After finishing his words, Xia Yuan began transforming at once. A burst of blinding light later, he had become Lancer.
She was not the King of Knights now, but the Lion King-the deified Artoria.
Hum...
Outside Kunlun Villa, brilliant golden motes suddenly erupted from Xia Yuan's body, as though the midday sun had been crushed and scattered through the air.
The radiance was too dazzling to look at. Mo Shiyu instinctively raised a hand to shield her eyes.
Through the gaps between her fingers, she could only see that slender figure being reshaped, bone and light humming faintly in the air.
Even the floor-to-ceiling windows trembled beneath that divine pressure.
When the light slowly faded, the figure standing there was no longer the Saber who had radiated youthful freshness.
Mo Shiyu's eyes widened as she murmured, "Th-this is...?"
Xia Yuan's figure had undergone a breathtaking transformation before her eyes.
If Saber was a maiden yet to bloom, then Lancer was a fully developed goddess.
She had grown a little taller, her contours smooth and full, her proportions divinely perfect.
A pure white silk robe had replaced the lower panels of her old armor, cascading in layers like a wedding dress.
Ornate silver-white and deep blue breastplate and arm guards encased her body. Ancient lion motifs were engraved upon the breastplate, sacred and inviolable.
Pale golden gauze draped her shoulders, drifting like clouds in the morning breeze.
She looked like a white goddess who had stepped straight out of the legends of King Arthur.
Most striking of all was the lance in her hand, pointed toward the heavens-the Holy Lance Rhongomyniad.
Half-visible chains of causality wound around its shaft, as though the world itself had been pinned to its tip.
Its mere presence made space and time feel thick and sluggish.