The Small World Encompassing the Azure Sky is a shield described in a hundred lines of the eighteenth song of the Iliad. It was forged by the god Hephaestus, and upon it was projected the world seen by the great hero of greek mythology, the demigod Achilles. The outer edges were stirred by ocean currents due to the sea god.
The forging god recreated the world Achilles lived in on the shield in a miniature state. To confront this shield is to confront the world itself. Once activated, it can defend against all attacks, whether against humans, armies, cities, nations, or divine noble phantasms, by deploying a small world defense. It is a divine construct personally crafted by the forging god Hephaestus, capable of almost completely blocking all attacks against humans, armies, and even cities and nations. However, due to its nature, it has an extremely poor compatibility with Anti-World noble phantasms.
The gungnir, thrown back by Rin, struck the deployed World Shield. The point of the spear and the invisible barrier generated by the shield collided, igniting an intensely blinding white light. The meteor spear falling from the starry sky blasted Gilgamesh, along with the shield barrier enveloping him, into the sea!
The dozens of meters of waves it stirred up exploded into colossal surges. The waves generated in this mythical battlefield, spanning a thousand meters, were enough to annihilate an entire 01 fleet in an instant!
Rin's figure, faster than lightning, swiftly stepped onto the crest of a giant wave. In her empty left hand, a pure, glowing light suddenly flashed, and the chunjun (ancient sword name), radiant with lotus-like sword light, appeared in Rin's hand. This sword, the Sword of All-Defense Shattering, which Lancelot had taken from Gilgamesh's treasury, was imbued with a sure-hit rune and was directly thrown by Rin as a flying knife towards Gilgamesh beneath the sea.
The whistling chunjun (ancient sword name) divine sword instantly cut through the golden sea surface. When its defense-shattering blade touched the invisible and colorless barrier, the Small World Encompassing the Azure Sky shattered at a touch, exposing Gilgamesh once again to the threat of gungnir.
At this moment, Gilgamesh drew a slender, curved blade that appeared to be cast from pure gold from a golden ripple-gate in his Gate of Babylon. Gripping the hilt, he struck horizontally, batting away the meteor spear, which still had momentum, back into the air.
Under an invisible gravitational pull, the two noble phantasms Rin had thrown autonomously traced an impossible, curving parabolic arc in the air, returning to Rin's hands.
Rin frowned as she watched Gilgamesh wield his weapon to bat away gungnir. She activated her Master's reserved Heroic Spirit information-reading skill and noticed a significant change in Gilgamesh.
His Class had changed!
It's not uncommon for a Heroic Spirit to be able to use multiple Classes. If they were proficient in various skills during their lifetime, and are summoned as a Class corresponding to one of those skills, they can only retain one to manifest with the corresponding noble phantasms. For example, Diarmuid, who manifested in this Holy Grail War as a Lancer, could not bring his two demonic swords.
This situation is very common, but Gilgamesh is an extremely special case. He can be summoned in multiple Classes, but there is also another possibility: manifesting with his own name as his Class—
Gilgamesh! This was Gilgamesh's Class at this moment. Clad in divine attire, Gilgamesh had returned to his strongest state. At this moment, Rin was no longer facing a Heroic Spirit of a certain Class, but the flawless King of Heroes from the Age of Gods!
Few people knew that besides possessing all the noble phantasms in the world, Gilgamesh was also the strongest warrior of the Mesopotamian plains. However, as the supreme tyrant, the praise for this martial prowess was too little known compared to the legends of him collecting all treasures in the world for himself, and thus could not be elevated into a skill. Otherwise, he would also possess Unlimited Martial Prowess!
He slew Humbaba, the forest beast that brought disaster to living beings, and together with Enkidu, he eliminated the divine beast Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven, which plunged the land into a seven-year famine. In the ancient Age of Gods, he led the Babylonian dynasty of Mesopotamia to prosperity. How could such a powerful individual rely solely on having many noble phantasms to win?
Without the constraints of the Archer Class on close-quarters martial arts, Gilgamesh, whose Class was simply his own name, simultaneously regained his own two-thirds divinity. The formidable martial arts that surpassed all others in ancient Mesopotamia were reclaimed.
Damn it, even his close-combat weakness has been nullified!
Rin gnashed her teeth, roaring in her heart with hatred. Gilgamesh, displaying his full power, was truly a perfect existence, completely standing outside the realm of normal specifications.
The sea surface, cratered by gungnir's impact, rapidly filled with surrounding seawater. Seeing Gilgamesh submerged beneath the water, Rin, in the briefest pause of less than a breath in his attacks, began to channel and unleash the strongest attack within her current capabilities!
"Illusory Projection: Parallel Replacement!"
Utilizing the Second Magic, which the Jeweled Sword was equipped with, to tear open a rift to a parallel world, Rin extended her right hand, clad in a paint black knight's gauntlet, into it and pulled out a paint black, massive spear-blade over seven meters long! It was a spear in length, yet shaped like a greatsword, with seventy percent of its length forming a sword-like sharp edge, a huge acute triangle. At its widest point, where the hilt met the blade, it measured seventy centimeters across, engraved with a massive golden sun. A powerful divine aura of the sun radiated from this unusually strange divine weapon!
Rin held the massive spear-blade with one hand, braced against her arm, and leaped over the waves to a hundred meters in the sky. She created a floating pathway with Mana beneath her feet, halting at a hundred meters in the air.
An extreme Mana Burst was infused into the god-slaying spear-blade in her hand. The glowing golden sun engraving ignited the Mana, and sacred, scorching golden flames erupted around Rin! Rin stood above the sea like a golden sun, the intense flames igniting the air, as if threatening to evaporate the vast ocean.
Locking onto Gilgamesh's position beneath the sea, Rin pointed the spear-blade directly, closed her eyes in concentration, and poured all her Mana into the spear-blade in her hand. Under the infusion of immense Mana, vast as an ocean, and as the Mana-transformed flames reached their peak intensity, Rin suddenly opened her eyes and solemnly, gravely, declared:
"Comprehend the mercy of the King of Gods."
"Indra, watch closely."
"Annihilation, lies in this single thrust..."
A grand, boundless light of the sun burst forth! It was as if the true sun from the other side of the Earth had suddenly descended upon the sea. Divine flames, with a temperature comparable to the sun's core, gathered, compressed, and converged into the spear-blade. The sheer scorching heat emanating from the flames evaporated the hundred-meter expanse of sea beneath her feet into a sea of mist.
The infinite divine flames of the sun converged into light, and Rin shouted the final incantation:
"—Burn completely—O' Sun, Obey Death!!!"
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