"Wait a second! A whale shark just jumped out from the roadside—how the hell is that reasonable?"
That didn't sound right. Emiya had a hard time accepting it.
"It's perfectly reasonable. Because this isn't reality. This is Nibelungen."
Zero dismissed the abnormality with a single word: "Nibelungen," as if it explained everything like some universal excuse.
Emiya didn't press further. In fact, even among hybrid humans—especially elite organizations like the Secret Party that operate on the frontlines of dragon-slaying—very little is truly known about Nibelungen.
Scenes like these were the stuff of mythology.
Among hybrids, places like Nibelungen were often referred to as "the Land of the Dead."
In Norse mythology, the black dragon Nidhogg guarded the branch of Yggdrasil that led to the land of the dead. He was its gatekeeper. During Ragnarok, the sea would part, and a ship made of the fingernails of the dead would rise, carrying an army of the undead to wage war upon the living.
To alchemists, however, this land of the dead was considered a treasure trove of immeasurable value. Alchemy's core lies in the process of "killing" matter in order to "regenerate" it—and in the land of the dead, even matter itself is dead.
It's said there is no day or night here. The bronze-colored mountains and ground are formed of dead earth elementals. The gray sky consists of dead air elementals. The cold blue fire burns with the essence of dead fire elementals...
To alchemists, this place was an endless vault of raw materials.
Frankly, even though Emiya didn't understand alchemy, he couldn't see how this place resembled that legendary treasure vault at all.
Probably none of those old geezers had ever actually been here. They just theorized wildly and exaggerated to sell their research.
Tch... those stiff, nose-in-the-books alchemists—none of them understood Nibelungen better than me now, huh? Emiya chuckled bitterly.
Zero stood beside him, her expression unchanging as always—colder than even the famously stoic Chikahiko.
She calmly disassembled her portable radio, retrieved a power amplifier and backup antenna from her case, then used a custom SWR meter to test antenna matching. Next, she adjusted RF gain and squelch...
In just a few minutes, she had assembled a brand-new comms device with superior transmission and reception performance.
Emiya blinked at the dazzling display. "You know how to do this?"
Zero replied flatly, "Not really. I just learned it once."
With the power of her "Mirror Eyes," once was enough.
Thanks to that ability's learning and analytical capabilities, she could understand calculus by age two and fully disassemble and rebuild a broken 178-part radio by age three—using only 167 of the original parts.
Zero restarted the communicator, and sure enough, a familiar voice came through the static. Her expression softened slightly, and her eyes lit up. "Where are you now?"
———
"We're here! This is the intersection you mentioned, right? But I don't see you guys anywhere!"
Jiu De Mai had temporarily pulled over her Lamborghini Estoque and scanned the surroundings through the rain-streaked windshield. Rain fell hard against the dark asphalt. This stretch of road was near the original meeting spot—just ahead was the on-ramp to the expressway.
But due to the approaching typhoon, the expressway entrance was clearly marked as closed, with barricades in place. No one would drive beyond this point.
Damn it. Zero said she and Emiya took a black Maybach straight through here…
So this is Nibelungen? She'd run around this area for a while now and hadn't even seen a gate. Completely illogical.
"Alright, just wait there, Sanmu. Big sis is gonna try pushing onto the expressway myself."
She clenched her teeth. No way she was letting her boss's precious girl die inside Nibelungen.
"Perfect timing. I just got intel from Emiya-dono. He said something about the Nibelungen's entry point being connected to the Zero-numbered expressway."
"…Zero expressway?" came the garbled reply from Zero, barely decipherable through poor signal quality.
"Yeah, the little shrine maiden gave us some keywords—typhoon, zero expressway, ocean or something. They're probably all linked to this Nibelungen stuff."
"Possibly. The typhoon may be the correct timing... and the zero expressway, the correct entrance…"
Zero's voice broke again, but she suddenly sounded surprised. "Ocean? …Ocean!"
"We actually encountered marine life inside… whale shark… and—turn around! Ahead is—a tsunami!"
Turn around? What do you mean, turn around?
Jiu instinctively spun the steering wheel, but looking both ways, nothing was happening. Then the comms went dead.
Crap. That "turn around" must've been from inside the Nibelungen! Which meant Zero and Emiya had just encountered something terrible. A tsunami?
Driving into a tsunami inside a magical dimension—that's messed up!
Her first instinct was to reject the idea, but on second thought, she'd never actually seen Nibelungen before. Maybe being nonsensical was its whole thing.
"What the hell is this?! Alright, fine. You stupid expressway, I refuse to believe I can't find that damn Zero route!"
She glanced up at the road sign—but sadly, it read 023, not 000.
With a growl, she made a U-turn and re-entered the side road to look for another on-ramp.
———
Time passed. Night fell. The rain intensified into a torrential downpour, as if the heavens were pouring down rivers from above.
Drivers instinctively slowed down.
In this kind of weather, brake lights formed a continuous red ribbon down the highway. Impatient car horns echoed through the rain.
Chikahiko stared through the rain-speckled window of his taxi, taking in the blurry landscape.
He had called for a ride to take him home—his "new dad" Roku Tianming had, as always, completely forgotten about picking him up.
Chikahiko had considered calling that man, but Emiya hadn't answered any of his calls either. All he got was "The number you're calling is out of service…"
For the first time, Chikahiko felt a deep unease—like something was seriously wrong.
That man usually fulfilled every request, always trying to show off in front of Chikahiko. He suspected the guy treated his boss with the same overzealous service…
Except for that time with the red-haired siblings. That was the only time he'd received a serious warning from the man—one that felt strange and out of place.
So… could it be related to them?
Suddenly, a sharp car horn blared behind them. A red Ferrari surged from the traffic behind, flying through the emergency lane like a knife through butter.
Even Chikahiko's taxi driver had to swerve slightly to avoid being scraped by it.
"Crazy driver," the cabbie muttered. "Think they're late for reincarnation?"
Chikahiko's gaze followed the Ferrari the whole time. Just for a second, he thought he saw—through the window—a figure with red hair inside.
———
Inside the Ferrari, Emiya typed furiously on his phone, the screen illuminating his face and hair.
"I just heard from Jiu De Mai. She sent a message."
Nono was at the wheel, driving like a racing game pro, weaving through traffic like it was nothing. She really belonged in the same class as Alicefiel...
If not for the urgency, Emiya swore he'd never let Nono drive again.
"What'd she say?"
"She's still driving, so no call—just a short message."
"Basically, one of her teammates and another guy ran into some kind of bizarre incident. They're trapped in a maze-like otherworld and encountered ocean-related phenomena."
"Sounds like a rare anomaly that appears during typhoons, and you can only access it via the Zero expressway. That was our target anyway. If we meet up with her and add old Tang, we'll have a solid three-team search party."
The largest known "non-human labyrinth" Emiya had heard of was the Spirit Tomb Albion—a massive underground complex miles deep, whose surface coordinates shifted constantly.
Then there was the Seventh Labyrinth of Alcatraz from Fate/Labyrinth, an artificial experiment ground that even hosted a variant Holy Grail War.
(Unlike the regular wars, variant Grail Wars only involve 4-5 Servants—not enough to open a path to the Reverse Side of the World.)
"There! I see the Zero expressway!"
Nono, still slicing through traffic like a maniac, spotted a clearing ahead. A gust of wind had blown aside some willow branches, revealing the road sign—"Expressway Entrance..." followed by its number.
With enhanced vision, Emiya confirmed it: 000.
(End of Chapter)
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