430 Five Days Since Arrival

The moment Baiyi stepped onto the castle's grounds, the dark-skinned loli controlled her Berserker to use its Noble Phantasm to dole out a swift, lethal attack at him. The dark-skinned loli watched with glee as the bolts of green lightning destroyed the intruder's body before converging into a gigantic pillar of blinding light. This was the final stroke of her Berserker's Noble Phantasm.

"Ha!" The dark-skinned loli exclaimed haughtily. "Who called him a 'powerful and mysterious' magician? Faced with the power of my Berserker, all he could do was die! Victory in this Holy Grail war is ours, without a doubt!"

Out of habit, the dark-skinned loli spread her arms open to hug her Servant, but when her arms were inches away from the skin of the Servant, the dark-skinned loli lept backward. She looked as though she had just received a mild electric shock even without skin contact. 

"Gah, it burns!" The dark-skinned loli yelled.

"If we cool her down first, your fingers won't burn on contact with her," a voice helpfully said. 

"Ho, that's smart! I'll go get us some snow!" The dark-skinned loli's ears perked up, and she began to run in another direction; however, she froze after a few steps and turned around mechanically. 

Her gaze fell on a bizarre-looking suit of armor, and out of the corner of her eye, she spotted her 'mighty' Berserker standing within a large chunk of ice. The suit of armor waved at her, and a smile broke out on its face mask as it said, "Hi."

The dark-skinned loli had fallen into stunned silence. 

"Tell me everything you know about the Holy Grail, including the method used to construct it, the magical system behind its operation, and how it brings the unreal to reality," Baiyi asked directly. The dark-skinned loli was levitated into the air; at a time unknown, Baiyi had bound her with a Binding Spell, and soon, her eye was level with his. The Binding spell that Baiyi had used on the dark-skinned loli was a special one; every time she struggled, a wave of pleasure would assault her body. Hence, after struggling for a bit, the dark-skinned loli was completely red. 

However, she remained unyielding. In answer to Baiyi's question, she spat at him. "Ptui!"

"A tightlipped little girl you are, huh? I guess tearing down your beloved Berserker, piece by piece, would be the most effective way to convince you," Baiyi replied. He punctured the chunk of ice and grabbed the Berserker's arm, and with a hard yank, he pulled it straight out of her shoulder.

The dark-skinned loli's face darkened as despair overwhelmed her. She knew that spirits could use their magic to recover from all forms of injury, but she could not bear to watch the Berserker, her only friend, get tortured this way. The stranger placed the arm back at the hole on the Berserker's shoulder, and when the arm fused back into the shoulder, he yanked it off again. He did this over and over again, and the little girl could only watch. 

Soon, the dark-skinned loli gave in and told him what he wanted to know — the directions to a secret chamber in the castle, where centuries worth of knowledge was stored.

When Baiyi reattached the Berserker's arm, he said in admiration, "Man, this is a pretty slick marionette. Look how effortless it was to detach and reattach its body parts…"

This was when the dark-skinned loli realized that the Berserker was technically anfor visiting.

"Do you swear that THAT is the source of the big meanie's power?" Santa, who was standing in front of a cabinet much taller than her, asked whilst staring at a feather duster atop the cabinet. It was this feather duster that Baiyi had used to 'educate the loli assassin. After that, he saw no more use for it and placed it up there. 

The assassin loli, on the other hand, was now obsessed with that object that had brought her so much pain, and she had decided that it was a very powerful weapon.

"Believe me, that weapon deals a lot of damage when it strikes the body!" The loli assassin whispered. "But if we manage to steal it from him, we'll have the power to fight him!"

"That cabinet is very tall, though, and we are very short; how are we going to get it? We barely have enough magical energy to move around, let alone use our Noble Phantasm," The purple-haired loli, acting as the current Rider-class Servant, asked quietly.

She had introduced herself to the others as Anna. Although she had joined them to feast on the confectionaries, she did not participate much in the girls' discussion. The moment the girls decided to enact their escape plan, she volunteered to help. 

"If that tall person in the white dress had agreed to help us, then this would not a problem!" The loli assassin muttered, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in her head, and she said, "I know! Let's make a human tower!"

The girls moved immediately. Santa, who had more brawn than the others, was the base of the human ladder; the shy Anna formed the middle section, and the top of the ladder was the loli assassin. 

Unfortunately, the cabinet was still taller than their combined height. Even with her toes strained, the loli assassin found herself barely touching the feather duster.

"J-Jack? P-please hurry, I can't hold this for much longer," Santa said quietly.

"You can do it! Hold on a little longer; I just need a little… more…" The loli assassin stood on her toes whilst raising her tiny hand as high as she could, trying to reach the feather duster.

Anna was the first to lose her strength. "I-I can't do it anymore!" Her knees gave way, and she fell backward. The loli assassin also lost her footing and fell. Both girls crashed into Santa, and the cabinet soon followed after them. 

Ke-rash!

"Oww! Ahh!"

There was a flurry of steps as Baiyi shot down the stairs. Upon seeing the three girls knotted together, he asked, "What are you girls even doing?"

Anna was the first to recompose herself. She instantly grabbed onto the fallen feather duster and pointed it at Baiyi, growling, "Big Meanie! Your weapon is no longer with you—you can't control us now! Release us at once!"

Baiyi was so amused that he said nothing. Instead, he pulled out two more feather dusters from his storage pouch and wielded each on his hand before brandishing them like swords. "What was that?" He asked loudly. "What did you say? Louder please!"

He started walking towards the girls slowly. The girls, in return, burst into tears, thinking that he was really going to kill them.

Unexpectantly, though, he merely bent down towards them and poked on their puffy cheeks. "I'm doing my best to find a way to end this world without having you girls pit against each other, you understand? I'm too busy to play games with you," Baiyi said gently. "Now, can I expect you girls to be a bit more understanding so that I can do my work in peace? Or do you girls really long to kill each other in the Holy Grail War?"

The three lolis gave a quick glance at each other before hanging their heads.

"Alright, now go play," Baiyi said, ruffling their hair before starting back up to the stairs.

"Aww… Big Meanies is so… nice! B-but that's not how he acted when he caught me—he was horrible back then! I'm so confused…" Santa was the first to break the silence after he left.

"I heard from Black Chloe that even when he was capturing her, he did not kill anyone either. All he did was taking the books with him. In fact, I think he didn't kill anyone when he caught me too," Anna added sheepishly.

The loli assassin, who was the first to be captured and the only one who had ever tasted the power of feather duster, lowered her head silently.

Just like that, the lolis stopped trying to escape, which relieved quite a deal of troubles off Baiyi's shoulders enough to focus more on his research. Sometimes, he would go out and buy more snacks and even little girls' favorite plush toys home, treating these little trips as his breaks.

He wanted to play these little girls, but time was running out fast, and the knowledge concerning the Holy Grail was a larger academic endeavor than he had expected.

Fortunately, the captives seemed to be at peace with her new lifestyle by now, especially since instead of thinking of ways to kill more effectively or their fate in the Holy Grail War, they could just play, eat and sleep however they wanted as if they were a rich woman's pet piglets. Well, it was not exactly a bad way to live, was it?

Sometimes, and quite understandably, the girls wished they could go out of the house since staying at home all the time could be pretty dull.

There was also an arguably minor yet a bit upsetting issue too — Black Chloe was quite a little pervert. With the excuse that she knew everything the most just by being an Einzbern, she kept trying to give every girl a kiss on the lips. For that, Baiyi had given her quite a few painful lessons.

Baiyi finally made some headway in his research by the fifth day since he arrived. He gleefully went downstairs to announce the good news to the girls only to find Black Chloe pressing Blanket on the edge of the couch, her hands caressing the latter as her lips closed in...

"Aah oww!"

The dark-skinned loli rubbed her forehead — which had just been assaulted by an ice pellet — with her hands as she scowled at Baiyi, "You ground me here in this house and now you keep stopping me from having fun? What do you want for me?"

"I would like you to play something more holistic, like them," Baiyi said as he pointed at Santa and Anna immersing in video games. "Look at that! Now that's holistic love!" [3]

He had barely finished his sentence when he suddenly felt that something had attacked his home. Telling the lolis to stay safely within the house, he bolted out of the door — in time to see the Hero of Justice, his Woes-Be-Me pops, his stepmom, stepsister, and two of his classmates who each shared a complicated relationship with himself.

They were standing right at the gate to the workaholic's house with daggers in their eyes.A quick refresher: This Berserker's True Name is the Frankenstein Monster…'Nuff said.There is an alt form of this Berserker of Black where she dons a swimsuit. Perhaps this version of her actually have more words than grunts?The Einzbern family are very fond of artificial humans. Their maids are capable of acting as protectors and guards because they are magical androids (in a sense).A period of time on Nasuverse's Earth when "the laws are not based on Physics but based on Mystery".As one of the most ancient magi family and the inventor of the Holy Grail System, an Einzbern would of course be the most knowledgeable.Black Chloe, in her own story, once replenished someone's magical energy through a kiss.