Chapter 9: Chapter. 09 Namless Servant
The white mist veiled the inside of the magic circle. Like a waterfall of vengeful spirits, the white smoke flooded the room and broke the stone floor with his claws as faint, choking screams howled in the basement. Fear made Masaki take a step back when he heard his heart pounding under the sound of silent bells.
Summoning a servant from beyond the known world was an elaborate undertaking. It could only be described as a place that not even the magi knew with all the research. Masaki was no exception. The back rooms were closed off. Only the staircase was accessible to staff. He had spent the previous days alone in the cellar with the clinking of glasses and bubbling substances. It sounded like the Alchemical Teachings of the Clock Tower. However, Masaki was a trained Magus who perfected his movements and had fought for a place in the ranks of the magicians' association.
No sound penetrated the reinforced doors behind which Masaki was staying and cursed. His only way out was now blocked by the rotting mist. The modified circle for summoning a servant beyond the veil could be made and used. Masaki was proud that everything was completed on time. Blood, eyes, and further extremities were created or brought at short notice. The sleeves of his suit were rolled up, and the green, slightly salty water in which he kept the eyes still dripped down his hands. However, he was too excited to reach for a cloth to clean his hands. His eyes fixed on the circle with which he had just performed the summoning.
Cruelty could not describe what Masaki did. He wanted to create a pure, powerful, and dominant bloodline. A bloodline capable of opening a gateway to Akasha in the future. A dream that could never come true without the miracle called the Holy Grail. For in the clock tower, far more powerful and influential families had not yet reached the root. Accordingly, he was prepared to sacrifice everything for the summoning. Even if this procedure was unnecessary, Masaki believed he could summon a servant of absolute power.
'What exactly did I do wrong?'
A sickening wind swept the shelves. The incantation had succeeded; he made sure of it. The powerful presence of the voice could only come from an extraordinary existence. But he could see nothing in the circle. Everything remained hidden in a white veil.
A strange feeling washed over him that could not be described. The presence of the summoning was odd—perhaps sickening is the right word. The soul began to shake under the blurring, corrosive pressure exerted on everything in the room. The Bounded Field groaned as foreign lights flashed and illuminated.
The ritual behaved differently than he had expected. The events seemed almost alive to him. But he did not believe that the magic constructs could influence the world.
The stench made him stagger backward under watery eyes. He couldn't see his servant's status. Something every master should be able to do. A wall of fog slid in front of the words and blocked insight. He could not say whether it was intentional or a skill the woman possessed. With all his might, Masaki tried to break through. The servant's class was essential. It gave the servant different advantages that could be used strategically in battle. And he soon found what he was looking for when a fine string pointed him in the right direction.
Opposite, hidden in the smoke, a slender, slightly elegant figure waited patiently for Masaki. No emotions could be seen on her face as she examined the person that would soon be her master if she chose to form a contract. Shiro sighed slightly without making a sound; she decided to wait for the person. Suddenly the connection established to the command spells flared up. She had expected to be received with respect, but instead, Masaki examined her like a product in the supermarket.
Her aura reached out of the mist, and she saw him widen his eyes. A soft snap echoed through the room.
Masaki could see tiny letters through breaks in the wall of fog, and he squinted his eyes.
เภשค๔єг
"AHH!"
A blow ran through Masaki's mind, and he staggered backward as blood poured from his nose. With all his strength, he clutched a table to keep from falling, and a grunt of pain crept from his lungs.
When Masaki regained consciousness, he glanced around the room. His eyes were still clouded by the mental backlash as his thoughts went wild. 'How can such a frail thing win the war for me?'
An overwhelming presence crashed into him and shredded the wooden table, causing him to fall to the floor. Anger, arrogance, and pride. It all was meaningless in front of this servant. 'Monster!' Was the only thing that went through his mind when death took form in a beautiful young woman.
Shiro was not just a ghost. She was manifested by the Grail as a servant to fight the mightiest heroes of the past. Masaki was a strong and great man who wore his pride in his magecraft. The body was forged through hard work. So was the knowledge he inherited and honed over the years. But the existence that stood in the circle was something he only thought possible in stories.
"I ask you again, are you, my master?" Shiro's voice flowed through the room like silk, enveloping everything in sight and turning it into her domain. Demanding an answer from the lowly lifeform, she saw quivering.
Masaki clenched his teeth as the words wrapped around his neck like spider webs, threatening to cut off his air. He stood up and took a step forward as if the pressure coming from Shiro wanted to see if he was a worthy master.
"Yes, I, Masaki, am your master!" Even as he tried to contest the quiet yet embracing nature of Shiro's voice, the chattering teeth could not have been overheard. "May I also know what your name is?"
"I don't know."
Masaki froze, stunned by the answer. He had never heard of a servant who did not know their name.
"You, you." His fingers timed on the beautiful woman. "Are you kidding me? What do you mean?" It was a good thing the door was locked. Otherwise, the loud voice would have awakened the child that slept peacefully. However, Shiro couldn't care less about a master that showed no respect for her.
"You and Ritual messed up."
The cold and emotionless voice brushed Masaki's skin and made him tremble. He knew something went wrong with the ritual. But pride prevented him from admitting it. He was a respected Magus in the Clock Tower, after all. Masaki still saw Shiro as a simple Familiar summoned by Grail to follow the words of a master. However, Masaki saw servants in the wrong light. They were much more than puppets of the Grail, especially Shiro, who stood quietly on the spot. The three command spells on the master's hand were the only thing that could force the servant to do the task assigned. Without the command spells, the master lost all control. If Shiro had wanted, Masaki would have been killed for his disrespectful behavior towards him, but as every servant needs mana to survive, Masaki's head remained on both shoulders.
"The ritual went flawlessly. It was your lack of cooperation that had led to errors in the summoning and class."
"Not master?"
"What? I am your master. How dare you talk to me like that?"
Still standing in the same spot, she frowned questioningly as if enjoying his suffering.
"Proof?"
"Of course!" he cried out, grinning. His hand with the mark sprang forward. A spider with ten eyes sat on the hand. However, she did not look surprised. She knew Masaki was a master, but that didn't mean she had to accept him. Shiro sighed. She stood motionless on one spot like a ghostly apparition. The wind that had tossed the long braid around during the summoning had passed, and her hair hung behind her like a veil.
"No. Only command spell. Merely qualification."
"I do have the command spells. That is proof enough. I was the one who performed the summoning, or can you pinpoint anyone else?"
"Class?" Her expression remained petrified, but Shiro enjoyed Masaki's pitiful attempts to justify himself. She knew he couldn't check, or else he would experience her divine aura once more. Masaki's face took on a far deeper shade of red than before. He wanted to answer the question but could not. He didn't dare look again.
"I hear?"
"I don't know; happy now. But I am the only summoner in this room. That automatically makes me your master." Masaki took a breath and exhaled. Somehow he had to keep his senses. But the woman demanded everything he had built up during the day. And the emotionless half-sentences she formulated made it difficult for Masaki to understand what she was getting at.
The lady on the other side was considering whether she should perhaps look for another master. Slowly she left the circle and held her chin. Masaki's terror kept a firm grip on the body, and he only dared to follow her with his head. He was blinded by his pride and his position as a Magus. The very fact that he assumed that a servant, like a familiar, should listen unconditionally to his master showed how deficient his knowledge was. A servant was not obliged to enter a contract with the summoner. However, Masaki had enormous energy capacities. Even in the dimly lit room, his soul radiated and could illuminate the walls if such light would be visible to the naked eye.
Fuyuki was small; finding another candidate with massive energy reserves who had not yet made a deal with another servant was slim. The other option would be to kill people for their life energy and attract the attention of the other masters. No matter how Shiro would go about it, Masaki as a master was by far the best option. Even if she had to follow his noisy orders at the moment.
She slightly raised her head and studied Masaki closely. Her eyes always remained closed, even when she was analyzing her opposite.
Masaki, on the other side, had felt how frightening Shiro was on his body. The look that crawled over his skin like a thousand spiders that seemed to analyze him like a construction kit, and he had to admit, 'She is on another level.' His pride and anger-filled red face instantly disappeared as his body began to tingle. He wiped the tears from his face that kept forming from the foul prana stench, tugging at his mind like ghouls.
Trembling, he looked down at her. The composure and superiority with which she viewed the situation were at least as diabolical as the power itself. And yet Masaki had not even seen her in action. 'Is she related to a Gorgon?' he asked himself as he darted glances at the closed eyes.
He was all the more annoyed about the mistake in the ritual. The signs that Shiro did not know her name and that he could not identify the class led Masaki to the conclusion that he had not fully followed the instructions. Without her name, Shiro could not use the powerful Nobel Phantasm. The pressure disappeared from his lungs as Shiro turned to the ground and looked at the mass of flesh.
Masaki breathed a sigh of relief and followed her eyelids. He was sure that her eyes must have something to do with the Nobel Phantasm or the saga she came from. Only he did not know how to check the eyes. Because if Shiro kept his eyes closed to prevent a destructive effect, it could kill Masaki without fail. He was also afraid to enrage the pale death once more. He could not have known that Shiro did not open her eyes to avoid unpleasant situations.
The silence in the room was interrupted by a soft, cold voice. "master accepted."
Masaki was surprised. The voice sounded mechanical as if it had been recorded at low quality. "Have, room?"
"You want this room?"
Shiro's nod made her silver hair wisp. The room was ruined by the ritual. Shards of glass, books, notes, and other substances covered the ground like a blanket. Anyone could see that it would take days to clean up this mess. Masaki had neither the time nor the inclination to clean up the room. The war had begun, and masters had already summoned their servants. Information was being gathered. He was sure he would be the last to summon a servant. It was impossible to make up for the lost time, and he could not afford to fall further behind.
"At the moment, I have no use for this room. So do what you want. However, the other rooms are off-limits to you!"
Shiro just nodded. For her purposes, the room was more than enough.
"Before I go, one more thing. What should I call you?" Misaki asked, calming down from the shock. The redness in his face disappeared, and he no longer gave the impression of collapsing.
"Shiro."
He frowned. "You want me to just call you by sight?" Shiro nodded delicately. 'Maybe she is easier than I thought after all.' Not knowing that she told him her name.
"Officially, the war hasn't started yet, so I don't think we should expect any visitors today. Be ready, though. We'll get moving for the first time tomorrow."
Resolving not to disturb Shiro further, Masaki left the room. He felt tired. The door closed, and Masaki missed the slight, emotionless smile that slipped across the ghostly lips.
Masaki had a slight hope that whatever Shiro will do downstairs would bring back parts of her memory. In a fight between servants who could use their Nobel Phantasm, those who couldn't were mercilessly outmatched.
Shiro waited until her master had left the room. Things she did not want Masaki to know. The most important thing was to raise her brood. She had no information about the movements of the other masters or an overview of the city. Setting up a surveillance network and mending her lack of awareness would take some time.
At home, she had an innumerable number of spiders to hand her work over to. The entire underworld was already dependent on the eight-legged workers. The spiders sorted any paper documents and artifacts. Shiro was not the highest authority, but as the center of information and distribution of work, she had more influence than many other gods.
She gathered the biomass scattered on the ground. Green liquid dropped down her pale skin. The eyes Masaki had used in summoning had become deviant ground. Powerful magic that permeated the worlds and veils of the cosmos left a foul smell that was already corroding the ground. Large amounts of mana had accumulated in the deformed flesh, fading easily with each passing moment.
Alone, she slowly opened her eyes. Ten scarlet pupils stared at the large lump of mass in both hands. Two pupils in each eye began to glow with a nasty red light. A stream of prana left the biomass and flowed into your body, where she converted the energy into something useful.
A few moments later, she closed her eyes again. The previously shimmering mass with a corrosive stench lay colorless in her pale hands.
Shiro's hands glowed white as thousands of tiny white spiders formed from the clump. The body emerged first before four legs poked out of each side and tickled the soft skin on Shiro's hand. A white mass formed on the naked skin that hardened with each passing moment. Pointed spikes grew on the back, and the legs became sharp like razor blades trying to cut the skin. Full of vigor and joy to see their mother, the spiders jumped onto Shiro's hand. She held them together as if she was drawing water as she looked down with affection.
Softly she whispered, "You know what to do."
Slowly, the swarm crawled onto Shiro's forearm and finally disappeared under her sleeve. She stood motionless in a spot, uninterested in the thousand spiders crawling on her silky skin. At the beginning of her evolution into a god, the feeling had disgusted her, but by now, Shiro had become accustomed to it. The countless spiders crawled down her stomach and back. Each leg pricked the skin. The spiders reached her thighs before they finally jumped off the soles of her boots and slithered out of the room onto the cold floor.
It was a sight that would have disgusted any human.
A pair of spiders lingered on her body, connecting with her consciousness. In a way, you could say they were building a nest in Shiro's brain. The spiders' job was to upgrade the mind into a high-performance computer.
Shiro's senses stretched out to all corners of the house. Almost all the spiders had reached the garden. Only a few spiders remained and crawled up the stairs. Masaki had made himself comfortable in the kitchen and was eating soup with noodles. Easily two spiders slipped through the crack in the door and entered Masaki's bedroom. Shiro would wait until he fell asleep before ordering the two spiders to attack his mind. How long it would take she could not say.
Since he was a Magus, it would take a while before the spiders broke through Masaki's mind. So Shiro would sit patiently, waiting until she had complete control over the prana battery.
Meanwhile, the other spiders were spread all over the city. They were small, and it would take a long time before they spread throughout Fuyuki. Without sensors, the spiders could not detect humans. Therefore, Shiro resorted to old-fashioned methods and got reports as soon as the spiders detected something conspicuous.
The spiders, some barely bigger than the head of a pin, wandered the streets, stretched nests in trees, and lay in wait.
Any master or servant would have a hard time tracking down these eyes. But it was not impossible. Shiro's first clone, who had been summoned to this world before her, suddenly disappeared.
'I guess he grew too big.'
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone