Satoru's eyes narrow as he watches the Shrine Maidens reposition themselves. "With those two hovering around, it's going to be a pain to exorcise the big one. They're too good at covering his blind spots. We need to take them out first."
"Alright," I say, mentally cycling through my deployments. "I'll draw the big guy's aggro and keep you clear of their restraints. You just focus on taking out those maidens."
Satoru glances at the towering monster, then back at me. "Are you sure? One hit from that thing and you're paste."
I take a deep breath, focusing every ounce of my energy. My Barbarians and Giants are useless here—against a Special Grade like this, they're just paper targets. They wouldn't even buy us a second. If I'm going to draw his attention, I need them to keep their distance and have sudden explosive impact.
So , Wall breakers and....
"DEPLOY: BALLOONS!"
Above the fake 'God', the air ripples as five massive, skeleton-piloted Balloons materialize. They hover directly over him, the shadows of their wicker baskets swinging over the park.
It's my highest firepower; they can rain destruction from the sky where the fake God's massive fists can't easily reach.
"Satoru, GO!" I roar.
At my signal, the skeletons in the baskets tilt their crates. The first round of black-iron bombs whistles through the air.
BOOM! BOOM!
The explosions rack his broad shoulders, the shells are more of an annoyance than a lethal blow, barely chipping away at its massive frame, but they're doing exactly what I need.
BOOM! BOOM!
The fake God let out a deafening, shriek, its five-sectioned jaw snapping at Ballons upward .
The fake "God" reaches upward, its massive, rot-slicked claws grasping at empty air. My Balloons are perfectly positioned, hovering out of its reach.
It keeps trying to leap, its powerful legs cracking the park's pavement as it lunges toward the sky, but the balloon are very high in the sky.
Because of the distance, they have those precious few seconds to adjust their trajectory every time it leaves the ground. They drift just far enough to stay out of its lethal arc, making the "God" look like a dog chasing a bird it can never catch.
The distraction is flawless.
Seeing their "God" failing to swat the pests, the Shrine Maidens turn. Their long sleeves whip forward as they begin to gather shimmering golden energy to blast the Balloons out of the sky.
They've made a fatal mistake. They've looked away from the soon-to-be strongest sorcerer in the world.
In that split second of divided attention, a flash of white hair and blue energy cuts through the black smoke of the explosions.
Satoru appears instantly beside the first maiden. His grin is wide and maddening.
"Found you," he whispers.
Satoru doesn't even use a technique at first. He reaches out, his hand blurring as he grabs the face of the first maiden, and with a single, fluid motion, he slams her into the pavement, the impact shattering the concrete in a crater.
The second maiden has already spun around, her eyes bleeding with malice as she raises her hands. She's trying to trigger that same solidification technique, aiming to lock Satoru's Cursed Energy before he can finish her sister.
BOOM!BOOM!
My Cannons roar from the side. The shells hit her head-on, the explosive force flinging her backward before she can completely use her Technique.
"Nice timing, Emiya!" Satoru shouts.
Still pinning the first maiden to the ground with one hand, Satoru raises his other arm high above his head. A high-output, screaming sphere of vacuum energy forms in his palm, twisting the very air around his fingers.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue."
He doesn't throw it. He leaps into the air and slams the Blue down directly onto the maiden pinned in the crater. The gravitational pressure is absolute.
There is a deafening sound of imploding stone and Cursed Energy as the maiden is crushed into the earth.
She doesn't just die—she unravels. Under the absolute pressure of the Lapse: Blue, her form shatters into a writhing, chaotic spray of golden worms that dissolve into the shattered crater.
Seeing his priestess erased, the Mountain God lets out a sound that is a roar .
Its focus snaps away from the Balloons and lock onto me. It has identified me as the heart of the technique, the anchor holding those flying annoyances in the sky.
It slams both massive hands into the ground and begins to sprint. It's a terrifying, quadrupedal charge that cracks the pavement with every stride.
I frantically cycle through my reserves.
"WALL! WALL! WALL! WALL! WALL! ..."
A row of dark grey fortifications rises between us, but the God doesn't even try to dodge. It rams straight through them, the stone shattering like glass as it maintains its lethal momentum.
My Balloons are too high and too slow to track its sudden burst of speed.
BOOM! BOOM!
My Cannons fire point-blank, the shells exploding against its chest, but it doesn't even flinch. It's a juggernaut of rage.
In a heartbeat, the monster is on me. Its massive, rot-slicked fist is already mid-swing, filling my entire vision.
The world slows down to a crawl. In that split second of pure, adrenaline-fueled terror, my brain stops thinking and my body just acts.
By pure instinct, drilled into me from every training session with Toji this past week, I throw my own fist forward to intercept his instead of jumping away. It's a suicide mission, like a pebble trying to stop a landslide. I watch as my eyes widened in a horrifying slow-motion blur as my knuckles travel toward that massive, mountain of a hand."
I can see the individual cracks in its white skin, the way the air ripples around its knuckles from the sheer force of the swing. My eyes widen, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
What the hell am I doing?!
"EMIYA!" Satoru's voice cracks like a whip from across the park. He vanishes, but the fist is already inches from my face. I can smell the rot. I can feel the wind of the impact. I can feel the atmospheric pressure beginning to crush the bones in my hand before the impact even lands.
Oh crap.
"Have you guys started without me?"a voice sounded.
Then, the world stretches.
Suddenly, the space between my knuckles and the Curse's fist distorts, warping like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. The zero-meter gap, the point of certain death, violently expands to ten meters in the blink of an eye.
I blink, my fist punching nothing but empty air. My momentum carries me forward, and I nearly stumble, staring at my hand in disbelief.
I... I'm alive?
Satoru reappears directly beneath the God's lunging form, his eyes glowing with a manic intensity.
Using the momentum of his teleportation, Satoru drives a Blue-enhanced flying punch straight into the God's gut, lifting the multi-ton nightmare off its feet and sending it hurtling toward the trees.
"Well... it doesn't look like a horse at all."
We both turn our heads back. Standing at the edge of the clearing are Suguru Geto and Shoko Ieiri.
Suguru has his hands tucked casually in his pockets, while a two-meter-tall gorilla Curse looms behind him, gripping a massive wooden ruler like a disciplinary rod.