A Fake Familiar Reborn

Chapter 19: Promises and Punishments

Beta read by Shigiya, Paragon of Awesomeness and Maglad.

Double update with chapter 19.5 as well, if it's not showing them wait a few minutes as the website is probably taking longer to show it.

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-Kuoh Academy-

“She has a lot of explaining to do.“ Mumbled Archer as he left the middle of a smoking Kuoh Academy’s sports field, looking towards the unconscious Sitri heiress in the distance.

He was smart enough to not go near Sona before she woke up, aware that Rider would almost certainly misinterpret his intentions. He walked with a slight limp to his step, though it was quickly going away. Truly, Rias’ mana tanks were no joke, as he could feel himself healing almost as quickly as he would if he was acting as Alaya’s enforcer instead. He kept his guard up though, ready for any unexpected ‘surprises’ or further attacks.

If Sona hadn't used the Command Seal in time and Rider had fully deployed her Noble Phantasm… Archer wasn't sure he could have blocked it. Not without suffering some grievous injuries in the process, because some part of him worried that Rider might have received more than a boost to her base parameters. For all he knew, with a Pillar House heiress as her Master, some of Rider’s skills or even her Noble Phantasm had been made more powerful as well. While he had seen nothing that would truly indicate such, he was in no rush to find out, not while he was at risk of being on the receiving end of such power, at least.

If Rider had been akin to a supercar trying to run on an empty tank in most iterations of the fifth Fuyuki Holy Grail War, now she was more akin to an ICBM. A deadly, explosive payload propelled by hundreds of thousands of aerospace-quality fuel.

Regardless, now that she’d been made to stand down, he had to address the unexpected presence of Rias’ only Knight. “What are you doing here, Yuuto? I trusted you to escort Rias and everyone else away from this place!”

“I couldn't leave you behind!“ The young Knight shouted, frustrated and unwilling to apologize for his decision. “Do you have any idea how worried we all were? Koneko wouldn’t stop shaking each time we felt the shockwaves from your fight with that other Servant, and we were all more than a mile away!”

Archer simply shook his head, wanting to remove such a thought process from the boy’s mind as soon as possible.

‘That is the mindset of a fool, ready to jump into danger against opponents far beyond himself. If it had been any other Servant… no, Rider would also have taken him out if she had perceived him as a threat.’

At that moment, Archer felt strangely grateful for Rider’s newly enhanced capabilities, as that may have been exactly why Yuuto didn’t even register as a threat in her eyes. Blindfold, whatever.

“It doesn't matter if you were worried or scared. If the other Servant had been even the tiniest bit more merciless, practical, or cruel, she would have targeted you to get to me.” He massaged his temples, refraining from being as harsh as he perhaps should be, due to the undeniable fact that Yuuto’s actions did end up helping in the end, and he was infinitely better than his idiotic younger self. Instead of jumping between Rider and himself, he took a much smarter option, and forcefully brought Sona here, then pushed her into using a Command Seal to stop the fight.

‘Heh, if only my idiot self would have been smart enough to take Illya hostage back then. Perhaps we would have all ended up sipping tea and eating snacks at home together, talking our problems out instead of whatever you’d call the clusterfuck of a tragedy that happened in the end.’