"It's... the King of Heroes... Gilgamesh!"
As a witch of the Age of Gods, she understood better than anyone what this aura meant.
It was not ordinary strength, but an absolute suppression at the level of "rank" itself!
It was the oldest king in the world, standing at the apex of all Heroic Spirits, all myths! He had gotten serious!
"Oh? So you've finally deigned to crawl out of that turtle shell of yours?"
Yet, faced with a pressure that made even a witch of the Age of Gods tremble, Seiji's face showed not the slightest surprise or tension.
On the contrary, what flickered in his eyes was the undisguised excitement, greed, and fervor of a hunter watching the final quarry he'd coveted for so long finally step into his trap.
He raised his head slowly, those pitch-black eyes seeming to pierce through a thousand meters of rock to meet the golden figure descending over the city, gaze to gaze across the distance.
"And here I thought you'd stay a head-in-its-shell turtle perched on high, watching this drama right up to its final act."
His voice was not loud, yet through magic it became the sharpest mockery, transmitted with perfect clarity into the other's ears.
...
Atop the central tower of Fuyuki City, a fierce wind howled.
Gilgamesh, clad in ornate armor, looked down with a darkened face upon this city as small as a colony of ants.
Those ruby eyes that should have looked down on all creation, full of arrogance and delight, now burned with a towering rage like none before, a fury that seemed ready to incinerate heaven and earth!
Just a moment ago, he had felt it clearly: the Grail, which he had long taken for granted as one of his countless "treasures," had had the very "principle" of its existence altered at the root by some outside force!
The Grail was no longer the Grail.
It had become... the private toy of some nameless mongrel mage!
This was desecration! This was theft!
This was the most extreme, most unforgivable provocation against him, "the owner of all the treasures of the world"!
"Mongrel..."
Gilgamesh forced the word out through clenched teeth, his voice cold enough to freeze a soul.
The golden magic around him even formed a tangible storm, sending fine cracks racing across the rooftop terrace.
"Just which ant, too ignorant to fear death, not even worthy of looking up at this king, dares lay hands on this king's treasures?!"
And Seiji's mocking words reached him at exactly that moment.
Gilgamesh whipped his head around, his gaze like a sword of divine punishment, locking precisely onto the direction of Ryuudou Temple.
His Noble Phantasm, the Star of Omniscience and Omnipotence, let him "see" everything happening deep underground in an instant.
He saw that man he'd regarded as an amusing "clown," kept around to relieve his boredom.
He saw, standing behind that man like loyal hounds, the witch of the Age of Gods and the gorgon.
And finally...
His gaze froze on the figure of the girl knight in pitch-black armor, holding an ominous demonic sword, her whole body radiating an aura of fallenness and emptiness.
"Saber...?"
Gilgamesh's pupils contracted sharply, and into that towering rage crept a thread of disbelieving shock.
He recognized that face.
The King of Knights who, once, at a banquet of kings, had amused him with her naive and laughable "kingly way," foolish, yet a glittering "rare piece" all the same.
And now she had become... a lifeless, soul-drained, filthy doll, remade carelessly by some craftsman using the crudest possible methods?!
Rage!
An uncontainable, heaven-burning, earth-destroying rage shattered the last of the King of Heroes' reason in an instant!
He could tolerate a clown's performance, could appreciate the struggles of mortals.
But he absolutely could not tolerate someone destroying a "rare piece" that had been worthy of his eye, reducing it to this sickening state in so crude, so ugly, so utterly graceless a manner!
"ONORE!!!"
A roar that shook the heavens exploded across the night sky of Fuyuki City!
The glass of the entire city hummed under that furious shout, and countless mortals were startled awake from their dreams, trembling!
The next second, behind Gilgamesh, space rippled gold like the surface of water struck by a stone.
One, ten, a hundred! Hundreds, thousands!
Dense golden ripples filled the entire sky in an instant!
From each ripple, slowly emerged the prototype of a Noble Phantasm, each gleaming with its own hue of radiance, each worthy of being recorded in epic legend!
Dragon-slaying swords, piercing spears, city-breaking axes, ever-hitting bows...
The "originals" of every heroic legend in human history were displayed before the world, all of them, in this moment!
This, this was the true form of Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, as "humanity's oldest hero"!
"Mongrel! Mongrel! Mongrel!!!"
Gilgamesh's voice was no longer simple anger but a near-hysterical savagery.
"You not only stole this king's Grail, you ruined a toy this king had his eye on!"
"This sin, you could not repay even if you died ten thousand times!"
"This king will blast you and all your filthy creations to dust together!!!"
He raised his arm high, like the one and only god pronouncing divine punishment.
"Repent for your stupidity!"
With that pronouncement, heavy with the weight of divine judgment.
The hundreds upon thousands of Noble Phantasms hovering in the sky fell like a meteor shower of light and iron, the most magnificent and most lethal ever, trailing crimson tails of all-annihilating flame, lighting the whole night sky bright as day as they rained down toward Ryuudou Temple!
This was the King of Heroes' strike, unreserved and in full fury!
Enough to wipe the whole of Mount Enzou, and every life upon it, off the map entirely!
Facing that downpour of Noble Phantasms descending like the wrath of heaven.
The color had already drained from Medea's face.
Her Magic Circuits shrieked on instinct, warning her of this power's absoluteness and inescapability.
She instinctively tried to raise a defensive barrier, only to find in despair that her Age of Gods magecraft was as small as a speck of dust before this golden "world."
It's over...
Am I going to die here, together with my master? No, to die for this lord would be my honor... but I won't accept it! I haven't yet offered my master everything I have!
Yet Seiji, standing before her, still wore that same untroubled, easy expression.
He couldn't even be bothered to move, and though the wind pressure, fierce enough to tear space apart, whipped at the hem of his clothes, it couldn't stir his calm gaze by even a fraction.
He merely spoke, in a flat tone, to the pitch-black doll beside him that seemed fused with the darkness itself:
"Alter."
"Clear the field."
"Yes."
The black King of Knights named Alter glanced with those cold golden eyes toward the ceiling.
That thick, sight-blocking layer of rock might as well not have existed before her eyes.
Her line of sight had already locked precisely onto the "death" raining down from above.
The next second.
She moved.
No wasted wind-up, no ornate, elaborate incantation.
She simply stepped forward. That single step split the hard ground beneath her.
Then she gripped that pitch-black demonic sword, pulsing as if alive, in both hands, and swung it up from below in a sudden, violent arc!
A roar burst out from within the blade, a roar full of tyranny and the will to destroy, as if it came from an abyssal dragon, or from the gathered mass of a hundred million vengeful spirits!
A massive torrent of pitch-black magic, made of "darkness" and "malice," surged toward the heavens!
The black torrent, in the most savage and unreasonable manner, tore through the thick rock layer in an instant, bored through the entire body of Mount Enzou, and burst open above the summit, becoming an even thicker pillar of black light that met that golden "meteor shower" head-on!
There was no earth-shattering explosion as one might expect.
Not even any especially violent light or heat.
Only... a "devouring" sound that set teeth on edge, like strong acid splashed on flesh.
Those Noble Phantasm prototypes that had left mighty names in history, each with the power to destroy heaven and earth, those divine weapons gleaming with a hero's final radiance.
The instant they touched that black torrent, they were like stars hurled into a cosmic black hole, unable to put up even a halfway decent resistance, eroded, broken down, and annihilated, silently and without a trace, by that pure darkness and malice!
The laws attached to the Noble Phantasms were warped, the very concepts that constituted their existence erased!
Not a single ray of light remained!
A single strike!
The King of Heroes' barrage of Noble Phantasms, enough to destroy a mountaintop and flatten a city, was utterly devoured head-on by that brutally unreasonable black magic!
...
High in the air.
A look of shock appeared on Gilgamesh's face, that face full of rage and arrogance.
What... had he just seen?
His Gate of Babylon, his supreme collection that symbolized "all that the world holds," that even the gods would turn to look upon.
Had actually...
Been "eaten" by a torrent of filthy magic?!
How was that possible?!
"Did you see that? King of Heroes."
Seiji's voice, carrying a thread of mockery, drifted out again, as if right beside his ear.
"This is the return gift I prepared for you."
The mountain crumbled, and the dust and smoke cleared.
Seiji, with his three female Servants, rose slowly from the enormous crater into the air, facing off against Gilgamesh across the distance.
Beneath his feet was a flight spell Medea had instantly constructed, and his bearing was as composed as if he were strolling through his own back garden.
"Surprised?"
A wicked smile hung on Seiji's face, and he even reached out fondly to pat the helmet of the Alter beside him.
"This child, after casting off your so-called glory and ideals, all that meaningless garbage that only drags the strong down, has become even stronger than before, hasn't she?"
"Because she no longer needs to think about all those superfluous things. The meaning of her existence is no longer to protect those ants doomed to perish."
"All she needs to do is slaughter her enemies to the last. That is enough."
"And you..."
Seiji's gaze fell on Gilgamesh.
"...are her next, and last, enemy."
"Mongrel..."
Gilgamesh's expression had darkened until it was nearly dripping.
He slowly drew all expression from his face, and in those ruby eyes, the shock had faded, replaced by a far more dangerous, cold killing intent.
He knew that the man before him was different from all the foolish enemies he had faced before.
"It seems this king has need to get a little serious with you, you ant who knows nothing of his own place."
The golden ripples surfaced behind him once more.
But this time, what emerged was no longer those mass-produced Noble Phantasms used to clear the field.
It was a golden chain, gleaming with holy radiance, as if forged from fragments of the stars!
Enkidu, the Chains of Heaven.
It was once his one and only dear friend, and the supreme Noble Phantasm with anti-divine properties, capable of binding even gods!
"Let this king see whether your polluted toy can break free of this chain, which represents the will of the heavens!"
...
...
"The Chains of Heaven?"
Seiji looked at that golden chain, radiating a powerful aura of divinity, its concept ranking even above many gods, and his expression held not the slightest gravity.
"It really is a fine Noble Phantasm. Full of story, and holding powerful laws within it. As a collectible, it's worth a great deal."
"What a pity, though..."
He shook his head, his tone full of condescending superiority.
"...this set of rules of yours, ancient and long obsolete, has no effect on me."
"What did you say? Mongrel!" Gilgamesh roared in fury, unable to tolerate the man discussing the incarnation of his dear friend in that appraising-an-antique tone.
"I said..." The corner of Seiji's mouth curled into a cruel arc, his voice quiet yet cutting to the heart with every word, "...your gods have no authority over what's mine!"
He didn't even give Alter any command.
Instead, he stepped forward himself, meeting the holy pressure from the Chains of Heaven head-on of his own accord.
[System command: Heart of the Dragon (False) ability activated!]
[Applying Dragon-attribute concept override to target Saber Alter!]
[Definition correction: this target's Dragon attribute does not originate from the red evil dragon of Britain; its concept no longer belongs to this world's system of Mystery!]
[New definition: this target's Dragon attribute originates solely from the Host, Seiji Fujiwara! She is the king's kin, an extension of the king's power!]
"Go, Enkidu."
Gilgamesh couldn't be bothered to listen to the man's ravings any longer; to him it was nothing but a weakling's meaningless bluster in the face of absolute power. He swept his arm!
The Chains of Heaven, like a living golden serpent, gave a crisp, melodious ring as it tore through the air, becoming a bolt of golden lightning that coiled toward Saber Alter at a speed the eye could not catch at all!
The moment that chain wrapped around her, the "divinity" of the red dragon within her body would become the deadliest poison, a beacon drawing in the chain's power, binding her fast.
The stronger the magic, the higher the divinity, the tighter the binding, until the spirit core collapsed!
Yet just as the golden chain was about to touch Alter's body.
A deeper, more violent black magic erupted from Alter!
That magic resonated with her own Dragon attribute in a strange way no outsider could comprehend.
As if proclaiming to the whole world, to the "gods" who set the rules, the most insolent declaration: her "dragon" and this world's "dragon" were no longer the same concept!
With a metallic clang, the Chains of Heaven wrapped firmly around Alter, binding her solidly from shoulder to waist.
But...
The binding force one would expect, from divinity being countered, did not appear!
The chain merely wrapped around Alter's body like an ordinary, if somewhat sturdier, rope.
What's more...
Under Alter's black magic, swelling endlessly like a volcanic eruption, this divine chain, capable of making even gods wail, began to creak under the strain!
The holy runes upon it were being eroded and polluted by that black magic at tremendous speed!
"Nani?!"
The eternal arrogance on Gilgamesh's face was replaced by shock and incomprehension.
The Chains of Heaven...
had failed?!
How was that possible?! This defied the laws of the world!
This Noble Phantasm's binding force was determined by the level of the target's "divinity"!
The Dragon-attribute divinity on that target was clearly higher than even Berserker, Heracles! So why... was there no effect?!
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