Chapter 36 Before Dawn, the Shining Star
Alcides watched with his own senses as the youth stood behind the fragments of the fully dissipated shield, clutching a broken arrowhead.
He remained silent while aiming his arrow. Between equal opponents, words were no longer necessary. Whether it was that hero or Alcides, both understood this.
The youth had reached his limit. Alcides was satisfied with the answer the youth had provided to "carelessness."
Furthermore, he had blocked [Nine Lives].
Though he had only endured it at an Anti-Army power output, it was still Alcides' authentic Noble Phantasm; in life, countless opponents had fallen to this move.
Whether at range or in close quarters, the clash had been prolonged, and even a Noble Phantasm failed to take his life. Crawling on the ground, rigid and unyielding, indomitable, exhausting all wisdom, means, and technique—it was precisely in this manner that humans bid farewell to the age of gods and continued to survive tenaciously after the gods had receded.
While Alcides loathed the blessings or divine protections of the gods, if his body could have received even a sliver of the mysterious favor of the earth or humanity, the situation would have been entirely different.
Alcides saw Emiya Shirou's current condition at a glance and felt that this method of winning was too unfair.
With a flick of his fingertips, he let a single arrow be tainted by the divine aura of the War Belt.
A thought of sparing his life welled up within Alcides, but he quickly dismissed it. A foolish man manifesting in the Archer class might spare such a hero, perhaps even expecting him to hone himself and unite with allies to one day pierce his life.
However, precisely because Alcides recognized him as a threat capable of doing so, he would exert his full strength to eliminate him out of respect.
Magical energy surged, gathering upon the longbow before him. It whipped his long hair, forming the omen of a storm around his body.
He aimed at the exhausted youth. The bow was at full draw.
With an attitude of respect, Alcides loosened the finger hooked on the string for Emiya Shirou—at the same time, a golden light flashed past.
"A Servant!?"
Warning bells rang out; he retreated urgently out of instinct, but it was too late. The Servant's instantaneous speed was faster even than the arrow about to be loosed.
Alcides' stance broke. The arrow tainted by divine aura flew off to an unknown location, and from the distance came the sound of an abandoned high-rise beginning to collapse.
He clutched his right arm.
A large amount of blood flowed from his arm in that split-second crossing. If Alcides had not dodged that strike, his tendons would have been severed directly.
Alcides cast his gaze forward.
A blonde woman stood in silver armor, glowing faintly under the moonlight.
The golden holy sword she held was dripping with the monster's blood.
"Move your arrow away from Shirou. If you want to fight, I can accompany you."
She spoke each word clearly in her refined voice.
The King of Knights acted only to protect others.
"Arthur Pendragon."
Mostly because he saw through that golden sword held without any concealment, and partly because of his aching head. Even the monster Heroic Spirit himself couldn't judge the exact proportions, but he understood the newcomer's True Name instantly.
In the next moment, Alcides realized—in that urgent split second, it wasn't that he hadn't blocked with the Divine Beast's Pelt.
The Divine Beast's Pelt had been sliced open along with his own arm. Before Alcides, fragments of the pelt drifted; through the gaps, he saw the shining longsword.
The pelt that Emiya Shirou could not affect no matter how he attacked had suffered damage from a single strike from Saber.
[Excalibur: Promised Victory Sword], a Star-Constructed Noble Phantasm.
It is the "Ultimate Illusion" crystallized and refined within the planet from the accumulation of people's "hopes," and as the most powerful Noble Phantasm held by the King of Knights, Pendragon, it is regarded as the symbol of the most powerful and noble holy sword of King Arthur. Under the physical manifestation of the planet's own will, the Divine Beast's Pelt, which immunizes against the tools of human endeavor, was utterly meaningless.
Saber raised the radiant sword capable of inflicting fatal wounds on Alcides, staring at the monster with full battle intent.
The long night had not yet reached dawn.
But the girl alone had transformed into a shining star.
At the same time.
A shadow hid behind the star.
Before the dazed Shirou, a shadow nearby began to stir within his blurred vision.
It looked like an ominous scene, but the one who emerged stealthily from within was a familiar girl.
"...Sakura?"
It was like a dream. Shirou could no longer distinguish reality from illusion.
The girl made a "shh" gesture in response to Shirou's call, then lunged forward in one breath.
"Senpai, thank you for your hard work. I'll take you away immediately."
The purple-haired girl suppressed a tearful expression and held Shirou firmly.
The shadows writhed. It felt as if the area beneath his body led to another world—only, there was no danger there; it was simply a place she had meticulously selected.
The body heat coming from Sakura was very warm.
Shirou let his consciousness fade and closed his eyes.
.
.
.
"Why were you fighting Shirou!?"
"I need to eliminate threats to obtain the Holy Grail, and for that purpose, I deemed Emiya Shirou and a certain girl as threats. That is all."
High on the platform rang out a battle that transcended the human realm and reached the divine.
Saber, a swordsman to the core, against Alcides, who was forced to use his bow-staff again due to the proximity.
For Alcides, this time he did not wish for close combat. However, facing the blonde knight who pressed him step by step, Alcides had no choice.
—Two minutes until the cut on his arm from the surprise attack is repaired. He had to hold out until then.
The bow-staff of death swung once more.
However, due to her high basic parameters, the knight before him blocked it effortlessly.
At this range, their combat power was essentially equal. Yet, because of the wound inflicted on his arm by the opening strike, Alcides was now at a slight disadvantage.
Their weapons threw off sparks. Alcides, who had entered a defensive battle and was gradually stabilizing, spoke as he understood Saber's state:
"So you have remained until now, King of Knights."
"You speak as if you have memories of the past!"
"Perhaps I do, perhaps I do not."
the holy sword flashed gallantly, but Alcides in his defensive state gave her no openings. The holy sword approached as if his heart itself were drawing it in, yet he managed to brace his bow-limb against the vortex of momentum.
Within two minutes, although Saber could temporarily suppress him, she could not claim victory. The monster Heroic Spirit watched Saber's every move, further grasping her nature.
"...You have touched it as well."
Without any omen, Alcides suddenly spoke.
"You touched it too, but you did not turn out like me. —Furthermore, I cannot sense any trace of pollution within your body now."
Alcides' tone remained calm, but his words carried a profound bewilderment that was neither envy nor hatred: "Your current will is indeed 'without regret' and 'philosophical.' Thus, you can indeed endure longer within the Mud, but if the timescale is extended, you would still be assimilated by it."
As Alcides spoke, another two rounds of explosive clashes between bow and sword passed.
Without stopping the confrontation of their armaments, he offered a guess at the final conclusion:
"You touched the Mud, and for a short time, you were not eroded or blackened due to some sort of conviction. Afterward, for some reason, the Mud suffered another impact and dissipated on its own, its effect collapsing and spitting you out?"
"..."
Saber stared at him intently.
"Perhaps it was, perhaps it was not."
Artoria Pendragon showed a nostalgic smile, retorting with the very words the monster Heroic Spirit had just spoken.
Alcides, countered by his own words, changed expression as he caught a scene in his peripheral vision.
"You too..."
Alcides was talking to her, partly to probe her and partly to stall for time.
Only now did Alcides realize that he wasn't the only one stalling. At the edge of his vision, a human girl was holding the red-haired youth tightly, about to place the unconscious Emiya Shirou into the petals.
Alcides instinctively realized that was some kind of teleportation magecraft.
His body erupted with massive force. Within five exchanges with the King of Knights, Alcides barely managed to secure an opening to draw his bow.
Aside from drawing the string toward the lower side, he did not apply any special processing to this snipe. Even so, for a human, this was a clear omen of death.
An arrow that even the King of Knights could not stop in time shot forth.
"[Curtain of the Single Shadow]"
However, the moment he drew the bow, Alcides heard the incantation of a countermeasure.
As the older sister, Rin had the [Rotating Five Stars]; as the younger sister, she would not be worthy of being called a fellow genius if she could do nothing.
The storm tore toward the tiny human but vanished into a black curtain that manifested between the girl and Alcides.
In the next moment, black ripples rose around the girl, and fragments of something were flung out toward the irrelevant sides, maintaining the rotational speed of an arrow.
—It was likely a powerful magecraft formula that transferred anything within a certain power output into another space, decomposed it, and spat it out. As long as the power was strong enough to a certain degree, it could break through, but currently, Alcides could not spare the effort.
Alcides gritted his teeth beneath his pelt. Before he could dismiss the thought, he suddenly felt the girl's gaze through the dissipating curtain.
The girl glared at him coldly.
When he sensed this gaze, for some reason, Alcides felt a surge of inexplicable fear.
"...?"
Alcides, as a former hero, would not feel fear, but this "fear" was physiological rather than psychological.
It was not Alcides, but a spontaneous reaction from this body.
A panic like that of a frog meeting a snake gripped his heart.
Under the influence of this daze that Alcides almost mistook for mental interference, the pelt on his right shoulder was slashed to ruins by the golden blade again.
—He was caught in a predicament. He couldn't open up distance; if this continued, he would have to use a Noble Phantasm to resolve the situation.
The monster Heroic Spirit began to release the restrictions in the direction of his own desperate situation.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the deep black petals on the ground again. The figures of the two humans had almost completely vanished within them.
Next would be a fight to the death between Heroic Spirits. However, she was too naive.
Even Artoria Pendragon could not defeat Alcides.
Their duel would ultimately turn into a scene that would drive her to despair.
[Reincarnation Pandora: Plundering Wind of the Heavens], a method Alcides can only use as an Avenger, was enough to defeat the King of Knights before him cleanly.
The wind hiding her holy sword had dissipated. If only Alcides were given one opportunity to use his Noble Phantasm—her holy sword would belong to Alcides.
However, what even he did not expect was the girl's loud shout from within the petals:
"Saber, pay attention to your own Magic Resistance and jump toward the petals!"
"Understood."
A Servant's Magic Resistance does not activate against allies. Even the Three Knight classes can accept healing magecraft from an ally.
Utilizing this—Saber even used Mana Burst, breaking away from the front lines and diving downward just as Alcides reacted a beat late.
In her hand, the sword was once again wrapped in wind, so that Alcides could not seize it.
"Do you think I will let you leave!"
Out of a certain irritation, Alcides immediately drew his bow to snipe, the arrow chasing after Saber.
But it was too slow.
The moment Saber entered the ribbon-petals, they immediately closed and disassembled.
The arrow struck the empty ground, which held at most some residual magical fragments, leaving a crater of shattered stone five meters in diameter.
In the empty, lonely ruins of the battle, Alcides, who had struck at nothing, remained expressionless.
The person who should have been killed was not killed.
Alcides had fought with his full strength, yet there were no results.
In the future, the only one likely to make Alcides suffer such an encounter would be the King of Heroes. But even he couldn't do it—to have Alcides be outmaneuvered in return.
Because of the brilliant coordination, everyone had made a clean escape from a brilliant battle, leaving not even a gap for Alcides to seize.
His True Name was exposed. Since he had released his Noble Phantasm, Alcides' existence was surely exposed to the world.
And they would surely come again.
They would surely find Alcides again to settle the score.
This time, it was Alcides who could only wait helplessly.
Alcides had a premonition that next time—Alcides would come infinitely close to death.
The red-haired youth seemed to have a misunderstanding.
He did indeed have the limits of a single person. But that did not mean he was truly a lonely traveler walking alone.
It was the opposite. It was just that Alcides had caught him at a time when he happened to be alone.
However, it seemed his misunderstanding had been cleared.
He would become stronger.
He would become stronger together with those people. And then, this time, he would truly come head-on with the true form he had realized, the accumulation of his life.
Alcides gripped his longbow tightly; the brilliant white bow-limb was once again stained with filth from where his palm touched it. Alcides stood in place, narrowing his eyes.
He did not look back at the battle in the desert zone.
He lifted his head to look up at the moonlight.
In that gaze, nothing was reflected.
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