Shinji Matou at Your Service-Chapter 943 - : How to Deal with Berserker

Shinji's disdain for Acht is not without reason.

Let's take a look at Acht's actions in past Holy Grail Wars.

The First Holy Grail War.

Acht: "Good, the concept of the ritual was successful. Now, let's kill all those who stand in the way and claim the Grail to save humanity!"

Result: Due to the rules, the Masters barely had any real awareness as participants. Additionally, without Command Spells to control them, the Servants did not follow orders. In the end, they didn't even meet the conditions for the Great Grail to descend, and the war ended in failure.

The Second Holy Grail War.

Acht: "Good, the rules are set, and now we have Command Spells that can exert absolute control over Servants. This time, there will be no problems!"

Result: For various reasons, it failed again.

The Third Holy Grail War.

Acht: "I've prepared an extra class—Avenger—the embodiment of All the World's Evils, the invincible Angra Mainyu. This time, it will succeed. Absolutely."

Result: Angra Mainyu sounded powerful but was weak. He was defeated by the head of the Edelfelt family's Saber, and his defeat even led to the Grail becoming corrupted.

The Fourth Holy Grail War.

Acht: "This time, there will be no problems. The strongest class, Saber, the most famous king in the world—King Arthur! I even hired the notorious Magus Killer. We are flawless in both Servant battles and Master battles. Victory is certain!"

Result: Kiritsugu realized the Grail was corrupted, and Artoria destroyed the Grail with her holy sword, leading to another failure.

The Fifth, the current Holy Grail War.

Acht: "That traitor Kiritsugu! I will never trust outsiders again. I'll create combat homunculi myself—they will never betray me.

To ensure victory, I'll summon a hero even stronger than King Arthur. You, Heracles, are the one!

From all the past failures, I've learned one thing: the consciousness of the Servant is a hindrance. It must be erased so they become loyal, mindless fighting machines.

The Berserker class Heracles is the perfect embodiment of this ideal. This time, no one can stop me. No one can stop Einzbern's long-cherished wish!!!"

To this, Shinji could only respond with four words: "What a dumb move."

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He had seen fools before, but never anyone as foolish as Acht. If a rookie Master who knew nothing about the Holy Grail War stumbled into it and made any of the above decisions, it wouldn't be surprising.

But the problem is that Acht is not a rookie. He's a veteran who has been involved in five Holy Grail Wars. Although he wasn't directly participating, he closely monitored each one. Making a mistake once is understandable, but to make a mistake every single time, with each mistake being dumber than the last? This time, his preparations were as grand as they were ridiculous.

Combat-ready homunculi with Servant-level capabilities—just a few of them would be enough to give top-tier magi a hard time or even defeat them on the spot.

The Heroic Spirit he summoned, Heracles, is one of the strongest in human history, on par with Gilgamesh, and unlike Gilgamesh, he doesn't have any glaring weaknesses. Trained by Chiron, Heracles is a master of all types of combat, capable of crushing gods in close quarters and sniping targets from 20 kilometers away with a bow and arrow. Like Okita Souji and Sasaki Kojirou, he has perfected his skills to the level of Noble Phantasms, with his ultimate technique, Nine Lives: The Shooting Hundred Heads. Unlike Okita's and Kojirou's swordsmanship, Heracles can apply this technique to any weapon.

His Noble Phantasm, God Hand: Twelve Labors, which is derived from his legendary Twelve Labors, is so broken it's almost despair-inducing. Although classified as B-Rank, it's functionally an EX-tier cheat.

First, it's a super armor comparable to Siegfried's Armor of Fafnir. Aside from a few attacks that can bypass its defense, any attack below A-Rank won't harm Heracles' body at all.

Second, God Hand grants him the ability to resurrect after death. As the name implies, the Noble Phantasm gives him twelve lives. If you don't kill him twelve times in quick succession, you can't truly kill him. Moreover, if given enough time, his used-up resurrections will gradually recover.

But that's not all. It gets even worse—God Hand also gives Heracles resistance to any attack he's already endured. After being hit by a particular type of attack once, his resistance to that attack will drastically increase upon resurrection, no matter how strong or strange it is.

In simple terms, he has twelve lives, high resistance, high defense, and is practically immortal.

With an almost invincible body and godlike combat skills, it's no wonder even the three Olympian gods couldn't defeat him. In an endurance battle, almost no one can kill Heracles. At worst, he could just kite his enemies and wait for his resurrection count to replenish while building up resistance.

However, because of Acht's idiotic decision, Heracles lost his sanity. No matter how great his skills or techniques like Shooting Hundred Heads are, he can't use them anymore. And without those, how could he possibly use classic hit-and-run tactics? Even with high defense and multiple resurrections, so what? As long as he's not invincible, there are plenty of ways to kill him.

Before Shinji's transmigration, online communities had already come up with countless strategies for dealing with Heracles. The mighty demigod had been reduced to nothing more than a training dummy due to Acht's idiotic decisions. Shinji had been one of the many who researched ways to beat this dummy and had long since devised his strategy to take Heracles down. His contempt was built on absolute confidence. If that weren't the case, he wouldn't have let Medusa go.

Seeing an opportunity, Shinji began giving orders.

"Sakura, take Irisviel, Illyasviel, and those two vampires over there and retreat."

Even without his sanity, Heracles is still a top-tier Servant. Killing him will cause a big disturbance, so having enough space is essential.

"Saber, fall back. Let Shishou take over! She has a natural advantage against enemies with divinity—"

This was the first part of Shinji's plan. Heracles is the son of Zeus, with a divinity level as high as A, comparable to Karna's. Fortunately, Scathach has the perfect skill to counter divine beings—Godslayer, which functions similarly to Siegfried's Dragon Slayer. It greatly increases her attack power against divine beings or those with divine traits.

If Artoria's sword couldn't do the job, maybe a swing from Scathach could take one of Heracles' lives.

"Go search the area and see if you can find Berserker's Master. Once you do, bring them here."

This was the second part of the plan, a strategy applicable to all Servants. Servants depend on their Masters for existence. Without their Master, no matter how powerful the Servant is, they can't fully operate.

Berserker is already the hardest Servant class to control, requiring the most mana. Heracles' immense power only exacerbates this issue. Add the risk of losing control due to his Mad Enhancement, and there's no way the current Einzbern Master would be far from the battlefield. If they were too far, they would lose control of the rampaging giant.

Understanding Shinji's intentions, Artoria left without a word, exiting through the gap in the wall. It was at this moment that Shinji realized how much damage Heracles' night raid had done to the Emiya household. The once beautiful, traditional Japanese courtyard was half-destroyed, and the other half was on the verge of collapse. With Scathach entering the fray, Heracles, sensing the threat of his natural enemy, became even more frenzied, and his destructive urges grew stronger by the second.

Shinji had promised Kiritsugu that he'd look after the house while he was away, but now it was in ruins. This was why Rin and Gilgamesh overheard him complaining.

"Why is he still smashing things? Could it be they've lost control of him? Those Einzbern idiots! The house is ruined—how am I supposed to explain this to Kiritsugu?!"