Magician in Type-Moon

Page 268

Then he said calmly:

"I was just thinking, if the Mage's Association is willing to go to such great lengths to participate in Araya Sōren's plan, then what about the Holy Church, which is of the same caliber as the Mage's Association?"

“Isn’t that right here? I’m a staff member sent by the Holy Church.” Hansa raised an eyebrow.

“Indeed, you are also someone sent by the Holy Church. Although when we first met, I asked you why the church only sent you this time, you said it was because the world had changed and your predecessors were busy with other things.”

Matou Ike looked at Hansa, but the priest himself shrugged, looking completely unaware.

“I also believe that what you said is true. I recently went out and saw what kind of situation the world is in now. It is understandable that the Holy Church is unable to get away from it.”

Ignoring Hansa's expression, Matou Ike continued:

"But was your purpose in being assigned here really just to capture this newborn Twenty-Seventh Ancestor? You think you can do that, Father Hansa?"

Chapter 327 The Garden of Sinners (Part 8)

"Then just kill me..." Hearing Matou Ike ask this, Hansa glanced at Matou Ike and managed a bitter smile.

Matou Ike snorted softly upon hearing this, but instead revealed a slightly amused smile.

"If you say that, I'm even less inclined to kill you. If you don't want me to continue, I'll keep talking. Don't you want to know why you were thrown here as a sacrifice?"

He moved slightly closer, his expression indifferent yet with a hint of scrutiny.

"Let me re-examine the timeline. It started roughly after the Holy Grail War ended. The world underwent a dramatic change, magic began to slowly recover, and mystery began to grow. At the same time, the Mage's Association and the Holy Church also discovered that the world was gradually spiraling out of control."

Ignoring Hansa's increasingly gloomy expression, Matou Ike continued speaking to himself.

"Let's start with the Mage's Association, which I know better. The information I got from my contact with the El-Melloi family, the monarchical family of the Clock Tower, is that the Clock Tower's legal and political family, the Barthel-Melloi family, convened a Grand Order meeting on that day."

"Um... have you ever heard of the term 'Grand Role'?"

—Grand Order Decision.

In the management of the Clock Tower, in order to conduct deliberations across academic and factional boundaries, a meeting was convened by the monarch and his agents, which was the highest decision-making body of the Clock Tower.

"The main topic of this Grand Order decision is how to combat the ever-increasing mystique. Although in general, an increase in mystique is a good thing for magicians, the Association, as the administrator of magicians, sees it as a problem."

As magicians grow in mysterious ways, their pursuit of the origins will become increasingly fanatical, and they may end up doing things that harm the world.

This is something the Department of Law and Politics cannot accept.

Matou Ike, calculating the time, continued:

"At this moment, a man presented his latest research findings and proposed a topic in this Grand Rank decision: to take the Boundary Record Belt as a familiar and use force to stabilize the world order under the mysterious surge."

"You should be familiar with this man. He is Marisbury Animusfia, the monarch of the Celestial Science Department. He is also the man who manipulated the Great Magic at the last moment in your intelligence report about the campaign to subjugate the Son of Fuhailin."

"Regarding this, I can explain to you how he summoned the Heroic Spirit..."

After listening, Hansa sighed. To be honest, he didn't really remember the man before he came to Guanbuzi City, but as for what happened afterward... well, let's not talk about it.

"and then?"

"And then? Then, although that man had achieved remarkable research results and successfully summoned the Heroic Spirits to the present world, he lacked a crucial step. This is something that even we Holy Grail families only realized after experiencing our first failure."

Command Spell System.

This is a system created by the Matou family after the descent of Heroic Spirits, in order to allow Masters to better control their Servants.

Unlike familiars created artificially by magicians, Servants are beings that are born with personalities. In fact, some Servants who have been tempered by history have a much stronger sense of self than the magicians who serve as their Masters.

When Master and Servant disagree on a matter, it is difficult for Master to stand up to Servant without reasonable means of restraint.

After Matou Ike gave a brief explanation, he continued:

"Therefore, the results of that monarch of the astronomy department are not perfect. The heroic spirits he summoned are not willing to stay in the clock tower for the magicians to study how to stabilize the heroic spirit summoning system. Instead, they have come here to Guanbuzi City."

Although Matou Ike truthfully relayed the information from El-Melloi to Hansa, her true feelings were not what they seemed—

The reason why the monarchs of the Celestial Sciences did not have a Command Spell to bind Beelzebub is most likely because their cooperative relationship ended at that point.

As for the Command Seals, it's probably something they wanted to conceal, something they wanted to tell other monarchs in public.

This story is likely true, but it certainly doesn't tell the whole story of his plan.

Hansa was puzzled upon hearing this. If what Matouchi said was true, then that Heroic Spirit must be closely related to what was happening here, but...

As if seeing right through Hansa's thoughts, Matou Ike smiled:

"No trace of that heroic spirit was found, is that right? Because that heroic spirit is the one you were asked by the church to give up the pursuit of—the one who obtained the 'fruit' principle, the newly born Twenty-Seventh Ancestor."

Matou Ike further stated:

"Although there is no Command Seal connection between the monarch of the Celestial Department and that Heroic Spirit, he can still find the approximate location of his Heroic Spirit by supplying magical energy."

"Because of this connection, the Mage's Association turned its attention here. It was from that time that this city became the Mage's Association's testing ground."

Hansa looked enlightened, but still asked, "The experimental field?"

"Yes, it's an experimental field used to unlock the Root and summon Heroic Spirits." Matou Ike slightly raised his chin and said calmly:

"Because I want to know what kind of changes have occurred in the world, it is reasonable to want to observe the changes in the root. Thus, I have the support for Araya Sōren's arrival at the root. Of course, this is just my guess."

Before Hansa could respond, Matou Ike continued:

"As for the experiment of summoning Heroic Spirits, I guess they want me to do it. After all, as a participant in the Holy Grail War, summoning Heroic Spirits is something I am very familiar with. Moreover, the Matou family is one of the families that created the Greater Grail in Fuyuki."

Matouchi left out half a sentence—

The Mage's Association should have already investigated the situation at the Greater Grail in Fuyuki, and may even know that there is someone within the Greater Grail who can control the entire Grail.

They also learned that Matou Ike and that being had a certain connection.

"You should know exactly what's going to happen next, since we've already reached the part about the Holy Church."

Matou Ike turned his head to look at Hansa. He had made himself perfectly clear, almost as if he had drawn the whole process into a comic and shown it to the priest next to him.

Hansa nodded; he had indeed figured it out, and the mystery in his heart had been solved.

Ever since he arrived in this city called Guanbuzi, he had been thinking—

Why should the church remain neutral in this matter?

He had been instilled with the theory since his upbringing—that vampires were unforgivable heretics.

Glancing at Hansa's somewhat forlorn expression, Matou Ike spoke again:

"Actually, you've noticed it yourself, haven't you? After all, the letter you had Liangyi give me was filled with contradictory emotions, even though I was initially misled by your provocative words."

"But don't say anything now, like 'because I'm a magician, so what I say isn't believable.'"

Hansa simply nodded and said nothing more.

When he first met Matou Ike, he was telling the truth: the Church was indeed having a difficult time during that period.

Due to the influence of the mysterious resurgence, the strength of the heretics that the church is currently trying to suppress is gradually increasing, and various dead apostles or secret realms are further resurfacing.

The shortage of manpower in the church has become a significant practical factor.

Furthermore, it is understandable that the Church, whose strength was somewhat depleted, and the Mage's Association, which was thriving after the mysterious resurgence, would reach some agreements after learning about the "albinism" situation.

It is estimated that if the Mage Association succeeds in solving the problem of "recruiting the Boundary Record Belt as a familiar", the corresponding knowledge will probably be immediately shared with the church's higher-ups.

After all, there have been quite a few heroic souls throughout history who believed in Christ.

From this perspective, whether or not to eradicate a newly formed Twenty-Seventh Patriarch is a matter of little concern to the Church.

If the heroic spirits can be successfully summoned, the church's combat strength will likely be greatly replenished in a short period of time.

In contrast to the loosely organized Mage's Guild, where mages would likely only be embroiled in internal strife and resource competition even if they summoned Heroic Spirits, the immediate conflict would likely be between them.

Therefore, no matter how you look at it, supporting the Magicians Association's plan is an extremely reasonable step.

As for why he was the one to carry out this task?

Hansa wasn't really stupid; of course he understood...

In particular, she learned from the man next to her named Matou Ike how the astrophysicist magician summoned Heroic Spirits.

One reason is that, as a sanctified cyborg, he was an important "material" in the hands of those high-ranking officials during the campaign against the Son of Fuhai Forest. If they wanted to replicate the summoning of heroic spirits, they needed him to act as the opposite of the Dead Apostles, thereby detonating this spiritual vein.

As for the second point... well, if that's really the case, then it's quite ironic.

But this is also the main reason why he keeps forcing himself not to think about it.

"Hypocritical, you people in the church are really hypocritical. The reason they only sent you was not only because you were an important condition for summoning heroic spirits, but more so because you were unconscious for a period of time during the campaign against the Son of Fuhailin, right?"

Seeing Hansa's constantly changing expression, Matou Ike said with some pleasure.

He had been quite furious with this guy's letter.

"During that time, if I remember correctly, you were captured by the monarch of the Department of Astronomy and the head of the Department of Modern Magic. Taking advantage of this gap in time, the Church could easily say that you were given a suggestive spell by the monarchs of the Clock Tower and that you were in a state of hypnosis by a magician."

Matou Ike seemed oblivious to the bulging veins on Hansa's forehead—or perhaps he did notice, which is why he spoke even more earnestly.

"After all, the contents of that scroll already involved a proxy being manipulated. Using this excuse to escape responsibility is truly brilliant, isn't it, Hansa?"

"However, I can probably understand why the church has gone to this point. After all, the power of you all comes from a unified foundation, a foundation belonging to God."

"If we want to draw power from this foundation, we need to maintain a pure faith. If the scandal of colluding with the Magicians' Association and providing assistance to the Dead Apostles is exposed, the faith of the followers will probably be shaken, and even some of the agents will probably fall into confusion."

"So sacrificing one of you can save the Church's global influence. It's a deal that you can't lose no matter how you look at it."

Hearing this, Hansa let out a long sigh, as if all his strength had been drained.

He slowly focused his gaze on Matou Ike, and then uttered a sentence.

"So what? So what exactly are you trying to do with all this stuff? If you're trying to turn me against you, then I'm really sorry, but even for the sake of the Lord, I won't agree. Besides, I'm actually being hypnotized by the people from the Mage's Association."

Matou Ike simply nodded upon hearing this, then said in a low voice:

"Is that so? Even if it's an act, it has to be a complete performance. That's quite in line with the style of an organization of this size. But I'm not just saying this to you, Hansa."

Ok?

Hansa was taken aback. So this wasn't meant for him? Then why was he here... wasting his time?

If that's the case, why not just kill yourself?

In this way, without the magic power supplied by this body, the cemetery would be nothing more than something that could be destroyed with a single blow by the man before him.

All you have to do is kill yourself.

Then, using this corpse as magic material, you can simply follow the predetermined route step by step.