"What, did something interesting happen?"
"No, you..."
"Forget that. Just heal me first. We can talk after that. The workshop-forming sorcery... is probably all gone by now. Anyway, heal me."
"...Hah. Fine, I get it."
"And Da Vinci, get me some scouting. Expand the search radius as much as possible around here. Precision doesn’t matter. I just need to know whether a Servant is approaching."
[Hm? Ah. Understood.]
Ugh... my body hurts. Not a single bone in me is intact.
"Start with the bones in my left arm. After you patch them together roughly, do the muscles first. Leave the bones for last."
"...Crazy."
Forcing my body to move, I took off my coat and asked Caster, Cú Chulainn, for help.
[...No cuts, just fractures everywhere, bruising, ligament damage....]
"Huh? Romani?"
[...Ritsuka, your condition right now is...]
"You mean it’s that bad? Well, there are more broken bones in my body than intact ones... maybe? No, a little less than that."
Ritsuka made a stunned face.
"Don’t make that face. I’ve already temporarily patched and set the broken bones."
"Wow. There isn’t a single healthy part of your body, is there?"
"To be exact, my left shoulder is dislocated, my left arm has a compound fracture, every bone in my right arm is broken, a few finger bones are cracked... and my ribs are pretty wrecked too. My skull’s still fine, though."
At least thanks to the coat’s function, the bones were patched the instant they broke, so I didn’t end up with a punctured lung from a broken rib stabbing into it.
"Tch. Bear with it for a bit. I need to set the bones first."
"Wait a second."
I looked around... Hm, no good. Nothing for it.
I brought the scabbard to my mouth and bit down on it with my teeth.
"Se-tthe..."
"Hah. I’ll set them on three. One, two, three!"
"Ghk."
With the scabbard clenched in my teeth, my speech came out slurred. Damn, that hurts like hell.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Well, if you’re tense, it’s hard to get it right. Guess I was worrying for nothing. I patched them together roughly."
"That’s a little better. My shoulder..."
Hm. I forced my shoulder to move upward, and with a dull pop, the dislocated joint slipped back into place.
"Oh. Lucky you."
"Tough bastard."
"Well, it’s a little better than having your head cut off, isn’t it?"
"Fair enough. You’re a man, all right. Are you from Ulster by any chance?"
"...Have you given up on hiding your true name, Hound of Culann?"
"What are you talking about? I figured it out from the start. Besides, I’m not so rude as to hide my name from a warrior like you."
"...What about in a Holy Grail War?"
"That’s an exception."
"You’re more flexible than I expected."
Well, revealing your true name in a Holy Grail War is stupid. I’m not interested in getting my weakness exposed and being unable to fight properly. Still, I guess that’s true enough. Not bad. We exchange a little small talk.
[If you’re the Hound of Culann... your true name is Cú Chulainn, right?]
"Hm? Oh. Olga Marie?"
"Correct."
Cú Chulainn drew a rune on the floor as he spoke. A cool, refreshing sensation unique to healing magecraft spread through my body, and the pain subsided all at once.
"Oh. Faster than I expected."
"Since the bones were fixed as soon as they broke, you didn’t keep making the injuries worse by moving around. For how badly you were broken, you’ll recover quickly. In... five minutes, I should be able to get the ligaments and muscles to the point where you can at least fight."
"Hmm. Good. What about the bones?"
"Those’ll take a little longer."
Hm. Well, that’s still something. Once the muscles are restored, I can at least fight.
"That’s a relief. I should be able to fight again soon."
"Hah! And you still plan to fight in that condition? Man, you’re tough!"
Cú Chulainn laughed with a grin.
"In that case, I’m counting on you."
"Got it, you bastard."
++++
"Ah! By the way, why were you running over here so urgently earlier? Was it because of those guys?"
"That too..."
"Hm?"
"This is just my guess, but we might have to deal with Berserker."
"Huh? What happened to make you say that?"
"That Archer bastard bought time with one snipe, then disappeared."
"...Damn it."
Hm, it really is convenient when you’re with someone smart. We get along well.
"Tch..."
"Looks like they’ve planted bombs all over every leyline they could find, huh?"
"Seems that way."
"Hmm... setting up a new workshop... might be impossible."
I glance at the ruins of the church, now just a pile of rubble, and ask.
"Probably, yeah."
"Tch... then we’ll have to finish healing and move out right away."
"Hmm. What’s the plan after that?"
"There is a way to avoid Berserker entirely and only deal with Saber, but... do you think that’s possible?"
"Impossible. Maybe for a little while, but I don’t think Berserker will stay away while you’re dealing with Saber."
"Hmm. So we have to take down Berserker first. Cú Chulainn, with your Noble Phantasm..."
"If I can land it properly, then yes. But there’s no way that Berserker bastard will just let himself get caught. Even if he does get caught, he’ll probably just smash his way out with brute force. At best, I can wear him down some."
"Hmm. So your Noble Phantasm has to be used to wear him down, or else as the finishing blow after he’s already badly wounded."
"Exactly."
Neither option is easy. If we use it as a finishing blow, then just injuring Berserker badly enough in the first place is already a huge problem. And even if we use it to wear him down, Berserker will still be terrifying even after he’s been drained.
In the end, either way, we have to beat Berserker down hard enough.
"Tch. No choice, then. We’ll have to smash straight into him and take him down."
"Now that’s a conclusion I like. Hey, the muscles and ligaments are basically healed for the first stage. Want me to fix the bones too?"
"Just my limbs for now."
"Got it. Hey, give me your arm."
Hm? When I held out my arm, he drew something on my forearm. A rune?
"When I checked earlier, it looked like you’d roughly patched the damage with something. I’ve set it up so the healing will replace it for now."
"Oh, thanks."
"That’s about all I can do here right now. Anything beyond this needs to be treated properly from the start. That’ll take about ten minutes, so wait there. Be glad the injuries themselves were relatively simple. Or was that intentional too?"
"Once you take internal damage, the scale of the treatment time changes."
If it’s just ordinary broken bones, they can be treated in a few hours or even a few minutes... but if your Magic Circuits are battered or you’ve taken internal injuries, it takes at least a few days.
"I deflected as much as I could, and what was left over I stopped with my limbs."
"You’re not human... no, come to think of it, what the hell was that circle-and-slash thing you did earlier? I pride myself on knowing my way around weapons, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it."
"If you work hard enough, you can make it happen somehow. Well, it’s not even the real thing. That woman’s technique is impossible to figure out."
"That woman?"
"Did I mention her? Yeah, there is one. Not something worth worrying about."
"The way you say that makes anyone worried."
Fair enough. He laughs in amusement, then, apparently irritated, whacks the back of my head with his staff.
"Ow, what the hell?"
"Consider that the price for not telling me."
"Tch. My bad, I guess."
"Good."
++++
"By the way, Ritsuka? What are you hesitating for?"
"Ah, no, it’s just... Ren...-san?"
"...I told you to call me big brother."
"...That’s way too much pressure, you know?"
"What is?"
"I mean, after you made the city look like that with just one sword..."
...Ah. I blinked in confusion for a moment, then understood the reason when I saw the traces of the divine sword technique I’d used earlier.
"Eh, don’t worry about it."
"...It’s very hard not to worry about it!"
========================================
+bonus
Kwaaaah!
On the other side of the screen, Ren seemed to carve a taijitu pattern with a single sword, then split the city apart in one stroke. Olga Marie and the entire staff were left stunned.
"...Hey, Da Vinci?"
"What is it, Director?"
"...Can all Heroic Spirits do things like that?"
Strictly speaking, Ren wasn’t a Heroic Spirit, but having defeated a Heroic Spirit, he could be called Heroic Spirit-level. No, from the moment he started pulling off insane feats like that, it was hard to think of him as human at all.
"...At that level, would that count as a Noble Phantasm for anti-army use? No, maybe even anti-fortress... It seems like that kind of power... it depends on the Heroic Spirit."
"....Uh, sorry for acting so arrogant all this time!"
One staff member, who had once been rude to Da Vinci on a bad day—well, rude was probably an exaggeration, since Da Vinci herself didn’t even remember it—bit his tongue mid-sentence.
...This reminds me of Merlin. Romani Archaman, Chaldea’s top medical specialist, judged inwardly. No, and honestly, I have no idea how that works either. Even when I searched through the memories and knowledge of the "Mage King" rather than "Romani Archaman," I still couldn’t grasp the principle. I can tell it definitely originates from mystery—otherwise something like that would be impossible—but even then, I can’t understand how it works.
[Secret Sword, Tsubame Gaeshi!]
On the other side of the screen, the Assassin fighting Ren seemed to exchange a few words with him... then suddenly split into three bodies and launched a slashing attack.
"Wha—?! That’s dimensional distortion!! Isn’t that the work of a magus?!"
one staff member shouted in panic.
...A moment later, Ren seemed to thrust his sword, and with a metallic clang! the blade was knocked aside, while Ren’s sword pierced straight through the Assassin’s chest.
"...What exactly did we just witness?"
"Let’s forget it. Forget it. Just forget it."
After a series of things that looked like magic—no, not the kind people casually call magic, but true Magic, like interference with parallel worlds—happened right before their eyes, the staff gave up on trying to understand.
"Director, what are we supposed to do?"
"...There’s nothing we can do. Just eat popcorn... no, prove your existence! What are you doing?!"
"Ah, yes!"
Perhaps influenced a little by Ren, Olga Marie, who had briefly started speaking naturally in a joking tone, snapped back to her senses and issued her orders.
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