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Some Heroic Spirits were built around abilities — Noble Phantasms, divine lineages, mystical skills stacked on top of each other.
Others were built around nothing except the man himself.
Dian Wei was firmly in the second category.
No Noble Phantasm. No class skills. No mystical powers or divine connections or legendary artifacts.
Just the man himself, his twin halberds, and a body that had apparently been constructed with the explicit purpose of not dying when it should.
The moment he hit the front line of King's Army, the yellow sand of Iskandar's Reality Marble turned red.
[Chat]:
[Figured_It_Out]: every warrior-type Heroic Spirit in this game just goes completely feral on contact. it's a pattern.
[Scale]: is this what the number one infantry fighter actually looks like?
[Going]: GO BIG BROTHER GO
[Request]: Max, when are you releasing a game where WE can be the Heroic Spirits? I want to experience fighting ten thousand people personally.
[Seconded]: seconded
[Thirded]: thirded
[Stop]: stop jinxing him. every time someone says a Heroic Spirit is strong they immediately die.
[Noticing_Something]: wait. he wasn't supposed to have a Noble Phantasm. where did that hammer come from.
[Explanation]: he's a historical general. he carried an eighty-kilogram weapon as standard equipment. perfectly normal. not a Noble Phantasm. just a man with an eighty-kilogram hammer.
[Reasonable]: completely reasonable yes
[Ominous]: ...he's going to die isn't he
[Stop_IT]: I said stop jinxing him—
Most of King's Army's soldiers couldn't match Dian Wei one-on-one.
That was just the math. A few of the more exceptional figures in the army could hold their own — there were presences in that crowd stronger than Iskandar himself — but the average soldier, facing Dian Wei directly, lost.
So as the twin halberds swept in wide arcs, what happened was not a battle but a harvest. Severed limbs. Ruptured armor. The army's front line caving inward around him with every pass. The game's pixel filter softened the worst of it but didn't disguise the shape of what was happening — Dian Wei's black armor going red from the outside in, soaked through, and still he moved forward.
The army adjusted.
Hundreds of iron chains launched simultaneously from different directions.
Dian Wei knocked most of them away. Dozens made contact.
Then hundreds of soldiers grabbed the ends and pulled in opposite directions.
The struggle that followed was not quick. Dian Wei against several hundred to a thousand people, each chain anchored by multiple bodies — the tension was visible, the ground around him churning as the forces balanced against each other. Against any other Servant, this would have ended in seconds.
It held for longer than seconds.
Then the Lancers came.
Dozens of spears, from angles the chains had created by pulling his limbs apart. Dian Wei's body was designed to break spears — and it did, iron muscles snapping wooden hafts on contact. But Iskandar's army had no shortage of legendary figures, and the exceptional ones in the crowd were moving now, targeting the gaps the chains had opened.
A dozen spears found purchase. Then more.
[Chat]:
[Can't_Watch]: I can't watch this
[Watching_Anyway]: I can't watch this and I am watching this
[Numbers]: if it were a few hundred he'd kill tens of thousands. there are just too many. you can't outfight mathematics.
[Spirit_Core]: those hits are reaching the Spirit Core. this is over.
[Stifling]: it feels like watching Superman get buried under ordinary people. wrong in a way that's hard to explain.
Dian Wei's right arm came free.
The chains had shifted, the tension redistributed as the soldiers on one end lost their footing from the pull. It was a fraction of a second of slack.
The Mad Shark Iron Halberd moved in a full arc.
Another storm of red across yellow sand.
Before his left arm and torso came free, the sky above him darkened.
Arrow rain. Enough arrows to block out the desert sun, fired simultaneously by archers spread across the army's depth. The kind of saturation that didn't need to aim because coverage was the aim.
When the sand settled, Dian Wei was still standing.
He was also a different shape than before. The arrows had found every exposed surface. The spears from the previous exchange still protruded from his torso at angles, some snapped, some intact. His armor had been punched through in so many places it had effectively stopped being armor. The muscles underneath had become target surfaces.
He looked like something that should have fallen three minutes ago.
He was still standing.
[Chat]:
[Silent]:
[Still_Silent]:
[Someone_Eventually]: ...he's still up
[Reading_Iskandar]: Iskandar's face. look at Iskandar's face. that's not satisfaction. that's regret.
[Understanding]: he wants to recruit him. he can see it. but Dian Wei won't stop fighting, so the only option is complete suppression.
[Dian_Wei_Would_Never]: he would never stop
The army's attention shifted to William.
Hundreds of soldiers, the immediate front line of King's Army, turned toward the small figure standing behind where Dian Wei had charged. The malevolent energy of tens of thousands of battle-ready Heroic Spirits redirected at once — a pressure that had no physical form but produced a physical effect. William's body began to tremble without his permission, his nervous system responding to something it had no framework to process.
He didn't move.
He didn't look away from the battlefield.
Because William had heard a promise, and he believed in it completely, and the kind of person who made that promise didn't break it.
Two soldiers broke from the front line and moved toward him.
Dian Wei died.
His body lost whatever had been holding it upright. The accumulated damage — spears, arrows, chains, the hammer blow that had caved in half his face — reached a threshold, and he went down, slumping forward into the churned sand.
The soldiers kept moving toward William.
Dark fire.
In the ruin of Dian Wei's half-skeletal face, something ignited that had not been there a moment before. Not a metaphor — a literal dark fire, burning in the exposed bone where the hammer blow had stripped away everything else.
His muscles, shredded and punctured, found tension again.
The arrows covering his body snapped one by one — not from external force, but from the muscles beneath expanding, the body reasserting itself against everything that had been done to it. The chains followed. Link by link, the iron gave way.
His hand found a spear lying in the sand.
He threw it.
The two soldiers who had been crossing the distance to William didn't have time to register the sound before the spear passed through the first one and into the second, pinning both to the ground in a single motion, the impact kicking up a spray of sand that passed William's ear close enough to feel.
Dian Wei straightened.
Half his face was gone. Every available surface of his body was occupied by a weapon someone had put there. He was bleeding from places that blood shouldn't have been reachable. He was on his feet.
He looked at the army.
"Come back."
His voice had not changed. Still enormous. Still completely certain of itself.
"Who allowed you to leave?"
[Chat]:
[ALIVE]: HE'S ALIVE
[COME_BACK]: "WHO ALLOWED YOU TO LEAVE"
[MAX_NOW]: MAX. SAY SOMETHING. NOW.
[Max_Expression]: his expression is—
[Max_Finally_Speaking]: he's speaking—
[William_Status]: William has stopped trembling. he's looking at Dian Wei. his expression is—
[Can't_Describe_It]: I don't have words for William's expression right now
[Someone_Try]: proud. that's the word. he looks proud.
[Iskandar_Status]: Iskandar has not moved. he is looking at Dian Wei. he has not moved for thirty seconds.
[King_Recognizing_King]: ...
[End of Chapter 168]
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