An unimaginable final trump card—Saber's strength truly could not be underestimated. The True Name Release of that holy sword was absolutely a top-tier Noble Phantasm.
Anti-Army, Anti-Fortress, or something with an even greater range?
B+, A+, or an even more outrageous output?
If she immediately closed in, she might still have a chance to seize it with the Heavenly Wind Usurper before the opponent used his true Noble Phantasm, but that Noble Phantasm might very well be instantaneous.
If she got too close then, she would not even have a chance to dodge.
The Twelve Trials gave her unparalleled survivability, but even that had its limits. Who knew how many lives she would lose if she took the full force of the ultimate holy sword head-on? Of course, it would still be impossible to kill her with a single strike.
But this Holy Grail War still had Gilgamesh...
Gripping the holy sword freed from its stormy restraints, Saber did not release its True Name. Instead, he charged straight at Ritsuka.
Perhaps he had realized that even the ultimate holy sword could not kill her in one blow.
Saber's speed and strength abruptly rose by a huge margin. The power on his holy sword became exaggerated, and the magical energy surging around him was unmistakable.
Without question, it was that ability to reinforce himself with magical energy.
Without the cost of maintaining the compressed wind, has he become more reckless?
Muttering inwardly, Ritsuka swung the Bow of the Hydra and collided with the holy sword.
The great bow, nearly as long as Ritsuka was tall, moved freely in her hands. Used in close combat, it actually looked even more effortless than wielding a sword.
The golden bow and golden sword collided again and again, throwing off a shower of sparks.
"You..."
The person using the Saber Class Card suddenly spoke.
The lower half of his helmet had already been destroyed. Ritsuka could not see his eyes, but she could still feel his gaze.
It was as though he were scrutinizing her.
Ritsuka took a slight step back. Relying on her absurd technique and muscle memory, she deflected the holy sword with her bow, then sharply lowered herself to slip beneath a sweeping strike by a hair's breadth before swinging the bow into Saber's abdomen.
Under that tremendous force, the man was blasted away.
Using the holy sword to support himself, its sharp blade carved a deep furrow into the ground. Then the man's magnetic voice rang out.
"How did you even manage that kind of bow technique?"
Among the Class Cards developed by Enzō's family, there was none that could use a great bow in such a manner. That bow was nearly as long as Ritsuka was tall. It was utterly outrageous.
And yet she could use it so freely in close-quarters combat. Honestly, it looked strange in every possible way.
"Whew... I'll finish you in one move."
Ritsuka once again ignored her opponent's question and continued fighting.
There was no meaning in pointless chatter. They would have to decide life and death, victory and defeat anyway. If words alone could crush an enemy, people would not have so many troubles.
Hundred-Beast Slayer.
She quietly invoked the Noble Phantasm. This Noble Phantasm was itself a martial technique, so there was no real need to shout its True Name aloud.
In the next instant, Ritsuka's not particularly tall figure abruptly vanished from the spot. Her terrifyingly accelerating speed left behind an afterimage where she had stood.
Before her opponent even had time to be surprised, the bow was already smashing toward his head.
"!!"
The man raised his holy sword and took the heavy blow head-on, sliding backward uncontrollably.
However, the power in the bow was not particularly extraordinary. It felt no different from their earlier exchanges, which left Saber slightly puzzled.
Only this much?
Bang—!!
The man was sent flying like a cannonball, tearing through the air. The doubled force and speed of the bow split the web between his thumb and forefinger, blood spilling at once.
Even his left arm, which had only barely been repaired by the powerful regenerative ability granted by the Class Card, was damaged again.
Crimson flames rose around her. What made the man's brows twitch wildly was that Ritsuka's attack speed and explosive strength were becoming increasingly outrageous—
It was as though every strike was steadily stacking more power and speed.
Wild winds wrapped around the holy sword once more. He used Strike Air again, borrowing that power to forcibly block the third strike.
Then, at a speed that surged to the limit, Ritsuka unleashed the follow-up barrage after her swing.
Saber, sent spinning 720 degrees through the air, crashed into the ground like a meteor. Beneath the torrential barrage of fierce blows, he seemed utterly incapable of resisting.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
Intermittent coughing came from the crater in the ground.
At the edge of the crater, Ritsuka panted heavily. Hundred-Beast Slayer had many applications, and she had just chosen one of the most exhausting. It seemed to have had some effect.
As the dust cleared, the man's armor had completely shattered, pieces of it falling to the ground.
His left arm hung limply again. During his defense, he had protected his other arm as much as possible, so this time every bone in the entire arm had been shattered. Recovering from that would not be easy.
The handsome middle-aged man knelt on one knee, supporting himself with the holy sword in his right hand.
"Ex..."
"What?"
As Ritsuka gradually approached, she heard a faint voice. A suddenly overwhelming sense of danger sent a chill down her spine.
The holy sword rose. The man forced himself to stand and swung it, while countless golden motes of light surged together and gathered around the blade.
"...calibur!!"
The Sword of Promised... Victory.
A dazzling pillar of light shot straight toward Ritsuka. At that moment, the sight before her was even more shocking than the nine-light-cannon version of Hundred-Beast Slayer.
She had never expected him to be capable of activating the ultimate holy sword with only one hand.
The beam blasted into the sky, annihilating everything in its path with its heat. The ground glowed a molten red, as if grazed by a meteor, revealing an extraordinarily desolate and tragic scene.
It was like the passage of a one-way shockwave from a nuclear explosion.
The pillar of light suddenly shifted upward. Ritsuka seized the chance to crouch down to the lower left, then slid forward toward her opponent.
The high temperature scraped past her right side, and her arm was reduced to motes of light within the blast. But Ritsuka had already rushed to within two meters of the man, the enormous Axe Sword in her left hand spinning.
Squelch!
It pierced straight through him, blood spraying out.
Saber, who had activated the holy sword Noble Phantasm with one hand, had suffered severe backlash in his right hand as well. He could not even hold the hilt anymore. As the holy sword fell to the ground, the Axe Sword forged from a temple cornerstone pierced through his chest.
The Axe Sword nailed the opponent directly to the ground, leaving him unable to move.
Coughing up clots of blood, the handsome middle-aged man looked toward Ritsuka beside him. Crimson flames twisted through the air, and then her arm returned to normal.
"Julian... I'm leaving him to you."
"..."
The middle-aged man fell silent and turned into the expected puppet.
The card was pinched between the fingers of his right hand, which had nearly shattered from activating the Noble Phantasm. Blood stained the Class Card red.
Thinking of his final words before death, Ritsuka hesitated. That tone, like he was entrusting an orphan to her, left her deeply confused. What was this even supposed to mean?
Could Julian be a pitiful person too?
Ritsuka clicked her tongue. No one had it easy. Julian was fighting for the continuation of all humanity, carrying Human History forward all by himself. It really did seem difficult.
But that was not a reason to sacrifice someone at will.
The greater good did not mean justice. If she were willing to sacrifice Miyu to save this world, then at the moment she made that choice, Ritsuka would have already abandoned her own justice.
She put away Saber's Class Card as well, and the faint glow of the Crystal Dice gradually faded.
"Finally, I've collected them all... Miyu."
The Holy Grail War was nearing its end after three nights and two days.
Ritsuka simply packed her belongings, locked the doors of the Emiya Residence, and casually placed a spell around the house to keep thieves or burglars from sneaking inside.
The Crystal Dice rolled across her fingertips. Standing at the gates of Fuyuki Church, Ritsuka casually tossed it into the air, then clenched it tightly in her palm.
The final moment was about to arrive. Before leaving, she still decided to say goodbye to Kirei Kotomine.
Although that man had helped her only for his own pleasure, making him nothing more than a mentally unhinged pleasure-seeker, without him pulling her out of the ruins, what would have happened to her remained unknown.
By both sentiment and reason, she ought to say farewell.
"Kirei?"
Ritsuka pushed open the church doors and entered. The quiet interior felt somewhat empty.
At this time, it was only half past nine. Father Mape should absolutely have been awake already and preparing to head to the ramen shop.
But there was no one here...
After wandering around the church and searching several times, she still could not find Kirei Kotomine.
"Could something have happened to him?"
After hesitating for a moment, Ritsuka chose to head to the Mapo ramen shop.
As for that priest who looked at Mapo Tofu more affectionately than anything else in existence, she had affectionately given him the nickname "Father Mape."
Maybe he had gotten up early today and gone straight to the ramen shop?
The thought flashed through her mind. Without question, it was quite a likely possibility.
When she reached the street where the ramen shop was located, Ritsuka suddenly stopped. The Demonic Blade Muramasa, which she used rather often, appeared in her hand, and her outfit shifted into a Servant combat suit.
Divine energy surged from her belt and filled the blade as she walked toward the ramen shop step by step.
She could feel an extremely powerful magical presence.
Pushing open the ramen shop's door, a spicy scent assaulted her face. Ritsuka's expression subtly changed.
It was not because of the spicy smell in the air. At this point, she could no longer clearly sense that stuff.
It was because the figure seated there with his head plunged into a bowl of noodles looked, no matter how she viewed it, exactly like that old man Kishiya from before.
"Hey! Old man, are you okay?!"
Ritsuka stepped forward and pushed him a few times, only to discover that Kishiya was as motionless as a dead dog.
The shop was unnaturally silent. Naturally, the unconscious Kishiya could not make a sound, and the priest who should have made this bowl of ramen was nowhere to be seen either.
Looks like he ate Kirei Kotomine's ramen, but... where is Kirei Kotomine?
Ritsuka looked around and even went into the courtyard behind the ramen shop, but she could not find any trace of Father Mape.
In the end, she only found a bottle of spilled transparent liquid beside Kishiya's table. A scalp-crawling sensation immediately made the corner of Ritsuka's eye twitch.
Mapo Water?
Kishiya's bowl did not even have the overly spicy red coloring. It looked like ordinary soy sauce ramen with less chili added, yet it had still taken down the incredibly powerful Kishiya. It seemed this drink Kirei Kotomine had developed himself had done its work.
Its ingredients were unknown. For now, its effect was to multiply the spiciness of Mapo noodles by an unknown number of times. Kirei Kotomine had not taught her how to make it.
"Tch, how long is he going to be unconscious? I can't just leave him here..."
To be fair, the magecraft world was rather complicated. Kirei Kotomine had explained that to her before.
Although she was not sure of Kishiya's identity, if he had enemies who came looking for him, his chances of being killed while lying unconscious like this were not low. She was somewhat worried about his safety.
Even though it really had nothing to do with her.
Scooping up the unconscious Kishiya, Ritsuka carried him out of the Mapo ramen shop and brought him to the storage room behind it.
She made the bed Kirei Kotomine used for temporary rest, washed Kishiya's face, settled him in the storage room, and covered him with a blanket to keep him from catching cold.
There was still some time, so Ritsuka decided to make use of it. Perhaps the most difficult enemy was still waiting for her.
Before you continue