Throughout the city zombies continued to invade and spread. There were already thousands of them and more were created with each new death, it was a disaster of the highest order. To make it worst the zombies were capable of using their own magic from the time they were alive, not quite as strong as when they were alive but still moved and attacked with magic. Not only that, as they now are just corpses they no longer had the restrictions that regular humans usually have thus they could move faster and strike harder than regular humans without reinforcement magic.
And yet, despite their numbers and the fact several captains were fighting in the city right now, this was still not the most eye-catching thing happening in the capital right now. No, this title belonged to the duel between two people.
The Crown Prince of the Clover Kingdom and the Primera General of the Spades kingdom.
The two were moving throughout the capital, the two were using reinforcement to improve their physical attributes and were little more than blurs at this point and yet the fight raged on.
Shiro was using a single blade, it was a broadsword with considerable power to it. He was using Durandal The Peerless Sword, the sword of Roland and a holy sword known for being unbreakable and by carrying within it three miracles of God. He chose to use it because of how durable it was, a necessary feature when his enemy was using his spear made of concentrated heat that was so hot it melted right through Kanshou and Bakuya when he tried to use them.
They have been fighting for the last 5 minutes or so and their faces remained locked in a perpetual stoicism.
Shirou attacked him with a sweep attack only for Karna to put his spear in front of him, blocking the shockwave from hitting him while the houses around got clear signs of the strike. Karna then proceeded to try and stab Shirou who deflected the attack force upward before sliding Durandal close to Karna and going for a strike on his body only for Karna to pull his body back just enough to avoid the attack. Karna then proceeded to kick Shirou away only for Shirou to use his Finral blade to teleport to above Karna and go for an attack from above, trying to pierce Karna.
Karna avoided it and launched about twenty flaming projectiles at Shirou when he got enough distance. Shirou responded in kind as he created twenty swords and sent then at Karna. Both avoided the strikes of the other, neither slowing down at all.
The citizens, those who were not in immediate danger of the Zombies at least, could only stare in awe at what they were seeing. Not only that, the magic knights sent a few people to help Shirou but the captains were busy as the stronger zombies had to be dealt with and the more normal knights could not even try and get close.
Even Yuno moved there to help but could not do a thing as he was, not only was his power not strong enough his element was wind, fighting against fire it was more likely he would create trouble instead of helping.
Clenching his fist Yuno could only think that he wanted to be stronger, strong enough to deserve to be the next Magic Emperor.
Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath he turned away from this fight, there were more enemies he could fight against and he should be able to free at least one captain to come and help Shirou.
On another part of town the captain of the Blue Rose squad, Charlotte Roseley, was fighting against a specific zombie. It looked like a bride with short red hair, a horn in her forehead, two metal rods on the sides of her head, and a feral expression. She carried a mace in her hand which she was using to crush the vines sent her way.
Whenever she hit the vines electricity would flow and with the vines carrying water inside it made the situation disadvantageous for the captain.
And yet Charlotte was able to fight on. Not only that, Charlotte had the advantage.
However, it was still not easy since the enemy had impressive physical strength and it had an annoying regenerative speed and no regard for injuries.
"GO GET HER, BERSERKER!" A shout rang close by from Charlotte and a magic construct rushed to the zombie. It looked like an incarnation of violence, with its leather-like skin, messy black hair, giant physique, and the stone slab that barely could be called a sword in its hand.
It hit its weapon against the zombie who was sent flying back a distance. The berserker would have followed but more zombies came in all directions and aimed at Illy so she returned her construct to her side.
Illya turned to her captain and spoke.
"Captain, leave this to me. I will take care of things here, you need to deal with the caster of this spell."
Charlotte looked around and saw another of Illya's constructs and Sol cleaning the area of zombies. Seeing that they should be able to handle themselves Charlotte nodded and moved away, there were many more places in need of help and standing there was not going to be helping anyone.
She moved, wanting to help a bit more before moving forward.
"Briar Creation Magic: Corpse-Hunting Briar Tree." As she said this she unsheathes their weapon and transforms it into several prickle-covered vines, which extend to considerable length as they surround her. These prickly vines actively hunt her targets. Once these vines have caught them, they converge together and rise to create tall trees of briars while the targets are still trapped between the prickles. These prickles are sharp enough to shred the targets that are trapped within the vines. She created more than five dozen such things around her as well as created multiple barriers around the citizens to protect them from any zombies who might try their luck.
Well, that and Illya's own magic. She DOES have a slight tendency of destroying everything around, her magic is Berserker magic in the end, after all.
Seeing this ready she moved to leave towards where the mage who created this attack is, however, an arrow hit where she was about to go and if not for her reflexes it would have hit her.
Turning in the direction where it came from and could not even see her assailant, such was the distance. Charlotte glared and put a serious expression in her face. Of the captains she was not really all that great with dealing with super long distance fights, but she had her ways if that is that the enemy wished to do.
"Briar Creation Magic: Cursed crossbow of Birth." as she said that, from her right hand, a crossbow was created. Concentrating all her energy she tried to predict the area where the enemy must have shot his arrow from. In truth she had no need to fully know it, she only had to sense the magic energy that was left from his attack. Sensing it slightly she activated a second magic. "Briar Creation Magic: Hunted Briar of the cursed snarring." As she did so she launched the 'arrow' created by her crossbow.
Arjuna saw all this and sneered, seeing how off-course the arrow was, but his smile vanished when the arrow changed trajectories after touching the area where his previous arrow flew by. The attack from Charlotte then moved to follow the previous trajectory and the longer it flew the faster it became as it sucked away the energy from the attack of Arjuna and the magic energy in the air.
Arjuna jumped to the side just in time as to avoid being hit by it. The arrow hit the place he was on before. It did not explode, instead the arrow turned and grew into briars trying to reach him, forcing him to escape and evade the best he could.
Pushing his hand forward he spoke up.
"Destruction Magic: Palm of Salvation." as Arjuna said that a wave of pure destructive power was released from his hand, obliterating completely the attack from Charlotte. Turning in the direction of the capital Arjuna saw something quickly approaching him from there.
It moved at incredible speeds and he could sense incredible magic power from it.
Instead of attacking Arjuna waited and saw when it reached close to him, this one creating a large impact.
"Ufufu, this is soo cool! I saw you attack from so far away and I just had to come and see who it was that was doing so." the person said as he stood in front of Arjuna, his azure robes flowing freely behind him. "I am the Azure Deer Captain, Rill Boismortier! And I hope your destruction magic can help my magic of creation reach new heights, Ufufufu."
'... This man, he may be weird, but he is strong.' Arjuna realized thus and moved ahead. A fight of creation and destruction started now.
Back in the capital, other fights exploded everywhere. The magic knights moved around and chaos was everywhere.
Civilians were being killed in droves and the magic knights, with their limited numbers, could not stop it all. But, all of this meant little to nothing to the king of the country.
He was on top of a bed that was three meters tall, he was currently laying in his comfortable bed and eating grapes from the hand of a noble lady lazily.
On the floor of the room there were some magic knights there in position, one of which was the assistant of the Magic Emperor, Max. As he looked in that bed and could see the king enjoying himself in such a frivolous manner Max felt his teeth clench a bit. He had come here to guard the king in this moment of crisis, but in truth, the one that should have been here is undoubtedly the magic emperor, not him.
And yet here he was. The Magic Emperor had gone out, disappeared to who knows where really. And right at this moment of crisis no less.
"And then? Where is Julius? Isn't his job as Magic Emperor to be right here by my side at this moment of crisis to protect the king?" The king asked lazily but with a hint of indignation to his tone.
"Answering my king, the Magic Emperor had an emergency matter to take care of. But please do not worry, this section of the palace is protected by multiple bounded fields and the king's personal chambers are even more so well guarded. There is not a chance the enemy will manage to injury even a hair on your person's body." Max said with a painfully fake smile.
"Humm, oh well. When our guests arrive be sure to welcome them here then," The king said easily enough, making Max's face twitch.
Guests? What 'guests' is this idiot of a king even talking about right now?
"By guests who do you speak off?" Max asked in confusion.
The king looked like he didn't want to speak at all, he'd rather just continue enjoying himself instead of wasting time explaining these matters, but he was feeling rather good today so he would explain these small matters.
"It is quite simple really. The Queen of the Hearts kingdom, the Crown Prince, Crown Princess, second Princess, and some of their knights should be arriving today. The Queen contacted me a few days ago about strengthening our alliance and I decided to hear her out." The king said as another grape was put on his mouth, not noticing how pale Max was getting.
'To think that in a moment of crisis like this there would be the time when the royalty of another kingdom is coming. This could not grow any worse.' Max thought to himself, not realizing how he had just jinxed this whole thing.
A lot.
"Well, and where is my son? Well protected, I believe." The king asked and Max's smile became much, much more strained than before.
In his head he had two competing thoughts. First being 'He is doing what a king should, go and help his countryman in a moment of crisis instead of hiding and thinking only of himself!' while the second being 'Oh, fuck me sideways. If the king hears of Shirou being in the middle of it all who knows what this idiot will do or demand?!'.
Max was about to reply when the king waved his hand.
"You know what, I will just look for him myself." The king's grimoire then floated to before him as he spoke "Light Creation Magic: Omnipotent King's Vision."
As he said that light spread from his body in all directions for a moment before returning to in front of him, as if a space portal had been created a perfect visualization of where Shirou currently is was shown.
That being, in the middle of combat with Karna, gashes on his sides and wounds in his legs and belly, all closing quickly but the blood in many other places being still plenty visible.
The king's eyes paled seeing this, and so did Max but mostly because of the king's reaction. In Max's honest opinion he would say that if Shirou really were to fight with all he has then only the captains could match him, and even then he wasn't 100% sure any of them could actually kill Shirou even if they wanted to. His adaptability was terrifying and the power from Avalon was simply too hard to deal with. If he were to focus on only himself and not use Avalon on others then he was confident that Shirou could only really die if he were to have his magic energy depleted and doing so was certainly no easy task.
If it was up to Max he would have made Shirou the captain of his own Magic knight Squad as soon as possible, letting the kingdom have more Magic Kight Squads could only be a good thing considering how troublesome and chaotic the current world is becoming.
The king, looking at this, stood from his bed and asked.
"Which knight captains are in the capital right now?"
"Answering my majesty, the Azure Deer Captain and Vice-Captain; The Silver Eagles Captain; The Crimson Lion Captain; and the Blue Rose Captain." Max answered truthfully.
"Very well," As the king said that he activated his spell again, scenes of the fighting from all four captains could be seen.
Charlotte was moving towards the caster of the magic and so was Fuegoleon, Rill was facing Arjuna on the outside of the capital and their battle was already changing the terrain considerably with destruction and weird objects abound, and as for Nozel he and his siblings were decimating the zombies at the northern part of the capital the most distant place to where Shirou was currently fighting.
The king saw this for a while before snorting.
"Is THIS what my knight captains are doing? When their Crown Prince, the future king of Clover Kingdom, is fighting they are dealing with rabble instead of securing him? Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous! They are just lucky I am not in the mood to go and teach them a lesson about duty!"
Max and some of the other knights around could only hold a grimace as they thought that the king, who was laying down and eating grapes while his people were dying, really has no right of speaking as such. And the capabilities of actually doing anything about it.
"Send the message, I believe Yami and Vangeance have spatial magicians in their knight squads, tell them to hurry over and protect my son!"
Max bowed in consenting to this order, but inside he doubted it would do any good.
Yami actually coming to this now was doubtful at best and if Willian hasn't shown up until now then he'd likely not show up anyway.
But it was at this moment that the king spoke again.
"Wait, never mind. There is no need for that.
"Our allies are approaching."
With Asta he was currently facing the caster of the soul corpse magic, Rades, the one who created all these zombies.
He was having quite the difficulty, the enemy being guarded by a black-skinned and bald man who had to be at least 2,20 meters tall with two huge golden axes in hand. Asta had been facing the huge man for a good while now.
Whenever Asta hit the giant's ax he felt his whole body shake, the strength of those strikes not being a joking matter in the slightest. Thankfully Asta could barely deal with this amount of strength. If not for Rades sending pot shots at Asta he could even have had some advantage. His Anti-Magic sword able to weaken the giant whenever it touched his body, but with him being unable to follow through even when he managed to attack due to Rades attacks really put Asta on a bind here.
On a street nearby Noele was having trouble of her own as she and Leopoldo were facing what looked to be a female corpse with horns and a mace releasing electricity. It was not an easy fight, especially since Noelle was quite ineffective against electricity and Leopoldo was having trouble with another zombie giving assistance on the side, using water magic to counter his flames.
As Asta was fighting he could only grit his teeth in anger, the enemy was too strong for him right now.
It was at this moment when what looked like a flaming meteor went in his direction. Asta voided it the best he can and if not for what he understood of ki from Shirou he would definetly not have been able to dodge nearly as well.
Jumping away just in time he could see Shirou standing before him, multiple burn marks in his body quickly receding while facing a man with white hair and an armor made of fire in front of him.
Shirou didn't even seem to acknowledge Asta's presence, his feet moving quickly as he moved to Rades with the objective of killing him. Memories of the devastation of what Dead Apostles can create still firmly planted in his mind and hesitation not being something he would ever admit when in face of such a being.
However, before he could reach Rades, Karna intercepted him with a trust of his spear, changing the trajectory of the sword in the nick of time.
Not stoping in his movements Shirou accelerated the best he can, striking at blindingly fast speed while Karna defended against all of his strikes with the two swords.
Asta, seeing this, was gobsmacked. He didn't even know people could be that fast. He grined broadly seeing this and tried to circle it when he noticed someone in the distance approaching too. It was Tamamo, in her hands she held multiple talismans which she threw around her as she moved to help her Shirou.
"Now we will win for sure!" Asta said excitedly as he noted that on the direction of where Noele and Leopolde were from there was another person as reinforcement coming. The captain of the Crimson Lion Squad, Fuegoleon Vermilion.
Rades, seeing this, began sweating bullets as he turned to the sky.
"Damned animal, won't you show up already?!" As he called no one could see what he meant. But, as if on cue, the sun above brightened even further than before by many times over even.
"Hahaha, I see that the moment of my grand entrance is neigh! Very well, so be it then." An arrogant voice spoke loudly up high. The secret weapon that the Eye of Midnight Sun had obtained by simple luck was making his entrance.
Entrance in a spectacular way as he descended from the sky in a golden 'ship' while proudly looking down at everyone down in the ground.
The one in the ship looked down at everyone and smiled broadly.
"Look up, as I am as the sun so bask in the radiance of Ozymandias!" As he said that the man's figure could finally be seen. He was someone that radiated strength in waves and someone that Tamamo recognized well enough.
'What is he doing here?' Tamamo thought hysterically, knowing that Ozymandias should still be back in the village, and especially knowing just how dangerous he truly is. She could only grit her teeth and move to fight with all her might to stop him from wrecking havok in this entire city.
Looking down Ozymandias saw Tamamo and his eyes flashed in pity and with exasperation at her.
"Do not worry, little sister! I shall take you back where you belong soon enough as soon as I kill this Shirou person as for the agreement."
Those, those were not the right words to be said. Not at all.
And thus the chaotic battle descended in even more chaos as the fight grew that much worse.
And yet, no Julius have appeared to help. And as everyone was starting to converge things only would grow worse. Much, much worse.
AN:
Admittedly, not my best work here. I wasn't really that inspired and had a lot on my head while writing this chapter.
Well, I hope you all at least enjoyed it. As for Ozymandias' sudden appearance, there is a reason for that. It will be revealed soon, I promise, but let us just say that news about Tamamo and her 'destiny' was not exactly a secret.
Finally, the next chapter will be a few more fights and the finale of this arc as I really don't like it and I really want to write the invasion of the Diamond kingdom.
Oh, and about Shirou being able to face Karna who should be much stronger than him, remember that the one who always says that Shirou isn't on the level of captains is Shirou himself, he was never that confident on his own skills anyway. Also, this time he wasn't sharing the power of Avalon, making him stupidly hard to kill. Honestly, he may or may not be on the level of the captains (being extremely close at the very least), but if he were to fight them for real I doubt anyone except Yami could actually defeat him. And Yami only could if he got Spatial Slash, so until then even him would not be a true match.