Chapter 9: Day 1, Evening



A Horse Not Yet Pale; Mud Yet Firm

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Hundreds of thousands of people are reported missing in the United States every year.If you were to ask whether that number of people actually disappear each year, the answer would be that half do, and half do not.Japanese news media often reports the sensational figure. Actually, however, the greater part of persons reported missing are found within the day, or within a few days. Those who remain missing for more than a year  that is to say, those who have truly disappeared  make up less than ten percent of the total. Tens of thousands of people each year.Tens of thousands is not a number that can be overlooked. Even excepting that, however, the numbers for the years leading up to the Holy Grail War were abnormal.It was a slow change, in a sense. No one realized its true meaning.No one except the man who caused it.There was a mass of twisted magical energy called "mud."Francesca extracted it from the Greater Grail in Fuyuki at the same time she stole a portion of the Grail's "substance."Faldeus, who had inherited memories of the third War, recognized its nature.Before that, the Grail had been absolutely clear, unpolluted by that clump of sentient magical energy.Faldeus, following his memories, had immediately realized its identity. He had immediately proposed the "mud" be quarantined.No orders, however, had come down for its isolation, disposal, or purification. His superiors and their collaborators had an interest in the muck  in the "human evil" that had polluted the Holy Grail and its power and which still retained the power to defile a new grail seventy years later. That is to say, in the infinitely pure, infinitely stagnant wish that had composed a certain Avenger in the third Holy Grail War.It was the boss of the Scladio Family, Galvarosso Scladio, who had expressed the greatest interest in the "mud," which Francesca had preserved for years in the gaps between the entrails of adaptable humans."Bazdilot could Master that toxic bog," he had said.Faldeus had, naturally, been opposed. Because Francesca, who actually possessed the stuff, had accepted the proposal, however, the situation began to grow increasingly tangled.All of the muck's hosts had been seized by madness. It had ultimately consumed their bodies as well. Bazdilot, however, remained just as he had been before accepting it into his body. In fact, he was apparently nurturing the mud on his own magical energy, increasing its volume. The Scladio Family praised this as proof of Bazdilot's power as a mage, claiming that he had subjected himself to his own magical domination in order to control the mud while preserving his sanity. Faldeus knew better.It was true that Bazdilot was employing his own magecraft in order to control and cultivate the muck. He must also be maintaining an extraordinary effort to prevent it from dominating his mind. Nevertheless, Faldeus was aware that there was a single mistake in the Scladio Family's accolades.Bazdilot was not controlling the mud while preserving his sanity; the man called Bazdilot had been mad long before becoming its host  possibly from the very beginning.Snowfield industrial district. Underground."...You're back."Bazdilot was in the vast mystic workshop with its entrance beneath the meat processing plant. Sensing a presence, he turned. His Servant, Alkeides, stood behind him."What did you think of the rumored King of Heroes?" He asked, facing the ArcherAvenger."...Strong. He showed no sign of rising to my bait. He sometimes flew into a rage, but it was never more than a superficial display.""According to Francesca, he's a conceited king prone to violent outbursts... I suppose her information is dangerous to swallow."They had no way of knowing that the existence of the Heroic Spirit Enkidu had put the King of Heroes in an unprecedented good humor. He was now far more tolerant than he would normally have been when summoned. But then, to Bazdilot and Alkeides, Gilgamesh's personality hardly mattered.After a brief pause, Alkeides addressed his Master."O Master, what is the source of your magical energy? Even simply maintaining that 'sacrificial mud' would be beyond any common mage.""Are you worried that my magical energy will run dry?""You must know the number and nature of my Noble Phantasms.""..."In a battle between Servants, how freely each was able to employ their Noble Phantasms was often a deciding factor.A mystic pass now linked Alkeides to his Master, but he was still unable to fathom the limit of Bazdilot's resources. To be precise, he could roughly sense the overall capacity of his Master's Magic Circuits, but the volume of magical energy flowing through the pass between them clearly exceeded it."It's simple; I'm merely using 'batteries.'"Bazdilot reached a hand into his pocket as he spoke. It emerged holding an object the size of a baseball.At first glance, Alkeides did not realize what it was. Once he did, however, he gave a low grunt of admiration.The thing in Bazdilot's hand was a crystal wrapped in an air of mystery. Though transparent, it refracted light in complex patterns. It resembled the mystic crystals used by jewel mages, but it seemed several orders of magnitude more pure.Alkeides had seen such distinctive crystals before. It had the same aura as the "Mana Crystals" that the witches of Greece had once refined from the Mana in the very air. If that was the case, it would mean that Bazdilot had been extracting vast quantities of magical energy from this crystal.A Mana Crystal stored was like a battery of magical energy, but it was not for boosting or immediately replenishing a mage or Servant's Od. They were primarily used in order to add external magical energy when casting a spell.Bazdilot, however, was using a trick; by using the "mud" to pollute the energy, he was able to take it into himself and then channel it into his Servant. Using such a method, the corruption of that warped magical energy  which might justly be called suffering itself  would ordinarily have spread to his brain and driven him mad. Bazdilot was casting his "domination" magecraft on himself in order to manipulate it while keeping his right mind.Alkeides had no aptitude for magecraft, but he had gained a suitable knowledge of it through his voyages on the Argo and other adventures. He quickly grasped Bazdilot's process. There were still two points, however, that he could not explain.Was not the production of Mana Crystals impossible with the techniques of modern mages?And would not a crystal the size of the one his Master now held be exhausted relatively quickly?As if in answer to his Servant's doubts, Bazdilot rose from his seat."...There is no need for you to worry about energy."The pair proceeded a long a corridor of the underground workshop and arrived at a vast open space. It was far larger than the room Alkeides had been summoned in; almost as large as if the plant above had sunk beneath the earth intact.There, Alkeides saw it.Strange machines linked to rows of cylindrical water tanks. The center of the space was occupied by a device reminiscent of a summoning circle composed of modern mechanical technology. In a further corner of the room a small mountain sparkled brightly enough to be mistaken for a castle treasury. Lumps of transparent crystal were heaped up like a mountain of jewels."That's only a fraction of them."Bazdilot's underlings began some kind of operation. The human-shaped lumps in the tanks turned to foam and vanished. In exchange, a Mana Crystal the size of a baseball materialized atop the central apparatus."...Sacrifices."Alkeides understood everything."A man called Atrum Galliasta developed the system," Bazdilot explained matter-of-factly. "The Scladio Family stole it and improved it. Atrum was a genius at developing these things, but his skill as a mage was lacking. I hear he died without a fight in the Fuyuki War before he had a chance to improve its efficiency.""I see. So you derive the magical energy you channel into me by sacrificing human lives.""The Scladio Family has no shortage of enemies. If you find human sacrifice unforgivable, you could always wring my neck right here."Bazdilot's eyes were reminiscent less of the grim reaper than of death itself. Alkeides quickly shook his head."It is a mere trifle compared with my vengeance on the Olympian tyrants. Not even if the life offered as sacrifice was my own."Then, his whole frame oozing with reddish-brown energy, he voiced his grudge against the gods."They did not even sacrifice the souls of my children... They cast their lives into the furnace for common envy."The police station."Y'know, bro, that Archer who went after the hotel's got me more worried than Saber.""...As always, you have sharp ears.""'Avenger,' was it? Looks like Little Miss Francesca was carrying around a bit of something awful dangerous.""Be that as it may, I hear that the actual Servant was quickly eliminated from the Third Fuyuki War. I suppose no amount of human hate and anger is a match for eminent Heroic Spirits."The chief and his men did not fight with deluded conviction and hate alone. He would not, however, deny that there was power in rage, hate, and other negative emotions. If they were totally ineffective, he would need to give another thought to their future movements."Ha!" Dumas answered, laughing. "You're not giving revenge enough credit, chief. Hate, taken to an extreme, is a form of curse all on its own. You might even call it a kind of Mystery that's still around in the modern day and doesn't need magecraft. Of course, it's not really any kind of Mystery; it's just a human emotion.""A curse, huh?""Yeah. The dangerous thing about it is that the more just the revenge, and the farther you take it, the better it feels. If hate's a curse, catharsis is opium. One taste and you're hooked. Doesn't matter if you're an avenger, or an onlooker reading about one in a book or watching one on stage, or an author turning a profit making other people's revenge into books. Ha ha!"The chief considered Dumas' words for a moment, then scowled and asked:"...It seems impossible, but was there a model for your Count of Monte Cristo?""Who can say? One of the models was probably my old man. But did Edmond Dantes exist? Did he really take a revenge that thrilled everyone who saw it? Did he give it up in the end? Was the treasure ever real? Only God knows. It's one of those 'Rashomon' things. Well, it's definitely true that I made a mint on the novel! Ha ha ha ha ha!""...If, for the sake of argument, there was a real man you based him on, and that man met you now, you'd have no right to complain if he shot you dead.""I guess so," Dumas assented to the chief's sarcasm, laughing all the while."As long as I'm a Servant, I might bump into him someday, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I'll tell him, 'Thanks to you, I made a boatload more than the villains who tricked you'! Ha ha!""If I was in his place, I'd still be waiting for a chance to sock you one. What was that line? Oh yes, it was""Hey, stop that!" Dumas shouted hurriedly. "Don't quote an author his own work! I won't be able to help thinking up a better line, and then I'll want to revise it! And I can't anymore!"Some time later, once he had calmed down, Dumas resumed his lecture on the curse of vengeance."Anyway, bro, be careful. From a stranger's point of view, proper revenge  not unjustified resentment  is a pleasure to watch. The curse is contagious, you get me? The harder the revenge is to get, the stronger it is."Even that shiny king you're after could get swallowed up by the vengeance of some country bumpkin."