“. . . What deity? Do you mean that steel monster that stabbed His Majesty?”
“No, I mean—. . .?”
The next instant, Enkidu raised his head as if he had noticed something.
“There’s . . . someone here.”
“What?”
Enkidu slowly surveyed the surrounding space without answering Tine’s question.
“Is this . . . a human? No . . . it’s like a human, but . . .”
“Do you mean that someone is hiding in this room?”
Tine probed the nearby magical energy in confusion, but she could sense nothing of the kind.
Enkidu, however, seemed certain of its presence and wiped the emotion from his face as he said:
“No . . . they aren’t hiding. . . . It’s probably the opposite.”
“?”
“It seems . . . that something is trying to probe this place from the reverse side of the world.”
× ×
A Closed-off Town, Crystal Hill, Top Floor Suite
“I knew it. This room looks like it has the ‘thinnest walls.’”
The Snowfield recreated inside the mysterious ward.
In the top floor suite of its Crystal Hill were Flat Escardos, Berserker Jack the Ripper, and the Holy Church personnel led by Hansa Cervantes.
“I see. . . . But what is this place? It’s the top floor of a hotel, but it doesn’t look like guest accommodations. It reminds me of a mage’s workshop, but the furnishings are too needlessly extravagant for that.”
Flat responded to Jack’s question by looking around the room in growing excitement.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of like a museum?! There’s pretty jewels and gold dishes and all kinds of amazing things!”
The space, which ought to have been the hotel’s most luxurious room, was decorated with countless sparkling treasures that looked brand new despite their antique style. The assortment really could plausibly be some kind of exhibit.
“I’ve seen these in the professor’s lectures. I’m pretty sure they’re treasures from somewhere around Mesopotamia, but . . . hmm . . . The way they’re made, they should have some magical energy stored inside, but I don’t sense any. . . . They don’t seem like fakes, but it’s like they’re empty shells. It’s weird,” flat commented as he stared intently at the furnishings.
“But if the walls are thinnest here,” Hansa cut in from behind him, “does that mean that altitude is the key?”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. . . . I’ve got a feeling that this place is uniquely in harmony with the world outside the barrier. Like both sides are connected, or . . .”
At that point, Flat shifted his focus to a point at the center of the suite.
To the middle of the largest room.
What looked like a magic circle of a system unfamiliar at the Clock Tower was drawn on the floor there, but the target of that magecraft was missing from its center.
“What’s this? I think it’s a circle for stabilizing something . . . but there’s nothing here.”
“From the looks of things, this must be some faction’s workshop after all.”
“I’m technically neutral. I can guess who it belongs to, but I decline to comment.”
Hansa went out of his way to explain something he could have easily left unsaid with a shrug.
Jack maintained the bare minimum of cautious attention on Hansa and the nuns who were inspecting the room as he continued.
“Could the circle be empty simply because they haven’t begun their ritual yet?”
“No. . . . It’s strange. I’ve got a feeling that something is already happening here, but . . . This circle really isn’t active . . . but this is definitely the place.”
Flat waved his hand over the center of the empty circle with a look of confusion.
“The reason this place has the strongest connection to the world ‘outside’ the ward—to the real city—is . . .”
× ×
Snowfield, Crystal Hill, Top Floor
Enkidu’s voice rang out outside the ward, on the top floor of the “real” Crystal Hill.
“Yes, something is definitely here, but I can only sense its presence.”
When Tine’s subordinates heard that, each of them seized a weapon or Mystic Code and frantically looked around the room.
There faces, however, showed confusion. It seemed that they could not find even traces of magical energy.
Enkidu’s high Detect Presence Skill, however, was certainly detecting the “fluctuation.”

Fate/Strange Fake: Volume 6, Chapter 18 ("As Dream and Reality are Both Illusion I")