"..."
The werewolf boy frowned slightly. "What exactly are you trying to say? I thought you wanted to work with me."
Even he, the purest creature in all of Type-Moon, could tell there was something strange about Shirou's words.
He did not care what Touko had done behind his back... No, it was not that he did not care at all, but more importantly, the werewolf stared irritably at the red-haired boy before him.
He saw himself as a king. If someone looked down on him, that alone was enough reason to kill them.
If Shirou had not been the first living person he had met in so long, he would have already bitten through his neck.
He should have been putting pressure on him. And yet this human showed no fear at all.
It was hard to believe, but could he be... looking down on him?
Shirou said, "Yeah, of course I want to work with you, Beowulf. If we weren't on opposite sides, I'd even want to be friends with you.
But before that... I noticed Touko made a mistake in how she trained you."
"What?"
The werewolf boy looked composed, but his voice was full of irritation. His anger was already on the verge of boiling over.
Shirou said, "I don't know much about Magi, but I think there should be a clear hierarchy between humans and pets.
No matter how rare or precious the breed is, as long as it's being cared for and raised by its master, it should recognize that it's a pet beneath humans.
But Touko doesn't seem to have educated you properly in that regard. She hasn't even put a collar on you.
A dog that does whatever it wants will only damage its master's reputation."
Beowulf did like Touko, but that was because he thought "this human's words and actions are cool."
He had never once thought humans were qualified to stand on equal footing with him, much less that he was Touko's pet, or familiar.
So to the werewolf boy, Shirou's words were a direct insult.
Of course Shirou realized that too. From the very beginning, he had never expected a proud Phantasmal Species to obediently cooperate with him.
Shirou only knew one way to make a disobedient dog listen.
"Ha!!"
A sudden wind howled through the forest.
Perhaps because the werewolf's emotions had changed, the aura of the Beast became a current of burning air, whipping up a violent gale through the trees.
"I see. I understand now. I completely understand... You want to die that badly, do you...!?"
The werewolf boy's time as a human ended there.
In the blink of an eye, he transformed from a child less than 150 centimeters tall into a golden beast over two meters high, his entire body covered in bulging muscles and bristling fur.
Shirou calmly watched the transformation before him, a faint trace of surprise in his eyes.
Beowulf's current form made it hard not to think of the fairies of the Fang Clan.
They were known as the warrior race of the Fairy Kingdom of Britain, and their appearance was that of werewolves who walked on two legs.
They possessed powerful bodies, fangs, and claws, along with the finest curse resistance. They were the strongest, and also the most arrogant, of all fairy clans.
But the boy before him was slightly different from the Fang Clan. He did not only have the form of a werewolf. The fur covering his body was also an incomparably noble gold.
"..."
The surprise on Shirou's face made the Golden Beast's mouth twist in satisfaction.
He was a strange human, but in the end, the result was the same as always. Once he saw my true form, he was too frightened to speak.
But that vanity was satisfied for only an instant.
When Beowulf finished transforming, Shirou showed a look of disappointment.
"Kill me...? Unfortunately, you can't. You're far too weak."
"..."
The thick fog Barrier went so quiet that even a falling needle could have been heard.
The Golden Beast's eyes widened, and he clenched his teeth. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah... I once fought someone in a similar position to you.
He really was a formidable enemy. The title of strongest warrior in the Fairy Kingdom wasn't an exaggeration at all.
Even in the end, I only managed to win by luck. Thinking back on it now still scares me.
If he hadn't been so fixated on me, the outcome might have been hard to call.
But you're different. Compared to Wryneck, you're simply weak."
Shirou spoke with absolute certainty. "Even among dogs, you're probably one of the weaker ones."
"..."
The anger vanished from the Golden Beast's face.
The magical energy around him stopped boiling and settled into calm.
That was the sign that Beowulf was getting serious, ready to tear his opponent to pieces.
He planted his forepaws on the ground, arched his back high, and leaned forward into a charging stance.
"Come on. I won't kill you, since I still owe Touko a favor."
As he said that, Shirou beckoned to the Golden Beast in provocation. At the same time, the glow of [Projection Magecraft] flashed, and a sword appeared in his left hand.
It was an extremely bizarre sword.
Even [Ea], the Sword of Rupture that the King of Heroes Gilgamesh took such pride in, looked more like a sword than this did.
Its body was far too massive. Rather than a sword for humans to swing, it looked more like a two-handed staff used in some kind of ritual.
This was the other sword Morgan, the witch of Fairy Knight Arthur, had given him.
"..."
Beowulf paid no attention whatsoever to the sword Shirou had projected.
He stayed leaning forward, staring at the red-haired boy only ten meters away.
That was right. Only ten meters.
He needed just one-tenth of a second to close that distance.
To attack that human from head to toe, it would take only one-thousandth of a second for his three sharp claws to fall.
So no matter how powerful a weapon his opponent had brought out, it would be useless before the Golden Beast's overwhelming physical ability.
More than that, with over two thousand years of Mystery, his noble pelt could never be harmed by a weapon forged by vulgar humans.
Assuming, of course, that it truly was a weapon forged by humans.
The Mythological Mystic Code, [Marmiadoise].
Shirou had not known the origins of this strangely shaped greatsword until after returning to the Fairy Kingdom.
It was the greatsword once possessed by King Arthur in the legends of the Knights of the Round Table.
According to an even older source, its birth could be traced back to Greek mythology.
It was the greatsword said to have been forged by the fire god Hephaestus and presented to the great hero Heracles.
In terms of sheer power alone, it even surpassed [Excalibur]. It was said that King Arthur would sometimes lend the Holy Sword of the Planet to Gawain while wielding this greatsword himself.
Aside from special cases such as the [Blades of Chaos], Shirou normally could not project Divine Constructs.
The reason he could project it even after returning to Proper Human History was actually the same principle as [Excalibur].
The Mythological Mystic Code, [Marmiadoise], had become part of the legend of the [Nameless King].
In another Britain far away, he had once used this sword to suppress a rebellion by the Fang Clan.
There was no way Beowulf could know that story.
"You're dead, you...!"
It was a low murmur, both savage and delighted.
The golden wolf took that alone as the signal to attack and leapt at Shirou.
It took only one second.
His speed was like a storm ravaging the earth.
No. It would be better called godspeed.
The werewolf sprang through the air as a streak of golden light, while Shirou, ready to meet him, neither dodged nor moved. He stood there as if completely indifferent.
Only when the distance between them had shrunk to three steps did Shirou finally raise the greatsword and take one step forward.
A torrent of magical energy wrung out from within him ran through all twenty-seven Circuits of Shirou Amemiya.
"[Nine Lives]."
As he whispered softly, the boy swung down the greatsword, far taller than himself, with one hand.
"???"
In that instant, the Golden Beast doubted his own eyes.
The boy had clearly swung only once, yet what he saw were nine flashes.
No. I have to run. I'll die.
For the first time in his life, that thought appeared in the Golden Beast's mind.
But there was nowhere left to run.
With no way to evade, the Golden Beast saw an even clearer vision of death.
It was the immortal venomous dragon slain by the great hero in Greek mythology.
The Hydra.
Of course, this was not the actual Hydra, but a near-miraculous feat created as part of the Noble Phantasm of the man who had slain the great serpent in legend.
A flash that surpassed godspeed, overwhelming both causality and the laws of physics.
A nine-hit chain unleashed in the same instant. This was the martial art Shirou had read from the greatsword, [Style: Nine Lives].
Like the serpent of legend, the nine slashes became nine sharp, massive jaws, rushing forward as if to tear the Golden Beast apart.
"!"
A tremendous impact rang through the night.
Everything happened in a single instant.
The nine slashes projected by Shirou struck the Golden Beast head-on, then exploded.
"Guaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
The Golden Beast screamed as flesh and blood scattered, sending him flying before he crashed heavily to the ground.
The golden werewolf was not dead.
Even after taking head-on a blow meant to exterminate the great serpent, he was still alive.
That did not mean Shirou's projected [Nine Lives] was weaker than the original. Quite the opposite.
"Ugh... guh..."
The Golden Beast lay on the ground, gasping in agony and vomiting blood.
He lay there in disbelief, his whole body trembling, unable to move. He tried to stand again, only to find that he simply could not.
What... just happened?
His upper arm, collarbone, windpipe, crown of the head, chest, ribs, lower abdomen, and thigh.
Those eight parts of his body had all suffered fatal blows.
If he had been an ordinary Magical Beast or Phantasmal Beast, even one of those strikes would have killed him on the spot in a gruesome state.
But for the golden werewolf, that did not matter.
Because his body would eventually recover, and his bodily functions would recover with it.
That was not because he had received some mystical Magecraft. It was because he himself had already surpassed the concept of life.
Beowulf was the final weapon Touko Aozaki had prepared to oppose the Fifth Magic.
There was one obvious truth. The only thing that could oppose Magic was Magic itself.
This Golden Beast was a perfect existence that had already achieved the materialization of the soul.
As an Elemental of the planet, no matter how many times he was killed, he would not truly die. He would revive endlessly.
His immortality was absolute.
For example, suppose one day a gigantic monster came from space and pierced the Earth's core with a single blow.
Beowulf would die when the Earth exploded, but in the next second, due to the characteristics of the Third Magic, he would randomly revive somewhere in space.
That was the nature of life whose soul had been materialized.
The eight parts destroyed by [Nine Lives] had already healed rapidly.
His broken upper arm had healed, his shattered collarbone had grown back together, his severed windpipe had returned to normal...
Damage of that level meant nothing.
But one fact had been seared deep into Beowulf's mind.
He could not stand.
He could not understand what had happened.
The power this small human had displayed in that instant exceeded the limits of his comprehension.
He did not want to acknowledge that fact no matter what.
His consciousness had cut out nine times.
His heart had stopped nine times.
He had been killed nine times in a single instant, effortlessly.
Common sense told the werewolf that this was proof of an overwhelming gap in strength between them.
After all, even the weakest insect could not be killed nine times in a single instant!
"You've got to be kidding. Like I'd lose because of something like this."
Like a player furious over being penalized for a foul, the werewolf boy gritted his teeth and gathered every last bit of strength in his body.
"Right. It's all a lie. Even among my own kind, there's no one who can beat me.
This pain, this whole thing, it's all a lie. It makes no sense. There's no way there could be a human stronger than me...!"
The time for thinking was over.
To fight once more, the werewolf lay on the ground and stared at the enemy standing beside him.
"I... don't... admit defeat..."
The moment he said those words, an unfamiliar new agony suddenly erupted from the eight places where he had been struck.
Pain.
It hurt.
Like a stone sending ripples across water, the pain that had been blocked out spread through his entire body.
At first it was only a faint ache. Then it became unbearable agony.
This too was a first. The werewolf boy's body was now completely ruled by pain.
"Ugh... guh...!?"
Enduring the agony, Beowulf raised his head and found Shirou looking down at him in silence.
Those twilight-colored eyes held no killing intent. Not even hostility. There was only a coldness like absolute zero.
From the very beginning, Shirou had not intended to kill him.
Even so, he had killed him nine times.
"...Ugh!?"
Beowulf suddenly felt a terrible chill, and every hair on his body stood on end.
The pain throughout his body grew worse.
The werewolf boy began to understand the name of that pain.
It was fear.
Before the absolute power Shirou had shown him, the Golden Beast regressed back into human form.
He began to understand that he could never defeat this person.
Fortunately, the one he had encountered was not the tyrant version of him. Otherwise, there would be nothing left of his body.
The werewolf boy curled in on himself, trembling uncontrollably like a puppy soaked through by a storm.