That was a high-speed movement technique unique to Menos, even more bizarre and harder to track than a Soul Reaper's Shunpo.
He left afterimages in the air, truly like a petrel weaving through a storm, dodging the Noble Phantasms' encirclement from all sorts of tricky angles!
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Sharp blades grazed his shoulders and thighs, but he didn't even pause. Instead, he used the momentum to accelerate toward Gilgamesh.
"Die!!"
Just as this god-like aerial battle intensified, the piercing roar of jet engines intruded upon this battlefield of gods and demons.
It was a fighter jet squadron belonging to the Air Self-Defense Force.
The sacrifice of one fighter jet forced them to take the unfolding disaster seriously, deploying more units for backup, only to discover an even more shocking scene.
"This is Falcon One, visual confirmation of the target!"
"Wait! There are unidentified flying objects engaging in combat in the sky!"
The pilot stared in horror at the massive, hundred-meter-tall Sea Monster below, and the two entities colliding at lightspeed above. His brain instantly short-circuited.
But he never got the chance to speak again.
Swoosh!
The two fiercely battling figures had no time to care about mortal pilots. Merely grazed by a Noble Phantasm, the entire fuselage snapped like a dead twig.
"Evade! Evade now!"
The wingman's shrill scream echoed over the radio.
But it was too late.
Amidst the flashing blades and shadows, several fighter jets were instantly sliced in half!
The aircraft spun out of control in the air, quickly turning into burning heaps of scrap metal.
Boom!
Fireballs exploded in the night sky, illuminating the face of the running Asuka below.
"So ordinary people are already getting dragged into this..."
Asuka frowned, but he had no time to worry about those unfortunate pilots.
By now, he had already charged onto the Fuyuki City Bridge.
Fierce winds howled across the bridge, the concrete surface riddled with cracks from the earlier tremors.
Against this apocalyptic backdrop, the scene in the middle of the bridge seemed entirely out of place, even absurd.
Two figures dressed in elaborate Western outfits stood there.
One was a blond boy who looked no older than fourteen or fifteen, holding a grimoire and chanting obscure incantations in a fanatical, obsessed tone.
Magical Energy flowed continuously through the magic circle beneath his feet, feeding the massive Sea Monster in the river.
The other was a girl who looked strikingly similar to the boy, but dressed in an exquisite Lolita gown.
She sat on the bridge's railing, her legs dangling in the air. Holding a pair of binoculars she had gotten from who knows where, she watched the aerial battle with great interest, occasionally letting out silvery laughter.
"Wow! Amazing, so amazing! That Gilgamesh is going to split the sky open!"
"François, look, look! That masked weirdo got his chest blown through and he's still fighting! This is hilarious!"
The girl, Francesca, patted the wheelchair beside her, where Sola-Ui sat immobilized, her eyes filled with terror. "This war is just too fun! It's more chaotic and insane than any of the previous ones! We should have joined sooner!"
"Oh dear, Francesca," François Prelati frowned as he maintained the spell. "Artie-kins is charging up, and her Magical Energy reaction is piercing the heavens! If she unleashes that strike, my big guy might die."
"Then let her unleash it," Francesca shrugged indifferently. "This place is already mostly destroyed anyway. One more giant crater won't make a difference..."
"Easy for you to say, since you're not the one being affected," the boy grumbled, tapping Sola-Ui on the head to express his dissatisfaction.
"Are you two done with your little stage play?"
A cold voice abruptly cut into the bizarre twins' conversation.
Asuka walked forward step by step, holding his Zanpakuto in one hand.
"Oh my, if it isn't Mr. Avenger who keeps rushing to the rescue everywhere! A pleasure to meet you."
Francesca's eyes lit up as if she had seen a new toy. "What? Do you want to join our stage too?"
"I'm here for a refund."
Asuka's voice was still echoing in place, but he had already vanished.
In the next second, the pitch-black blade was already pressed against Francesca's pale, slender neck.
Without any hesitation, this strike was aimed squarely at severing her head.
Clang!!!
A crisp sound of a parry rang out.
Asuka's Zanpakuto stopped an inch away from the girl's neck.
What blocked him was neither a sword nor a shield, but a transparent membrane that appeared out of thin air, formed by countless twisted human faces.
It was the automatic defense spell inherent to Prelati's Spellbook.
"So fierce."
Francesca's smile didn't diminish in the slightest. She even leaned closer to the blade, sticking out her tongue to lick the frost off the edge. "Going straight for a girl's neck right off the bat... That's not very gentlemanly behavior."
"Roar."
Boom!
A point-blank, black-and-red Spiritual Pressure slash erupted between them!
Francesca cried out in surprise as her body drifted backward like a feather. She spun gracefully in the air a few times before landing steadily on the other end of the railing.
"Ah! It hurts, it hurts!"
Even with the automatic defense spell, she couldn't completely block such a close-range Spiritual Pressure slash.
A large portion of her originally exquisite dress hem was scorched, and even a patch of skin on her forehead was burned away, revealing a bizarre, doll-like material underneath.
This finally caused the smile on her face to cool.
"François, he's so rude!" she pouted, speaking in a tone that was both coquettish and spine-chilling. "I'm very angry."
"Then kill him."
The boy, who had been chanting incantations all this time, closed the human-skin book in his hands.
He turned around, his malice-filled eyes locking onto Asuka.
"Although maintaining the Sea Monster requires a massive amount of Magical Energy, I should still have more than enough to deal with you."
As his voice fell, the air around the bridge suddenly became damp and viscous.
Countless translucent, jellyfish-like creatures emerged from the air. Their tentacles flickered with highly toxic blue light as they densely surrounded Asuka.
'Is it an illusion?'
Asuka scanned his surroundings, sensing the fluctuations emanating around him, and slightly lowered his blade.
It was a mix of truth and falsehood; some were real summons, while others were merely illusions meant to deceive the five senses.
"What a pain. I've already exerted too much effort tonight," he muttered, furrowing his brow.
"Cough, cough... cough, cough, cough..."
Before Asuka could swing his blade down, a hoarse, elderly coughing sound echoed from deep within the shadows of the bridge.
Asuka and the Prelati twins all froze simultaneously, turning their heads toward the end of the bridge.
In the heavy darkness of the night, countless black worms were gathering on the ground.
A few seconds later, those worms formed a pair of feet wearing wooden clogs, followed by emaciated legs and a hunched torso.
Finally, a terrifying face covered in age spots with deeply sunken eye sockets appeared.
Zouken Matou.
The old Magus, who had lived for hundreds of years, was now standing at the end of the bridge, leaning on his bone-like cane.
His expression was incredibly grim. His hollow eyes didn't look at Asuka, but instead glared fixedly at the Prelati twins.
It was the kind of look a farmer would give to wild boars that had broken into his carefully tended vegetable garden and trampled everything in sight.