"Archer."
Rin Tohsaka remained silent for a long while.
After some internal struggle, she finally ordered Archer to appear.
The red-coated Archer materialized beside Rin, looking at Roy with clear frustration.
Seriously.
Who the hell are you?
Why are you involved every time something happens?
"Don't look at me like that."
Roy smiled faintly.
"Let me guess—when you were summoned by Rin, did you claim to have lost your memory and blame it on her summoning going wrong?"
"Guh!"
The red-coated Archer visibly stiffened, his expression growing even more troubled.
Rin was also dumbfounded.
"How did you know that?"
Seriously.
Are you actually reading from a script or something?
Roy nodded inwardly.
Although the worldline had been altered beyond recognition, certain events were unaffected by such changes.
Most likely, Rin hadn't opened the snake shed—the Holy Relic left by Tokiomi Tohsaka—until the Holy Grail War began. As a result, she didn't use it, and the clock in her house was affected, causing her to summon Archer an hour early.
Seizing the opportunity, Archer used this as an excuse to claim he had lost his memory.
Amnesiac Servants did exist.
But they would never lose their memory over such a trivial reason.
"Archer, what are your thoughts on this world?"
Ignoring their shock, Roy pressed on with his question.
"What do you mean?"
Archer crossed his arms, eyeing Roy suspiciously.
"I'm asking, from the perspective of 'Is the world supposed to be like this?'—do you have any thoughts?"
"...It's obviously not normal."
After a brief silence, Archer shrugged helplessly.
"Because it's completely different from the history you know?"
"Just who are you?"
"Don't worry about the details. You can just think of me as someone who accidentally obtained information about parallel worlds."
What kind of excuse is "accidentally obtained information about parallel worlds"?
That's way too half-hearted.
Archer's face was full of disbelief.
But he was also deeply concerned about the current state of this world, so he decided to humour Roy for now.
"This place is indeed completely different from the history I know."
Archer seemed lost in thought. "Originally, during the Fourth Holy Grail War, the black mud tainted with those malicious impulses did emerge, but a man named Emiya Kiritsugu managed to contain the disaster on a small scale by destroying the Lesser Grail."
"But in this world, someone else reached the Grail and wished to destroy the world—or human society, I suppose. Emiya Kiritsugu is nowhere to be found..."
Rin listened intently.
Though the conversation moved quickly, her sharp mind quickly grasped the key points.
At the same time, she realized something else.
Namely, Archer had never lost his memory at all!
He had outright lied to her!
And she had fallen for it!
"Right, that's the divergence point between this world and the normal worldline."
Roy nodded in agreement.
In this world's Fourth War, Emiya Kiritsugu had somehow vanished, replaced by some lunatic who achieved final victory.
Earlier that day, he had asked Illya about it, but she had no idea who Emiya Kiritsugu was.
Perhaps Kiritsugu had never even participated in the Fourth Holy Grail War.
In fact, if you thought about it, it wasn't hard to guess who the idiot who wished to destroy the world might be.
"But do you think the world's changes are limited to just that?"
Then, Roy abruptly shifted his tone, his voice taking on a sharper edge.
"What are you trying to say?"
Archer narrowed his eyes.
The group walked along the path leading to the location of the corrupted Caster.
The hill was now clearly visible, growing closer by the minute.
"You're not a Heroic Spirit aligned with Gaia, but a Guardian of the Human Order, right?"
Roy pointed out another detail—one that many overlooked.
"In that case, you should also realize this: from the perspective of the collective unconscious of humanity, Alaya, would it simply allow a sharp decline in the global human population? The moment such a possibility emerged, Alaya should have dispatched Guardians like you to put an arrow through that idiot who wished to destroy the world, shouldn't it?"
The Counter Force of the Nasuverse manifested in countless ways.
Sometimes, it was a carefully selected Heroic Spirit.
Other times, it was an unremarkable bystander.
Such characters always happened to stumble into critical events, coincidentally ruining some villain's meticulously crafted plans.
With such a diligent Counter Force in place, how could the world have been reduced to this state by a single Fourth Holy Grail War?
It made no sense.
It wasn't as if everyone could block the Counter Force's interference.
Even if the Counter Force hadn't reacted immediately, the black mud took a year to spread across the world, and the global combustion took another year. Two whole years should have been more than enough for the Counter Force to take countermeasures.
Yet, the world had still ended up in this ruined, wretched state.
Archer's footsteps halted, his body stiffening.
Roy's words hit him like a hammer, jolting him awake.
Having only just been summoned, he had been too shocked by the world's current state to consider the deeper implications. Only now did he realize the truth.
Rin's expression also turned unprecedentedly solemn.
"As a Guardian of the Human Order, you should at least have some insight into Alaya's intentions—well, 'intentions' might not be the right word, but you get the idea... What are your thoughts? What was the Counter Force thinking? What's your take on this?"
Roy posed a sharp question.
This was what he wanted to verify.
The Counter Force could have prevented this, yet it had done nothing.
It had allowed the world to reach this state.
Preventing humanity's destruction should have been necessary for Alaya, and even Gaia in its current state wouldn't have interfered. Yet, the Counter Force had acted as though it didn't exist.
"...I don't know."
Archer's expression was unreadable.
He was just a grunt worker, and his boss was a collective consciousness that barely communicated, only issuing one-sided orders.
What could he do?
He was just as helpless!
"That can't be helped."
Roy was somewhat disappointed.
But this reaction was within his expectations.
After all, even Aozaki Touko had spent ten years searching without finding an answer.
Now, the question was—
Was humanity's destruction part of the Counter Force's plan?
Or had the Counter Force been restrained by something?
Either way, the possibilities were despair-inducing.
No matter how you looked at it, the catastrophe from ten years ago still held many unsolved mysteries.
"We've reached the corrupted Caster's territory."
At the foot of the hill, the group of four arrived at their destination.
What greeted them was a vast, overwhelming sea of demonic creatures.
Not only were their forms grotesque, but their numbers were staggering—likely over a thousand, possibly every single demon summoned in the past decade gathered here.
A single glance was enough to make anyone with trypophobia pass out.
"This number... is extremely bad news!"
Archer's expression was grave.
At the same time, Rin's furious shouts of "How dare you lie to me, Archer!" and "Just you wait—I'll deal with you when we get back!" from behind him gave him a massive headache.
If he'd known this world had no Emiya Shirou, he wouldn't have bothered pretending!
***
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