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There was a brutal elegance to pure numbers superiority.
Gawain swung the Sword of Revolving Victory and the flames consumed the surrounding oxygen, boiling the atmosphere along the blade's path. A crimson line appeared across the field, marking the end of however many Astolfo manifestations had been standing in it.
Then, accompanied by another wave of chattering, more Astolfos surged out of the void to replace them.
It didn't matter.
A backhand draw, the same blazing arc, and the new wave became white ash reflecting in the firelight along with the last.
Gawain swept his gaze across the field. His expression hadn't changed since the engagement started.
For any Servant, mana was the foundation everything else stood on. Quality and quantity together determined output, and most Noble Phantasms — outside a small category of low-cost exceptions — scaled directly with available mana. Astolfo's manifestation ability worked on the same principle, whatever its specific mechanism was. The solution, from Gawain's perspective, didn't require understanding the mechanism. It just required cutting the source.
He executed a high jump.
At the peak of it, the Sword of Revolving Victory came down with both hands, driving directly into the earth.
The ground split. Heat surged upward from somewhere far below, magma-bright, carving a crimson line across the battlefield that mirrored what the sword had already been doing in the air.
The Astolfos seemed to understand what this meant.
Their chattering hardened into something more focused. They came at Gawain with renewed intensity, throwing themselves at the gap between strategy and desperation.
The stat gap was too large to overcome through commitment alone.
Gawain didn't use the sword this time.
He reached out, caught one of the charging Astolfos by the head, and closed his grip.
The manifestation dissolved into spirit particles in his hand.
[Chat]:
[Disturbed]: is this what "too cute to live" actually means in practice
[Concerned]: the bunny boy fate is grim today
[Going_All_In]: I am completely invested in this fight against my will
[Power_Gap]: the gap is too real. is he just clearing the field at this point?
[Dian_Wei_Mention]: only Dian Wei could match Gawain at noon and he's gone. there's nobody left who can take this directly.
[Where_Are_The_Others]: where is everyone else. someone help. this is just Astolfo buying time alone.
[Castle_Excuse]: what else — the castle melted. it takes time to get out of a lava pit.
[Alex_Watching]: Alex, why are you just standing there. go help Gawain.
Alex was, by any honest measure, an excellent war correspondent.
He'd given the audience a clean, complete view of the entire Gawain-versus-Astolfo exchange. But characterizing his current behavior as "just watching" would be inaccurate — what he was actually doing was scanning the field for enemy positions.
The ground had been scorched flat by Gawain's strikes. Anyone hiding in it would have nowhere left to hide.
He had a human equivalent of a guided weapon standing beside him. If he found the enemy's position and relayed it, the engagement was functionally over.
If the enemy escaped instead — that was acceptable too. His objective had always been territorial control, not a kill count. A kill was a bonus, not a requirement. He'd watched enough matches collapse from greed, from players overextending past their actual win condition and exposing themselves in the process. Stick to the objective, and the position held. Reach for more than the objective demanded, and the position became vulnerable.
The map still showed the point as contested rather than captured. That meant the Black faction's Master in this location was still alive somewhere.
Still alive meant still a target.
What Alex hadn't confirmed yet: whether there were additional Servants beyond Astolfo defending this point, and whether "Charlemagne" had been a pure illusion or an actual disguised hero.
He was turning this over when a golden-armored figure rose from the far end of the ruins.
"Mighty Knight of the Sun!" Don Quixote's voice carried across the scorched field with the formal cadence of a knight initiating a proper challenge. "Forgive my earlier deception. Knight Don Quixote offers his sincere apology. And in the same breath — I will now launch my charge against you."
"Deception." Gawain's attention shifted fully. "So it was you wearing the name. Then come — let me see your resolve."
A knight who declared his true name received the same courtesy in return. Don Quixote, freed from the performance he'd been playing earlier, had no further obligation to restraint.
Gawain's backhand cleaved another leaping Astolfo in the same motion as his response.
[Chat]:
[Brutal]: Prince Charming just killed a little princess mid-sentence without breaking stride
[Don_Quixote_Standing]: the old knight is fully committed now
[Height_Note]: he's barely 1.5 meters tall and he's charging Gawain with a straight spear
[Broken_Armor]: the broken golden armor catching the light is genuinely a good visual
[Speed_Assessment]: not fast. but absolutely fearless.
Gawain felt the conviction in the spear tip before the spear itself arrived.
He parried with a backhand sword stroke, then spun through the deflection into a follow-up aimed at Don Quixote's throat.
An old knight facing him made no difference to the outcome of the strike. Knighthood didn't extend special mercy to opponents who'd earned the duel honestly — if anything, the opposite. This was a confrontation of belief systems, not a mismatch to be pitied. Treating Don Quixote gently would have been the actual disrespect.
A crimson lotus of impact bloomed where the blade met its mark.
Elsewhere on the field, a different engagement was already in motion.
Alex, as a faceless streamer, kept his Kotomine Kirei avatar in its default appearance throughout. Professor Pu — face-revealing, with a build large enough that minimizing his collision profile mattered tactically — had also kept his default Emiya Kiritsugu model rather than customizing it.
While Gawain handled Astolfo and Don Quixote simultaneously, Professor Pu moved.
Double acceleration carried him out of the melted castle's wreckage at speed. He cleared the rubble, raised the submachine gun already in his grip, and opened fire on Alex's position from the higher ground he'd used for cover.
Alex moved.
The speed of it caught Professor Pu completely off guard — and the chat watching his stream along with him.
[Chat]:
[HE'S_FAST]: wait — Alex just dodged that entire burst
[Kotomine_Stats]: Kotomine Kirei's character build has actual combat capability. people forget that.
[Professor_Pu_Surprised]: Professor Pu's expression right now
[This_Wasn't_In_THE_PLAN]: the plan was a clean snipe. this is not a clean snipe anymore.
[Both_Fights_At_Once]: Gawain vs Astolfo and Don Quixote on one side, Professor Pu vs Alex on the other
[Competition_Status]: who solves their side first — this is happening live right now
[End of Chapter 188]
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