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IBHJ Chapter 616
🕑 Added 2023-12-11 04:49:54 +0000 UTCIndeed, the swordsmanship sublimated into Lancelot's Noble Phantasm.
Arondight Overload: Breaking All Restraints - The Overloaded Light of the Lake!
This Noble Phantasm overloads Lancelot's sword, Arondight, with magical energy. Rather than emitting the energy as a ranged attack, it releases the vast power on contact when cutting a target. The overflowing blue light resembles a shimmering lake - thus "Unbreakable Lake Light."
Shirou had reproduced this explosive swordsmanship through the Spear of Endless Light!
"Ka ka ka—"
The surrounding white hands fractured into shards like breaking glass.
Shirou turned his wrist, and the Spear of Endless Light radiated brilliance like a condensing sun.
In the next moment, he slashed with the spear.
"Boom—!"
The simulated sun instantly exploded, scorching sunlight stretching in all directions with the spear's endless light. It extended along the white hands like shadows - vanishing them completely in the blinding rays.
“That’s...Gawain’s sun...” Mordred whispered.
“S-Such blinding light...” an uncomfortable female voice echoed from the fissure.
It still wasn’t over!
Shirou adjusted his stance, wielding the Spear of Endless Light like a javelin.
He overlaid Scáthach's record through his Second Noble Phantasm, recalling her decisive blow against the invader. Divine light flashed through his eyes as tremendous aura brewed within.
Abundant mana poured into the spear, making it shine brilliantly - as if wanting to pierce this long night of chaos with the first light of dawn!
Radiance blazing in his eyes, he hurled the spear straight at the fissure and its stretching hands, tearing through the darkness like daybreak.
"Boom boom boom boom—!!!"
Gales and thunderstorms. Even space itself quaked.
All darkness shredded apart under this radiant strike, surging into the endless abyssal fissure.
"BOOM!"
With the same blow Scáthach had recently mastered, the spear punctured through the fissure and kept going, bombarding straight through the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, blasting a hole to the open sky before disappearing into the horizon!
"Ugh—!" A pained voice rang out.
"Crack crack crack—" The fissure fractured like shattering glass, slowly crumbling away.
Rays of light streamed down through the pierced Gardens above, sprinkling onto his face.
The light felt sacred yet welcoming, filled with warmth and lacking any imposing pressure
The Spear of Endless Light spun like a pinwheel somewhere out there before blinking back into his palm.
Grasping it, he turned slightly as his cloak fluttered. The fissure crumbled behind him while he was bathed in the warm glow.
Mordred watched this scene, thinking...
So this was the one she wanted to defeat?
The abyssal fissure crumbled like shattering glass, falling apart shard by shard.
Shirou’s blow had destroyed the countless white hands that continued to crawl out.
However...
Glancing down at the spear of endless light gripped in his hand, he was clearly aware of one thing.
Perhaps the power had already reached the level of force unleashed by Scáthach before, but this was by no means her true strike.
It lacked something.
Yes, he had used Scáthach's record to recreate the blow she landed after focusing all her thousands of years of skill into a single attack.
Yet that was merely an imitation, not the true strike. Even with Scáthach’s record, he couldn't fully recreate that actual strike. Or rather, it was not a memory that could simply be reproduced by overlaying records.
It was a technique that even records couldn't recreate. However, even lacking something, he still destroyed the entrance to fissure held by the demonic bodhisattva.
No. It could not be called an abyssal fissure. But rather, the entrance to Heaven's Hole. And those white hands were the capturing limbs used to drag targets into the Hole.
The entrance to Heaven's Hole, like the extraterrestrial invader from before, was an entrance to another dimension - an existential concept that would generally be extremely difficult to destroy. Yet unfortunately for it, his copied strike from Scáthach’s record had managed to obliterate it.
Walking toward Mordred in the dawn light streaming down from the sky, he bent down slightly, looking into her teal blue eyes inherited from Artoria. He gently asked, “Now, can we talk properly?”
Upon hearing this, she pursed her lips, subconsciously gripping the chalice tighter. She raised her head to meet his eyes that seemed to hold raging flames within and said, “I...”
She was just about to speak when a pained female voice interrupted them.
“My stomach... it hurts...”
Shirou and Mordred's eyes abruptly twitched.
In the blink of an eye, the heavens and earth swapped around.
The light in the sky vanished, replaced instead by pitch-black chaos.
Dim starlight glimmered around them, with stars floating distantly as if they had arrived in the dark cosmos.
The land beneath their feet disappeared, substituted by a white, tender hand.
“This is...!”
Mordred stared in shock.
Shirou glanced over and sighed inwardly. As expected, a Beast wouldn't be defeated so easily.
It was a giant.
No.
It should be called a Bodhisattva.
The colossal Kiara Sessyoin, seemingly the size of a planet, stretched out a hand to rub her own stomach. Rare agony showed on that bewitching face, as if she had been viciously punched in the gut.
As she rubbed her stomach with one hand, the other cradled Shirou and Mordred in her palm, just like Buddha holding the whole world!
Indeed, Shirou and Mordred now stood in Kiara's hand like Sun Wukong held in the Buddha's palm.
"You've really overdone it, Mister Assassin," Kiara resentfully said.
Ever since becoming a Bodhisattva, this was the first time she had experienced pain.
Heaven's Hole was an Anti-Human Order Noble Phantasm that transcended authority. It drew souls into her body, forming a vortex of happiness beyond measure. This vortex would melt those with intellect. Regardless of intellectual structure, it took effect without exception on beings with wisdom. Thus, not limited to Earthlings, even extraterrestrial lifeforms would produce desire and fall under the restraints of this Noble Phantasm.
And the essence of Heaven's Hole was, in truth, her own stomach. The Beast III Kiara had a body internally akin to a vast universe - a land of utmost bliss. Things that fell inside would lose all semblance of reality, abandoning self and driven to madness through irrationality, eventually sinking completely into depravity.
Perhaps this was also a different form of salvation.
This was Heaven's Hole - the higher the organism's wisdom, the more they would fall under its domination. Therefore, neither Nero’s Golden Theater nor Saber’s Excalibur could overcome her Heaven's Hole.
Yet Shirou destroyed it!
He demolished the entrance to Heaven's Hole in one blow!
This made her feel pain again after so long.
Having regained his bearings and finding himself in Kiara's palm, he lightly shifted his footsteps and leapt right out of her hand.
Mordred had also come back to her senses. Using her chalice, she phased out of Kiara’s palm as well.
Shirou jumped from Kiara’s hand and landed on a starry sky.
Stepping on the starry expanse, he raised a brow. As if it had substance, it felt like treading on solid ground.
Clearly they were not truly in outer space. This was an illusion created by Kiara, or perhaps some bounded field they had fallen into.
Kiara didn't mind Shirou’s escape at all. Stroking her stomach resentfully, she watched Shirou and said, "You've really overdone it, Mister Assassin. Showing hostility towards ‘me’ from the very start too, how excessive."
"You are not that Miss Kiara," Shirou revealed a faint smile as he spoke. Unlike Nero and the other Heroic Spirits, he didn’t show disgust towards the Beast. Instead, he maintained an exceptionally calm appearance.
Beasts were the evils of humanity, the grand disasters rejected by human history.
There was Goetia. The primordial mother goddess - Tiamat. Kiara was one of them too. These existed in the Type Moon universe - beings infinitely close to, or perhaps equal to, the Ultimate Ones: Mercury Spider, Saturn, Venus...
Up until now, the only existences able to suppress them were the Archetypes and Grand Servants summoned specifically to face these Beasts, in order to avert humanity's annihilation.
Ordinary Heroic Spirits had no chance against these Beasts. So undoubtedly this was an exceptionally mighty foe. Yet Shirou’s state of mind remained exceptionally calm.
He told Saber and the others that Beasts couldn't be negotiated with. However, being unable to negotiate didn't equate to being unable communicate.
Comments
JeanMartin Freites
That final observation is quite a distinction.
ZRain raion
No beast is even close to matching a Ultimate One in power, UO are a whole another lvl of power
