Chapter 24. The Servant Escaped
He had finally checkmated her.
Pressed against the side of her neck by a large, kitchen-knife-like blade, Assassin's gaze remained tenacious, yet it was accompanied by obvious frustration.
"Assassin, I'm only doing this so we can have a proper conversation. You should understand that at this distance, swinging my sword is faster than your Noble Phantasm," Shirou warned calmly, maintaining his stance.
Assassin had an interval when using her Noble Phantasms.
With two hands restrained and a third forced against the wall tiles, any attempt she made to release a Noble Phantasm through any of her hands was a situation Shirou could control.
Moreover, generally speaking, Shirou had enough time to strike before she could finish chanting a True Name. Having already had a Noble Phantasm activation interrupted once, the lead-up time required for Assassin to enter her Noble Phantasm state did not allow for optimism on her part.
"Gugh... why don't you kill me?"
A faint voice came from beneath the hood.
"I don't go around attacking people indiscriminately like you do! Argh, fine... have you calmed down yet?" Shirou couldn't help but retort.
Assassin fell into silence.
"Trust me, I want to know about the state of this city even more than you do. What exactly is going on with this Holy Grail War? Why is there a Holy Grail War here? Ultimately, why does a second Holy Grail even exist? Also, I want to know what the situation is with your Master."
Shirou was full of questions. His lips moved incessantly, greedily asking the questions for which he could find no explanation.
After subduing Assassin, it wasn't her he was concerned with; it was the "system" she represented that made him feel entirely uneasy.
Until he met Assassin, Snowfield City had appeared peaceful. Despite receiving prior information, there had been no omens of a major incident; the dark side of Snowfield and Shirou's group seemed like two parallel lines that never intersected.
But after just one encounter, the surface-level calm of the city had exposed the tip of an underwater iceberg.
"...A second Holy Grail?" Assassin asked.
The moonlight illuminated a corner of the derelict city outskirts. The leveled blade relaxed slightly; Shirou made up his mind and showed his hand.
"Nearly ten years ago, a Holy Grail War took place. I am a survivor of that war. And that Holy Grail has already been destroyed."
"...Destroyed?"
"Yeah. It was destroyed by me and my companions."
Assassin seemed momentarily awestruck, falling silent without a word.
When she spoke again, she lowered her gaze and said, "I have no Master."
"..."
"The magus who intended to hold that position is dead. I do not regret doing it. Even putting aside the Holy Grail that profanes our God... that man's eyes were full of filth."
Assassin glared up with great conviction.
For someone to make Assassin strike with lethal intent without a second thought, it was hard to imagine how extreme that Master must have been. One had to remember that even against Shirou, her fiercest initial intent was only to wound his tongue.
Though he felt a bit uncomfortable, Shirou didn't immediately jump in to judge the matter.
"I'll ask for details after I'm done with other things... wait, no."
Shirou noticed a discrepancy.
"Assassin, you say your Master is dead, so who is supplying you with prana?"
Even for an Archer with "Independent Action," a Servant's strength would dwindle to less than ten percent in just a few bouts without a prana supply, let alone an Assassin using Noble Phantasms consecutively.
"You've released the True Names of your Noble Phantasms many times. You've used more than five types. No matter how small the prana cost of a single Noble Phantasm is, you should have run out long ago. Without a prana supply, the effects of a Noble Phantasm would get worse each time, until eventually, you wouldn't even be able to release them."
—Where exactly is your abundant prana coming from?
Before he could finish the sentence, Assassin's gaze froze. It was as if she had realized something she had never noticed before.
Even Shirou realized there was more to the story regarding Assassin's Master. Assassin began to mutter to herself in pain, looking as if she wanted to clutch her head.
"Don't say such absurd things! I clearly killed him! I... In that case, the link should have been severed! How can it still exist?"
"No, that's wrong. Could it be... immortality... Is that man a monster!?"
Her awareness of the need to argue vanished, and then she closed her mouth tightly as if refusing to give up.
"[Zabaniya - Meditative..."
She whispered those words quietly, completely ignoring the presence of Shirou, her executioner.
"—"
Shirou's hand moved in synchronization.
With only a few millimeters of distance, it would not be difficult to slash down and make her vanish instantly. But his arm changed direction at the last moment, shifting the target from her neck to her chest. This was because Shirou sensed no killing intent from her; this time, she didn't even have the intent to harm.
Facing a sensation like cutting through butter, Shirou controlled his strength to slice through the inner side without severing it, ensuring a serious wound. He stepped back with his left foot, his body retreating rapidly to maintain a safe distance.
The moment the tip of the blade flicked blood into the air, that Noble Phantasm activated.
"...Recollection])"
An anomaly. The Noble Phantasms in his hands turned into mist and dissipated inexplicably.
Shirou watched this scene in astonishment.
Not only that, but the two clusters of swords trapping Assassin melted away like fog, vanishing completely.
Assassin herself dissolved into mist and crumbled away.
Finally, Shirou—...
...
...—
"—"
Two seconds of subjective time later, like waking from a dream, he suddenly returned to the real world.
Both Shirou and Assassin were whole and unharmed—at least, they weren't in a state of being shrouded in mist.
None of the Noble Phantasms Shirou had thrown to harm or restrain her could be found, but his prana seemed to have a subtle recovery in that instant.
Assassin was no longer by the wall. Shirou also realized that his position had been changed without him noticing.
Assassin knelt on the ground in defeat; she was at the position where she had previously recovered from a fall and been pierced by the stakes.
And Shirou, without realizing it, was standing at the counter-attack position—the spot where he had originally dodged the ambush and thrown the stakes.
Scanning the outer wall, the craters had vanished into thin air. Yet Shirou saw that Assassin still had bloody holes in both hands.
The slash wound on her chest was oozing blood, keeping her strength at the threshold of a serious injury.
"I see."
Shirou stepped away from the spot where he had "woken up" with some discomfort; after all, the "hallucination" before him was like traveling to the past.
These things should have been full of eeriness. But if understood as a Noble Phantasm, Shirou understood certain things at a glance.
Injuries sustained before the activation cannot be recovered. However, the damage being sustained at the moment of activation was retracted. The stakes, the sword clusters—conditions returned to before those things were launched.
Is this [Zabaniya - Meditative Recollection]?
Assassin, who had unleashed this move, was pale. Having barely managed to stand up, she suddenly clutched her body as if feeling nauseous after a few seconds of daze.
She had finally confirmed that something irrevocable had happened—Assassin's frozen expression gave Shirou this feeling.
Her prana recovery was rapid; this time, he could clearly perceive the process of her weakness being refilled.
So she does still have a Master.
"Did you stay your hand again?"
Assassin briefly set aside her complicated thoughts, looking at Shirou with a complex expression.
"Who knows," Shirou said non-committally.
In contrast, the heavily injured Assassin had lost her will to fight, her face showing urgency.
"Let me leave. I have more pressing matters to attend to."
Without even a detailed explanation, she threw out those words and turned around, her black robes fluttering in the air.
She continuously chose to leap toward places where she could utilize her agility, beginning to run into the distance.
"Hey, wait!"
Since letting her truly get away would be a hassle, Shirou had no choice but to raise his bow and fire an arrow.
The cloud-piercing arrow turned into a split-arrow volley, carpet-bombing the path ahead of Assassin. The wounded Assassin was forced to stop, allowing Shirou to catch up behind her.
"At least tell me about the Holy Grail War participants you know first!"
"How could I know such things! Those heretics in this city foresaw the occurrence of this ritual long ago. And I am merely an existence summoned to crush those heretics!"
Against a backdrop of blue magical flames, the Fanatic finally turned to face him.
Her eyebrows were raised high; along with a ghost-like angry voice, her delicate features displayed an emotion of rage. Set against the burning azure light, her pitch-black silhouette appeared even more profound.
Then, realizing she couldn't shake him off, she seemed to reach some sort of resolution. Her black robes trembled as she suddenly began to close in on Shirou at high speed.
"Forgive me."
She added this unnecessary remark.
There was no time to frown at her subtle change in attitude; the Fanatic, having suddenly said such a thing, reached out her hand.
Targeting his head, the Fanatic, who was about to brush past him, extended her hand into the danger zone.
"[████ (Zabaniya)]"
For a moment, Shirou stared at her, wondering if she was serious, but he couldn't read her thoughts.
Although it was an unspoken consensus between Shirou and her, Assassin should have known that if she extended a lethal Noble Phantasm into Shirou's danger zone, Shirou would have no choice but to cut it off. He couldn't allow a Noble Phantasm capable of an instant kill to touch him.
Regarding this behavior, which was like offering up her own arm, Shirou grit his teeth in dissatisfaction, but there was no time for thought.
With a cracking sound, a newly generated black-patterned sword, in this brief instant...
Killed the arm using the Noble Phantasm from below to above. The wrist that crossed the line was severed almost instantly; that arm did not get near Shirou's forehead.
"—"
"..."
Assassin had completely failed to touch Shirou.
However, at such close proximity, something that both humans and Servants bleed when injured sprayed out, bursting between Assassin and Shirou.
The difference was, it was black.
For a first-time encounter with a special-effect type move, the alarm bells did not ring in advance.
Facing the final move, Shirou, after a brief reaction, retreated a distance in frustration.
Countdown 02:48:33