Chapter 9: Who is the Misleading Choice?
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["Remember to clean this up."]
After a while, the middle-aged man clapped his hands and left, leaving behind Chihiro, who was bruised and battered.
The video ended there.
Seeing Chihiro getting beaten like a practice dummy in the video left everyone with a refreshed perspective on what constituted magecraft training.
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[Chihiro: "System, what is this nonsense? How can you fabricate something like that and tarnish my reputation?"]
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[This video serves to confirm the host's identity. After all, everyone in the group is connected to the Fourth Holy Grail War in some way, except for the host. This could easily raise suspicions.]
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"Well, that makes sense."
The system had a point, and he had overlooked this aspect. After all, the people in this group were quite sharp. If there was a single outlier, it wouldn't take long for them to notice.
At that moment, everyone else in the group seemed to come to their senses.
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Waver: "Chihiro, does your teacher usually treat you like this?"
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Chihiro: "Not a teacher—he's my master."
Chihiro: "There's a significant difference between a teacher and a master. When you become someone's disciple, it's a deeper bond. 'Once a master, always a father,' as they say."
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Tohsaka Rin: "Even if that's true, isn't that a bit excessive?"
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Chihiro: "It might look rough, but it's not as bad as it seems."
He spoke from experience. Although the video had been exaggerated, the incident itself had genuinely happened. Chihiro had once fallen asleep during his master's training session, and just like in the video, he ended up getting "disciplined" with a series of Aikido techniques.
Bruised though he had been, the injuries were superficial and didn't impede his training. His master's strikes were always precisely controlled.
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Waver: "Well, that still looks painful!"
The bruises on Chihiro's face didn't look like mere scratches; it seemed hard to believe that such rough treatment would be "fine."
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Artoria: "It's alright. The gentleman demonstrated remarkable control over his strength. The injuries appeared severe, but they were only on the surface."
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Diarmuid: "Indeed, the man must be a master of martial arts."
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Waver: "Anyway, there's a bigger issue here."
Two sets of images appeared on the screen. One row featured the Masters: Emiya Kiritsugu, Tohsaka Tokiomi, Waver Velvet, Kenneth, Matou Kariya, Kotomine Kirei, Uryuu Ryuunosuke, and Chihiro. The other row showed the Heroic Spirits introduced in the earlier video.
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[You have five minutes to match the Masters with their respective Servants. Answer quickly.]
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The group members immediately began their analysis. The fact that there were eight Masters but only seven Heroic Spirits suggested that one of the Masters did not summon a Servant, serving as a red herring.
Two pairings were obvious: Waver and Iskandar, and Uryuu Ryuunosuke with Bluebeard. Kenneth had already revealed that Waver had stolen Iskandar's relic, and Ryuunosuke's connection with Bluebeard was made clear from the video.
That left five other Masters whose connections needed to be determined.
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"This one…"
Emiya Kiritsugu's gaze lingered on Kotomine Kirei. Although he didn't know Kirei personally, he had a gut feeling that the man was dangerous.
In the video, Kirei was shown as a mere observer beside Tohsaka Tokiomi, which could be a red herring. However, another possibility occurred to him.
The last scene showed Chihiro standing before a summoning circle without a Servant appearing. If the system hadn't intentionally misled them, then Chihiro was likely the extraneous option.
But what if that scene was deliberately misleading?
Others had similar thoughts as well. Tohsaka Tokiomi and Kotomine Kirei, in particular, had their suspicions.
Tokiomi silently cursed his luck. He had planned for Kirei's Servant to operate in secret once the Holy Grail War commenced, but now that plan was useless. Kirei would be exposed sooner or later, especially if anyone bothered to investigate and discovered that he was Tokiomi's apprentice.
Still, Tokiomi saw a slight advantage here. Besides the known pairs of Waver-Iskandar and Uryuu-Bluebeard, both he and Kirei had already determined the identities of their intended Servants.
The Servant listed as "Troupe of Acrobats" was undoubtedly Kirei's, specifically the Assassin, Hassan-i-Sabbah. The exact identity of this Hassan, however, was indeterminate, as there were multiple versions throughout history.
This left four choices for the group to analyze: Artoria (King Arthur), Diarmuid, and the Knight of the Lake.
Kenneth, being the head of a distinguished magecraft family at the Clock Tower, could plausibly summon King Arthur, as relics associated with the legendary figure weren't difficult to acquire in London.
The remaining two knights posed a greater challenge. Diarmuid, a figure from Irish mythology, was clearly a knight. But the other armored figure, whose identity was concealed, was impossible to deduce without further clues.
Tokiomi made a mental note to play the odds and guess between the two.
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Chihiro chuckled to himself. "The system really knows how to keep things interesting."
Including him as an option was bound to mislead the others. Without a straightforward seven-on-seven match, the chances of accurately deducing each Master-Servant pair were considerably lower.
Moreover, the system's choice to omit Kotomine Kirei's summoning scene was no coincidence. It was bait to lure people into doubting whether Chihiro or Kirei was the true "misleading" choice.
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King of Conquerors: "Little Master, what are your thoughts on the connections?"
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Waver: "Hey, hey, how can you discuss something like this in the group?"
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King of Conquerors: "Hahaha, it seems you're not entirely hopeless, after all."
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Waver: "…"
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[Time's up. The quiz is now over.]
The screen immediately froze, becoming unresponsive to any further attempts to interact with it.
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[Now, let's begin announcing the answers.]
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[Bluebeard did not submit an answer.]
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"What?!"
Everyone nearly spat out their drinks.
At the very least, he could have matched the two obvious answers he had provided. What was the point of not answering at all?
Chihiro chuckled to himself. Bluebeard's thought process truly was different from that of ordinary people.