Chapter 715: Gilgamesh Completely Insane, The Final Moment!
The ominous cracking of the Reality Marble was merely a prelude, a minor fracture in the illusion of the world.
What truly terrified those present was the sheer density of magical energy erupting from Artoria's small frame. It was not just a wind; it was a physical weight, a suffocating pressure that sought to crush the lungs of anyone daring to stand in its presence.
"This mana...!"
Even Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, who had been forced to one knee by the earlier pressure, found his golden eyes widening in astonishment.
It was a purity of power that even the chaotic, raw ether of the Age of Gods could hardly rival. It was vast, endless, and terrified him as much as it enraged him.
Suddenly, the invisible shackles binding him loosened slightly. He found that his limbs, previously locked by the atmospheric pressure, could move again.
"Hmph!"
Gilgamesh stood up, his golden armor clanking sharply against the metaphysical silence.
His crimson serpentine eyes flashed with a scarlet rage, locking instantly onto Ren. The man was sitting comfortably in the distance, seemingly treating this battlefield as a private theater. He was even enjoying a massage from the beauty beside him, looking completely unconcerned by the apocalypse brewing mere meters away.
Gilgamesh's first thought was violence. Pure, unadulterated violence. He wanted to skewer this mongrel, to wash away the humiliation of being toyed with in a sea of blood.
But before he could even summon a single blade, a cold, mechanical voice echoed directly inside his skull.
"Don't even think about touching him. You can't, and neither can I."
"..."
Gilgamesh's pupils constricted to needle points.
The voice belonged to the Counter Force—Alaya. But the fear in that tone was unmistakable.
Who exactly was this man?!
Even the collective unconscious of mankind, the defense mechanism of the planet itself, admitted it couldn't touch him?
"Honestly complete the Adult's game," Alaya's voice continued, laced with a desperate warning. "Otherwise, the name of Gilgamesh will be permanently erased from world history. The Throne of Heroes will not shelter you."
"..."
Gilgamesh's heart surged with an inferno of anger.
A game? He, the oldest King, the wedge of heaven, was merely a pawn in someone else's twisted amusement?
His veins bulged instantly across his forehead. His fists clenched so tight that the golden gauntlets ground together with the screech of tortured metal.
Humiliation!
Unparalleled, absolute humiliation!
As the King of Heroes, he had stood above all creation. He owned all treasures, judged all mortals. How could he have ever suffered such an insult? To be threatened with erasure for the sake of a game?
Just as his pride began to override his survival instinct, just as he prepared to defy Alaya's warning and unleash the Gate of Babylon upon Ren regardless of the consequences...
Buzz.
He suddenly felt a severe, sickening sense of detachment.
It wasn't pain. It was the feeling of his very concept being untethered. His hands, his history, his legend—it felt as though they were fading, turning into transparent glass that could be shattered and swept away into the void.
"I'm warning you one last time," Alaya's voice dropped to absolute zero, devoid of any humanity. "Don't make me angry. And more importantly, don't provoke my Lord."
"I am not who I used to be. The connection to the Root has shifted. I advise you to behave yourself, King of Uruk."
"..."
Gilgamesh fell silent. The air around him grew heavy.
The Counter Force had grown stronger. He could feel it in the texture of the mana around him. This wasn't a bluff. If he raised a hand against Ren, he wouldn't just die; he would never have existed. The epic of Gilgamesh would be wiped from the slate of human history.
"This King... will absolutely not allow it!"
He gritted his teeth, swallowing the blood rising in his throat.
Ultimately, Gilgamesh had no choice. The logical part of his mind, the supreme intellect that ruled Uruk, forced him to abandon the idea of attacking Ren.
He took a deep, lingering look in Ren's direction.
Ren didn't even glance back. He simply leaned into the soft hands massaging his shoulders, his eyes half-closed in contentment. The sheer disregard was a sharper blade than any sword.
Gilgamesh turned his gaze away, focusing instead on Artoria—on 'Ria'—who was now the epicenter of a swirling storm of magical energy.
"A game... Hehe... Hahahaha!"
A low, distorted chuckle escaped his lips, quickly escalating into a manic laugh.
"Fine! Then let this King bring a tragedy to this game you cherish so much! If I cannot strike the player, I will shatter the pieces!"
A bloodthirsty, cruel smile tore across Gilgamesh's face.
He reached his right hand into the golden ripples opening beside him. But this was not the usual Gate of Babylon portal. This ripple was dark, heavy, and chaotic.
He slowly pulled out a sword.
Or rather, something that mankind had labeled a sword for lack of a better term. It had no blade, no edge. It was a pillar of dull black material, etched with glowing red cuneiform, composed of three rotating cylindrical segments.
It was his most powerful Noble Phantasm. The crystallization of the era before the concept of "sword" existed.
Its name was the Sword of Rupture, Ea.
Ea was an Anti-World Noble Phantasm. It did not cut flesh; it cut space. It revealed the truth of creation by tearing apart the texture of reality itself.
Whoosh!
Gilgamesh, holding the Sword of Rupture, soared into the air, hovering high above the crumbling desert of Iskandar's Reality Marble.
The red cylinders began to spin. Slowly at first, then accelerating with a sound like the grinding of tectonic plates.
"Speaking of the beginning," Gilgamesh began his chant, his voice echoing with the weight of ancient authority. "The separation of heaven and earth, the opening of creation."
Red lightning began to arc from the blade, tearing dark fissures in the sky.
"Cleaving the world is my Sword of Rupture, the mortar of the stars!"
The wind howled, sounding like the screams of the damned. The very ground of the Reality Marble began to dissolve into data and dust.
"The hell of the heavens is the end of the night before creation, subdued by death!"
"Enuma Elish!!!"
Boom!
The three cylindrical blades rotated at blinding speeds. A torrent of compressed wind and magical energy, colored in ominous black and crimson, swept across the earth and sky like a primordial storm.
This was not a beam of light. It was a spatial rupture. The attack rewrote the laws of physics in its path, crushing all enemies by simply deleting the space they occupied.
At maximum output, it was undefendable. Unless one possessed an Anti-Purge Defense or a force capable of rivaling the genesis of a planet, death was the only outcome.
"Hahahahaha!"
Gilgamesh laughed wildly from the sky, looking down at Ren with eyes full of madness.
"Watch closely, mongrel! Your beloved Servant will die under this King's Sword of Rupture!"
"This King will claim victory in the middle of your arrogant game that sickens me!"
"The King allows! The King acknowledges! The King bears the burden of all creation!"
"..."
On the ground, Ren felt a twitch at the corner of his lips. He wanted to laugh, but held it in.
He had heard everything Alaya whispered to Gilgamesh. His connection to the world gave him that privilege.
He knew very well that Gilgamesh's mentality had completely collapsed. The proud King had been backed into a corner where his only option to salvage his ego was to obliterate Artoria.
Simply put, he had gone a bit mad.
"But..." Ren thought, glancing at the girl standing firm amidst the gale. "Trying to defeat the current Ria with that sword... it's a bit ridiculous."
Nearby, the other Servants watched the catastrophe unfold.
"Lancer... Berserker... it seems we also have to go all out."
Iskandar, the King of Conquerors, tightened his grip on his sword. He realized that his Reality Marble, Ionioi Hetairoi, was already dying. The sky was cracking like a broken mirror. This was the final strike.
"Ah. Then let us kill, or be killed, right here on this battlefield of your glory."
Diarmuid Ua Duibhne's expression was calm, yet a fire burned in his eyes.
As a warrior of the Fianna, he wanted to dedicate his life to a glorious end on the battlefield. He refused to be branded a traitor or die by a curse again. This—facing the King of Heroes and the King of Knights at their peak—was the death he craved.
"Hahaha, good! Then let's go too!"
"Roar!!!"
Even though Berserker (Lancelot) had lost his reason, his instinct as a knight responded to the overwhelming power. He unleashed the magical energy of Arondight, adding his chaotic roar to the symphony of destruction.
The prestige of the four Servants reached its peak simultaneously.
The desert sands were blown away. The sky fell in shards. The world was ending.
Yet, amidst the apocalypse, Artoria's expression remained tranquil.
"I promise you," she whispered, closing her eyes for a fleeting second. "At this moment, I swear by this sword... the oath will surely achieve victory!"
Ren's figure flashed in her mind.
The current her was no longer just the King of Great Britain who bore the burden of a nation alone.
She was Ren's woman. Ren's Heroic Spirit. Ren's Knight.
She was fighting not for a distant ideal, but for the man she loved and for her own newfound resolve.
"Invisible Air... Release!"
The barrier of wind that hid her blade dissolved.
The golden sword, Excalibur, revealed its true, divine form.
The blade shone with a blinding golden light, illuminating the darkening world. It was a light that warmed the soul, a stark contrast to the destructive void of Ea.
It felt like gazing at the morning light after a long, freezing night.
The anxiety, the worry, and the shadows deeply entrenched in her heart were gently wiped away by this radiance.
That's right. This light was the ideal of a knight.
It was the crystallization of all dreams envisioned in the hearts of those warriors who had scattered across the battlefields of history.
Even when they lay dying in the mud, exposed to the ultimate hell of death and despair, they still held onto a fleeting hope—a song of the nobility of humanity.
The King of Knights gathered all that strength, all those dreams, into her arms. She gripped the hilt with both hands and raised the golden sword high above her head.
Particles of light, like fireflies, began to drift from the earth and sky, converging on the blade.
Blinding rays of light converged one after another, adorning the holy sword with the brilliance of a thousand stars.
The intense and pure light made everyone—Iskandar, Diarmuid, even the mad Lancelot—hold their breath, unable to speak.
That radiant divine sword transcended the past, present, and future. It was a beacon that could not be extinguished.
That crystallized prayer named "Glory" transformed her will into a revelation of honor.
"Admonish yourself to uphold loyalty."
Artoria felt a surge of limitless power flowing from her connection with Ren. It was warm. It was infinite.
A confident smile flashed in her emerald eyes.
She looked up at the descending red storm of Enuma Elish.
At this moment, the King of Everlasting Victory took a step forward and loudly sang the true name of the miracle in her hand.
"Ex—calibur!!!"
A torrent of holy light streamed forth.
The roar shook the heavens, drowning out the grinding of Ea.
The Dragon Factor within her core was fully released, accelerating her magical power and transforming it into a purifying flash of kinetic energy.
The spiraling stream of golden light shot upward, clashing directly with the crimson winds.
"Mongrel!!!"
As the light cannon roared toward him, Gilgamesh widened his eyes. He swung the Sword of Rupture down with all his might.
"Enuma Elish!"
The attacks collided.
The golden light of promises and the red winds of destruction interweaved, devouring the world around them. In the periphery, the almost unnoticeable radiance of Iskandar and the others flickered like candles in a hurricane, mere spectators to a battle of gods.
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