Gae Bolg met Kanshou in a detonation of force, the shockwave peeling back the floorboards like dead skin. Without a moment's rest, Lancer's crimson spear blurred—thrusting, sweeping—each strike faster than the last, each deflection sending sparks that lit up the church's dark interior.
Lancer's crimson spear was a blur of lethal intent, its barbed tip seeking every vital point in my body with murderous precision. I pivoted on my back foot, twisting my torso to let a thrust aimed at my heart whistle past my ribs. The follow-up sweep came low, aimed at my thigh. Kanshou came crashing down, its blade clanging against the shaft as my other blade, Bakuya, sliced upwards in a counter that forced him back half a step.
My blades continued to meet each thrust and sweep, the force of our collisions sending tremors through the crumbling stone floor. Dust rained from the ceiling as the rafters groaned in protest.
Behind my guard, my lips had split into a grin. My strength exceeded his, but my speed was only superior by a moderate margin. However, the combined reach of my extended arms and blades couldn't match his, so I pressed on, stepping inside his optimal spear range when an opening presented itself.
Kanshou licked out like a viper's tongue towards his leading wrist, forcing a hasty parry that I followed instantly with a downward hammer-blow from Bakuya onto Gae Bolg's shaft, driving his point momentarily into the floor. A kick to his stomach sent Lancer crashing into the wall and into a different room. Not a moment later, Lancer charged back at me with a feral smile, and we returned to our back-and-forth exchange of blows.
If battling a Servant always felt like this, I think I might get addicted to it. The impact of just a single one of his hits should have killed me ten times over. Should've shattered my ribs into fragments and torn my flesh like it was paper.
But with Heracles' and EMIYA's combined strengths, skills, and experiences?
I didn't budge an inch.
Our second flurry lasted less than one breath—dozens of attacks, dozens of deflections. It was a whirlwind of steel. I ducked under a decapitating swing, feeling the wind of its passage ruffle my hair, while simultaneously batting aside a follow-up thrust aimed at my knee with a sharp parry of Kanshou. My own riposte, a blinding-fast double slash from high to low, forced him into a rapid backward shuffle, Gae Bolg spinning defensively before him.
The air between us shimmered with displaced dust and debris. Every strike and parry had sent visible shockwaves through the ruined sanctuary. Lancer's eyes narrowed as he disengaged, boots skidding across broken tiles.
"Not bad," he admitted, rolling his shoulders. "But you aren't taking this as seriously as you should, are you?"
Lancer planted Gae Bolg point-first beside him, the stone cracking under the impact.
I adjusted my grip on Kanshou and Bakuya. The twin blades felt like natural extensions of my arms. "Was waiting for you to get serious."
His answering smirk vanished as he seemed to notice the complete absence of wounds on my body.
Not a scratch or tear on my outfit. Not a cut on my body. The few strikes I had let through on purpose during our bout might as well have been raindrops against stone. His gaze swept over me again, disbelief warring with calculation. He flexed his fingers around Gae Bolg's haft, knuckles whitening.
Lancer's grip tightened on Gae Bolg. For the first time, something like frustration flickered behind his crimson eyes. "The hell kind of Noble Phantasm is this? Some kind of... absolute defense?"
I rolled my shoulders. If I told him about the Nemean Lion's Pelt and its effect as well, he would probably cough blood.
"Think of it as a quality filter. Only good stuff gets through. Unfortunately," I smirked, "your attacks do absolutely nothing. Not even a tickle."
His lips peeled back in a snarl before recognition sparked in his eyes. "Is that so?"
Without warning, he slammed his palm onto the stone floor. Runes ignited. Ancient, angular symbols burned blue fire into the stone. Power crackled around him, muscles coiling like steel springs under his armor as his spear became charged with magical energy.
The bastard actually buffed himself using his runes.
"Let's test that threshold," Lancer growled.
What followed was less of a duel and more of a localized natural disaster.
Where before Lancer was fast, now he was a crimson and silver smear. We became blurs of motion, our clashes sending continuous shockwaves through the ruined church. He flickered past a pillar, Gae Bolg lashing out almost casually. The ancient stone column exploded into fist-sized chunks. Every footfall cratered stone, and every exchange of blows sent fresh cracks racing up the remaining walls.
I met his empowered speed with barely any issue, my blades a whirlwind of black and white. I wove through the debris field, parrying thrusts that came like machine-gun fire, each one hammering against my guard with concussive force. A kick reinforced by primal mysteries sent me skidding back, my boots carving furrows in stone. The air whoomphed out of my lungs, a testament to the raw power now behind his blows.
Finally, a hint of pressure!
"That's more like it!" I laughed heartily, parrying a spear-thrust that would skewer a tank. The spear tip screeched against Kanshou, sending a shower of white sparks across my vision. "I've never felt more alive!"
Lancer didn't respond with words. Instead, he now came at me with everything he had. He launched a furious combination: a feint towards my head followed by a savage upward thrust towards my gut. His eyes burned with furious focus, probing, analyzing, seeking any flicker of weakness, any flaw in my defense or movement.
But despite his rune-enhanced speed, I tracked his movements without issue. My Mind's Eye skills synergized and tracked the spear's lethal patterns, predicting its exact trajectories before they manifested.
His spear was a crimson storm, each thrust carrying enough force to level buildings. I answered in kind, our weapons meeting in bursts of sparks and concussive force that reduced the remaining pews to kindling. Wooden splinters filled the air like lethal confetti.
The ground beneath us buckled and split as we continued to trade blows that would shatter boulders. I sidestepped a downward smash, replying with a shoulder charge that drove him back, his boots sinking into the pulverized floor. Lancer's roundhouse caught my ribs with enough force to send shockwaves through my body. I grunted, the sheer kinetic energy bruising me internally.
Fortunately, no injury could remain for even a second before my healing abilities healed me.
My counter—a two-handed horizontal slash with both blades crossed—caught him mid-recovery. His spear blocked the blow, and the force lifted him off his feet. It sent him flipping backward into the shattered remains of the church wall and out into the rain, his boots carving trenches in the wet dirt as he landed.
"Getting tired yet?" I taunted, stepping through the gaping hole in the wall, blades held loosely at my sides.
Lancer wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and spat a glob of blood onto the muddy ground. "Hardly. You're one tough bastard and a worthy warrior, kid. Let's see how you handle this."
Instead of charging like I expected, he entered a wide stance, holding the spear in an angled way, with its head pointed at the ground. The Cursed Spear of Death's tip glowed, exuding a flaming aura of magical energy that painted the area red. A thorny, bitter cold overtook the area as all the mana in the atmosphere froze solid.
My instincts flared.
I knew what was coming next—an attack that would be impossible to counter without special means. I could easily prevent Lancer from activating it or block it with a powerful shield, but the survival instincts of a normal man ingrained in me since birth lost to the morbid curiosity of the now immortal superhuman.
What would it feel like to have my beating heart pierced? How much pain would it cause? I wanted to find out. And there was no better time to satisfy my curiosity than now.
"I'll have your heart!"
"At least take me out on a date first, you sly dog!"
Lancer's face twisted. "Let's see if you can still joke after this."
He charged at me with explosive force and slid to a stop halfway, rupturing the dirt beneath his feet.
"Gae…"
Attacking from such a far distance would normally be pointless. After all, the combined length of his arm and spear could only cross about three meters at most. And yet, Lancer thrust his spear at my feet, regardless.
"…Bolg!"
A red beam of light—of solidified destiny—shot from Gae Bolg and lanced through the air. It was a streak of blood-red light that ignored distance, angles, and physics. The air itself seemed to warp around it, reality twisting to ensure its strike found my heart regardless of defense or evasion.
It was an attack that reversed cause and effect, making it so that the cause of the "lance being thrust" came from the effect of the "opponent's heart being pierced" by it. Lancer thrusting was merely a formality.
Mind's Eye saw the truth. It screamed that evading would be futile. But in my head, I had already decided how to react.
I would let it succeed.
To put on a show of fighting back, my blades crossed in front of me, as if putting up a defense. But the beam didn't visibly arc or curve. It simply was—simultaneously at its launch point and already piercing through my chest.
Agony I had never felt before hit me. It hurt like hell. Not just physical, but existential. My heart erupted. A thousand phantom barbs bloomed inside my chest cavity, shredding muscle, bone, and spirit from within.
Lancer swung his spear upward, dragging the beam still stuck to my chest and my body into the air. As my blades slipped from my hands, the world turned upside down as I fell with the raindrops. I landed on my back on top of the wet grass, staring into the murky clouds above.
As raindrops fell on me, blood fountained from my mouth, its metallic taste coating my tongue. Before my healing abilities could repair the damage and wipe the pain away, I forced them to remain inactive. It let me savor the agony and the profound, violating intimacy. Besides, even if I left them off, this wouldn't kill me.
A thousand phantom thorns writhed within the ruins of my heart. It was a pain that echoed through my soul, a discordant note playing on the strings of my existence.
For a minute, I stayed still as I savored the "near-death experience".
Ah... This was what it meant to be truly, mortally vulnerable. To be so close to death, I could hear the whispers of the afterlife. For a man like me using immense, unearned power, the raw immediacy of personal annihilation was… beautiful. Terrifying. And quite possibly… addictive.
…Man, there was seriously something wrong with my head. I've always had suspicions about this strange side of me, but this just confirmed it. No one else would let themselves get stabbed in the heart by a cursed spear.
Lancer approached, cutting off my train of thought. He held Gae Bolg loosely, his crimson eyes narrowed in wary assessment rather than triumph. He stopped a few paces away, spear tip angled down. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead, mixing with the mud on his armor.
"Stubborn bastard," he muttered, voice lacking its usual mocking edge. "Even with your heart turned to mincemeat, you cling to life."
"Haa… haa…" my breath rattled, a wet, bubbling sound. Trying to talk was excruciating, but the words clawed their way out, fueled by a perverse exhilaration.
"So… this is… destiny's kiss?" I managed to croak out and smile, each word tasting of copper. "Feels like… swallowing broken glass… wrapped in lightning."
A choked, bloody laugh escaped me. "Five stars… would recommend… for the… adventurous."
Lancer's gaze sharpened, shifting from wary to genuinely unsettled. He'd no doubt seen men rage, weep, and bargain when faced with death. But he had probably never seen anyone reviewit.
"You have a few screws loose, boy," he stated, but it lacked conviction.
There was a flicker of something else—recognition? The madness of a fellow warrior who danced too close to the edge? I didn't know, but there was something.
"I'll… recover…"
He raised Gae Bolg slightly. "Really think you can walk that off?"
In response to his words, I locked eyes with him and cracked a manic, blood-stained grin.
"You'll… see…"
My vision gradually faded until I lost consciousness. For a moment, it felt like I was about to be introduced to God himself.
But it was only for a moment.
God Hand roared, bringing me back to life, snarling against the lingering curse and shredding the conceptual barbs like cobwebs. White-hot, purifying fire replaced the cold void left by my shattered heart as it became whole once more. Blood stopped flowing. My rattling breath smoothed into a deep, steady rhythm.
God Hand remade the gaping hole in my being—stronger, denser, thrumming with defiant power. Now, a second activation of Gae Bolg's causality reversal would be useless against me.
Lancer's eyes widened in shock. Taking advantage of the opening, I twisted my body and pushed myself up. My leg lashed out like a whip.
"What the—?!"
He evaded my blow by a hair's breadth, backing away as I began exerting astounding pressure and magical energy.
The air grew heavier, as if the force of gravity had somehow increased.
"This is impossible," Lancer said, his gaze filled with shock.
I stood up in one smooth motion. Mud and rainwater slid off my cloak and armor. I met Lancer's wide, utterly stunned eyes. There was a profound, unsettling calm in me, born of having touched the absolute brink and clawed back. My hand went to my chest, feeling the powerful, steady thump-thump beneath my palm.
"Walk it off?" My voice rang clear, strong, echoing slightly in the sudden quiet broken only by the rain. "Lancer… I could dance right now."
"Dance, huh?" Lancer's grin a tad shaky, Gae Bolg snapping up into a defensive guard. "Got any other tricks to pull?"
He stared at my chest, then my face, searching for any sign of weakness, any lingering wound. He found none. The spear that pierced destiny had failed. It was not dodged, nor was it blocked.
I simply endured his most lethal attack and came back from death.
"Just one. You showed me yours, Lancer. Now let me show you mine. Properly this time."
Lancer glared. "Oy! Do you really have to say it like that?"
"Say it like what?" I blinked with a straight face, but inside, I was having a blast laughing at his reactions. "You should be more concerned about what I'm going to do to you."
"Then get on with it already, you annoying bastard!"
I shrugged. A little banter in the middle of a fight never hurt anyone. "Okay, have it your way."
Magical energy crackled around my body like electricity.
"Trace on."
Kanshou and Bakuya once again materialized in my hands with a thought, gleaming faintly in the darkness. But the blades were longer, elongated into savage, single-edged longswords with jagged, saw-like teeth along their spines. These were the same blades, but transformed by Reinforcement into their Overedge forms that further increased their power.
Across from me, Cu Chulainn held his crimson spear, his grin savage and wild. The Hound of Ulster poised to strike.
"Trigger off."
I closed my eyes, and the world around me stilled, raindrops freezing mid-fall.
Magic roared like thunder in my veins.
My arms trembled, not from fear, but from the impossible pressure building in them.
"Nine Lives Blade Works!"
My eyes snapped open. I stepped forward once—and vanished.
Lancer's face tensed. The spear came up.
Too slow.
Before he could move an inch, I crossed the distance between us in a near-instant, invoking an onslaught as I struck his body with a series of eight high-speed slashes so swift they seemed to overlap. I targeted his right upper arm and shoulder, collarbone, windpipe, diaphragm, ribs, knees, and thighs simultaneously, outstripping the speed of sound.
Every time I struck, I carved a colossal gash into the earth, each one a jagged canyon stretching dozens of meters long. The ninth strike, a brutal stabbing of both blades into his stomach, marred the ground directly behind Lancer's frozen silhouette.
The world held its breath as rain once again fell.
Lancer stood rigid, Gae Bolg still half-raised in a guard that oblivion had outpaced. No blood flowed yet. The cuts were too clean, too impossibly fast. For a single suspended heartbeat, he looked untouched.
Then, the sound arrived.
A deafening scream tore through the downpour, the delayed sonic boom of eight hypersonic slashes and one hypersonic thrust arriving all at once. It was the sound of reality catching up to the one cascading moment of violence I enacted.
At the same time, Lancer's body unfolded.
Crimson lines bloomed across his blue armor like macabre flowers, displaying the bones, flesh, and muscle underneath. The final stab manifested over his stomach as a sudden, violent gush of blood, dark as wine, contrasting with the blue of his armor.
However, Lancer didn't fall.
Battle Continuation allowed him to keep his feet planted in the churned mud. But his knees buckled. Gae Bolg's tip sank into the earth, keeping him upright. His head lolled, chin hitting his chest. Rainwater streamed down his face, mingling with the blood welling from the gash across his windpipe.
A wet, rattling gasp escaped him. But I sensed it wasn't a sound of pain, but of sheer, overwhelming shock. His crimson eyes, wide and unfocused, stared at the ruin of his own body.
I lowered the Overedge forms of Kanshou and Bakuya. The phantom agony of Gae Bolg still echoed in my newly reformed chest.
The silence after the sonic booms was profound. Only the drumming rain and Lancer's labored breathing filled the church grounds. The stench of coppery blood hung thick in the air.
I took a step back. Mud squelched under my boots. Lancer's head rose with agonizing slowness. His gaze, clouded but still fiercely intelligent, locked with mine. Using legilimency, I sensed his disbelief warring with a terrible, dawning respect. He tried to speak, but only a choked gurgle came out of his savaged throat.
I looked down at the broken Child of Light, pinned to the earth by his own spear. Rain washed the blood, turning into rivulets down his armor.
"Still think I'm not worthy to be your Master, Lancer?"
He managed a minute shake of his head. A spray of crimson droplets accompanied the movement. The message war clear.
No.
His remaining hand, trembling violently, released its grip on Gae Bolg's shaft. It took me a moment to figure out that this was his gesture of acknowledgement.
He stumbled. With a thought, the blades in my hands dissolved into shimmering golden motes before I caught him and supported his body. I placed my hand over his throat, calling upon my magic. Within moments, new flesh and muscle grew, as good as new.
"The hell… was that technique?" Lancer rasped, giving me a carefree smirk. "Man, you're just full of surprises, you absolute monster. I never stood a chance, did I?"
"Nope" I said, reciprocating his smirk. "Not one bit. But it was a fun fight, right? Get ready for more and bigger surprises down the road. This won't be the last."
A liquid blue diamond portal opened beside me. Reaching into the Celestial Inventory, I pulled out a single, unassuming green bean.
"Eat this," I said, holding the Senzu Bean out. "Heal up. Then, we'll talk about changing management."
Lancer stared at the Senzu Bean, the disappearing portal, then back at me. His eyes, filled with pain, held no trace of refusal, only exhaustion, and the hard-won respect of a beast that had met its match. He lifted his good hand, fingers trembling, as he picked it up.
He eyed the bean, then me, then crushed it between his teeth. Instantly after he swallowed, life flooded back. Bones snapped into place, wounds healed, and his breath steadied. He rose, flexing his healed arm before picking Gae Bolg back up, whirling it like a windmill.
"Of course you have magical beans that completely heal and replenish someone's stamina. Ridiculous," Lancer scoffed, but the fire in his eyes was brighter than before.
"Didn't I say you should prepare yourself for more surprises? That's not even the most absurd thing I have on me," I said, taking a step back and extending a hand. "I look forward to working with you, Cu Chulainn."
Surprise colored Cu's face. But it soon turned into a brief chuckle and a shake of his head.
He accepted the gesture, shaking my hand with a firm grip. "You've got my spear. Should I be glad or scared that my new Master's a monster in disguise?"
A snort of amusement escaped me. This guy had no clue about what I had in store for him. Aside from the Helmet of Fate, I hadn't even pulled out any of the truly overpowered comic book items like the Cosmic Cube or the White Lantern Ring. And who knew what else I could pull out from the Celestial Inventory?
"Thanks for the compliment," I said, my smile turning ominous. "And since we're now on the same side, you should most definitely be glad."