Chapter 275: The White Deity, Shirou
In a vast expanse of pure white, frozen land, the perspective shifted. Shirou looked down and saw a pair of raised, pale palms—those hands were his own.
A freezing blizzard howled, and then the ice mountains groaned, triggering a world-shaking avalanche. It was a disaster of unprecedented proportions.
The snow swept across the globe, swallowing his home in Chiba and the estate in Fuyuki. Komachi and the girls from the school clubs were buried in the drifts. Artoria and Jeanne resisted, but they were too small before the might of nature; they were eventually scattered and vanished. Everything related to him was covered in white.
What was more terrifying was that, watching all of this, his heart remained perfectly still. He simply watched it all, cold and indifferent...
"Senpai! Shirou-senpai! What's wrong?" BB asked worriedly.
Shirou clutched his eyes. Under the stimulation of the sharp pain, he cut the circuit of the Mystic Eyes and returned to the cyber-space of the oil field base where he had started. Cold sweat poured down his body.
Calm down... Shirou whispered to himself, forcing his heart to steady.
Everywhere his gaze landed, information about the structure of objects automatically flooded his brain: the date of creation, the manufacturing process, mass, strength, hardness—even the date the object's lifespan would expire.
"Senpai? Shirou-senpai? Don't scare me! Are you alright? We were only observing past events; you shouldn't have been hurt!" In his mental world, BB-chan asked with urgent concern.
"I'm fine. It's just that too much information fed back into my brain through my eyes all at once," Shirou said, gritting his teeth against the pain, his left hand over his eyes and his right pressing against his temple.
For a moment just now, it felt as if his soul, from the inside out, had become that other person.
Absorption, return to the root. The meaning of those words was far more terrifying than he had imagined. The white-haired man was a convergence—not just a similarity, but a fundamental difference.
The other was a God. Though they looked alike and shared the same Origin, their thoughts existed in entirely different dimensions. Specifically, that man was gradually losing his memories and emotions as a human being.
Shirou leaned one hand against a wall. In that moment, through the glass of the wall which had become mirror-like due to digitalization, Shirou saw his own reflection. His eyes, for some
reason, wouldn't close; they were emitting a brilliant white light, with a seven-colored rainbow spiraling rapidly within the glowing irises.
Right now, his eyes looked exactly like those of the white man he had just seen.
Shirou turned around and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.
"Shirou-senpai, since you're okay, let me explain what happened before," BB spoke up.
"I understand. It's time we talked," Shirou said, his voice low and raspy from exhaustion and a dry throat.
Indeed, from the moment he had "possessed" the man in the white robes, many things became clear. He understood why he was born in a world without war where everything was perfect, and why the world was restricted by layers of constraints, with black-mud Heroic Spirits sent to hunt him down.
"But Shirou-senpai is truly kind. He rescued me and placed me in the outside world, leaving behind only the re-manufactured NPCs to replay the events over and over."
"What do you mean?" Shirou asked in surprise.
"That is a God. This is the first record in the Moon Cell regarding the appearance of a Creator God in this world," BB said sadly.
"You said that 'God' is the convergence of all Shirou Emiyas. Mumei and Archer disappeared because they became one with him. Then... why am I perfectly fine? Just now, I saw through his eyes, so why did it seem like he didn't notice me at all?"
Shirou asked the question that weighed most heavily on his heart to the girl residing within him.
In the past timeframe, even though he was reading history, the man in the conversation between Kiara and the white deity was already a being beyond time and space. Logically, he shouldn't have been unaware. Shirou's reaction was so strong, yet the man acted as if he didn't see him at all.
Shirou felt it—the man's gaze had looked toward him. At the very least, he had seen BB.
"That's only natural. Senpai was looking at the scenery using the exact same eyes from the start," BB nodded. She had known this all along, which was why she had led Shirou to face God. The purple-haired girl whispered:
"Because Senpai is special. That God didn't even perceive your existence. If he could, you would have been absorbed from the beginning. Or rather, his heart rejected it. Because you, Senpai, are actually the avatar created unconsciously by that God—the manifestation of Shirou Emiya's longing for happiness."
"You weren't discovered because you were selectively forgotten from the start. As a God, he doesn't need past memories or expressions of love; he only needs to stand at the heights.
Simultaneously, you are the last shred of hope that God holds deep in his heart for this world," BB explained.
"So that's how it is..." Shirou gave a bitter smile; he had suspected as much.
"I'm sorry, Shirou-senpai. But that is why I sought you out," BB said apologetically.
"Don't say that. It's not like you. I still think you're cuter when you act like your usual self," Shirou said with a light laugh.
"Senpai!..." BB's face flushed in his mind, seemingly caught off guard by his words.
Shirou continued: "If sacrificing one person could save all humans in every world, I would choose to do that too. But that 'me' is losing his memory and humanity. He'll break sooner or later, won't he?"
"Yes... humans are beings that decrease in number even if left alone. Statistically, every year, about 10 people are killed by sharks or wolves, hundreds by lions or elephants, over 2,000 by tapeworms and roundworms, tens of thousands by flies and beetles, over 25,000 by dogs, over 50,000 by snakes, and over 450,000 by other humans. The biggest killer is the viruses spread by mosquitoes, claiming over 700,000 lives. Suicides are close to a million. Then there are natural and man-made disasters. While technology has created traffic accidents and air disasters, social mechanisms and professional rescue training have generally reduced the damage."
"But! He is fighting against the natural laws of all worlds. He has to appear in every era, every point in time, past and future. Even with the Moon Cell's processing power, that cannot be maintained. It is destined to fail. The Counter Force let the black mud find me; those who want to return to the Mother's mud share my goal. With their help, I came here. But, Shirou-senpai..." BB showed a rare, serious expression. She had found the youth she considered her savior, but she didn't intend to force him into anything.
"Yeah. He has to be stopped. Not because of you, BB, or the Counter Force, but because it is my will," Shirou agreed with a smile.
"Of course! Because BB is the most evil and cutest Super AI who only likes Senpai. To be honest, I don't care what happens to the rest of the world," BB said with a grin.
"So, what's the first thing we need to do?" Shirou asked.
"Please return this place to its proper track. Defeat Kiara Sessyoin. Make the impact of God's appearance and the disappearance of the Black Emiya return to a net zero. If you do that, it won't affect this world," BB replied.
"The Kiara here is still in the state of 'becoming R.' Some Evils of Humanity are divided into pairs, like Yin and Yang, left and right. Right now, she is like a young beast just before maturity; this is the chance to defeat her."
"Using the oil base as her body, if she reaches the Earth's core and completes the fusion, she will be mature. At that point, stopping her becomes nearly impossible!"
"Understood. Let's regroup with Gudako and the others first!" Using his Mystic Eyes, Shirou located the girls and headed toward them.
At this time, Gudako and the others were officially heading toward the celestial lab. Unlike the memory Shirou saw, the girl was surrounded by several more companions this time. Seeing this, he felt a layer of confidence; this time, Gudako would not lose.
Shirou's white-glowing pupils flickered with a rainbow light. A pair of black-and-white bladed pistols were traced and held in his hands. It was time for him to bring his own part in this play to a close.
The oil base, just as in Shirou's vision, began to undergo a massive collapse. Before it broke apart, the BB-chan who had been pretending to be defeated by Gudako suddenly appeared and pulled everyone into a specific space.
"Since this place has been digitized, exceeding the speed of light is not impossible. The oil base is sinking through a vertical trench, so lateral movement won't be significant. By utilizing this and moving upward faster than light, we can return to a previous time coordinate."
Theoretically, if the distance crossed was great enough and time sufficient, returning to the surface before the base sank was possible. However, the current digitized space was under the influence of Kiara's gravity. To escape, absolute speed was required; even A-rank Servants would find their Saint Graphs unusable.
In that moment, Meltryllis couldn't worry about any of that. For her beloved person, she was willing to pay any price. Under the impact of exceeding the speed of light, cracks appeared on the girl's slender body; even a Saint Graph of the High-Servant class couldn't be spared.
Meltryllis arrived at one of the few non-digitized churches in the oil base, where she met the Meltryllis of this timeline. This Meltryllis had escaped from BB's control simply because she was unhappy about being used.
Behind the pulpit in the church, beneath the wreckage of the wall, lay the original Meltryllis of this era. After receiving the memories of the time-leaping girl, she understood what had to be done.
The Meltryllis of this world agreed to the proposal. Although the jump had damaged the time-leaping girl's Saint Graph, starting over from Level 1 to train and prepare to fight a Beast was too urgent. Therefore, the Meltryllis of this world entrusted the chance to the girl: "I leave Senpai to you!"
However, two versions of the same girl could not act simultaneously in the same world. To avoid detection by Kiara, only one could remain.
The BB here had originally been arranged by the Moon Cell to prevent Kiara's planet-merger. Because of previous rule restrictions, she had played her role to the end—maintaining the stability of the space as an operator while secretly helping Hakuno (Hakuto), eventually standing before Kiara.
Now that the digital world was transforming, BB was no longer bound by those specifications and stood naturally on Gudako's side, though her nature led her to hide in the back as a commander.
But Hakuno had made a series of preparations to defeat Kiara: anti-Beast strategies prepared by BB, items to prevent charm, and the "KP" (Kiara Points) to lower Kiara's level and seal her skills. During this time, BB hadn't been idle; she had developed everything necessary to flip the script.
Because Kiara used the oil base—which was a cyber-space similar to the Moon Cell—as her body, she was affected by the rules here. BB's "cheat" authorities became effective against her.
"Operation! CCC, Cursed-Cutting-Crater! Officially beginning! Let's brilliantly repel this Evil of Humanity who plans to possess the Earth like she's in a sewer!" BB shouted loudly.
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