Chapter 19 Grass Cutting, and Then Meeting Soldier A
Guns.
Not the spear represented by those crowned with the title of Lancer, but the standard armament of modern humanity. The most efficient killing weapon, and the one with the lowest barrier to entry.
Blood does not splatter on the user, so those who use them often lack the resolve and the weight that comes with killing—with erasing another person's life. To turn the energy of gunpowder into kinetic energy sufficient to take a life, one only needs to move a finger and pull a trigger. It is a fast, convenient, and efficient means of murder available to the common man.
As such, it can be considered a terrifying weapon. At least, that is how Shirou, who originally belonged to the world of mortals, thought of it.
Although they couldn't hit him no matter what, he didn't want to let them keep firing and creating a suppressive effect. Shirou had seen this weapon many times and knew its limits and weaknesses well.
One such weakness is that a gun is not the fastest weapon... no matter how fast it is, there is still the process of moving a finger. It is even slower than the lightning-fast thrust of a Heroic Spirit's spear.
For Shirou, whose battlefield processing speed was anything but ordinary, the activation process hadn't even been executed yet. The moment their presence arrived on the scene, Shirou had already captured their positions. The soldiers, caught by the sweep of Shirou's faintly glowing pupils, saw their expressions flicker as they immediately began to contract their fingers inward.
'Too slow.'
Even the motion of pulling the trigger was captured in its entirety by Shirou's eyes; it was fundamentally different from the movements of a Heroic Spirit, which required total concentration to handle.
He didn't chant a specific incantation.
Instead, multiple iron swords appeared out of thin air around Shirou, floating in clusters. They moved proactively to fill the space in front of him, forming a shield with their blades pointed directly at the opposition. These dozens of inconspicuous, dark iron swords formed a swarm that possessed neither the spiritual resonance of a Noble Phantasm nor any flashy decoration. However, when launched in dozens of straight lines, they left behind strange, linear afterimages that seemed engraved in the air for several seconds.
The sword swarm Shirou created would indeed be slower than an "Infinite Treasury" if it came to multiple rounds of volley fire. But in reality, a single round was far faster than this group of ordinary humans moving their fingers.
Willingly competing with Shirou in "firing speed" was their mistake.
The iron swords severed gun barrels, causing them to backfire; in the next instant, the blades grew from the edges of their bodies, leaving almost no room for the sound of gunpowder explosions to ring out.
The brief duration—which was almost so short one would want to skip it—ended here. The gunmen, frozen in the outdated action of "pressing a finger," finally began to react, only to fall into the predicament of being unable to process what had happened.
A sound of metal cutting through metal echoed from that direction, followed immediately by a chorus of screams. Before they could fire with killing intent, Shirou had neutralized this ten-man squad simultaneously.
Since they posed no noteworthy obstacle, Shirou and Saber maintained their speed, running past the crowd that had served as a roadblock without so much as a second glance.
"Saber."
"Yes?"
"If the reinforcements are only at this level, then that thing we abandoned at the corner earlier... we might be able to go back and get it now."
Shirou whispered the reminder.
"...In a theater of war like this, one must consider the worst-case scenario, so forget it. Though it is kind of you to think so, Shirou."
After a subtle moment of hesitation, Saber shook her head with a sharp motion, as if flinging away her indecision. Then, realizing Shirou was teasing her, her eyes immediately narrowed with a look of pointed disapproval due to her previous "embarrassing" display.
Shirou and Saber chatted idly as they moved.
"Who exactly sent these people?"
"The enemy is in the shadows while we are in the light; currently, there isn't enough information to deduce. But the opposing force is clearly well-trained; it's likely not a coincidence."
"—If we kidnap one of the people from that rifle squad and question him slowly, do you think that's feasible, Saber?"
"Are you referring to a prisoner of war? It is indeed a viable tactic. Even if there are risks, there are corresponding rewards."
Saber gave him a look that likely meant: Are you planning to head back into that hail of bullets to tie someone up?
Shirou shook his head.
"Wait a moment."
Change of plans. Since he could drag one person away for questioning, he no longer needed to worry about whether he could wipe out this entire group of killers cleanly. Shirou turned his head, and new flying swords appeared behind him.
In this situation, they should be called sword-arrows.
A massive number of sword-arrows hovered in the air, none falling to the ground, following Shirou's pace as he sprinted until they were fully formed. When they reached completion, this sword formation—which seemed to be an extension of Shirou himself—stagnated. Then, at least to the eyes of an outsider, the sword formation that had appeared from nowhere blurred and vanished into thin air.
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The endless echoes of gunfire vibrated within the buildings, deafeningly loud.
A sniper wiped the sweat seeping from his forehead and ejected the final shell casing. He was the sniper Shirou had reverse-calculated at the beginning—the one 900 meters away in the 3 o'clock direction.
After ejecting the casing, he pulled the rifle back from the window and numbly removed the empty magazine. He swapped the old magazine for a new, full one.
'What's the point of firing again? Can it even kill him?'
The sniper didn't know. The sniper only knew how to pull the trigger blindly; he thought of nothing else.
His elbow, having absorbed the recoil repeatedly, throbbed with pain; his eyes, which had spent too long trying to aim at a target he couldn't even see clearly, were bloodshot; his ears rang from the repeated torment of the muzzle blasts. The target was within his line of sight, yet he couldn't touch the opponent at all. If the sniping were working normally, this mechanical labor might be somewhat bearable, but the sight of a sniper's professional pride being trampled into the dirt was a form of torture.
—Why am I suffering like this?
Once the magazine was loaded, he pushed down the hollowness in his heart, poked the muzzle out of the window again, and resumed his original firing stance. The sniper had more or less grown used to this cycle: Fire, then the result would cycle between being dodged or being blocked. Although he had seen the end of the rifle squad, he was far away from the opponent—nearly a kilometer. At most, the sniper couldn't kill the target, but nothing would happen to the sniper himself.
One of the points of a sniper rifle's range, after all, was to maintain a sufficient safety distance. The sniper only had to stay here and empty all his magazines, bit by bit.
The afternoon sun seemed exceptionally dazzling; the sniper squinted against the light. At that moment, a sudden impact hit his right arm.
"?"
His entire body curled into a ball, his feet left the ground, and a sensation as intense as a burning flame on his right arm caused the sniper's face to contort, coughing out air in incomprehensible gasps. His wide eyes saw himself being carried off the ground by some object that had streaked toward him—then he slammed heavily into the wall behind him.
His body fell, a secondary impact hitting the floor, yet his arm didn't feel like it was falling. Or rather, his arm had lost all sensation.
The sniper looked up and saw that through the arm still attached to his body, an inconspicuous iron sword was naturally embedded.
'How is this possible...'
The rain of swords that had struck down the rifle unit—did it actually have a range exceeding that of a sniper rifle?
Nailed to the wall, the sniper gave up all resistance, staring blankly at the ceiling.
'That's just cheating.'
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It felt as though the light had left the sniper's eyes. Shirou lowered his outstretched hand.
"Shirou, what did you do?"
Saber looked in the direction of Shirou's gaze, then brought her eyes back. Although she could tell what he was doing, she asked for confirmation anyway.
"I neutralized the enemies who were relatively close to me, probably."
The sword clusters around Shirou had vanished, and the sensation of a hit had been transmitted back to him.
Saber tilted her head. "The range of your sword-making is actually that far?"
Because Saber always fought in close quarters, she had likely never seen the distance limit of his flying swords.
"Within a kilometer—that is, a thousand meters—it's probably fine. I only dealt with the enemies closer to us; it would be a bit forced to use that move on the ones too far away."
"Even so, it is sufficiently convenient."
Saber, who had absolutely no long-range attack methods other than her "Light Cannon," offered her critique.
'Even so, Excalibur itself is the strongest anti-range method, Saber. That's enough from you.'
"I've taken down sixteen enemies in total. the rest are quite far away. If anyone else dares to snipe, I'll leave the cover to Saber while I use a bow to settle it."
Shirou held his blade horizontally in a certain direction. Immediately after, as if the bullet had actively collided with it, the projectile was pulverized entirely, unable to leave even a mark on the famous sword. This lone remaining sound of impact gradually faded away.
Shirou looked toward the direction of the shot; the opponent who met his gaze turned pale, large beads of sweat rolling down his face. Before Shirou could even project a bow—before he had even manifested an arrow—the man scrambled to vanish behind a wall, dragging his sniper rifle with him.
"Shirou, you are better at handling this situation than I am."
Saber actually chuckled, a rare sight; her unexpectedly teasing manner was enough to leave one stunned.
"What are you laughing at? I'm the one doing the hard work here..." Shirou grumbled irritably.
The remaining enemies were all pretending to be dead, shrinking back like snails into their shells; let alone their bodies, not even a muzzle peeked out anymore. Just because Shirou could hit what he saw didn't mean he could see people through walls. Heaven knows which corner they had crawled into.
Shirou had originally guessed these guys would hide like rats halfway through the fight, which was why he planned to settle it all at once. However, in the case where they were going to take someone with them, these guys weren't that important anymore—let them be.
Furthermore, while making mana arrows explode was feasible, the buildings they occupied would collapse due to damage to their load-bearing structures. Modern buildings are unexpectedly fragile; if you blow up the load-bearing walls, they go down. He had to keep in mind not to endanger the public.
Saber curled her lips slightly in a nonchalant way to comfort him. "At least thanks to Shirou's efforts, no one is launching an attack for the time being."
The gunfire had stopped. The gunshots that had been rising and falling like waves were now as peacefully silent as the dead.
The people who had used every trick—ambushes, encirclements, sniping, suppression, coordination—to issue an invitation to a duel now lay scattered like fallen leaves. The survivors kept a low profile, remaining silent. The cowardly killers had vanished for the moment, leaving behind only the scars of a violent battle in this corner of the city.
Small fragments were scattered across the quiet road, including wall plaster and bullet splinters. The wind poured in from one end of the alley, finally blowing away the white smoke rising from the bullet marks on the walls and ground. As the battle came to a temporary halt, the burnt smell of gunpowder in the air lessened over time.
Ignoring the hidden enemies, Shirou and Saber walked back with dignity, scanning the squads lying haphazardly in the distance, preparing to pick a lucky winner to "package and go."
At that moment, both of them noticed something at the same time and looked toward the rear left. There was the sound of footsteps.
Only one person. The pace was light. They walked and stopped as if observing their surroundings.
Shirou and Saber had originally intended to keep going straight, but there was actually a fork on the left connecting to this road. Now, someone was approaching Shirou's direction from that fork.
Shirou moved his legs, actively stepping in front of Saber as he approached the mouth of the fork. The wall blocking the view of the passage gradually shifted out of his line of sight, and the road where the other person stood was revealed.
The footsteps ten meters away stopped as if sensing the future. Shirou took the critical step that exposed their existence to each other, looking at the person in silence.
A black-haired youth with a very youthful face was frozen there. He wore military-style goggles on his forehead. Beneath his black bangs, his eyes were also black. Both of his hands were covered by black gloves, hiding the skin of his knuckles, and he wore a black windproof light jacket. Despite this, Shirou immediately felt his aura was different from that of an ordinary soldier or magus.
"Soldier A," who had yet to become anyone, stood staring at Shirou as if preparing himself mentally.
Finally, he pursed his lips and asked:
"Excuse me... are you Shirou Emiya?"
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