Walking in the Question and Answer System of Heroic Spirits

Rin Tohsaka: "How is this possible?!"

Kiritsugu Emiya: "...Hartlees."

Weber: "Hmm?"

Kiritsugu Emiya: "Didn't the Second Lord say that Hatteres was trying to interfere with the spell? He's probably..."

Weber: "It's a success."

Kenneth: "It seems like they were scared away by the future Weber, but is it actually because their goal has already been achieved?"

Shiki Jie Li: "That man is truly terrifying."

"You are both the victim and the murderer, Magdalena."

The Second Prince said seriously, "Well, calling you the murderer isn't quite right, and saying you were the murderer isn't quite accurate either. It should be said that within the original timeline, you became the murderer according to your own desires."

[Magnalena gazes at her other self after the mask has been removed, and groans softly, "I... so..."]

Chapter 258 The Greatest Mother

[Second Generation: "Rest assured, you have achieved your goal. Not a single day of your life has been in vain."]

Magdalena looked at the Second and smiled, "Is that so? That's wonderful..."

She covered her mouth as if accepting the fact, and then disappeared.

Indeed, as if it had never existed in the first place, it vanished without a trace before everyone's eyes, leaving only an old, curved short sword.

Rin Tohsaka: "Hey, hey, what's going on here?"

Kenneth: "Spell interference, interference...wait, could it be!"

Waver: "So this is Hartleley's achievement: turning King Arthur's body into Magdalena!"

Rin Tohsaka: "So, Grey's mother disappeared because!"

Kenneth: "The ceremony is over, and the spirit and body are now one."

Rin Tohsaka: "But what happened just now..."

Kenneth: "It was the first round. The second round, due to various variables, became a completely different situation from the first round, but death is the only thing that cannot be changed."

[Grey was now consumed by fear and despair. Like a crying child, she crouched at the site of her mother's destruction, her voice trembling as she asked, "Mommy! Where is Mommy?"]

[The Second King pointed to the corpse of the Skeleton King and said, "This is her body. Before it is determined which one is the original, both can exist. Once it is determined, the simulated replica can only disappear, similar to a split body."]

"Priest Fernand's death was probably also due to him accidentally discovering his own corpse."

Grey was completely bewildered; she couldn't understand a word her teacher was saying.

"Lord El-Melloi II! What have you done?!"

Grandma couldn't help but speak up. Her tone was less of a question and more of a plea.

"Unfortunately, I didn't do anything."

The Second Prince lit a cigar and said, "I can't do anything; I only made predictions based on the clues left behind."

Grandma: "You said you predicted this?"

[The Second King: "You say Grey is King Arthur's body. This means you know the Skeleton King is King Arthur's spirit, and you also know very well that he lacks a soul. Based on this premise, you attempted to merge the two elements here. However, that ritual has been distorted."]

【“!!!”】

Hearing this, everyone in the village was immediately devastated.

Grandma: "You said the ritual was distorted..."

[The Second King picked up the short sword at his feet and said, "The Skeleton King should originally have been faceless, just like Sir Kay. A Skeleton King with only spirit, like Sir Kay, is incomplete. Therefore, a ritual to fuse these elements should have been passed down in this village. Especially the ritual attire or spells used to remove the original spirit and soul from a body like Gray's. However, someone intervened at this time. Let's temporarily define this person as 'him.'"]

The villagers didn't know, but Grey and Kay both knew perfectly well who "he" referred to.

"He had been eyeing this village for a long time; he was a magician well-versed in the three elements of body, mind, and soul. To achieve his goal, he instigated a villager..."

【"Snap, snap..."】

Just then, unusual noise swept through the space again, its frequency and range clearly expanding, but no one except us noticed it.

[Grey: "Teacher, the noise is spreading."]

"The answer lies ahead."

A bead of sweat trickled down Ershi's temple; clearly, he didn't believe the situation would be peaceful either, but now he could only gamble everything on this opportune moment.

"The village already had several magical alarms set up, and even he would have had a hard time deceiving them all to obtain information. Finding a collaborator was a natural consequence. This allowed him to obtain clues about the village's magical formulas, while the person who provided the information received the means to interfere with King Arthur's resurrection ritual from him."

[Grandma: "Was the person who provided the information Magdalena?"]

[Second Generation: "Besides this, there is no one else."]

"However, Magdalena is not a magician at all. Unlike Grey, she is a failed attempt to fully become King Arthur's body. She only received some assistance from an external magician, but how could such a person interfere with ritualistic procedures? She already possessed significant means to interfere with the core figures of rituals."

Grandma: "You mean Grey?"

The Second Prince looked at Gray and said, "Gray, didn't I mention when you were there that not only the act of gathering magic and driving spells, but also eating, sleeping, and sometimes even defecating, are all connected to magic and other mystical practices?"

Grey was startled; the Second Prince's words reminded her.

Since my father's passing, my mother has become even more fervent in managing my life. Needless to say, my sleep and worship practices are meticulously observed; she's even started paying attention to the order in which I eat and the way I dress. Naturally, the attitudes of those around me have also been influenced by her. Is this kind of life some kind of magical ritual?

[From the microcosm of life, Mikrokosmos, to the macrocosm of reality, Makrokosmos, that is one of the true magics. By incorporating the flow of the earth's veins and the movement of planets into the tiny human body, the great mystery becomes possible.]

[Second King: "Your mother's genes were naturally similar to King Arthur's. She was your mother, and this village has been cultivating that gene, so of course it would be so."]

"In short, the method he taught her for intervention techniques was very simple. He would take the first finished product, synchronize your wavelength (which has the highest affinity with the village's techniques) with her wavelength, thereby establishing a path sufficient for direct intervention."

[Grey: "In sync with me?"]

[Second Generation: "That's right. She was involved in everything about your diet, your sleep, and your life, subtly aligning you with her wavelength while simultaneously using that wavelength to interfere with the village's magic."]

"While the method itself is simple, putting it into practice is anything but. In fact, it's a difficult and demanding undertaking, one that even a true magician would find unbearable. To ensure his mutated daughter's wavelength matches his own, no mistakes are permissible. Even a few grams of variation in her diet can affect the precision of the technique; the chewing time and frequency must be meticulously managed, not to mention the daily practice required."

"Since one cannot reveal the inside story to request the other party's assistance, it must require a terrifyingly strong mental fortitude."

Tokiomi Tohsaka: "This... there's actually such a method!"

Kenneth: "Trying to fool the spell through synchronization? Hartres, this guy actually came up with that trick."

Kiritsugu Emiya: "The truly formidable Magdalena, she secretly persisted for years in order to achieve synchronization with Gray, and the reason she did so..."

The wife said, "It's to save her daughter, she doesn't want her to become a victim of the resurrection ritual."

Kotomine Shiro: "This is family love, the greatest family love. He is willing to endure pain and sacrifice himself for his daughter."

Rin Tohsaka: "Her fanatical demeanor before was all a cover-up."

Weber: "Death is irreversible, so in that case, those who died in the first round were actually..."

Kenneth: "It was her. She successfully replaced Grey and also ruined the ritual to resurrect King Arthur."

Rin Tohsaka: "So, that Priest Fernand was also..."

Kotomine Risei: "In the first round, he probably didn't know why he had died, but the second generation didn't know."

Weber: "So, the body that Belsack saw was actually the body of Fernand, who died in the first round."

Grey's body trembled slightly; her mind was no longer able to comprehend the meaning behind the Second Prince's words.

[Though I cannot comprehend it, I know it is an incurable truth. My feelings towards my mother, which I still hold dear, are gradually reversed with the excruciating pain of having my skin peeled away.]

[Second Queen: "She succeeded, she succeeded... Next, we will proceed according to the formula written on the affinity diagram by Hartles. Although the formula is extremely complex, once the synchronization is successful, the execution itself is not difficult."]

"The result is obvious: King Arthur's unstable mind received two sets of parameters. One set was from King Arthur's mind, and the other was from your mother. King Arthur's mind naturally surfaced in his conscious mind, but similar parameters from your mother also lurked in his subconscious. The Skeleton King himself probably only realized this at the very last moment."

The Second Prince raised the short sword he had just picked up and asked his grandmother, "Is this short sword part of the ceremonial attire required for the ceremony?"

[Grandma: "Exactly, the ceremonial garment that separates the soul and spirit from the body, is then used to penetrate gold."]

[Second Generation: "Then, the answer is quite simple."]

["Magnalena arrived first in the first round, plunging the dagger into her own body in her daughter's place, leaving behind a physical body stripped of its spirit and soul. King Arthur's unstable spirit was dragged into that body. However, before acting, Magdalena first stabbed herself in the chest with an ordinary dagger. With the body already dead, even King Arthur was powerless and could only die."]

Grandma: "What?!"

Grandma was speechless for a moment, and the surrounding villagers, not knowing how much they understood, simply swayed along with her.

Lion's Robbery Jie Li: "Indeed, a simple and brutal solution."

The wife said, "She gave her life to solve all her daughter's worries."

Artoria: "..."

The Conqueror King: "Ah, what a great mother she is."

【"Snap snap snap, snap snap snap..."】

The sound had grown so loud it was now noise, sweeping across the swamp and the cracks in the temple, and now it swept over the bodies of several villagers.

[Queen II: "Grey, you saw that noise message too, didn't you?"]

[Grey: "Yes, yes."]

[The Second: "If the Dean of the Atlas Academy were here, he would say that the stage has sensed the contradiction. Once the contradiction cannot be sustained, the calculations become meaningless. Because the foundation has collapsed, we can only start over. Therefore, we must arrive here before the collapse."]

"Ah, this recreation is truly exquisite. Even I've had moments where I couldn't help but wonder if it was the past itself. But, it's definitely not the same."

"Since it's not the past itself, there will always be aspects that are difficult to conceal. In this case, that aspect is death."