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In any case, Max's romantic situation could wait. Back to Maverick.
Maverick had no idea what was happening online. He was fully immersed in the game — completely absorbed — while his viewer count quietly climbed from four or five hundred thousand to four or five million.
That surge was enough to make Shark Platform lock him into the homepage's top slot immediately. Worth noting: at two or three in the morning, every single one of those four or five million viewers was a real person. Not a bot account in sight. The platform's internal team apparently checked twice, because the numbers looked wrong.
To understand why, we need to rewind about fifteen minutes.
After forming an alliance with A-bro, Maverick had staked out the airport for a while. No new arrivals. So the two of them found a nearby café and settled in.
The specific arrangement: hypnotize the owner, let both Artorias eat whatever they wanted, and actually talk strategy for once.
Paying was never on the table.
Through A-bro, Maverick learned a significant amount about how the Holy Grail War actually worked.
Beyond raw combat ability, Servants had Noble Phantasms — and the scope of what counted as a Noble Phantasm was much broader than he'd assumed. Weapons qualified, yes, but so did anything that had been elevated to legend by a Heroic Spirit's life story.
A-bro used Lancelot as his example. In one duel, Lancelot had been tricked — arrived weaponless. He'd picked up a twig. Used it to win. When that moment sublimated into legend, it became Knight of the Lake: A Knight Does Not Die with Empty Hands — an ability that let him transform any object he picked up barehanded into a Noble Phantasm, minimum D-rank.
[Chat]: so Lancelot picks up a TWIG and it becomes a Noble Phantasm
[Confirming]: any object. bare hands. minimum D-rank.
[Logical_Extension]: he picks up a parking cone and it's probably B-rank
[Lore_Fan]: one of the most flexible Noble Phantasms in the franchise. incredibly dangerous.
[Excited]: the implications for other Heroic Spirits are enormous
Besides Noble Phantasms, A-bro covered True Names — the system every Servant used class codenames to protect against. Heroes had methods of death. Know the True Name, know the exploit: a Servant killed by poison had virtually no poison resistance; a Servant killed by arrows took extra damage from arrows. Exposure was a one-time mistake.
Then fame, and local bonuses. A Servant's strength scaled with how well-known they were in the current era, and the spiritual pulse of local land boosted regional heroes. Fuyuki City was Japanese territory. A Japanese Servant fighting on home soil would punch notably above their base stat line.
A-bro was, Maverick reflected, very forthcoming. Possibly too forthcoming. The thought crossed his mind that he should let A-bro win — this guy was genuinely sincere.
But Artoria wanted the Holy Grail very badly.
He privately hoped A-bro would be accidentally eliminated by someone else later. For real.
Maverick also asked a question the chat had never brought up: there was no eastern continent option on the flight map. No icon, no locked door — simply absent.
A-bro answered without hesitation.
The chat erupted.
[Exploding]: the East is a FORBIDDEN ZONE for foreign Mages?
[More_Exploding]: meaning any foreign Mage who operates there doesn't come out alive
[Lore_Drop]: and eastern practitioners can already connect to the Root individually — the thing all western Mages are racing toward — through something called an Ideation Key
[Processing]: this is why there are no eastern Servants in the roster. it's deliberate worldbuilding.
[Respecting_It]: the dev adapted the source material instead of copying it. eastern lore is protected. internal consistency maintained.
[Consequences]: also means no Holy Grail War disasters can spill into that territory. the setting has rules.
[Impressed]: Forest Studio built consequences into their world. this is not normal indie dev behavior.
Maverick clicked his tongue. He looked at the tower of plates in front of both Artorias — a small mountain by now — and felt secondhand sympathy for the café owner NPC, standing behind the counter with the glazed expression of someone under Suggestion who knew something was wrong but couldn't locate what.
He was still processing the eastern lore when the shadow fell across the window.
Then the glass came in.
Three of them. Identical — not similar, identical, down to the last button on the sailor suit. Enormous. Each with a paper talisman half-stuck to its forehead reading "MASS-PRODUCED." They didn't scan the room or announce themselves or do anything strategic.
They laughed.
"Uh hahahahahaha!"
"Uh hahahahahaha!"
"Uh hahahahahaha!"
It was the kind of laughter assembled by studying what laughing looked like without understanding what it was for. It went too long. It hit frequencies the human nervous system registered before the brain did.
A-bro's chair went over. He hit the floor from pure shock.
The three figures moved immediately — not toward Maverick, not toward A-bro, not toward either Artoria. They grabbed the fallen waiter and the manager and pulled them toward the door.
Both Artorias were already moving. One sword, one spear, driving all three figures out through the broken window and into the street.
Maverick hauled A-bro off the floor. Pulled the Glock — submachine gun was empty, no choice.
"You scared me half to death," A-bro said. "I thought you were about to shoot me."
"We're allies. Do you know what those things are? Three identical ones, all labeled 'mass-produced.' Clone Noble Phantasm?"
"They weren't in story mode. Someone summoned them." A-bro watched through the broken window. "And did you notice — when they came in, they went for the NPCs. Not us."
"Why grab NPCs?"
Neither of them had an answer.
Then something hit the café's back door.
Heavy. Deliberate. Rhythmic — not frantic, the specific patience of something that knew it was getting through eventually.
Thud.
Silence.
Thud. A gap appeared in the wood. Clean-edged. Like something designed for exactly this.
The gap widened.
Maverick's hand found the Glock. A-bro went completely still.
The wood piece pulled free.
In the gap: an enormous bearded face. The beard pointed outward from the chin at a geometrically impermissible angle — an inverted axe, in human form. A talisman was pasted across most of the face. A smile was barely visible beneath it.
A draft from somewhere blew the talisman aside.
The smile came fully into view.
"Here's Columbus!"
"AHHH—"
"AHHH—"
The screams were simultaneous, completely genuine, and absolutely not something either of them was going to acknowledge later.
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