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Marie Alter was not as overwhelming as the presentation suggested.
Her base stats were second-tier. Her Noble Phantasms, while unusual, didn't place her among the top bracket by raw power. Against a fully operational Iskandar with King's Army and his Thunder Ox and a Master supplying mana, she would have been a serious problem but not an unsolvable one.
The current situation was not that situation.
Iskandar had lost Northern Star. King's Army was depleted past usable. He'd voluntarily dismounted the Flying Hooves Thunder Ox to intercept the guillotine aimed at Northern Star — stepping into the lily's range of his own choice. The moment his feet touched that ground, the targeting logic had locked in.
He was the prey. The lily had closed around him.
Marie Alter's first Noble Phantasm was the swamp itself — formally designated Tragic Flow: Black Flower Funeral Procession, B+ rank, Anti-Country classification. The black lily at its center released a continuous weakening curse across everything within range, killing living things slowly and causing inanimate objects to destabilize. Its specific nature was the French royal lily crest, inverted — a curse directed at royalty and monarchy as a concept, transformed by black mud corruption into something that carried active malice toward King-type Servants specifically.
Iskandar was a King-type Servant. The special attack bonus applied in full.
Every time he struggled, the lily's vines responded — tightening, rerouting, adjusting to new angles of force. The black mud's paralyzing effect worked in parallel, draining his strength incrementally with each passing second.
When the Thunder Ox charged to extract him — hooves throwing off arcs of divine lightning, the kind of force that had burned through the mud once already — the second Noble Phantasm answered it.
Guillotine of Mockery.
C-rank, Anti-Unit. The mechanism that had ended the monarchy and ended Marie — her karmic connection to it gave her complete control over its manifestation. It could be summoned in any quantity, from any angle, with no wind-up requirement. A grid of enormous black guillotine blades dropped across the Thunder Ox's approach vector, blocking every path the sacred beasts could take.
The Thunder Ox pressed against them. The guillotines held.
The mud kept working.
[Chat]:
[Lore_Mode]: so the lily targets kings specifically. Iskandar jumped into it to save Northern Star. he knew what it was and jumped in anyway.
[That's_Him]: that's completely him
[Noble_Phantasm_Breakdown]: black lily = anti-royalty weakening field, guillotine = infinite-spawn Anti-Unit barrier. combined they seal movement and drain stats simultaneously
[Third_Element]: what's the necklace thing around her neck?
[Max_Incoming]: Max is still talking
The necklace was a skill.
The historical record: even though Marie had nothing to do with the Necklace Affair, she was condemned as its architect. The injustice of that verdict had crystallized into something the Moon Cell could formalize — Bloody Necklace, B+ rank. A composite skill that incorporated Innocent Monster and several subsidiary abilities. On its own, Marie Alter's combat power started at second-tier.
The necklace's mechanic was what made her dangerous over time.
In combination with a secondary ability she'd developed — constructed from her own despair, grief, and blood in the second chapter of her lore, a familiar called Anger's Condensation — the two skills worked as an absorption system. By continuously extracting the spiritual foundations of other Servants, Marie Alter's power climbed. The absorbed Noble Phantasms could be processed into pseudo-Noble Phantasms of her own.
The example that made Chloe's eyes light up: absorb Iskandar, activate a version of King's Army. Every soldier inside it would transform into an instance of Anger's Condensation, Chloe's army, her tool.
Marie Alter had disclosed this ability when Chloe asked.
She had done so while feeling something that could only be described as nausea.
She had encountered many people who had betrayed and condemned her out of ignorance — people caught in currents they didn't fully understand, making decisions based on incomplete information, afraid of the wrong things. Foolish. Harmful. But not knowing.
This woman knew exactly what she was doing. She'd looked at Iskandar — damaged, retreating, having fought an entire battle and come away from it with his army gutted — and she'd seen a resource, not a person. She'd seen an opportunity in someone's loss.
That was different.
Chloe had been smart enough to issue one Command Seal instruction before the introduction: do not harm me. The binding was real. But Command Seal energy wasn't infinite when the instruction ran contrary to the Servant's nature — the magical cost would compound over time, and when it ran out, the binding would dissolve.
Marie Alter was patient. She could wait.
She'd let Chloe have her moment. She'd absorb Iskandar, watch Chloe celebrate the win, and save the rest for afterward.
Dessert.
She accelerated the absorption.
"Why aren't you screaming?"
Iskandar, buried to the chest in black mud, was still cutting vines with the Cyprus sword. The sword strokes were slower than they'd been. The weakening effect was measurable now.
He didn't look at her when she asked.
"Why would I? You want me to cover your victory with my wailing?" A short exhale, almost amused. "Conqueror Iskandar cannot do such a thing. And besides — I don't believe I've lost."
Marie Alter studied him.
"Then struggle. Until you're completely swallowed."
What she wanted was wailing. Impotent rage. The specific satisfaction of watching something powerful reduced to helplessness and forced to acknowledge it. This — this quiet, methodical resistance, this refusal to perform defeat even while sinking — was not interesting. It gave her nothing.
Her irritation translated directly into action.
Blades evolved from the guillotine mechanism, a dozen of them at different angles, all targeted at Iskandar simultaneously.
His arms were severed. The Cyprus sword hit the mud.
Marie Alter's expression shifted toward satisfaction—
A golden blade broke through the air.
Fast, precise, launched from somewhere outside the lily's range — it hit Iskandar's chest with concentrated force, and the explosion of searing heat that followed it burned through the black mud in all directions, scorching the vines to ash, forcing the lily back from the center.
Marie Alter's smile stopped.
Iskandar's spiritual foundation shattered under the combined impact of absorption and the strike — not her kill, not her absorption, just the accumulated damage from everything that had happened since the Reality Marble. He dissolved into ions. Slowly. Golden light rising.
Gone.
[Chat]:
[THE_DUCK_FLEW]: he got out
[NOT_ABSORBED]: SHE DIDN'T GET TO ABSORB HIM
[Golden_Blade]: what was that. what just hit him. who fired that.
[Gilgamesh]: that was Gate of Babylon. that was Gilgamesh.
[WHY]: why would Gilgamesh—
[Little_Cat_Theory]: Little Cat. she's been keeping Gilgamesh happy for hours. she might have finally asked for something.
[Or]: or Gilgamesh just decided he didn't want Marie Alter to have King's Army. on principle.
[Both_Possible]: both completely possible
[Chloe_Reaction]: "you bastard"
[Gilgamesh_Response]:
"Be quiet."
The voice came from somewhere above and to the side — not present on the plain, not physically there, the Gate of Babylon simply being the Gate of Babylon, reaching wherever it needed to reach.
"Mongrel."
Chloe turned toward the sound.
Marie Alter didn't.
She was looking at where Iskandar had been — at the empty space, the scorched ground, the dissipating golden light.
Her expression had not returned to satisfaction. It had settled into something colder and more patient.
She turned, eventually, toward Chloe.
Chloe was still looking at the sky, toward Gilgamesh's direction, already processing the next move, already recalculating.
Marie Alter watched her recalculate.
She could wait.
[Chat]:
[Ominous]: Marie Alter just looked at Chloe the way a cat looks at something it's going to deal with later
[Chloe_Situation]: zero Command Seals. Iskandar gone. Gilgamesh hostile. Marie Alter calculating.
[Survival_Odds]: ...
[King_Hassan_Again]: old man. bell. PLEASE.
[End of Chapter 174]
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