In an instant, the blond man's arm extended fully like a whip. With a deafening roar, he hurled the hammer-sword with all his might.
Then, along the cracks that covered its blade like a spiderweb, the heavy sword shaped like a flanged mace exploded before Heracles's eyes!
"Oh? Broken Phantasm? They're really going all in."
Up in the sky, Sovell stroked his nonexistent beard and raised an eyebrow.
As supreme armaments formed around a framework of humanity's fantasies, noble phantasms-or the so-called "Noble Fantasies"-were themselves crystallized Mystery.
The method of activation that involved pouring magic power into an armament along with its true name was called a noble phantasm release.
But if the armament itself was treated as a disposable item, and the magic power within it was detonated directly, the result would be an even more terrifying explosion-"Broken Phantasm."
Releasing a noble phantasm through Broken Phantasm would produce tremendous power, even if the noble phantasm originally had no offensive capabilities whatsoever.
After all, a noble phantasm was fundamentally part of a Servant's own Spirit Origin. When a Servant chose to sacrifice a noble phantasm through Broken Phantasm, he was, in a sense, detonating part of himself.
The cost was immense, and so was the payoff.
Even low-ranking noble phantasms of C to E rank could unleash several times their original power through Broken Phantasm, rivaling or even surpassing an A-Rank noble phantasm release.
"Still... what a shame. Heh."
But Sovell shook his head. It seemed the Masters of the Azure Faction had yet to fully understand the nature of that great Hero's noble phantasm.
The drawback that balanced Broken Phantasm's tremendous power was that it could not allow the noble phantasm itself to overcome the difference in rank.
For example, a C-Rank noble phantasm might possess C+++ power or