After entering the South American Lostbelt, the surface was swallowed by brutal thunderstorms and a landscape littered with lava-spewing volcanoes. The Mana flow in the atmosphere was a complete mess.
By the time Storm Border detected U-Olga Marie's approach, she was already within roughly ten kilometers, and that gap was shrinking fast.
She wasn't flying. She was manipulating particles to push her own movement faster than time itself, a kind of time-limited action that looked almost like spatial transference.
She repeated it over and over, and by the time Shiomi and Morgan reached the deck, U-Olga Marie was already within striking range.
A gravitational sphere formed in front of Storm Border and expanded at an alarming speed.
It was obvious what she was trying to do: catch them off guard and crush Chaldea's headquarters in a single blow.
It was vicious and decisive, and Shiomi wasn't surprised. The reason she hadn't attacked at the Wandering Sea was probably simple. She never managed to find it, just as he'd suspected. She had only assumed the Wandering Sea's coordinates existed somewhere in the year 2017.
"Dissolve."
Shiomi raised his hand and touched the gravitational sphere as if it were right within reach. By reversing its flow and interfering with its rotation, he disrupted its formation.
The sphere, which had been expanding and trying to latch onto the ship, bending Storm Border and snapping it in two, vanished under Shiomi's counter.
Storm Border, briefly hampered by the gravity anomaly, quickly adjusted its posture and stabilized back into cruise.
And then, the one whose surprise attack had failed appeared before them, lowering herself onto the deck with deliberate slowness.
"You're awfully diligent, 'Alien God'."
In the gale that whipped at his clothes, Shiomi bared a mocking grin.
"That's my line." U-Olga Marie looked at him coldly. "You barely survived, and you're already rushing to the final Lostbelt. Are you really here just to stop me from taking what's waiting for me?"
Morgan brushed her disheveled hair back behind her ear. "You were the one who retreated in a hurry back then, yet you're talking like you won."
"Hmph. If this ship hadn't barged into the battlefield, you'd have been dead with nowhere to even bury you." U-Olga Marie shot them an irritated look.
There was no doubt she still believed she could kill them.
"Really?" Shiomi held her gaze, ready to move the moment she did. "This time, Storm Border is with us. Try not to get overwhelmed."
"Overwhelmed? Hahaha!" U-Olga Marie laughed openly. "By that shabby vehicle and the rabble riding it? Let me tell you, I'm in a very good mood right now. Want to know why?"
"Let's hear it," Morgan said.
U-Olga Marie smiled with open contempt. "You humans call yourselves the pinnacle. That 'seven riders of decisive magecraft' thing, right? The ones you call Grand Servants. I just gathered them up and dealt with all of them."
"Oh?" Shiomi narrowed his eyes.
Heroic Spirit Summoning by the Primates Suppression Force selected the very peaks of human history to confront overwhelming threats known as the Evils of Humanity, granting them vessels called Grand Spirit Origins so they could manifest and hunt those threats down.
Even a single Grand Servant was nothing to scoff at. Solomon, the first King of the Mountain, even Orion, who manifested for special circumstances, all proved that.
And yet U-Olga Marie was claiming she had wiped out all seven Grand Servants who came to subdue her.
"…Doesn't sound like a lie." Morgan's fairy eyes flickered.
It was rare to hear uncertainty from her.
"Even your eyes can't tell?" Shiomi asked, genuinely surprised.
"My husband should understand," Morgan said quietly. "The enemy in front of us is something without precedent in the history of Earth, or even human history."
Shiomi fell silent.
They had already accepted that between them, and treated it as a premise they had to account for.
"What's wrong?" U-Olga Marie asked smugly. "Just hearing that much, and you're too scared to move? For someone who's escaped me again and again, that's pathetic. I'd be disappointed."
"No." Shiomi pressed a hand to his face, steadying himself as the initial shock faded. He stared at the enemy who looked exactly like Marie and yet was completely different. "I was just putting a few things together. Whether you're telling the truth or lying, we have no reason to back down here."
"Hah. So you still have some spine." U-Olga Marie watched him. "Your journey ends here. Don't think you've 'managed to escape' up to now because you were clever. I simply had more important things to do."
As she spoke, she rose into the air again and extended her hand toward Shiomi and Morgan.
Golden lightning bloomed from her palm, countless serpents of light surging straight at them.
A violent explosion tore across Storm Border's deck.
With Skadi's barrier protecting them, the blast left scorched marks but no real damage.
U-Olga Marie watched the rolling smoke and waited in silence for their response.
In truth, she had been thinking along similar lines to Shiomi.
The Unity God.
A new god formed by the fusion of a divine body and a fairy, a concept entirely different from the 'Alien God'.
Something equally unprecedented in Earth and human history.
But there was no one to talk to, no way to turn that unease into words. U-Olga Marie simply judged the Unity God to be a threat that had to be erased.
Even if, in her eyes, it wasn't worth worrying about, it still had to go.
Whoosh.
A cold, piercing sound split the air as several black shapes cut through the smoke and shot straight toward U-Olga Marie.
"Hm?"
Realizing these weren't thrown weapons or ranged attacks, but semi-autonomous strikes that could keep tracking their target, U-Olga Marie shifted her gaze and finally saw what was coming at her.
She slipped past one attack, then caught one of the weapons mid-flight.
"A cursed crimson spear… and the Holy Lance, and the Spear of God."
She scanned the crimson spear in her hand, then the other three spears circling nearby. She didn't know why, but she recognized what these Noble Phantasms were.
Even if she couldn't speak their True Names.
The crimson spear thrashed in her grip, roaring as it tried to break free and attack again.
U-Olga Marie had no interest in holding it, but she was even less pleased that a mere Noble Phantasm would dare resist her.
"Byakuya・Ice Flower."
Morgan's clear voice cut through the howling wind and reached U-Olga Marie's ears.
A rain of deep-blue frost light swept in like a storm.