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[PanicMode]: MAX. MAX WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOUR LEGS.
[Analyzing]: Wait, that's—that's a skill activation isn't it? She didn't even need to touch him.
[Confirmed_Terrified]: Fruit of the Wine has a secondary effect. Physical contact or sustained presence. She literally poisoned him through proximity.
[MedicalConsult]: Is that even fair?! That's not fair!!
[GrievingAlready]: Max I will avenge you.
The sensation was, to be completely precise, like someone had poured liquid concrete into his legs from the knee down—except the concrete was also sparkling with electricity, and the electricity was also mildly on fire, and all of it was located directly between "pain" and "wrongness" in a way that his nervous system didn't have clean vocabulary for.
Max stopped. Looked down. Looked back.
Shuten-dōji stood thirty feet away with her robe settling around her and her hands clasped at her waist, head tilted at exactly the angle of someone who had engineered this moment and was taking a moment to appreciate it.
"Ara~ ara~" she said, in the same tone you might use to inform someone that their shoelace was untied. "Staying too close to this humble one for too long comes with... side effects. Did no one warn you? Master should really do more research before charging into things headfirst."
She's right, Max thought, through the spreading cold in his legs. I should have anticipated this.
The numbness was climbing. Slowly, but with the steady patience of something that knew it had time.
Fruit of the Wine, A-rank. The glance effect was just the opener. Sustained exposure—physical proximity, ambient aura—had its own creeping version of the same curse. He'd been holding the protective amulet against her alcohol-soaked divine presence for the past two minutes and thought the amulet was doing all the work. It had been. But "all the work" had limits, and he'd been standing in range for too long.
He still had his legs. Barely.
The items were helping—the Lucky Charm and the Hardened Armor Charm were running interference against the status effect, burning magical energy to slow the progression—but "slowing" wasn't "stopping."
[MedKitWhere]: Does this game have antidotes??
[Lore_Expert]: The counter to Shuten-dōji's Fruit of the Wine is magical defense and physical distance. You need to break contact range.
[DeathMath]: So Max needs to fight a 6A Servant while retreating from a status effect she applies just by existing near him. Cool. This is fine.
[Medea_Moment]: MEDEA. MEDEA PLEASE.
Medea had already read the situation.
She came down fast—not gracefully, not with her usual composed precision, but with the controlled urgency of someone who had made a calculation and didn't like the result. Her staff came up and two things happened simultaneously: a high-intensity beam of High-Thaumaturgy fired at Shuten-dōji to force distance, and a healing circle bloomed around Max's feet, reaching into his bloodstream for the curse and starting to dismantle it from the inside.
Shuten-dōji sidestepped the beam without looking at it.
"Oh~" she said pleasantly. "The little witch is worried about her Master. How sweet."
"Call me 'little witch' one more time," Medea said through her teeth, "and I will erase you from this city block."
"You are welcome to try, menopause-chan~"
Medea made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
The magic circles behind her flared open again, wider, and this time the beams that emerged weren't the guided precision of her earlier salvos—they were raw, furious, undirected, the magical equivalent of someone throwing everything they owned at a wall. It was less efficient and significantly more terrifying.
[HolyWater]: MEDEA HAS SNAPPED.
[PureEnergy]: She is not aiming. She is just FIRING.
[Popcorn]: I am physically incapable of looking away from this stream.
[Shuten_Enjoyer]: Shuten-dōji continues to talk trash while dodging. Icon behavior.
[MaverickReport]: WHERE IS MAVERICK?? He's still out there!! Can he get a clean shot on Derek??
Speaking of Derek—
Derek Walsh had gotten about two hundred yards from the engagement zone before realizing that running in a straight line with a sniper somewhere in the general area was probably not a tactically sound decision. He'd ducked behind a half-collapsed building and was currently crouched behind what had once been a very nice display window, breathing hard, watching the light show in the direction he'd come from, and experiencing the particular emotional cocktail of "my Servant is incredible" and "I am definitely going to die today" in equal parts.
He was also reconsidering his life choices at a somewhat accelerated pace.
The lecherous thoughts about Medea had evacuated entirely sometime between "Max punched Shuten through the air" and "Max's legs started not working." In their place was a dawning appreciation for the fact that he was technically in a 2v1 situation against a developer who'd kitted himself out with D-rank Noble Phantasm equipment and a Caster who'd already demonstrated casual street demolition.
He peeked around the edge of the rubble.
Max was back on both feet—the healing circle had done its work, the numbness was retreating—and was moving again, and the direction he was moving was toward Derek with the purposeful energy of a man who had decided that this particular task was getting finished today.
Derek made a decision.
He pulled up the Command Seal menu.
Three remaining. He picked the first one.
"Shuten! I'm using a Command Seal—protect me from the blue-haired guy—"
[GrimFace]: Oh he's serious.
[MasterAndServant]: The Command Seal is a full force multiplier applied to any order. Shuten's already a 6A panel. With a Command Seal buff...
[Math_Hurts]: I don't want to think about this math.
Shuten-dōji paused in the middle of a dodge. She felt it—the binding authority of the Command Seal settling over her like a hand on the back of her neck, gentle but absolute. She closed her eyes for exactly one second.
When she opened them, she was still smiling.
"Goodness," she said softly. "He actually used one."
She moved.
The distance she covered was wrong. Not fast—instant. The space between her and Max simply ceased to exist as a relevant factor, and she was there, inside his guard, one hand already extended, and the cold she radiated was not the same cold as before. This was intentional. Directed.
Max got his arm up in time.
The impact rocked him back several feet across the broken pavement, his boots carving shallow furrows, his items screaming as they burned energy to keep him upright.
[Breathless]: Command Seal Shuten is a different category of threat.
[TerminallyOnline]: MAX IS OKAY RIGHT?? HE'S OKAY?
[Equipment_Clutch]: The Bracelet is the only reason that arm is still attached, let's be honest.
[Somewhere in the ruins, a rifle shot cracked across the street.]
Derek swore.
The round had come close—close enough that he felt the wind of it—and the burst of rubble near his left shoulder was a fairly clear message about how much of a safe position he was currently in. He scrambled to a new location, less dignified than he would have preferred.
Maverick. Of course. Still out there, still hunting, still waiting for a clean line.
The situation had moved beyond Derek's comfort zone approximately fifteen minutes ago and hadn't stopped moving since.
He had two Command Seals left.
Max had equipment that was borderline absurd.
Medea was somewhere above him and increasingly angry.
And his Servant was currently engaged in what looked from the outside like a dance—all fluid movement and surgical precision and the occasional world-shattering impact—with a man who apparently warmed up using Dragon Ball Z routines.
Derek looked at his remaining Command Seals.
He looked at the fight.
He looked at the exit routes available from his current position.
Think, he told himself. Think like a ranked player. Think like someone who is not about to lose twenty points and also possibly their in-game legs.
The answer, when it came to him, was not what he'd hoped for.
He was going to need to use both remaining seals.
Back in the main engagement zone, Max and Shuten-dōji had found a rhythm that was less "combat" and more "negotiation through physics."
She was testing him. He could feel it—each exchange calibrated just slightly below her actual ceiling, each push designed to find where his defenses cracked. The Command Seal had bumped her stats up, but she was still playing at maybe seventy percent. The rest was reserved, watching, waiting to see which wall Max hit first.
His legs were solid again. Medea's healing had cleared the status effect completely, and the Lucky Charm was running active suppression on any new exposure. He was burning through its stored energy faster than he liked, but it was holding.
She's going to make a move, he thought. She's been circling this whole time. She's going to commit when she thinks she sees the opening.
He gave her one.
Deliberately, visibly, he shifted his weight slightly wrong—the kind of micro-mistake that telegraphed a gap in his guard, the kind that said "tired" without saying it out loud.
Shuten-dōji's eyes curved.
Got it, Max thought.
She came in low and fast and absolutely committed.
And Max, who had been waiting for exactly this, dropped entirely out of the way and let Medea's beam find the space where Shuten-dōji had been standing.
The impact was, generously speaking, significant.
[SCREAMING]: COMBO ATTACK
[Beautiful]: THE BAIT AND SWITCH. MAX YOU GENIUS.
[CommentaryMode]: Did he just use himself as Medea's targeting system?? Did he just—
[ShutenvFans]: My wife got absolutely cooked and I respect the play so much.
[RankingMath]: If they can close out this fight, Max just moved up at least three ranks. That was a ranked-mode carry performance.
The smoke cleared.
Shuten-dōji stood at the center of the impact zone.
Her robe had caught a little. One horn had a small scorch mark. She was looking at the blast radius around her feet with an expression of genuine assessment, like she was recalibrating something.
Then she looked up at Max.
And she smiled—different from before. Not the warm, theatrical warmth of her entrance. Something smaller. Realer.
"Oh my~" she said, quietly, almost to herself. "My defense just got broken."
She sounded almost delighted by this.
"Don't worry," Max said. "I won't tell anyone which part."
[MeltingDown]: HE SAID "I WON'T TELL YOU WHOSE"
[TitleDrop]: THE TITLE. THE TITLE DROPPED.
[DefenseOfWho]: For context: her defense. It was her defense. But also maybe his composure when she called him Master for the fifteenth time. This chapter contained multitudes.
[NeedAMinute]: I need to lie down.
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