The war between the two sides has been going on for a long time.
(What is going on here?)
The female warrior leader did not panic even though she was very confused.
(Wait... Considering the extent of this battle, perhaps... This isn't a proper ceremony but perhaps it's enough to call me.)
The two figures collided and she had no reason to take sides.
She has been called up but has not yet signed a contract.
Hippolyte observed so.
To know what is happening in the sacred land she summoned.
Or to determine exactly what this Holy Grail War is.
“Aaaargh! Can’t you ever give up?”, one of the people exchanging bullets said - a woman dressed in red - while she fired Gandr curses.
She fired cursed bullets with the force of a triple-barreled assault rifle, narrowly dodging the target, shattering part of the concrete wall behind her and revealing the steel bars inside. While the woman in red confirmed the result of her shot, her dark eyes found Hippolyte.
"Seems like our guest couldn't stand to wait until we were finished. Wanna keep going?", she added as she furthered the distance between herself and her opponent.
The other figure—a woman covering the area around her in black smoke—responded to her enemy in red's question with a sharp glare.
"Leave her waiting. Or did you want a break to have tea with the Heroic Spirit?"
From the gaps of the woman's black smoke, she could peek at a harmonious face with shark-like teeth and a pair of gothic goggles on her eyes, engraved with magical letters.
Her words were weaved with wicked laughter, but in contrast, the woman in red sighed and shrugged.
"Well guessed, that's exactly what I was planning to do this whole time."
There was no delay between the woman's words and her actions.
"Without you, of course."
Her sigh and her shrug were no mere provocation. A superb way of walking that combined her magical energy, technique, and all of her arduously cultivated physical strength.
Her slender body reached top speed in a blink of an eye.
At that point, she had already switched her limbs to their next form.
A perfectly delivered backhand blow flew toward her opponent's body.
A hit to the ribcage. Even a normal backhand to that area had the chance to prove fatal to an undertrained body.
Nonetheless, this was not even the worst she did.
At the start of her movement, the woman in red fired a ball of curse from her fingertip, ran at the same speed as her shot, and delivered her twisted backhand together with it to push the shot further.
"Gah...!"
The woman's goggles cracked with the blow.
The blow hit the chest, quite distant from the face, and yet the impact spread through her body was intense enough to cause visible damage to her facial accessory.
"Kh... Kh... Haha, hahahahaha!"
Hit with a strike and curse inevitably capable of knocking out a boxing champion in one hit, the woman with the goggles laughed ecstatically.
"I get it now... You're as good as the rumors say! No, better than the rumors! Average One!"
"I don't know what rumors you heard, but I'm much more than my attributes... Ah!"
Toosaka Rin—the woman in red dodged the opponent's chop mid-sentence.
"True, my bad!"
The mage with the goggles—Doris Lusendra's chop was also superhuman.
The first thing to call attention to is that her fingers were nothing like human fingers. Their form and hardness were altered to resemble the talons of a bird of prey—or rather, of a phantasmal dragon. This makes them blades capable of bisecting a human being. She rushed in at Rin for a follow-up.
What makes her chops so difficult to fight against is how all of them cause the whole cloud of black smoke around her to move.
It can sometimes serve as a traditional obfuscating smokescreen, sometimes serve as shackles to slow down the enemy's movements, and some of the smoke can concentrate to attack Rin as a third arm.
The Lusendra family.
A lineage that determined that one of their end goals was to replicate an allegedly extinct phantasmal species from Japan, the oni, with their own flesh and blood, and spent the past 1000 years modifying their own bodies and Magic Circuits.
With a special form of Reinforcement Magecraft passed down in the family, they repurpose their skeleton, each muscle fiber, each nerve, each lymph duct, and each capillary vessel to pass as a makeshift Magic Circuit.
Their final destination is defined by the contradiction of making the already lost past reach the distant future.
To take hold of, understand, or rewrite what is lost with the progress of the current form of Human Order, many mages keep the engine of their bloodlines running.
Doris Lusendra is one of many using their lives and souls as fuel to the ends of the rails set by their lineages.
"I really want to praise you right now, but the first word to come to mind is 'nasty'.", Rin shrugged looking at the half-wrecked walls, floor, and pillars. "In no time, you changed this room's attribute into your own without even a Mystic Code or a catalyst... no, I guess at this point, your very body is already a Mystic Code and a catalyst."
The room had marks of destruction, some done by Rin's magecraft but most done by Doris's own body, and the parts she broke were drenched in remains of the raging magical energy seeping from her.
Meaning that the more Doris destroyed, the more this environment became magically advantageous to her.
The debris housing magical energy had already begun to resonate with Doris. The room's interior was expressing its hostile intent to remove the unwelcome element that was Rin.
"You are the greatest wall in my path! You are worth bringing out all the deepest secrets of us Lusendra!"
"Do I really look nice enough to play along with everything you want to show?"
Her actions were faster than her words. Rin deployed jewels around her.
"Anfang."
Simultaneously with her power words, surges of magical energy of multiple attributes erupted from the spaces between the seven floating gems.
Then the light continuously reflected inside the gems, expanding their magical energy as it shot flashes of light.
Magical energy of multiple attributes twisted into a beam of light aimed at Doris Lusendra.
The spell known by the name Cutting Seven-Colors.
And what was behind her seven jewels was even more terrifying.
The flash of light was concealing five floating jewels disposed in the shape of a pentagram.
It was the magecraft she perfected under Lord El-Melloi II's tutelage: Fünf Sterne im Umlauf.
The unfair technique that allows Rin, the Average One, to initiate magecraft pre-deployed in the gems in response to the enemy spell, ensuring her attack will always have the upper hand in any compatibility interaction.
The jewels' magical beam served as a distraction to give her time to speak the chant that induces its activation.
"You won't!"
Black mist explosively expanded out of Doris's body to cancel the glimmer circulating in the jewels.
It was the blood that sprayed out of the cut she made on the arteries of her own wrist.
The blood sprayed out already on its acidic black color and tried to crush the jewels around Rin in a form like a water jet's blade.
At the same time, Doris's body morphed considerably.
Doris's skin, previously reinforced like steel, was ripped apart as her right arm's bones started to morph into a blade.
And then the debris around her floated and began to gather on Doris's right arm, compressing all the steel beams and concrete.
The bone blade coated in steel and debris finally covered the whole arm, turning into armor as it grew larger until the black hand eventually surpassed her own height, almost reaching from the ground to the ceiling.
And next,
with a twisted sound, the right arm made of debris, bone, iron, and most importantly, Doris's Circuit-converted flesh and blood, plunged forward, assaulting Rin with the palm of a giant.
And the worst of all is that this whole alteration and strike took place in less than 1 second.
Normally, Rin could effortlessly dismantle the physical components if she had only completed the Fünf Sterne im Umlauf chant.
But Doris's speed left no room to complete the spell.
All cheats and counters are swallowed by her diligently optimized bodily alteration speed and the physical strength created by her Reinforcement Magecraft.
Even if Rin did activate her spell and tried to dismantle it, the debris had already gained impulse unrelated to magecraft and an improvised barrier or defensive spell couldn't stop their masses.
Rin's Fünf Sterne im Umlauf is practically invincible against constructed magecraft.
However, this description refers to magecraft which eventually dissipates into the world. It's powerless against real phenomena connected to the world, like for example special permanent projections, a mercury being taking a fully physical form, or simply a dump truck running in her direction.
Lusendra knew nothing of the Fünf Sterne im Umlauf spell, but in the depths of her obsession, she unwittingly achieved a counterplay for Rin's greatest secret.
"You don't get a choice, you will play along, Toosaka Rin!"
The Lusendra lineage has been in rapid degradation in recent years.
Not because they've been getting any less arcane.
They simply tried too hard.
The Lusendra lineage devoured everything it could to grow closer to the phantasmagoria of the oni, or to live life the way they did.
The previous family head, the most powerful in their history, devoured man and fiend alike, sometimes even vampires, and lastly, in an attempt to devour a god, he headed to Japan, where the God Possessor clans are.
And there he randomly came across the real deal. Which means to say he was slaughtered by a one-eyed man with thick oni blood in his veins.
They lost most of their Magic Crest and then had to deal with the heavy consequences of their quest for "sacrifices to devour" continuously making larges amounts of new enemies for them.
The only options left for them were to disappear into obscurity or to be instantly ruined by an enemy attack.
That's when Doris, the only one who hadn't given up yet, was visited by Francesca and invited to the Holy Grail War.
She was told that the Grail was fake and most likely incapable of reaching the Fount.
But she was told it was somewhat effective as a wishing-granting device.
Doris Lusendra didn't blindly trust the story but accepted the invitation.
She believed that seeing a hero from the Age of Gods with her own eyes and having her magical energy connected to one was worth it, and most importantly, if something close to a god manifested, she had a chance to incorporate it into her body.
But that was not what was happening.
A powerful enemy appeared before she could even summon, and faced with this enemy, Doris lost sight of everything. The Holy Grail War, the revival of her family, and the roadmap of her future were all trivial.
But she didn't forget her thesis as a mage.
She was sure of it.
This mage right here was the greatest obstacle in her whole life.
She was sure that blasting through this wall was the way to perfect her lineage's magecraft.
Thus, she poured everything into this blow.
She didn't mind losing the chance to fight those who appeared alongside Toosaka Rin or the chance to contract the Servant.
It was with that much resolve that she launched her Giant Oni Grab.
This blow was her ultimate technique to crush any enemy regardless of whatever magecraft attribute they could have.
"Fantastic.", Hippolyte approved of the magecraft Doris poured her heart and soul into. "But..."
Her eyes were the eyes of a warrior Heroic Spirit. They clearly saw the bigger picture.
By the time the palm strike of the giant was composed, the woman named Toosaka Rin had already abandoned the chant and the jewels.
She judged that the greatest magecraft she ever constructed couldn't a thing against the physical strength generated by her opponent.
And as soon as she did, she repurposed half of the magical energy in all the deployed gems to conceal herself and construct a power spot, and then she jumped close to the ceiling, slipping between the giant's fingers.
Any misstep and she would have ended up a victim of the oni's claws, but regardless, the mage named Toosaka Rin escaped the jaws of death.
(This wasn't a gamble. That mage... she went through all her options and knew which was the best one.)
The mage Rin only turned behind for one instant to look regretfully at the gems going to waste, and while she did, she kicked the ceiling, switching the vectors of her body, mind, and magical energy flow into her next move.
Drawing all the excess energy from the crushed jewels back into her body, she composed her favorite spell, one she can do without requiring a chant.
Dense misfortune spouted out of Rin's fingertips at the start of her free fall from the ceiling.
Hippolyte recognized that as a curse, although one quite different in design compared to the curses of her land.
Hippolyte never heard the word "Gandr" before, but as someone who fought loads and loads of demonic beasts and sorcerers from the Age of Gods, she could easily guess what it was used for.
(But what radiant curse!)
The Gandr was just a curse. Hippolyte's heartfelt admiration was for the refined tricks around it. She presumed this magecraft finesse to be on the high end of what the tactical minds of the modern age can do.
And so came the time for the match's conclusion.
"You wily-!"
Doris voiced her surprise at the same time she internally commended her enemy.
The spell Rin had previously compiled was one of the greatest achievements of her mage lineage.
The decision to discard that magecraft after so much buildup was not an easy one even for the most rational of mages.
Doris judged that her opponent had extraordinary combat experience on top of her diligent study of magecraft. She prepared to counter her opponent's attacks, with the corners of her mouth raised high.
She had already seen this Gandr many times before.
It was a refined cursed bullet named Finn Shot, capable of piercing concrete. Since Toosaka Rin fired those with the frequency of an autocannon, no ordinary man fighting her could escape certain death.
Even if their body can somehow withstand it, the essence of the curse would infiltrate their body and stop their heart.
(However, my skin is now iron and can block the consecutive curse volleys!)
Doris surrounded her whole body with intense magical energy, with the intention of landing the most effective counter she could deliver.
But the Gandr impact she was prepared to take never came.
"!?"
Doris felt let down but didn't have the time to feel confused. Before she could, she saw the Gandr shot out of Rin's fingertips intercepted by something invisible.
For a moment, Doris assumed someone other than Rin interfered. But she discerned it was not the case. The qualities of the magical energy emitted by the barrier were identical to the qualities of the energy covering Rin.
Meaning the one who set the boundary was Rin herself.
(She's... keeping her Gandrs caged inside a Bounded Field?!)
In its normal form, this boundary was powerful enough to lock an enemy inside a room.
Rin compressed the boundary to the size of a football, making it into a cage to circulate the Gandrs she produced.
The cage was now a pressure cooker full of curses, shrinking even further as it dropped to Doris's feet.
Doris envisioned the explosion of the accumulated curses and focused her magical energy on her feet to jump away, then Rin sank her foot to the ground with a full-powered stomp.
A blow on a moment of distraction.
With the Gandr cage taking all of her attention, Doris forgot about Rin for a moment—an instant, even.
To Toosaka Rin, a mage who once survived a Holy Grail War, an opponent who lets their guard down like this is an opponent who surrendered the battle.
And Toosaka Rin's style was to break an enemy's spirit beyond repair, surrendered or otherwise.
Rin approached from an angle Doris wasn't looking at and shoved the Bounded Field compressed to the size of a golf ball into Doris's foot with her stomp.
Doris had her whole body down to the capillary vessels turned into makeshift Magic Circuits, and this strike aimed for the moment she would focus all her magical energy on her feet for a jump.
What could only be described as a curse cannon loaded with a grapeshot of Finn Shots wrenched open her steel body and spread through her body when her foot had the maximum amount of magical energy paths open.
The impact on the foot could be felt even on the top of the head, and its shockwaves broke Doris's goggles to smithereens.
"GAH...!"
Doris coughed black blood and her body bent backward.
Rin's movement flowed into the next, preparing to use her palm heel to shove in her next Gandr along with a jewel she suddenly had in her hand. However, this blow was blocked by another palm coming from her side.
Rin cast a sharp glare at the intruder. Hippolyte looked straight into Rin as she spoke.
"I apologize for putting a damper on your combat.", said Hippolyte. Her right hand calmly stopped the blow that would use a jewel to drive a Gandr to someone's insides.
Rin just saw someone block an attack powerful enough to knock down a giant elephant, but showed no signs of surprise.
Because she knew that Heroic Spirits were overwhelming power inaccessible to modern mages.
"But this match already has a winner. Additional attacks those who can't move won't be allowed on my watch."
In sync with Hippolyte's words, Doris's knees gave in and she collapsed.
With the magical energy composing it dispelled, the giant palm made of blood and debris crumbled.
Meanwhile, Doris's left arm was extremely injured, but due to the original properties of her body, it had already stopped bleeding.
"Hmmm..."
Rin looked as if she was the one testing the Heroic Spirit's values. She sighed while she put her magical energy to rest.
As she stepped away gripping her gem, Doris formed sentences in the gaps of her ragged breaths.
"I don't need your mercy, Heroic Spirit... Now that I'm defeated, I have no problems with my blood, flesh, and soul being devoured by the victor."
Despite the blood coughs interrupting her speech, Doris's face had an expression of satisfaction. She couldn't stand up. It was taking all that she had just to keep talking.
Seeing Doris like this, Rin spoke with an expression of disgust.
"Hey, can you stop making it sound like I'm a Strigoaică or a carnivorous dinosaur? I was never after your life... That said, I hate being mistaken for a naïve mage, so listen. Ahem." In contrast with her previous violence, Rin's assertion to Doris was completely rational. "Regardless of our pact, the Command Spells appeared in you first. I can't imagine the Heroic Spirit right there will be happy if I kill you to steal them like some bandit... Although some Heroic Spirits would like me better if I finished you off without mercy."
Rin looked at Hippolyte as she spoke.
Doris had also perceived Hippolyte's nature at first glance. Her face alone could vaguely move when her limbs still couldn't, so she faintly smiled and closed her eyes.
"I was soundly defeated. I have no regrets."
"Good for you. I have a lot of regrets. Sigh." Before continuing, Rin directed a mean smile at Doris. "How many gems do you even think I spent on you? I can't make you pay compensation if you're dead, can I?"
X X
"I see, the two mages made a pact before the duel. I assume with the rights to my contract at stake."
"More specifically the bargaining chips that enable our contract. That'd be the Command Spells."
After hearing the situation, Hippolyte looked at Rin with new eyes.
A mightful mage.
And still with a lot of room for growth.
Rider's simple impression is that despite all this growth potential, she was already far too perfected for her young age.
And she wasn't the only one.
"And you don't resort to your numbers to steal it...", said Hippolyte, feeling the presence of the dozens of mages outside the room.
"We do, depending on the situation. But the Holy Grail War is not even started yet, you know?"
Taking Rin's word as their signal, the ones outside stepped into the wrecked room.
"Well, it was really fortuitous that she accepted a personal duel bound by a magical pact, Toosaka Rin. It's already humiliating enough that our Svin and Roland, due to being a wolf and snake, had to negotiate a peaceful resolution to their fight against the Zempulus beast hunter the other day. Having to resort to our superior numbers to beat the Lusendra oni imitation would put a dent in our teacher's glory.", said a young man with the airs of a noble.
"Still, what a boorish battle. You could have ended it so much faster and easier if you had ever learned a grappling move or stopped being a penny-pincher with your gems.", continued a woman in a blue dress.
Hearing that, Rin took one more at Doris lying down on debris before delivering her counter-argument.
"Hello? Have you seen her magecraft? I'd be dead with my bones full of holes if I've ever tried anything as slow as a grappling move."
"Sweet, ignorant child. Once you master your locks and throws, you can neutralize your enemies as instantly as you can with punches."
"Honestly, you're the only one who even tries pulling off these niche tactics on mages, do you know that?"
"And that last hit... The Bounded Field sealing the Gandrs was shoddily composed. Were you taking suicide bombing as your plan B again?"
"What the hell do you mean by 'again'? When did I ever do that?!"
The women in the red and blue continued their debate. Watching it from the sidelines, it was hard to determine if they were serious or just banteri
