Even amidst a violent explosion capable of destroying the building, this sentient mass of liquid metal still formed an absolute defense.
However, although this Mystic Code shielded him from the lethal impact, the sheer shock of falling from such a height still left his internal organs churning.
"Sola-Ui, are you alright?" he asked, looking back at his fiancée.
At this moment, Sola-Ui was being held in Diarmuid's arms in a princess carry.
Thanks to the protection of Kayneth's mercury sphere, the two of them had avoided any serious injuries from the fall. Aside from Diarmuid's arm being slashed by a few exposed steel rebars while protecting Sola-Ui, they were largely unharmed.
"I... I'm fine," Sola-Ui replied, still shaken. But upon seeing Diarmuid's injured arm, the panic in her eyes melted into a heartbreakingly tender gaze.
She reached out, trying to caress Diarmuid's wound. "Diarmuid! You're bleeding! Kayneth, quickly, help him!"
"He is a Heroic Spirit! He can heal himself using magical energy!"
Watching Sola-Ui care only for the Servant even in a situation like this, Kayneth felt a volatile mix of jealousy and rage. "Diarmuid! Do you see this? This is your so-called knight's code! The enemy resorted to straight-up explosives just to win!"
"Forgive me, my Lord," Diarmuid said as he stood up, his eyes filled with bewilderment. "I completely failed to anticipate such... dishonorable tactics."
Meanwhile, in the shadows of a distant building, Kiritsugu Emiya watched the scene coldly through his sniper scope.
"Kiritsugu, the target is still alive," Maiya's voice crackled over the radio.
"I know." Kiritsugu pulled the bolt of his rifle. "The Twelve Lords truly live up to their reputation. To think even this couldn't kill him."
"It seems we really can't underestimate the strength of any Master."
Just as Kayneth's group was reeling in the chaos and Kiritsugu was preparing to finish them off...
The air amidst the ruins suddenly warped unnaturally.
Silence.
It was an incredibly faint fluctuation, yet one that made the very soul tremble.
"Hmm?" Diarmuid's Servant intuition instantly flared with alarm.
He spun around, crossing his twin spears in front of his chest. "Who goes there? Show yourself!"
The smoke and dust gradually cleared. At the boundary where firelight met shadow, a figure clad in black slowly stepped forward.
It was a man dressed in dark casual clothes. Beneath his short black hair, a pair of pitch-black eyes exuded an unsettling calmness.
"You?" Kayneth's pupils shrank violently. "That Avenger?"
The person standing before them was none other than the mysterious Servant who had appeared last night—Asuka.
He did not answer Kayneth's question. Instead, he stopped in his tracks and tilted his head, studying the mass of silver liquid metal before him.
The corners of his mouth curled up slightly, and his voice rang out, clear and frivolous. "What an excellent Mystic Code, Professor."
"A turtle shell of a defense like this truly suits a cowardly and arrogant magus like you."
"What did you just say?!"
Kayneth was already furious, and this insolent provocation pushed him straight over the edge.
With a flick of his finger, the Volumen Hydrargyrum instantly morphed into countless razor-sharp silver blades. "Lancer! What are you standing around for? Kill him!"
"Understood!"
Although Diarmuid sensed something was off, he still chose to obey the command.
The crimson demonic spear, Gae Dearg, carved a fierce red arc through the air, aiming straight for the opponent's heart.
However, the ensuing combat style caught him completely off guard.
The opponent did not opt for the domineering, straightforward slashes he had used during their battle last night.
Faced with Gae Dearg's thrust, his body moved like a slippery viper, twisting in a way that completely defied physical inertia to narrowly evade the spear's tip.
"What's wrong, Sir Knight? Is this the extent of your spearmanship?" Asuka let out a brisk laugh, the sound echoing through the ruins, dripping with mockery.
Utilizing that bizarre footwork, he weaved through the gaps of the spear strikes, dodging the opponent's thrusts time and time again.
'So fast?' Diarmuid furrowed his brows.
'No, it's not speed.'
'His body is just some sort of lingering phantom. I've been shadowboxing this entire time!'
Diarmuid suddenly realized the truth!
"It's an illusion! Look out!" Sensing the enemy's true intent, he tried to turn back and help.
Asuka's figure suddenly split apart in midair, turning from one into three. The multiple afterimages directly disrupted Diarmuid's perception.
In the split second it took for Diarmuid to sweep his spear and shatter two of the afterimages, the real Asuka slipped past Kayneth's defensive blind spot like a ghost.
The Volumen Hydrargyrum was indeed a perfect automatic defense, but its reactions were based on the caster's pressure and the fluctuations of surrounding magical energy.
Under the manipulation of the man's illusions, a subtle error had been fed into Kayneth's perception.
In that brief second, the world in Kayneth's eyes overlapped.
He thought the enemy was attacking from the left, so the silver blades of the Volumen Hydrargyrum instantly covered his left flank. But in reality, Asuka silently cut in from the shadows on the right.
"Is that all you have? Naive!" Kayneth sneered, and the Volumen Hydrargyrum immediately rushed back to protect him.
But Asuka merely offered an insidious smile.
What he wanted was exactly this—for Kayneth to see through the illusion and recall his defense, creating a split-second gap where the Volumen Hydrargyrum was drawn away!
*Squelch!*
A sharp blade pierced flesh, but the target was not Kayneth.
"Ahhh!"
A shrill, agonizing scream rang out right beside Kayneth.
Kayneth whipped his head around, his pupils trembling violently.
Sola-Ui had been stabbed in the waist. Her slender wrist was gripped tightly by Asuka, emitting the sickening crunch of fracturing bones.
Blood sprayed out like a fountain, and the vitality in her face rapidly drained away.
"Sola-Ui!!!"
Kayneth's eyes were bloodshot with rage. Driven by his fury, the Volumen Hydrargyrum transformed into countless tentacles that lashed out madly, threatening to completely pulverize the rubble within a ten-meter radius.
"Whoops!"
Asuka had already leaped lightly backward before the attack could land, touching down on a broken crossbeam.
He stuck out his tongue and elegantly licked Sola-Ui's blood from his fingertips, a deeply twisted and satisfied expression surfacing on his face.
"You... you unforgivable scum!" Kayneth's reason completely snapped in that instant.
He simply could not comprehend why this Servant would refuse to fight him or his Heroic Spirit, and instead choose to attack a third party.
Although he had altered the Command Spell contract to make Sola-Ui the magical energy provider for Diarmuid, there was no way the opposing Servant could have known that.
This meant that from the very beginning, he had come with the sole intention of harming the innocent.
"Don't be so angry, magus," Asuka said, his voice brimming with the glee of a successful prank. "This is a gift I brought just for you."
He glanced at Sola-Ui, who was wailing on the ground with a deathly pale face, his eyes revealing undisguised contempt.
"Look at this woman. Is there even a shred of love in the way she looks at you?"
"She's even fantasizing about seducing your subordinate... It's better to just kill off trash like her early on to save yourself the headache, don't you think?"