"I'm going to kill you."
"It's already too late. If you all have the time, please come to my Nevernight City. I will entertain you properly."
Just as Pirate Princess was about to order her subordinates to attack the Empress, the Empress leaped away and vanished from the group's sight. Before disappearing, however, she invited Ritsuka to visit her.
"Bastard!"
As Pirate Princess Dayu cursed furiously, surging floodwaters poured in through the hall's main entrance. At the same time, the surrounding walls began to crack apart.
"Mash, Ritsuka, get out of there!" Roman from Chaldea shouted.
"Got it. Move." Ritsuka did not waste words, but before she could act, Mash had already jumped to her side, picked her up, and leaped in the opposite direction from the oncoming flood. She smashed through the window with the shield in her hand.
D'Eon, Astolfo, and Youth Fergus followed close behind. As for Knight, he jumped out through another window. Pirate Princess and the female pirates reacted half a beat slower than Mash and the others, and were swept into the flood in an instant.
Boom.
Not long after Mash and the others escaped the hall, they heard a tremendous crash behind them. Held in Mash's arms, Ritsuka watched Pirate Princess's luxurious estate collapse beneath the impact of the raging floodwaters.
The flood did not come in a single wave. Like ocean swells, one wave followed another. Perhaps because the buildings obstructed it, each surge grew larger than the last. They had reacted quickly enough to rush out of the hall with the first wave. If they had waited until the second flood arrived, they would likely have been swept away as well. Mash and the other Servants might have been all right in such a flood, but Ritsuka would have been in