From the gap in the door of the special ward where Tsubaki Kuruoka was hospitalized, a faint white mist quietly seeped out. It crawled along the silent midnight hospital corridor like a living serpent, slowly heading toward one particular room.
If an ordinary person who knew nothing had seen it, they would probably have thought the air conditioner was simply overheating and found nothing strange about it at all. But to the eyes of a magus, this mist radiated a chilling magical aura that symbolized "absolute death."
The fake Rider — its na was Pale Rider.
At that mont the white mist spread deep into the corridor and finally slipped quietly into the hospital room where Matou Yuu lay.
The next instant——
Buzz!
A piercing buzzing sound suddenly rang out through the suffocating air.
—"Kago Kago"
This was the Noble Phantasm unique to the Pale Rider. Its sole function was to forcibly seize the souls of anyone the mist touched and drag them straight into the endless abyss of dreams.
The mont it activated, the mist of death centered on the Pale Rider spread like a net and enveloped Matou Yuu's bed. Yet just as the faint mist was about to touch the boy's body, it stopped dead in mid-air, as though it had struck an invisible wall of sighs, unable to advance even a single step.
Beside the hospital bed, a petite girl with blue hair slowly lifted her head. Her clear, crystal-like crimson eyes — shaped like a cross — quietly observed the white mist that symbolized natural disaster, a faint curiosity in her gaze.
"Who are you…?"
Tiamat's clear, beautiful voice echoed through the room. At her feet, a dark Sea of Life quietly rippled and flowed into the pale mist.
This was absolute conceptual suppression.
The instant the Sea of Life drew near, the faint mist symbolizing death and plague instinctively recoiled as if it had encountered its natural predator. In the end it was driven into a corner of the ward with nowhere left to retreat.
Tiamat had already noticed the barrier the mont it was deployed. She had not imdiately crushed it because she sensed no killing intent from the white mist. More importantly… from deep within the mist she had faintly heard the heartbreaking sobs of a young girl.
The Pale Rider did not answer the Mother Goddess's gaze. To be precise, it simply could not answer.
The so-called Pale Rider — one of the Four Horsen of the Apocalypse recorded in the Book of Revelation — was not a historical hero or general but the personification of the concepts of disease, infection, and death. Its existence was the very symbol of natural disaster.
As the final book of the New Testant states: "Then I looked, and there before was a pale horse! Its rider was nad Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."
The essence of the Pale Rider could be described as the divine punishnt and death, God would unleash at the Last Judgnt. Yet although it could not speak, it seed instinctively drawn to the vitality that nurtured all things within Tiamat.
The faint mist swirled gently in the corner and slowly approached Tiamat Lily, quietly projecting fragnted mories before her eyes.
The photograph showed a girl nad "Tsubaki Kuruoka."
From the mont she was born she had been used by her biological parents as a subject for cruel human experints. Cold operating tables, unknown bacteria injected into her body, endless pain… and in the depths of that suffering, an extrely faint wish had taken root in the girl's heart — a longing for her parents' love, a terror of endless loneliness, and a desperate yearning for friends to play with.
In the end, the reason this unconscious natural disaster had found Matou Yuu so precisely in the vast darkness beca clear.
There was only one reason… the boy was from the Matou family.
Tsubaki Kuruoka had been born into an extrely ruthless magus lineage. When the Holy Grail War was about to begin in Snowfield City, her parents stole incomplete information about the Matou family's Worm manipulation magecraft from Fuyuki in order to win and explore the source. Lacking the core technology to cultivate the Matou crest worms, they had a sudden inspiration: replace worms with magical bacteria or microorganisms and, in the cruelest way possible, transplant them into their own daughter's body.
Frankly speaking, it was a low-quality version of the Matou family's Worm magecraft. Conceptually and foundationally it shared the sa origin as the Matou modifications. However, the bacterial experint spiraled completely out of control, and the entire Kuruoka family of three fell into a vegetative state.
In reality, Tsubaki Kuruoka was constantly tornted by the pain of the bacteria. Her sealed subconscious cried out in despair in the darkness: "It hurts so much…"
"Soone… soone help … I don't want to be alone…"
On the night the Holy Grail War began in Snowfield City, Tsubaki Kuruoka scread inside her heart. Thus the bacteria within her body beca the catalyst, and within her vegetative form the calamity symbolizing death and plague — the Pale Rider — was miraculously summoned.
"In other words, you're trying to tell … there is no malice. You simply want to borrow my child for a little while so you can play together?"
Tiamat Lily quietly watched the tragic mories revolve through her mind like a lantern and seed to understand the Pale Rider's clumsy intention.
She spoke softly. "That girl… is truly pitiful."
"However, Yuu cannot remain trapped in the dream forever."
She paused, gazing at the girl in the photograph with pure, clear crimson eyes, and said with pity in her voice, "Even if it's only for a short ti… it's all right to go see that child together with Yuu."
When she finished speaking, strength naturally left her body and the heavy Sea of Life at her feet quietly receded.
The faint mist seed to hesitate for a mont. Then it slowly approached Tiamat.
"…"
"…"
"…"
It was unknown how long the analysis lasted, but afterward the faint mist suddenly began to tremble violently. This Pale Rider, lacking self-awareness, experienced an unprecedented logical overload at that very mont. It clearly sensed the endlessly vast and imasurable vitality residing within the small body before it. Furthermore, its probing tendrils discovered that this existence of astonishing vitality was rely a trivial terminal. She was connected to an indescribably deep place.
There, using Tiamat Lily as an anchor point, the Pale Rider attempted to spread the pale mist of plague along dinsional gaps into an imaginary space that did not exist in the current world.
Finally, a figure so enormous and terrifying that it could collapse even concepts suddenly appeared in the Pale Rider's vision.
It was the origin of all life and, at the sa ti, the ultimate calamity for humanity.
Beast II — Tiamat.
If this had been an ordinary human, their legs would have trembled with terror the instant they saw this living corpse. Yet the Pale Rider felt no fear. In its poor logical circuits there was only one command: Tsubaki must always receive the best. This playmate's true form was so powerful and perfect that it must be allowed to enter Little Tsubaki's dream.
Thus, before the Goddess of Creation who possessed the power to destroy the world, the Pale Rider did not hesitate for even a mont. White mist materialized in the void, becoming a long spear symbolizing the Apocalypse of the End, and gently struck the dinsional wall between the Sea of Imaginary Numbers and the real world.
Click.
It was as if an ancient dragon had suddenly opened its ferocious, beast-like eyes. The sky above Snowfield Castle, originally adorned with stars and the moon, seed to be torn apart by so invisible force. The door to the great Sea of Imaginary Numbers had opened!
Within that freezing void rift, the jet-black mud of life quietly overflowed from the gap cut by the Pale Rider and flowed toward the real night sky…
…
A specially modified black Cadillac limousine glided smoothly along the empty streets of Snowfield City. Faldeus lounged comfortably in the soft, luxurious leather rear seat, gently swirling the deep red wine in his goblet.
"Sir Faldius, is it really all right? Chief Orlando looked quite angry just now…"
Aldora, the neatly dressed secretary sitting beside him, asked in a low voice. She still rembered the gloomy expression on the face of the local tyrant who ruled both the legal and criminal sides of Snowfield City when Faldeus left the police station.
"Aldora, when carrying out important national missions we cannot always take everyone's emotions into consideration."
Faldeus took a sip of the fragrant red wine, savoring how the expensive liquid spread across his palate.
"The primary mission given by the military is to turn this city into an experintal field and collect sufficient extre data and test samples. If we can use this to mass-produce the Holy Grail system and establish Arica's own Second Magic Association, then such sacrifices are nothing."
He looked out the window at the overpass and neon-lit night scenery flowing past and said slowly, "If Orlando were smarter, he would understand that he alone cannot resist the power of the military."
After a mont of hesitation Aldora finally spoke. "However, if Chief Orlando refuses to cooperate… even the federal governnt cannot imdiately dispatch another police chief who knows the inside story of the Holy Grail War to replace him…"
Faldeus suddenly let out a mocking chuckle. "Refuse to cooperate…?"
Aldora sensed the hidden aning and a look of confusion crossed her face.
Just then Faldeus spoke in a calm tone. "Orlando has, all this ti, been unknowingly and perfectly cooperating with our activities."
In the Snowfield Central Hospital where Matou Yuu lived, a girl lay in a vegetative state. She was one of the high-value Masters secretly monitored by the military during this Holy Grail War.
The terrifying plague quietly spreading through Snowfield City was a natural disaster caused by the Servant Pale Rider unconsciously summoned by the girl.
On one side stood the Horseman of the Apocalypse symbolizing death and plague; on the other stood the Goddess of Creation symbolizing life and origin. When these two extre concepts clashed inside the sa hospital, what interesting developnts would occur? And how much valuable sample data would it add to the military's database?
Thinking this, Faldeus could not help but smile.
Thud!
With a piercing screech of tires, the smoothly running black bulletproof sedan was suddenly slamd to a halt by the driver. The violent deceleration threw Faldeus forward; the Holy Grail slipped from his hand. Bright red wine spilled across the carpet like a pool of blood.
Faldeus regained his posture, frowned, and looked toward the driver's seat. "What happened?"
Aldora also looked up, ready to scold the driver. But the mont she raised her eyes to the night sky through the windshield, this rigorously trained female agent seed to be staring directly at an indescribable terror. Her pupils contracted to pinpoints and she instinctively grabbed Faldeus's arm.
"Sir Faldeus… look ahead!"
The man frowned and followed her gaze out the car window. His breath caught.
Faldeus's eyes were fixed on the sky above Snowfield City. At so unknown mont a crack had suddenly appeared overhead. A gigantic hole roughly half the size of the city had materialized. Beyond it stretched a jet-black sea that seed to swallow even light.
…The Sea of Imaginary Numbers.
At this very mont, dark and turbid matter symbolizing misfortune and death poured from the crack like an inverted waterfall, slowly flowing into the city.
But that was not the most terrifying sight.
The true reason Faldeus's brain nearly shut down was the colossal figure standing deep within the Sea of Imaginary Numbers. It was an imasurable, enormous beast that defied common sense. A pair of towering horns looked ready to pierce the void at any mont; black hair thrashed violently within the imaginary sea. From the swirling dark mud, the silhouette of a beautiful woman's upper body with eyes tightly closed faintly erged.
Even though she was rely sleeping, even deep within the Sea of Imaginary Numbers, the oppressive power symbolizing creation and humanity's evil almost instantly threatened to collapse the entire city.
The car's magical detection dashboard blared wildly, then exploded with a "boom" a second later.
Faldeus stared at the gigantic being with a mixture of shock and anxiety. After a long, uneasy silence he finally forced out a trembling voice.
"What… what is that?!"
…
…
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