"How did things end up like this?"
Shirou pedaled a bicycle through the slum streets at astonishing speed, his face filled with confusion.
Originally, everything had been perfect.
They had sufficient manpower, equipment, and intelligence. It should have been the kind of mission that could be cleared effortlessly no matter how they approached it.
So why was he operating alone?
And why was he stuck riding a bicycle?
Every single one of Shirou's quiet complaints was transmitted clearly through the small communicator borrowed from Rhodes Island, especially to the true culprits responsible for forcing him into solo action.
Namely, Penguin Logistics and the Guard Department.
Only Chen, Hoshiguma, the four members of Penguin Logistics, and several responsible operators from the office could hear this communication channel.
Since almost everyone involved knew Shirou well, he was not particularly concerned about speaking casually.
"There is no helping it. One extra hideout suddenly appeared. Putting you with either Penguin Logistics or the Guard Department would create an excessive concentration of combat strength, so having you operate alone ended up being the best option."
After hearing Shirou complain, Hoshiguma, who had been sent over as support, could only attempt to calm him down slightly.
There was no deeper reason for it.
Within the entire Guard Department, she was probably the best person at comforting others, largely because she spent so much time mediating arguments.
Secondly, they genuinely did not know where to assign Shirou.
Should they place him with Penguin Logistics?
Well, Shirou was technically working for the Guard Department right now, so that felt inappropriate.
Should they assign him to the Guard Department team?
Then Penguin Logistics would become unhappy.
As for assigning him to the Rhodes Island office...
Sorry, but the Rhodes Island office had absolutely no understanding of Shirou's combat capabilities. In that case, letting him operate independently was honestly the better choice.
And so, things ended up like this.
"I know. It just feels strange somehow."
After hearing Hoshiguma's explanation, Shirou sighed.
He was not angry or anything. The arrangement itself was completely reasonable.
The hideout assigned to him was also one of the taller locations with better visibility.
The main idea was that after clearing it, he could immediately move to the rooftop and provide support to everyone else.
As for the bicycle, it was the ordinary ladies' bicycle Minmin normally used when going out shopping. The front basket even allowed Shirou to carry extra items.
Though personally, he did not particularly need that functionality.
Still, because his current appearance was supposed to resemble someone casually shopping in the streets, he obediently stuffed most of his equipment into a backpack and placed it inside the basket.
He had already changed out of the Guard Department uniform jacket and into ordinary clothing. He even wore a baseball cap on his head.
No normal person would ever imagine that he was currently on his way to assault an enemy hideout.
He looked far too ordinary.
The only potentially suspicious item was the communicator, but even that was disguised as an earphone-type device. Unless someone specifically examined it carefully, it was unlikely to be noticed.
While riding the bicycle and monitoring the status updates from the others, Shirou quickly arrived near the hideout under his responsibility.
Because of his ordinary clothing and lack of suspicious items, he had not attracted much attention along the way.
After parking the bicycle inside a nearby alley and locking it to a railing, Shirou picked up his backpack and headed toward the building.
His expression appeared completely relaxed, as though he was simply visiting someone he knew inside.
The backpack itself did not contain much.
Aside from basic medicines, the main contents were spare communicators.
After learning his lesson from the previous communicator breaking, and because he was operating alone this time, Shirou had specifically brought two additional sets.
"Hm? There are barely any people around?"
As he approached, Shirou realized the surrounding area was unusually deserted. Even inside the building, there seemed to be almost no activity.
If he had not repeatedly confirmed the address on his phone, he might have suspected he had come to the wrong place.
Still, fewer people was actually better.
Shirou hoped this side could be resolved quickly so he could move on to support the others.
Rather than entering through the main entrance, Shirou first circled around the side of the building and placed his hand against the wall.
As he used Structural analysis, Shirou gained a rough understanding of the situation on the lower floors.
First of all, there really were not many people inside.
However, there was something else that immediately caught his attention.
"These are... active Originium gas?"
The results of his analysis made Shirou frown.
Inside one of the rooms was something that, unless he was mistaken, appeared to be active Originium gas.
After all, he had encountered it earlier that very morning, so the impression was still fresh in his mind.
At the very least, he clearly remembered the containers used to store the substance.
Ordinary households definitely would not keep things like this around. Normally, they would only be used for experiments or other special circumstances.
Realizing this, Shirou decisively expanded the range of his Structural analysis even further.
Although it consumed more magical energy, it would allow him to gather information much faster.
At this moment, Shirou sincerely hoped he was overthinking things and that this building was merely an ordinary laboratory.
Unfortunately, no sane person would establish a laboratory deep inside the slums.
After all, there was no guarantee that a group of desperate criminals would not suddenly storm in and rob the place.
And researchers obviously could not be expected to commute through the slums every single day just to go to work...
Wait.
Would that not mean they would basically have to live inside the company building?
Thinking about it that way was actually pretty horrifying.
While his thoughts wandered in strange directions, Shirou continued extending his analysis farther upward.
As expected, he discovered a large amount of weaponry on the higher floors.
"Tch... Am I attacking an armory here?"
After seeing all those weapons and pieces of equipment, Shirou was now certain this place was one of the enemy hideouts.
And apparently, it was specifically being used as a weapons storage facility.
At this point, it was clear Lin Yuhsia's intelligence network had gathered information extremely thoroughly.
After reporting the situation to the others, Chen thought for a moment before speaking.
"You said there are not many people inside, right? Then destroy the most dangerous things first. At the very least, we cannot allow those items to fall back into their hands again."
Chen still remembered this building fairly clearly.
After all, it was one of the taller structures within the slums, though nobody had ever really known what was being done inside it.
Now that she knew the building stored large quantities of dangerous materials, Chen's first thought was to have Shirou destroy them immediately.
Alternatively, he could stay behind and guard the equipment so nobody else could access it.
However, Chen leaned more toward the first option.
Shirou's combat strength was extremely important, and under the current circumstances, transferring manpower there would take time. Even then, there was no guarantee the people sent over could successfully defend the materials.
If the contents inside were truly what Shirou described, then even a slightly stronger Arts attack could potentially ignite the active Originium gas.
And if that happened...
The nearby residents would be doomed.
"I can reinforce the area a little. At the very least, I can make it much harder for anyone else to get direct access."
After hearing Officer Chen's suggestion, Shirou understood her reasoning.
Destroying the weapons themselves was not a problem.
But asking him to destroy the gas containers was genuinely difficult for him.
He had absolutely no idea how to properly deal with the gas once it leaked out.
It was not as though they could simply let it drift freely through the air.
After thinking briefly, Shirou proposed another solution.
He could project several massive swords to completely surround the containers. That way, anyone attempting to retrieve them would first need to destroy the Noble Phantasms he projected.
It would not provide perfect defense, but it would at least delay anyone for a significant amount of time.
Though they were technically swords, they were still Noble Phantasms in the end. Ordinary attacks would have great difficulty damaging them.
"That works. Then I will leave it to you. I will have the char siu cat arrange additional personnel to head over."
Clearly, Chen also understood the quality of Shirou's projected weapons.
At the very least, she had never personally seen any weapon in Shirou's hands break before.
The ones he exploded himself obviously did not count.
"Then I will deal with it now."
Once they finalized the plan, Shirou immediately used the wall in front of him as leverage, kicked off another wall midair, and leapt upward.
Afterward, he used Kanshou and Bakuya to directly smash through the iron bars and windows in a single motion.
"So it really is this stuff."
After entering the building, Shirou looked at the metal containers filled with active Originium gas and confirmed his earlier analysis had been correct.
Although the substance was harmless to him, it was an extremely terrifying material for everyone else.
And the noise he made while entering the building had not exactly been subtle.
He could already vaguely hear hurried footsteps and the sounds of metal clashing outside.
"Trace, on—"
With a sweep of his arm, several giant swords taller than a person slammed into the floor, firmly surrounding the containers holding the dangerous substances.
The windows in particular were sealed off especially tightly.
The massive blades embedded themselves deep into the ground and locked firmly into place.
Among everyone Shirou knew, he estimated only Croissant or Hoshiguma might have a chance of physically pulling those swords back out.
And even they would need a considerable amount of time.
By then, the Guard Department would probably already have arrived to secure the area.
Still, the real battle was only about to begin.
As the sounds of footsteps outside grew increasingly frequent, Shirou knew it was time to move.
If he waited any longer, the enemy might begin preparing Arts attacks manually, and that would become troublesome.
"Haa..."
Taking a deep breath, Shirou adjusted the weight of Kanshou and Bakuya in his hands.
The familiar sensation calmed his emotions almost immediately.
His entire state of mind shifted smoothly into the proper condition for combat.
Shirou had already finished preparing everything in advance.
His Mystic Code, reinforcement magecraft, and even the Noble Phantasms that required chants to retrieve had all been readied beforehand.
After all, he had promised Sora earlier that he would not get hurt.
The instant he sensed hostility from outside, Shirou immediately used Kanshou and Bakuya to destroy the door. At the same time, two giant swords slammed down into the original doorway position, replacing the door itself.
"There is only one person!"
The people outside, upon seeing a single individual rush out of the room, immediately raised their weapons and charged toward Shirou.
The corridor was extremely narrow.
For Shirou, that was actually a considerable advantage.
At the very least, under circumstances where he was trying not to kill anyone, this sort of terrain was ideal.
He threw Kanshou and Bakuya from his hands.
The two people charging in front instantly collapsed, each with a black blade and a white blade embedded in their legs.
"Hah! This idiot actually threw away his weapons! Hurry up and get him! Do not let him retrieve his weap— Lungmen profanity!"
Seeing Shirou suddenly empty-handed, one of the men burst into laughter. Holding his long blade, he deliberately stood between Shirou and the two injured people, attempting to stop Shirou from recovering his weapons.
Unfortunately, before he could finish speaking, Kanshou and Bakuya reappeared in Shirou's hands, instantly silencing him.
The next thing he saw was a blade buried in his own leg.
The intense pain caused him to collapse immediately, completely incapable of thinking about how Shirou had recovered his weapons.
"Not a bad idea. Too bad you ran into me."
Glancing coldly at the man writhing on the floor in agony, Shirou's expression remained utterly emotionless.
These people were enemies.
In terms of strength, they posed absolutely no threat to him.
But the sheer malice radiating from them still disgusted him deeply.
The feeling was probably similar to encountering a cockroach.
Even if you knew it was technically harmless, the disgust and instinctive fear would still remain.
Still, Shirou's goal was only to strip them of their ability to fight. He had no intention of killing them.
Otherwise, gunblades would have been far more effective in this sort of environment.
On compact battlefields like this, gunblades could suppress opponents at astonishing speed.
The only issue was that one shot would probably blow an entire leg off.
For the sake of the mental health of the Guard Department personnel arriving later, Shirou had deliberately chosen not to use dual guns.
After finishing with the group, Shirou retrieved the blades embedded in them, shoved the injured people into an empty room, and projected several giant swords to block both the windows and the doorway before leaving.
There was no time to slowly tie them up with ropes.
Once the enemy realized there was an intruder, more people would inevitably rush back to reinforce the building.
He needed to hurry and seal off the upper floors containing the remaining weapons and equipment before anyone else could access them.
As for the possibility of attacking the wrong people...
Anyone storing this kind of material was obviously not some innocent civilian. Even if he accidentally targeted the wrong person, it hardly mattered.
Especially since every single one of them wore orange cloth strips as identifying markers.
"These people even have suppressants?"
After moving several floors higher and casually taking down more enemies along the way, Shirou once again used Structural analysis to inspect the upper floors.
At the very top floor, there appeared to be a stockpile of suppressants.
The reason he could identify them so quickly was because he recognized the packaging.
It was the exact same brand he used to buy frequently from Lungmen's suppressant specialty stores long ago.
This was not good news.
It meant these people had already stolen a considerable amount—
No.
More likely, they were cooperating with someone else.
After all, if suppressants had been stolen, the Guard Department would definitely have been notified.
Yet not only Shirou, but even Officer Chen, Hoshiguma, and Swire were unaware of any such incidents.
That meant the suppressants probably were not stolen at all. Instead, they had likely been supplied through collaborators operating within Lungmen itself.
Anyone capable of acquiring this many suppressants would possess extremely high status and influence.
And if that were true, the situation became significantly more troublesome.
With those thoughts in mind, Shirou quickened his pace and prepared to investigate the upper floor personally.
Shhk...
Behind him, Shirou suddenly heard the sound of a dagger slicing through the air.