Medea had chosen a different final enemy instead of the Saber girl -- the winner right now would be a very different story.
"Heh heh heh. A frontal assault? How reckless. This generation's Lord of the Clock Tower Mineralogy Department lacks steadiness."
Fuyuki City Civic Hall.
On the rooftop of the grand building.
Sensing the approaching magical energy a hundred meters away, the short, bent old man let out his peculiar laugh. Without question, that was a Heroic Spirit Servant's magical energy signature.
"Can you confirm exactly how many enemies are approaching? Is Francesca Prelati among them?"
"Unknown. That Clock Tower Lord's counter-detection barrier is cleverly constructed. This old man's insects sent into that area simply vanished without a trace. But from the current shape of things, that Clock Tower Lord should not be personally fighting. He can only rely on his Heroic Spirit Servant to push through."
A counter-detection barrier, standard equipment in a conventional magical workshop, a type of barrier specifically designed against familiar reconnaissance.
Normally, constructing such a barrier required at minimum two weeks, often over a month. But in Kayneth's hands, it had taken mere hours to hand-craft one on the spot, completely blocking the enemy's ability to gather intelligence.
The younger generation truly was pushing the older out. There were genuinely terrifying talents in the world.
To a mage, greater age meant greater mastery. Kayneth was just barely past twenty, and already able to deploy various types of magic to this level of refinement. Given another fifty or sixty years to grow, there was a real chance he could reach what was spoken of in legend as the highest rank.
If by that point he was still interested in Fuyuki's Holy Grail War system, it seemed reasonable to imagine he might come to the Fifth Holy Grail War sixty years from now, once all his magic had been perfected.
A chilling thought.
This one must not be allowed to live.
"Though it's not impossible that Francesca and that genius Clock Tower Lord have reached some form of cooperation, in this old man's opinion the probability is actually quite low."
"After all, that illusionist's reputation at the Clock Tower is, in certain ways, even worse than Emiya Kiritsugu's."
Never mind anything else. Just the two points of having challenged the Jewel Magus and having wounded Aoko Aozaki, the Red of the Three Colors, were enough to have completely ruined Francesca's reputation among the Clock Tower Lords. Given Kayneth's pride, even an alliance with Kiritsugu would have been more likely than one with Francesca.
Zouken narrowed his sunken eyes, and at the same time noticed that in a completely opposite direction from the civic hall, another figure was quietly approaching.
"Dark clothes. Dark hair. Carrying firearms. Moving quickly. A pincer formation from two sides. At least a semblance of tactical thinking."
But unfortunately, the enemy was not Tokiomi Tohsaka. It was him, Matou Zouken.
Against magical positional warfare, unless someone was directly carpet-bombing with Noble Phantasms the way Tokiomi had done earlier, his positional defense was a state of completely airtight advantage capable of holding against multiple opponents at once.
"Leave that one to me. It is Emiya Kiritsugu, the Master of the Saber."
"Oh? Surely the Saber has not still failed to depart the stage?"
"If that were the case, Lancer and Kayneth would already be two corpses. Emiya Kiritsugu is a mage-killer who will use any means necessary as long as he holds the advantage. The fact that he is now apparently allying with Kayneth proves he has been backed into a corner with nowhere left to go, forced into an alliance."
Kirei turned the golden cross on his chest between his fingers, and the corner of his mouth curved slightly. He didn't know why Kiritsugu and Kayneth had set aside their enmity and united, but as long as Kiritsugu was still alive, that was enough.
This one fact was what mattered to him. He didn't concern himself much with the other details.
Illyasviel was dead. His source of pleasure was gone. And Emiya Kiritsugu could very nicely fill the absence left by Illyasviel's departure, in his own way.
"Everyone who has survived this long has something up their sleeve. Are you certain you want to face a mage-killer alone?"
Zouken looked at Kirei with a measured gaze. He didn't know much about Kiritsugu, but he understood that in a Holy Grail War that had reinvented its difficulty settings daily, anyone who had survived to the final rounds must have something remarkable about them.
"An agent of the Holy Church is not inferior to any assassin. And Emiya Kiritsugu is not in the best of condition either. A mage-killer kills mages, but I am merely a mage practitioner."
"...Heh heh. The maggot tells jokes now."
Being able to kill a mage naturally meant being able to kill a mage practitioner. That framing made Kiritsugu sound like he had some special technique specifically against mages and nothing else.
"Still, this old man should warn you first. Kayneth's magical ability may exceed my estimates. I can stall Diarmuid Ua Duibhne for about an hour at most. Beyond that, I cannot promise, only do my best."
Zouken's voice unconsciously cooled as he said this. That man born of the Tohsaka family had razed his insect nest to the ground.
Many rare and combat-capable insects had been wiped out by Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasm flood. If not for that, even with depleted logistics, he was confident he could hold and stall a badly injured Diarmuid, and might even have had faith in solo killing him here.
So regarding Tokiomi Tohsaka, he was genuinely grinding his teeth, and had hinted multiple times, trying to lead Kirei into finishing off the disabled Tokiomi completely.
"An hour or two is enough time for the Grail to fully manifest."
Kirei's expression didn't change as he walked down the steps toward the direction the small insects indicated.
"Would you like some assistance from this old man?"
Zouken offered in a tone of apparent goodwill.
Not that he was worried about Kirei, but he was afraid the man would embarrassingly get himself killed by Kiritsugu, leaving him with no one to go to for the Age of Gods mage Medea's relic.
How was he supposed to summon Medea -- who could cut through all three Knight classes in close combat -- in the Fifth Holy Grail War?
"No need. I would prefer to speak with him alone. A bit of small talk."
"?"
"Such as, for instance, who it was that instructed and pressured me into killing his wife, Irisviel."
"...!"
"Whether he can guess. It was Illyasviel, you know