First Servant

After my deal with Elza was completed, Manaka and I headed back to my parent's new Tokyo mansion. At first, my mother and father were hesitant about me leaving without Aisha, however, she was busy protecting my mother on her various excursions into Tokyo and around Japan. Father was busy investigating and had narrowed down the culprit. He was almost 100 percent certain that Sancraid Phahn was the one who masterminded the stealing of the ritual.

The fanatical racist had a rap sheet a mile long and was even excommunicated from the Church for a time before becoming a Templar. Sancraid had recently been visited by a number of seedy people who were all affiliated with the Church or mercenaries in some way. Sancraid wasn't officially in Japan at the time the ritual was stolen, however, one of his mercenaries, a young boy called Sigma was. Sigma had made a few trips to Sancriad over the years, supposedly to 'confess his sins' to Sancraid, so it wasn't seen as unusual for him to travel to see him and so the Church didn't even give him a second glance.

My father was able to put two and two together that Sigma was the one who stole the grail info from the Matous. Sigma specialized in familiar magecraft, the same as Zouken, so it wouldn't be all that surprising if he found a way around the magecraft of Zouken for long enough to steal some info and leave before being detected. At least, that's what my father thought, attempting to put two and two together.

When he gave his hypothesis to my mother, while I was eavesdropping, I was able to confirm that this was how it must have happened. After all, Sigma is one of the characters from Fate/Strange Fake and is Maiya Hisau's son, though by r*pe. The fact that he existed at all was strange and him working in close proximity to another Grail War other than the one he was supposed to be a part of, made it even clearer.

Despite all this information, all the evidence was circumstantial, so we were going to have to wait and see. My father had already submitted his report but was convinced to stay and oversee the war just in case. He was curious about the 'Holy Grail' and wanted to see if it was worth all the bloodshed, so we stayed in Japan for the time being.

I was happy because I was able to convince him to let me observe the Fuyuki War if I impressed him enough during this one. He didn't have to know I planned to be a part of it.

Finally, I had my father attempt to get an invitation to Rail Zeppelin.

I really wanted some more Mystic Eyes to experiment with and all I needed to do was to scan one or two to get enough information to create my own custom eyes for Aisha. I also thought about stealing Tatsumi Kitano's Mystic Eye for this but decided only to do so if he turns out to be a threat.

My father was hesitant but eventually got them for me. Unfortunately, the next auction was being held after the war would have concluded, so I'd have to keep Aisha mystic eyeless for now.

...

Its been nearly four months of waiting, and finally, the last of the servants have been summoned. To be honest, I was kinda expecting Saber to be summoned as Artoria. The reason why was because Manaka's father had her use f*cking Avalon as the catalyst. I was sorely disappointed to know that that wasn't the case.

Despite meeting the 'love of her life', Manaka felt indifferent to Arthur upon first seeing him. When I heard that, I was secretly relieved. I didn't quite know when it happened, but I guess Manaka had grown on me. Whenever I'd walk into the bathroom and see her naked with her offering to wash my back or when I'd wake up and she'd be in my bed with me, etc must have slowly eroded my resistance to her. When I realized I was relieved that she didn't fall for King Arthur, that's when I realized that what she was saying was right.

She'd definitely be my wife someday, just not my only wife.

Arthur was a cool guy to hang out with and I even had him teach me a few lessons in swordsmanship. Unfortunately for him, he would never get his wish granted, as he would disappear after I scanned the Holy Grail with my eyes.

In that timeframe, I also had Elza adopt a young Caren Hortensia from the church she was being raised in. I really wanted to fuck with Kirei when I showed up with her in the Fifth War, if that ever happens. If not, I can always steal his Magic Circuits off his corpse and give them to Caren as a pseudo-Magic Crest. Luka and Caren hit it off well which was nice. I had Elza continue her photography job, however, instead of working in war zones, she now worked as the head of the photography department of my mother's new idol agency.

Elza always hated working in warzones, so this suited her nicely. I was also correct in my assumption that Arash and her would make a cute couple. He was also a good role model for Luka, who was already treating Arash as his father. Luka's original father ran off when he found out Elza was pregnant and she had to raise Luka by herself, leaving him alone with her parents whenever she went overseas for work.

I had to give Elza some upgrades to her magic circuits to allow her to sustain Arash after the Grail's support disappears, but that was a trivial operation for the current me. All in all, that story is shaping up to have a happy ending, which is rare in the nasuverse.

Currently, I was standing with Aisha nearby a warehouse district, waiting for a certain event to unfold. I was tracking Seiji Jinga for a while now. The dude wasn't that smart. He was the heir of the Jinga family who was moderately known in this part of the world for their skills in Alchemy.

For this reason, he really should have paid closer attention to how he conducted his business. He didn't even bother hiding his paper trail and used his real name when renting the warehouse he wanted to summon Assassin in and presumably make his workshop. Literally, every other master in the war had at least one familiar keeping an eye on the place and if he wasn't killed accidentally, by Assassin, he would have been the first person to die from the other masters ambushing him.

I sighed as I snuck into the warehouse. It didn't even have any bounded fields, so it was as easy as opening the back entrance with a bit of creation magecraft on the lock to the door and walking in. It was a good thing I did so too, as I got to witness the most pathetic scene I'd ever saw.

"You're my servant right?" Seiji asked with a hesitant voice.

"...yes..." Serenity replied.

(A/N: I'll be calling Hassan of Serenity just Serenity. I feel it is a much better name for a woman and is a lot shorter to write)

"That means I am your master. That means I can do whatever I want with you..." He said, more to himself than her as he approached 'his' Assassin. He didn't even wait a moment before he amateurishly kissed her on the lips.

I raised my eyebrow, sensing the fool's body quickly entering cardiac arrest while his body spasmed slightly and fell towards the floor. Assassin was gracious enough to catch the body and lay it down, spending a moment to close his eyes, which were locked in terror. She seemed to whisper something silently, probably a prayer of some kind before standing up and looking in our direction.

"Come out. It's no use hiding." She called out in a calm voice.

"Looks like we were discovered," I said sarcastically as we walked into the open. Aisha was on full alert, standing directly to my right instead of slightly behind me like she normally does. She also had several magecraft spells charging up stealthily in case things got heated.

Serenity looked at the two of us for a long while. I couldn't see her face due to the mask, but I could tell she was probably sizing us up. She probably wanted to either escape or to steal our life force to maintain herself but she also probably really didn't want to fight. Without a way to restore her mana now that her master was dead, any amount of fighting would waste precious time. While she did have Independent Action, she somehow knew that even if she could defeat the two people in front of her, she probably wouldn't be able to maintain her form in the world.

Noticing that Serenity wasn't going to say anything, I sighed to myself and raised my hand to calm Aisha.

"How about this. I could use you as one of my forces in the future. I can become your master for this Grail War if you'd like." I offered as I raised my hand to her.

Serenity looked at my hand for a moment before sighing. She walked over to me and put her hand over mine, expecting me to begin spasming and fall to the ground, dying of poison, however, when she touched me and nothing happened for a while, I could tell her eyes opened wide and she audibly gasped.

"How!?!" She asked excitedly.

"Let's just say, the Concept of 'Poison' doesn't affect me, and leave it at that for now," I replied.

Serenity immediately fell onto her knees and lowered her head, still holding my hand in front of me. "If you would have me, I shall be your assassin." Serenity quickly states.

I was a bit surprised by how quickly she folded, but that was fine with me. The sooner I finished what I needed to get here, the sooner I could go home and use magecraft to delete the memory of the dumbest magus in the history of modern magecraft.

"I really hate using magecraft with long-ass incantations so I'll skip it," I said as I waved my hand and I felt a burning sensation from the back of my palm. I looked down in time to see the command seals engrave themselves onto me.

"Heh. Even command seals can be replicated once you understand them." I said to myself.

What I did was use my mystic eyes on Seiji's command seals when he died and learned how to they worked using my mystic eyes. Afterward, I simply recreated them using creation magecraft with a large amount of mana as the 'ingredients' to replicate them. I looked at my hand and began to spam create more and more command seals, eventually ending up with twenty, as the symbol wrapped around my whole arm.

"Master, will Lord and Lady Arcana not be worried about your new 'tattoo?" Aisha asked.

"No need to worry. I'll just wear a long sleeve shirt and gloves. Might as well go all 'chunni-phase'. I'm sure mom would love it." I said jokingly back to her.

Serenity simply looked at our interaction and tilted her head, not understanding what I was talking about.