Five Servants were crowded into an area less than two hundred meters in radius.
Even in a Holy Grail War, a scene like this was probably rare.
The harbor district was now packed with Spirit Origin fluctuations from different directions, and even the air grew heavy.
Artoria and Diarmuid had stopped fighting for the moment.
The King of Conquerors stood on his chariot, looking as though he had stumbled upon some lively gathering.
The young Gilgamesh sat atop a streetlamp, swinging his legs back and forth.
Mayuri floated more than twenty meters in the air, her rose-red eyes sweeping over the people below.
No one moved first.
No one spoke, either.
They were all waiting for a chance to break the deadlock.
But the first to break it was none of them.
In the darkness southwest of the harbor district, the air suddenly changed.
It was neither the temperature nor the wind.
It was something else, something more direct, pressing toward them from that direction. Mayuri was the first to notice.
Madness.
Madness so pure it was black.
That pressure spread across the entire harbor district from the southwest.
It was neither fighting spirit nor killing intent.
Those two things at least still carried something "human."
This had none.
It held only destruction.
Like a wild beast locked up too long, with nothing left in its head but the thought of smashing everything before it.
Artoria tightened her grip on her sword.
Instinct A was warning her.
Diarmuid crossed his two spears in front of him, looking straight into the darkness.
Iskandar stopped smiling, and his gaze grew somewhat graver.
The young Gilgamesh sat on the streetlamp, narrowing his crimson eyes.
Black mist emerged from the passage between the shipping containers to the southwest.
That was no figure of speech.
It really was black mist, roiling up from the ground and gradually spreading along the passage.
Something was moving inside the mist, and the magical energy around it was absurdly dense. When it touched the ground, even the surface of the concrete began to crack.
Then that thing walked out.
It had the silhouette of a knight.
Roughly a meter ninety tall, it was entirely shrouded in black mist. Neither its face nor its armor was visible; all they could barely make out were broad shoulders, long legs, and a build made for combat.
Through the gaps in the black mist, two points of red light were occasionally visible.
Those were its eyes.
There was no reason in them, nor any intention of surveying the battlefield.
The instant it emerged, it raised its head.
Mayuri.
The blonde girl suspended above became the first target it fixed upon.
When that gaze swept over Mayuri, goosebumps instantly rose across her back.
Being targeted by something like this was nothing like being targeted by a normal Servant.
A normal Servant's eyes would hold at least some measure of judgment and probing.
This thing had none.
Only killing.
The next second, it moved.
The knight in the black mist stepped to the roadside and clamped his left hand around a streetlamp pole.
The metal shrieked under his grip, and five finger impressions sank into it at once.
A-rank strength forcibly squeezed an industrial steel pipe out of shape.
Then he tore the entire streetlamp out, base and all.
Concrete shattered, cables snapped, and sparks burst out. Gripped in its hand, the pole, over three meters long, looked like a long stick casually picked up.
Then the transformation began.
Blackness crawled outward from his palm, instantly spreading across the pole's surface.
In less than half a second, the originally silver-gray metal turned completely black. Then bright red markings showed through from beneath its surface, like blood vessels, or rings of roots burrowing inward.
The pole was still the same pole, but it was no longer an ordinary municipal streetlamp. It was a weapon imbued with Mystery.
From start to finish, it took less than a second.
Uproot, transform, throw.
The black knight whipped his right arm forward, hurling the entire three-meter-long black pole like a javelin.
Its trajectory was straight, its speed leaving nothing but a black streak, and its target was Mayuri, more than twenty meters in the air.
Mayuri did not even dodge.
The pole was already upon her.
The sound of contact exploded above the harbor district, as dull and heavy as a sledgehammer striking a steel plate.
The black pole stopped the instant it struck Mayuri.
It was as though something had devoured every last bit of its kinetic energy at once.
The next second, the pole began to deform.
The straight metal shaft bent outward from the point of contact, then twisted and crumpled into a mass, as though an invisible hand had crushed it.
The blood-red markings on its surface broke apart as well, dimmed, and finally vanished altogether.
The Mystery that had just been forcibly bestowed upon it was crushed along with it.
The mangled remains of the pole fell from in front of Mayuri, hitting the ground with a clear metallic clang.
From below, it looked as though Mayuri had not even raised a hand.
The thing the black knight had thrown reached her, only to be crushed outright by something invisible.
Judging by her demeanor, it could only be described as effortless.
Mayuri still did not move, and there was little expression on her face. She simply watched the people below from above.
The thing below, wreathed in black mist, was still watching her.
Those two red lights had not shifted away, as though it was waiting for the result, or looking for another chance to strike.
Mayuri clenched her teeth.
No more delays.
A pulse of magical energy surged out from the core of her Spirit Origin, traveling along a spatial connection straight toward an invisible location above Fuyuki City's night sky-the Thunder Sanctuary.
Here it comes.