Disclaimer: Little information has been given about the exact physiology of lower-ranked demons, we don't know how many hearts they have or whether destroying them is strictly necessary to kill them, so I'm working under the assumption that destroying their brain or separating the head from the body is enough to kill them. (Of course, this applies to minor demons only, and doesn't hold true for higher-ranked ones.)
Boing.
Boing.
Boing.
Four more kilometers and I'm there.
It had been a little over two minutes since Emrys had left the village. He wasn't exactly rushing, but he wasn't taking his time either, and since he was traveling through the air rather than on the ground, nothing stood in his way to slow him down.
He kept an eye on the demon camp the whole time, narrowing his haki's range as he drew closer.
During his short trip, he'd taken the time to scout the area a bit more thoroughly.
There's not a single human in this camp. Only demons over there.
That bit of news pleased Emrys. With no one left to save or protect, he could finally get to what he'd actually set out to do on this journey.
I'll finally get to work on my utilisation of Drainda.
When Emrys said that, he wasn't really talking about Drainda's abilities. He already had a solid handle on its anti-magic properties, as proven by the Black Pulse.
The more accurate way to put it would be working on his swordsmanship in general.
Emrys's enthusiasm cooled a little when he sensed movement among the demons. A group had formed and spread their wings, heading straight toward the village.
They noticed something was off. It hasn't even been two minutes since the villagers left, if I let them through, they'll catch up in no time.
A small smile formed on Emrys's face.
But why would I let them through in the first place.
Emrys summoned Drainda in a flash of black light and gripped it firmly with one hand.
He conjured another platform behind him, its elasticity set to maximum.
Pushing off it, he launched himself forward at a downright terrifying speed.
Bang.
Did I just break the sound barrier?
Emrys himself was stunned by his own speed. Faster than him, sure, but he hadn't been all that much faster than the gray demon. The reason he could dodge every one of that demon's strikes and make it look slow was that he'd been using his haki to predict its movements.
So breaking the sound barrier was an entirely new experience. Especially since right now, he felt neither the shock of acceleration nor any air resistance at all.
"No matter how many times I say it, it never feels like enough. This armor is just monstrous, Dubs is just monstrous," Emrys said, full of admiration.
It was only after finishing that sentence that he realized which laws of physics he'd just broken.
"But how can I hear my own voice if I'm going faster than sound," he wondered out loud. "I know in most manga, when characters move fast, that little detail gets ignored, but this is real life here. Does that mean the laws of physics in this world are different?"
It was a question he considered worth looking into, but he filed it away in a corner of his mind, since he'd nearly caught up to the group heading for the village.
I hope the armor's shock absorbers are sturdy, because what I'm about to do might just shatter my legs.
A few seconds later, the group of demons came into view. It was made up of twenty demons, roughly the same composition as the first group. So, a mix of low-ranking demons with a gray demon in command.
This time, though, the fight was far more swift than the previous one.
Swoosh.
With a single stroke of the sword, the pressure of the air alone split the gray demon's body clean down the middle, killing it instantly.
Boing.
That done, Emrys immediately created another platform and abruptly changed direction, using the platform's elasticity to preserve his momentum.
Swoosh.
Another demon was sliced apart, and Emrys created another platform, repeating the process.
Boing.
Swoosh.
Boing.
Swoosh.
Emrys used the same combination of moves, wiping out all twenty demons in an instant.
He was moving so fast that not a single one of them even realized they were dead. The only one who might have noticed something was wrong was the gray demon, but he'd been the first to die.
It was only once Emrys had finished that the sonic boom finally caught up to where he was.
Bang.
Moving faster than sound, every single one of his actions up until then had been completely inaudible. And now, nothing stood in the way of his advance toward the camp, or rather, his descent into it.
Because he hadn't even given the demons time to get far enough away, he now found himself directly above the camp.
Emrys let himself fall toward the ground and landed as gently as could be. Over eighty demons were already waiting below, having heard the sonic boom.
"Who are you, and are you the one responsible for the deaths of our comrades?" an ochre demon asked.
The bodies of the twenty demons had landed before Emrys did and lay scattered all around.
"Yes, but not just them," Emrys answered.
"What does that mean," a gray demon said.
I haven't sensed a single demon stronger than the gray ones. There are about five of them, they're my priority targets.
"No need for you to know. Besides, we've talked too much already, let's get started right away."
Fwish.
Emrys lunged at the nearest gray demon, aiming to cleave through it, but the demon, already on guard, immediately tried to dodge, though given its build, that was a lost cause from the start.
So at the last second, it put its arm in the path of Drainda instead. The arm was severed, but it paid that no mind and threw a punch at Emrys, who conjured a platform in midair to launch himself toward a nearby demon and slice open its chest.
"Argh."
That one spat up blood but didn't die.
Tch, missed one of the hearts.
Destroying all of a demon's hearts in a single strike was much harder without Hrunting.
Meanwhile, the gray demon had already reattached its arm and was charging a beam of hellfire.
Sensing this, Emrys didn't try to dodge, instead flooding Drainda with mental energy and releasing it outward in the shape of a sphere.
Black Dome
The hellfire beam struck the dome but was instantly nullified by Emrys.
Emrys could easily have dodged the hellfire beam, but he'd set himself a restriction for this fight. He wouldn't use any ability other than Drainda, his Observation Haki (obviously), and his armor's elasticity power.
That made the fight several times harder, but he figured that was exactly what he needed in order to actually grow.
Once the attack was completely nullified, Emrys stopped maintaining the dome and immediately finished off the wounded demon by piercing its last remaining heart.
Sensing a strike coming from behind and finding himself surrounded on all sides, he jumped into the air and ended up upside down.
Boom.
His attacker was a massive copper-colored demon whose blow had carved a giant crater into the ground and kicked up an enormous cloud of dust.
Well, that works in my favor.
Boing.
Emrys launched himself at it and severed its head in a single sharp strike.
The colossus's body collapsed to the ground. Taking advantage of the dust cloud hiding him, Emrys mowed down dozens of demons, either by cutting off their heads, splitting their skulls, or piercing their hearts.
Even so, he found this pace far too slow for his liking. He stared at the sword he was holding with both hands and wondered if he could do better.
The sword's light, so I should be able to wield it one-handed, right?
Emrys took his right hand off the hilt, leaving it entirely to his left.
And with my free hand…
A second Drainda, identical in every way to the first, appeared in his right hand.
A longsword in each hand. Not exactly common.
Oddly enough, despite Fate being a fantasy franchise, relatively few characters used two swords at once, and the number who used two longswords at the same time was practically nil. Maybe because Fate's characters were, first and foremost, historical figures.
The only Heroic Spirit Emrys could remember who wielded two swords simultaneously, off the top of his head, was Liu Bei. But Emrys had neither the time nor the desire to sift back through the Chinese general's memories for inspiration right now.
He'd just have to learn on the fly.
Lucky for me that I am, or rather, that EMIYA is, naturally ambidextrous.
Snapping out of his thoughts, Emrys dodged a blistering strike from a blue demon by tilting his head. He then spun his entire body in a full rotation and delivered a spinning back kick to the demon's head, the impact shattering its brain.
Emrys didn't stop there, immediately leaping at two more demons, slicing off one's head with the sword in his right hand while skewering the other's hearts with a series of thrusts.
Damn it, their size is really pissing me off. Do they all have to be this big?
Five demons attacked him simultaneously from several different angles at once, including from above. He read their movements easily enough, but his various escape routes were all blocked.
He managed to dodge four of the attacks, but one got through, aimed straight at his ribs. On reflex, Emrys protected himself by pressing the flat of Drainda against the targeted spot.
Thud.
The blow struck Emrys, but he felt no pain whatsoever. It was only at that moment that he remembered the armor.
Phew. That was close. Without the armor, I'd definitely be dead if that hit had actually landed. Reminds me I really need to start working on my Armament Haki.
Not giving his enemies time to retract their limbs, Emrys spun around, severing the limbs the demons had used to attack him. But knowing that wouldn't be enough to stop them, he leapt to slice off their heads.
Damn, on top of being huge, they regenerate too.
Another wave of enemies attacked Emrys, who once again couldn't dodge everything and could only rely on Dubs's armor to protect him.
Emrys eliminated them, then a new wave took their place, and so on.
Emrys was starting to realize that charging headfirst into the fray and getting surrounded by opponents wasn't exactly the best idea. Especially since his initial plan of taking out the gray demons first had failed miserably.
From constantly dodging the blows raining down on him and striking anything that moved, he was also starting to grow tired.
He'd managed to wipe out half the demons, but those had only been the weakest ones. Cannon fodder, basically.
"Haa! Haa! Haa!"
Emrys stopped for a moment to catch his breath, but was forced to move again to dodge a wave of hellfire.
He thrust his swords out, skewering the heads of two demons trying to catch him off guard.
Unfortunately, exhaustion forced him to use his swords just to hold himself upright.
Damn it, I don't see the end of this. My reflexes are getting duller and duller from fatigue, and it's getting harder and harder to dodge attacks even when I see them coming.
Emrys didn't strictly need to dodge the attacks, but he preferred not to take them on purpose, so as not to develop a bad habit. After all, there was no guarantee he'd have this armor forever, or that he'd be able to project the copy he'd made of it under any and all circumstances.
At this rate I'm gonna have to use "that."
Struggling back to his feet, Emrys fixed his gaze, metaphorically speaking, on the horde of enemies surrounding him.
"So what are you gonna do now, huh? You're surrounded," one of the gray demons mocked from a safe distance at the back.
Yeah, no doubt about it, I'm gonna have to use "that."
"All I am surrounded by is dead men."
Emrys straightened up completely and regained control of his breathing. Fighting against his body's biological urge to hyperventilate, he breathed slowly and deeply, concentrating like he never had before.
Seeing that he'd stopped moving, the demons took the opportunity to launch their attacks at him. Some attacking from range, others in close combat.
But before they could seize the initiative, Emrys moved.
Fifteen steps forward, nine steps to the right, duck down, then jump and slash.
Emrys followed that exact path.
He took fifteen steps forward, dodging the melee fighters' strikes. Nine steps to the side, dodging the hellfire shooters' blasts. He ducked, passing between the legs of the demon in front of him, jumped, and sliced off the heads of two demons.
And the same scene repeated itself, over and over.
Every single time his opponents tried to do something, Emrys had already taken action to counter it before they'd even finished the thought.
This wasn't like before, when he read his opponents' intentions to predict their movements. No. Now, before the demons had even thought to do something, Emrys had already dodged the attack or nullified their attempt to dodge his.
This wasn't prediction anymore. It was foresight. Emrys was using an advanced form of Observation Haki. He was looking into the future.
But what he hadn't realized was that the immense swordsmanship talent he'd inherited from being the very incarnation of the blade, spurred on by exhaustion, was completely transforming the way he moved.
The more he focused on the future, and the more exhausted he grew, the less he focused on the present, to the point where his body carried out the movements on its own, right after his brain had finished seeing what was about to happen.
And as the saying often goes, the brain is never a better fighter than the body. Emrys made fewer and fewer wasted movements, and his motions grew increasingly fluid.
At some point, without even noticing it himself, he'd started incorporating his legs into the fight, materializing miniature versions of Drainda and driving them in with kicks.
Even though the talent was his own, inherited from who he was, the way Emrys fought bore no resemblance whatsoever to EMIYA's own style.
And thanks to his armor, Emrys was able to attack from any position at all. By the time he fully regained awareness of himself, there were no demons left not even the gray demons.
"What the hell just happened?"