Ey, hello again everyone!

Well, after just barely under 3 weeks, another chapter comes out! Woot, woot~!

Anyways, just gonna say that this chapter is a bit shorter compared to the rest, mostly because I had this fairly long and, in my opinion, rather shit battle scene of Astolfo fighting one of the 'fake' servants and stuff, but I decided to just cut it all out. It's not like it impacts the story in any major way anyways, so there's no point for me to make it too long.

Still, sorry about the slightly shorter chapter! This will basically be the setup for the next chapter, which will most likely be the end, or at least, the one before the end. Not too sure, cause I'm also expanding the story ideas as I go.

Well, enough of my ramblings, enjoy!

Gareth had been, and always will be a side character. She wasn't bright like her master, nor was she powerful and regal as her king, nor was she boisterous and proud like Francis, and she definitely didn't have the qualities befitting that of a knight. She was just a squire that was promoted far too quick, and no matter what the people around her had said, she'd always see herself as a squire.

But-!

As she stands before the legendary Lancer in front of her, she holds herself with confidence. Knights do not back down from a challenge, and though she may be unqualified, she still not disappoint.

"Maa, this is a first…" The Lancer, Li Shu Wen, idly says as he takes a look at the crumbling surroundings around them. Gareth has to agree with him on that. She'd seen battlefields after battlefields, but this is the first time she's come to witness the world around her crumbling, with bursts of magical energy sprouting all around them and shooting to the skies above.

Distantly, the sounds of fire and explosions fly, originating from the bout between Sir Francis and the ancient Indian deity.

It makes her feel somewhat inadequate actually, seeing them flying through the air and exchanging attacks that blew up parts of the earth on their impact. The sentiment seems to be shared by her opponent however, as he looks to them with a rather wry smile. "That as well." He says, before turning to her, grinning. "So, ready, little girl?"

"...Yes." She takes a step back and tightens her grip on her nameless lance. Li grins back, taking a stance, his nameless spear pointed at her.

Silence stretches on, both combatants staring at one another, light blue to deep red. Then, as the earth cracks and a building topples over,

The two leap forward.

Clang!

A loud bang shoots out as the two polearms clash. They remain locked for a moment, before Gareth's superior strength wins and knocks Li's spear into the ground. Stunned by the girl's surprising strength, Li flinches back, and that short moment was enough for Gareth to land a deep kick into the man's abdomen, sending him flying back.

Technically, she should not have won that bout. Her strength is inferior to the man, but somehow, by Hanami intervention, the armor she wears is giving her parameter a boost. She remembers her master saying something along the lines of 'adding some passive effects to it', but what that truly entails she knows not.

She attempts to follow up with another attack, but the Li quickly leaps back, his speed faster than hers despite their similar agility. He lands, and bending down close to the ground, he rushes forward, his spear blurring as it is thrusted. Gareth barely manages to defend, using the bulky back of her lance to divert the thrust, but this time she's the one left open, and Li moves. His spear snaps to the left, hitting her across her rib and sending her tumbling to the side.

She quickly recovers her footing and deflects the spear heading her way, before using her lance's odd structure to trap the spear and tugging it back, and Li along with it. Then, with as much force she can muster, she sends a powerful punch onto his chest, sending him crashing onto the ground.

An unknightly move it may have been, but she was a squire, so that doesn't count, right?

Li quickly kicks her back, sending her away and backing away. Gareth skids to a stop and rushes forward once more while Li bends forward, ready to meet her head on. But before that could happen, the ground under them cracked and gave away. Both Lancers lost their footing, and they soon found themselves falling into the opening cracks in the earth.

But the battle continues.

Using the falling rocks as platforms, the two Lancers continue their charge at one another, trading strikes at any opportunity. When Li comes too close, Gareth would respond by using her kicks and fists, and if she came too close, Li would strike back with his lightning fast kicks. Soon the falling rocks became weapons as well, with Gareth kicking them at the fake Lancer and Li kicking them back.

Bang!

Gareth lets out a silent cry as she crashes onto the rocky walls, and before she can move, Li kicks her in her chest, sending her through the wall and out onto the other side.

And just under her is a rampaging leyline, with the planet's mana exploding wildly into the air.

Gritting her teeth, Gareth bears through the pain of having her skin burn, quickly finding a rock big enough for her to jump from before leaping back. She rears her lance back, and with as much strength as she can muster, she slams her lance into the wall she'd been sent through.

Cracks spread through the rocky structure, shining blue, before it falls apart. Li's on the other side, standing on a falling platform and his spear already poised. She slows her momentum, and with ease from her years of strange training under her brother, she kicks the many rocks falling around her towards the red-haired lancer.

The man easily deflects them, but he's taken aback when Gareth's bulky lance is thrown with speeds rivalling a rocket. He manages to block it in time, sending the lance barrelling away before stabbing onto the rocky wall nearby, but the sudden throw causes him to miss the speeding rock coming his way, and he's pelted right on the forehead.

Pain shoots through his nerves, and before he can move away, a missile in the form a blonde girl hits him directly in the stomach, and this time it's him that's crashing onto a rocky wall. And not long after, a fist strikes his chest, sending him tumbling through and out the other side of the wall.

Acting quickly, Gareth retrieves her lance before breaking through the wall to follow him.

But there, with his spear facing her and a confident smile on his face, Li stands atop a falling platform.

"I thank you, fellow Lancer." He says, his spear burning with might. "Though we stand on opposite sides, I'll look forward 'til the day we meet once again!"

Gareth's eyes widen in realisation, and she looks around to see no platform for her to get to.

"Observe carefully, the exquisite skill of the Liu He Da Qiang!" The air around him ripples, the stone he stands on cracks, and a tornado is kicked up as his spear shines. "My spear will rectify the one-hit kill!"

"There is absolutely no contradiction to this spear!"

His body crackles with golden light, his very essence being poured into this one attack.

"With this divine spear, there shall be no second strike!"

With one last cry, Li leaps forward, the world breaking apart around him as his spear is thrust. The words he said take into effect, and the world rewrites itself, turning its laws for the Noble Phantasm to work. Space swirls around the tip of his spear, and Gareth finds herself trapped, unable to move away from the spear.

For this was the spear of gods, and none shall halt its strike.

And so, the spear strikes true, causing a loud metallic clang as it stabs right through Gareth's chest and drawing blood. The knight coughs as blood rushes out of her lungs, pain overtaking her every sense.

Gareth stills, and the two begin their descent towards the throat of the world.

But Gareth doesn't disappear.

What?

Slowly, with his weakening sight he sees what's gone wrong. The spear had indeed struck true, stabbing through her chest and out the other side, but-

It didn't hit her heart.

His eyes widen, too late to realise that Gareth had used her lance as a shield to direct his spear away and stab her in her lungs instead, sacrificing the lance in the process.

Slowly, the girl opens her eyes, and her bright green eyes shine.

"No...I must thank you as well, Sir Li." With her strength, she rips both their weapons away, throwing them down into the rising lava below. "Though I...may not have been a true knight, I thank you for...not holding back!"

She rears her arm back, and though her lance is gone, the skill and experience she'd gained in her lifetime still remains.

She may not hold a legendary weapon like the other knights of the table, but she cares not. She remembers clearly what her king had said to her, of the small proud and understanding smile she'd held as she expressed her concerns of not having anything special.

"Then make your own." She'd said, and Gareth took those words to heart, polishing the one skill she had an affinity with.

So, though she may not have her lance, and though she may not be on horseback, Gareth shifts her stance, dropping into a form fitting for a jouster getting ready to charge, a wolf waiting for its moment to pound. She lets out a misty breath, one painfully created from her punctured lungs, and as blood flows out from her wounds, she calls the name of her Noble Phantasm.

"[Ira Lupus]!"

Her skill at jousting given mystic form, solidified by the words and images King Arthur had departed onto her.

With the fluidity of an ocean wave and the ferocity of a wolf, she pounces. She slams her fist onto him, then another, and then another, and soon her fists blur as tens of punches rain down onto the red-haired lancer all at once. Li can only cry in pain as he watches the girl beat down on him, her green eyes burning in bright green flames.

Then, with one final cry, she sends one more punch onto his abdomen. Wind blasts out as Li rockets away from her, heading down and crashing into the magma-filled caverns below. A blast of hot magma explodes up from Li's impact, and before long, the fake Lancer is swallowed by the bubbling magma.

Somehow, she imagines a smile forming on his face as he burns away.

The thought gives her comfort as she closes her eyes as well, unable to keep herself awake.

When Shirou finally comes to wake, he feels a distinct lack of the flowers he remembered falling unconscious atop of. He immediately bolts upright only to wince when the many healing wounds on his body are stretched, and he forces himself to sit back down.

He takes a moment to look around, at the small empty shed Merlin seems to have placed him in, and he lets out a sigh of relief when he sees Sakura sleeping not far from him, the pained expression she wore previously gone. For a moment he just sits there, idly watching the girl the Matous had tortured for so long, and at the knowledge that he'd managed to save her.

It feels...almost liberating, to know that he'd managed to save someone. Could this be what Kiritsugu felt when he pulled him out of that accursed fire?

For a short moment he wondered why Merlin placed them here out of all places, but he shakes the thought away.

Nevertheless, he can't stay here, not for long. There's already some knowledge on what's currently happening in the world outside, seemingly from Merlin placing them inside his mind while he slept. He can't sense Hanami anywhere either, and that familiar sense of dread begins to creep in.

He stands up, slower this time, and as gently as he can, he picks Sakura up and carries her on his back. Taking a deep breath, he opens the door and steps out,

To see the world breaking apart, with cracks spreading all over the earth's surface, bursts of mana exploding up into the sky, and a bright aurora decorating the night sky above. He already knew of it, had knowledge of it implanted within him by Merlin, but still, the entire scenery looks almost beautiful.

Of course, there's also that chain of explosions happening in the distance, one particularly being caused by a battle between a certain familiar ship and a divine being of old.

Then, he can hear something approaching, accompanying it four different distinct smells; one of smoke and gunpowder, another of a garden of lilies, one a pristine vinyl, and the last of metal and something distinctly magical. He knows them all, two of them more than the others, and he turns to their direction and waits.

Slowly, a car can be seen coming his way, before it jerks to a stop. The door at the driver's seat opens, and out from it comes Kiritsugu, his eyes wide in surprise.

"...Shirou?" He begins, and he can't quite help but smile.

This is probably why Merlin chose this spot.

"Hey, d-, Kiritsugu." Shirou quickly corrects himself, knowing that he isn't the man's son, at least, not yet. The other doors open to reveal the rest of his team, with Irisviel looking particularly stricken by his condition. "S-Shirou, what happened?"

"...It's a long story." He says, before turning to Kiritsugu. "Is there enough space for one more?"

"We can manage." Shirou nods at the man, and they all quickly return to the car, just with Maiya and Saber making more space at the back for him to sit. He gently moves Sakura down onto his lap, and nodding at his father, Kiritsugu turns the car back on and drives onward atop the still undamaged roads.

"What happened Shirou? Where's Hanami and her servants?" Irisviel asks again, her eyes staring at him with an amount of worry he'd only seen on Hanami. He doesn't quite know what to think about it, but he sighs and leans back, already beginning to compress his experience for them to understand.

"It's a mission. Hanami would deal with Zouken while I went in and saved Sakura." He begins, looking down to the sleeping girl before continuing. "I managed to save her, but...then Erebus appeared."

"Erebus?" Saber asks from his left, clearly unfamiliar with its name. "It's...essentially humanity's desire for death, somewhat like a phantasmal beast but created by humans instead of the planet."

The moment he says so, the atmosphere becomes eerily silent, and Shirou blinks, wondering if he'd somehow said something wrong. "Um, Shirou…" He turns to Irisviel, still confused why everyone is so silent. "Y-You said, a phantasmal beast, right? O-One made by humanity's consciousness…?"

"Yes?"

"Then it's immortal...right?" Irisviel continues, looking visibly shaken. He simply nods. "Ah...Yeah."

Silence reigns once more, and Shirou can only grimace at how awkward the entire atmosphere is. "B-But I killed it, so it's fine." He says in hopes that it'd alleviate some of the strange tension in the air. He succeeded on that front, but the car suddenly stops, and he's faced with surprised stares from the four individuals inside the car.

"Forgive me, Shirou, but you said you...killed it?" Saber asks, he nods, and she backs away slightly, clearly uncomfortable. It makes him feel slightly nostalgic actually, reminding him of how many times he baffled Saber when he was her master, and he can't help but smile.

He leans back onto his chair, closes his eyes, and lets himself rest as he let the others take in what he'd just said.

Of course, he doesn't truly 'sleep', instead reappearing within the gardens of Avalon. Actually, when did he last truly 'sleep', without having himself be transported to Avalon or train in that strange world where Okita and the rest are? He can't quite remember.

He looks down to see clean, chiseled stone instead of flowers, and he realises he's appeared atop Merlin's tower instead of the ground this time. And talking about the mage, she's not far from him, sitting by an ornate table with a cup of warm tea held in her hands. There's also another cup of tea on the opposite side of the table, presumably for him.

"Come now, enjoy the tea. It'll get cold if you don't." Merlin says, taking another sip from her cup. Shirou nods, taking a seat by the table and picking up the cup of tea. Then, he stared at it, a random thought suddenly cropping up in his mind. "Wait, can it even become cold? Is something like that possible?"

Merlin stops, blinking in surprise at the question. "...I do not know." She admits, staring at her own cup. "I suppose I could force it to become cold, but I don't know if the heat could naturally escape." She takes another sip, humming in thought. "Hmm, I suppose that's another experiment I could try out."

They sit there in silence, enjoying their cups of tea. Of course, they aren't truly drinking tea. Despite the wonders the Avalon are capable of, it isn't able to use the first true magic. The tea, the cup, even the tower they stand on are mere fragments of dreams given form by Merlin's magecraft. Still, the creations are real enough for them to satisfy themselves on the taste of warm tea.

"So, what are you going to do?" Merlin says as she places down her empty cup, letting the ambient air waft back into the cup to slowly refill it. "The world is in ruin, your companion is missing, and there're still rampant servants running amok." She smiles, "Well, that, and the corrupted grail is about to activate, no?"

"What can I do about it?" He says, frowning. "The other fake servants seem to be occupied by the others."

"So you would do nothing? Even when the masses are being swallowed into the world at this very moment?"

Shirou stills, the echo of that old damaged dream crying in the back of his mind, but he pushes them away. "And waste myself? The corrupted grail will activate either way." He said, distantly noting that he'd sounded a lot like his possible future self. Whether that was a bad thing or a good thing however, he doesn't quite know.

"And yet you saved little Sakura, no?"

"...It's the least I could do, after neglecting her for so long."

Merlin hums, thoughtful as she picks up her now filled tea cup. "So, you're saying that you'd go save only those you care for?"

"I guess." He says, before raising an eyebrow at her. "What's with all the questions?"

Merlin smiles vaguely. "Oh, just idle curiosity."

It really isn't though. Right before her is she witnessing the birth of another hero, one that could compare against those of old. It almost reminds her of her time with Arthur, of the guidance she'd given to him, just this time they were far closer than a simple student and teacher, intimate yet not quite partners, close yet not simply friends.

[Hero Maker] is one of the skills that'd somehow been integrated into her Saint Graph, and it's actually something she takes quite a lot of pride in. There isn't much that could compare to the satisfaction of watching her students grow.

So to see him grow from a naive young boy carrying the weight of his father's faulty dream, to a young man capable of matching ancient monsters is...she isn't sure how to describe it actually. There aren't any words of the human language that can explain the special warmth she has every time she watches her students grow.

Of course, Shirou is still far from his path's end. There're still many trials he must undertake, many more arcs his story must go through.

Merlin closes her eyes, hiding her smile behind her tea cup.

And I'll be there for him, every step of the way.

From the moment Saber laid her eyes on him, she knew there was something special about him.

A young man with auburn hair and bright, golden eyes. It was a pair of colors uncommon, not just in the land of Japan, but everywhere else. His body is sculpted, similar to heroes of the old generations, and his gait is both confident and humble. His powers are even stranger, capable of bringing the [Gardens of Avalon] into the real world, something she knew only a certain magus could do.

But what was perhaps most confusing is those discrete gazes when he thought she wasn't looking. Those eyes that glanced at something familiar, holding inside them a sense of both nostalgia and guilt.

She knows she has never met him, she would've remembered someone like him if she did, but a small part of her, hidden in the far reaches of her heart screamed at her, wanting to comfort those pained gazes of the young man.

She'd done her best to repress those thoughts, pushing them away and filling her mind with worries over the current situation, but now,

The car is silent, the vehicle isn't moving, and she's sitting right by his side. It almost feels like the world has frozen, blurring and leaving behind only her and the auburn-haired man. Slowly, like an expanding crack on a dam, she begins to feel something, something familiar and tranquil flowing between the two of them, and-

She freezes.

It's a presence achingly familiar, something she once had within her and one that had kept all harm from coming onto her. The partner to her excalibur, the sheath where her destined sword would be placed when the battles came to an end. Her sword is poised to attack, while its sheath is created to defend.

One of the strongest forms of isolation and defense,

The sheath of everdistant utopia, [Avalon].

How? Is the first thing that comes into her mind. Avalon is still implanted inside Irisviel, so how can Shirou have Avalon as well? Is it a copy perhaps? Is the next question, but such a notion is immediately discarded. The presence feels far too genuine, far too familiar for it to even be a copy. Why? Why him? Avalon will only bond with individuals it finds worthy and pure. If so, does that mean Shirou meets all that criteria? Does that mean he has the potential to be king?

An echo of her wish sounds, a desire to erase her rule upon Camelot. Could she perhaps give the crown over to him?

The image doesn't fit, at all, and she lets out a small laugh, ignoring the strange looks she's garnered from the other occupants in the car. The young man sleeping beside her will not accept it. Perhaps he had the quality, perhaps he may be suited for the throne, but he isn't like that. He would never let himself be chained.

"Because though he is broken, he is still a hero."

She hears a voice say, one sounding familiar yet too feminine compared to the one in her memory. Nevertheless, she agrees, silently nodding.

"He is a hero, a budding one perhaps, but a hero nonetheless."

Saber smiles.

A hero, a magus,

A master.

Her sheath.

In that moment, a spark lights, and a connection is built. From the insides of her soul, Excalibur shines, reconnecting with the sheath it'd long lost in days of old. Inside she sees a garden of flowers, a white tower standing in the centre of it all, and a white haired magus that looks suspiciously similar to a certain troll that was her teacher.

Then, her eyes lands on Shirou, casually drinking from a cup of tea-

Wait, what?

But then she is forced deeper, reaching deeper into Avalon, and she begins to see.

She sees a world filled with grass, the clear skies lit by a setting sun, colored into a beautiful gradient. She sees a city burning, falling apart as the sky is torn apart, corrupted mud flowing down onto the earth and tainting it with all the world's evils. She sees a large traditional house, people coming and going.

Inside, she sees Kiritsugu, his body and spirit weak. She sees an unfamiliar woman, pouncing around the house with the gait of a tiger. She sees a broken girl, held together by the hope given to her by her beloved. She sees a prideful and naive magus, willing to fight in a war that killed her father.

She sees a young girl, with hair a light brown and eyes a bright green, holding magic comparable to the age of gods. She sees Shirou, cooking by the kitchen, a small content smile as he cooks for the people he'd come to befriend and care for.

She sees herself, enjoying such foods.

And she remembers.

Saber barely manages to hold herself from jerking forward, biting the insides of her mouth to keep herself silent. Her tongue tastes iron, from the blood now leaking inside her mouth, but she doesn't care.

"Saber!"

She hears someone say, but it sounds too distant for her to understand, somewhat like static. Her mind and soul tears as two sets of memories fight for dominance, trying to gain an up over the other. Screwing her eyes shut, she takes a deep breath, struggling to get everything in her mind to order.

"Let me help."

A soothing presence fills her mind, slowly untying the many coils of pain that'd formed in her mind. The two sides are slowly filed accordingly, and her sense of self is slowly returned. She remembers being summoned at that abandoned church, coming to first see her master and his wife. She remembers flying to Fuyuki and coming to fight in what she assumed was a normal Holy Grail War.

But she also remembers being summoned inside a dusty shed, coming to see her master trapped in a battle with a blue-clad Lancer. She remembers first discovering how much of an oddity her master was, of how he managed to fight her on even grounds. She remembers exploring that strange fake Fuyuki, trying to survive as distorted forms of servants summoned in war threw themselves at her. She remembers how she first discovered how Hanami is a magus, and an incredibly powerful and skillful one at that.

Then, as everything settles, she understands.

Just as she is the servant of Emiya Kiritsugu, so is she the servant of Emiya Shirou, being summoned by him a decade from now.

At that moment, something snaps. Her connection to Kiritsugu is broken, and everything around her grows dark.

Astolfo frowns, seeing the slowly rising tides of corrupted mud coming out from the ground. From the moment he was summoned, he knew something was amiss, and Hanami had come to him to describe just what was going on, but still, seeing it for himself is…

Behind him are Akemi and Waver, the former unconscious while the latter is injured, most of his left arm barely functioning. Had Astolfo arrived a second sooner, the monster of corrupted mud would have speared him through his chest. Actually, it was quite impressive for a normal human to have survived against what was essentially a servant made of the grail's corruption.

Hanami and Shirou don't count. Those two are exceptions among exceptions.

But now that puts him in a dilemma. Both Akemi and Waver are currently incapable of fighting nor moving, and trying to escape from a situation like this was a bad idea. Now, Astolfo is forced to defend against an increasing number of these weird 'corrupted mud servants'.

But that's fine, because despite all the chaos, the skies are awfully pretty tonight, filled with blinding auroras and blinking stars.

He always liked the night sky, especially when the moon was missing or near invisible. It looked almost picturesque, like an ethereal painting that would fade away when the sun returned to the sky. Back when he still served as a knight, he'd spend many nights simply roaming about, maybe flying atop his mount once in a while as he watched the night sky.

...Huh, how did he remember that? Just a day ago he completely forgot about that, answering nothing when his master asked him why he liked night time so much. Is it because the moon isn't visible tonight or something?

Well, whatever the case, this ultimately tilts the odds back into his favor.

Because you know? He'd been called the 'weakest knight' among his fellow knights. Hell, it even became a part of his legend! He doesn't particularly mind it, since he doesn't value strength like the other gorillas do, but...It's always been a sore point on him, and it hurt him somewhat just how casual people mentioned it.

But just like how strength doesn't always determine the outcome of a battle, so do to the face-quality of a servant. A low, maybe mid rank servant he may be, but when he gets serious?

He gets serious.

And he'd killed a hoard of harpies with but a single blow of his Noble Phantasm, so why should a bunch of mindless mud monsters be any different?

Astolfo prepares himself, taking note of how many mud servants have been created, and how many are approaching from the distance.

The verdict? Not good. These guys have mediocre stats, but they number in the thousands in total, and anyone's going to get tired eventually, him especially considering his stamina is perhaps the worst thing he has going for him.

But here, Hanami-chan comes to the rescue, once again!

Light flickers and a spear forms in his hand. However, instead of the [Trap of Argalia], a new spear takes its place, one that is made from a strange, black metal and looks more like a strange syringe placed on a spear handle. It even has some weird glowing purple liquid sloshing inside it!

"Here, take this." Hanami had said to him a night ago, the strange spear offered. "You said stamina's your weakest trait, right? Then this should help."

Of course, several questions popped up the moment the girl handed over a bona-fide Noble Phantasm over like it was nothing, but before he could ask, the girl had already disappeared.

Still, it was just the girl's strangeness, he supposes.

Either ways, as much as he liked his natural jousting spear, it isn't much of an offensive Noble Phantasm. Like, sure, it can kill if need be, but most of the time it'd only force someone down and incapacitate them. Sadly, these mud servants don't feel pain, nor do they care if their legs suddenly disappear.

[Spuit Lance] is this spear's name, one that Hanami said belonged to a certain vampire. Unlike the [Trap of Argalia], this spear will kill someone if they're hit by it, and if they survive, then they'd probably explode from the influx of magic the spear sent into the opponent's bloodstream.

Or so she said.

But the reason why Hanami had given this to him in the first place was because of its final and true effect. Every time he hits or stabs something with it, then a portion of the hit enemy's life will be drained away and given back to her as prana.

And despite all that, it's still only a C+ Rank Noble Phantasm.

"Waver-chan, stay behind me, okay?" He turns to the boy and says. Waver makes a slow nod back, his teeth grit as he applies a healing lotion he'd created earlier with Caster. With his approval, Astolfo turns back to face the monsters. He brings forth the [La Black Luna], a special horn given to him by a kind witch, in its small horn form and brings it up to his mouth.

Then, his prana flows.

The small horn transform, becoming larger and more sophisticated. The previously small horn is replaced by a giant contraption created from a giant tuba with several trumpets as an added touch. Each instrument is tied together, their inputs all coming from one giant tube for Astolfo to blow into.

Astolfo takes one giant breath, and he blows.

The world is blown away.

With the force of a dragon's cry, the Noble Phantasm sounds, creating giant shockwaves that blow away anything remotely in its path. The mud servants too small or too weak to withstand its force are blown away, torn apart into tiny specks of corrupted mud, while those who manage to survive are blown and scattered about, parts of their body missing.

The ones approaching are mostly safe from the blast, but a portion are flattened by the falling buildings blown apart by the Noble Phantasm.

Now then, with around a couple hundred of those mud servants dead,

"Hippogriff!" His favored mount comes into existence at its master's call, and Astolfo smiles at it as he looks to the two masters he's protecting. "Take them somewhere far away and safe!" The hippogriff cries to deny, but the knight glares at it, and the phantasmal beast gives one last look before reluctantly turning and walking to the two humans. Waver stares at the beast for a moment, a trace of fear in his eyes, but he steels himself and carries Akemi and rides onto the beast.

The hippogriff gives out a cry as it flies away towards a safe location, leaving behind its current sworn master. Astolfo simply smiles as it flies away, before turning back to the empty space he'd created, now already filled with new mud servants ready to pull him in and turn him into them.

Yeah, not happening.

Astolfo brings forth his new spear run forward, eager to test this spear's effect first hand. A mud servant closes in, his sword already in the air and leaving its chest open for attacks. He immediately thrusts the spear forward, and the rocky spear easily stabs right through and out of the mud servant's body. It spasms uncontrollably before it collapses, broken down and then absorbed into the spear.

Vigor rushes inside him as a fair amount of energy is returned, and Astolfo can't quite help the excited grin on his face as he turns to the approaching tide of monsters.

And so Astolfo bursts forward with speeds befitting of his class, kicking winds powerful enough to knock the monsters down as he runs past. His spear blurs, stabbing and swiping, tearing and piercing through the bodies of the mud servants. His energy is used when he boosts his speed, and he regains energy when his spear kills another mud monster.

It's a seemingly never-ending cycle.

Of course, over time, as he swiftly reaches somewhere around his 300th kill, he begins to notice the increasing amount of prana he's missing even with the [Spuit Lance] giving him energy back from every kill.

Not that it's slowing him down in any way though. He's still acting on the same strategy; kill the mud servants that'd come too close to him, and when there's a massive group of mud servants approaching in a single clump, he'll bring out the [La Black Luna] and blow on it, destroying the approaching group with massive shockwaves and winds.

It's when he's beginning to approach the 500th mark that he begins to realise something is off. The night, despite all the shuffling from the approaching horde, is silent, too silent. The sounds of cannons and explosions coming from the sky is gone. The worried shouts and cries he hears from the populace are gone. The sounds of something far above the night sky is gone.

All is gone, leaving eerie silence.

Astolfo stills, and the battlefield suddenly stops as well, with all the mud servants suddenly stopping their movements, simply staring at him impassively. What? He looks around at the mud servants, and none are moving. They're all standing in place, frozen in the same pose they are in just moments ago.

He quickly brings forth his other Noble Phantasm, a thick leather-bound book given to him by that same kind witch and calls upon its name.

"[Cassuer de Logistelle]!"

At its name, the book opens, its pages light up into sparkles of golden light before it erupts towards the sky in a tower of light. It crashes against an invisible ceiling, and suddenly cracks begin to form, spreading across the sky like some sort of intricate web. Soon, the Noble Phantasm succeeds in its endeavors, and the invisible barrier surrounding the area he's in shatters.

And with it, so do the mud servants he'd valiantly fought off, disappearing like a mirage.

But then what was the point? Astolfo can't help but ask. His master is still safely riding atop the Hippogriff with Waver, and there aren't any monsters even remotely close to them. There aren't any dangers nearby to bring him down, no obstacles to tackle.

Was it just a waste of time then? And if so, for what?

The answer presents itself to him when suddenly, out from the mountain roughly at the centre of the city, a bright pillar of purple light erupts up into the night sky. The starry sky is overridden by a sickly poison-like color, similar to the mud servants he'd just fought. The magical energy rising from the expanding cracks turns from a pale blue to a deep, eerie red.

The air shifts, and reality is twisted.

A reality marble has been formed.

And powering it in its centre is the corrupted holy grail, its corrupted heart beating to an unheard rhythm.

Ah, so that's what Hanami meant.

"It seems it's time for you to wake."

"Is it?" Shirou asks, and Merlin gives a small nod. "Time marches on, and the final arc of this event has come to greet us." She smiles. "I believe it's ample time for us all to end this."

With a nod, Shirou stands, ready to leave. "Wish me luck." He says, before fading into golden dust, fading away and returning back into the real world.

Merlin places down her now empty cup, and sighs. "I shall."

After all, the world depends on him.

Fight well, hero.

I can just imagine Gareth being like: ORA ORA ORA! While punching Li. Wonder is this Gareth would get along well with Beach Saint Martha? Hmm...