What made Mayuri hesitate was an entirely different impulse.
Her gaze settled on the blonde girl at the center of the battlefield.
Fragments of silver-and-blue armor still lay scattered on the ground. Her white underlayer was stained with blood, and her emerald eyes shone brightly in the night.
[King of Britain-King of Knights] Artoria Pendragon.
In her previous life, she had been a typical Ahoge King fan-no, in that circle, the term was a King stan.
Images she had previously been unable to recall no matter how hard she tried suddenly surfaced in her mind.
The battle at the harbor. Saber and Lancer's first clash. The King of Conquerors barging in. The scene where all the Servants gathered together.
Yes, this was the very anime Mayuri had watched on a screen countless times before.
And now.
She was right here.
She really was right here.
There was no screen between them. This was neither animation nor fan fiction.
Everything happening three hundred meters directly beneath her was real and alive.
Artoria was right there.
Her hair stirring in the sea breeze, the way she held her sword, her emerald eyes, and the blood and sweat on her body-all of it was real.
Mayuri's heart began to race.
This was-
A sacred site she had to visit in this lifetime.
The voice of reason was drowned out by that impulse.
Through the link of their Master-Servant contract, Mayuri sent Tokiomi Tohsaka a request for permission.
Tokiomi Tohsaka replied quickly.
Permission granted.
Two additional conditions followed immediately.
First, stay safe; second, try not to reveal too much of her strength. They still needed to keep some trump cards in reserve.
Mayuri sent back an acknowledgment.
"All right, Master. Don't worry."
She organized what she wanted to say in her mind.
"I have my defensive Noble Phantasm, Astral Dress. It's almost impossible for any Servant present to defeat me instantly."
"Of course, if anything unexpected does happen, please use a Command Spell to summon me back in time, Master."
Tokiomi Tohsaka replied with a brief "Understood."
Mayuri took a deep breath, then remembered that a Servant's Spirit Origin did not actually need to breathe, and began to descend.
Three hundred meters. Two hundred. One hundred. Fifty.
Presence Reduction was still active, so none of the Servants present had noticed her approaching from above yet.
Thirty meters. Twenty.
That was enough.
Mayuri canceled her Spirit Form.
At the same time, she canceled Presence Reduction.
To everyone's senses, the process amounted to a presence suddenly appearing in the night sky more than twenty meters above them.
There had been no approach, no trajectory of movement, as though someone had pressed a spawn button at that exact spot.
Her exceptionally long, straight, pale champagne-blonde hair swayed broadly in the sea breeze.
Her fitted black-and-gold Astral Dress outlined the girl's slender figure, and the golden gear at her chest gave off a faint glow.
She hovered in the air with nothing beneath her feet. There was no platform of magical energy, nor any visible trace of a flight formula. She simply floated there.
Her wings were still hidden.
From below, she looked like a girl suspended in midair without any means of support.
Her rose-red eyes swept across the harbor district from above.
Artoria immediately looked up.
Her emerald pupils contracted.
Instinct was sounding a frantic alarm.
Those Spirit Origin fluctuations came from the same source as the danger in the sky she had sensed when her plane entered Fuyuki's airspace.
So it had been a Servant.
Diarmuid also looked up into the sky, a measure of wariness entering his golden-amber eyes.
Another Servant had appeared.
Able to hover in midair without touching the ground-the Caster class?
Or some other special being capable of flight?
Iskandar tipped his head back to look at the girl, and his grin widened.
"Good! Another one!"
Clinging to the edge of the chariot, Waver also glanced up, then quickly ducked back down.
The blonde girl floating in the sky was the one who had destroyed Assassin with a single strike that day-the Tohsaka Family's Servant.
The young Gilgamesh sat atop a streetlight, his crimson eyes narrowing slightly as he studied the newcomer.
The slight curve of his lips remained unchanged.
The harbor district fell silent for another few seconds.
During those few seconds, the situation changed a little as well.
While everyone's attention was on the new Servant in the sky, Artoria quickly retreated to Irisviel's side.
A strand of silver-white hair lifted in the wind, and her wine-red eyes were filled with worry.
"Saber, your hand..."
Artoria said nothing.
She simply rested her right hand lightly on Irisviel's shoulder.
The instant they touched.
Golden light poured out of Irisviel's body.
It was not healing magecraft applied from outside. Rather, Saber's touch had activated something within this silver-haired woman's body, within a certain conceptual Mystic Code buried in the deepest recesses of her Spirit Origin.
The golden light traveled up Artoria's right hand, passed her shoulder, and surged along her blood vessels and magical pathways to her left arm.
The curse of permanent healing prevention left around the wound by Yellow Rose of Mortality could not withstand that golden light for long.
The markings struggled for less than 0.1 seconds before being completely dispersed.
Then the torn muscles began reconnecting bit by bit, the severed blood vessels joined back together, and skin rapidly grew from the edges of the wound toward its center.
The entire process took less than three seconds.
Artoria moved her left hand.
She bent her thumb, straightened it, made a fist, and relaxed it.
It was healed.
As though the wound had never existed.
Diarmuid's eyes widened abruptly.
The injury he had inflicted with his own hands just moments ago, that deadly curse which would never heal unless Gáe Buidhe itself was destroyed, had been completely erased by something in three seconds.
It was not simple healing.
It was a direct override.
A power that surpassed Gáe Buidhe's curse on a conceptual level had negated the curse itself.
A Noble Phantasm capable of such a thing...
Only one answer came to Diarmuid's mind.
Avalon.
The absolute defensive Conceptual Weapon from King Arthur's legend that separated its bearer from the laws of the world.
According to legend, whoever held it would never age, suffer injury, or die. All outside interference would be rendered ineffective.
Why was it here?
It should not have been here.
Avalon had been lost long ago in the legends, and there had never been any record of King Arthur bringing this Noble Phantasm with her when summoned.
Yet here it was.
Diarmuid pressed his lips together, a trace of bitterness flashing through his golden-amber eyes.
The lethal strike he had landed by trading an injury for an injury, his carefully laid tactics, the critical damage he had already inflicted-all of it had come to nothing before that legendary Noble Phantasm.
The duel had returned to square one.
No, things were even more troublesome than at the beginning.
His right flank was still bleeding, while his opponent was already completely unharmed.
The others on the battlefield reacted differently as well.
When Iskandar saw that golden light, a gleam flashed through his amber eyes.
He said nothing, but the smile on his lips changed from enjoying the spectacle to finding the trip worthwhile.
The young Gilgamesh sat atop the streetlight, his crimson eyes slightly narrowed, a touch of genuine interest appearing on his finely featured face.
He did not even need to activate Sha Naqba Imuru again. The quality and level of that golden light alone were enough for him to recognize the object with his discerning eye as the King of Heroes.
Hovering twenty meters in the air, Mayuri saw everything clearly.
Avalon.
The sheath of the holy sword.
The ever-distant utopia.
That strongest defensive Noble Phantasm, which she had seen countless times in guidebooks and games in her previous life, had just been activated right before her eyes.
If the harbor battle had been a visit to an iconic scene, then seeing Avalon actually operate was a live gameplay demonstration of an SSR Noble Phantasm.
Mayuri bit her lip, forcibly swallowing the "So cool" that had almost escaped.
For her, however, the information this Noble Phantasm provided was more important.
Saber Artoria with Avalon and Saber Artoria without Avalon were on entirely different levels.
With the former, as long as Saber remained in contact with its bearer, she was practically impossible to kill, and any damage would be rendered ineffective.
To defeat such a being, one would either have to destroy Avalon first, separate Saber from its bearer, or overwhelm it with an attack beyond Avalon's level.
The other Servants present were probably making the same calculations.
Standing at the edge of the roof, Kayneth watched Artoria with his pale violet eyes. She was as good as new after the golden light faded, and his expression grew even uglier.
The tactical result his Servant Diarmuid had achieved at the risk of injury had been effortlessly canceled out by an additional legendary Noble Phantasm she had brought along. At that moment, the duel had effectively been fought for nothing.
The atmosphere below had changed as well.
What had originally been a one-on-one duel between Saber and Lancer had now become a standoff with five Servants appearing in the same area at once.