And then Rei Ao crossed the wall between worlds, appearing as if from nowhere and yet utterly natural, stepping in front of the sisters and shielding them.
This time, Rei Ao set foot in this world. He could feel the faint leylines of Fuyuki tremble underfoot, breathe the fog-and-dust-tinged air with its trace of mana, and sense how this world's unique "Root" drew on all things.
The World Channel was like an invisible umbilical cord, binding him tightly to this place. If he wished, he could remain indefinitelyhe could even invite trusted allies from other worlds to join him. That freedom gave him a calm he'd never had before.
Back to the moment he appeared: after he spoke Matou Zouken's true nameMakiri Zolgen.
Yes. Matou Zouken is not "Matou Zouken." His current state is complicated, entangled with a self from five centuries past.
"Makiri Zolgen"
The name was a long-sealed curse dredged up from centuries ago, and a rusted key driven straight into the deepest hive of worms and obsessions that passed for his soul.
The twisted smile on his face froze. His clouded eyes locked on Rei Ao, brimming with disbelief, terrorand the panic of a man stripped naked under the sun with nowhere left to hide.
His shriveled body tremblednot from fear, but from a soul-deep stabbing pain, like being jolted awake from an age-long sleep.
How many years had it been since anyone spoke that name? Even he sometimes lost track, corroded by time: Was he Matou Zoukenor the once-idealistic magus called Makiri Zolgen?
He drifted for a moment, eyes vacant, as if his soul had slipped back to that snowy day five hundred years ago and the fateful meeting there.
Tohsaka Tokiomi, meanwhile, frowned hard. As head of the Tohsaka, he knew his history. He'd seen the name Makiri Zolgen in the clan's oldest recordsthe Matou family's ancestor (back when they were the Makiri), a gifted magus with lofty ideals.
The records were clear: he died in pursuit of those ideals. So why was this young man calling Matou Zouken by a name from the grave? A mistake? Or some secret Tokiomi did not know?
While Tokiomi wavered and Zouken reeled, Rei Ao turned his gaze on the head of the Tohsakawho, in the Fourth Holy Grail War to come, would be stabbed in the back by his trusted disciple Kotomine Kirei and die a wretched death.
A flicker of disdain passed through Rei Ao's eyescontempt for Tokiomi's obstinacy and foolishness, a touch of pity for his end, and, more than anything, the wry amusement of someone who sees the whole board.
He remembered the famous meme:
In the end, it's all Tokiomi's fault.
~~~
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Chapter 976: Makiri Zolgen
"Everything is Tokiomi Tohsaka's fault."
Rei Ao's lips curled into a faint, mocking smile.
There was some teasing in that line, sure. But in light of what Sakura would do in the future, putting it that way didn't seem wrong.
So he went on, openly derisive:
"Tokiomi Tohsakaan arrogant, willfully blind fool who'd rather trust an outsider's one-sided story than his own daughter's instincts and accusations."
"Honestly, a man like you won't be missed when you die."
"What did you say?!"
Such blunt, cutting wordspractically a cursewere a first for Tokiomi Tohsaka. It was like someone lit a fuse; already seething because his daughter talked back and an outsider had butted in, he blew up on the spot.
A vein throbbed at his temple.
His usual poised elegance nearly shattered.
His knife-sharp gaze locked hard onto Rei Ao.
As head of the Tohsaka family, when had he ever suffered such humiliation?!
"Heh."
Facing Tokiomi's fury, Rei Ao only let out a cold snort.
The contempt in that sound made Tokiomi even angrier.
"What's wronghit a nerve?"
"Every word your daughter, Rin Tohsaka, just said is true."
"Matou Zoukenan old monster who's clung to life for five centuries with bug magecraftcovets Sakura's Imaginary Number attribute. He wants to remake her into a 'Lesser Grail' that can bear the souls of Heroic Spirits summoned for the Holy Grail War."
"His ultimate goal is to use the Grail's power to fulfill his long-perverted dream of 'materializing the soul,' and he may even seize Sakura's body as his new vessel."
Rei Ao's voice was clear and cold, stripping bare the filthy, bloody purpose Matou Zouken hid under the fig leaf of "adoption."
"I'm curious."
Rei Ao watched Tokiomi's shifting expression with interest, continuing to apply psychological pressure.
"Ifand I do mean if"
"If you believed all of this right now, if you understood the irredeemable abyss you personally pushed your daughter into"
"You, Tokiomi Tohsakawhat would you choose?"
"Would you cling to that laughable 'magus pride' and your deal with a tiger, and march straight into the dark?"
"Or would you finally wake upand protect your own flesh and blood, even if it costs you everything?"
""
Tokiomi fell silent.
His face kept changing, his lips pressed tight; it was obvious he was wrestling with himself.
Rei Ao's words were a hammer, pounding at his entrenched assumptions and beliefs.
On one hand, reason and the family's teachings told him he couldn't lightly trust some nobody of unknown origin. The man could be sowing discord.
On the other hand, Rin's earlier accusations, Matou Zouken's odd stupor just now, and Rei Ao's firm, detail-rich account all of it was like a cluster of sharp thorns lodged in his heartimpossible to ignore completely.
In the end, years of rigid adherence to "magus codes" and "family interests," buoyed by blind faith in his own judgment, smothered that weak flicker of fatherly intuition.
He raised his head.
His eyes grew sharp again, wary and hard.
In a low voice he demanded, "Who are you, really?!"
"You appear out of nowhere, spouting deceitful nonsense!"
"Why should I believe your one-sided claims?"
"Old Man Matou has been an ally of House Tohsaka for yearsa renowned elder in the world of magecraft!"
"And youa skulking nobody who might not even be here in personwhat gives you the right to grandstand before me?!"
"Father"
Those words snuffed out the last faint ember of hope in Rin Tohsaka's heart.
She held her sister Sakura tight, eyes filled with deep disappointment and pain.
Even with evidence this solid, her father still wouldn't believe?
To him, were the Tohsaka family's face and a magus's rulebook really more important than his daughters' safety and happiness?
Sakura Tohsaka didn't fully understand everything the adults were saying. But she could feel her sister's sorrow and her father's coldness.
Her small body trembled in Rin's arms, violet eyes brimming with tears.
"Heh. Hopeless idiot, through and through."
Rei Ao shook his head, the mockery on his face deepening.
He looked at Tokiomi like one might look at a pitiable wormlost in his own world and refusing to wake up.
"Since you're that stubbornso foolish you won't open your eyes to reality"
"Then I'll 'waste' a few words. For you, and for these two young ladies who still have a conscience, let me tell a story."
Rei Ao's voice leveled out, carrying the weight of history and a tone that brooked no doubt.
"A story about Makiri Zolgen."
And a story about how time corrodes idealshow the lofty decays into obsession.
And how that obsession dragged a magus lineageand this very city of Fuyukiinto the first turn of a tragic, ever-repeating whirlpool.
His gaze seemed to pierce time and space, back to a land five hundred years ago.
Five centuries ago, there was a young man named Makiri Zolgen.
He was born to a family of magi, yet he held an ideal that even magi of his age would have called naiveperhaps even noble: "to abolish all the evils of this world."
Not merely catching villains and punishing crime,
but striking at the rooterasing the inborn, inescapable "karma" of humanity: the wellsprings of selfishness, greed, envy, hatred all negative impulses of the heart.
To realize this seemingly impossible dream,
he chose the path of "materializing the soul."
He believed humans cannot shake off "evil" because they're shackled to a limited, fragile body. If the soul could be made materialfreed from the body's constraints and housed in a vessel with broader spirituality
then humanity could evolve into a higher order of sentienceand eliminate "evil" at its very root.
Chapter 977: Miracle Among Miracles
For his ideal, Makiri Zolgen gave everything.
Yet "materializing the soul" is one of the five Grand Rituals that reach the Roota miracle among miracles. By his power alone, he could labor a lifetime and still never touch it.
To behold his dream realized with his own eyes, he set foot on a crooked path.
He devised an insect-based magecraft to prolong life, fusing his body with crest worms. By endlessly devouring the life force of his descendants and swapping bodies, he has scraped by to this day in a grotesque parody of survival.
One of the key methods he used to continue living was seizing a suitable descendant's body.
"For example, the shell you see before youMatou Zoukenwho knows how many generations of hosts have already been corroded and taken over."
Rei Ao's words offered a chilling explanation for the inhuman form and eerie aura surrounding Matou Zouken.
The color drained slightly from Tokiomi Tohsaka's face. For the first time, his gaze toward Matou carried scrutinyand fear.
"Yet the long years did not bring wisdom; they became the cruelest punishment."
Rei Ao's tone held a trace of pity, but more of ice.
Five hundred years of waiting and struggle. Watching the ugliness of human nature cycle through history again and again. The original ideal was worn down and twisted by endless time.
The "Makiri Zolgen" of todayor rather, Matou Zoukenno longer has the soul of a man who dreamed of saving humanity. He has become a hollow, distorted monster, filled only with the urge to keep living and to fulfill his obsession.
He still pursues soul materialization, but the purpose has long since curdledperhaps now it's only to perpetuate his own repulsive existence.
Rei Ao paused, his eyes flicking over the darkening face of Matou Zouken and the wavering look in Tokiomi's.
Then he dropped another bombshell.
"And the Holy Grail Warthe very thing you'd sacrifice blood ties to join and upholdits beginning was designed by Makiri Zolgen himself."
"What?!"
Tokiomi cried out. The Holy Grail War was the great rite founded by the Three Familiesthat's etched into the Tohsaka family precepts! How could it be designed by Matou alone?
"Hard to believe?"
Rei Ao spoke evenly.
Roughly two hundred years ago, clutching his last hope of realizing his ideal, Makiri Zolgen visited the artificial homestead in the frozen north built by the disciples of the Third Magicianthe Einzbern.
"Einzbern"
Tokiomi murmured. That much was established fact.
The Heroic Spirit summoning system comes from the Clock Tower's magecraft. And the Einzbern are the heirs of alchemists who once achieved the Third Magicmaterialization of the soul. They possessed vast homunculus technology and a colossal magical core.
Makiri Zolgen believed that by combining the Einzbern system (the Grail) with the Heroic Spirit summoning rites, it might be possible to reproduce a miracle and achieve his "impossible" dream.
"That was the true beginning of the Holy Grail War."
"After that, he found the steward of Fuyuki's leylines at the timeyour ancestor, Nagato Tohsakaand the Einzbern homunculus known as the Holy Maiden of Winter, Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern."
"The three joined forces and, here in Fuyuki where the leylines converge, constructed the grand ritual system named the 'Heaven's Cup.'"
"From then on, Einzbern, Tohsaka, and Makiri (Matou) were called the founding Three Families."
This dust-covered history flowed from Rei Ao's lips with an undeniable ring of truth.
Tokiomi's breathing quickened. The details lined up, faintly but unmistakably, with the vague accounts in his family's secret texts.
"And the irony is"
Rei Ao's voice turned cutting.
"On the eve of completion, the so-called founding families began killing one another out of the selfish desire to monopolize the results."
"Add in various limitations and accidents of the era, and that first ritual ended in total failure."
"That is what later generations call the 'First Holy Grail War'an unknown, ugly farce."
Only after learning from failure did the Three Families sit down and grudgingly refine the rules of the Holy Grail War. Among them, Makiri Zolgen took charge of designing and creating the Command Seal system.
"I'm sure you know the binding power Command Seals exert on Master and Servantand the vast magic they contain."
Rei Ao's tale ended.
Silence fell.
Rin and Sakura couldn't follow the intricacies, but cold sweat had already soaked the back of Tokiomi's shirt. The morning fog seemed to thicken. The Matou manor's sinister silhouette loomed in and out of the mist like a silent behemoth swallowing every sound.
Tokiomi stood where he was, pale and slightly unsteady, as if struck by a great blow. The glory of the Three Families he had always revered, the greatness of the Holy Grail Warwere their origins truly so sordid and self-serving? And his long-respected ally Matou Zoukenwas his true face that of a five-hundred-year-old, twisted, dangerous monster?
Had he really been wrong?
At some point, Matou Zouken had emerged from his stupor. Head lowered, his expression hid in shadow; only the bony fingers gripping his cane trembled with the force that betrayed how far he was from calm. Centuries of deception had been stripped away in an instant. His contorted soul bled menace into the air.
Rin held her sister tight, looking at Rei Ao with gratitude and reliance. He had arrived at her most desperate moment. He had spoken the truth she could not prove. He had used irrefutable words to hammer at her father's stubborn wall.
He was her savior.
~~~
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Chapter 978: Crazy Old Man
Rei Ao's account of Makiri Zolgen and the origin of the Holy Grail War was like an invisible keyone that not only pried open five hundred years of sealed history, but also violently churned the hearts of the two key people present.
Tokiomi Tohsaka went pale, his body swaying almost imperceptibly. The pillars of faith he had relied on all his life took a catastrophic hit in that instant. If Rei Ao was telling the truth, then heTokiomi Tohsaka, current head of the Tohsaka familynot only personally pushed his daughter into the fire, but was paving the way for a centuries-twisted monster who treated human life like weeds?
