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Is this... my body?
[Thud!]
Like a ripe fruit dropping clean from its stem, a headless figure stood on the field.
After one full dizzy rotation — the kind of motion that the body does automatically when the mind has already stopped — Ushi Gozen's head hit the ground. Her brow furrowed. Some part of her registered what had happened.
Then the greatsword came down.
It hit like a bat connecting with a melon at full swing. Clean. Total. What had been Ushi Gozen's head ceased to be anything identifiable.
Everything had happened in under two seconds.
One moment everyone watching was braced for the third round — divine form, third eye open, Noble Phantasm recharged, MHX already closing the ten-kilometer gap at full speed — and the next, a single line of black light had crossed Ushi Gozen's neck from the side.
The blood came in a high arc from the stump of her neck. The black armor — still intact, still functional, still trying to do its job — began the process of seeking the head to reattach it, and then a backswing from the same greatsword shattered the armor entirely. Every piece of it. Bone-composite, blood-infused, B-rank mental negation and all — reduced to dust and settling across the field.
The skeletal knight flicked the blood from his blade in a single practiced motion and slid the greatsword back into the large shield at his back.
"Your vespers have sounded."
Randy's vision had gone white for a moment, then returned. Ushi Gozen's headless body was on the ground in front of him. The skeletal knight was standing where she had been.
King Hassan.
In Randy's stream, after a pause that lasted approximately one breath:
[Chat — Randy's Stream]:
[When]: when did he get up there. WHEN DID HE GET UP THERE.
[Red_Side]: hold on. isn't he supposed to be — wasn't he on the Red side? why did he just kill a Red-adjacent Servant?
[Correction]: he killed his own Master on day one. Red side is a technicality at this point.
[Mourning]: I was this close to the phase three battle. this close. Ushi Gozen and MHX in divine-form-versus-Noble-Phantasm and then it just — stopped.
[Same]: I needed that content and it was taken from me
[More_Important]: his voice though. the magnetic factor of that voice is doing something to me.
[Agreeing]: he sounds like a judge. an extremely old, extremely tired judge who has seen all sins and found them beneath comment.
[Gerontophilia_Acknowledged]: I won't explain myself.
[Strategy_Update]: Red side just lost two people in the opening phase. Victor went in thirty seconds. Ushi Gozen just got erased. if this keeps up Maverick might win by doing absolutely nothing again.
[Lights_Out]: who turned my lights off—
Randy didn't think.
The moment his vision cleared and the paralysis broke, he moved — turned, pushed off the Ox-King's back (which was already beginning to dissolve, light particles rising from it as the Noble Phantasm began its evaporation), and put as much distance between himself and King Hassan as the surface area allowed.
Too slow.
He'd been stunned in place a second too long.
A bullet crossed the open sky.
Randy's stream went dark.
[Chat — Randy's Stream]:
[???]:
[???]:
[???]:
Maverick let out a low whistle.
"Finally." He lowered the scope. "By the way — what was happening up there? Why did he freeze like that?"
Danny watched the last light particles from the Ox-King's dissolution drift upward. "Not sure. Maybe MHX's trump card did something to him."
"You mean the spaceship. The rocket-looking thing."
"That's the one."
Battlefield tempo is unforgiving. In the space of thirty seconds: Ushi Gozen eliminated by King Hassan, Randy eliminated by Maverick's sniper shot, the Ox-King Great Divine Messenger dissolving into nothing, the anti-city Noble Phantasm cancelled mid-activation. The threat to Trifas City was gone.
Maverick and Danny high-fived with the energy of two people who had spent the last ten minutes being genuinely terrified and were only now processing that it was over.
MHX landed beside them, touched down with visible relief — she'd been closing that ten-kilometer gap at full speed and had arrived in time to watch the resolution rather than contribute to it. She looked at Maverick.
"You got him?"
"Clean shot." He paused. "The one time."
Mozart stepped down from his conductor's stand — the performance venue was already dematerializing around him, white angels dissolving, instruments fading — and crossed to where the group was standing, rolling his conductor's baton between his fingers with the air of someone who'd just finished a particularly successful encore.
"Well done, all of you."
"You're the one who made it possible," Maverick said. "Seriously."
"Oh, Master is far too modest." Mozart waved it off, though something in his posture suggested he didn't entirely disagree. "When there's no one watching, you can just use my—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
His gaze had moved to the small path at the edge of the city, where the leaves were rustling in a cold wind that had no obvious source.
[Chat]:
[Sensing_It]: something's coming
[Leaves]: why are the leaves doing that
[Mozart_Noticed]: Mozart noticed first. that's either impressive or ominous.
The rustling resolved into footsteps. The black cloak came first, then the rest of him — King Hassan, greatsword in hand, moving through the city gate path with the unhurried pace of someone who had never in his existence needed to move quickly.
He stopped.
He looked at Mozart.
"Your senses are sharp, Magician."
"Pure guess, honestly." Mozart kept his tone easy, though a few drops of cold sweat were running down the back of his neck. "I just had a feeling you'd come over for a conversation." He glanced sideways at Maverick and Danny, both of whom had gone completely still. "Masters — and X's Master — don't worry. This one isn't our enemy."
"Go to hell!"
MHX moved.
She'd been ten kilometers away during Ushi Gozen's fight. She hadn't seen King Hassan fight. She knew he'd appeared at Ushi Gozen's location and that Ushi Gozen was gone, and she had drawn the obvious conclusion and acted on it before anyone could explain the alternative.
The twin blades were already at full speed, coming in from behind King Hassan at an angle that left no reaction time—
King Hassan raised the greatsword behind him without turning.
The impact was clean. MHX's full momentum met the flat of the blade and stopped. Not deflected — stopped, the way a wall stops something. King Hassan had not changed his posture. He had not looked. He had raised the blade the same way a person raises a hand to block the sun.
Before MHX could rebalance, the large shield came around and hit her across the neck with its edge.
The sound it made was definitive.
MHX went down like a swan hitting a pond at the wrong angle — fast, complete, no recovery arc. She hit the ground hard and stayed there.
[Chat]:
[Silence_First]:
[Then]: he didn't even turn around
[Also]: the shield. he used the SHIELD.
[Full_Analysis]: Artoria and Ushi Gozen burned through everything they had fighting each other to a standstill, and this man just walked up and ended both of them with one strike each.
[Victor_Reference]: Victor was eliminated in thirty seconds. MHX and Ushi Gozen just needed a few more minutes.
[Mourning_Victor]: alas. Victor has cost us so much.
[Worried_About_Ge_Ge]: don't say it. don't say it. Ge Ge is going to cry.
[Tactical_Question]: what does he WANT. he killed his own Master, he just killed a Red-side Servant, now he's standing in front of Maverick's group — is he switching sides? is he planning to kill everyone? what is the plan?
[Theory]: he's following his own alignment. Lawful Evil, acts only when Heaven wills it. he's not on anyone's side. he's the judge.
[Counter]: then what does he judge?
[Waiting]:
Randy's stream had gone dark, and his audience — most of them — were migrating. Maverick's viewer count climbed. Max's did too.
In Maverick's stream, Maverick himself was very still, watching King Hassan with the expression of a man running calculations about whether his last Command Seal would accomplish anything useful and arriving at an uncomfortable answer.
He was still working through it when King Hassan turned.
The black cloak moved. Beneath the white skull mask, two pale flames floated in the empty eye sockets, still and steady. They passed over Maverick, over Danny, over Mozart, over MHX still flat on the ground.
Then King Hassan pulled the cloak closed and stepped back.
He didn't walk away — he simply ceased to be visible. The space where he'd been was just space again.
His voice came from that empty space, once, unhurried:
"Maintain your original heart. If so — your vespers will surely not sound in this realm."
And then the cold wind stopped, and the leaves settled, and he was gone.
[Chat]:
[Long_Pause]:
[Maverick_Expression]: Maverick's face right now is doing a lot of things at once
[MHX_Status]: MHX is still on the ground
[Mozart_Status]: Mozart has stopped sweating. barely.
[Parsing_It]: "maintain your original heart" — he's not threatening them. he's advising them. he came over here specifically to say that.
[Why]: but WHY
[Theory_2]: remember the girl. the blind girl with the orange. she gave him a sugar cube. "you sound very kind." he accepted the down payment.
[Connecting_It]: he's been watching people fight this Holy Grail War and he's deciding who deserves to keep going
[Quiet]: that's actually kind of terrifying
[Also_Quiet]: yeah
[Danny_Status]: Danny is pretending she was never scared
[Accurate]: Maverick is also pretending
[End of Chapter 161]
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