001 - What Makes it Hard to Go Home ?

*Baaaaaam!* Saber smashes the ground where Rei stood moments ago, unleashing the force of her Excalibur.

"Give my country back!!!" Saber screams at him again and charges forward, trying to slash him with her sword.

But, as usual, Rei easily evades her attacks. To him, her movements are quite slow, and he can see that her mind is truly breaking at this point.

He doesn't know exactly what she saw in those dreams, but it must be bad enough to drive her into her Alter form.

"Really interesting, so that's how Alter works," Rei mutters while observing Saber's body, which has completely transformed into a dark form—except for her sword, which still glows golden.

However, he knows it won't be long before her sword changes color too, and he can hardly wait to witness it. This would be a fascinating experiment for his Primal Beast and might even enhance the Primal Beast's Malice form.

While Rei continues to observe Saber's transformation and effortlessly avoids all her attacks, Saber notices that he isn't taking her seriously, which infuriates her even more.

"Stop underestimating me!!!" she shouts, stepping back and gripping her sword with both hands.

The moment she does that, her sword's color begins to change to black, just like her clothes, and a dark aura starts enveloping it.

"Excalibur Morgan? Interesting. Let's see how that works," Rei stands still, watching Saber gather her Mana.

But then, suddenly, he hears Rin shout at him, "Rei!!! She's forcefully using Emiya's Mana and his life force too! You need to stop her before she uses her Noble Phantasm!!"

"Tch! Damn human! Why is his magic circuit so bad anyway? I'm definitely gonna revive Kiritsugu and kill him again because he's just terrible at teaching Shirou."

Rei quickly raises his right hand, "Atheism!" and separates this space from the outside world.

A barrier with various colors emerges, covering the area where Rei and Saber are fighting.

"Gabriel, I'm gonna use your power," Rei murmurs to himself, and soon, twelve blue wings appear from his back.

[Gabriel]

"True Glacial Dream Staff," he declares, and a bright blue light appears in front of him, quickly forming a staff.

[IMAGE]

Without any hesitation, Rei grabs the staff and points it toward Saber.

"Sink into the mountain of corpses. Collapse!" Saber chants, and the dark aura surrounding her Excalibur grows larger and taller.

However, because of Rei's barrier, the aura can't break through and stops in place.

"Sorry, Saber, but maybe later. Deluge of Raw Agony!" Rei immediately uses his staff, and it responds by glowing blue. A blue magic circle appears beneath Saber.

"!?" The magic circle activates instantly, restraining Saber. "Arghhhhh?!?" she screams in pain as the magic circle begins to repair her broken mind.

Both of Saber's hands which were gripping Excalibur, loosen, and the dark aura surrounding her sword disappears. Her sword falls to the ground and sticks there.

Saber clutches her head with both hands, feeling intense pain, unable to escape from the magic circle that has appeared beneath her.

Her feet feel glued to the ground; she can't lift them off the magic circle, so all she can do is hold her head and endure the agony.

Rei suddenly appears in front of her, watching all of this while staring at her body—or more accurately, at something within her.

The Spiritual Core: it's like the heart of a normal human that controlling everything about a Servant. If it's destroyed, the Servant will instantly disappear.

But Rei notices something else—it seems like there's something binding the core that would control it if activated. "Is that a Command Spell binding?" Rei mutters, bending down to take a closer look.

Right now, Saber is writhing on the ground, holding her head and groaning in pain. The magic circle takes time to work because Saber's mind is severely shattered by whatever she saw earlier.

Rei continues observing her body, analyzing the structure of a Servant for some time. Occasionally, he touches her and removes the black armor she's wearing to access it more easily.

Finally, Saber stops screaming, and the magic circle beneath her stops glowing and vanishes.

"Looks like it's done. Now, I just need to wake her up because we still need to go to the church," Rei says as he starts shaking Saber's body, trying to wake her up.

It doesn't take long before Rei sees Saber opening her eyes, her golden irises staring right at him.

"Welcome back, King Arthur. You fell asleep there," Rei says jokingly.

"Shut up... Don't call me that," Saber responds in a low voice.

"I'm not a king... I don't deserve to be a king... No matter what I did, my people suffered and died..."

Rei is genuinely surprised to hear her say that. Now he's even more curious about what she saw inside that dream.

"So, what do you want to do now?" Rei asks her as she remains on the ground.

"...Kill me so I can return to my era and just die."

"You don't care about the Grail anymore?"

"No, I don't care about that corrupted Grail or any Grail... I don't even want to see it anymore..." Saber closes her eyes, seemingly resigned to her fate.

Rei smiles upon hearing this, as he's managed to eliminate that stubborn personality obsessed with the Grail. He hadn't expected it to be this easy—he thought she would need to see the corrupted Grail and witness its effects before entirely giving up on it.

Rei then dismisses his wings and staff and standing up. "If you don't want to be a king, you can just start over in this era and see what happens to your country."

"You know, even though Camelot was destroyed, not all the people died, right? There are still people alive who carried stories of your kingdom to their descendants."

"....." Saber remains silent with her eyes closed, seemingly doesn't care anymore to anything related to her country.

"Hahhh... Then I'm just gonna show you," Rei says, touching her forehead and showing her what happened after Camelot's fall.

Meanwhile, outside the barrier, Rin waits anxiously while watching the barrier with concern.

Though she has to admit, the barrier in front of her is quite beautiful—with so many colors, it's mesmerizing.

Except for the part where someone is unconscious and coughing up a lot of blood due to depleted Od beside her. Sure, she could share some of her Od with him, but that would require a ritual, and she's not keen on doing that for some random person.

She had already healed him once with her necklace, so this time, she doesn't feel the need to help further and just waits for Rei.

"Why are they taking so long, anyway..." Rin mutters, growing bored from waiting without any clear idea when Rei will be done.

And considering Emiya is currently experiencing the same thing as Saber, she know that if he wakes up, he might attack her like Saber did.

But Rin isn't worried at all since she is far stronger than Emiya. If he gets violent, she'll just knock him out again.

*Crack* *crack*—Rin suddenly hears something cracking, making her turn toward it.

"The barrier is cracking?"

Rin stands up and approaches the barrier, waiting for it to completely disappear. Eventually, the barrier shatters into small pieces, scattering in all directions. "Rei, you're finally done! Can we just heal Emiya and go to the church alre—!?" Rin's words are abruptly cut off by the scene before her.

She sees Saber in her black outfit without her armor, the surrounding street utterly destroyed, and Excalibur stabbed into the ground.

But that's not what shocks her the most. What really leaves her speechless is the sight of Saber kissing Rei—no, is it even kissing? It looks more like Saber is greedily sucking on Rei's mouth, or rather, his tongue, as if she doesn't want to miss a single drop.

Rin just stares at them, trying to process all of this, when she suddenly snaps out of it and rushes toward them. "What are you two doing!!!!" she screams, separating the two of them.

Saber, who was busy sucking on Rei's saliva, finally releases his mouth, her tongue still hanging out.

"Rei, what are you doing! Why are you suddenly kissing her in the middle of a battle??" Rin immediately questions Rei, whose tongue is still out.

Meanwhile, Saber licks around her lips, savoring the remaining traces of Rei's saliva. "Such Mana... So addicting."

"She said she needed Mana because she's running out after using it to fight me before, so she asked me to give her some Mana," Rei explains, pointing at Saber.

Hearing that, Rin can't say anything because she knows Servants need Mana to remain in this world, and since Shirou isn't capable of supplying Saber with Mana, she understands why Saber did it.

"Well... at least do it somewhere else..." Rin mutters, trying to make an excuse, though it sounds rather silly.

"Thank you for that, Rei. With this much Mana, I can definitely destroy that Grail—not like before, when Kiritsugu ordered me," Saber says to Rei while pulling Excalibur from the ground and making it disappear.

"Well, no problem. So, can we just wake up Shirou? Because from my prediction, even though he's so stubborn about his Hero of Justice dream, he should wake up like... now," Rei says, glancing over at Shirou, who is still unconscious.

But then, Shirou suddenly moves and starts standing up while wobbling around. He begins walking with dead eyes. "Huh? What is he doing?" Rin says, watching Shirou move.

He keeps walking toward the other side of the road, right where the barrier separates this place from the sea.

"Wait, wait, he's going to kill himself!!!" Rin yells as she realizes what Shirou is about to do.

<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>

After they managed to stop Shirou before he jumped into the sea and killed himself, they were now walking towards their original destination: the church on the outskirts of the city, located on a hill.

It was getting late because they had been delayed earlier, but this time they were determined to finish this and head home.

"Why did Saber suddenly become like that?" Shirou asked as he noticed Saber wearing a different outfit.

Earlier, Rei had erased part of Shirou's memory of what he experienced because he was just a normal human, and Rei was sure the trauma he felt was too overwhelming for him.

However, Rei didn't erase everything; he left a bit so Shirou would see it in his dreams. At the very least, by seeing that, he might stop chasing his dream of becoming a hero of justice and choose a normal job.

"Something happened, but I'm still me, Shirou. You don't need to worry about anything," Saber said to him.

"Ok... But it's weird how I don't remember anything after staring at that book. Did something happen to me that made me lose consciousness?"

"Nope, nothing happened, Emiya," Rin immediately answered his question.

Rin and Saber clearly wanted to change the subject so that Shirou wouldn't ask about what had happened to him.

Meanwhile, Rei was behind them after repairing the road that had been destroyed earlier due to Saber's attacks.

"Not even 24 hours here, and I'm already doing so many things... If I think about it again, maybe DxD isn't as bad as I thought..." Rei shook his head at the situation.

There is actually another reason why he's following them to the church. He remembers something mentioning Kirei using orphanage children as Mana fuel for Gilgamesh, so he needs to check if that's true or not. If it's true, he doesn't even know what he will do to Kirei Kotomine because he really hates something like that.

He doesn't care if that stupid simping clay is going to fight him or anything or even summon EA, but he is definitely going to make Kirei suffer if he actually finds it.

Not long after, they finally reached the top of the hill where the church was located, and they were now climbing the stairs leading to it.

"Finally, we're here... So many things happened, but at least we made it," Rin said as she looked at the large gate in front of them.

"This is where I need to register or something?" Shirou said, looking towards the church.

Saber seemed to be staring at the church seriously. She knew who was inside, overseeing the Holy Grail in this city. If she were her former self, she might wait here, but her current self didn't care at all.

"So Saber, do you want to wait here? It won't take long. We just need to ask a few questions to that fake priest and then leave," Rin asked Saber, who was staring intently at the church.

"What about you, Rei?" Saber suddenly asked Rei.

But strangely, Rei didn't answer her question and continued staring in a particular direction—specifically, below the church...