Shirou fixed his gaze on a dilapidated, half-collapsed building as a longbow materialized in his hands.
Drawing the string and nocking an arrow, he aimed straight ahead.
Behind him stood Amiya, the Doctor, Ace, and the retreating Rhodes Island operators, all watching the situation unfold.
He could not afford to let his guard down. After all, whoever was behind this was capable of controlling gigantic stone statues. Anyone capable of wielding such Originium Arts was certainly no ordinary opponent.
"Looks like we have been discovered! Then I will leave it to you all to stall them for a bit, okay?"
Shirou saw no one, yet a woman's voice emerged from the very spot his arrow was aimed at.
Her tone was carefree and flippant, as though neither Shirou nor the Rhodes Island operators were worth taking seriously.
"...Only you were discovered."
A deep voice answered from behind a massive boulder nearby.
Moments later, a towering figure stepped out from cover.
Following them came numerous fully armed Sarkaz soldiers.
After glancing at the group, Shirou kept most of his attention focused upward.
The overwhelming malice emanating from that direction made him extremely uncomfortable.
As for the heavily armored individual below...
A red cloth strip was tied to the hammer in their hand.
Setting everything else aside, the horn protruding from their head was particularly eye-catching.
It reminded him of a rhinoceros beetle.
They looked troublesome enough, but compared to the giant monstrosity from earlier, they did not seem quite as dangerous.
More importantly, this one had stepped into the open and was now fully within Shirou's sight.
The other remained hidden in the shadows.
There was no question which target deserved priority.
"Hmph. Are you only capable of hiding in the shadows?"
Shirou released the string.
The arrow shot straight toward its target.
"Oh my! That was dangerous!"
The person hiding behind a window on an upper floor immediately ducked backward when she saw the arrow flying toward her, exposing herself to Shirou's view.
She was a white-haired female Sarkaz.
"Take this seriously. This one is not easy to deal with. Besides, this mess is your fault."
The heavily armored figure below looked up at W and offered a warning.
Just moments ago, the red-haired young man had destroyed her colossus with a single stone axe in an instant.
To be honest, facing an enemy of this caliber was quite stressful.
Originally, she had planned to wait for FrostNova's reinforcements before engaging him.
However, the Sarkaz on the rooftop, W, had forced the situation and dragged them into conflict ahead of schedule.
If they had not received reports that this organization had come into conflict with Patriot, nobody would have volunteered to face such a terrifying opponent.
Fortunately, most of Shirou's attention remained focused on W.
Still, considering they were both Sarkaz mercenaries and members of Reunion, she felt obligated to warn her companion.
"Ugh... what a nuisance."
After hearing her ally's words, W appeared thoughtful for a moment.
Then a broad grin spread across her face.
"Sir, I would advise against doing anything rash. Otherwise, all I need to do is press this switch, and the explosives hidden throughout the nearby buildings will detonate. Boom! Buildings collapse, and who knows? Maybe everyone on the streets gets buried alive."
"You..."
It was exactly the sort of thing a classic villain would say.
The kind of statement that made Shirou want to kick her on the spot.
She was not wearing a red cloth strip, and combined with that incredibly villainous speech, Shirou felt fully justified in hitting her immediately.
But he could not.
Every Rhodes Island operator on the street, along with the nearby civilians, had effectively become hostages.
Shirou had no way of knowing whether he could kill her faster than she could press the detonator.
"Do not glare at me with such a scary expression. I am only after that damned hooded person over there. Everything else is none of my concern."
Watching Shirou's expression darken, W casually waved the detonator in her hand before boldly walking toward her actual target.
Before leaving, she called out to her allies:
"Then I will leave this terrifying-looking gentleman to you all. Just keep him occupied for a little while!"
"..."
As the unfortunate recipients of W's request...
They really wanted to refuse.
Unfortunately, it seemed far too late for that.
Their captain had already raised a wall of earth, isolating Shirou from everyone else.
And when exactly had W planted those bombs?
They had been moving together the entire time.
The only place she had spent any significant amount of time was that building earlier.
Could she have just been bluffing?
But what if the bluff was exposed?
At the moment, they were all panicking internally.
What exactly were they supposed to do?
"Captain Mudrock, should we buy some time for you?"
After thinking things through, several Sarkaz decisively gave up on struggling and placed their hopes on their squad leader, the heavily armored Mudrock.
There was no way they could defeat this monster themselves.
The best they could do was stall for time and see whether their captain could create another colossus.
"No need... Colossus are completely ineffective against him. All we have to do is delay him until reinforcements arrive."
Others might not have sensed it, but Mudrock understood very clearly just how dangerous the red-haired young man standing before them truly was.
"Sorry, but I have no intention of playing along with you."
Watching the earth beneath his feet rise into a towering wall that separated him from the main Rhodes Island force, Shirou remained calm.
Ace, Scout, Nearl, and the others were still on the other side. He had absolutely no reason to worry about that W or G or whatever she called herself posing any serious threat to them.
That did not mean, however, that Shirou intended to waste time playing along with these people.
The longbow vanished from his hand, replaced by the black-and-white twin swords, Kanshou and Bakuya.
As Shirou tightened his grip on the blades, Mudrock and the Sarkaz behind her could clearly feel a powerful sense of danger emanating from him.
"What did you come here for? Was it simply to riot? Or were you trying to seize something?"
Weighing the twin swords in his hands, Shirou listened through his communicator to the situation on the other side of the wall while gathering information from the Sarkaz before him.
The wall was tall, but at the end of the day, it was nothing more than a barrier made of earth and stone.
"...Neither. We only received reports that someone had come into conflict with Patriot."
Seeing that Shirou had chosen to ask questions instead of attacking, Mudrock rested her massive hammer on the ground and answered.
The only reason they had come here was because they had received word from their people that Patriot had encountered a hostile group.
By the time they arrived, however, that group was already conducting an orderly withdrawal.
As a result, they had first deployed a stone colossus to impede their advance, then sent people to investigate the battlefield while dispatching another messenger to seek reinforcements.
Someone had sabotaged Reunion's communications equipment, forcing them to rely on traditional methods of communication.
"Patriot...? You mean that giant black guy?"
After hearing her explanation, Shirou froze for a moment before realizing she was probably referring to the Wendigo carrying the enormous shield and halberd.
"Yes."
Mudrock wanted to correct his rather unusual description of Patriot's appearance, but the current situation hardly allowed for it.
Based on everything she knew about Patriot, he should not have been defeated by a group that could not even break through one of her stone colossi.
But if the opponent had been this red-haired young man...
That was another matter entirely.
The destructive power he had displayed was among the greatest she had ever witnessed.
"We did fight, but I found an opportunity to leave afterward. You can follow this direction if you want to find him."
Having more or less understood their purpose, Shirou took a deep breath and raised the white blade in his right hand, pointing toward a particular direction.
This entire conflict had been one giant misunderstanding.
These people had acted on incomplete information, while Rhodes Island had simply happened to run into them.
No... perhaps "happened to" was not quite accurate.
That woman, W, had clearly been targeting Rhodes Island from the start. Perhaps she had deliberately approached them all along.
Or maybe her real target had been the Doctor.
Judging by the hostility she had radiated earlier, there seemed to be quite a bit of bad blood between the two.
Otherwise, Shirou would not have gone out of his way to expose her presence and put everyone on guard.
Though he certainly had not expected her to turn the situation around and threaten him instead.
"...We already sent someone."
Mudrock remained unmoved by Shirou's explanation.
The difference in strength between them might be obvious, but she was not foolish enough to accept his words without verification.
They would wait for confirmation from their scouts.
If everything turned out exactly as Shirou claimed, they would immediately withdraw.
In fact, they might even escort Rhodes Island safely out of Chernobog.
But if he was lying, and something had happened to Patriot...
Then no matter how wide the gap in strength might be, they would find a way to tear a piece of flesh from him.
Patriot's existence held tremendous significance for Reunion's infected members.
As Reunion members themselves, they respected him deeply.
"..."
Seeing that they clearly had no intention of letting him leave so easily, Shirou merely looked up at the gathering storm clouds overhead.
In a few more minutes, Chernobog's sky would probably be completely covered.
Judging from the weather, a heavy rainstorm was on its way.
Just as that thought crossed his mind, a plume of red smoke rose from the direction he had pointed out earlier.
A smoke signal.
Shirou did not know what the color signified, but he could tell one thing immediately.
The instant that signal appeared, the Sarkaz before him began radiating unmistakable hostility.
Unlike before.
Earlier, W's hostility had been directed at the Doctor, with Shirou merely standing in the way.
Now, however, this hostility was aimed directly at him.
"Stone and fertile earth, rise."
As Mudrock raised her hammer, the Sarkaz around her sprang into action.
The Sarkaz were an unusually distinctive race, even by Terra's standards.
Their physiology made them highly susceptible to becoming infected, which was why most Sarkaz were infected. As a result, many people automatically associated Sarkaz with infection.
At the same time, they possessed greater compatibility to Originium than most races, resulting in a far larger number of Arts users among their people.
Combined with a history marked by constant conflict and warfare, the majority of Sarkaz were highly skilled combatants.
There were exceptions, of course.
But none of those exceptions stood among the group facing Shirou.
The moment he saw the overwhelming barrage of Arts rushing toward him, he knew one thing for certain:
He was definitely not going to find anyone like Hibiscus or the other Sarkaz members of Rhodes Island's medical department in this squad.
"Tch."
Shirou clicked his tongue, unable to understand how things had escalated into their current state.
What he did know was that the people in front of him were completely serious now. If he continued treating them the same way he had earlier, they would probably kill him first.
Since they had made the first move, he saw no reason to hold back.
Lowering his stance, Shirou kicked off the ground and charged through the storm of incoming Arts attacks.
The twin swords in his hands continuously shattered the spells flying toward him. If he could not disperse them in time, he dodged. If he could not dodge, he endured the attack with his Mystic Code.
In a way, it felt like experiencing what it was like to be a Berserker.
Still, Shirou knew very well that the person he truly needed to watch was the one at the front, the individual dressed like a rhinoceros beetle.
If his guess was correct, the stone colossus from earlier had probably been under that person's control.
After all, a simple wave of their hand had caused an earthen wall to rise instantly.
Moreover, the mass of earth gathering before them was gradually taking shape. Even at a glance, it was obvious that the colossus currently being formed was far stronger than the previous one.
"Shirou? Have you started fighting over there?"
On the other side, the Doctor, who had been attempting a rather "friendly" conversation with W, saw the red smoke signal and heard the explosions coming from beyond the wall.
From that alone, they could infer that combat had already begun on Shirou's side.
Based on everything they had learned so far, Shirou himself was probably not in any real danger.
The problem was that this assumption depended on him being able to fight without distractions.
Whether from Amiya, Ace, and the others, or from the information available through PRTS, nearly everyone described Shirou the same way:
He cared deeply about other people.
Compared to his own safety, he placed greater importance on the well-being of others, even complete strangers.
But from a tactical standpoint, it made him dangerously vulnerable.
Because of the detonator held by the Reunion member standing before them, the entirety of Rhodes Island could effectively be considered hostages.
Thinking this through, the Doctor's mind began racing as they searched for a way to break the current deadlock.
"Hehe~ Looks like not all of that person's subordinates are exactly on the same side after all! I still have plenty of questions for that damned hooded freak, but it seems circumstances will not allow it."
As the Doctor and the operators worried about Shirou's situation, W hummed cheerfully and spoke.
At the same time, she casually spun the detonator in her hand before tossing it high into the air in full view of every Rhodes Island operator present.
As the majority of the operators instinctively followed the detonator with their eyes, W had already vanished.
Only Scout and a small number of operators, who had kept their attention focused on her from beginning to end, noticed what had happened.
Yet none of them made any attempt to stop her.
In fact, her departure suited them perfectly.
With W's threat gone, the Rhodes Island operators could retreat quickly.
And without having to worry about them anymore, Shirou would finally be able to focus entirely on the battle ahead.