Chapter 94: Salvation
In a long-running series, or when a work concludes and spawns numerous spin-offs featuring characters from the original, an inevitable problem arises— Inconsistent settings and retcons.
Take Gilgamesh in Fate/stay night, for example.
Setting aside the "Gate of Babylon," whose contents grew more numerous and settings more exaggerated over time, there was the question of how Gilgamesh managed to linger under the command of Kotomine Kirei—a Master who wasn't even particularly exceptional—from the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War until the start of the Fifth.
The answer provided in Fate/stay night was that Emiya Shirou wasn't actually the only survivor of the great fire triggered by the Fourth Holy Grail War ten years ago.
Kotomine Kirei had also found many orphans in that fire. However, unlike Emiya Kiritsugu, who saved Emiya Shirou, the orphans Kotomine found were turned into magical batteries.
Just as human traffickers might break the arms and legs of the children they kidnap to use them for begging, Kotomine Kirei's treatment of these orphans followed a similar logic. He severed their limbs to prevent escape while maintaining their lives with a bare minimum of glucose IVs. Of course, this wasn't out of the kindness of Kotomine's heart. For a magus of Kotomine's mediocre caliber, life force equaled magical energy. The vitality of others represented sustainable, developing magical batteries. And the cost was merely some glucose... no, he didn't even need to spend that much.
Kotomine had raised a swarm of insects on these orphans, establishing a symbiotic relationship. The insects consumed the orphans' waste and flesh, while the orphans, in turn, ate the grown insects to supplement their protein. In this cycle of constant drainage of life and recycled nutrition, the orphans Kotomine found provided Gilgamesh with the magical energy needed to persist until the Fifth Holy Grail War.
Later, this setting changed. It became: Gilgamesh, having been bathed in the black mud, didn't actually need the magical energy provided by these orphans to live until the Fifth War.
The reason he allowed Kotomine Kirei to do this was simply a desire to see such an act of sacrilege—defying the church's core tenets—within a place meant to praise God.
Simply put, it was a display of twisted malice.
But regardless of which version of the lore one followed, both presented a vivid depiction of Hell to Saber, who had followed Emiya Shirou, and to Shirou himself, who had only seen brief descriptions in his past life's memories!
"Shi... Shirou..."
Perhaps this man-made Hell was too horrific. For Saber, the most cruel thing was usually just killing an enemy. Saber, who would never intentionally torture a foe, let alone use such barbaric methods, found her voice beginning to tremble.
This wasn't fear. It was the righteous fury that any person with a conscience would feel!
"It seems we made it in time." Emiya Shirou didn't immediately respond to Saber.
Although he felt equally nauseated and enraged by the sight—even wishing he could make the dead Kotomine Kirei experience this treatment—
He knew what he had to do.
He forced himself not to look away, staring wide-eyed at the mummified orphans and the insects bred beside them.
Finally, he let out a sigh of relief and said: "Fortunately... should I say that bastard Kotomine really had a twisted sense of fun?
Or rather, since he kept these people here not to kill them, but so they could provide mana for Gilgamesh while he admired their despair...
He actually managed to preserve their lives to some extent?!"
Concluding this, Emiya Shirou clearly suppressed his anger. But he had to admit that Kotomine Kirei, by creating such a Hell, had ensured that Shirou's subsequent treatment of the orphans would be possible.
After all, no matter how powerful the ability of the Stand [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond] was, it was only "Restoration," not "Creation." In other words, it could fix broken objects and fuse them back together, but it could not bring the dead back to life, nor could it create a new part to replace a missing one.
Bazett's severed hand could return because Kotomine had tossed it aside after cutting it off to take the Command Spells.
Similarly for these orphans whose limbs had been severed. To prevent the symbiotic insects from burrowing into the orphans' bodies to eat their internal organs, Kotomine Kirei had placed the severed arms and legs on the insects' feeding trays as food. This was done to inflict an unspeakable psychological shock on the orphans as they watched their own limbs being gnawed upon. It also allowed Emiya Shirou, having projected [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond], to restore the orphans' bodies to the greatest extent possible.
"Saber, do you remember what I said before? I'm actually very grateful to you and Kiritsugu.
At that time, Saber, you might not have felt much about my gratitude, nor thought it was such a big deal.
But for me—and for us— It's not just that you saved my life in that fire. It's that if you hadn't reached out to me then, I might have been one of the people in this room."
Emiya Shirou spoke to Saber without looking back, as if discussing something minor, while using [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond]'s ability to reattach the severed limbs. "And if the 'chosen'
me—the only one saved by you and the others—hadn't truly been saved back then, I wouldn't have the power to save them now. Even if this late salvation isn't much of a 'salvation' at all."
So, when you feel you weren't fit to be a King, or feel you couldn't save Britain,
Perhaps in the Britain of that time, there were many people like me—saved by you in corners you never knew about."
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