"...No way."
President of Earth U-Olga Marie.
That overwhelming being, one of the Seven Beasts, was kneeling right in front of them as a Servant.
It was the very moment that grotesque, absurd miracle became real.
The overload from his forcibly opened Magic Circuits, the accumulated fatigue from one battle after another alongside his Servants, and the strain of the Rayshift all crashed down on Yaiba's entire body at once, like a dam giving way.
"Mr. Togabito? Your face...!"
His vision flickered violently, and the world spun.
Just as the strength left his legs and he was about to collapse onto the cold metal floor, someone's solid arm caught his upper body and steadied him.
"My, you've pushed yourself too far. Rest easy, Master."
With Kojiro's low, calm voice as the last thing he heard, his consciousness sank into total blackness.
"Husband?! Open your eyes, husband!"
"Master! Wake up, open your eyes!"
Shuten and Baobhan Sith cried out in panic as they crowded around the fallen Yaiba.
Amid the chaos, Olga Marie, still collapsed in a corner, stared at her trembling hands and gasped for breath as a tremendous clash raged inside her.
Olga Marie Animusphere. The proud, high-strung self she had possessed as Chaldea's director.
And U-Olga Marie.
The self that had communed with Yaiba down to the depths of their souls and crossed countless battlefields with him.
As the two beings fused perfectly, two sets of memories poured through her mind like a waterfall.
The tender memories of all the countless times Yaiba had quietly looked after her, trying to ease her pain for her sake.
And then, just a few hours earlier—the horrible memory of herself lashing out at him in the ash-gray streets of Fuyuki, spewing disgust at him as if he were some filthy insect.
"...What... what have I done...!"
Olga Marie's golden eyes shook uncontrollably.
The boy she had hated and despised for no reason had been silently bleeding all this time, enduring alone the terrible curse of being rejected by the world.
With that cursed body, he had raised golems to protect her, and he had begged his Servants to save her—even though she was already dead and condemned to eternal agony inside CHALDEAS.
The desperate loneliness and pain he had endured tore Olga Marie's heart to pieces.
Ghk... urk...!
Olga Marie dropped to the floor and retched. This time, it was not the instinctive revulsion caused by Yaiba's constitution.
It was a hideous disgust toward herself—for repaying kindness with cruelty, for driving a dagger into the heart of the gentlest and most pitiful person in the world.
"D-Director?! Are you all right?!"
Mash hurriedly called out and tried to approach Olga Marie, but with Yaiba collapsed between them, she could only hesitate at a distance.
Her reason knew he was their benefactor, but her instincts kept sounding alarms and rejection toward Yaiba without end.
Meanwhile, there were others watching the entire scene.
Dr. Romani Archaman and the Chaldea staff, who had been holding their breath at the main console in the control room as they watched the Rayshift team return.
"Th-That guy... Togabito? Why is he in Fuyuki...?"
"Could he be the terrorist who planted the bomb in the control room?"
Because communications had been cut off, the staff had no idea about Lev's betrayal. To them, Yaiba—already someone who inspired inexplicable discomfort and disgust throughout Chaldea—was the perfect suspect.
As his ominous presence seemed to seep directly through the control room, the staff recoiled in fear.
Romani, a doctor himself, was just as shaken. He hesitated as he looked down at Yaiba, unconscious in Kojiro's arms.
He felt the duty to have the patient moved to the infirmary and treated immediately, but the moment he looked at Yaiba, a beastlike urge to avoid him and stay on guard crawled up his spine and held him back.
"Should I... take that boy to the infirmary right away? But Ritsuka is asleep there right now. Is it really safe to put someone giving off such ominous, revolting energy in the same room as Ritsuka?"
Just as Romani was unable to give an order, caught between his duty as a doctor and his instinctive revulsion—
"That's not true! You're mistaken!"
Mash cried out urgently.
"Mr. Togabito isn't the terrorist! The one who blew up the control room and caused the Singularity was... Professor Lev! If anything, Mr. Togabito defeated the one responsible for the Singularity and saved us!"
Mash's explanation sent a stir through the control room. But the hatred and suspicion in the staff's eyes did not fade easily.
Feeling that vicious atmosphere of distrust against their skin, Shuten and Baobhan Sith finally reached the end of their patience.
"...You filthy little worms, what did you just say about my husband?"
Shuten's pupils narrowed to slits, and a dense killing intent pressed down over the control room.
Baobhan Sith also smiled coldly as crimson Magical Energy gathered at her fingertips.
"Maybe I should rip all your eyes out. Master risked his life to save you, and instead of being grateful, you're running those trashy mouths?"
"Calm yourselves. The Master's condition comes first..."
Kojiro reached for his sword hilt and tried to stop the two Servants, but the staff were already ducking behind the consoles in terror. The whole room was one spark away from exploding.
"...Everyone."
That was when it happened.
Olga Marie, who had been on the floor retching, slowly staggered to her feet.
"Everyone... be quiet!!"
KRAAASH!!
The overwhelming Magical Energy carried in Olga Marie's shout slammed into the control room. Dozens of fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling shattered all at once with a deafening roar, and glass rained down like a storm.
Inside the half-destroyed control room, sparks flying everywhere, she roughly swept back her disheveled hair and let out a ragged breath.
The geometric horn rising from her forehead. Her bizarre outfit. The rippling golden Magical Energy.
The murderous gaze of the President of Earth, bearing the Spirit Origin of a Beast, turned toward the staff at the main console and toward Romani.
"Wh-Who... Director? Is that really you? What in the world happened to your... appearance...?"
Romani asked in a pale, faltering voice, and Olga Marie, sweat running down her face, clenched her teeth and shouted back.
"Romani! Move him to the infirmary right now and examine and treat him with everything you've got! Did you not hear me?!"
"B-But, Director! His reputation inside Chaldea is already... and besides, Miss Ritsuka is in the infirmary right now...!"
One of the staff members, trembling with fear, had just begun to object—
"...Does my word mean nothing to you?"
Olga Marie's golden eyes flashed toward that staff member.
It was not the pressure of an angry director scolding a subordinate. It was the killing intent of an absolute predator, the kind that seized a human by the throat and left them unable even to breathe.
Ghk...!
The staff all clutched at their throats and dropped to their knees. Even Romani broke out in a cold sweat, as if an overwhelming gravity were crushing him down.
The force pouring from her was not the Olga Marie they knew.
"If not for that boy, I would have suffered forever inside CHALDEAS. He is my savior and Chaldea's savior. If any of you look at him like he's some kind of insect one more time... I'll punish you myself. So move, now!!"
At Olga Marie's furious order, Romani nodded hurriedly.
"U-Understood, Director!"
Once Romani gave permission, Kojiro lifted the unconscious Yaiba in his arms and led the way toward the infirmary. Shuten and Baobhan Sith followed close behind, glaring at the staff as if they wanted to tear them apart.
Watching Yaiba's limp back grow farther away, Olga Marie felt a throbbing pain in her chest, as if it were being ripped open.
"I... I made you hurt like that. Even knowing how terrible your loneliness was, I still drove a blade into your heart too..."
She wanted to run to him that instant, take his hand, and weep, but she bit down on her lip until it bled and forced back the tears.
Right now, she was his Servant—but she was also the director who had to bring this hellish mess in Chaldea under control.
She had to take proper command of this place, the place where Yaiba would remain.
And she had no right to stand at his side after wounding him herself.
"Mash! Romani! Report the damage to the control room. And back up all Rayshift logs. From this moment on, Chaldea is entering a wartime state!"
Olga Marie began directing the control room in a sharp, commanding voice.
Though her outward appearance had become grotesque and alien, the orders she gave and the judgment behind them were unmistakably those of Chaldea's director.
But even as he worked the console, Romani kept watching Olga Marie with an intensely serious, sharpened gaze.
"Marie's outward appearance has completely changed into that of an unknown Heroic Spirit. And that overwhelming Magical Energy..."
More than anything, what bothered Romani was the change in Olga Marie's attitude.
Just a few hours ago, before the Rayshift, she had found it disgusting even to be in the same room as Yaiba. And now she was blindly protecting him to the point of nearly killing staff members for insulting him.
It was far too extreme and unnatural to be explained as an ordinary change of heart.
"That ominous, malicious wave of Magical Energy pouring off Togabito. And the director's grotesque physical transformation, along with this near-obsessive defense of him..."
Romani's hand slowly curled into a fist.
"No way. Did Togabito make a contract with some unknown evil spirit in the Singularity... then brainwash Marie's mind and alter her body? No... is that even really her in the first place? We definitely found her corpse. Honestly, none of this makes sense."
And so Chaldea's story of saving Human Order raised its precarious, dangerous curtain amid the warped suspicion surrounding a boy welcomed by no one.
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