"I must've told you this before, but I've got to say, Shuten, whenever I see your face, I'm startled by how beautiful it is." Frantically, you decide that the best way to survive this situation would be to flirt with the girl who may kill you at any moment. "Your eyes are like amethysts, sparkling incandescently." You reach out a hand to caress the side of Shuten's face, clearly, she wasn't expecting you to once again be so daring. You move some of the hair out of her eyes as you silently begin the countdown into which you'll be able to manipulate the truth of her body. Certain things are of course more difficult to mess with than others, and would require tremendous amounts of magical energy to change, but to do something like remove the contract between a Servant and a Master, well, you've manipulated the contracts between Servants and Masters before and strengthened them, so by the same logic, you should be able to weaken and break them.

"Oh Master, ever the daring one, aren't you? Even in the face of death, you know just the words to say..." It's been five seconds now, five more are all you need! Shuten is none the wiser to what you're planning either! She raises her other hand to caress the side of your own face, careful not to cut you with her demonically sharp nails. If Shuten wanted to, she could use just her nails to slice through you like an exceptionally sharp pair of scissors through paper.

"How could I remain silent when presented with your beauty, Shuten? It would be a crime to keep my mouth shut about such things." Ten seconds. Your connection to Shuten-dōji has been established, your mind begins to visualize every aspect of her being and without any hesitation, you try to find the connection she shares with her Master. Where is it, where is it?! Your brain is working on overdrive as you have your magical energy spread throughout Shuten, trying to find the connection she shares with the girl with control of the grail. It's not where you would've thought it would be, so... where?! Finally, you find something strange in the visualization of Shuten's body, it's not a chain binding two people together, but instead, what seems to be a sheet of paper, written on in fine cursive. Time on the outside should be flowing far slower right now, as you are operating solely on the speed of thought as you delve through Shuten's existence with the assistance of truth. Of course, while you could likely alter anything about her right now, so long as you have the magical energy, all you want to do right now is sever whatever might be binding Shuten-dōji to Manaka Sajyou.

You move your visualization closer to the sheet of paper, curious as to why it is so different to the other bonds you have seen between Servants and Masters. Could Manaka have done this on purpose? Is this more like a written contract between than the unspoken contract shared between a Servant and a Master? You ponder over just what sort of relevance this sheet of paper may hold. You may be operating on the speed of thought right now, but on the outside world, it's only a matter of time before Shuten pulls your hand away and severs your connection to her!

Part 23