Chapter 15
Gold and Lions II
The King of Heroes clad in golden armor—Gilgamesh the "judge"—was still standing where he had started on the roof of the church.
The church roof was pincushioned with Noble Phantasm and had collapsed in places, but the ward set on it must have been powerful, because it remained barely recognizable as a roof.
To a casual observer, it looked like a beautiful dance.
Tine and the other mages actually watching the scene through farseeing spells were captivated by the sight of Saber dancing in the gap between life and death with incredible speed.
It was a contest between kings, but it was certainly not equal. The golden king stood on high and the other king struggled to supplant him. Taken the other way round, it looked like a greater king passing judgment on a lesser one.
But that was why he charged. If they were both kings, then which of them was superior would change with time and circumstance. Their battle was a struggle for that height. One might call it the world's smallest-scale "war," waged between the kings' Spirit Origins.
Of course, one of those kings was armed with the innumerable Noble Phantasms that his subjects had made and he had collected. The other, in contrast, had only seven "supporters."
The golden king and judge showered Saber with attacks without ever dropping his guard. Nonetheless, the king once said to "have the heart of a lion" kept up his advance, pushing himself to even greater speeds as he narrowly avoided death.
Superhuman speed.
It was usual for a battle between Heroic Spirits to appear superhuman. Even taking that into account, however, Saber's swiftness was extraordinary.
Speed due to his fundamental abilities as a Heroic Spirit.
Speed boosted through magecraft.
Speed that could only be attributed to some kind of "divine protection" associated with anecdotes of his exploits and bestowed on him by the Throne.
By combining all of them, he darted this way and that across the cluster of buildings that had become his battlefield with singular speed even for a Heroic Spirit, circling as he slowly but steadily closed distance.
The Lionheart's advance, once begun, was like a gale scything across land and sea. The peerless speed of his march was so great that legend had it "only a general blessed with protection against wind had finally succeeded in halting it."
Incredibly, the Lionheart, said to have raced across the battlefield with three times the speed of an ordinary charge, at last drew close enough for his sword to reach his opponent.
"So, you have the insolence to stand before me."
As good as declaring that he had only just begun, the golden king leapt backward while firing his Gate of Babylon in an effort to put more distance between himself and Saber.
But his efforts gave Saber the perfect opportunity.
"Ex...calibur!"
Saber's sword shone, the arc of its swing becoming a massive band of light that flew at the airborne golden Archer.
"Not so fast!"
Gilgamesh materialized countless shields in front of him, dispersing the band of light.
"To think that you would strike at me with a mere imitation of a relic of the planet. Were we not in the middle of your trial, such folly would merit death, mongrel! ....Hm?"
When the scattered light dissipated and the countless floating shields scattered, Saber was no longer to be seen in front of the golden king.
As he landed, he sensed immense magical energy from behind him, lower down the slanted roof of the church. The golden Archer turned to look, his eyes narrowed, and saw Saber with his sword poised to strike.
"Ex...calibur!"
A second band of light was fired up the slope. It was blocked by the countless shields, as the first had been...but this strike was an order of magnitude more powerful. It pushed the shields back, lifting the golden king several meters into the air.
"How dare you..."
The golden king saw through the gaps in his shield wall that Saber was holding one of the Noble Phantasms that he himself had fired.
"I told you I was going to borrow them, didn't I?"
Saber, still clutching the long sword, instantaneously slipped in directly underneath his airborne foe and made radiance envelop the blade once more.
The first time he had released the true name of his Noble Phantasm, the decorative sword he had originally held had shattered with a single strike. The Noble Phantasm shrouded in the aura of the age of the gods, however, remained intact after his second true name release and retained its properties as his Noble Phantasm.
He unleashed magical energy in a third band of light.
The golden king deployed shields beneath him and blocked the attack, but he was pushed higher into the air.
Then came the fourth band of light.
Saber gave his opponent no time to recover and followed it with a fifth and a sixth slash of light aimed skyward from the church roof.
Even more frighteningly, the interval between strikes was steadily shrinking. By the time he got past his twentieth slash, they had become a massive, continuous band of light firing from the earth into the night sky.
As if to say that this, too, was both an infinite series of blows and a never-ending single strike.
X X
Several minutes earlier, the hospital's front parking lot
A short while earlier.
In the parking lot situated between the hospital and Main Street.
The area had been cleared of people, so there were hardly any cars parked in the moderately spacious lot and no obstacles up to the hospital entrance that John had been flung into.
The attack on John had triggered every police officer with strength to spare to spring into action at once. Each of them held a different Noble Phantasm. "Fake" Noble Phantasms—mere relics that had lost their original Mystery and magical energy, but whose legends had been overwritten by Caster.
It would be fair to say that they attacked with every trick they could think of—feints, sneak attacks from blind spots, and more. It could even be justly said that their teamwork had improved since their battle with Assassin at the police station.
And yet Archer, having stolen Berserker's Noble Phantasm and gain the power of a demon, did not even make an effort to dodge them or to deflect them with his weapon. He took every blade and projectile aimed at him, but they had no apparent effect.
"Shit... Is he the same as that Dead Apostle Jester...?" One of the officers ground his teeth.
Memories of the moment they had been crushed in the police station flashed through their minds. Faced with what was becoming a repeat of that defeat, the members of Clan Calatin never considered fleeing. If they retreated, they would lose their raison d'être called "justice."
Like John, they carried their chief's nearly-hypnotic words. That said, an honorable death was not what they wanted. They continued to think of ways they might stop the monster confronting them.
While they thought, the now-grotesque Archer advanced.
But every attack they aimed at his vitals was stopped by the cloth he wore. When they attacked his exposed arms and sides, in contrast, they felt their attacks connect, but never managed to reach the level of an effective blow.
On top of the cloth that completely nullified their attacks, his bare body's specs must have been extraordinary as well. Given that he had also absorbed the demon's power—although the police officers did not understand exactly what had happened—they supposed that his endurance and resistance to magical energy must have improved as a result.
In that case, did the enemy facing them have any weaknesses at all?
While the words "give up" ran through the officers' heads, the grotesque bowman was steadily advancing step by step.
"...? Why doesn't he just rush us?" One officer asked.
"Yeah," another answered, "he could probably knock all of us out of his way in no time..."
At that, a woman who had been coolly observing the situation from a short distance away—Vera Levitt, the police chief's aide-de-camp and effectively one of the leaders of Clan Calatin—said:
"He's probably on his guard."
She was a true mage as well as a police officer.
Although she had been born the younger daughter of a mage bloodline, her elder sister's Magic Circuits were poor, and so she had been brought up by her mother, who carried on the family's Magic Crest. Her elder sister Amelia worked in Snowfield as a doctor, still ignorant of the world of magecraft.
Because her lineage had cooperated in running this Holy Grail War, Vera, as the heir, had joined the war having inherited a portion of her mother's Magic Crest. It was an incomplete succession, given that the Crest transplant was not yet complete, but her strength stood out among Clan Calatin and it would be no exaggeration to call her the chief's right hand.
Her next action was to take a little glass test tube that did not match her modern gear from her belt of equipment. She threw it in front of the enemy bowman and fired at it with the peculiarly decorated revolver she held.
Her bullet accurately pierced the test tube. A moment later, a smokescreen spread over a wide area.
And no ordinary smokescreen—a smokescreen charged with magical energy of a randomly shifting nature. Call it jamming for magical energy perception.
Watching the dense smoke—which naturally also obscured his vision—spread, the bowman muttered in a low voice:
"...Impudence."
Then, he moved his enormous body in a great leap, avoiding the smoke.
Vera had read the situation correctly.
The grotesque bowman—Alkeides—was wary, not of the police force, but of other factors—Saber, who had appeared without warning, and the King of Heroes, who had entered combat with him. They were fighting each other for the moment, but there was no telling when they might turn their attacks on him. He could also sense another Heroic Spirit's Spirit Origin on Saber's side and the presence of the monster that had stopped his initial attack on the hospital with a "shield of water" had not vanished.
This was not a duel to be fought honorably; it was a never-ending melee in which one had to outwit one's opponents and could not afford to show even the least opening at one's back.
Alkeides understood that. He could slaughter the police force spreading out and attacking him in an instant, but he would have to proceed carefully to do it without creating an opening. That was because the police force possessed more than a certain level of power. What they had acquired, the resolve to risk their lives, had not been for nothing.
There were twenty-five police officers on the scene. The rest remained in the station to guard the chief and to gather information. The bowman's hellhound—Kerberos—had appeared just as they had been about to dispatch an advance team to their target's hospital room, so none of them had reached the hospital room yet.
"How many do we send to Kuruoka Tsubaki's room?"
"If the Servant possessing Kuruoka Tsubaki is hostile, a small team will end up dying for nothing," Vera whispered her opinion to a female officer with a bow Noble Phantasm. "I would have liked to send Berserker, who could have dealt with it alone, but..."
Berserker had suffered serious damage to his spirit origin and had likely withdrawn with the aid of Flat's Command Spells.
"...If the Servant is capable of understanding that Kuruoka Tsubaki is being targeted, it should take action to protect its Master. The fact that she still hasn't withdrawn from the hospital means that either it hasn't noticed what's happening, doesn't intend to protect her...or is confident that it can protect her without moving."
Vera, thinking that the latter would be preferable, produced another several test tubes and scattered them around her. No sooner had the tubes, thrown with the aid of magecraft, flown through the air to cover a wide area than bullets shattered all of them, spreading more smoke over the area.
Vera was about to order someone to scout out the hospital room, taking advantage of the delay, when...
"A wasted effort."
The grotesque Archer flapped the demon wings that grew from his back, kicking up a wind charged with dense magical energy around him. The wind carrying sinister magical energy formed a number of small whirlwinds and began to catch the smoke as if devouring it.
"How are we supposed to deal with this shit...?" One of the officers asked, his cheek twitching.
Despair began to spread across the officers' faces...when a lone figure dashed through the smokescreen.
"Stop! It's no use!"
The officers called out to restrain the figure. They could not see its face clearly through the windstorms and trailing smoke, but they could tell that it wore the same uniform as they did.
Alkeides judged it to be a reckless charge.
No matter what sort of attack the approaching police officer attempted, it would have no effect on him. If he struck with his bare fists, the blow would ignore the protection of the Nemean lion's pelt, but in that case the attack would not even scratch him unless it was charged with a great deal of magical energy.
If he drew his bow, both of his hands would be occupied for an instant. That would obviously present the other Heroic Spirits with an opening. The King of Heroes, in particular, was capable of sending a lethal strike his way even while crossing swords with Saber. Even a "stray shot" could prove fatal if it happened to strike a gap in the Nemean lion's pelt.
If he only possessed the Noble Phantasm that gave him twelve lives, which had been left before his metamorphosis, he would probably have given little thought to the possibility and drawn his bow with all his might...but his present did not merit leaving such an opening.
In that case, he decided, he need only brush the attacker aside with one blow of his arm, as he had done to that first brave officer whose neck he had shattered.
Alkeides raised his arm and waited for the police officer concealed by the darkness and smoke to approach him.
Then, that instant, he sense immense magical energy swell up behind him.
"!"
This magical energy... Saber.
The Saber who had been fighting with Gilgamesh must have fired some kind of Noble Phantasm. Sensing that its magical energy was aimed not at him, but at the sky, Alkeides did not take his eyes off the small threat closing in on him from the front. It was an action born of his refusal to drop his guard against even the weakest enemy.
No.
It was not that he did not look away.
He could not look away.
It was an effect produced by his "mind's eye."
It was not instinct.
His accumulated skill and experience, his honed senses, and the flesh and blood that comprised him all dominated his spirit and refused to let him look away.
It was not the other Heroic Spirits he ought to truly be wary of.
It was the lone police officer closing in on him.
Everything he had built up told him so.
The reason why would soon become clear.
Behind Alkeides, a pillar of light pierced the sky and illuminated the face of the approaching police officer before him. At the sight of that face, which appeared through a tear in the smokescreen created by the whirlwinds, Alkeides muttered:
"What...?"
It was unmistakably the face of the man whose neck he had broken and who he had sent flying into the hospital entrance a short while before.
"Ooooooaaah!"
The officer let out a wordless roar and kicked the ground.
His instantaneous acceleration exceeded Alkeides' expectations. His arm moved to block, but before it could reach, the man's slight frame sprang at Alkeides with the force of a bullet...and delivered a flying knee to the bridge of the grotesque Archer's cloth-covered nose with all his might.
"J-John?!" The police officers shouted in surprise.
The way John had been sent flying earlier had put the words "instant death" into most of their minds. He might have Magic Circuits, but he lacked the Magic Crest which only one child in a lineage could inherit. If he had had a Crest, which would have performed self-restoration magecraft when he was on the brink of death, it would have been a different story, but no one had imagined that John could survive without one, much less reappear so much stronger that he seemed like a different person.
But he had.
He had reappeared shrouded in magical energy that far surpassed that of an ordinary mage and made use of that energy to enhance his body and nerves severalfold.
John.
I see. So, this man's name is John.
Alkeides, despite taking the flying knee and being knocked backwards, coolly noted information about his opponent as he spun in midair and landed feet-first.
Those feet, however, were swept out from under him by John, who had circled around even farther behind him without his noticing.
"Oh-ho..."
Alkeides sounded impressed. He then caught himself with one arm on the ground and used his free arm to block John's follow-up attack. The shock ran through Alkeides' whole body with a creaking of flesh and bone.
John followed it with a series of bare-handed strikes, continuing to batter Alkeides without giving him a chance to ready his bow.
What happened? He's like a different man... Or should I say he's matured?
He had gone beyond the level of ordinary humans, even for a mage. The experience Alkeides had built up over his lifetime warned him that the power surging from the police officer before him rivaled the enemy generals he had fought in ancient Greece in brute strength.
Is it his Noble Phantasm? Did Caster do something?
Alkeides noted that his body was being damaged, but it was not enough to make him register danger. Compared to when the Amazon queen had struck him using her Noble Phantasm, the pain was like being punched by a child.
And yet...he regarded the man before him with the greatest possible caution.
Why? Alkeides wondered as he fended off the flurry of blows. Why was I wary of this man?
The vortex of magical energy that had sprung up behind him ought to have concerned him more than strikes like these. And yet everything he had accumulated was telling him not to take his eyes off this human.
His strength is certainly more than human, but it hasn't reached the level of a warrior Heroic Spirit.
So why, he wondered as he continued to take blow after blow. His attention was first drawn to the unnaturalness of his opponent's attacks.
...Why doesn't he use his right hand?
Throughout his flurry of unarmed strikes, the police officer called John never attacked with his right hand.
This difference in his center of gravity... A prosthetic?
While attacking and defending at split-second intervals, Alkeides instantaneously deduced the truth of his opponent's unnatural movements.
That being the case, he wondered what that prosthetic hand could be.
Does it conceal a weapon? If so, it won't penetrate this pelt.
No, this man should already know that. Should I assume that it conceals magecraft, then?
Alkeides focused every nerve in his body on John's right arm while evading his close-quarters attacks.
It must be some kind of—No, is it...?
He felt a presence. A slight presence—a unique magical energy, or perhaps a curse—was escaping from the man's prosthetic hand. The instant that presence, which retained faint vestiges of the Age of the Gods, tickled Alkeides' nostrils and skin...
A chill of fear ran down Alkeides' spine.
Having noticed it, his instincts as a Heroic Spirit made him freeze in shock for just an instant.
No matter how much his Spirit Origin changed, it had a special meaning for him. It was because he knew its dangers better than anyone, because he knew the terror of it better than anyone, that he himself had soaked his special arrowheads in it.
"Damn you...!"
The instant Alkeides shouted, John's right arm shone darkly...and a peculiarly shaped blade appeared from it, forming the back of his hand.
A black liquid writhed around the prosthetic blade like a curse with a will of its own. It was one of the greatest calamities and most awful curses of the Age of the Gods, one that had killed countless heroes and even driven a certain great hero to take his own life—Hydra venom.
The blade coiled in that incomparably fiendish toxin closed in on a gap in Alkeides' cloth.
Impossible!
Has it survived into this era?! That water snake shouldn't be able to exist on the surface anymore!
He felt keenly how naïve his thinking had been.
The mages of this era could not hold a candle to those of the Age of the Gods, but they were intelligent enough to wield its remnants. Considering that his own Master likewise harbored the toxic, cursed mud in his body, he should have considered the possibility that his enemies possessed Hydra venom.
Faced with a weapon capable of killing him, Alkeides gripped his bow and leapt backward with all his might.
"...! Hurry! To the hospital!" John shouted to his nearby fellow officers once he was sure Alkeides had distanced himself. "I'll buy as much time as I can! Secure the target while I do!"
"John... What happened to you?!"
"I don't really understand myself...but it looks like Mr. Caster pulled something off for me!"
John then made to dash off, as if to say that they could talk later...when a chill ran through his body this time, causing him to stop in his tracks in spite of himself.
"...?"
John strained his eyes, his whole body breaking out in a cold sweat.
The grotesque bowman stood over twenty meters ahead of him. The intimidating air rising from him had magnified severalfold.
John had no difficulty figuring out why—the bowman had nocked an arrow to his bow.
He had fired arrows several times before, but this was different. He was serious.
The grotesque bowman spoke, paying his respects to John, who was trying to advance in spite of the chill.
"You who possess the means to kill me,
"I acknowledge you as my foe."
X X
Crystal Hill, top floor
"Lord Gilgamesh!"
Tine, on the top floor of Crystal Hill, viewed the king who was her Servant, not through a farseeing spell, but with her naked eyes.
Gilgamesh was being forced upward to the height of their base on the building's top floor. His golden armor was completely engulfed in an even more radiant band of light and it was no longer possible to perceive his figure.
Not only Tine, but also the other nearby members of her tribe were wide-eyed.
The pillar of light that grew into the heavens from the church roof had ascended so high that its end could not be seen.
Not even the King of Heroes could be engulfed in that torrent of power and emerge unscathed.
Tine, sensing that, was on the verge of using a Command Spell to recall him... when she sensed Gilgamesh's magical energy swell within the pillar of light.
It might be more accurate to say that massive concentrations of magical energy had appeared around him.
It was the same thing that he had been doing all along.
Merely firing Noble Phantasms from his treasury out of empty space.
Only... the natures of the Noble Phantasms he deployed were a little different.
The myriad Noble Phantasms, although each shrouded in immense magical energy, formed a single, titanic surge that coiled around the torrent of light itself, dispersing the light by brute force.
The Noble Phantasms that he had so far fired monotonously now displayed complex movements like a gigantic serpent.
But Gilgamesh was not using magical energy to control his armaments—golden chains that reached out of thin air on all sides were entangling the swarms of Noble Phantasms and forcefully adjusting their trajectories.
Gilgamesh emerged from the dispersed light and, by gathering together the rain of Noble Phantasms, transformed them into a waterfall that plummeted earthward accompanied by a furious surge.
It was like a great, golden dragon devouring the light Saber unleashed as it advanced.
X X
The Church
Saber, who was continuing to fire his Noble Phantasm from the roof of the church, sensed that the magical energy he unleashed was being driven back.
Then, seeing the compressed swarm of Noble Phantasms bearing down on him, he could not keep sweat from beading on his forehead.
Gazing up at the oncoming dragon of Noble Phantasms, Saber closed his eyes for a moment... and, forcing an intrepid grin, poured his magical energy into his next strike.
X X
"What? What's going on...?"
Meanwhile, directly beneath Saber...
His Master, Ayaka, was inside the church, voicing her confusion.
As far as she could see out the windows, it looked like something on the church roof was glowing, but Ayaka, who was not a mage, had no way to make sure of what was taking place outside.
"Are you feeling all right, miss?" The overseer priest asked her quizzically.
"Huh...? Oh, now that you mention it, I do feel a little tired..."
"A little. I see..."
After a pause for thought, Hansa said:
"What are you, miss?"
"What?"
"The ability to provide a Heroic Spirit with that much magical energy isn't normal. At the very least, anyone short of a first-rate mage should have run dry by now, but you..."
"I don't know what you mean... I don't even really know what this 'magical energy' stuff is..."
Ayaka frowned, looking troubled. Hansa was observing her with great interest, when:
"No, we haven't got time for questions. You'd better get farther inside."
"...Why?"
"I'm strengthening the wards," the priest answered, staring up at the church's high ceiling, "but the roof is about to cave in."
"?!"
The next instant, a portion of the roof gave way and a figure dropped through the opening it left.
Ayaka narrowly avoided a direct hit from the rubble thanks to Hansa's yanking her arm.
Before the situation could penetrate her brain, however, a haughty man's voice rang out through the hole in the roof.
"I had intended to obliterate you along with the church. I suppose I should praise you for stopping me."
It was a man in golden armor.
His armor was cracked in places, but his arms were crossed imperturbably and he was looking down at the center of the rubble piled in the middle of the church.
"What...?"
The instant Ayaka laid eyes on the man, she felt as if her brain had just received a violent jolt.
The instant she laid eyes on his face, to be precise.
She had a feeling that she had seen a similar face years before.
And in a church like that one.
When she tried to remember, noise ran through her thoughts.
Her brain buzzed... the noise was even in her vision. And in the gaps it made, a girl in a red hood appeared.
"Eee..."
Ayaka tried to clutch her head, but then she realized.
Why had the man in golden armor been speaking to the center of the rubble?
"I suppose I should praise you for stopping me."
Who had stopped him?
Ayaka tried to think, but the answer came to her at once.
She had recognized the thing in the center of the rubble.
For an instant, Ayaka had mistaken the figure with numerous swords and spears sprouting from its body for part of the rubble. It was unquestionably... Saber, who had so recently walked beside her, making friendly conversation.
While his heart and head were intact, his stomach, shoulders, and thighs were impaled by a number of weapons—enough to kill an ordinary human.
"Sa...ber...?"
The instant she recognized him, both the noise and the red-hooded girl vanished from her sight.
She nearly sank to the floor, but caught herself at the last moment and attempted to approach Saber.
She was tripped up by the rubble, however, and fell.
The man on the roof, seemingly oblivious to Ayaka, continued to address Saber.
"You could have avoided those wounds, had you dodged. Did you intend to protect this church? I ought to execute you for your hubris, but you did succeed in cancelling out a single strike. For the moment, you have my praise."
At that, Saber, who had thus far remained motionless, moved sluggishly and twisted his lips into a grin as he answered the man on the roof.
"You...honor me," Saber said, still breathing feebly and looking up at the golden Heroic Spirit. "I can't believe you'd destroy a church. Don't blame me if God has something to say about it."
"Absurd. I had my fill of the wrath of the god long ago."
"Gods... I see, you're a polytheist... And the way you talk... Ha ha. So, you... No, you two are the 'primordial travelers'..."
Saber laughed, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth.
"Mongrel...what do you hold within you?" The golden Heroic Spirit looked at him and asked haughtily, without anger or disdain.
"...? What...do you mean?"
"I do not mean your retinue. I mean the foundation of your Spirit Origin."
The man on the roof continued to speak dispassionately to the feebly-breathing Saber.
"In any case, it seems you still lack a reason to fight. To challenge me with that attitude is the height of hubris, mongrel. If dubious desires are all you can muster in the face of my treasure, then perish while all you harbor within you rots."
He did not even uncross his arms, but ripples formed in the space above him.
"I will deliver my verdict. Have you any last words?"
"...I'd like to say no...but yes... The girl who shared her magical energy with me isn't my Master... I just drained her energy..."
Ayaka had staggered to her feet. Saber's words made her eyes widen. She realized what he was going to say next.
Stop.
Don't say it.
She tried to speak, but he throat refused to function.
She was breathing raggedly and on the verge of falling again when Saber said, with a smile:
"She hasn't opposed you...so don't be harsh on her."
"Very well, but do not forget that I will only grant her consideration. If she turns out to be worthless, I will simply blow her away, just like the other rabble."
Then, the armored man slowly raised his hand and made to conclude his words to Saber.
"Mongrel, I judge you—"
His sentence, however, was never finished.
An instant later, the Heroic Spirit in golden armor was...
X X
Several minutes earlier, on Main Street
"Is that...John?"
The man who had appeared and saved them was their colleague who, moments before, had been sent flying with a broken neck.
His sudden display of superhuman activity seemed to declare that he had truly been "reborn." The members of Clan Calatin were seized by confusion.
Vera's clear, ringing voice cut through their hesitation.
"Front line, fall back and shield the rear line! Rear line, support John with everything you've got!"
The barked orders from the normally quiet Vera snapped them back to awareness.
The officers each readied their own Noble Phantasm and surrounded John and the grotesque bowman in the positions she had ordered.
Far from support, those with close-ranged weapons would only be a hindrance against the bowman.
So, the officers judged that they ought to leave it to the long-ranged attackers in the rear line to serve as a distraction. And if that really was John, he ought to know how to coordinate with the rear line.
They planned to support John, and in the meantime find an opportunity to send half of their number inside the hospital as he wished...but several arrows launched by their enemy shattered their formation in an instant.
A burly officer a large shield Noble Phantasm tried to block one, but the instant the arrow struck, a shock like a blast from an adhesive grenade ran through the surface of the shield and launched him backward.
And the bowstring had not even been pulled fully taut.
The arrow had been just one of several diversionary shots fired without leaving an opening.
The officers were painfully aware that the only reason they, along with the city around them, had not been reduced to scraps of meat was that the Heroic Spirit had reason and, either by his Master's order or on his own initiative, was making some effort to maintain the Concealment of Mystery.
When he had first arrived with Kerberos, they had assumed he was a marauder without an ounce of concern for such things, but he was actually the opposite.
As far as that Heroic Spirit was concerned, using a beast like Kerberos to simply devour his enemies' flesh did more to preserve the Concealment of Mystery than fighting seriously himself would.
"Doesn't he have any weaknesses?!" One of the officers shouted.
It was true that John was moving on par with a Heroic Spirit, but his opponent's strength far exceeded their expectations of Heroic Spirits.
They had assumed that such strength must be unique to Gilgamesh and possibly the other Heroic Spirit—thought to be Lancer—who had clashed with the King of Heroes on the first day, but they were realizing too late that they had been naïve.
Still, they had known from the beginning that their abilities would not measure up to a Heroic Spirit's.
They needed to support John—who was likewise outside their calculations—and at least force the bowman to retreat.
The bowman must realize that wiping out the officers would not allow him to attack their Master or Servant directly.
In which case, at minimum, they only needed to convince him that it would not be worth it to continue.
Those were the thoughts running through the minds of more than a few officers...
When they realized that there was another police officer, apart from John, behind the grotesque bowman.
"!"
The officers wanted to shout at him to follow Vera's orders, but raising their voices would only alert their enemy.
When they focused their attention on the officer to see who was ignoring orders...they realized.
Before they knew it, the one officer behind the bowman had become two, who then soon became four.
It was not one of them.
It was none other than the Heroic Spirit who had been battling the archer in the guise of a police officer shortly before—the Servant Berserker.
Berserker—Jack the Ripper—had become a swarm of police officers.
Those officers, whose ranks had swelled noiselessly to sixteen, attempted to launch a surprise attack on their enemy's rear to support John.
But they were easily scattered.
Without turning to face them, the bowman twisted the grotesque wings that sprouted from his back and sliced through the first several Jacks who sprang at him.
"...So, you can still move."
The bowman spoke without looking behind him, in a tone that was equal parts admiration and exasperation.
While he spoke, he continued to fend off John's attacks with his bow.
The superhuman sense that had allowed him to deal with Jack approaching silently from behind him was truly worthy of the name "Mind's Eye," one of the remaining Jacks thought and called out:
"I'm impressed that you can use your newly stolen wings so well."
Other Jack's lunged at the bowman as he spoke.
The new Jacks no longer even had the appearance of police officers. They were an assortment of ordinary townspeople, doctors, the young and old, men and women.
Possibly Jack could no longer afford the effort to keep his appearances uniform. The Jacks looked like a pitiful human crowd gathered to assault a demon out of legend, or else to throw themselves on its mercy.
"Absurd."
Ultimately, Jack's power was not even what it had been earlier. Their movements were sluggish.
The bowman seemed to realize that, because he kept the majority of his attention on the human police officer in front of him.
An instant later, however, his assessment changed completely.
Countless black arms grew from Jack's shadows and coiled around the bowman's body.
"Hm...?"
Shadows.
He was surrounded by a jet-black vortex that seemed to swallow even the darkness of night.
Having recognized it as magecraft, the bowman—Alkeides—let his attention range around the area while continuing to deflect the police officer’s prosthetic hand with his bow.
He discovered a distortion in the scenery.
It was a crude illusion. No ordinary person would ever have seen through it, but it was obvious to a Heroic Spirit of Alkeides’ caliber.
“...So, you’ve come out of your hole, mage.”
Alkeides judged that it was Berserker’s Master and immediately grasped what the shadows meant.
They were merely a diversion.
If they had been a type of magecraft that inflicted direct harm, he would have been impervious to them.
It would be a different story if his adversary were a mage from the Age of Gods, but assuming that Berserker’s Master was a human mage and not a Heroic Spirit, that was impossible.
According to intelligence supplied by his own Master, Bazdilot Cordelion, Berserker’s Master was a genius from the headquarters of the Mages Association known as the Clock Tower. As long as he was a modern mage, however, his magecraft was nothing to fear, and the mage ought to be equally aware of that.
In which case, he ought to regard the shadows as a diversion.
As a matter of fact, Alkeides was aware that in his current situation, with multiple Heroic Spirits in his vicinity, a diversion was far more dangerous than any half-baked attack.
Accordingly, he made his next move with care.
“...Peck.”
That softly muttered word became a weighty curse scattered over the area.
John and the Berserkers were forced to retreat before the force of a horizontal swipe of his great bow.
Alkeides took advantage of that momentary opportunity to fire the multiple arrows in his hand at once.
In the twinkling of an eye, the shafts metamorphosed into birds of war with bronze beaks and talons, which launched themselves at the distortion in space on the sidewalk down Main Street.
The distortion was torn at each pass of the magical-energy-shrouded birds, revealing the figure of a young man in what had appeared to be empty space.
“Whoa! P-P-Play ball!”
The young man disturbed the surrounding air currents to avoid the birds’ attacks while hastily erected a mystical barrier.
A mighty shot from Alkeides, however, threaded through the whirlwind-scattered birds and pierced the pit of the young man’s stomach.
“...”
The avatar of destruction had torn its way through without regard for strong winds or mystical barriers.
It had accurately annihilated the young man’s core, shattering the surrounding flesh and bone as it destroyed his organs.
“Master!” Berserker cried from behind Alkeides.
“Flat!”
The police officer called John shouted the mage’s name as well.
His shout reminded Alkeides that the name in the information his Master had supplied him had been Flat Escardos and assured himself that he had disposed of Berserker’s Master.
The Magic Crest marked onto the mage’s body might activate automatically, force his fatal wounds to heal, and revive him, but Alkeides would not give it the time for that. He had already fired a second and a third arrow to destroy the mage’s entire body, Crest and all. The birds, which had gotten free of the gale, had also begun to peck at it.
However...
Just as the destruction was about to begin, the young man’s body began to fade like mist.
“What...?”
For a moment, Alkeides suspected an illusion, but he was quickly proven wrong.
He had definitely felt the “birds,” which were a part of his Noble Phantasm and linked to him by paths of magical energy, pierce his enemy’s body.
But it was a fact that the corpse was vanishing, almost like a Heroic Spirit’s.
Alkeides’ primary focus shifted to the question of the Master he had killed for only a few seconds.
And in those few second... he was completing his complex and bizarre spell.
“...Game select.”
The voice came from right beside Alkeides.
From among the Berserkers who had become corpses in that short time.
In the midst of that pile, one body Alkeides could not remember slaying moved its mouth and hands and rapidly performed magecraft.
A moment later... one of the arrows Alkeides had nocked burst, causing his now-grotesque frame to stagger for an instant.
Impossible.
Alkeides immediately realized what had been done to him.
The current of magical energy necessary to activate the Stymphalian Birds, part of his Noble Phantasm, King’s Order, had been tampered with and made to short-circuit.
That, however, was only the beginning of the spell.
“Ngh...!”
Just as he tried to regain his footing, he was struck by another wild burst of magical energy.
Alkeides was not a mage, but as his body was itself a mass of magical energy, every vein and nerve in it could be called a Magic Circuit.
All of them had become fuses and were setting off surges of uncontrolled magical energy one after another in a chain reaction.
Magical energy burst in his lean, steely arms.
Magical energy burst in the toes of his feet, so well-honed that they sometimes became blades.
Magical energy burst in the veins that ran throughout his body, deep and strong as the roots of the world tree.
Magical energy burst in his beautifully woven nerves.
Magical energy burst in each of his alveoli before he even had a chance to breathe.
Magical energy burst behind his eyeballs, hidden by his cloth.
Magical energy burst in part of his brain stem.
It burst, and burst, and burst...
The interval between bursts of magical energy grew shorter and shorter until at last he felt a massive explosion of magical energy near his heart.
He could not distinguish the pain from the heat of it.
Half of the wings on his back and the horns on his head snapped off. There was even an explosion of magical energy in the hand that held his bow, tearing off several of his thick talons.
The magical energy ran out of control inside his body as well, shredding parts of his organs.
But his Spirit Origin, once renowned as a great hero, was to be feared.
“...No!”
With a shout of effort, he stamped his foot down onto the street and poured his rampaging magical energy into the earth.
A moment later, the asphalt lifted in patches all along the street, which ran for several hundred meters, and ruptured pipes shot fountains of earth and water into the air in unison.
Many Heroic Spirits might have burst entirely at that point, but he had held his body together by the force of his sheer physical strength.
Even so, the resulting damage was extraordinary.
The backlash had torn up the street around him and a number of cars that had been parked along it were overturned and half scrapped.
Alkeides’ insides, however, had suffered far greater damage than the cars.
It would ordinarily be inconceivable for a single mage to inflict such damage on a Heroic Spirit.
Alkeides’ Spirit Origin, with its extraordinarily powerful Anti-Magic, was impervious to modern magecraft.
Meaning... it had backfired.
There was one part of his Spirit Origin whose Anti-Magic was weak.
It was also a part of Berserker, meaning that a path of magical energy had linked it to the young man who had until recently been its Master.
The mage had introduced a spell that disturbed the flow of his magical energy through the power of the Noble Phantasm he had stolen from Berserker—the part of him that had transformed into a demon, a kind of phantasmal.
Even so, it was no easy feat.
Unless the mage had a complete grasp of the complex flow of his magical energy in this condition, it would be impossible.
Meaning that he had accomplished that.
“I had to get this close for it to work,” the mage who had been hiding among the crowd of Berserkers said, revealing a relieved smile.
The Berserker corpses around him began to vanish. At the same time, the corpse of the mage Alkeides had just shot through disappeared completely.
It had been Berserker in the form of the mage Flat Escardos.
Circumstance piled on circumstance dulled Alkeides’ mind’s eye for an instant.
And that momentary unbalance... created a fatal opening.
A roar struck Alkeides’ ears.
It signaled that the police officer called John had poured all his strength into a desperate strike... and by the time it reached his ears, John was already upon him.
The blow momentarily broke the sound barrier.
It created a shockwave that sent Flat and the nearby rubble flying.
It took just an instant.
An impact ran through Alkeides’ side, feeling so weak to him that he almost doubted it.
It may have been a supersonic blow from a prosthetic hand transformed into a Noble Phantasm, but that was all it could do to Alkeides’ superhuman physique.
As a matter of fact, the impact had broken off the prosthetic hand’s blade at the base and the recoil had sent John tumbling to the ground several meters away.
But it had been enough.
John had put all his might into that blow of his prosthetic hand—a thrust of a blade dripping with hydra venom.
It would have been a fatal wound to almost any Heroic Spirit... but there was a reason it ate into Alkeides’ Spirit Origin with especial ferocity.
Death.
The pure curse of deadly poison.
The thing that had once driven Alkeides to end his own life coursed through his veins.
As it entered his body, Flat spoke the phrase that concluded his spell, signaling that his stratagem was complete.
“...Game over.”
He had created an opening for John, who possessed a strike worthy of being called final.
The steps he had taken to produce that moment of time were simple and obvious.
He had offered up his soul.
He had offered it to a Heroic Spirit of the Caster Class, whom he had known for only a few minutes.
X X
“My specialty as a Heroic Spirit is tinkering with tools that have a bit of notoriety and whip ‘em up into Noble Phantasms... but I don’t get many chances to work on a real Heroic Spirit.
“You see, I’d need the owner’s consent for that, which is normally a no-go.
“But when the pieces fall into place, an ‘exception’ comes out tasting the best.
“Basically, I’m gonna fiddle around with your ability to ‘become anyone’ and elevate it.
“I’ll make it so that you can turn into strangers even more perfectly.
“Of course, it’s up to you whether your Master counts as a stranger.”
Alexandre Dumas’ proposal had been quite a tradeoff.
It was to temporarily enhance Jack the Ripper’s abilities by combining one of his Spirit Origin’s skills, Thousand Faces, and his Noble Phantasm, Natural Born Killers, with one more “ingredient”—the essence of his Master, Flat Escardos.
It was a metaphor, of course; Dumas did not chop Flat up and toss him in a pot.
Still, for the Master and Servant whose links of magical energy Dumas strengthened and whose beings he artificially intermingled, it was equivalent to being thrown in a blender and turned into a mixture of ground meat.
For the Master, it meant having his own nature mixed with the Spirit Origin of a “killer.” It was impossible to foresee what side- and after-effects it might have. He might lose his magecraft, or unconsciously commit murders, drawn along by episodes associated with the Heroic Spirit Jack the Ripper.
There was no end to the conceivable negatives... but Flat had agreed without hesitation.
Jack had been fortified by Dumas’ Noble Phantasm and gained the ability to become the mage Flat Escardos down to the last detail, including his magecraft.
X X
Before they knew it, the pillar or light that had reached into the sky had vanished, and in its place, part of the church that had been its base had collapsed.
As darkness engulfed the area, a grave, but quiet voice rang out.
“...Why?” Alkeides asked Berserker, the poisoned blade that had broken off John’s prosthetic arm still buried in his side.
Alkeides understood that Berserker had used a perfect disguise to make him mistake Berserker’s Master’s location, although not how they had accomplished that, but that did not dispel his doubts.
“If you can completely become your Master, you could just as easily have done so and worked the spell on me yourself. Why did you risk your Master on the battlefield?”
Berserker, in the form of a police officer, answered:
“Simple. No matter how completely I become my Master, there are things I can never possess.”
At that, Alkeides shifted his gaze to Berserker’s Master, Flat Escardos, who was just picking himself up off the ground.
A second of the Command Spells on the back of his left hand was faded.
Alkeides realized that it had been the “final push” behind the spell that had sent his magical energy out of control.
“...So, you repurposed one of your own Command Spells.”
Command Spells only affected Servants contracted to their user.
It was impossible to overturn that principle and enforce a command on someone else’s Servant... but by skillfully rewriting its immense magical energy and using it to “hack” the path of magical energy that linked Alkeides to his Master... Flat had forced him to run a spell equivalent to ordering him to take his own life with a Command Spell.
“Well... I guess it was kind of a gamble... Your Master already used all their Command Spells, right, Mr. Archer? If they had even one left, I think I would have bounced off the strength of that connection.”
Seeing Flat smile that he had been lucky with a look of relief, Alkeides realized how abnormal the young man was.
“I see. I never expected you to have the ‘sight’ to perceive so much...”
Then, he muttered to himself in a voice too low for Flat to hear:
“So... it’s you.”
“?”
Flat looked puzzled, but Alkeides did not answer his unspoken question.
He had realized... that ‘death’ was eating into his body.
A “death” that had been enough to drive the human shell and soul from that hateful man, the “glory of god,” who had once been his other half.
Alkeides looked at the blade stuck in his side and then at John, the owner of the broken prosthetic hand.
To John, who still trying to rise, Alkeides said:
“Well done, child of man, my brother who rejects divine rule and stands on his own feet.”
There was a sound of spilling liquid—dark blood had dripped from under the cloth that covered the grotesque bowman’s face.
“If the power you were given had been a divine blessing, I would have slain you at once, but the power coursing through you is born of man and earth. The gods had no hand in it. And so, I praise this world, this age. You may have used the water serpent’s venom, but I congratulate you on producing a technique to destroy me while rejecting divine aid.”
Was his calm speech the mark of a Heroic Spirit who realized his end was near and meant to meet it with dignity?
John was under the illusion that it was, until Alkeides continued:
“And... I pity you, hero.”
“What...?”
Alkeides’ side was eaten away by the venom, melting into a black wound before John’s puzzled gaze...
But an instant later, the jet-black toxin was consumed by “mud” of an even more sinister hue.
“What?!”
The police officers, Flat, and the Berserkers froze in spite of themselves.
The mud-like mass of magical energy that welled up from Alkeides’ body enveloped the Hydra venom as if to consume it, to consume “death” itself, and was then sucked back into the wound.
“If I had merely thrown off the robe of godhood, I would have suffered and then gone to my rest.”
The poisoned wound that eaten so deep it exposed his ribs and hipbone vanished, leaving his body fully restored in its place.
“Before my Spirit Origin twisted, I would have been willing to fall to that scratch. This venom alone may have been able to eat through all of my countless lives.”
Then, he stood before the speechless John and declared:
“But... we have both been unfortunate.”
There seemed to be a faint hint of resignation in his voice, but it immediately turned to anger.
“I have lost my twelve lives... but know that you cannot vanquish me, afflicted as I am with vile mud, with deadly venom.”
With rage, not at John and the others, but at himself, at limitless “power” itself, Alkeides bellowed as if pronouncing a curse.
“It will take more than venom to dye my corrupted blood... the flames of vengeance that my soul harbors!”
Then, his magical energy overflowed.
It was a writing of magical energy, but it became a physical wind that buffeted the bodies of all nearby.
A vortex of magical energy stained a dark red swept over the area. It was as if Alkeides had become a monstrous tornado.
The familiars that had been observing the battle were blown away. Magic Circuits screamed. The mere touch of the wind drove some to their knees.
Alkeides had not done anything.
This was the result of his mere presence.
“He wasn’t even... taking this seriously...” One of the officers muttered with a look tinged with despair.
“No, he was,” a Berserker answered with a wry grin.
“Until now, he’s been seriously scouting things out... I suppose. He’s been wary of everything around him.”
He was also wearing a look that said there was nothing more to be done and clearly considering how to make an escape with his Master.
“That was why we had to kill him completely here... before he devoted his full power to his murderous impulses.”
A moment later, Alkeides sprang into action.
His target, however, was neither the police force nor Berserker.
As if to say that they were now beneath his notice, the lone avenger kicked the earth.
That kick carried Alkeides high into the air... where he drew back the arrow he had nocked and loosed it without hesitation.
Loosed it at the Archer who, shrouded in an aura of divinity, was at that moment about to pass judgment on Saber.
X X
On Top of the Church
Gilgamesh stood on section of the roof that had narrowly avoided collapse and looked down on Saber, who lay drenched in blood on a pile of rubble.
“Mongrel, I judge you—”
He was about to deliver a verdict, not as a king, but as a “judge,” when a tempest of dark-red magical energy swirled around him and an intense bloodlust bore down on him.
“...How boorish,” Gilgamesh tutted with an icy expression, halting his judgment in mid-sentence.
Space rippled and Noble Phantasms launched out of Gate of Babylon to intercept the oncoming arrow.
“If I were here as a king, I would dismiss this as a jester’s antics, but if you interrupt my judgment, I will eliminate you.”
Then, he slowly turned and addressed Alkeides, the Archer-cum-Avenger who had alighted on the opposite edge of the church.
“I see you have been unmasked, clown. I will permit you to remove your cloth as well,” Gilgamesh continued, as if to say that the dark-red magical energy shrouding his opponent’s body was of no concern to him. “I would look on your tear-stained face.”
“...My tears have long since run dry. I shed them all that day when the divine tyrants took everything from me.”
“So, you drip mud from your eyes instead? I see you’ve brought quite an eyesore... I shall make the organizers of this ritual pay for defiling the Grail, one of my treasures, with mud sullied with a mongrel’s obsession.”
After insinuating that he had perceived the nature of the red-black, mud-like magical energy, Gilgamesh asked Alkeides, as if to test him:
“So, what will you do now? You could say that coming for my head while you still have strength to spare was the right choice, although impertinent... but do you really believe I cannot dispel your paltry corruption?”
“...Mighty king, it is true that corruption would be nothing to you if you made use of your treasures.”
In contrast to the immense vortex of magical energy swirling around him, Alkeides was unsettlingly calm and relaxed.
His arms hung loose at his sides. His right hand lightly clutched his bow.
And yet, his untensed limbs were pregnant with an ominous sense that they might become decapitating blades at any moment.
“But... feeble warrior, it is not corruption that will slay you.”
“Oh?”
“It is... the corpse drowned in that mud.”
X X
Between the two Heroic Spirits was the massive pit created by the collapse of the church roof.
“Ah... What a shame,” Saber muttered, watching the two presences squaring off above him. “A big war is about to start, and it looks like I’m going to miss out...”
“Idiot!” Ayaka, who had practically crawled up the rubble, shouted in a low voice. “This is no time to be worrying about things like that. We need to get out of here...!”
“Yes. Sorry, Ayaka. I meant to keep the church safe... but I slipped up just a little.”
“You want to brush this off as ‘a little’?! Listen, you need first aid... The church must have bandages or something...”
“...Trying to heal a Heroic Spirit with bandages...? I guess you really... aren’t a mage.”
The blood-covered Saber gave Ayaka a wry grin.
“Besides... your concern... is far better medicine...”
“This is no time for jokes! We have to at least get away from here.”
Ayaka grabbed Saber’s arm and tried to lift him on her shoulder.
“Oh, hang on... Accepting that kind of help from a subject I’m meant to protect... would be a disgrace as both a knight and a king...”
“Your name was mud the minute you started hanging out with me! Now hurry!”
“Causing you to disparage yourself like that... is a disgrace... as a Heroic Spirit...”
Saber somehow struggled to his feet unaided and, as if to say that his heart, at least, was unbroken, forced a pained smile and said:
“Of course... after getting us into this situation... I can’t complain if you tell me I’m not fit to be a Servant...”
X X
The words Saber muttered atop the mountain of rubble naturally failed to reach the Heroic Spirits above him.
“I may already be a corpse, but my sins are eternal.”
Having declared himself a dead man, Alkeides took a step forward.
“And so, I shall consign my body and soul to the seat of oblivion that drifts in Hades.”
A nonchalant step.
Nonetheless, his opponent, the King of Heroes, recognized it as a weighty step, charged with Alkeides’ whole being.
“My great foe and pitiful fellow, dance along with my mad rush.”
Then, Alkeides, his posture still relaxed, spoke with force.
“...Nine Lives.”
At almost the same instant Gilgamesh deployed his Gate of Babylon, Alkeides fired his bow.
Hundreds of Noble Phantasms were fired.
Not the weak Noble Phantasms that Gilgamesh had attacked with during their confrontation in the wasteland—each and every one of these would be sure to smash his opponent’s Spirit Origin.
If they had been fired with conceit, the myriad Noble Phantasms would have fallen as a rain of vicious bloodlust with no thought for efficiency or any other consideration.
Now that he was standing on the same land as his friend Enkidu, however, Gilgamesh had no conceit.
His onslaught consisted of accurate Noble Phantasms aimed precisely at the parts of Alkeides’ body that the Nemean Lion’s pelt did not cover. It was a lethal swarm that would have obliterated any ordinary Heroic Spirit.
And yet, the rapid barrage of arrows that Alkeides fired while leaping to one side were downing those Noble Phantasms by matching them shot for shot.
Each arrow shot down multiple Noble Phantasms, but even more shocking than their force were their unusual trajectories and the speed of the barrage.
Alkeides was nocking two or three arrows at once and drawing his bow too fast for the eye to follow.
And that was not all. His arrows changed trajectory in midair as if each shaft had a will of its own, precisely shooting down Gilgamesh’s oncoming Noble Phantasms.
Those he could not completely evade, he blocked with the pelt by twisting his body, nullifying them.
Seeing the pelt undamaged, the King of Heroes snorted and made his next move.
“I shall personally assess...”
A large distortion in space formed beside him.
“...how well that pelt of yours can recognize the work of man.”
From the air to his left, blazing white flames.
From the air to his right, shining silver liquid.
To be precise, the liquid itself was colorless, but the moisture in the air around it froze instantly, giving it the appearance of a silvery gleam.
As they were in the King of Heroes’ treasury, both fire and liquid must have been human creations.
They were joined by manmade thunderbolts, and the storm of fire, ice, and lightning assailed Alkeides.
“...”
Alkeides, for his part, drew his bow back especially far.
The longbow bent back. Just as it seemed about to snap in two, it was released... and “it” took form in the sky above the church.
It was nine arrows shrouded in ominous magical energy whose twisting trajectories looked like titanic serpents.
They covered the sky over Main Street like the Hydra of legend, devouring not only the onrushing Noble Phantasms, but flame, cold, and even lightning alike.
Had the bowman been his proper self, his shots would have been shrouded not in the sinister, mud-like magical energy, but in pure divinity.
It was originally a culmination of skill and divinity said to be “clad in dragons.”
That Noble Phantasm, which unleashed with a sword, it was a breathless dance of nine strikes and with a spear a series of nine blows, was no secret art passed down from father to son. It was a myth that the great hero had created and perfected alone.
The shafts he fired having become a disciple of vengeance, however, raced between the skyscrapers with appearances that suggested vipers or evil dragons.
And, as if to declare that the gleaming gold King of Heroes would be their final prey, the nine outspread great serpent heads bore down on him.
“Hydra venom? It may be the way of the world for a king to be served poison, but you lack artistry, mongrel.”
He paused his barrage of Noble Phantasms and caused another ripple in the air in front of him, preparing to open a door for a new treasure.
“I hate to take snakes into my treasury, but I already have venom to match yours.
“Along with its flesh, blood, and antivenom.”
X X
“You can win, Lord Gilgamesh... I know you can...!”
Tine, who had been watching the clash from the top floor of the casino hotel, instinctively clenched her fists.
The grotesque bowman who called himself Alkeides must be one of the most dangerous opponents in this Holy Grail War.
But what Tine saw of the exchange convinced her that her own Servant, Gilgamesh, would triumph. He seemed to be deflecting all of his opponent’s attacks, and these nine bowshots that seemed to be a Noble Phantasm must be one of Alkeides’ trump cards.
Judging from circumstantial evidence, Alkeides possessed a Noble Phantasm that stole his opponent’s Noble Phantasm, which smacked of foul play. But the way things were going, Gilgamesh would not even need to draw Ea, the Sword of Rupture, to unleash Enuma Elish, so there would be no risk of its being stolen.
More than anything else, it was Gilgamesh’s attitude, which betrayed not an ounce of fear or distress, that made Tine feel relieved.
“I would expect no less, my king...!”
The words Tine could not suppress were not those of a mage seeking to reclaim her land.
They were the words of a child who had yet to fully mature, entranced by the King of Heroes’ radiance.
Tine Chelk had forgotten.
Forgotten that while she was a retainer of the King of Heroes, she was also Gilgamesh’s Master.
And Tine was unaware that, however great and exalted a being the Gilgamesh might be, even if the King of Heroes abandoned conceit and carelessness...
The Holy Grail War was not so soft that it could be won without Master and Servant fighting as a team.
X X
Just as Gilgamesh was readying a Noble Phantasm to intercept the nine arrows shrouded in grotesque, dark-red magical energy that were closing in on him...
The distortions in space that had spread out around him suddenly vanished.
“...What?”
At that, Gilgamesh frowned for the first time.
The disappearance of the distortions in space pointed to a single fact.
The gates to the treasury of Babylon that held every last one of the king’s treasures, to the vault said by some to still exist somewhere in the world and by other to exist in other space entirely, had all shut.
Gilgamesh himself, of course, would not do such a thing.
But was there anyone else who could?
It was impossible.
In the fractions of a second it took Gilgamesh to reach that conclusion, the hero-slaying poisoned arrows were still closing in on him.
But this Gilgamesh was neither conceited nor careless.
Refusing to despair so soon, he attempted to bring the Noble Phantasms he had already fired to bear to counter them, when...
“— __ — _ — _ — ____ — __ —”
“It” bore a strange resemblance to the song of the earth that Enkidu had sung on the first day.
“It” resounded throughout Snowfield without warning, becoming a cacophony that scrambled the brains of everyone there.
What set “it” apart from Enkidu was the timbre.
“It” was not a beautiful singing voice ringing out in praise of the land and its people...
“It” was the resentful roar of a twisted monster that seemed to curse the whole world.
X X
Tine witnessed the look on Gilgamesh’s face in that moment through her farseeing spell.
“What...?”
For an instant, she did not believe her eyes.
The look on Gilgamesh’s face reflected in them was one she had never seen on him before.
At first glance, it was close to his look of surprise when he had sensed Enkidu’s presence.
Except for his eyes.
Unbelievably, his eyes were tinged with an emotion that the King of Heroes must never show.
An emotion ordinarily seen in the eyes of the King of Heroes’ opponents when they looked at him.
His eyes expressed shock, irritation, hesitation... and the faintest tinge of fear.
Everyone who witnessed that sight, momentary though it was, reached the same conclusion.
The instant he heard that roar, the King of Heroes had flinched.
Impossible.
It’s not true. My eyes are playing tricks on me.
Tine did not even have time to finish her thought before her farseeing spell showed her a tragedy.
The instant that one of the arrows bearing down on the King of Heroes pierced his shoulder.
X X
“Ngh...!”
It had barely missed his vitals.
But with a poisoned arrow, that hardly mattered.
The other arrows, which he had evaded, were closing in on him.
His treasury refused to open.
The one arrow impact had unbalanced him.
And the swarm of arrows was bearing down on him with too much force for him to deflect with his sword.
With nothing more to be done, a second and third shaft pierced the King of Heroes’ arm and leg.
The remaining arrows would be sure to strike vital points.
That instant, when it seemed to everyone that the King of Heroes was about to fall in a shocking upset... a “spears of earth” flew out of nowhere, passing by the King of Heroes to strike down the arrows.
The magical energy shrouding the shafts was deflected with a thunderous crash, shaking the window glass in the surrounding buildings.
“...So, we’ve been interrupted.”
“Damn... you.”
The King of Heroes’ rage-filled face was turned to the night sky. It was impossible to tell if he could even hear his opponent.
“To think that you would wander here... Do not tell me... you have fallen that far.”
His words were not aimed at Alkeides.
Gilgamesh’s eyes, fixed on empty air, had already sensed that presence.
A presence that, until then, had been skillfully concealed.
A presence that had emerged the instant the poisoned arrow had struck Gilgamesh, as if to say that it no longer had any need to hide.
And, in answer to his word... a third voice rang out in the sky over Main Street.
“’Fallen’? How rude.”
It was a beautiful, clear voice, but so utterly cold that it gave its listeners chills.
“My elevation has never changed. You just convinced yourselves that you had climbed above us. Am I wrong?”
From behind a skyscraper appeared a woman floating in the air, with white skin, red eyes, and inhuman beauty.
Gilgamesh did not recognize her appearance.
But he knew the being that most likely dwelt within her more than he would like.
You might even say that he knew her too well.
“Still, you finally left me an opening... Actually, I think the searing pain from that venom should be hitting you about now. Don’t you want to writhe? Hurry up and scream in agony—I’ll do you the favor of laughing at you,” the beauty told Gilgamesh with a faint smile as the Hydra venom began to eat into him.
But Gilgamesh, although he must have been suffering a shock for which the word “pain” was insufficient, like powerful acid coursing through every vein in his body, and despite the sweat beading on his forehead, looked down on the beauty hovering above him.
“How you bark. To think that even the passage of millennia has not worn off the arrogance stuck to your soul. Quite a deep-rooted mold, it seems.”
“Say what you like,” the woman who the King of Heroes, himself like the word “egotism” walking around in a suit of armor, had declared arrogant continued with a complacent smile. “Still, tracking you down took a lot of work... You deserve a thousand deaths just for making me walk through that gloomy cave.”
At the word “cave,” both Gilgamesh and Tine, who heard through her farseeing spell, simultaneously thought of the same place.
The cave in the ravine where the outsider mage had first summoned Gilgamesh.
“But I forgive you. After all, it helped me find something that will come in handy for killing you.”
The woman, glaring down at Gilgamesh, produced a key of lavish workmanship.
What she held in her hand was none other than the catalyst that the mage had used to summon Gilgamesh.
The front key to his treasury.
Not the key-sword that unlocked its deepest recesses, which housed Ea, the Sword of Rupture.
It was literally a work of art that served to open the treasury’s front gate.
“Just a pointless knick-knack that a mere human couldn’t do anything with, right?”
“Damn you...”
The woman regarded Gilgamesh, who groaned, drenched in cold sweat, but continued to stand erect, with a charming tilt of her head... and spoke with a smile that chilled to the bone.
“But in my hands... I can at least ‘relock’ it.”
It was a declaration that she had sealed the King of Heroes’ treasury—fatal to Tine’s faction.
But, as if to say that there were more important things, the King of Heroes smirked and pronounced with sarcasm:
“I am surprised that you shut the door before my treasures blinded you. I said you had fallen, but I was mistaken.”
“...”
“You deserve praise, Ishtar.”
Ishtar.
The woman answered the name he spat out with a cold smile in place of acknowledgment. Gilgamesh continued to sneer ironically back at her, suppressing the pain of the venom that wracked his body with his superhuman pride alone.
“Or did that vessel influence you?”
“Not a chance. I completely overshadow her original personality... She’s a kind of human made just to be a vessel.”
The next instant...
A seven-colored radiance, like a rainbow, spread from under her feet, and a gargantuan “thing” revealed itself beneath her.
Most likely... the creature that had just let out the “bellow” that had made Gilgamesh flinch.
“Like this one.”
“...!”
At the sight of the massive thing revealed—the “True Berserker” summoned by a Master named Haruri, although he had no way of knowing that at the time—several emotions ran through the King of Heroes.
Then, looking at it with eyes ultimately filled with rage, he slowly shook his head.
“Well, well. I, of all people, have misjudged... Not the original, but an inferior echo of her curse.”
“...”
Ishtar’s only reply was a faint smile. Instead of answering Gilgamesh, she surveyed the area and broke into a broad, cheerful grin.
“I’d really love to play with you more... but it looks like things will get annoying if I take any more time.”
“What...?”
“A servant of Ereshkigal... or Nergal, maybe? I suggest you run. It said that it’s eaten its fill, but you’ve just suffered ‘divine punishment,’ you know?”
Perhaps she had overheard his conversation with Saber. With those dispassionate words, she and the gigantic Heroic Spirit turned their backs and left with a parting shot.
Leaving behind her a last remark accompanied by a smile that was too wicked—or bewitching—for a deity.
“I went to the trouble of sparing your vitals, so suffer as long as you can.”
“...Or so I’d like to say.”
With that, Ishtar halted and turned her head toward Gilgamesh with an even crueler smile.
“It seems like she’ll never forgive either of you, even if I do.”
The next instant, a seven-colored halo shot from the steel colossus, twisted and tapered into something like the head of a jackhammer... and plunged straight into Gilgamesh’s belly.
“Lord Gilgamesh! No! Nooo!”
The young Master’s cries echoed high into the sky, but they did not reach the woman called Ishtar or Alkeides near the ground.
Whether they reached her Servant, Gilgamesh, was impossible to determine.
Only one thing was certain: Gilgamesh had stood majestically and firm in the face of his enemies until the moment he lost consciousness.
The catastrophic, wracking pain that even the centaur who had been the tutor of numerous heroes had abandoned his immortality and longed for death.
Even eaten away at by that venom in three places and impaled through the gut by a steel beast... Gilgamesh continued to stand before his enemies as a king.
Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes.
In this battle, he had been devoid of conceit.
The fact that, even so, he had fallen before the schemes of a deity and the violence of a beast was driven home.
At last, as the church roof he stood on crumbled and vanished into the rubble, the path of magical energy that connected him to Tine began to fade...
And the king’s Spirit Origin vanished completely.
Then, a few dozen seconds later... came a swarm of overwhelming “blackness,” different from Alkeides’ mud.
The jet-black wind that blew from a single room in the hospital enveloped the entire area...
And all life vanished from Main Street, which had been the scene of so much fighting.
It ultimately erased Gilgamesh, Alkeides, the police officers, Flat, and even the overseer priest, Ayaka, and Saber inside the church.
Not even an insect corpse remained in its wake...
Only a silent cityscape.
Not even the chief of police, Faldeus, or Francesca Prelati, who were on the side of the masterminds, could grasp the full scope of what had taken place.
Silence simply continued to hold sway over Main Street.
Originally Posted by successor of the Matou family
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