Chapter 49: Arturia: Who let Master shout in the room?

"Hmm..."

Shinji woke up in a daze. He looked around and found himself lying on the bed in his room.

"Am I hungover again? Wait a minute... why did I say 'again'?"

Gurgle~

A distorted sound came from Shinji's stomach. He rubbed his stomach with force.

"So hungry... How long has it been since I last ate?"

Rubbing his stomach, Shinji got up from the bed with a face full of resentment.

"I feel like I can try Uncle Hai's grilled whole cow special today..."

Gurgle~

Shinji's stomach made a strange noise once again.

Feeling something was wrong, Shinji stopped his first movement and looked down at his body. He noticed that his chest suddenly started to swell abnormally.

"This..."

Plop—

A thorn-like tentacle suddenly burst out from Shinji's body!

A large amount of blood dyed the entire room red.

"What the...?!"

A mouth full of spikes protruded from the head, emitting a horrifying sound towards Shinji.

"Wow—"

Shinji covered his blood-soaked mouth and fell onto the bed, his body convulsing involuntarily.

In his last moments of consciousness, Shinji saw the strange tentacle creature emerging from his body, a black shadow, and...

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Isn't this super cool?! Ha-ha-ha!!"

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

"Cool, my aunt——!!!"

Shinji jumped up from the couch and shouted at the ceiling.

"Boss, are you okay?"

Seeing Shinji pale with cold sweat on his face, Ophelia asked with concern.

"Huff... huff..."

Shinji didn't answer his secretary's question. He managed to calm down a bit and leaned back on the couch, breathing heavily as if he had just run ten kilometers.

"Damn..."

Shinji carefully touched his chest. Although nothing had actually burst from his chest, he still felt the skin under his fingers burning, as if someone had pressed a red-hot iron against his chest.

"Boss, I think we should stop now."

Ophelia grabbed Shinji's shoulders with both hands, looking concerned.

"Delving into the depths of your consciousness to observe possibilities is really dangerous," Ophelia earnestly advised, "If you keep doing it, your mental health will be at risk."

Ophelia's Mystic Eyes, a form of future sight, allowed her to observe possibilities. What Shinji just "dreamed" about was using Ophelia's Mystic Eyes to observe future possibilities by diving deep into his soul.

More precisely, it was observing the possibilities of summoning new Heroic Spirits, especially considering that some of the Heroic Spirits in FZ had various neurotic tendencies, such as Lancelot and Gilles de Rais.

Originally, summoning these two would not work due to their class, but unfortunately, both of them happened to be Sabers, and Shinji had increased the number of summoning slots for the Holy Grail system in Fuyuki City. However, due to the constraints of the underlying magical system, the Holy Grail could only summon seven Heroic Spirits at a time, with each of the seven classes having at most one representative.

Considering the potential need to summon strange Heroic Spirits like Ruler or Foreigner in the future, Shinji had asked his grandfather and Irisviel to modify the Holy Grail summoning system. However, redesigning this most fundamental magical system without changing the current situation was not a simple task, and the progress was as slow as the trash production capacity of DW.

In any case, Zouken Matou had already made it clear that this project would take years, so Shinji had to be patient.

Shinji could wait, but the Fate/Zero movie couldn't.

Seeing that the time for summoning Heroic Spirits was getting closer, Shinji could only use his secretary's abilities to see how he could handle it without making any mistakes.

As it turned out, Shinji's approach was quite correct. Although he could only see some scattered scenes, he already knew how bad the future of summoning those two neurotics would be.

Summoning Saber Gilles de Rais was not too troublesome, as he would simply be wiped out in the battle between Berserker Lancelot and Artoria.

The real trouble was summoning Caster Gilles de Rais. Shinji either got possessed by the Sea Demon or killed by it. His bizarre deaths felt like he was reenacting the various deaths of supporting characters from the movie "Alien."

To make matters worse, Gilles de Rais liked to laugh in a demonic way, which was truly mentally corrupting.

All day long, it was either "Cool" or "Cooool," or "Cooooool."

"Are you a Blizzard employee, damn it?!"

Shinji rubbed his head and made a sarcastic remark.

"Boss? Are you sure you're okay?"

Hearing Shinji's seemingly random comment, Ophelia, fearing that his mental state might indeed be affected, immediately embraced his shoulders.

"I'm fine; I'm just not satisfied with the results of my observation earlier. Ophelia, don't blame yourself."

Shinji held Ophelia's delicate and slender body closer to him, his fingers intertwined with her petite, fair hands.

"Don't worry; I'll stop the observation here for now," Shinji whispered softly into Ophelia's ear.

Observing possibilities in this manner was indeed very dangerous because the injuries experienced in those snippets would be partially reflected back onto the body through magic.

However, this method of "observing the future" was also very practical. When he wanted to summon Heroic Spirits in the future, he could use this method to confirm if he could summon the ones he desired.

"It's probably better to avoid doing such things."

Ophelia looked into Shinji's bright eyes and spoke with a slightly displeased tone, "It's really dangerous..."

She said this with her lips slightly pouted, seemingly a bit annoyed and even angry.

Shinji's panicked look just now really scared her.

Ophelia has always longed to be needed, but if Shinji needs her in a way that hurts him personally, she will be very sad.

Because for Ophelia, Shinji, who was the first to affirm her, was a very special existence.

Just as Ophelia was about to voice her complaint, Shinji brought his face closer and gently kissed her on the forehead.

Without any warning, Ophelia's body instinctively leaned back. If Shinji hadn't been holding her soft waist, she might have fallen backward onto the floor.

"Boss, you are so cunning..."

Blushing, Ophelia said coquettishly.

"Well, it's more effective this way~"

Shinji chuckled and gently caressed Ophelia's head with his hand.

"So, Boss, have you made your decision?"

"I have. We'll summon Lancelot as Saber, and as for the other one, we'll assign it to Yan Qing or find another actor."

Ideally, Shinji didn't want Yan Qing to play the other role, as Yan Qing already had a heavy workload. Giving him a role with a lot of screen time would be too demanding.

Shinji suspected that if things continued this way, Yan Qing might end up with split personalities.

"I wonder if Yan Qing will create multiple clones like Bai Mo."

Teasing his own Heroic Spirit, Shinji reached out and opened the door to the room.

Then—

"Ouch!"

"Come on! Don't push me!"

"Get off me quickly!"

...

Seeing the girls huddled together on the floor, Shinji coldly asked, "What are you all doing?"

Rin awkwardly smiled, "Uh, we were just curious."

Sakura pouted as she explained, "Because you and Miss Pham Son Nhi sneaked into this room secretly, it looked like you were doing something secretive."

Medusa pushed her glasses up and said, "I was just watching them. I tried to stop them, but I couldn't."

Only the innocent Artoria revealed the real reason, "Because Master was screaming in the room, they thought you were doing something exciting–MMM!"

Although Sakura and Rin promptly covered Artoria's mouth, Shinji still heard what she said.

"You guys are really idle..." Shinji's eye twitched twice, "If you have so much free time, can you make sure to do your work properly? Have you completed all the preparations for the filming's pre-production?"

"Understood!"

After hearing Shinji's words, the girls quickly got up from the floor and ran to the other end of the corridor, leaving Shinji behind.

"These guys..."

Shinji didn't know what to say about these girls.

After finalizing the summoning list, Shinji began the final preparations for the Fate/Zero movie before shooting. He even delegated the promotional work for the ongoing Fate/Stay Night to the distribution company, as he was deeply focused on his own film.

Shinji took his movie very seriously, personally inspecting everything from props to set design and location selection. While he wouldn't oversee every aspect of the production, he would meticulously review each stage, only allowing it to progress when he was satisfied.

Apart from the filming itself, the script was a key focus of Shinji's pre-production efforts. Not valuing logic in commercial movies didn't mean ignoring it entirely. For a film aimed at a broad audience, the fewer plot holes, the better.

To ensure the authenticity of the characters' dialogues, Shinji had the actors write their own lines based on the scenes in the script. However, these lines still had to pass Shinji's approval.

In a film, dialogue must have a purpose for each line, rather than being empty chatter, especially in a commercial film like Fate/Zero with a significant amount of plot. Due to these factors, character dialogues needed careful refinement.

Due to the experience gained from preparing for Fate/Stay Night, Shinji's pre-production work for this project proceeded smoothly. Even before the end of the summer of 2003, Shinji was ready to start shooting.

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