The air did not just grow cold; it died.
Bestia Avaritia, the Sin Dragon of Greed, raised its stark white, clawed hand. The dark blue jewel on its collarbone pulsed, and the immense, geometric theater-wings behind it expanded, casting a shadow that seemed to swallow the very concept of light.
It was initiating Sanguine Dominion.
The blood-red streaks running down its chest and the stained hems of its holy raiment began to violently boil, separating from its body as liquid ribbons of cursed draconic mana. They solidified in the air, forming hundreds of razor-sharp, crystalline blood-stakes. Each stake hummed with a terrifying density, carrying the combined weight of Fafnir's toxicity and the absolute piercing power of a Beast.
With a silent, imperious flick of its wrist, Avaritia unleashed the swarm.
"Stay behind me!" Jeanne shouted, her voice cutting through the suffocating Singing Void.
She slammed her standard into the melting ice. Luminosité Eternelle: God is Here With Me (Barrier A Rank) flared into a brilliant golden dome.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-KRAKOOM!
The blood-stakes struck the holy barrier with the force of consecutive meteor impacts. Jeanne screamed in agony as the sheer, conceptual weight of the Sin Dragon's greed bore down on her. The Beast wasn't just trying to pierce her shield; it was actively trying to devour the holiness of her Noble Phantasm. The golden light began to violently flicker, bleeding away into the suffocating gravity of the Beast's aura.
Behind her, Jalter was on her hands and knees, gasping for air. Her Spirit Origin was critically destabilized. Avaritia's initial attack had drained almost all of her mana, leaving her magic circuits entirely barren. She was at the absolute brink of disappearance. She couldn't even summon a single spark of her cursed flames.
She was completely, utterly powerless.
And then, she started to laugh.
It started as a low chuckle, echoing painfully in her chest, before erupting into a full-blown, manic cackle that rivaled Francesca's madness.
Jeanne glanced back, her arms trembling as the holy shield began to shatter. "Alter! What are you doing?! Run!"
"Run? From a gluttonous, overgrown lizard?" Jalter wheezed, slowly pushing herself up off the ice. She wiped a trail of black blood from her chin, her golden eyes locking onto the floating Beast with absolute, arrogant malice. "Tell me, you mindless parasite... do you realize what you just did?"
Avaritia's soulless, glowing golden eyes shifted slightly toward the Avenger.
"That idiot Caster's Noble Phantasm is still active," Jalter sneered, spreading her arms wide. "The Anti-Logic field. Strong becomes weak. Weak becomes strong."
Jalter took a step forward.
"I am an Avenger. My power comes from my hatred, my mana, and my fire. And you... you just drained my mana to absolute zero. You reduced me to the weakest, most pathetic, fragile state I have ever been in since the Grail spat me out."
Her smile widened, revealing her fangs.
"Which means... under the rules of this twisted stage... I AM NOW THE STRONGEST THING IN THIS SINGULARITY!"
The B+ Rank Anti-Logic field violently registered Jalter's state of absolute zero. The World's logic instantly inverted.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
A pillar of paradoxical fire erupted from Jalter's body, completely obliterating the frozen wasteland around them. But the flames were not her signature pitch-black and crimson. They were a blinding, terrifyingly pure white. Because her weakness had been inverted, her cursed, hateful flames had been inverted into a chilling, absolute anti-fire that burned with the intensity of a dying star.
Avaritia's head snapped toward her. For the first time, the Beast's oppressive silence was broken by a low, mechanical growl of actual caution.
Jalter didn't just walk; she bypassed the concept of distance entirely, appearing directly in front of the holy shield. She reached out and casually swatted her hand through the air.
The swarm of Avaritia's blood-stakes—attacks carrying the weight of a Beast—were instantly vaporized the moment they touched her white flames.
"Take a breather, Saint," Jalter spat, glancing back at the exhausted Jeanne. "I'm going to show this thing what happens when you try to eat a witch."
Avaritia reacted instantly. The dark blue jewel on its chest flared, initiating its Axiom Override. The Beast sought to declare a new rule of reality to crush the anomaly before it. The geometric wings flared, and the Beast raised both hands to warp the space around Jalter into a crushing singularity.
But suddenly, the Beast's arms violently jerked to a halt, as if they had been caught in a vice grip of solid titanium.
Ding...
The chilling, spectral sound of a temple bell echoed across the battlefield.
Avaritia looked down. Wrapping tightly around its invincible, stark-white draconic legs were massive, glowing scales of aquamarine and gold.
Kiyohime had awakened.
Like Jalter, the Berserker had been rendered completely unconscious and battered to the brink of death by the previous battle. Her utter fragility had triggered the Anti-Logic field's ultimate inversion. Kiyohime's half-human, half-serpent form was now radiating a conceptual density that defied the laws of physics. She wasn't just heavy; she was anchored to the very texture of the world.
"You..." Kiyohime whispered, her voice dangerously calm, her reptilian eyes glowing with a terrifying, inverted sanity. She slithered upward, her massive serpentine coils wrapping around the Beast's waist and arms, physically pinning the humanoid abomination in place. "You made a very loud noise... while I was trying to sleep. Do you know how rude that is to Anchin-sama?!"
Avaritia struggled, its invincible scales grinding against Kiyohime's coils, but the Berserker's inverted strength made her grip absolute. The Beast opened its fanged maw to unleash the Roar at point-blank range, preparing to vaporize the serpent.
"I don't think so!"
Jeanne d'Arc surged forward. Abandoning her defensive stance, she channeled all her remaining holy light directly into the tip of her standard. She leaped into the air and drove the flagpole directly into the dark blue jewel on Avaritia's chest—the Beast's Singularity Core.
"God is here with me!" Jeanne cried out. The holy light didn't pierce the invincible armor, but it acted as a divine jammer, violently disrupting the Beast's chaotic reactor and causing the sonic blast in its throat to misfire in a shower of sparks and black mud.
"Hold it right there, snake!" Jalter roared.
The Dragon Witch leaped high above the entangled Beast and the holy maiden. She gripped her blackened sword with both hands. The blinding, paradoxical white flames condensed entirely into the blade, compressing an ocean of inverted, infinite mana into a single, executing edge.
Bestia Avaritia stared up at the descending Avenger. The Beast of Greed, the entity that was meant to consume the world, found itself completely immobilized by a broken serpent, silenced by a battered saint, and about to be executed by its own stolen meal.
"This is the roar of my soul! Burn to ash and return to the void!"
Jalter brought the sword down.
La Grondement Du Haine: Roar, Rage of Mine (Anti-Army EX).
The blade struck the exact center of Avaritia's helm.
Because the Beast possessed the Ultimate Draconic Apex (absolute immunity), and Jalter possessed inverted, infinite conceptual strength from the Anti-Logic field, the collision created a localized tear in reality. The sound was deafening—a screech of tearing metal and shattered glass.
A pillar of blinding white fire pierced the rusted sky of Orleans, engulfing the humanoid Beast in an inferno of paradoxical, anti-logic energy. Jalter poured every single ounce of her inverted hatred into the strike, screaming until her vocal cords tore.
For a few seconds, it felt like victory. It felt like the Beast was burning.
Then, the white flames began to swirl. Not outward in an explosion, but inward.
Jalter's eyes widened in horror. The infinite, paradoxical fire wasn't incinerating Avaritia. It was being sucked into the dark blue jewel on the Beast's chest.
Bestia Avaritia, the Sin Dragon of Greed, was a manifestation of an Evil of Humanity. Its hunger was not bound by human logic, nor could it be tricked by a mere Caster's Noble Phantasm. The Beast simply opened its fanged maw and began to literally devour the Anti-Logic field itself.
Crack.
Avaritia casually reached up with one stark-white, clawed hand and grabbed Jalter's blackened sword by the blade. Despite the paradoxical heat, the Beast didn't even flinch. It squeezed. The cursed blade shattered into a dozen pieces.
"No... impossible..." Jalter gasped, her momentum completely halted.
Avaritia's golden eyes glowed with absolute, cold superiority. It didn't even use a skill. It simply flexed its aura.
A shockwave of sheer, dense draconic mana exploded from its body. Kiyohime, whose inverted serpentine strength had been pinning the Beast, screamed in agony as Avaritia effortlessly expanded its chest. The invincible white scales ground against her coils, shattering her aquamarine scales like cheap glass. Avaritia grabbed the massive serpent by the throat and violently hurled her across the battlefield.
Kiyohime crashed through three melting glaciers before collapsing into the boiling water, violently forced back into her frail, human form, completely unresponsive.
"Kiyohime!" Jeanne cried out.
But Avaritia was already moving. The Beast casually pulled Jeanne's holy standard out of the jewel on its chest. The divine light that had been jamming its core was snuffed out as if it were a cheap candle. Avaritia backhanded the Holy Maiden with the flat of its claws.
The kinetic force bypassed Jeanne's Ruler-class resistances entirely. Her armor shattered, and she was launched backward, tumbling across the jagged ice until she violently crashed into the base of a ruined watchtower. She coughed up blood, her vision swimming as her spiritual core suffered critical damage.
Jalter, now disarmed and suspended in the air before the Beast, could only watch as Avaritia's hand closed around her throat.
The Beast lifted the Dragon Witch up to its eye level. The Anti-Logic field completely shattered, digested by the Beast's Singularity Core. Jalter's paradoxical, infinite strength vanished instantly, leaving her completely drained, battered, and at the absolute mercy of the Sin Dragon.
"Ghk—!" Jalter choked, kicking her legs helplessly against the Beast's pristine white armor. The blood-red streaks on Avaritia's chest pulsed, casting a sickening light over her face.
The terrifying, fanged maw beneath the Beast's elegant helm parted, emitting the low, subsonic thrum of the Singing Void. It was no longer a battle. It was an execution.
"Damn it... let her go!" Jeanne pleaded, desperately trying to use her splintered standard as a crutch to stand up. Her legs refused to obey. Her holy light was flickering out.
Jalter stared into the soulless golden slits of the Beast. The Dragon Witch, born of wrath and vengeance, felt an overwhelming, crushing weight of despair. A Demon God Pillar was a weapon; this thing was a natural disaster that had learned to hate. There was no logic to exploit, no weakness to strike.
Bestia Avaritia raised its free hand, forming a condensed orb of apocalyptic, twilight ether and abyssal fire—a miniature Nibelheim ready to vaporize Jalter at point-blank range.
The execution was set. Bestia Avaritia raised its hand, the dark blue jewel on its chest flaring as it prepared to unleash a condensed, apocalyptic orb of twilight ether and abyssal fire to erase the remaining Servants.
But the Sin Dragon of Greed, an entity that fed on power and survival, fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the heroes standing against it.
They were no longer fighting to win. They were fighting to take the Beast down with them.
"You want to absorb me?" Jalter wheezed, her voice a ragged, blood-soaked rasp. She was still suspended in the air, the Beast's claw tight around her throat. She glared directly into the soulless golden slits of the Beast's helm. Her blackened sword was shattered, her mana was zero, and her Anti-Logic inversion was gone.
But she had one thing left.
"I am the Witch of Vengeance. I don't need a sword. I am the fire."
Jalter didn't try to break free. Instead, she drove both of her hands directly into the white, invincible armor of the Beast's chest, her fingers hovering right over its glowing Singularity Core. She closed her eyes and forcibly, violently ignited her own Spirit Origin.
This wasn't a spell. This was a suicide pact. She was detonating her very soul as the fuel for her Noble Phantasm.
"This is the roar of my soul..."
A terrifying, localized inferno erupted point-blank against the Beast's chest. Not black, not white, but the pure, conceptual crimson of a self-destructing Saint Graph. The sheer, suicidal intensity of the blast caused Avaritia to actually flinch, its grip on Jalter's throat loosening slightly as the sheer heat began to warp its invincible scales.
Below them, the boiling ocean erupted.
Kiyohime, who had been brutally thrown away and presumed dead, rocketed out of the water. She had completely abandoned any semblance of human rationality or self-preservation. She didn't return to her massive serpentine form; instead, she transformed into a localized, horrific storm of blue draconic fire and burning scales.
She slammed into the Beast's back like a meteor, wrapping her flaming, spectral coils entirely around Avaritia. She wasn't just pinning it; she was fusing her burning existence into its armor, creating a superheated lock that even the Sin Dragon's overwhelming density couldn't immediately break.
"I will never let you go!" Kiyohime screamed, her voice distorting into a demonic screech as her own flames began to consume her. "Even if we burn together in the depths of hell, you will not take a single step forward!"
Avaritia roared—a genuine, mechanical sound of panic. The Beast thrashed, trying to unleash the orb of destruction it had formed, but Kiyohime's suicidal grip and Jalter's point-blank detonation were violently jamming its reactor.
But the final, fatal blow had yet to fall.
Jeanne d'Arc, battered, bleeding, and stripped of her holy defenses, slowly pushed herself up from the ruined watchtower. Her standard was splintered, her armor shattered, and her body was failing.
She looked up at the sky. She saw her dark reflection burning her own soul to crack the Beast's armor. She saw the mad serpent sacrificing everything to hold it in place.
Jeanne closed her eyes. She let out a soft, sorrowful breath.
"O Lord... I consign this body to you."
A different kind of fire ignited. It wasn't the chaotic flames of vengeance or the blue inferno of madness. It was a serene, terrifyingly pure golden fire that blossomed from Jeanne's very heart. It was a flame that didn't consume, but purified. It was a flame that represented the absolute, unwavering conviction of a martyr.
Her sword, normally a symbol of peace, materialized in her hand, bathed in this absolute holy fire.
She opened her eyes, and there was no pain, no fear, only the resolute gaze of the Holy Maiden.
"The path of the Lord is right..."
Jeanne leaped. She didn't fly; she became a falling star of pure, conceptual salvation. The golden fire engulfed her entirely, transforming her into a singularity of absolute sacrifice.
Avaritia saw her coming. The Beast's chaotic reactor screamed in terror. It recognized the conceptual weight of the incoming attack. It wasn't just a Noble Phantasm; it was the absolute antithesis to its existence.
"...La Pucelle: The Crimson Holy Maiden (Suicide EX)!"
Jeanne struck.
She didn't aim for the head or the heart. She drove her burning, conceptual form directly into the absolute center of the three-way collision. She struck the exact point where Jalter's suicidal inferno and Kiyohime's burning coils met Avaritia's desperate defense.
The sound of the universe cracking.
There was no explosion. There was only a blinding, absolute dome of crimson and gold light that instantly expanded to cover the entirety of the Orleans Singularity.
Inside the epicenter, the three distinct flames—Jalter's suicidal vengeance, Kiyohime's mad devotion, and Jeanne's holy sacrifice—merged into an impossible, apocalyptic crucible.
Bestia Avaritia, the absolute pinnacle of draconic evolution, the Sin Dragon of Greed with its EX-Rank immunities, shrieked as its existence was conceptually erased. The absolute heat of three suicidal Noble Phantasms didn't just break its armor; it atomized its chaotic reactor, incinerated its authorities, and completely purified the demonic energy of the Beast.
The entity that sought to consume the world was entirely consumed by the absolute, self-destructive resolve of humanity's heroes.
The blinding light held for ten long seconds, completely silent, a beacon of ultimate sacrifice burning away the darkness of the Singularity.
And then, it faded.
The gentle light of the morning sun illuminated the glassed crater. The rusted sky of Orleans had been completely burned away by the triple sacrifice.
Jeanne's splintered flagpole rested quietly in the center of the scorched earth, the only monument to the three Heroic Spirits who had given absolutely everything to protect the world.
From the edge of the battlefield, the Anti-Logic field finally dissipated entirely. Fujimaru Ritsuka gasped, his lungs suddenly able to draw in the cold morning air properly. His paralyzed limbs twitched as the conceptual gravity pinning him down vanished. Beside him, Mash groaned, the impossible weight of her shield returning to normal.
"Senpai..." Mash whispered, her voice trembling as she looked at the empty crater. Tears welled in her eyes. "Jeanne... Jalter... Kiyohime... their mana signatures... they're completely gone."
Fujimaru pushed himself up onto his knees, his fists trembling against the ice. He stared at the splintered flagpole, an overwhelming wave of grief washing over him. They had done it. They had sacrificed their very souls to execute the Beast.
Krrrrkk.
A sound echoed across the silent crater. It wasn't a roar. It was the sickening sound of glass cracking.
Fujimaru's breath hitched. Mash's eyes widened in sheer horror, her grip instantly tightening on Lord Chaldeas.
Krr-cracccck!
The glassed earth near the center of the crater violently ruptured. A localized, suffocating wave of demonic energy—weaker than before, but still unmistakably apocalyptic—spilled out like thick, black blood.
"No..." Fujimaru whispered, the blood draining from his face. "No, that's impossible. Nothing could survive that..."
From the boiling mud of the ruptured earth, a hand emerged. It was no longer covered in pristine, invincible white scales. The armor had been completely melted away, revealing charred, pulsating red flesh beneath.
Slowly, agonizingly, Bestia Avaritia pulled itself out of the crater.
The Sin Dragon of Greed was horribly, catastrophically mutilated. The regal, geometric theater-wings that had floated behind it were completely obliterated. Its pristine holy raiment was nothing but ash. The left side of its elegant, fanged helm had been blown entirely off, revealing a grotesque, melted draconic eye burning with bottomless malice. The invincible Armor of Fafnir and the aspect of the Dragon Slayer had been completely incinerated by the overlapping Noble Phantasm detonations.
The three Servants had successfully destroyed the Beast's armor, its stolen authorities, and its physical vessel.
But they had not destroyed its Core.
Embedded deep within the charred, exposed chest of the abomination, the dark blue jewel—the Singularity Core of Avaritia—remained intact, albeit webbed with massive, glowing cracks.
At the absolute final microsecond before total conceptual erasure, the Sin Dragon had exercised its ultimate nature. Greed. It had violently sacrificed the consumed Spirit Origins of Fafnir, Tarasque, and Siegfried, using them as conceptual meat-shields. Then, it had opened its maw and literally devoured a fraction of the apocalyptic energy from the triple-suicide attack to keep its own Beast Core from shattering.
It was broken. It was bleeding. It was reduced to a crawling, skeletal shadow of its former divine glory.
But Bestia Avaritia was still alive.
The Beast let out a ragged, gurgling breath, black mud spilling from its shattered jaws. The Singing Void was gone, replaced by the horrifying, desperate panting of a starving predator. Its single, glowing eye locked onto the only two living souls left in the Singularity: the Last Master of Humanity, and his Demi-Servant.
It didn't have the energy to warp space or project gravity anymore. But it didn't need to. It was still a Beast, and it was ravenously, infinitely hungry for mana to rebuild itself.
! Avenger, Jeanne d'Arc (Alter) has been defeated !
! Ruler, Jeanne d'Arc has been defeated !
! Berserker, Kiyohime has been defeated !
Avaritia dragged its ruined body forward, its charred claws gouging deep trenches into the glassed earth. It was coming for them. The ultimate sacrifice had burned away its godhood, but left behind a starving demon.
The colossal tentacles of the Gigantic Horror slammed down, but they didn't even need to hit their targets to ensure victory. The sheer conceptual gravity of Francesca's Anti-Logic field had reached its absolute peak under the presence of the true Grimoire.
Cú Chulainn Caster was slammed face-first into the ice, his wooden druidic staff slipping from his paralyzed fingers. Beside him, Mash was entirely flattened. Lord Chaldeas lay deactivated on the ground. The ultimate defense of the Shielder class had been inverted into an absolute, inescapable paralysis.
"Ahahaha! Yes! Writhe! Despair! Be crushed by the weight of your own magnificent legends!" Francesca cheered from her perch atop the Gigantic Horror, twirling the grotesque, fleshy Grimoire.
The Caster looked down at the teenage Master, expecting to see his mind shattered by the abyssal text of the sunken castle.
Instead, her manic laughter abruptly died.
Fujimaru Ritsuka was bleeding from his nose. His eyes were bloodshot. But he wasn't pinned to the ground anymore.
Without a single word, without a single boast or explanation, the Last Master of Humanity simply stood up. His movements were jerky, unnatural, and agonizingly misaligned—a horrifying display of a human manually sending the exact opposite biological commands to his own nervous system just to take a step forward.
"What...? How are you—?!" Francesca gasped, her eyes widening in genuine panic. "Crush him! Drown him in the abyss!"
The Gigantic Horror roared, aiming to flatten the boy into a bloody smear on the ice.
Fujimaru didn't flinch. He didn't look to his Servants for salvation. He simply reached his hand outward, his Mystic Code flaring as he accessed Chaldea's spatial inventory—a localized void used to store excess supplies.
He didn't pull out a conceptual weapon. He didn't pull out a holy relic.
He pulled out a handful of the cheapest, dullest, mass-produced iron daggers from the bottom of Chaldea's armory. They had zero magical energy. They were poorly balanced. They were the absolute lowest tier of weaponry in human history, practically useless even against a basic skeleton familiar.
Fujimaru locked eyes with the goddess of madness. He didn't take a stance. He just limply, clumsily, and weakly tossed the daggers into the air toward her.
It was an attack of absolute, pathetic weakness.
And because it was the ultimate peak of physical and magical weakness... Francesca's Anti-Logic field registered it.
The domain's logic violently inverted the action.
The moment the dull daggers left Fujimaru's fingertips, they bypassed the concept of acceleration. The air shattered with deafening sonic booms. The pathetic toss was inverted into an apocalyptic barrage of localized meteor strikes.
Francesca shrieked in terror. "Defend me!"
The Gigantic Horror surged forward, raising a massive wall of skyscraper-sized tentacles to block the incoming projectiles. But the Anti-Logic field was absolute. Because the Gigantic Horror's tentacles were conceptually massive and strong, the domain inverted them into fragile tissue paper.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The dull iron daggers didn't just pierce the tentacles; they completely atomized them. Massive chunks of the evil god's flesh were blown away in showers of black blood and toxic steam as the inverted projectiles tore straight through the abyssal wall.
"Impossible!" Francesca screamed, frantically flipping through her Grimoire to cast a barrier. "They're just mundane trash!"
But Fujimaru wasn't done. He reached his hand back into the void.
He pulled out another handful of cheap daggers. And another. And another. He threw them weakly, awkwardly, relentlessly.
It became an endless, overwhelming assault. Hundreds of mass-produced iron blades filled the sky, instantly transformed by Francesca's own spell into an unavoidable storm of catastrophic artillery.
The Gigantic Horror wailed in agony as its massive body was systematically blown to pieces by Chaldea's literal garbage. It couldn't regenerate fast enough. The "weak" daggers shredded its eyes, obliterated its maw, and collapsed its structure.
"Stop! Stop it! I am a supreme Caster! I am the Director of this masterpiece!" Francesca shrieked hysterically, her illusions and barriers shattering the moment the inverted daggers touched them.
Thwack!
A dull iron dagger pierced straight through the fleshy cover of the true Grimoire, pinning it to the Gigantic Horror's melting flesh.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
More daggers followed. They pierced Francesca's elegant dress. They pinned her arms. They shattered her knees. The sheer kinetic force behind the "weak" blades crushed her ribs and sent her coughing up blood.
She looked down at the weapons protruding from her body. They weren't cursed spears or holy swords. They were rusty, cheap, mass-produced iron junk.
The humiliation was absolute. The grand, theatrical mastermind who had twisted the logic of the world to break legendary heroes was being systematically executed by a human teenager throwing actual trash at her.
"By... by cheap daggers...?" Francesca wheezed, her eyes wide with disbelief and ultimate, crushing humiliation. "This... this is bad comedy..."
Fujimaru reached into the void one last time, pulling out a single, rusted throwing knife. With an exhausted, heavy breath, he gave it one final, pathetic toss.
The Anti-Logic field caught it, accelerating the rusty blade into a blinding streak of kinetic destruction. It struck Francesca Prelati dead center in the forehead.
Her head snapped back, and her physical vessel instantly dissolved into white ash, her final expression frozen in a mask of total humiliation.
With the Caster's death, the Grimoire crumbled into dust, and the Anti-Logic field shattered like cheap glass. The colossal remains of the Gigantic Horror, completely annihilated by the endless barrage, melted into the boiling ocean.
Fujimaru Ritsuka slowly lowered his hand, his inventory void closing behind him. He fell to his knees on the ice, utterly exhausted, as the crushing weight on his Servants finally lifted.
"Well," Fujimaru panted, looking at the spot where the Caster had vanished. "You said you wanted a tragedy."
! Caster, Francesca Prelati has been defeated !