[Emergency situation detected. Emergency situation detected. A fire has broken out in the central power plant and the central control room...]
Listening to the flat warning voice with one ear and letting it pass through the other, I hurriedly checked Olga Marie’s condition. Breathing... thankfully, yes. I put a hand under her nose and felt a faint but steady breath.
There didn’t seem to be any obvious external injuries, so had she just been knocked out by the impact? Through the gap in her collar, I could see that the blue jewel on the necklace I had given her was shattered. So that’s what protected her.
If she’s alive, that’s fine. It doesn’t look like her internal organs were blown out or anything, so the magic crest should keep her alive. She’ll wake up with time... but we don’t have time.
I filled my hand with wave energy and gave her cheeks a couple of light slaps. Olga Marie’s cheeks turned red. Sorry. But there wasn’t any other option.
“Ghk! What happened!”
“You okay, Olga?”
“Ugh... my cheeks hurt...”
“Sorry.”
Of course, I hadn’t woken her with pain alone. Olga Marie was a mage too. And mages usually had one or two ways to forcibly rouse consciousness even while unconscious, if their life was in danger.
“Nnngh...”
A strangely heated moan reached my ears. Mash!
“Damn it!”
I rushed toward the sound. Whirr! Hm? The door’s opening? Who?
“Mash!”
“Ritsuka?”
What the hell, how did he get here? No, more importantly, why is he here?
“You... no, never mind. You came to get Mash, right?”
“Ah, yes...”
“Forget it. Follow me. Olga Marie, you get outside the bulkhead for now. In your condition, you’ll just get in the way.”
“...Understood.”
Maybe a little hurt by that, Olga Marie bit her lip. Well, I get it, but this isn’t the time to worry about pride. Still, she really was a mage, because she accepted it and left.
[The power section is being shut down...]
Tch. Forty seconds... this is going to be tight.
“Uuugh... sen...pai?”
“Mash!”
“...Damn it.”
Hah, tight my ass. The pillar had completely crushed her leg. Clearing this and stopping the bleeding would take not forty seconds, but over four minutes.
[Proceeding to the final stage of Rayshift. Coordinate AD 2004, Fuyuki. Transition protection established by Laplace. Additional axis secured for the Singularity. Unsubmergence program set. Master, please enter final adjustments.]
“Uuugh... because of... me... even senpai...”
“No, Mash. It’s not because of you.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t die.”
“Ah... come to think of it...”
“Brother... what should we do?”
“Tch. It’s too big to move by hand. Let’s see...”
If I break it... yeah, that’s possible.
“Around here...”
I clenched my fist, drew up wave energy, and reinforced my body’s physical ability. Wrapping myself in ki, I drove my fist forward.
Myer-style Wave Ki Fist
Boom! With a thunderous crash, the pillar shattered and snapped apart. Hmm. That should be enough.
“Wha—just now, wha... what is this...”
“Hmm... better break the other side too.”
I walked to the opposite side and cut through the pillar there as well.
“Huh? What? Why are you so surprised?”
“No, uh...”
“Forget it. I’m going to lift it, so pull Mash out through the gap.”
“Ah, yes...”
I moved to the end of one pillar and shoved my hand into the gap between it and the ground. Hup!
“Gah!”
After seeing Ritsuka pull Mash free, I set the pillar back down. Thud!
“Whew, that’s rough. Hm?”
“....”
Ah, shit. This is bad. Her leg was completely crushed. The amount of bleeding was serious too. It’s a miracle she hadn’t gone into shock yet.
“Hey, get over here. [Emergency Treatment, target designated: Mash Kyrielight].”
I hurriedly used Chaldea’s Emergency Treatment mystic code. I could use healing magecraft too, but this was more convenient.
“Ngh...”
“Target designated, pain relief.”
“Haah... thank you.”
That should at least keep shock from pain from setting in. Though there was already severe bleeding, so shock could still come from blood pressure.
[Warning to observation staff. Caldeas’s condition has changed. Overwriting near-future observation data via Shiva. No traces of humanity can be found on Earth up to the next 100 years of the near future. Human survival cannot be confirmed. Humanity’s future cannot be guaranteed.]
“Caldeas...!”
“...That was definitely the real-time status reflection mode. Damn it. I should’ve beaten that bastard Daepae to a pulp.”
“Um... what does that mean, brother?”
“...Ah, you were asleep, so you didn’t hear it. Simply put, Caldeas is a hologram that projects the state of Earth in real time.”
“...Then!”
“Yeah. It’s a complete mess.”
[The central bulkhead is closing. Until purification of the facility begins, 180 seconds remain.]
“So the bulkhead closed. Well, if it comes to it, I can just smash my way in... no, wait. The Rayshift process was definitely already prepared, wasn’t it? According to the manual...”
[Staff absence confirmed. In accordance with Article 5 of Emergency Situation Type 3, the autonomous observation existence-verification system, Mnemosyne, is being activated.]
“Good thing I finished that thing. I pulled all-nighters making it.”
[The Master’s vitals inside the coffin have not reached the standard value. Rayshift capacity has not been met. Searching for Master.... Found. Adaptation No. 48, Fujimaru Ritsuka, is being reset as Master. Master No. 49, Tohsaka Ren, has been found.]
“Brother? What does it mean that the vitals haven’t reached the standard value...”
“It means they’re either dead or not in good shape.”
“That...!”
“You think someone’s fine after a bomb goes off right next to them?”
No, if it were Akuta, she’d probably be fine.
“At least we avoided the worst-case scenario. If this had gone off after the system redefined them as ‘status unknown,’ everyone would’ve been dead. Then there’d be no saving it. The coffin itself has pretty strong defensive power too, so at the very least none of the Masters are dead. A few of them have one foot in the River Styx, though.”
“...Doesn’t that mean they’re basically half-dead?”
“Doesn’t matter. If it comes to it, we freeze-preserve them and revive them later. Problem solved.”
“Unauthorized cryopreservation is a crime...”
“Then you’d rather leave them to die?”
“That’s true, but...”
[Mnemosyne activation complete. Mnemosyne has reset Master No. 48, Fujimaru Ritsuka, and Master No. 49, Tohsaka Ren, as targets for spiritron transfer.]
“...Damn it, I should’ve tweaked that setting a little.”
“What kind of setting was it...”
“If a Type 3 emergency occurs, activate Mnemosyne, designate all Rayshift-compatible candidates as Rayshift targets, and send them. Mnemosyne will handle all necessary procedures by connecting to Trismegistus. Since we were already preparing for Rayshift, they’ll be sent to the originally designated coordinates.”
“And the existence verification...”
“Mnemosyne handles that, so there’s no loss of identity. After that, once Mnemosyne judges the situation stable, it retrieves the Rayshift targets. Of course, if necessary, they can also be retrieved from the Rayshift location itself, but...”
“In this situation, it’d be better to Rayshift first and return after the Chaldea facility is restored.”
“Yeah. Well, thinking about it, that’s not bad. And considering Mash’s condition, it’d be better for her to get treated there.”
[Unsubmergence program start]
[Spiritron conversion commencing]
[Mnemosyne, entering existence-verification preparation process]
“This is my first time directly Rayshifting.”
[3 seconds until Rayshift begins]
[2]
[1]
[All processes clear]
[Mnemosyne, beginning existence verification]
[Good luck]
“...What was that?”
“...Well, it does sound nice, doesn’t it? Man. To think I’d be going back to Fuyuki just two days after leaving.”
With a floating sensation, as if my body were lifting off the ground, the Rayshift began.
========================================
+bonus
How Ren got hired by Chaldea
2005, the Clock Tower.
“Hmm. So the remaining time is... about nine years.”
“Marisbury.”
“Hm? Caster? What is it?”
“Ah, call me Romani from now on.”
“Oh, have you chosen a name?”
“Yeah. Romani Archaman. That’s my name.”
“Romani... that’s a good name.”
“Ahaha... but is something wrong?”
“Hm?”
“You look full of worry.”
“Hmm. It’s just that talent is lacking. It’s not nonexistent, but it’s lacking.”
“Ah, come to think of it... during the Holy Grail War, the eldest son of the Fuyuki Second Owner family. Do you remember?”
“Of course I do. How could I forget that a modern human defeated a Servant, and not just any Servant, but that ‘Knight of the Lake.’ His name was definitely... Tohsaka Ren, was it?”
“Yes. Did you read the paper he published?”
“Hm? Let me see it.”
“Here.”
Marisbury took the paper and read it.
“Hmm. Quite interesting. A combination of science and magecraft...”
“A little different from us, though.”
“In Chaldea’s case, magecraft and science were fused on equal footing and elevated into an entirely new technology, but in this case it’s closer to science as the main component, with magecraft supporting the missing parts. More like a magecraft user than a mage.”
“That’s true.”
“Still, the idea is solid. Rather than attempting to fuse two things that may or may not succeed, he separates magecraft and science and lets them complement each other.”
If Chaldea had fused magecraft and science outright, this method instead used science to make up for magecraft’s weaknesses and magecraft to make up for science’s weaknesses. By keeping the two separate while only compensating for what each lacked, it managed to secure both stability and synergy.
“Of course, compared to us, the synergy is a little weaker...”
“Even so, that makes it more stable. I want to recruit him.”
“The problem is how to recruit him...”
“He didn’t exactly act hostile during the Holy Grail War, but he didn’t form an alliance either. Money... perhaps?”
“I don’t think that would work well. He’s still the eldest son of a Second Owner family, and the Tohsaka family’s assets are quite substantial.”
“I see...”
“Honestly, I think being direct would work better. I met him last time, and he was surprisingly kind. He seems to have quite a bit of human sympathy too.”
“Is that your opinion as Romani Archaman?”
“Both. It’s also the opinion of the former King of Mages.”
“In that case, he’s worth recruiting. Will you do it?”
“I will.”
...And after that, through one thing and another, he was recruited. According to Ren, it was a nice stroke of luck—he’d been bored out of his mind anyway.
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