Danmachi: The Multiverse Portal

Bonus Chapter, enjoy!

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Snowfield Opera House

By the time the Zealot slipped inside, the summoning ritual was already underway.

A man stood in the middle of the stage, finishing the last lines of a complicated magic circle. Nearby, a young woman lay tied up. The way the ritual was set up and how she was placed made it clear she was meant to be the sacrifice.

"Heretical magus..."

The Zealot narrowed her eyes.

The girl had much more magical energy than the man running the ritual, but she didn't show any of the control or awareness a trained magus would have. She just looked like a scared civilian caught up in something she couldn't understand.

The man was the lesser threat.

The Zealot got ready to attack. Before she could act, she heard muffled footsteps resounding through the opera house. Someone was coming. No, it was a whole group.

Her instincts warned her. Whoever was coming felt different from the usual magi in Snowfield. If she wasn't careful, she might die here.

She leapt into the rafters and disappeared among the shadows.

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A moment later, August entered the opera house.

Unlike the careful magi who hid behind barriers and familiars, he walked right in, as if he was just showing up for a show. Artemis, Hestia, Rethusa, and the rest of the Artemis Familia followed him, while soldiers moved through the halls. They had brought a whole force just to watch one summoning.

Unfortunately, they were slightly too late.

The man completed the final section of the ritual, and the magic circle began drawing power from the leylines beneath the building.

The Zealot made up her mind right away. She couldn't just watch anymore. This magus was trying to make another fake Heroic Spirit by sacrificing a person, and to her, that meant he no longer deserved to live.

She dropped from the darkness.

"Zabaniya: Delusional Heartbeat."

A demonic arm appeared next to her. The magus felt the danger and started to turn, but she didn't give him a chance to speak, cast a spell, or beg. Her ghostly hand grabbed the invisible image of his heart.

Crush.

His real heart burst inside his chest. The magus went rigid, blood ran from his mouth, and he fell next to the summoning circle, never knowing what killed him.

The Artemis Familia had entered just in time to witness it.

"So that's Assassin's Noble Phantasm..." Rethusa stared. "She crushed his heart without touching him!!"

The girls had already seen August fight the Zealot, and they knew Noble Phantasms were the legendary weapons of Heroic Spirits. Hearing about them was one thing, but seeing one kill a man instantly was something else.

The Zealot turned and froze when she saw August.

"It's you!!"

She became alert right away. She remembered that man too well. He had survived Delusional Heartbeat—turned its curse into his arm—and healed himself in a way that seemed more like a miracle than magic. Fighting him head-on had already failed.

But this time, August wasn't alone. A dozen armed women stood with him, each marked by a Divine Blessing. Instead of being afraid of the Assassin, they looked ready and excited to fight right away.

The Zealot studied them carefully.

"I don't recognize any of you."

She had looked into all the magi involved in Snowfield's Holy Grail War and memorized every known Master's magical signature. These women didn't feel like normal magi at all. They acted like soldiers.

"If you want to know who we are, fight us first!" Rethusa called.

That was signal enough.

The Artemis Familia split up. Some girls jumped to the balconies while others spread out on the floor, making a loose circle around the Zealot. Lante and the rear guard drew their weapons at the same time, each moving into a role they knew well.

The Zealot slipped away from the first wave of attacks.

"Coordinated formation..."

Her gaze moved to Rethusa. The red-haired woman was clearly the captain, the others adjusted around her without needing orders, closing every opening the moment the Zealot tried to exploit it.

"Are you magi?"

She knocked away one blade and ducked under another, still not sure what kind of group she was facing. The girls didn't look at her with hate. Their eyes were full of excitement.

Challenge!

They wanted to use her as a test.

'They've chosen me as their trial.'

She should have felt insulted by the thought. Instead, the Zealot rushed forward. She would never back down just because she was outnumbered. If they wanted to test themselves against a Heroic Spirit, she would show them what that really meant.

Steel rang through the opera house as both sides collided.

Ayaka Sajyou could only stare from the floor.

The man who tied her up was dead. A masked Assassin had ripped out his heart, and now a group of armed women were fighting right in front of her after barely saying a word.

What was going on? Ayaka didn't understand any of it. She just knew she didn't want to die here.

That single thought was enough.

The dead magus couldn't control the ritual anymore, but the summoning circle was still active. It reached for the closest source of magical energy and found Ayaka. Mana started pouring out of her before she could stop it.

The circle flared, and bands of multicolored light swept across the stage.

"Rainbow light!" Hestia's eyes widened. "That's an ultra-rare Servant!"

Even though they had interrupted it, the ritual still managed to finish. The summoning system took Ayaka's desperate wish to live and used her mana to fill what was missing.

The light grew brighter. Wind tore through the opera house, whipping curtains from the walls and scattering loose papers across the stage.

A figure stepped out from the center of the circle. He wore silver armor, and a long cloak whipped behind him in the magical wind. Golden hair framed the face of a young man who stood with the confidence of a King.

"Saber..." August said.

The Servant appeared much faster than anyone expected. Normally, Ayaka would have been sacrificed as part of the ritual, but this time the summoning reached her first and made the contract directly.

The True Saber of Snowfield's Holy Grail War had arrived.

He walked out of the fading light and looked around the room. The fight between the Zealot and the Artemis Familia was still going on, but he quickly looked past it.

Two presences here did not belong in the modern world.

Divine Spirits...

No... True Goddesses!

"Well, this is unexpected." Saber's relaxed smile turned serious and respectful. He stepped between Ayaka and the others, then bowed his head in a formal gesture.

"To meet legendary Goddesses in their true forms... It looks like I've walked into something truly special."

"True Goddesses?"

"..." Ayaka's heart jumped.

The Age of Gods had ended a long time ago. The modern world couldn't support gods walking around openly, and even Divine Spirits usually needed vessels or weaker forms to appear. But Saber had recognized two right away.

"THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE," the Zealot muttered, avoiding another coordinated attack. "Bringing down a Goddess in her true body is beyond cheating."

She had already thought August was impossible to explain. But now, it seemed he wasn't even the strangest one here.

Rethusa pulled back with her companions and raised her weapon.

"We are the Artemis Familia. I'm Rethusa, the Captain." She indicated the blue-haired Goddess standing behind them. "You can think of us as followers blessed by Artemis, Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt."

"Artemis..."

The Zealot looked at the Goddess with a bow. Thanks to the Holy Grail's knowledge, she knew the name right away: Artemis, the well-known virgin Goddess from Greek myth, Apollo's twin sister and the moon's divine huntress.

The Zealot only worshipped one God and saw all others as false. But the women fighting her truly believed in a Goddess known for purity and the hunt. Their faith was real, and their Blessings were pure. That made things much more complicated.

Since Rethusa had introduced herself, the Zealot refused to stay silent.

"I am a nameless Assassin." Her blades lowered slightly. "My path began with the Old Man of the Mountain."

Saber's expression changed at the sound of Artemis's name.

"The Goddess Artemis?"

He turned fully toward the blue-haired woman. Greek mythology was woven deep into the foundations of European legend, and its stories shared countless points of contact with the ancient myths of Mesopotamia and the civilizations that followed. Even among heroes, Artemis was a name no one could mistake.

She studied him in return.

He spoke with a light, almost playful confidence, but his armor, stance, and manners were those of royalty. He wasn't just a wandering knight. He was a king, or at least someone raised so close to a throne that it made little difference.

"Welcome, Saber," Artemis said.

Her greeting was serious but not unfriendly. Her voice held both the dignity of a huntress and the authority of a Goddess, and she still gave him the respect owed to a summoned hero.

Saber blinked. She knew more than she was saying. By addressing him only by Class, Artemis was choosing not to reveal his True Name in front of the others.

He smiled and returned the bow.

"It is an honor to meet you, Goddess Artemis."

Once the formal greeting ended, Saber's gaze shifted toward the figures beside her. Another woman carried unmistakable Divinity. Then there was the young man standing between the two Goddesses.

"Hm?"

Saber paused.

The brilliance surrounding Artemis and Hestia had drawn his attention the moment he manifested, keeping him from looking closely at anyone else. Now that he saw August clearly, something clicked.

His eyes widened.

"So that's what this is..."

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