"I've been expecting you, Inori."
The Grave Keeper's figure emerged slowly from the shadows, a smug grin on his face. Those thick eyebrows curved with his expression in a way that looked deeply unsettling.
The three soldiers dying without accomplishing anything came as no surprise. They had already been dead, reanimated through crystallization. Their sacrifice had simply given him a better look at Inori's abilities.
"Is this how the Grave Keeper receives his guests?"
Inori Yuzuriha brushed off her coat, her tone cold.
"You got my seventy-thousand-yen coat dirty."
"Why do you insist on opposing us? Someone like you should be on our side. Abandon your mortal shell and become an eternal existence within the crystal. What could possibly be wrong with that?"
The Grave Keeper walked toward her. Behind him, in the darkness, several massive shapes were shifting. Inori caught the movement at once.
"Don't project your ideals onto other people. I have no interest in being trapped inside a rock, reliving a short life on loop."
Inori walked out to meet him without a shred of fear. In one smooth motion she drew Singer's Sword from her chest, and King Crimson detached from Shu to hover behind her, towering and still.
"Hmph. So in the end, no matter how much power you possess, you're nothing more than a simple human."
"This is the will of God. The natural selection of biological evolution. Just as apes evolving into humans was inevitable, this is a destiny no living creature can defy!"
"Are you done? Good. Now stand still and let me cut you down."
Inori's blood-red eyes flared with savage light. She swung the greatsword and launched into a charge, and the instant her foot left the ground, before it could even touch down again, she activated Time Erasure. This time for herself alone. The world shattered into an empty, pitch-black void. Only the Grave Keeper remained, slowly reacting and stepping back.
Inori closed the distance and brought the sword down. No backstab this time. A clean, frontal slash aimed squarely at his neck. She released the Time Erasure at the exact moment the blade fell.
—!
She had expected this strike to at least take his head off and put him out of commission temporarily. But the Grave Keeper's reflexes were faster than expected. The blade met no resistance, no drag of steel through flesh. His body had dissolved into a white, mist-like substance, retreating backward in a swirl before rapidly recongealing into human form.
"Don't underestimate the will of God, Inori."
He couldn't resist a taunt even after barely dodging.
So he wasn't just immortal and undying. He had this evasion trick, too.
"Inori!"
Shu shouted in alarm. Inori snapped back to the present.
Her charge had carried her far from the elevator. The massive shapes lurking in the shadows on both sides of the corridor had stepped into the light: Endlaves encrusted head to toe in crystal, some with bodies twisted and warped into metal monstrosities that looked like they belonged in a psychological horror film.
Inori took one look at the crystal-infested machines and ducked her head, pressing a hand over her mouth. She was about to lose it.
"Because you can't beat me one-on-one, you built a bunch of toys?"
"I am trying so hard not to laugh right now. I'm about to crack up like Tom in Tom and Jerry the first time he sees Mechano the robot cat. Are you sure you're not just trying to make me laugh myself sick so you can sneak in an attack?"
"...These machines gave even that man considerable trouble."
The Grave Keeper couldn't parse Inori's bizarre analogy, but he understood well enough that she was mocking him without an ounce of restraint.
"The first False King? A strong man, no question. The fact that you could give him trouble is commendable." Inori nodded, her analysis measured and fair. Then her tone flipped on a dime. "But you've miscalculated on one point. My resolve is far beyond his."
She didn't even need Time Erasure for this.
The ability couldn't be used in seamless succession, after all. Even the most seasoned sailor couldn't evolve into an amphibian; there had to be a moment to come up for air. And these machine-monsters looked clumsy enough that they couldn't possibly match a fighter with all-A stats and Singer's Sword. This was the single most powerful Void in the entire world.
Even if these things turned out to be the Grave Keeper's secret weapon, or could launch some bizarre, unexpected attack, Epitaph would warn her in advance. She could activate Time Erasure at that point and rewrite the "fact" of having been hit. It wouldn't be too late.
Inori could not, for the life of her, figure out how she was supposed to lose to these things.
King Crimson flowed back inside her body, becoming her power armor the way it always did. The girl in black with pink hair vanished from the spot like a phantom, leaving only a chain of afterimages that hadn't yet faded. She took the Endlave on her left first, one massive swing carving into it and blasting loose a shower of crystal fragments. It crumpled, disabled.
Inori was privately surprised. She had put everything into that swing, fully intending to cut the thing in half, but she'd only managed a deep gash. Still, it was more than enough to destroy its functionality.
"Shu, stay out of this! Use your Void to protect yourself!"
She caught Shu in her peripheral vision, already strapping on Ayase's Leg Armor Void and preparing to join the fight. She stopped him immediately.
These things were far too tough for his strength and Yahiro's Scissors to penetrate. If he jumped in, she would only have to split her focus protecting him.
"Inori, behind you!"
Shu listened. He stayed put in his corner. But in the split second Inori had turned to speak to him, another massive crystallized monster had closed in on her back, and she seemed completely unaware.
Getting excited over nothing. My Epitaph already saw it coming.
Not a flicker of panic. Her deep crimson eyes narrowed, a flash of scarlet light rippled across her body as King Crimson surged with power, and she gripped the greatsword tight. A hundred-and-eighty-degree pivot. A brutal horizontal slash that caught the thing square in the midsection, biting deep. She couldn't sever it, but the sheer force behind the blow launched the entire machine off its feet.
After that, there was no suspense left. Inori carved through the rest in rapid succession. With both Epitaph and Time Erasure at her disposal, these things could never touch her with brute force alone. One final overhead cleave split the last crystallized Endlave clean in two. It toppled and went still.
"Is that what you call your secret weapon?"
Inori looked at the Grave Keeper with a cold smile.
"They can't stop you, true. But they can run you ragged."
The Grave Keeper snapped his fingers, unhurried, and from behind him a section of wall slid open on an automated mechanism. More crystallized machine-monsters lumbered out.
Trying to wear me down with sheer numbers? A clever idea, but my Epitaph already saw this future and prepared a response.
"Shu!"
Inori shouted his name and activated Time Erasure.
Shu didn't hesitate, didn't second-guess. He knew he had to trust Inori and follow the tactics she had laid out for him beforehand. The moment she called his name, he fired Argo's Dark Room Gate at the Grave Keeper, trapping him in a sealed pocket of darkness where he could neither see nor react.
The projectile traveled slowly. Easy enough to dodge under normal circumstances.
That was precisely why Inori had triggered Time Erasure at that exact moment. Shu would continue the motion he had already started and fire the shot, but neither he nor the Grave Keeper could react to anything during the erased interval. The Grave Keeper couldn't dodge a projectile that, from his perspective, had never been fired.
King Crimson's rule was absolute: its user could not attack during Time Erasure. But a teammate who had already received the order to attack before the erasure? Nothing stopped him.
Every Stand has its limitations. But with enough creativity, you can exploit the loopholes and pull off an unexpected Stand Attack.