One With Nature

Omake: Cherry Blossom Child.

I kept track of a lot of "dangerous elements" while I was in the Empty Bridge while taking the occasional walk with my puppet body.

One of the things I kept track of was the Mage Association. Especially three specific families.

Einzbern, Makiri, and Tohsaka.

The Einzbern family began losing some of their status in the World of Mage-craft after Ainzel just... vanished. I couldn't find where she went or even why she disappeared. Zelretch seemed to know something, but didn't tell me much beyond the fact she was still alive. He was following her request apparently.

Anyway, when the Einzbern family turned their sight to the Holy Grail, I immediately went there to stop them. Justeaze, the current head of the family, was surprisingly reasonable. I explained to her that the Grail was a dead-end in reaching Third Magic because keeping it around for so long would undoubtedly cause it to be corrupt.

Justeaze was understandably disappointed but thankful that I "saved the Einzbern family what could have been centuries of wasted resources", as she put it. To make up for it - and honestly because I saw Ainzel as a friend - I supplied their family with a lot of raw materials and hard to get Mystical resources to create their Humonculie with.

They're now focusing on honing their crafting skills rather than other methods like the Holy Grail. Since Justeaze is their closest attempt and she was born from a mutation, they had previously given up, but the materials I offered seemed to rekindle their motivation.

The Makiri family was a bit more difficult to deal with. Zoulgen couldn't turn to the Holy Grail or such plans without the Einzbern's support, but he was still determined to "save the world with immortality".

I killed him as soon as his experiments looked anything remotely inhumane.

I didn't do anything to the Makiri family itself. Without Zoulgen's influence, the family didn't turn out so bad. Sadly, me killing Zoulgen kind of seriously effected them in negative ways. For how much of a bastard he was, he was good at keeping the family stable politically in the Mage Association.

I visited their next head to give him a few advices on how to keep the family from falling apart. Since Zoulgen never shared his deeper secrets and I made sure to make it look like an accident, he - the current Makiri head - had no idea who I am and I just told him to call me "anonymous benefactor".

Thankfully, he was desperate enough to listen to my advice to help his family. The Makiri family still use insects, but as Familiars rather than experiments. They use all kinds of insects to gather information and locate things. Nowadays, the Makiri family is one of the best suppliers of information for the Mage Association thanks to their Familiars reaching places that normal people or familiars can't reach.

The Tohsaka family was by far the easiest to deal with, mainly because I didn't need to do anything. Without the Einzbern or Makiri family getting together with them, that family had no knowledge of the Grail, how to use it, or any other dangerous element. They were basically... just there, honestly. There was one thing I miscalculation, however.

That was Tokiomi's sheer level of stupidity. There really needs to be a level just made for people like him.

Why? Because Tokiomi's idiocy led me to THIS situation.

"Okay, Sakura, this is our new home," I said to the young girl as I held her hand - in my puppet body - standing in front of the newly bought house.

The girl just looked... lost. She genuinely didn't know what to do and I don't blame her. That moron of a father practically threw her away because of Magus laws of only one heir.