“Finally, I get to wear trousers. I wanted to stroll along some bright-lit areas ... why did you want me, the King of Conquerors, to go to a country-like riverside to draw water anyway?”
“Because it’s much more meaningful than munching rice crackers and watching television, that’s why.” Waver swiftly cleared the table and removed the whole set of experiment tools—one of the few valuable items he brought from his school dormitory in London. He then prepared the operation. Various vials into which ores and reagents were filled, spirit lamp mortar, droppers of all sorts ... . At the sight of the apparatus lined up on the desk, the King of Conquerors frowned.
“What is this? You plan to start with some make-believe alchemy?”
“It’s the real thing, not make-believe. Idiot.” Replying disappointedly, Waver set up the test tubes Rider brought back in the tube rack according to the labels. He selected complementary reagents and mixed them together. This was something he had repeated many times in the Clock Tower; a basic task to him.
As for the amount, he could not get it wrong even with his eyes closed.
“Just to be sure, you did not make any mistake with the places drawn on the map, did you?”
“Are you looking down on me, boy? What could possibly go wrong with something so easy?”
Grumbling, Rider tossed the folded map to Waver. It was a complete map of Fuyuki City. At approximately regular intervals, alphabets dotted the map alongside the Mion River from the river mouth upstream. The inscriptions on the map were marked with labels from the test tubes Rider brought back. The liquid contents were the water of the Mion River, retrieved from designated spots along its banks. Rider had demanded to go out in physical form, and hence was ordered by Waver to collect the river water, with clothes bought by Waver as a condition of service. As expected, it turned out more fruitful than ordering him on a useless walk.
“... What am I doing?” Silently, he made progress on the preparation of the reagents. Feeling like he was back at the elementary department of Clock Tower, Waver was unhappy. He, who should be participating glamorously in the Holy Grail War as a Servant’s Master, was here repeating such plain and boring work again. Letting out a melancholic sigh, he plugged the reagents which were fully mixed with a stopper. With that, he unplugged the stopper of the test tube labelled A, and put a drop of reagent in the center.
The instantaneous reaction exceeded his expectations. The water, which was supposed to be colorless and transparent, suddenly turned rust red in color.
“—t on earth is this?”
He thought Rider would surely start with the sequel of the video, but Rider was watching the experiment over Waver’s shoulder with an engrossed expression. Although explaining was troublesome—a barrage of questions would intrude on his work even more—Waver did not ignore him, and answered.
“These are traces of the remains of the procedure. The remains of the magecraft in the water.” Label A marked the position where the river mouth was the closest to the sea. At that location, such a reaction was evidently abnormal.
“Upstream of the river, but still considerably close to the river mouth. ... Who could have performed magecraft there? If we go upstream from here, we could probably find the location.”
“... Boy, had you not realized from the start that the water of that river was mixed with such a thing?”
“No way! But it is a land with water flowing through the heart of the city. It is natural to start investigating from the water.”
The easiest way to discover the whereabouts of magi is through the “Water” element. Water flows from a higher place to a lower place; this is an absolute principle. Compared to the effort needed to calculate the wind’s direction or read the earth’s pulse, finding the lowest flow of the water pulse is the least laborious. This is especially true for a land with rivers.
From the various methods of investigation, he had thought of picking the easiest one as a start, but it seemed he had already drawn a winner; luck was with him for now. B, C, D ... . In that order, he deftly droppered the reagent into each test tube. The reaction grew increasingly stronger with each test tube nearer to the river mouth. At such remarkable conspicuousness, Waver’s emotions bypassed wonder and went straight to utter shock. This could not be anything but someone setting up a workshop right in the middle of the river and discharging waste directly into it without any precaution whatsoever. Such a magus was worse than third-rate; a mere fool! He could not possibly exist—no, he exists. That abject greenhorn! The incident Waver heard about from the supervising Father at the church, to which he was summoned this morning, must be it.
“Still, to confirm it in such a manner ... I don’t feel proud of this at all.”
Exhausting one’s ingenuity to outsmart the enemy, pitting wonders against each other—that was the “Magecraft Contest” Waver had imagined. What he was doing now—progressing by carrying out underground investigation like a forensic investigator—was a method employed by people with no talent whatsoever. Though he already had positive results in his hands, what was left was the bad aftertaste of humiliation.
The reacting solution in test tube P had now turned to black ink. If it turned any murkier, this simple method could no longer be used for analysis. With an expectation of the outcome, he droppered the reagent into test tube Q. The water remained transparent. No matter how vigorously he shook it, there was no response.
Waver opened up the map again, and pointed at the P and Q scribblings. “Rider. Here, and here; what was in between them? Was there a draining trench? The mouth of an irrigation channel, perhaps?”
“Oh? There was something remarkably big there ...”
“That’s it! If we trace it back there, we will probably find Caster’s workshop.”
For some reason, Rider gazed at Waver closely with a solemn face.
“Oi, boy. Might you happen to be some great, excellent magus?”
Fate/Zero, Volume 2, Act 8