Gilgamesh moved, even as hundreds of his own treasures screamed toward his back.
A golden portal tore open behind him. The face of a shield materialized from its radiance—already thrusting forward, launched from the Gate without a moment's delay.
Spears, swords, arrows collided with that shield. It vaporized on impact. But vaporizing took time. Precious seconds.
Another Gate opened beneath his feet. A square shield thrust from within—propelling him up and out of those weapons' trajectories.
Still, sparks ignited where glancing blows scraped his armor. A spear tore into his back. A sword followed. Only a dozen from hundreds struck true, while the rest detonated beneath him, hurling him away.
Ignoring him, I turned my focus to Artoria and walked over.
"... Master." Blood still dripped down her lips, Excalibur supporting her weight.
My hand went to my sternum, into the metaphysical space within, and I pulled.
[Avalon] materialized in a flash of light that illuminated our devastated surroundings. I didn't wait for her protests and pushed it straight inside her.
Instead of protests, Artoria brought a hand up from Excalibur's handle, her fingers tracing a single black mark across my jaw.
"Master... You succeeded?" She asked, eyes on the black marks on my face.
"Do you not feel it yourself?" I asked, my hand coming to her shoulder to brush away some dirt.
Her head tilted, and then she focused inward... and felt it.
A tremendous amount of mana flooding her body through our connection, so much that her strength seemed to have soared up from its base state.
"This..." Artoria's mouth opened in wonder.
We were interrupted.
Medea landed beside me from above, throwing herself at me from the side. My arm moved on its own, wrapping around her waist so she didn't lose balance and plant her face on the ground.
"Master... You made us wait for so long." Medea buried her face in my chest, rubbing her cheeks against it.
"But, Master. Medusa..." She trailed off, voice muffled against my coat.
"She is still alive. I saw her and Archer fighting some distance away while falling." I glanced west, in the exact direction where they'd been fighting minutes ago.
"Haah..." Medea's shoulders relaxed. A sigh of relief slipped from her lips.
A Gate opened a meter behind us.
Artoria's grip over Excalibur tightened. Medea pulled away from me, hand pointing at that portal, magic circles rotating across her arm's length.
What materialized from that portal was not a Noble Phantasm. Fingers wrapped around its edge and tore it open wider.
Gilgamesh walked out from within. Blood still dripped down his back. His upper armor had been discarded, leaving his torso bare.
"Mongrel. You have this king's attention now."
His free hand gestured toward us.
Gates erupted around us in concentric circles. A formation closing in from all sides, weapons aimed inward, trajectories locked.
"Artoria... how much time would it take for you to fully heal?" I asked, eyes searching for a crack in their formation.
"As I am right now? A minute at most." Artoria swept her gaze around, mind already calculating paths to swing Excalibur under the coming deluge of Noble Phantasms.
"Take two."
My hand moved before those Gates could release, a palm strike straight at Artoria's chest.
"Mast—?!"
Her eyes widened as the impact launched her backward, through a sliver of space between four Gates. She was out of the formation a heartbeat before those Gates moved, sealing that gap completely.
Then the weapons fired.
Hundreds of Noble Phantasms screamed inward from every direction. All of them aimed at me. At Medea, still at my side.
I moved.
My arm wrapped around Medea's waist again, pulling her tight against me. She gasped, her spell circles forgotten.
"Master—?!"
Capoeira. A flowing, swinging step carried me sideways. The first wave of weapons sheared through where my head had been. An arrow. A sword. A halberd that carved a trench in the soil behind me.
I bent backward, Medea glued to my chest, my spine flexing like a dancer sliding under a bar.
A golden spear missed Medea's hair by centimeters.
My free palm found the earth behind me, fingers digging into cracked soil. I pushed—and rose, lifting both of us on one arm, bodies vertical and pressed together. A dagger hissed past my ribs. A scythe whispered by her shoulder.
One inverted breath.
Then I backflipped. The world spun—sky, ground, sky again—and we landed on our feet. Weapons tore into soil where we'd hung upside down a moment before.
"My—my spells—" Medea stammered against my collar.
"We won't need them."
Aikido. The next weapon was a massive iron shield flying at us from ahead like a battering ram. Instead of dodging, I met it. My palm touched its edge and nudged its trajectory past us. That shield flew aside and crashed into two swords coming from behind.
Gilgamesh's eyes narrowed.
Wing-Chun. A short sword appeared within arm's reach. My elbow slammed into its spine, and that blade spun into another weapon mid-flight. My hand kept moving in tight circles—fingers catching shafts, palms grazing hilts—redirecting weapons into one another.
Medea's fingers dug into my coat. Her magic circles were gone.
Our eyes met.
And I let go—of everything. Gravity pulled me straight down, back nearly brushing against ground, as a blade sliced the air above my nose. Then I rolled, spine curving like water around rock, back on my feet in one unbroken motion. Medea stayed against me the whole time.
More Gates opened.
Judo. I hooked my leg behind hers and swept her feet from under her entirely, catching her falling body across my arm and pulling her into a carry.
A war hammer cratered where she'd stood.
Another wave of twenty weapons came at once.
I rotated around the first spear with my lead foot, let its shaft slide along my forearm, and used my momentum to spin us past a screaming arrow. Then past another. And another.
Each rotation faster than the last, each building on my momentum, weapons meeting only afterimages.
Medea's breath was hot against my neck. Her eyes squeezed shut.
"Look." I told her.
She didn't.
I kept moving.
The Gates multiplied.
Thirty.
Fifty.
Seventy.
Capoeira. Aikido. Wing-Chun. Judo.
More styles integrated into my movements, blurring their boundaries into something unified.
Sambo—Break the structure before it sets.
Jeet Kune Do—Intercept an angle before it forms.
Systema—Empty the space before it fills.
My body stopped being a body. It became motion itself—pure evasive instinct given form.
Medea's fingers had stopped digging into my coat. She was watching now. Eyes wide. Following.
I caught a sword. Threw it into a spear. Launched her up. Cartwheeled above buried weapons, caught her on her fall back. Spun past a halberd. Repeat.
Faster.
The weapons came faster.
I moved faster.
Our surroundings were all wind and steel. I wove between them, every trajectory a path I had already mapped. Medea's weight against me had become an extension of my own body—her breathing matched mine, her shifting center anticipated my steps.
We were not dancing.
We were the dance.
Eighty gates.
Ninety.
A hundred.
Gilgamesh's arm hadn't lowered. His crimson eyes tracked every movement, every pivot, every impossible dodge.
A small smile crept onto the corner of his lips. His eyes blazed with genuine interest. Then, he brought a hand to his forehead and—laughed.
"Hahahahaha!" His voice was unhinged. "Keep going. Keep entertaining this king!"
I ignored him.
A golden storm hurled toward us. I moved. Weapons shattered against each other in my wake. Atmosphere itself seemed to bend around us.
Capoeira. Flow.
Wing Chun. Counter.
Aikido. Redirect.
Judo. Sweep.
Faster.
Faster.
And then—
I stopped.
Golden steel filled my vision.
Before they could reach us—
"Strike Air: Hammer of the Wind King."
Another hurricane of compressed winds slammed against that storm of weapons.
Amidst that collision of steel and wind, I looked into Gilgamesh's eyes and spoke.
"Two minutes."
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[5 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
I had thought about writing a mix of martial arts and dance, with different martial arts and daces and their philosophies intersecting with one another. Unfortunately, it got too complex to preserve their true meaning while writing it, so I cut back on the dance, though there are one to two beats of dance too in between.
Originally I had thought about mixing four martial arts with four dances. But as you all saw, it was very hard, though not impossible. Maybe If I had three to four days then I could cook something up that wouldn't read incoherent.
Anyway... Have a fabulous day, everyone!