Saberfes!

Chapter 90

Chapter 90

"Has anyone seen Kairi?"

Flat turned his face away from the 'Shounen Jump' he was reading.

"Scarface? He hasn't showed up here these two days."

El-Melloi stared at the cellphone in his hands. The Nokia screen stared back at him, a list of missed calls within the past hour catalogued. Six calls to him, and no answer.

He was supposed to check in with them every five hours, so after no contact in any way after fifteen hours, both magical or non-magical, it was starting to look suspicious.

Slipping the cellphone back into his pocket, he came to a decision.

"Flat, Gray, we're going to the Einzbern territory to see if Kairi's still there. Caules, Org and Ayaka, hold down the fort."

"Understood Professor."

"There's no need to call me Professor any more Org."

Grabbing the sealed box holding the cursed knife, he left for the garage, the two following him. Flat took the magazine with him onto the car, reading manga on the way to the spot where Kairi was supposed to be.

-the previous night-

Sipping his thermos of black coffee, the man sat on the ground, a telescope on a tripod setup in front of him. Even with a thermal blanket wrapped around his shoulders, the winter chill still stung, though it was already something he was used to after travelling the world.

"To think that I'd get dragged into something like the Holy Grail War...heh."

Kairi grinned to himself, watching the distant forest of the Einzbern territory.

Originally, he had been undertaking a job in Romania when the heiress of the El-Melloi, Reines, approached him for work. After getting roped into working for them for a short period of time, chasing Doctor Heartless and gathering information on him, he was suddenly sent to directly work with Lord El-Melloi II after being told that one of his disciples was going to join a magic ritual in Japan.

He was fine with suddenly switching jobs, so long as they paid him well, so he tagged along with the team. It had been some time since he had returned to his motherland as well, so it would be nice to see it once more.

Still, the moment they had set foot in Fuyuki, something had felt off to him. It wasn't to the extent that he would immediately void his contract with the Edelfelts, but it certainly left him on edge. The feeling had intensified when he had stood at a certain park in Shinto, and he knew when to trust this gut feeling of his. After years spent on many battlefields, plundering the Magic Crests of dead magi and gathering materials for his magecraft, his instinct was well-honed in these kinds of situations.

It had led him here, staking out the territory of the Einzberns. While he wasn't certain if he'd find anything here, he at least wanted to check out their base of operations, such as if there were any ways to penetrate the Bounded Fields surrounding it. Earlier, he had received news of Ruler appearing at a local high school, and that the Einzbern Master was there as well, so he had decided to leave the immediate area before they returned.

Based on what he had seen of the information they had collected so far, he would judge the Einzbern Master to be one of the most dangerous ones in the war, though quite a few of them were formidable. The Tohsaka girl, the Enforcer Bazett and Araya Souren were all people he was wary of, though thankfully the latter was already dealt with.

Still, it wasn't like he was weak either. If push came to shove, who knew what could happen.

After seeing photos of the Einzbern Master though, he'd rather not kill her if could it. It wasn't like he hadn't killed children before, but if possible, he'd much rather not do it at all. In his line of work, getting his hands dirty was inevitable, but the less he had to dirty them, the better.

"Hah, I wonder if I can visit her grave after this is all over."

His stepdaughter was probably still resting there, if his parents had respected his wishes...

*twang*

The human hair connected to a nail behind him snapped, a chill running down his spine.

"Shit."

Flinging himself madly to the side, he simultaneously pulled the pin of a concussion grenade made from the lungs of a magus and stuck it right behind him.

*BOOM*

*THOOOM*

A smaller explosion preceded the second, much larger blast that followed, the explosion of air from the concussion grenade throwing him far enough forward to just barely avoid being eviscerated by the charging horse that barreled right through the space he was in moments ago.

With his ears ringing and eyes watering from dirt, he still managed to get to his feet and stumble away from his camp, his back aching from the grenade's blast.

Where had that come from? How had they gotten here so fast? Even with his mind muddled from the blast, he could still sense the unmistakable presence of a Servant near him. If it hadn't been for his Bounded Field set up in advance to warn him of intruders, he would have been turned into bloody mist from that attack.

Lancer frowned under her helmet, turning her head to look back at the ruined camp, now just a large furrow in the ground.

"I underestimated him too much, to miss like that."

Her charge had created a massive swirl of air in front of her with the speed of her attack, and it had triggered the hairs making up his Bounded Field, the wind drill going ahead of her spinning lance. Hence, it had bought him an extra second or two before she arrived, and the grenade did it's job in throwing him out of the way.

Focusing her eyes, she scanned the forest around the camp, around the area where he should have landed after being thrown away from the camp. All she could see was trees, dirt and leaves, the moonlight filtering through the gaps in the branches above.

Leaning against a tree, Kairi did his best to quieten his breathing with a technique he learned in India. Reducing his presence to avoid detection should be possible, against Servants without sensory type abilities. As long as the Servant wasn't Caster class, if he wasn't actively using magecraft, he wouldn't be easy to detect. The leather jacket he was wearing, sewn from the hides of magical beasts, also helped to confuse his scent and magical signature.

He could figure out why there was a Servant here later, right now his priority was escaping.

"Heh."