Chapter 108: The Actors are in Place, So Says the Stage
Shirou crossed the arrow with the bow's frame, and blue sparks sprayed in all directions from the nocked string. On the blade fragment that had already lost its original shape, prana began to swell toward a peak, at the cost of the weapon self-destructing upon the completion of this strike.
His hem fluttered. A microscopic storm swirled around the spot where Shirou stood. Even at a time like this, Jester still hadn't noticed the abnormality behind him.
'Let's settle this in one shot.'
The arrow, which brought "death" equally to the living and the undead, took aim at the Dead Apostle's heart. At the moment he failed to realize someone was aiming at him, he was already finished.
...Failed to realize someone was aiming at him, was it?
Shirou stood on flat ground like a high platform, without any cover or obstacles. The bow, held by Shirou in a posture of certain annihilation with concentrated prana and a body that had undergone a shift in tone, remained unchanged.
Only his fingers gradually loosened from the full draw... and then, blue light burst forth and shot out.
"Blue light" referred to the sound and light of the prana gathered around Shirou clinging to the string and being flicked forward. The flash reached its limit one meter away from Shirou and vanished, and the part clinging to the bow dissipated immediately along with it.
Only after it dissipated did an object, hidden under its cover, fall to the ground. Without making a sound, a Black Key sank directly into the earth.
Because just now, it was a dry fire.
The string and arrow had been misaligned at the spot covered by his fingers; in reality, only the string had swung out, with no intention of firing the arrow. By not firing with full heart and soul, he wouldn't fall into a state of rigidity.
"[Rho Aias (The Seven Rings that Cover the Fiery Heavens)]."
Before the shockwave—which had been fired synchronously from somewhere unknown—could pierce through Shirou as he "shot," the shield appeared to the right of Shirou, who did not intend to attempt the folly of dodging with his physical body. The shockwave, which pierced everything in its path in a single breath, clashed against the Conceptual Armament that had once stopped the spear of Hector.
Between the two, the stone surface of the hospital roof split from one to two, two to four, four to eight, eight to sixteen... and finally decomposed slowly, leaving only permeating dust.
The shield vanished at Shirou's thought, revealing the distance it had obscured. Shirou looked in the direction the arrow had come from and saw a figure hidden in the night atop a building about eight kilometers away.
While Shirou generally only sniped within four kilometers, he wasn't actually limited to that range. What Shirou could achieve was that within four kilometers, no matter who the target was or how fast they moved, as long as he stood and aimed, it was a "true shot that must hit." As long as he reinforced his eyes, eight kilometers was at least within his visual range.
In the pitch-black night, that Heroic Spirit did not nock a new arrow. Shirou was neither angry nor restless, but looked back at him from afar. Like him, he made no further move, simply expressing through action: The current me is no longer at a level where I can be taken out by you in one hit; that method won't work.
He seemed to nod slightly toward Shirou as a sign of respect, and immediately after, black mud surged from beneath him, swallowing him whole. The Heroic Spirit, taller than Shirou, vanished from the top of a building even higher than where Shirou stood.
The method of blocking was simple. Anyone would do it. To put it simply, it was about adjusting the timing of receiving the attack. By automatically exposing a fatal opening, one locks in the attack.
Shirou himself was a bowman who was "not an Archer"; if he were to snipe an archer, he would definitely choose the moment the opponent fired their arrow, when their whole body was unable to move. Therefore, Shirou completely understood his way of thinking.
Of course, he probably understood Shirou's way of thinking as well. The problem was, he had no better choice. Large-scale Noble Phantasms weren't stealthy enough and were easily intercepted by Saber, and when Shirou wasn't concentrating on drawing his bow, Shirou could block his normal attacks with Noble Phantasms. So, naturally, sniping at the moment the arrow leaves the string had the highest success rate. He couldn't confirm whether Shirou had noticed his presence.
Both were gambling. For Shirou, if he sniped at the moment Shirou released the string, it was easiest to block. Noticing he would be sniped but being shot before release would increase the difficulty slightly, and being shot without noticing the possibility of a snipe would mean death.
But for him, no matter when he shot, Shirou might block it; if Shirou noticed, there would be no chance. On this basis, sniping before release had a small chance of failure even if Shirou hadn't noticed. However, if he sniped at the moment of release, the success rate was 100% as long as Shirou hadn't noticed—high risk, high reward.
Arrowhead. This was the optimal choice made based on mutual reading, even with identical skills.
After confirming his disappearance, Shirou scanned the distance and confirmed the Dead Apostle had ducked into a city forest five or six kilometers away. The Dead Apostle had likely gone still; Shirou couldn't see his exact location, and due to the distance, Shirou decided against using another Black Key after thinking it over.
His location seemed to be near a mass grave, with a large number of tombstones standing on one side of the forest. Shirou didn't have time to wait for him to expose his true position, and instead, a spiral-shaped sword appeared on the bow. Even without seeing a silhouette, there was a way to cause damage, and furthermore, Shirou estimated that the properties he was immune to wouldn't protect him from this either.
In an environment where no one else interfered, the arrow sped away, slicing through the sky. After a chaotic-colored ball of light appeared in the distance, Shirou relaxed his body and dropped down from the roof.
Perhaps the arrow he released wasn't a direct hit, but it had a strong enough effect. At least, enough to kill a single body several times over.
Shirou had completed his original objective and simultaneously realized that Gilgamesh's presence had also vanished. The enemies within the hospital's vicinity had all been cleared; Gilgamesh and Alcides had both been driven away, and Shirou had saved the people under the Dead Apostle—though it wasn't his intention, the hospital now only contained people willing to cooperate with Shirou and the others.
Tonight was going much more smoothly than expected. With only the final step of rescuing Tsubaki remaining, the matter would be over. Since even Gilgamesh and Alcides had left, negotiating with Tsubaki's Heroic Spirit shouldn't be a problem. Because Shirou had pushed himself enough that even when facing the strongest Heroic Spirit, he had held his ground.
For a moment, Shirou thought so too.
Clan Calatin. Saber, Ayaka. Assassin. Sigma. All the people willing to stand on this stage had arrived—he didn't yet realize that this sentence could be shortened to: The actors are in place.
Shirou walked toward the side of the hospital, preparing to return to the front gate via a different route from Saber, who had driven off Gilgamesh. Next, they would face the Heroic Spirit inside the hospital together and save the girl. Thus, Shirou wanted to adjust his own state by walking slowly to alleviate the accumulated fatigue.
As Shirou passed the back wall of the hospital, he turned his head back because he sensed something.
"I can't stand it most when I see people who work hard not get rewarded," someone by Shirou's side had once said.
Shirou suddenly understood the reason for Rin's misjudgment.
A rustling sound swept past. A very familiar rustling, impossibly like someone walking in a different phase.
A thick black smoke suddenly burst from the back of the hospital, expanding at a terrifying speed. Shirou recognized that thing.
Shirou had once discovered signs of it on a weapon; what was here was merely a macro-scale version. They were almost the same thing. Shirou also remembered the anomaly at a certain mansion and had been on guard against similar methods, even having conjectures about the opponent's abilities.
However, when what was originally invisible suddenly manifested in a form everyone could see—Shirou never imagined the scale could become so massive and rapid in an instant. There was no time to stop it, nor did he have much knowledge on how to stop it, because it was a "disaster" like a dust cloud—a "disaster" without even an enemy, which could not be interrupted by human power.
Before he knew it, the black tide rose as if to swallow everything, continuously spreading, rising, and flowing in the air. The earth trembled, the dark night pulled down its curtain, and from the nest dissolving within, an endless black mist bloomed all at once.
After the second hand ticked three times, a flood as tall as the hospital building completely engulfed the Snowfield City Central Hospital, making it vanish from the landmarks.
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