Surrounded by the black shadows that had suddenly appeared, Irisviel and Hassan of the Hundred Faces were forced into a bitter struggle.
Those overlapping black figures were the remnants of Heroic Spirits who should have been laid to rest, only to be dragged back into the world by force.
Lancer, Caster, Rider, and Assassin.
Though they had lost their reason, Noble Phantasms, and combat skill, they still retained part of their Servant traits and Mana.
Worst of all, the resurrected Servants included Assassin, Hassan of the Hundred Faces.
Originally the weakest Servant, once everyone had become shadows, she instead became the most troublesome presence through sheer numbers alone.
Each individual one was weak, but once they formed a legion, they became a truly terrifying enemy.
And so, the dense legion of shadows launched its assault on the silver-haired Homunculus and the purple-haired Assassin.
Irisviel was the first to strike back.
"Shape ist Leben! (Remains, I bestow life upon you!)"
With only a short two-line chant, silver threads spilled from Irisviel's fingertips and wove together into a precise, intricate form.
Mighty wings, a savage beak, and razor-sharp talons.
It was an alchemical lifeform, a Homunculus modeled after a giant eagle. A weapon given life by Irisviel.
The silver giant eagle spread its wings from Irisviel's arm and shot toward the shadows.
With a shriek like metal slicing through space, the Shadow Servants were torn to pieces by the silver eagle's razor-like beak and vicious claws.
At the same time, Assassin drew her blade and threw herself into the Shadow Servants.
She was not a Servant suited for direct combat, yet even so, the female Assassin cut down enemy after enemy as though she were moving through an empty field.
There were three reasons she could do this.
First, the enhanced "All Kinds of Specializations" gave Assassin access to all thirty-two of her techniques.
Second, the dagger Shirou had given her carried properties that strengthened her in direct combat.
Third, the enemy she faced was "herself."
No one knew better than she did what weaknesses each Assassin Shadow Servant possessed. That was why she could kill them so efficiently.
Thanks to the fierce resistance of Irisviel and Hassan of the Hundred Faces, more than a dozen members of the shadow legion were wiped out in an instant.
Even so, the gap in strength between the two sides was still hopelessly overwhelming.
Assassin was faring a little better, but Irisviel's breathing had already grown ragged not long after the fighting began.
The Einzberns were not a clan built for battle. Their divine art of manipulating metal and granting life was, in the end, only an extension of alchemy, not a craft born for conflict from the start.
Irisviel did not possess combat ability equal to her rank as a Magus, and she was far inferior to exceptional Magi with real combat experience like Tokiomi Tohsaka or Kayneth.
The same was true for Assassin.
Throughout the history of the Assassin Order, there had been many leaders who excelled at large-scale slaughter.
The Hassan who could poison an entire army simply by standing above them.
The Hassan who could merge completely with the world itself, sending all who stepped into the mist into eternal sleep.
Unfortunately, Hassan of the Hundred Faces did not possess abilities so abnormal they bordered on the monstrous.
The encirclement of shadows steadily tightened, pushing both Irisviel and Assassin into a desperate corner.
"Amamiya Shirou... what kind of person is that boy, really?"
At that moment, the young man who had been watching from the sidelines all along, the priest in black vestments, Kirei Kotomine, spread his hands and spoke without expression.
"Although I have already seen through his true nature, I still want to hear the answer from those close to him."
"Who would talk to someone like you about Shirou?!"
Irisviel snarled angrily as she wove silver threads.
"You say you've seen through Shirou? Ridiculous. What could you possibly understand about him?"
Kirei Kotomine paid her no mind and continued as though speaking to himself.
"If my assumption is correct, Amamiya Shirou is a human much like myself."
Irisviel was just about to snap back that he was talking nonsense, but his next words left her speechless.
"Amamiya Shirou surely has no wish he hopes to realize through the Holy Grail."
"Wh..."
Irisviel froze for a moment, and then.
The woman who had once served as Kirei Kotomine's Servant, Assassin, spoke.
"Stop saying stupid things. You're nothing like Shirou, and the fact that I'm standing against you now is proof enough.
You and Shirou are nothing alike at all... Just thinking about the fact that you were once my Master makes me furious!"
"...Assassin."
Kirei Kotomine let out a sigh.
Back when he had learned from Avenger that Assassin had not disappeared, but had instead gone over to Amamiya Shirou's side, he had felt a strange emotion.
"I'm troubled... Why did you join Shirou Amamiya's side?"
"He has something you don't!"
Kirei Kotomine narrowed his eyes.
"...I admit it. I really am an empty, hollow man. I truly have nothing."
At first, his voice was flat, almost completely without inflection, but as he went on, emotion gradually began to surface.
"But how am I any different from him? Throwing himself into meaningless battles for all that time.
That brat has no wish of his own, yet he still throws himself into the Holy Grail War and keeps repeating acts of slaughter. So what exactly makes him different from me!?
If actions that meaningless do not make him someone lost in confusion, then what do they make him!?"
Kirei Kotomine demanded it in a near shout.
"Someone like you will never understand."
Irisviel replied coldly.
"Shirou has never been someone without wishes. It's just that when he thinks, he always puts himself last.
For Shirou, the reason worth fighting for has never been himself.
And he has never agonized or suffered over his own heart. That alone makes him completely different from you!
Kirei Kotomine... you're the kind of person who thinks of nothing but yourself. How could you possibly be the same kind of person as Shirou?"
Just as Irisviel said, Kirei Kotomine had always thought only of himself.
Who am I? Why do I exist? How can I stop wandering in confusion?
Kirei Kotomine thought about such things every single day.
The only person Kirei Kotomine truly loved was himself.
The young priest in black robes frowned.
"Are you saying Shirou Amamiya is a true saint?"
"I don't know."
With absolute conviction on her face, Irisviel said,
"I don't know... but I can say one thing for certain. Shirou and you are absolutely not the same kind of person!
At the very least. He would never sell his soul to a devil!"
"......"
The hesitation vanished from Kirei Kotomine's face.
As expected... these two women did not understand the real Shirou Amamiya either.
There was no point asking any more. It would just be a waste of time... Better to kill them.
If he brought her corpse before Shirou, perhaps the boy's reaction would give him the answer.
Kirei Kotomine swung his arm, and the Mana of the shadow Servant legion suddenly swelled.
"Ugh...!"
Irisviel was sent flying by a shadow Servant and crashed to the ground with a cry of pain.
Had those shadows not been fighting seriously until now?
Hassan of the Hundred Faces hurried in front of the silver-haired Homunculus to shield her, but even more shadow Servants closed in and attacked.
At the same time, Kirei Kotomine started walking toward them.
Irisviel saw it as a chance. If she could defeat Kirei Kotomine, the shadow Servants might stop moving.
"No!!"
Assassin shouted in alarm, but it was already too late.
Climbing back to her feet, Irisviel charged straight at Kirei Kotomine.
The silver giant eagle soaring through the air dissolved back into shapeless threads and coiled around Kirei Kotomine's upper body like vines.
Irisviel tore out two strands of her long hair and poured Mana into them, transforming them into gorgeous curved blades with minds of their own, then slashed at Kirei Kotomine's neck.
But.
Before she could even understand what had happened, the priest was already standing right in front of the Homunculus.
The next instant,
"Bang!"
Irisviel was blasted away like a cannonball.
No matter how excellent a Master she was, in direct combat she was absolutely no match for Kirei Kotomine.
The instant the alchemical blade brushed his robe, the shockwave of Bajiquan had already torn through the Homunculus's defenses.
Assassin reacted at once, rushing into the path of Irisviel's flight to catch her and absorb most of the impact.
Even so, the two of them were still pushed back several meters.
And by the time they tried to recover their stance, the shadows had already surrounded them completely.
The shadow Servant Lancer pressed his spear to Hassan of the Hundred Faces' throat, leaving her unable to move at all.
"This is the end."
As Kirei Kotomine stepped forward, he drew the Holy Church's specialized weapon, the Black Key, from inside his robe.
Without another word, he drove it cleanly through Irisviel's heart.
"Ugh...!"
The silver-haired Homunculus coughed up a mouthful of blood, staining the front of her chest bright red.
"Irisviel!"
Assassin tried to rush forward and stop Kirei Kotomine, only to be pinned to the ground by "herself," the shadow Assassin Servants.
Could an artificial lifeform still survive after having its heart destroyed?
To make sure, Kirei Kotomine cruelly twisted his wrist.
The three Black Keys between the Executor's fingers completely shredded the pierced Homunculus heart into pieces.
...
...
The king's fighting spirit surged and boiled.
How long had it been since his blood had run this hot?
Bathed in a torrent of Mana, the King of Heroes, Gilgamesh, pondered in silence.
His final battle with Rider had been exhilarating.
Iskandar, the King of Conquerors, was an opponent to whom he had given the highest respect and granted death.
But their battle had been hard to call an equal one.
The last time he drew Ea, it was because the King of Heroes had acknowledged Iskandar's kingly path and, out of respect, unleashed his strongest strike.
But this time was different.
This time, the situation was this.
If I do not draw my sword now, I truly will lose.
That was an undeniable fact.
With eyes that could see through the future, and as the origin of all the world's treasures, the King of Heroes had already brought out everything he had, and still could not defeat Shirou.
If this fight keeps going, it will probably never end.
This was only the second time he had ever been driven into such a desperate corner.
The last great enemy who had forced the King of Heroes to reach into the deepest part of his treasury was the friend he would later meet, Enkidu.
Though it was hard to say, though he did not want to admit it.
My friend, there truly exists a hero in this world who can stand beside you and me.
Unable to suppress the surge of emotion within him, the oldest king revealed a bitter smile.
Then he activated the strange sword in his right hand.
Ea.
To Gilgamesh, who possessed all the treasures of the world, a half-baked Noble Phantasm was nothing more than something to casually toss into his treasury. Yet among all his Noble Phantasms, this sword was one of the rare exceptions he held especially dear.
And yet, this sword had no name.
The so-called Sword of Rupture was merely a nickname Gilgamesh had given it for convenience.
More than that, it might not even count as a sword at all.
After all, it had already existed before weapons such as swords and spears ever appeared in history.
An age older than mankind, older than the planet itself.
It was a treasure among treasures, a supreme artifact in which pure power itself had been made manifest, wielded by the gods to carve open the world.
The thing that split apart the heaven and earth at the very beginning of this planet.
It tore open the void to create the sky, then pierced the sky and returned it to nothingness.
A power that symbolized both beginning and end, permitted only to Gilgamesh, the inheritor of the gods' lineage.
And so, when Gilgamesh swung this sword with all his might, it was classified as the following.
Anti-World Noble Phantasm.
Offensive Noble Phantasms, whether Anti-Unit, Anti-Army, or Anti-Fortress, varied in standing according to their nature.
In one on one combat between Heroic Spirits, there were many cases where an Anti-Unit Noble Phantasm was more useful than an Anti-Army or Anti-Fortress one. But the power contained within an Anti-World Noble Phantasm had already gone far beyond anything that could be measured by compatibility or battlefield conditions.
It was absolute force, power capable of destroying the world itself.
Whether the opponent was an individual or a group, it would shatter the world they belonged to along with them.
That was the level of power contained in a full force strike from the King of Heroes.
Next, he would destroy Amamiya Shirou's world.
This was not a grand judgment delivered in acknowledgment of the other's ideals.
The time for "judgment" was over.
The truth was simple. If he did not wipe out Shirou together with his world, there was absolutely no way he could win.
Now the King of Heroes had become just like the heroes he himself spoke of, caught in an ugly struggle, forced to fight to survive.
Even so, he felt no anger at all.
Only joy and exhilaration echoed in his heart.
So this was what a proud and equal battle truly was.
This was the kind of battle the overwhelmingly powerful King of Heroes should never have been able to encounter.
He had thought this feeling died along with his friend, yet now it had returned to Gilgamesh once more.
Thank you... Amamiya Shirou.
I shall remember your name, and then grind your bones to dust!
"!"
The cylindrical segments of Ea slowly began to rotate, like some machine from an alien civilization drawing in the surrounding air.
The atmosphere was compressed to its absolute limit, forming an eye of the storm of True Ether above the King of Heroes' head.
Ea's three cylindrical sections spun along trajectories that defied the laws of physics, and with every turn they tore open cracks that crossed dimensions.
Even light and sound were drawn into Ea's convergence, and the laws of physics themselves began to distort.
Then, without the slightest hesitation, the King of Heroes swung the blade.
"Behold, mongrel! This is the cry of planetary creation!
Enuma Elish!!!"
There was no suspense.
Amamiya Shirou's inner world, the landscape of the Inner Sea of the Planet, gradually began to collapse.
The endless sea of flowers turned to ash within the crimson storm of Mana, while the azure night sky and the distant moon were churned to pieces.
No matter how noble a world might be, it was powerless before an Anti-World Noble Phantasm.
But.
Gilgamesh's face twisted in shock.
Because he saw the boy standing amid the scenery of the end, Amamiya Shirou, smiling.
"Impossible..."
Gilgamesh's pupils contracted violently, and for the first time, an emotion called fear appeared on his beautiful face.
Sorry, Archer... I deceived you.
Shirou quietly closed his eyes.
From the very beginning, I never intended to fight you fair and square.
Everything up to this point was preparation to trick you into drawing that sword.
There were two things I deceived you about.
The first one probably does not even count as deception.
For some reason, it seems that everyone, whether you or Avalon-nee-san, has mistaken my "Unlimited Blade Works" for a "Reality Marble."
Sorry, but this is not a great magecraft called "Reality Marble. Unlimited Blade Works."
This is not boundary field magecraft that invades and overwrites the world, so even an Anti-World Noble Phantasm specialized in destroying worlds cannot break it.
Morgan said it before. This is a great mystery that rewrites the real world into another realm through its own principles.
"Fairy Domain. Unlimited Blade Works."
Because it is not a boundary field, it will not collapse just because a hole is blasted through it, unless it is completely destroyed or dispelled by my own hand.
If you want to end my "Fairy Domain," then bring a weapon capable of truly destroying the planet.
And then there is the second point.
The three abilities possessed by "Fairy Domain. Unlimited Blade Works."
The first is "forging," the power to forge any enemy who steps into the domain into a Holy Sword.
The second is "storage," a space that preserves the original forms of every sword Shirou has ever seen.
And then there is the third ability.
In this world, there exists a class of sword Noble Phantasms known as Divine Constructs, weapons that even Shirou cannot project.
After all, humans have their limits.
It is impossible for a mere human mind to create a divine weapon.
If "humans" cannot do it, then leave it to the "planet."
The third ability of "Fairy Domain. Unlimited Blade Works" is to analyze, deconstruct, and reconstruct any weapon released within the domain.
In the next instant, the space around Shirou began to twist.
Within the vortex of infernal flames, the supreme Noble Phantasm from the planet's beginning appeared.
Without hesitation, Shirou drew the freshly forged Ea.
"Then let the storm of creation rage even harder."
Shirou raised the spiraling Sword of Rupture high above his head.