Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

In times of national and personal vendettas, justice only applies to the victors.

Even if I wished upon the Holy Grail to undo everything, what difference would it make? War would inevitably break out, and the old era would always be replaced by the new. And the new era would be replaced by an even newer one. Mortals are ultimately creatures driven by self-interest. Those rebels who championed the new banner, wouldn't they, more than sixty years later, just as they abandoned the Tsar, abandon the new nation built by their fathers and grandfathers?

More information flooded her mind from history. Although she didn't know why she possessed a flesh-and-blood body, the historical knowledge that a Servant should have—or rather, that she believed a Servant should possess—functioned perfectly. She saw the regime that had replaced her family repeatedly purging itself in a way more brutal than the Tsar's; she saw that regime achieve victory after victory in the Second World War; she saw the land once known as Tsarist Russia become one of the two poles of the world; and finally, she saw this behemoth collapse like a staggering bear.

What would happen if that regime were replaced by the Romanov royal family?

They'll probably be wiped out in the second world war.

After all, if the Romanov dynasty hadn't performed so disgracefully in the First War—the serf system that hampered industrialization and led to a simultaneous outbreak of internal and external pressures—how could their family, which had ruled for so long, have so easily met its demise?

If a regime can't even solve the problem the first time, what kind of results can it achieve the second time?

All tragedies in the world stem from the incompetence of those involved. While this statement may be somewhat biased, Anastasia, at least for this moment, believed it to be true. She acknowledged that she and her family had fallen behind the times, and their elimination was inevitable; though her anger and hatred wouldn't disappear, they were still inevitable.

And so, grief and sorrow silently faded from the depths of her heart. The only driving force that could have fueled her desires vanished into meaningless nothingness. She still harbored hatred, but the object of that hatred no longer existed, or perhaps never did. And her previously decided goal of finding her Master faded, losing its priority.

No desires, no goals, no direction.

The little princess, who had just woken up, was thus confused.

"What should I do?" She instinctively clutched the rag doll in her arms, the doll stained with her blood before her death, which seemed to have become a part of her and descended with her. She remembered giving the doll a name; it must have been called—

“Pa.” The word suddenly flashed through her mind. Then she quickly accepted it. So she picked up the little rag doll, who looked like a princess, and stroked her cheek. “Where should I go, Pa?”

She asked softly.

She hadn't expected an answer.

However, the next moment she felt the cold air around her body being attracted by something, vaguely pointing in a direction not far from her.

There's something over there.

There are living things.

There are living, resilient creatures that act in groups.

Is it a wild beast? A herd of beasts? Or something even more terrifying and powerful than that?

There was a faint, fishy smell in the air, carried by the long wind, a fishy smell that carried a certain familiarity. She knew this fishy smell very well, after all, at the very end of her human memories, she was immersed in the liquid that this fishy smell represented.

That was the smell of blood, human blood. She couldn't see the source of the blood from here, so it must be at least tens of kilometers away. She could clearly sense that the wind speed here was only about a third of what it would be in later times. This meant that at least half an hour had passed since the moment the bloody smell first appeared.

Did wild beasts attack the town? — Perhaps.

Should we go over there and take a look? — It's not necessary, and there's no reason to object.

So, how do we get there?

The little princess tilted her head, and then she immediately felt new knowledge flooding into her mind from an unknown place. She had never fought in her life, but in that instant, she grasped the way to wield power.

She felt the breath of the cold wind and sensed its source. A large part of her power actually came from the doll in her arms. And she wasn't surprised by this.

She knew the title of her profession: Spirit Master. She also knew how to wield the power of this profession.

“Pa, take me there.” She gently stroked the doll’s light-colored hair. The next moment, she felt a cold wind rise around her—the wind enveloped her, making her move as fast as a wisp of fluff in the wind. A path of ice crystals, about thirty meters wide, formed from where she was off the ground and followed her, extending towards where she wanted to go.

The road stretched on and on, and for the first time in her life, she felt the joy of flying. The sadness and melancholy that had previously lingered in her heart seemed to dissipate with the cold wind. She was like a bird finally freed from its cage, even wanting to sing a song in the wind.

Of course, she didn't do that. After all, she was a genuine little princess, and although she was quite mischievous in life, she had her own manners. That carefree joy of flying was firmly bound within her body, allowing that comfortable feeling to resonate throughout her limbs and bones.

She felt she wasn't a true Heroic Spirit. Compared to those with unwavering minds, she was more like a mortal easily swayed by emotions—Heroic Spirits don't grow, but she felt she should be able to. Servants don't undergo drastic changes in a short time, but she felt she could.

She was happy, but the happiness didn't linger for long. Just minutes later, she saw desolate land after land, fields stained crimson with blood—soldier corpses scattered, torn to pieces. Hordes of strange monsters devoured them. Each of them possessed the speed and strength of a lower-ranking Servant. And countless more corpses overlapped, stretching as far as her eye could see into the distance.

At the edge of her vision lay an ancient city—she knew this was the 27th century BC, and she knew this was Mesopotamia. The city in the distance appeared to be at war, the battle lines having shifted from outside the city walls to inside.

She hated soldiers. Especially soldiers with guns. Although it wasn't the kind of gun she was referring to, she still hated them.

But she hated the monsters even more, because the soldiers were already dead, yet the monsters dared to bare their teeth at her!

"Roar—" The monsters roared terrifyingly, leaping into the air to pounce on her, who was suspended in mid-air. But the next moment, a cold current surged from the wind and froze them in mid-air, turning them into statues encased in ice!

She reached out, intending to crush the frozen beasts into powder, but hesitated. An inner impulse prevented her from granting these magical creatures utter death. Instead, she wanted to simply imprison and freeze them within this land.

She didn't know why she had such a thought. But she did it anyway. The 'Pa' she was holding seemed to agree with her, radiating even more cold air to envelop her.

It was strange; despite being made of flesh and blood, she seemed completely impervious to the cold, like a true ice-attribute Servant. She knew that the icy winds surrounding her were, by modern standards, around -180 degrees Celsius. It was said that a slight drop in temperature would liquefy oxygen, yet her delicate skin functioned perfectly normally in this frigid wind without any protection.

There must be a complex reason behind this, but she wasn't a scholar who delved into the details, so she didn't pay much attention to it. However, regardless of her indifference, now that she had discovered this, she would naturally restrain this naturally generated destructive force on her body when necessary.

More monsters rushed in.

Then they all turned into ice sculptures.

"You pesky fellow, are you ready for the freezing winter?"—She found it quite amusing to shout a few slogans before taking action. Although the first time was a little awkward, a strange sense of pleasure welled up from the bottom of her heart after the awkwardness faded. This strange feeling even aroused her interest in fighting, causing her to use many techniques she had never used before from her memory.

"Go to hell." — He made a ball at minus 20 to 50 degrees Celsius and threw it at them.

"Stop." — A towering wall of spiked ice, tens of meters high, was created, causing any monsters that crashed into it to bleed profusely.

"Quiet down." — A whirlwind of cold wind swept through the air, drawing away the atmosphere and lifting the monsters into the air, freezing them into ice sculptures.

"Don't move." — Directly drain all the heat from the monster that lunged at him, turning it into a still statue.

She learned quickly and found it very interesting. The monsters outside the city were cleared away by her at a visible speed, like trash, and the battle inside the city seemed to have come to an end.

She saw dozens of golden chains hurtling toward her at speeds of Mach 10 or higher.

Section 20: Leaping Notes

"still."

Before her consciousness could react, her body acted first. As the golden chain cone approached within a hundred meters of Anastasia, the freezing air around her instantly condensed at an unimaginable speed. The air temperature within thirty meters in front of her was instantly sucked away, and water and impurities immediately formed a solid wall of ice crystals!

The wall was merely a facade; its true stability was maintained by a series of interconnected micro-cyclones clinging to its surface. The chains that attacked physically were frozen solid the instant they touched the cyclones, losing all momentum. The blue-white ice crystals then spread along the chains towards the attacker, reaching a distant place unseen by her in a mere instant!

She heard a soft "Eh?"

The next moment, time returned to its normal flow as mortals could perceive. With the sound of ice crystals shattering, the entire ice wall disintegrated and shattered, the chains crumbling into an aetheric aggregate. Only then did she recover from the shock of the attack. And in an instant, she was filled with unparalleled rage!

She was furious.

The servant should not be so angry.

The little rag doll in the girl's arms still emitted a chilling aura. However, this time, it did not pull her reason back as it had in the darkness and nothingness.

My family was destroyed, my kingdom collapsed...

I have slumbered in nothingness for countless years once more...

And now you dare to ambush me?!

[This is truly courting death...]

"You've all courted death!" Anger dominated her thoughts, and an endless chill, accompanied by her raging will, gathered in her palm. The doll in her arms, the princess doll with blood-stained feet, remained unchanged in shape, but its presence rapidly amplified in a fleeting instant. In the blink of an eye, a gigantic, faintly humanoid figure, hundreds of meters tall, silently appeared behind her!

"Unleash your Noble Phantasm, Pavel! Curse them all to death, plunder them to death, freeze them to death! Mystic Eyes activated, Pavel!"

She gleaned a technique for harnessing energy from her mind, and immediately put it into practice. The extreme frost, below -270 degrees Celsius, instantly liquefied the nitrogen and oxygen within a few hundred meters of her, transforming them into a solid state at a visible rate. She still couldn't see the attacker, but the rage coursing through her made her target the entire distant city. And when the massive icy aura around her reached a terrifying critical point, even the sky seemed to change according to her will!

Frozen clouds obscured a third of the sky. Even the distant bands of light above the dome were partially blocked. An extreme sense of oppression descended evenly from the heavens, pressing down upon all living things on the entire continent.

Hundreds of kilometers away, King Gilgamesh, who had been handling state affairs in the royal city of Uruk, suddenly rose from his throne, his bloodshot eyes gazing northward. The stone tablet and battle axe, which he carried as his personal weapons, appeared in his hands. He took a step forward and flew straight out of the great temple at the heart of the city-state!

Hundreds of kilometers away, two powerful auras suddenly erupted from the city shrouded in dense forest and deathly fog, drawing two shocked gazes towards the location of Gilsu City. As goddesses themselves, they clearly sensed a pure power of equal or even slightly surpassing their own, rapidly brewing and about to explode. And once this power descended, within a radius of one hundred kilometers centered on its point of impact, not even an ant would be spared!

Hundreds of kilometers further out, within a blood-soaked temple, a colossal serpent goddess abruptly opened her eyes. She sensed a Noble Phantasm unleashed, powerful enough to destroy her own form once or twice, being generated. Her most beloved offspring was currently at the very center of that Noble Phantasm's eruption, completely locked onto. In her understanding, this Noble Phantasm unleashed, equivalent to a strike from a supreme god, was more than capable of crushing and annihilating her; even with the Holy Grail's protection, she would inevitably wither into dust!

"No, no!" the ancient serpent god growled, its massive serpent body breaking through the Blood Temple and crashing towards the source of the power eruption. She saw her demonic beast offspring, who, in recent months, had become overly specialized in their defenses against lightning and fire, trembling beneath the frozen clouds that blotted out the sky, and her anger intensified. But she paid them no heed, and rode the earth toward the heart of the frozen clouds.

At the edge of the earth, on the border of Mesopotamia, Flora, who had succeeded to the position of the ancient goddess, gazed at the source of the power eruption, her face filled with astonishment.

"What the hell..." Her eyes were filled with disbelief. She had just sensed something amiss; everything should have been under her control; she had devised a foolproof strategy, gathered intelligence on the many hidden powerhouses in this world, and skillfully restrained and appeased them all. If only the Imanitic under her control had continued to develop for a while longer, the situation would have been in her hands...

But why? I prepared so much, so why did it suddenly turn out like this?

The force was directed at a human city, and she even knew its name was Gilsu. The two sides battling within were Enkidu, a subordinate of the Beast Goddess, and Amakusa Shirou, one of the Uruk's commanders. This force was capable of utterly obliterating both sides and the entire city in an instant, and regardless of who was responsible, this would lead to a full-scale war between the goddess and the human forces!

War is inevitable, but not now! Not here!

But what should we do?

What should I do?

She quickly made up her mind, and her thoughts unfolded. The whereabouts of her Servant, Tomoe Gozen, became clearly visible in her perception. In an extremely short time, she channeled an unparalleled amount of divine power into that Servant's body through the link of their contract, and a spatial transfer reaction immediately followed—

—[Archer, I entrust the magic to you; I command you to protect that city!]

Her thoughts, carried by divine power, instantly reached the heart of the white-haired servant Tomoe Gozen, who was still fighting on the front lines. The latter responded immediately, his physical body traversing the barriers of space to arrive in the wasteland less than ten kilometers outside the city of Gilsu!

She saw the enraged girl instantly, and the massive frozen clouds that pressed down on the sky. A cold, jade-colored sun had somehow appeared high in the sky, and, following the girl's will, it descended from the top of the heavens, seemingly slowly, but in reality swiftly and unstoppably!

That's too late.

Tomoe Gozen instinctively tried to unleash her Noble Phantasm, and a massive fire bow appeared in her hand. However, before her arrows could even form on the bow, the flames on the bow dimmed and extinguished in the extreme cold. Only then did she realize that she had also become a target of the attack. At the same time as she unleashed her Noble Phantasm, the extreme frost had already frozen her legs!

How could this be?! Mangotlund's divine power shouldn't have faltered like this!

She was astonished, but the facts were undeniable. In her past understanding, the mighty and domineering power of the Old Gods was inexplicably rendered almost useless in this instant. She could only watch helplessly as the unseen 'Enkidu' within Gilsu City constructed barrier after barrier around herself with golden chains. And then—

The jade-colored, cold sun sank above the city walls.

The entire city of Gilsu shattered into dust like building blocks on a beach, while the sphere constructed of thousands of golden chains held on for an extreme moment. They crumbled, and then the phantom of the Holy Grail silently appeared and quietly faded away.

Tomoe Gozen saw Enkidu for the first time, that blue-haired, white-robed creature, as pure and beautiful as described in myths and legends. She saw it reach out to the cold sun in the sky, and then—cracked lines and frozen fragments covered its entire body.

This was no longer the release of a Noble Phantasm at the level of a main god; it was something far beyond that, transcending the mortal realm, even comparable to the massive band of light in the heavens—a force of annihilation. Although she didn't know why such a power would appear in this place so inexplicably, the fact remained, a fact that couldn't be denied even if she refused to acknowledge it. The next moment, azure and pure white cold light burst forth from the point of impact, instantly filling Tomoe Gozen's vision.

Anastasia blinked, and when reason returned to her mind, she found that the land within a hundred miles of her own footsteps had turned into frozen, broken earth. Frost had flattened the hills, swallowed the forests, and left the ground within a hundred miles as bare as a poorly made mirror.

All are dead.

Whether it was monsters, surviving residents, or attackers and combatants in the city, without exception, they were all completely wiped out. Her gaze swept blankly across her surroundings. The only other remnant besides herself was a patch of fire remnants a dozen kilometers away, where a pair of frozen, shattered feet of a female Eastern warrior remained on the ground, surrounded by the fire marks. Her upper body, however, had been completely pulverized and vanished without a trace in the previous burst of power.

Her gaze drifted further into the distance, far from the epicenter of the cold eruption, where she spotted the remnants of several villages and towns. The brick and wood structures and protective barriers of this era were utterly vulnerable to the overwhelming power that seemed beyond the reach of even a god. They were frozen, cracked, and blown away, leaving only a few scattered foundation stones as evidence on the earth.

Her gaze continued into the distance, landing on a site that had been razed to the ground, presumably intended to block the long northern defensive line. A warrior dressed in Greek style stood before the line facing her—his body had become a necrotic ice sculpture, and behind him, across hundreds of square meters, were scattered traces of hundreds of artisans or warriors.

Yes, just traces. Because they were all dead too. The guardian standing before them had withstood the oncoming chill, but the extreme cold had still drained all the heat from what he was protecting. The only thing he had done was to ensure that the skeletons he guarded, even in death, retained human outlines. But beyond that… he had done nothing.

Beyond the northern defenses lay a colossal city fully exposed to her view—likely the largest human settlement of the era, possessing a perfect urban structure and defensive barriers. At least one hundred thousand people had gathered there, preparing for the final war.

But in Anastasia's eyes at that moment, all she saw was a city covered in ice and snow, lifeless, with only its front side intact.

The city's protective shield withstood the onslaught of the cold wave, but the chill still killed the vast majority of its inhabitants behind it. In her estimation, the number of living people was less than a hundred. And so, only silence remained between heaven and earth.

Silence, a deathly stillness.