Roland was also a bit dazed for a moment, as if he were floating on a cloud.
In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Killer Queen had never seemed that overwhelming next to other time-based final villains. Facing an enemy who can stop and erase time at will, turning people into bombs, is cruel enough but it didn't feel utterly oppressive. That changed the moment the third bomb appeared.
The third bomb's arrival announced a harsher truth: time doesn't only flow forward.
"The loser eats dust." That rewinding ability left a deeper mark on Roland when he first read the original work than virtually any other villain. The horror of ruthlessly erasing every factor and leaving only endless despair is singular. If only the user did not lose memory of each activation, and if the activation conditions weren't so strict, the Stand would be invincible.
A Stand's evolution follows its master's soul. When the Stand sank into a deep sleep after Roland's soul sublimated, he'd heard Killer Queen asking, in essence, what it itself desired.
Roland thought that through. He wasn't born evil, nor was he someone with a defective personality. The questions were practical: how to keep moving forward, how to manage himself, how to deal with his desires. Others around him had shown different dead ends
Ryunosuke Uryū who fell into indulgence, Kirei Kotomine who repressed and cracked, Kiritsugu Emiya and Zouken Matō who lost their original hearts and twisted themselves for ideals. Those examples sharpened his choice.
He needed to know where "past self" was in order to find a way forward.
From the moment the Key of All Spirits chose him, from the moment he contracted his first spirit, there was a "future" he must remember and a "Progress" he had to pursue. When the two merged he found his answer.
He didn't want an ability to obliterate every enemy instantly. He wanted a chance a way to turn things around when all seemed lost. Even against enemies who could seal him, against a world's hostility, he wanted the possibility of change. That was the feeling he'd had the first time he held his Stand.
A mysterious sensation filled Roland. He looked up at the sky without meaning to.
The moon, high and bright, was slowly descending. It was past midnight and a new day was beginning.
Today was the thirty-first day since Roland had set foot in Fuyuki City.
[Spirit: Kirara Yoshikage]
[Status: Fully Digested.]
"Impossible! This is absolutely impossible!" Gilgamesh ground his teeth. He could not accept the sight before him. Saber, too, was stunned, at this moment even he, The King of Knights felt a flicker of despair in the face of such terrifying power.
At first he had wondered if Roland had somehow deployed Avalon whether, like the scabbard-bearer, Roland had invoked something to resist interference. But when Gilgamesh's second attack was erased as well, that hypothesis fell away. It was absurdly audacious to affect only one individual without touching the world's rules. This looked less like miracle and more like a phenomenon beyond miracles. To manipulate such power in the mortal world was to use an intrinsic barrier, something that should have provoked the world's counter-corrections and yet Roland seemed untouched as he leisurely approached Archer.
"It's not impossible, Gilgamesh. As the King of Heroes, please don't lose your composure. If you don't understand yet, let me give you a lesson:
ONE must always fear the unknown."
The moment Gilgamesh's hostility made him the next target of the Fourth Bomb, the outcome of this unfinished duel was already sealed.
Whatever attack Gilgamesh launched at Roland whenever that attack achieved its result time would simply rewind to before it happened, and Roland, unaffected, would already have traveled farther into the future. The more Gilgamesh struggled, the wider the gap between them grew.
Roland smiled and explained, "The Fourth Bomb reverses time by erasing abnormal results from the past into the future. It manipulates cause and effect, fate itself. What truly happened cannot be changed."
"Your attack landed. That is an indelible truth. Cause and effect are carved into time. Even if the past is bound by my Killer Queen, that truth remains absolute destiny."
Gilgamesh frowned at Roland's next words. "King of Heroes, will those true destinies fall upon me who is already in the future after the attack? Or does time run backward, and I have only arrived at this moment in the past while you exist here in my future?"
"Could it be…" Gilgamesh's face shifted as he noticed a wound appear and staggered.
"Yes" Roland answered with a smile.
In the next instant, a series of violent detonations erupted across Gilgamesh's body.
If it hadn't been for his golden armor the kind that can take blows from A-rank Noble Phantasms, Gilgamesh would likely have been fatally damaged. Even so, he was in bad shape: blown back several paces, mouth bleeding despite covering his face.
"This king will never admit such a fact!" he barked defiantly. But he did not relent; he roared, "This world is my court. Such an aberration that subverts this planet's rules cannot be allowed to exist!"
"If this is destiny rather than a curse, then witness my counterblow!" Gilgamesh's expression hardened, and at close range he chose his next assault carefully. Golden ripples spread from him in concentric waves, wrapping around Roland like an enclosure. Trapped, Roland would appear vulnerable just what Gilgamesh wanted. Proud and scornful, he issued his decree.
"Take it! Unleash the King's Treasure within a twenty-meter"