Chapter 133: A Sister Falls from the Heavens
No, calling it the "minimum" would be an understatement.
He had defeated six Servants in total and collected six Class Cards (souls). Furthermore, while using [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond] to heal Matou Sakura, Emiya Shirou had conveniently extracted the fragment of the Lesser Grail buried within her body. He only needed to place these six Class Cards into that fragment to successfully activate the Greater Grail. Aside from the wish to reach the "Root," most wishes—including the Third Magic—could be realized.
It could be said that, with the Holy Grail War progressing to this point, Emiya Shirou had successfully locked in his victory. All that remained was to prepare for the wish-granting ceremony.
"Shirou!"
After confirming that Lancer was no longer capable of fighting, Saber—acting as a knight and respecting Lancer as a rival by listening to his final words—watched him finally dissipate. No longer needing to restrain herself, she approached Shirou with an excited expression.
"We did it!
We can summon the Holy Grail and grant our wish!"
Seeing Saber like this, Shirou didn't say anything discouraging. He didn't even mention that the true ordeal might still lie ahead. Instead, he responded with a smile, "Yes, all the efforts we've made so far haven't been in vain. Now we're just one last step away from summoning the Grail to fulfill our wish."
At this point, Shirou turned to Tohsaka Rin and asked, "Tohsaka, you don't mind leading us to the burial site of the Greater Grail inside Ryudou Temple, do you?"
"?... I don't mind that, but..." Rin looked at Shirou with confusion. "Shirou, why do you want to go to that specific place?"
This wasn't Rin trying to vent her petty frustration after losing the war. After all, Shirou's strength was clear for all to see. No matter how confident Rin was in her own magical talent, she didn't think she would become a Heroic Spirit in the future—let alone defeat a version of herself that had already become a Heroic Spirit and manifested as a Servant.
It was precisely because of this realization—knowing that even in a normal Holy Grail War, the combination of a Master with the strongest Saber class and a combatant who possessed Servant-level power and would become a Heroic Spirit in the future—that she knew they were the duo with the highest win rate. Rin truly had nothing to question regarding the outcome of this war.
Having accepted her defeat, her previous annoyance with Shirou wasn't so much about him pointing out that he could actively choose the winner of the war. Rather, it was that he had
originally intended to "bestow" victory upon her as an act of charity. Was she, Tohsaka Rin, the kind of woman who needed someone else's charity?!
But now, because a series of events had happened so quickly and intensely, her original annoyance had long since been replaced by a sequence of new emotions. Now, she was simply curious about Shirou's words.
"Since you have Mystic Eyes that see the future, Shirou, you should know that wishing upon the Grail only requires a location with abundant mana from the leylines," Rin explained. "We don't actually need to go to the physical location of the Grail; we can perform the final ritual right here in Ryudou Temple."
Of course, the process would normally require obtaining the Lesser Grail beforehand. But since Shirou already held a substitute fragment of the Lesser Grail, that part of the process could presumably be skipped.
"I know," Shirou nodded. "But the true function of the Lesser Grail isn't just to let the winner wish upon the Greater Grail.
Its true purpose is to establish a connection with Justeaze, the core of the Greater Grail. By using similar Magic Circuits to link them, it summons the Greater Grail—which is integrated into the leylines—into physical manifestation."
This was a supreme authority held only by the Lesser Grail and the Einzbern family. Otherwise, even a magus of Caster's caliber, or someone like Amakusa Shirou Tokisada who could use a Noble Phantasm to link his Magic Circuits directly to the Grail's to force its activation, would still need to be in close physical proximity to the Greater Grail. They couldn't just pick any high-mana spot in Fuyuki City to summon it.
In the original Heaven's Feel route, after Matou Sakura dealt with Illya—the other Lesser Grail who would compete for control—she went to the underground area of Ryudou Temple where the Greater Grail was buried for exactly this reason.
"...Alright, fine. It's not like it's a secret anyway, and besides..."
As she spoke, Rin suddenly paused, her face turning red.
She had originally intended to say that Shirou wasn't an "outsider." But that phrase, which should have referred to Shirou and Illya being siblings and thus both members of the Einzbern family (one of the Three Founding Families), took on a different weight now. Since Archer—the future Emiya Shirou—had been successfully summoned using herself as the catalyst and "relic," her relationship with Shirou had become tangled and complicated.
Using that phrase now would feel like she was personally confirming something...
This caused Rin to quickly change her words: "Cough, cough! Anyway, according to the records left by the Tohsaka family, the place where the Grail is buried is most likely over there. Let's go find it quickly!"
Despite the lingering blush on her face, Rin's magical knowledge—or rather, the fact that she had scoured almost all of the Tohsaka archives after losing Tokiomi's guidance—combined with the residual magical traces used to hide the Greater Grail's burial site, allowed them to find the correct spot under her guidance even more smoothly than Shirou had expected. They successfully entered the interior.
"Is this the place?"
"Judging by the surrounding mana, it's definitely here."
"So, the reason [Hermit Purple] couldn't produce a precise spirit photography of the Grail and its location..." Shirou mused to himself. "Wasn't because the Counter Force had some hidden trick, but because the massive amount of mana contained here interfered with the results?"
Just as Shirou was thinking this, something suddenly fell from above his head.
Was it a "Sister" falling from the heavens?!
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