The world was a fresh-made hellscape. Sukuna stood on a newly-formed plateau of cooling, cracked rock, a hundred feet from the corrupted king. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and molten earth. Saber Alter stood impassively near the crater's epicenter, Excalibur Morgan held steady in her hand. Her expression was a mask of cold, simmering fury.
She was the one to break the silence, her voice like grinding glaciers. "You... Anomaly. To use such a vulgar display of power... not for victory, but simply to remake the battlefield in your own image. That is not the act of a warrior. It is the tantrum of a mindless beast."
Sukuna let out a low, rumbling chuckle. "Mindless?" he retorted, a predatory grin spreading across his faces. "No. It was a perfectly logical solution. Your mountain was an inconvenience. So I removed it." He took a step forward, the molten ground crunching under his sandals. "You mistake necessity for a tantrum. A common error for those shackled by the pathetic notion of 'honor'."
"There is only one logic that matters," Saber declared, her voice devoid of all passion. "The strong rule. The weak obey. This world is a chaotic failure that must be brought to heel by a tyrant's unwavering will."
Sukuna's grin widened. He had found the core of her flawed logic. "And there is the flaw in your design," he said, his voice dripping with condescending pity. "You have achieved absolute power, but you still think like a slave. A slave to duty. A slave to purpose. You have the power of a king, but none of the ambition."
Her golden eyes widened for a fraction of a second.
He leveled Hiten in her direction. "A king does not serve an ideal. The king is the ideal." The joy in his expression sharpened. "True strength is the freedom to do whatever you please. And your boring, joyless tyranny... no longer pleases me." His final words were not a shout, but a cold judgment. "Let me teach you what it truly means to be a King."
With that, Sukuna launched himself forward. He crossed the hundred feet between them in a heartbeat; his upper right fist aimed directly at Saber's face. She sidestepped with a fluid, economical motion. As his fist screamed past, she brought the flat of her sword up in a casual parry against his incoming second strike.
CLANG!
The impact was a thunderclap. A brutal jolt shot up Sukuna's entire arm, almost dislocating his shoulder. She had turned a fully enhanced blow aside like it was nothing. Her strength was greater than his. The realization was sharp and cold.
He spun with his momentum, his other two arms whipping around to crush her torso. Again, she was faster. A single, perfectly placed kick to his leading leg disrupted his stance, forcing his attack wide. He leaped back to create distance, an analytical glint in his four eyes. He extended a hand, palm open. A simple Dismantle tore through the air toward her.
Saber Alter watched it approach with contemptuous indifference. She didn't move. The slash struck her armor with a faint ping and simply dissipated, leaving not a single scratch.
Sukuna's smile did not falter. He brought Kamutoke forward and unleashed a focused bolt of black lightning. Again, Saber did not move. The lightning washed over her and sputtered out. Her cold, mocking laugh echoed across the crater.
"Useless tricks," she stated. "My resistance to your magecraft is absolute. You are a sorcerer whose sorcery is worthless. You have nothing."
His primary tools—nullified. His grin widened into something manic. "Then I'll just have to tear you apart piece by piece," Sukuna roared, charging back into the fray.
The next several minutes were a brutal exchange. He abandoned his techniques, his four arms a chaotic storm of strikes. His lower arms jabbed and deflected, trying to create openings. His upper arms brought his cursed tools down in devastating arcs. But for every multi-pronged assault he launched, she responded with perfect, efficient counters. She spun, letting a smash from Kamutoke shatter the rock where she'd been, her own sword rising in a slash. Sukuna was forced to catch the blade between Hiten's prongs, the impact driving him back, his arms groaning. She shoved, creating an inch of space, and her blade became a blur. A low feint forced his guard down, opening his chest for a devastatingly fast thrust. With a snarl, Sukuna kicked her blade just enough off-target that it scored a deep, gouging line across his ribs instead of piercing his heart. The flesh was already knitting itself back together.
"You heal quickly," she observed, her voice flat. "It will only prolong your suffering."
She pressed her advantage. Excalibur Morgan moved with a speed that felt like it was already there, forcing Sukuna into a purely defensive struggle. He could not land a clean hit. Annoyance began to curdle within him. He feinted a downward swing with Hiten, expecting a parry, while his lower left hand shot up in an open-palm strike aimed at her elbow. It should have worked.
Saber's golden eyes flickered. She abandoned her parry an instant before he committed, letting Hiten crash into the ground. In that same breath, her gauntlet caught his rising lower arm by the wrist. A sickening crunch echoed as she twisted, snapping his forearm with contemptuous ease. Before he could react, a powerful front kick drove into his chest, sending him staggering back.
He healed the break instantly, his four eyes now burning with a cold rage. Every move he made, she had a more efficient counter.
Frustrated by his tenacity, Saber's patience finally snapped. "This farce is over!" she snarled. Red lightning exploded around her form, a violent Mana Burst.
Sukuna recognized the absolute threat. She was no longer just faster; she was a blur of absolute destruction. He couldn't block. He couldn't dodge. He could only perceive. She reappeared directly in front of him, her sword already descending. In a desperate, instinctual act, he dropped his weapons and threw all four arms up in a reinforced cross-guard.
His world exploded. He felt his own bones shatter. He was launched, tumbling end over end for hundreds of meters before crashing through a steel support pillar and coming to a halt in a mountain of rubble. He pushed himself from the wreckage, his four arms mangled ruins. Reverse Cursed Technique flooded them, a furious, agonizing knitting of tissue and sinew. By the time he stood, they were whole again, but the memory of the impact was an irritating thrum in his very soul.
Saber was already striding toward him, wreathed in red lightning. "A shame," she said, her voice dripping with disdain as she raised her sword for the final blow. "I had truly expected more."
Sukuna looked up, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. A conventional assault was impossible. Therefore, he had to change the rules. A slow, insane grin spread across his face. He made no move to defend, instead planting one of his lower hands firmly onto the ruined earth. He could not command her to be cut. But he could command the world around her to fall apart.
"You fight on the ground a king provides," Sukuna's voice echoed, quiet but laced with menace. "But you seem to have forgotten… the ground is mine to command."
Without incantation, he unleashed his Cursed Technique.
DISMANTLE.
The entire battlefield for a mile in every direction simply ceased to be stable. The ground under Saber's feet didn't just crack; it disintegrated into a plunging avalanche. Her expression of arrogant finality twisted into one of genuine shock and fury as the very world fell away into a newly-formed, thousand-foot chasm. The fight was not over; the board had just been violently reset.
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The silence on the two-mile-wide caldera was profound, a dead space carved from the world. Archer pushed himself from the rubble at the crater's edge, his crimson-lined coat in tatters. A mile away, in the molten heart of the devastation, the creature that had done this was already facing the King of Knights. His duty was clear. He drew his bow, nocking an arrow not of simple wood, but of condensed, corrupt energy. His target: the four-armed demon.
He never loosed. A pillar of fire erupted at his feet, forcing him to leap back with an annoyed snarl. Across the desolate expanse of cooling rock and magma stood his eternal rival, Cú Chulainn, staff in hand, a feral grin plastered across his face.
"Is the dog scared to be away from its master?" Cú's voice, laced with mocking contempt, carried effortlessly across the distance.
"I'll be the one putting down a stray dog today," Archer retorted, his voice flat and cold. This new, open battlefield was a sniper's dream. He began his assault, a relentless volley of high-arcing arrows, each one twisted to detonate on impact.
Cú just laughed. He didn't even bother to raise his staff. He stood there as the projectiles struck an invisible wall a foot from his body and were violently deflected into the molten earth. Protection from Arrows. A perfect, infuriating counter.
Archer's eyes narrowed. This was a pointless waste of mana. He turned, abandoning the open ground, and leaped into the shadowy ruins that had once been the base of the mountain. He wasn't retreating; he was repositioning to a battlefield that favored him.
"Running away already, you bastard?!" Cú's roar of pursuit came almost instantly.
Archer landed in a ruined courtyard, twin blades already projected in his hands, just as Cú Chulainn crashed down opposite him, shattering the stone tiles. The hunt was over. The fight began.
"You should have stayed out on the flats, blacksmith," Cú growled, launching himself forward, his staff a devastating horizontal sweep. Archer met it with Kanshou and Bakuya.
CRACK!
Rune-hardened wood met projected steel, a shockwave erupting between them. The close-quarters battle was a maelstrom of violence. Archer's blades were a blur of lethal precision; Cú's staff was a whirlwind of raw power. For every cunning feint Archer attempted, Cú replied with a burst of runic power—a point-blank blast of fire that forced Archer to backflip away; a jagged shard of cursed ice that he had to contemptuously bat aside.
The stalemate began to grate on Cú's pride. He charged, but this time his staff shimmered with a diamond-hard sheen of runic energy. Archer crossed his blades to meet it. The clash was different. Cú's staff did not just stop Archer's blades; it shattered them.
"Hardening your staff with a cheap spell?" Archer snarled, a fresh pair of blades already in his hands. "Still just a dog relying on brute force."
He was cut off as Cú used the opening to drive the butt of his staff hard into his stomach. The wind was driven from the Counter-Guardian's lungs with a pained grunt as he was sent stumbling back.
"It's not brute force," Cú panted, a manic grin on his face. "It's finesse."
"A parlor trick," Archer growled. He created distance and projected a far more powerful weapon: Caladbolg II. "Let's see if your luck holds against this, Dog," he said, the insult deliberate as he twisted the sword into an arrow.
Cú aborted his own attempt to gather power, instead pouring his energy into a desperate, multi-layered shield of glowing, defensive runes. The spiraling arrow tore at the runic barrier, which flared and buckled under the strain, erupting outwards in a hemispherical blast that leveled every remaining structure in the area.
Both men were blown backwards. Cú slid to a halt, his robes singed. Archer landed in a crouch, a trickle of blood on his lip. An infuriating stalemate. As they both prepared to charge again, they heard it.
A heavy, rhythmic, and impossibly fast sound, like a freight train barreling towards them. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
Both Servants turned. Archer's expression twisted into a snarl of profound annoyance. His calculated duel was over.
Mash Kyrielight crashed into the courtyard, her massive shield held high. She planted her feet, taking a defensive stance between Cú and Archer. Her voice was a clear, ringing declaration. "Caster! I will be your shield!"
"Another insect joins the fray," Archer sneered. "Hiding behind a girl's skirt, dog? A new low."
"Shut your mouth," Cú shot back, his grin returning. "This is called teamwork. A concept you probably threw away with your soul."
The dynamic shifted instantly. Cú fought with a new, reckless abandon, a pure offensive storm. Mash was his anchor, a moving wall of steel intercepting every high-powered shot Archer tried to make, her movements clumsy but effective. Archer was forced onto the back foot, a position he despised.
A few hundred yards away, Gudako Fujimaru and Olga Marie Animusphere finally arrived. Archer saw them. The Master. The weak link. This was his chance.
"Enough of this," he growled. He leaped backwards, gaining height. His movements became a blur as he drew and loosed, projecting a volley of nameless swords, each one overloaded into an explosive Broken Phantasm in the space of a single breath. A storm of shrieking steel descended, designed to flood the entire area and kill the two humans.
Cú swore, his staff a blur as he batted a dozen projectiles from the air, but more took their place. Mash planted her feet, a bastion against the storm, but she couldn't be everywhere at once. A blade slipped past her guard, then two, then ten.
Gudako looked at the descending sky of swords and made a decision. A searing, brilliant light erupted from the back of her right hand.
"MASH!" she screamed, pouring her will, her desperation, and the absolute power of her first Command Seal down their fragile link.
The power of a Master's ultimate authority flooded Mash's system. It was a key. An awakening. She slammed the base of her shield into the ravaged earth, pouring every ounce of the command's energy into her single, desperate desire: Protect. Her voice was a single, harrowing shout.
"HAAAAAUGH!"
A brilliant, pristine white light erupted from the shield's face. Not a barrier of metal, but a wall of pure, conceptual hope. The shimmering, spectral ramparts of a fortress materialized around them. Archer's storm of death struck the shining white walls and simply ceased to be.
For a single, stunned moment, Archer stared in disbelief. His guard was down. He was completely exposed.
Cú Chulainn saw it. The opening. He slammed the butt of his staff into the earth. His free hand began to trace glowing patterns in the air as the ground groaned, the nascent, skeletal hand of a fiery effigy clawing its way from the soil.
Archer recovered, nocking another arrow, a spiraling monstrosity, aimed to interrupt the ritual.
He was too late. Gudako, tears of pride streaming down her face, raised her hand again. Her second Command Seal flared. Her voice was no longer a plea, but a king's decree.
"CASTER, FINISH HIM!"
The order struck Cú like a bolt of lightning, his ritual completing in an instant. A colossal, twenty-meter-tall giant of burning wicker-man erupted from the ground. A massive hand of flame shot out, its fingers closing around Archer's stunned form. A cage-like door opened in the effigy's chest, revealing a raging inferno within. The giant contemptuously tossed him inside and slammed the door.
The last thing they heard was Archer's single, enraged curse.
Just as Cú Chulainn raised his staff to deliver the final command, the world turned blue.
It wasn't a gradual change. The red sky, the orange flames, the black ruins—everything was instantly washed out by a brilliant, unnatural blue light erupting from the crater miles away. A strange, clean coldness washed over them, a feeling of pure energy that had none of the heat of the city's fires. Gudako and Olga stared, mouths agape, their senses completely overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the light. Even Cú paused his chant for a split second, his eyes wide with a professional warrior's shock at the sheer scale of the power being unleashed.
Then, as quickly as it came, the blue light vanished, plunging the world back into its normal, fiery red. Cú shook off the momentary stun, his expression now a grim mask of resolve. He raised his staff, a new, deeper understanding of the monster he was allied with dawning in his eyes, and snarled.
"WICKER MAN!
The Wicker-Man erupted, a miniature sun of all-consuming fire. When the light faded, there was nothing left but a pile of white ash. The Archer was gone.
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For a brief moment, a flicker of respect was in Saber's golden eyes. Trapped and outmatched, her opponent had chosen to rewrite the battlefield. A commendable, if futile, gambit. They fell, the chasm walls a blur. She was a master of this falling world, using Mana Burst to leap from one plummeting slab of concrete to another. Sukuna became a force of chaotic control, using gusts of wind from Hiten to turn the debris field into a weaponized vortex.
A massive support pillar, sent spinning by a blast of air, forced Saber to cleave it in two. In that instant, Sukuna appeared behind her, all four arms swinging. She twisted, her obsidian blade meeting every blow in a shower of sparks. It was still a losing battle. As he healed a fresh crack in his sternum, a final, insane strategy clicked into place. He landed on a massive, floating island of asphalt.
"You wished for a challenger, King of Knights," his voice echoed, distorted and layered.
"Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine."
The world dissolved. Saber found herself in a dark, watery expanse dominated by a grotesque temple of bone. Her Instinct screamed as a relentless, inescapable rain of invisible slashes descended upon her. And did nothing. The blades struck her with the sound of sand scattering against a castle wall, the infinitesimal cuts erased by her regeneration an instant after they appeared.
"Is this it?" she asked, her voice echoing. "The trump card you staked your life on?" She charged. For a hundred seconds, a humiliating brawl resumed within his inner world. He threw four punches; she blocked three and broke the fourth. She swung her sword; he caught it with Hiten, the force sending him skidding. Finally, she smashed him with a two-handed blow that sent him careening into the central structure of the Shrine. The impact was the final strain. The Domain shattered.
Back in the chasm, Sukuna hung in the air, bruised and battered, yet a triumphant smirk grew on his face. As Saber charged again, he formed the sign.
"Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine."
As Saber was pulled back into his reality, she froze. "Impossible…" she whispered. She dismissed her shock. "A desperate gamble."
The slashes were useless. But this time, Sukuna used Air Jumps, exploding upwards, forcing her to look up as he assaulted her from above. Enraged, she decided to end it. She planted her feet and raised her sword.
"EXCALIBUR MORGAN!"
A torrent of black annihilation tore through the Shrine. Sukuna, anticipating this, coated his body in Domain Amplification. He Air-Jumped at the last second, but was too slow. The edge of the beam grazed his left side. The Amplification flared, minimizing the holy energy, but not the raw force. The attack seared away the entire left side of his torso. The Domain shattered.
The wound was grotesque, smoking, resisting even RCT. But as Saber fell from the collapsing Domain, she saw something that defied all reason. Sukuna, wreathed in black sparks of healing, was already forming the hand sign a third time. He was bleeding, exhausted, and smiling.
"Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine."
This instance felt weaker, the edges fraying. The slashes had become negligible. For forty agonizing seconds, he was pummeled, broken, and thrown across his own temple, never once falling, always getting back to his feet, a manic, defiant grin on his bloodied face. Then, at the precipice of his defeat, he stopped.
He dropped into a low stance, clasping his upper two palms and lower two palms together. As he pulled them apart, a flame no larger than a candle's wick appeared. It was not the angry red of Fuga. It was blue. A brilliant, pure blue, born of positive energy.
"Fool," Saber snarled, lunging for the final blow.
She was too late. From his abdominal mouth, a single, booming word:
"FUGA!"
The blue flame ignited. A colossal arrow, the size of a siege tower, was unleashed. It touched the cursed debris from his third Shrine, and in that instant, a chain reaction tore through reality. The metaphysical remnants of the first Shrine, the lingering wreckage of the second—all became fuel. A thermobaric explosion of pure positive energy ripped through his domain. Saber, caught at the absolute center of three overlapping ground zeros, was consumed.
The world shattered a final time. A blinding flash of blue erupted in the physical chasm. When it faded, she was still standing, her armor cracked and melted into slag. And then it began. Her pitch-black armor flashed to silver-blue. Her yellow hair to a vibrant gold. The cold fury on her face to one of confused agony. Black. Blue. Black. Blue.
Sukuna, his chest heaving, saw it for the first time: the dark, spiritual tether flowing from her soul to the Grail. His gamble had paid off.
His two mouths began the incantation. "Scale of the Dragon. Recoil. Twin Meteors." He brought his hand forward. "Dismantle."
The conceptual blade passed through her, severing the chain to the Grail. She let out a raw, guttural scream as her connection to infinite power was snipped away. Her flickering grew more frantic.
Sukuna began the chant again. "Scale of the Dragon. Recoil. Twin Meteors." He saw her turn, a flicker of the original Artoria's defiant eyes meeting his.
He respected it. He honored it. He gave a slight nod. He had been beaten, humiliated, and pushed to his limits. But in the end, there could only be one king. He spoke the final word.
"Dismantle."
This time, the slash did not pass through. A perfect, clean line appeared across her form—through armor, flesh, and spirit. It was not a wound. It was an absolute ending.
And so, the battle was decided.
The KING OF KNIGHTS fell, and the KING OF CURSES reigned alone.
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Author's Note
Hey everyone,
Just a few quick updates for you.
The next chapter is scheduled for this Saturday, but I might drop it earlier if inspiration strikes.
Also, the poll on Patreon has finished, and the "Yuta in FGO" fic has been chosen! The first three chapters are already up for patrons.
I tried a slightly different style for the fight scene in this chapter. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. If you guys aren't feeling it, I can switch back to the old style. Let me know what you think!
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Thanks for reading!
Patreon: patreon.com/st_scarface
Ciao.