"You may begin."
The Jewel of the Magic Tower, Zelretch, finished speaking.
With an extraordinarily reverent expression, Justeaze walked toward the stone platform between the three of them and the Jewel of the Magic Tower and lay down upon it.
This was the core of the entire Holy Grail System—the place where the Greater Grail was about to manifest.
Nagato Tohsaka and Makiri Zolgen watched expressionlessly from the side.
Rumble…
It was not until the enormous stone directly above the platform began to slowly descend that Makiri Zolgen, who deeply loved Justeaze, the Winter Saintess, finally revealed a look of unbearable sorrow.
But before the greater cause of eradicating All the World's Evil, he had no choice.
As the enormous stone slowly descended toward her from above, Justeaze's beautiful face showed not the slightest trace of fear.
Instead, the corners of her lips curled into a smile that was almost eerie.
She was a homunculus doll created in the image of a Third Magician who had already departed from this world, created by his disciples in an attempt to reproduce their teacher's miracle.
The meaning and value of Justeaze's existence was to achieve the complete Third Magic.
Otherwise, having inherited only an incomplete form of the Third Magic—one that forced her to endlessly repeat the same day, could only save herself rather than save others, and required decades to completely transform a single person—she would have collapsed long ago.
And now, at this very moment, she would transform her own body, which possessed the incomplete Third Magic, into the Magic Circuits necessary to realize the complete Third Magic.
The price was merely her physical death.
Her soul, however, would remain with the Holy Grail summoning ritual until the very end, answering the wishes of those who sought to use the Grail to make their desires a reality.
Until they reached the Root and achieved the complete Third Magic—Heaven's Feel.
For magi whose ultimate goal was reaching the Root, could there be anything more fortunate, or more worthwhile, than this?
And so, Justeaze smiled.
Because she had already foreseen her future.
She would become the true Heaven's Feel itself and remain with that great existence who had achieved the complete Third Magic until the end of time.
"Connect us to the Gate of the Root… until release~"
Just before the stone platform was completely crushed beneath the descending mass, Justeaze gave voice to a joyful, almost hymn-like chant.
"Release!" ×2
Nagato Tohsaka and Makiri Zolgen echoed her words, bidding farewell to this fellow traveler upon the same path.
The former, as the most orthodox and pure magus among them, felt not the slightest hesitation at the prospect of Justeaze being crushed to death beneath the enormous stone.
For a magus seeking the Root, such sacrifices were nothing unusual.
But for the latter—for Makiri Zolgen—the "heart" that simultaneously carried an absolute sense of justice dedicated to eradicating All the World's Evil and a profound love for the Winter Saintess, Justeaze, died completely when the stone finally descended.
BOOM—
The enormous stone above finally came crashing down.
Justeaze did not utter a single sound as her three-dimensional body was crushed into a one-dimensional plane.
The scarlet blood flowing from her body was carried along by the tremendous magical energy surging from within her, instantly spreading throughout the prearranged magical circuits.
Countless intricate branches of magecraft converged to form a gigantic scarlet image resembling the figure of a woman.
It was the very image that Kiritsugu and Kirei had accidentally activated before entering this memory space—only its color was different.
Kotomine Kirei remained prostrate on the ground, struggling in agony.
Emiya Kiritsugu stared blankly at the scene marking the beginning of the Holy Grail War.
It was as though he had become one with Makiri, sharing his feelings and experiencing his pain firsthand.
Because Kiritsugu knew all too well how agonizing it was to personally consign the person you loved to death.
Simply continuing to live in this world required tremendous courage.
To continue dragging yourself through life simply because you had no choice but to pursue the justice in your heart—
Kiritsugu's entire body trembled.
So this was what he had been pursuing all along…
How foolish.
How laughable.
What, exactly, was the purpose of beings like magi…?
For the first time, he had lost the answer.
Even though he had decided from the very beginning what he would do.
With Justeaze's self-sacrifice, the Magic Circuits of the Holy Grail System were finally completed.
Then—
The Jewel of the Magic Tower, Zelretch, reached into his robes and drew out a crystal dagger that appeared to have been carved from pure gemstones.
It was primitive in its natural beauty, yet simultaneously ornate and exquisitely crafted.
Its name was—
The Jeweled Sword.
It was an extension of the Second Magic—Parallel World Interference—which Zelretch commanded.
It represented the culmination of his research into magecraft and possessed the ability to draw an almost infinite amount of magical energy from parallel worlds.
The initial One changed everything.
The subsequent Two acknowledged more.
The succeeding Three revealed the future.
The continuing Four concealed itself.
The final Five lost its meaning.
The so-called Five Magics of the World of Type-Moon were precisely these five "miracles"—phenomena capable of transcending human wisdom and history and turning the impossible into the possible.
They were solitary existences standing beyond the realm of Heaven.
Almost every Magician could obtain an inexhaustible source of magical energy through their own unique means.
And the Third Magic was even more straightforward.
From the moment it was completed, the Third Magician herself had already become an inexhaustible source of magical energy.
It was the miracle that led toward the future—
Immortality and Eternal Youth. An Eternal Engine of Magical Energy.
—Materialization of the Soul!
The Servant system of the Holy Grail War, in which Heroic Spirits were summoned in a degraded form, was built upon this principle.
It relied upon the Greater Grail formed from Justeaze's Magic Circuits.
But this was merely the effect of an incomplete Materialization of the Soul.
If one truly wished to summon a Heroic Spirit itself from the Throne of Heroes, Justeaze's Magic Circuits alone would require decades, perhaps even centuries, to summon a single Heroic Spirit.
And even then, there was no guarantee that the Heroic Spirit would be willing to answer the summons.
That was precisely why the disciples of the Third Magician had become dissatisfied with Justeaze, considering her an imperfect product.
They were likewise disappointed that this accidental miracle had nothing to do with their own research.
In the end, they departed.
All they left behind was their obsession with achieving the complete Third Magic.
That obsession was inherited by the homunculus doll they had created in the image of their teacher, and it had continued for generations.
And then—
The Jewel of the Magic Tower, Zelretch, raised the Jeweled Sword high.
He swung it through the air toward the enormous mass of stone that had now completely merged with the platform upon which Justeaze had lain.
Although—
"Stone pillar" would have been a more accurate description.
VMMMM—
Magical energy so vast that it became visible to the naked eye surged from the Jeweled Sword, pouring into Justeaze's Magic Circuits, which had been expanded by the Holy Grail ritual to a scale far beyond the limits of the human body.
The enormous scarlet formation in the shape of a mature woman was instantly filled with this vast and pure magical energy.
Its strange scarlet hue transformed in an instant into a pure azure-blue.
A sacred radiance filled the entire chamber.
And with that—
The Holy Grail ritual was activated.
A ritual that would continue—
all the way to this very day, five hundred years later.
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