"Whoa? You're pretty tough!"
Seeing Souren Araya block his blade with nothing but an arm, Shirou neither panicked nor looked shocked.
He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth curling up almost imperceptibly. Shirou lifted his blade and struck a second time. Though the motion resembled chopping vegetables, the force behind it was completely real.
And where there was a second strike, there would naturally be a third. Each of the three strikes was stronger than the last. All three landed on the same spot. Shirou was confident that he could split even tank armor apart, yet Souren Araya's arm remained utterly unharmed.
As the old saying went, anything that stayed still was a turtle! Souren Araya was no turtle, so naturally he would not just stand there and let Shirou hack at him. He had lived for two hundred years, after all. He understood that a defense maintained too long was bound to fail.
His right hand clenched into a fist. After a brief buildup of power, Souren Araya punched toward Shirou's lower abdomen.
"Hmm?"
With Shirou's eyes, he naturally noticed Souren Araya's movement. He was confident that with his Steel Skin, Souren Araya could not even break through his defense.
But his opponent was still a magus, even if he was an unusual one. When dealing with magi, what one most needed to watch out for was all their flashy tricks.
His body spun ahead of the blade, driving the katana with the rotation. After one slash, he used the centrifugal force from the spin to cut the same spot again. Then, before Souren Araya's fist could reach him, he used the recoil from that strike to swing himself away and widen the distance between them.
Looking again at Souren Araya's left arm, there was not the slightest damage besides his clothing.
Souren Araya looked at the blade in Shirou's hand with faint surprise. "Perhaps I was wrong just now. Your so-called little trick is indeed worthy of praise. But do not celebrate too soon. The Relic of the Nirvana Saint is embedded in my left arm. You will never break through its defense!"
The Buddha relics in this world were not merely products of bone growth. They were conceptual armaments similar to Avalon.
Though the difference in rank between the two was enormous, in terms of nature, they were of the same level. Both belonged to the conceptual class.
However, Buddha relics were not nearly as convenient to use as Avalon. When Souren Araya spoke of embedding one, he meant physically embedding it in three steps: cut it open, stuff it in, then sew it shut.
The method was somewhat like the Uchiha's eyeballs, except the latter could be installed and used immediately, with enormous side effects. For details, see Naruto's unit of chakra measurement—Kakashi. The former, meanwhile, required a period of adjustment like a Magic Crest. It was useful and had no side effects, but it was terribly troublesome.
"No. In my view, nothing in this world is absolute." Shirou contradicted him as usual. "I only failed to break through your defense because the power I used was not strong enough. There is no such thing as absolute defense in this world."
As he spoke, Shirou snapped his fingers.
Trace On!
A flash of magical light passed through the air, and dozens of blades of every kind floated around Shirou as though worshipping a king.
Every one of them was an ordinary blade, but every one was also an exceptional piece of its kind. With a wave of his hand, the blades flew toward Souren Araya like rain.
"Wang Xian! Serpent Scorpion!"
Seeing this, Souren Araya did not dare hesitate and hurriedly deployed barriers for defense. Although the relic embedded in his left arm had greatly increased its defensive power, its protection could not cover his entire body. If Shirou wanted to kill him, a few blades were enough to skewer him.
"As expected of a first-rate Barrier Master, a pinnacle of strength that humanity can attain. So how will you deal with this?" Shirou parted his lips and leisurely recited an incantation—
Broken Phantasm
Though they were not Noble Phantasms and possessed no power of faith, Shirou had deliberately used vast amounts of magical energy when forging those blades through Projection Magecraft. Once detonated, their power was naturally far from insignificant.
"Not good!" Souren Araya's expression changed instantly when he saw the familiar scene.
It was true that those blades had been blocked, but after that, Souren Araya had let down his guard around them. He had not considered whether the weapons that fell to the ground were Eighth Route Army broadswords or Japanese grenade bombs. Thus, the blades had landed all around Souren Araya, and fatally, most of them were inside the barrier.
Even worse, barriers were like eggshells, protecting the egg white and yolk within. Nothing outside could get in, and nothing inside could get out.
Shirou's move was like tossing a grenade into an enemy pillbox. It caught him completely off guard.
Fortunately, Souren Araya's eggshell had more than one layer. It had six—
"Fearless, Vajra, Dai Tian, Top Sutra!"
Souren Araya activated all six barriers, sealing the explosion within three layers inside and three layers outside, ensuring that nothing would go wrong from making too much noise.
After the explosion, Souren Araya was still completely unharmed. Though the earlier blast had been formidable, it had only destroyed the Serpent Scorpion and Dai Tian barriers.
As the smoke and dust dispersed, Souren Araya seemed to realize something. His pupils contracted sharply, and he shouted, "I remember now. It was you, the Counter Force's lackey! Are you here to hinder me again?"
Seeing Souren Araya block all the blades and withstand the Broken Phantasm explosion, Shirou had originally planned to send another wave at him. But hearing Souren Araya's words, he could not help freezing for a moment.
Some things were better explained. Otherwise, misunderstandings would only grow worse later on.
"Uh? You've met 'me'?"
Shirou more or less understood what Souren Araya meant. This pitiful old magus had encountered Red Archer, then gotten beaten up by him.
"'You'?" Souren Araya could not quite understand Shirou's wording.
"Yeah. More precisely, the future me from another world line. He thought about becoming an ally of justice all day long, then got tricked by Alaya into becoming a wage slave. He drove himself insane through day after day of killing people, then went completely nuts and wanted to kill his past self, only to get talked into changing his mind by that past self. A total idiot."
Shirou rattled off a long string of incomprehensible words, but fortunately, Souren Araya caught one key point.
"Araya?"
"Huh?" Shirou was startled at first, then explained, "Oh, not your surname. It refers to the primate Counter Force. It just happens to sound the same as your surname."
"Is that so? Then what about you?" As he asked, Souren Araya quietly clenched his fist. If Shirou's answer did not match his expectations, he would attack without the slightest hesitation.
"At least for now, I have nothing whatsoever to do with the Counter Force." Shirou spread his hands, striking Red Archer's classic pose before answering.
"Is that so? But as far as I am concerned, since you have obstructed me, you are no different in essence from a lackey of the Counter Force!"
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