Chapter 274: Fujimaru Ritsuka Has Already Grown
At this moment, what Rowe held in his hand was the solemn will of heroes.
And more than that, it was the spirit of resistance shown by the people of the Singularity in the face of catastrophe.
The Great Old Ones were symbols of indescribable chaos, manifestations of the dark side of the universe itself. Their true bodies slumbered in the ultimate abyss, and their existence was far beyond the reach of ordinary living beings. Even Cthulhu, the Lord of Slumber, who was not counted among the greatest of them, still possessed the power to destroy a world.
In other worlds, on other planets, living beings would have had no means of resisting them at all.
But only here, in this spacetime called Type Moon, on this planet called Earth, and among this race called humanity, did the possibility of resistance exist.
Because Type Moon possessed the Throne that recorded all things.
Because Earth's Sea of Stars was connected to infinite time and space.
And because all humans are great.
Without question, this brilliant and dazzling power was the natural antithesis to the chaotic darkness embodied by the Great Old Ones.
That power took shape in Rowe's hand.
It became a sword.
A golden hilt shone with sacred brilliance.
A silver white blade gleamed with beautiful, immaculate light.
Across its surface ran mottled crimson lines, traces of the planet's manifestation itself.
It was the Holy Sword of the Star.
And also the Holy Sword of the Heart.
The dense water vapor tore across sky and earth alike, splitting mountains, rivers, and currents in its wake. Rowe gripped the Holy Sword tightly and swung it.
In an instant, he cut through the descending tentacles.
He split the mist.
He carved through chaos itself.
And with that same forward momentum, he crashed directly into the interior of R'lyeh, which had not yet fully condensed into the material world.
The ancient city of R'lyeh was a civilization older than civilization, older than myth, older than the gods born beneath the present sky. Its true history stretched back billions, perhaps tens of billions, of years.
That was an age in which even the primordial gods were still unformed.
An age in which the star forging gods had yet to awaken.
An era that belonged to the previous Earth, before the birth of the current one.
The city had been built by a race from the stars.
Dependents of darkness.
Worshippers of the Great Old Ones.
The Star Spawn of Cthulhu.
They had settled between mountain and sea. In accordance with the will of the Lord of Slumber, they had built that ancient city and shaped the matter of the abyssal dark side of the universe into architecture. Their music was the music of the sea itself, played for the master of nightmares.
And now that city stood before Rowe.
After piercing through the mist, this was what he saw.
Everywhere, hazy and chaotic light drifted like a veil. Within the vast interior, streets twisted and coiled between megalithic bronze structures stacked into impossible forms. The buildings towered into the heavens, but each one openly defied geometry. Some bulged upward. Some leaned outward. Some hung upside down from above. The spacious and majestic ancient city, with its grotesque arrangement of impossible angles, resembled a dream.
Or perhaps, more accurately, a nightmare pretending to be a dream.
And within the heart of that dreamlike city were countless writhing forms.
They bore the features of fish and the tentacles of octopi.
Vast as mountains, they drifted through that city like swollen bladders suspended in a dream. They were Cthulhu's Star Spawn, his attendants, those who had entered slumber together with him in R'lyeh.
These were true cosmic lifeforms.
Higher order dependents of the Outer God.
The monsters manifesting outside were only the dependents of those dependents.
They floated through the air and encircled the colossal spiral megalithic citadel at the center of R'lyeh like ministers standing around their king.
That spiral fortress was, without a doubt, Cthulhu's resting place.
The throne of the Lord of Slumber.
Rowe grinned.
The Holy Sword of the Heart in his hand blazed even brighter.
He tightened his grip and stepped forward.
In an instant, R'lyeh trembled.
The city let out the cry of an invasion alarm.
The sleeping Star Spawn all stirred at once, as if opening their eyes. Countless crimson lights flickered into being.
Roar. Gurgle. Shriek.
It was warning.
It was alert.
But the sound lasted only a moment.
Because their master had awakened.
Yes.
At this moment, Cthulhu had truly awakened.
What the outside world could see was only the large scale manifestation of R'lyeh. The colossal octopus shape in the sky was no more than a phantom formed from the slight overflow of Cthulhu's mental power.
But at the center of R'lyeh, the megalithic citadel shook, and an even vaster figure rose from within.
A stranger and more oppressive aura rose with it, like baleful stars ascending into the night.
This was not the first time Rowe had directly faced one of the Great Old Ones.
With his realm, he could naturally withstand the distortions in thought and spirit they exuded. Even the order of the universe itself would have difficulty shaking his will.
But every time he saw them, he still could not help thinking the same thing.
They were strange.
Too strange.
There was a saying he had once heard, an old joke about how deep sea creatures looked bizarre because they lived in total darkness.
The things he had seen before, and the Cthulhu before him now, all felt like the final punchline to that joke.
Completely green.
An enormous body.
The legends said it was as tall as a mountain.
Its soft head was a mass of writhing tentacles. On either side were three eyes. Its swollen body was covered in scales. Its limbs ended in huge hooked claws. From its back extended a pair of damaged, seemingly underdeveloped wings.
It sat upon its throne.
And Rowe suddenly understood that the throne was not a throne at all.
It was simply Cthulhu's own resting form translated into architecture.
He saw the countless Star Spawn lower themselves and bow, their tentacles drooping like kneeling courtiers.
He saw Cthulhu, seated high above, turn its gaze downward.
Rowe stood in the twisted streets of the ancient city and met that gaze head on.
...Human?
From the gibbering language of the Outer God, a sound that would have driven any ordinary person mad at the first syllable, Rowe neatly extracted the meaning and translated it into human words.
He nodded.
"That is right."
"I am human."
Humans were a special race.
They had infinite future.
Infinite possibility.
To the Great Old Ones of the ultimate abyss, they were an interesting kind of insect. Among them, there had once been those who grew wings, beings who had interfered with the Great Old Ones' plans. People later called them investigators. There had also been those who went further and transformed themselves into incarnations of the Great Old Ones.
But clearly, the being before Cthulhu was on a different scale altogether.
It did not recognize Rowe.
Which made sense.
The universe had been born hundreds of billions of years ago. For the first two hundred billion years, darkness had ruled, and chaos had outweighed order. That had been the age of the Great Old Ones. Afterward, stars gathered light, darkness receded, and reality turned over upon itself like a structure folding into another dimension. The Great Old Ones fell into the abyssal dark side. Cthulhu had fallen asleep in that era and had never truly awakened since. Only projections formed from the occasional fluctuation of its mind had surfaced.
Its true body had never once risen fully.
So unlike other Great Old Ones, it was not familiar with Rowe.
That was good.
"I came to purify you, Lord of Slumber. Cthulhu."
Rowe tightened his grip on the Holy Sword and smiled with genuine anticipation.
Cthulhu fell silent for a moment.
Darkness did not mean mindlessness.
Chaos did not mean irrationality.
So it arrived at a rational conclusion.
You are powerful.
But merely human.
And then, just as rationally, it decided it wanted to swat Rowe to death.
That was how it had treated projections of him before.
That was how it treated all things that dared intrude.
In the dark age of the early universe, there had also been humans. They had served the Great Old Ones. They had been futures summoned backward from rivers of time. There had been miracles among them, yes, but most had stopped there.
The person before it carried light.
But Cthulhu had just awakened.
And an awakened Lord of Slumber came with a temper.
Countless tentacles spread outward at once, carrying with them the power of the abyss and the dark side of the cosmos.
At the same instant, the Holy Sword shone brighter in Rowe's hand.
If it was the power of the Great Old Ones, the power of the Lord of Nightmares, then perhaps it really could kill him.
He grinned and raised the sword.
Do not let this trip into R'lyeh, into your nightmare domain, be wasted.
Cthulhu.
Roar.
In that instant, the ultimate abyss trembled.
And the battle between man and the abyss began.
Outside, the rain still poured.
The white Saint and the black Saint each held a banner as they ran through the downpour. Their figures cut through the dim world as streaks of black and white light, like a pair of wings spreading across the storm.
Siegfried.
Fafnir.
Queen Marie.
Mozart.
Charles.
Vlad III.
Beowulf.
Their battlefields were all different.
Their paths were all different.
But now, the purpose of the heroes who had once stood on opposing sides had become the same.
Resist the monsters of the abyss.
Protect humanity.
Defend France.
A dull, heavy impact rang out as a shield slammed a lunging fish like monster aside. The girl in the tight violet combat suit spun in a graceful arc, her body moving with fluid force despite the massive shield in her hands. Her thighs flexed. Her hips twisted. Her waist turned. The heavy armament moved with impossible smoothness.
The gust kicked up by the blow sent countless monsters flying backward. They crashed hard onto the wet ground.
Her short pink hair clung to her face, soaked through by rain. Her chest rose and fell from exertion.
She turned.
"Senpai, are you alright?"
"Fou."
The little white beast perched on her shoulder also let out a crisp cry.
"I'm fine, Mashu. Are you okay?"
Ritsuka ran up beside her, the last Master of Chaldea lifting her head toward the sky.
"Yes. I'm fine."
Mashu nodded.
As a Demi Servant, she still had more than enough stamina left. The fighting up to now had not even counted as a true burden. The monsters were strong, but only by the standards of powerful human beings. Their appearance was terrifying, but so long as someone could overcome that initial fear and pick up a weapon, they could be beaten.
"That is good."
Ritsuka nodded in relief.
Then she looked ahead.
After pushing forward all the way from Orléans, they could now already see the great city before them.
Paris.
The temporal nexus.
And the city was wrapped entirely in chaotic mist.
It had long since been swallowed by the curtain of R'lyeh and submerged in the nightmare abyss of the Lord of Slumber.
"Ritsuka. Are you really going in?"
Romani Archaman's voice came from the communicator on Ritsuka's wrist.
The anomaly in the Singularity had once again interfered with communications, but Chaldea was still the pinnacle of both science and magecraft. Da Vinci, being Da Vinci, had restored the link in short order.
Faced with Romani's question, Ritsuka only smiled.
"Of course."
"Why else would I come here?"
She stared into the mist hanging over Paris, into that hazy brilliance shot through with chaos.
She could feel that Rowe was inside.
"I am not going to leave him to fight alone, Doctor Roman."
"I am Chaldea's Master, aren't I?"
She smiled.
From the control room, to Roman and Da Vinci alike, the smile projected across the communication line looked clean and bright.
Yes.
She was Chaldea's last Master.
Even if she had originally ranked last.
Even if she had been only a reserve among reserves.
Even if circumstance and death had shoved her into the front line.
She was still a Master.
Fujimaru Ritsuka had never thought of herself as someone capable of saving the world.
But she did believe this.
That she should do everything she could to save the world she loved.
"This was also the Director's wish."
Mashu's ear twitched slightly as the words reached her.
It was so faint she almost thought she had imagined it.
She looked sideways at the red haired girl beside her, only to receive a smile and a small nod in return.
"Let's go, Mashu."
"Yes, Senpai."
Inside Chaldea, once Ritsuka and Mashu stepped into the mist, the communication link was cut again.
All that remained in the central control room was Roman and Da Vinci, looking at each other across the silence.
"She really is a reckless child..."
Roman scratched at his red hair hard enough to dishevel his ponytail.
Da Vinci only smiled and took another sip of coffee.
"Do not look so troubled, Romani."
"This may even be better."
"To save a Singularity, people from our own era have to step forward in person. That is simply how it works. The destruction of the world began from us, after all."
She looked at the France Singularity on Chaldea's display, now wrapped in black chaos.
"And that child... she is no longer lost."
Was it because of the Director's death?
Roman followed her gaze.
"When someone familiar dies in front of you, when a person who was alive one moment suddenly disappears from the world the next, it is never pleasant."
"It can even become a nightmare."
Da Vinci's voice remained calm.
"But nightmares do not only break people."
"They can also make them grow."
"Our little Master has already started growing."
"In places we did not see. At times we did not notice."
Roman finally exhaled.
"Perhaps... I really did worry too much."