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There was a legendary German swordmaster who had spent his entire life mastering the blade.
After decades of study and refinement, he produced a comprehensive sword manual—a complete record of every technique he'd developed, every school of thought he'd absorbed, every hard-won lesson from every duel he'd survived. The manual was thorough. It was exhaustive.
The last technique in it was titled: Pull Out Your Gun.
The accompanying commentary read, approximately: "I acknowledge your swordsmanship surpasses mine. However, if you are dead, then I am the strongest swordsman of this era."
There was wisdom in this. Profound wisdom. The kind that transcended the specifics of any individual weapon or fighting style and addressed something fundamental about the nature of conflict itself.
Max had taken this lesson to heart.
Which was why he'd thrown a steel pipe at Shuten-dōji's face and then shot her in the stomach at zero range.
Was it elegant? No.
Did it work? Mostly.
[ReviewingTheTape]: He distracted her with the pipe throw, got inside her guard, and then fired point-blank with enchanted rounds. This is technically perfect combat.
[InDenial]: She's going to be fine. She's Shuten-dōji. She's going to be completely fine.
[Waiting]: The suspense is genuinely killing me.
[ShutenvFans]: MY WIFE IS BLEEDING. I DEMAND A CLAY FIGURE OF SHUTEN AS REPARATIONS.
[ShipperAlert]: The unspoken chemistry between the developer and his Caster though. I'm going to ship this with my whole chest.
[Skeptic]: Max, be honest. Did you preplan that entire sequence? Because that was too clean.
[Humble]: I mean. It's fine. A little below my peak performance, honestly.
[Reality_Check]: DRAG THAT PERSON BACK, THEY HAVE CLEARLY LOST IT.
The beams cleared.
From beneath the scorched earth—from within the crater that Medea's follow-up blast had carved into the commercial district—a snow-white arm emerged.
Then another.
Then Shuten-dōji pulled herself out of the ground with the unhurried ease of someone getting out of bed on a lazy Sunday, trailing smoke and scorched fabric and an expression of thoughtful assessment.
She was looking at her own stomach.
The enchanted round had gone through. She reached down, unhurried, and pulled it out with two fingers, examining it like a jeweler examining a stone of questionable quality.
Then she looked up.
The flush on her cheeks was a little higher than before. Her eyes were a shade brighter. The set of her mouth had changed in a way that was hard to categorize as "angry" but very easy to categorize as "dangerous."
"Master," she said warmly. "That was truly too much. Doing something so rough to my poor belly." A pause. "If I don't kill you now, how would I explain it to myself?"
"Stop saying things like that in that tone!" Medea's voice cracked with the specific fury of someone who has been pushed past her last nerve. "If you want to fight, FIGHT. Stop making everything sound—stop—just FIGHT."
"Hehe~" The crescent-moon smile. Directed entirely at Medea. "The little witch is bristling again. Don't worry. I'll kill your precious Master right in front of you. Nice and slow."
Medea made a sound that was not a word.
The magic circles opened.
But something had changed.
The crimson horns on Shuten-dōji's head were shifting color—the red deepening, pulling toward purple at the edges, the change slow and deliberate. Her eyes tracked both of them simultaneously with the calm attention of something that had decided to stop holding back.
She drove her greatsword into the broken pavement.
And from the gourd at its base, a liquid poured—thick, viscous, the color of dark amber. It spread across the ground in all directions, and where it touched, the ruins began to dissolve. Not burn. Dissolve. Stone and concrete and metal going soft, then liquid, then nothing, like the ground itself was forgetting it had been solid.
The air above it turned pink.
Faint at first. Then denser.
Max processed this quickly. Noble Phantasm. Has to be. The sake from the legend—the poisoned sake that killed her. Sublimated into a weapon. He'd designed this himself; he knew the parameters. The gourd was functionally infinite. The poison had multiple concentration levels. At low concentration: debuffs, the creeping drunk effect, progressive stat corruption. At high concentration—
He didn't want to think about high concentration.
"Medea—" he started.
"Already on it," she said tightly, and a defensive barrier bloomed around them, woven from three magic circles stacked in sequence.
The pink haze pressed against it and couldn't quite get through. For now.
Max was already moving, circling, looking for an angle—
The cold arrived at his six o'clock.
He'd been watching Shuten-dōji's position. He'd been watching Shuten-dōji's position specifically, tracking her footfalls, calculating her movement patterns, and she had still appeared behind Medea without him seeing her cross the distance.
She didn't move through space, he realized. She moved through the haze.
The poisoned fog wasn't just a weapon. It was cover. It was camouflage. It was a medium she could dissolve into and emerge from wherever the concentration was sufficient.
He'd built this and he was still surprised by it.
"Then I'll start with you, little witch." Shuten-dōji's voice came from directly behind Medea, close enough to be breath against the back of her neck. "Noble Phantasm Release."
She raised her sword.
"Hyakka Ryōran—Waga Aichin."
Thousand Blooms — My Beloved Name.
The light that erupted was not white. It was every color simultaneously—gold and crimson and deep violet and the specific iridescent shimmer of sake held up to sunlight—all of it concentrated into a single strike that came down like the world ending in slow motion.
"MEDEA—"
Max was already moving.
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