Summoning a Heroic Spirit was the most profound Mystery of the Type-Moon world.
To drag a legendary hero from the Throne beyond the world into reality, then compel them to fight.
Every Heroic Spirit wielded overwhelming power. And due to the world's rule that lesser Mystery could not harm greater Mystery, modern weapons and magi were utterly outclassed when facing them.
That was why the Holy Grail War became the defining symbol of this world, and why the summoning circle for Servants was a compulsory discipline no magus could afford to neglect.
Unlike the Fate/Zero worldline, where the Holy Grail War was confined to Fuyuki City, this Fate/Apocrypha parallel world treated Heroic Spirits as common knowledge among magi. The Clock Tower's twelve traditional departments had even been expanded with an unorthodox new field—the Summoning Department.
Rhodes' Holy Relic had come from the hands of the Summoning Department's Lord, Rocco Belfeban. It was hardly cheap, but to avoid antagonizing Rhodes, Rocco had offered a relatively fair price.
Even so, it had consumed half a year's revenue from Rhodes' Arcane Garden.
In a world where sub-species Holy Grail Wars ran rampant, the price of Holy Relics had been driven to absurd heights—worse than property prices in major eastern capitals. The family hit hardest by this speculation was Yggdmillennia. Their lack of premium relics had left them with a roster of frankly terrible Heroic Spirits.
With one exception.
The Masters of Yggdmillennia had already been decided. While Command Spell transfers were possible through certain methods, Rhodes had no need for such things.
He intended to capture a Heroic Spirit.
Capture did not mean summoning a Servant and tossing a Master Ball at them. It required meticulous planning and an intimate understanding of Heroic Spirits themselves.
And the material for that capture lay before him.
A naked doll in the shape of a young girl.
It was an exquisitely crafted figure. Even among the maid dolls Rhodes had created, this one stood at the absolute pinnacle.
Her pale skin was smooth. Her sleeping expression held a playful wildness. Her body—narrow waist, generous curves—combined a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old's youthful face with an improbably lush, mature form. Even Rhodes, a veteran of countless temptations, had to admit his body reacted honestly.
Most striking of all were the animal ears atop her pink hair—fox-like, perhaps canine—and the fluffy, radiant golden tail behind her, radiating a transcendent aura rooted in divinity.
Despite her girlish beauty, no one could mistake her for human. Not because of the ears or tail, but because of the pressure she emanated—not the base savagery of a beast, but the lofty presence of a god.
Yes. A god.
The blood of a solar deity flowed through this vessel. Even inactive, the doll exuded a terrifying authority.
To construct this body alone, Rhodes had burned through eight years of accumulated resources. With assistance from several noble houses of the Clock Tower, he had completed a work approaching perfection.
"She" was the tool for capturing a Heroic Spirit.
Both the vessel through which the Spirit would descend into the world—and the prison that would confine it.
"With my current Holy Relic, I can only summon one of the nine tails… I don't even know which Tamamo-no-Mae will answer. If it's the gentle or the innocent one, that's manageable. But if it's another personality… or worse, that ill-tempered Golden-Haired White-Faced one…"
Rhodes muttered softly, bitterness flickering across his face.
Among all Heroic Spirits, Tamamo-no-Mae was an excellent choice—not for raw strength, but for her knowledge.
A true being of the Age of Gods, she possessed divine-era wisdom. And with eight other tails remaining, Rhodes could use her as a medium to summon additional incarnations of Tamamo-no-Mae.
Like catching rabbits—or foxes—you could catch them by the nest.
So long as the fox didn't drain him dry.
Every other risk meant nothing to Rhodes. The only danger he truly feared lay below the waist. He knew his own lack of restraint.
Talk of "curing desire through severance" was a joke. For Rhodes, managing physical urges was a far more urgent problem.
"So I need stronger restraints. The control spells over Tamamo must be handled with extreme care. Beyond the foundational spells, this body must contain methods of control that are truly lethal."
As he spoke, his voice grew colder.
As the greatest Arcanist of Netheril, Rhodes had once engraved a state of permanent mechanized cognition into his mind. When conducting Arcane Magic research, he could enter a fully mechanical mode of thought, shutting out emotion to prevent it from interfering with judgment.
Lines of incantation flashed through his mind. Rhodes embedded the freshly acquired Lesser Grail fragments into the doll's abdomen, transforming the Lesser Grail—the medium of the Third Magic, Materialization of the Soul—into the doll's power source.
This world could not accommodate a Mythallar. A classical solution was the only option for sustaining a Heroic Spirit.
Of course, emergency mana replenishment through… close contact was also viable.
"Then… let us begin the summoning."
Rhodes spoke calmly, his tone frigid.
In spellcasting and combat alike, mechanized thought replaced emotion, refining every action to perfection and eliminating error.
He raised his arm.
A long incantation poured from his lips, echoing through the sunlit workshop.
"I declare—"
"Let thy body heed my command, and thy fate be bound within my grasp!"
He chanted softly, rewriting the summoning spell through his own arcane framework.
"I am the origin of all that is accomplished."
"I am the source of all resentment in this world."
"Let the countless spells encircle thee unto eternity, and submit beneath me!"
"From the Wheel of Suppression, come forth—guardian of the scales!"
In an instant, Rhodes' Magic Circuits were drained dry. The Heroic Spirit nearing materialization devoured his mana with ravenous hunger.
Blinding white light erupted.
Rhodes collapsed to the floor.
The illegal summoning exacted its toll. As his eyes closed, he glimpsed the pink-haired, animal-eared girl rising, panic flashing across her delicate face as she rushed toward him.
—She's probably cursing me, isn't she?
The thought drifted through his mind as he sank completely into the boundless sea of consciousness.