Aozaki Aoko Case File

Credits: Nicholas Berenguer

Aoko transported herself and Artoria instantly through teleportation to the skies above the highway leading to Mount Enzou.

Considering it would be best not to let more magi, alerted by the news, discover the truth about the Greater Grail beneath, Aoko took the initiative and moved to intercept the incoming enemies.

"This is truly unexpected," Aoko said, her eyes fixed on the approaching enemy, her smile eerily unsettling. "I didn't think the bug lord, Makiri Zolgen, would turn out to be Berserker's Master. I thought you were killed by Tohsaka Tokiomi."

"A child like that could never kill me," the man scoffed in response.

"Did you come here to claim my head on behalf of the Church's overseer's bounty, Lady Magician?"

"I never thought the first opponent in this hunt would be you."

"No, isn't it precisely because of Miss Blue that we were found so quickly?" Makiri Zolgen shook his head and continued nonchalantly. "Enough useless chatter. Berserker, kill them!"

Following Makiri Zolgen's command, the pitch-black knight standing beside him unsheathed his sword and roared as he charged toward Aoko and Artoria.

Aoko glanced at Artoria beside her, and the Knight King understood her intent: A servant should fight a Servant, and a Master should face a Master.

Artoria unsheathed her holy sword, gazing coldly from above at her former subordinate. The only emotion left in her gaze was icy resolve. The moment Berserker drew his sword, Arondight, Artoria immediately recognized his identity.

But as the perfected, eternal king, she bore no psychological burden in punishing this knight burdened by sin.

Under her direction, Dun Stallion galloped downward fearlessly towards the approaching enemy.

Raising her holy sword high, Artoria used the momentum of her steed's charge to strike heavily against the maddened black knight.

Lancelot, of course, didn't just stand idly by. Screaming Artoria's name in incoherent rage, he swung his corrupted, now-cursed sword at his former liege, as the black miasma swirling around him surged violently.

At the moment their blades collided, the shockwave was so intense that it displaced the surrounding air, briefly creating a vacuum zone.

Though Lancelot was immensely powerful, bolstered by Makiri Zolgen's overwhelming magical energy, the Artoria before him had already been strengthened with multiple layers of transmutation and protective buffs from Aoko before the battle began. She was unyielding, like an immovable wall.

With the added momentum from her Mana Burst, the Knight King needed only one strike to send her former subordinate flying. The black knight hurtled towards the ground like a meteor.

"Lancelot, I sentence you to death. Do you acknowledge your guilt?" Artoria pointed her holy sword at the spot where Berserker had fallen, her tone icy. But the black knight, consumed by madness, was in no state to answer her.

While Artoria and Lancelot clashed, Aoko wasn't idle either. She was deeply curious about how this youthful version of the old worm Zouken Matou, now Makiri Zolgen had appeared, so she decided to test his abilities.

Aoko began by pulling out her spellbook and tearing a Transmutation Scroll to reapply buffs to herself. In the blink of an eye, she vanished into a cloud of blue smoke (Misty Step).

A split second later, Aoko reappeared behind the blue-haired man, her entire body glowing with the markings of magic circuits. Layers upon layers of magic circles spun and nested over her right arm.

She assumed a textbook-perfect modern combat stance, channeling an immense amount of compressed and accelerated magical bullets into her punch. This devastating strike was aimed directly at the back of Makiri Zolgen's head.

If Touko were watching, she'd surely mock her as a destructive gorilla who couldn't even pass for a proper magus. But fortunately, Touko wasn't present.

The blue-haired man seemed utterly incapable of resisting Aoko's unconventional and overwhelming attack. With her reinforced magic circuits operating at full capacity, Aoko's punch unleashed a close-range miniaturized beam cannon. The blow obliterated Makiri Zolgen's head so thoroughly that he couldn't even let out a scream.

But Aoko didn't let her guard down despite the apparent success of her attack. She immediately withdrew her right hand and opened her palm. With a series of rapidly expanding, high-speed magic circles, she unleashed a barrage of blue-white magic bullets with the rate of a heavy machine gun, reducing what was left of the old worm's body into a shredded mess.

Yet, even with his body in such a state, the headless corpse didn't collapse but instead knelt and staggered backward.

Aoko noticed that there was no blood flowing from Makiri Zolgen's wounds. His injuries revealed no normal flesh or blood at all.

She had initially assumed his body might be a mimicry created by a swarm of crest worms or blade-winged insects, but that didn't seem to be the case.

Instead, a reflective, black oil-like liquid surged within Makiri Zolgen's body.

Ordinarily, anyone subjected to Aoko's level of magical bombardment would've been reduced to tiny fragments, but Makiri Zolgen's body seemed to absorb the shock damage from the explosions.

"Absorption magecraft?" Aoko muttered to herself. "It seems five centuries haven't completely eroded all of your magical techniques."

Makiri Zolgen, once an ancient magus who had conversed with the likes of Da Vinci and Van Hohenheim, was not only skilled in the manipulation of familiars but also specialized in absorption-based magecraft developed from his water attribute.

This magecraft not only neutralized energy-based attacks but also had the characteristic of returning the absorbed energy to its origin, effectively creating restraints against its opponent.

For most magi, if their magical energy were absorbed by Makiri Zolgen, his absorption magecraft could generate a curse specifically tailored to bind the original owner of that magical energy.

But Aoko's magic was utterly incompatible with such techniques. Her energy was like the scorching core of a star—intense and searing. Even if the force of her attacks was neutralized or absorbed, there was no way the old worm could use it to harm her in any way.

Still, the cunning old worm wasn't going to be defeated so easily.

From the remains of Makiri Zolgen's body—his wounds and even his internal organs—emerged a multitude of blood-red, cross-shaped pupils. They resembled clusters of grapes, and Aoko felt an almost irresistible urge to crush them.

As these eyes manifested, Makiri Zolgen's magical energy surged exponentially. His mangled body morphed completely, dissolving into a pool of black sludge.

The eyes embedded within the sludge all moved in unison, staring directly at Aoko.

"What are you looking at?!"

Annoyed by what she interpreted as a perverted old man's gaze from creepy eyes, Aoko hurled a fireball at the black sludge, ruthlessly burning and blasting it.

However, as the smoke cleared, the result was not total vaporization. Instead, the ground trembled, and a massive white, jagged, fleshy pillar erupted skyward.

With it came eight humanoid demon gods of varying appearances. They floated above Aoko, silently watching her from the skies.

"Finally showing yourselves?" Aoko taunted them. "I have to say, King Solomon had a terrible taste—no wonder his demon pillars are so repulsive to look at!"

Aoko had already deduced from the information provided by Stark that this group was Solomon's 72 Demon Pillars. However, since Solomon summoned by Marisbury was still in control of them, the appearance of these nine entities raised a troubling question: where had these demon pillars come from?

...

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

["There's a Demon Pillar reaction in the singularity!"] the voice of a certain orange-haired, overworked Chaldea staff member came through the communicator, throwing the Chaldea team into a state of tension.

"What?! Here?!" El Melloi II exclaimed, the wrinkles on his forehead deepening. "It seems we'll need to change plans immediately. Ritsuka, Mash!"

"We haven't even done anything yet—how did the Demon Pillars show up already?" Ritsuka Fujimaru asked in confusion. "Usually, we solve the mystery first, and then these guys show up as endgame bosses, right?"

"They were likely triggered by a conflict with one of the Servants in this Holy Grail War," El Melloi II calmly analyzed. "It could be an accident, or perhaps they're trying to accelerate the Grail War's progress to sacrifice some of the Servants prematurely."

"Senpai, Lord El-Melloi II, now's not the time to discuss this!" Mash Kyrielight interrupted urgently. "If Demon Pillars are appearing in the city, it'll cause massive casualties and destruction! We need to reach the scene immediately!"