I ascended the stairs of Ryuudou Temple, carrying Illyasviel in my arms. Artoria strode behind me, Invisible Air spiraling in her grip as she kept her gaze fixed on the path ahead.
Another stake-chain materialized in Medusa's hand, her eyes snapping to the exact point Artoria was gazing at.
Medea hovered overhead, perched sideways on her staff with her face set forward. Violet magic circles rotated to life behind her, illuminating our path in a dark shade of luminescence.
Ten stairs ahead stood a man in red. Old by the musculature of his face, wearing black robes patterned like shattered church glass, buttoned tight to his throat. His glasses caught what little moonlight reached them, eyes closed in arching crescents.
A white-furred rat sat on his shoulder.
It was gnawing on a nut, yet its focus was entirely on us, crimson eyes unblinking, whiskers twitching up, up, down in a conscious rhythm.
"Come far, have you?" The man said, his smile stretching wider, voice warm, eyebrows moving in that exact same rhythm of up, up, down. "Children, out this late. And carrying—"
His gaze dropped to Illyasviel, lingering half a second longer than necessary before rising again. "—such a precious little cargo."
Invisible Air shifted in Artoria's grip. Her hands repositioned, bringing the invisible blade parallel to her face, its tip leveled at that priest.
Medusa glanced to her left, her body fractionally leaning in that direction.
The bracelet on my wrist twitched, its silver threads tightening against my skin.
"Someone from the Church. Or the Burial Agency, more precisely," I concluded, having cross-referenced the Einzbern database Irisviel had provided earlier. "They sent you this time as an enforcer."
"Oh, how lovely. You've done your homework." The old man's smile didn't waver, but he inclined his head toward us, the rat mirroring his movement perfectly. "Most children just scream—"
Air cleaved in an ascending line, freezing his words mid-sentence. An instant of stillness passed. Then, the stairs stretching between us split in two, left side wrenching upward, right sinking down. His body followed suit: one half rising, another falling, splitting perfectly down the middle.
Instead of a spray of blood or entrails, that priest burst into a cloud of glittering smoke that dispersed skyward. Tiles from the split stairs were still erupting sideways when gravity lost its hold, making them float upward.
The rat from before stood where that priest had moments prior, rising on its hind legs, jaw opening with a squeak.
"Rude children, the lot of you are. But I know how to handle ones like you."
It was bringing its hand up in a gesture when—
Gold.
A golden trail streaked in my periphery, and Artoria was on the rat, Invisible Air howling toward its body. Trees flattened in a crescent tracing her swing, their trunks bursting in a geyser of splinters that exploded a building high and hung there.
Before her attack could connect, the world softened. Moonlight bent, then curled into loops that danced in the sky as floating circles of silver. Trees mid-shatter lost their definition, their outlines straightening, soil collapsing into smears of brown, like something straight out of a fairy tale.
Clang.
A long, metallic blade clashed with Invisible Air, stopping it dead before touching the rat. A ten-meter-feet mechanical doll materialised between Artoria and her target.
At the same time, that rat was frantically waving its arms. "Merem Solomon! You said children! You didn't say a Servant!"
No one replied.
Foliage quaked to Medusa's left, cracks racing across earth to the stairs beneath her feet. She shifted in that direction, knees bending, body coiling, stake-chains pointing forward like two fangs.
The treeline ahead of her detonated, wood disintegrating into a cloud of dust, and a black furred silhouette manifested from it, already surging toward her, its footfalls cratering earth for meters.
It was a bizarre creature, a mix between a whale and a black-furred dog, nearly thirty meters long, with only its face and front torso visible, everything beyond that trailing into glittering smoke.
Finally, above and in front of Medea, a shape blotted out the moon.
It looked like a stingray, if a stingray had been stretched thin and set loose in sky instead of the sea, possessing a massive wingspan, its wings rippling through air like two blankets in a gale.
I stepped onto the next stair.
Medusa uncoiled. Fissures surfaced across a tile forty steps below, accompanied by the rapid clinking of chains moving so fast they sounded like clashing steel.
One moment she was covering our rear; the next, she was a blurring line beside that whale-dog. Both of her chains whipped around its neck, wrenching the beast away into the forest, leaving a widening trench and crushed woodland in her wake.
Simultaneously, the mechanical doll lunged. Its massive blade jerked back and swung down in a vertical arc, aimed to cleave Artoria in two.
Artoria shifted her footing, angling Invisible Air to catch the strike at a slant. Sparks erupted where their edges met, and golden light burst from her heels as she drove both knees upward, slamming them into the automaton's midsection.
Mechanical whirring resounded from that doll as it redirected the force through its shoulders and arms, crushing its blade downward, shoving Artoria toward the ground.
She let her body go parallel to the ground, a single leg lifting to plant on its torso. Golden light flared a second time at point-blank range, launching the doll off its feet, while the recoil sent Artoria tumbling backward. She flipped mid-air and rolled to a smooth stop.
Rolling her shoulder, Artoria got to her feet and met my gaze. "Take Illyasviel ahead and get her treated, Master. We can handle things here."
Our eyes held for a second before I tipped my chin upward, tracking a trail of violet as it intersected with another blue-green blur across the night sky.
Go on, Master. These monsters are irritating at best. It will just take a slight effort to put them down.
Medea's voice resonated within my mind, casual and at ease.
... Go.
Medusa's word came next, followed by the earth quivering from her clash farther away.
Alright.
I replied to all three together and resumed climbing forward, lines of heat across my face receding as I let them handle it this time, my attention shifting back to Illyasviel.
Five steps up, scurrying away toward a group of trees was that same rat. "Merem! You said children! You sent me to fight three Servants on my own! I'm the King of Rats, for god's sake! Not the King of Heroes!"
I swiped a finger at it in passing.
The trees ahead it simply weren't there anymore, trunks sliding apart at a diagonal, canopy shrieking down in a collapsing wave. It dove into the dirt, face buried in mud, whiskers trembling.
"Sixty years," It hissed into ground, "sixty years of seniority in the agency, and this is how I go, not even fighting, just running, do you have any idea how undignified this is—"
Crash.
"Heeik! Merem!"
...
..
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***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
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[Merem Solomon]: Twentieth of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors, appears as an unaging fourteen-year-old boy. As a child, his village mutilated him and worshipped him as a god, exploiting his power as a "Planet Terminal", the ability to materialize beings out of nothing. After his death, Crimson Moon revived him and told him to use that same power to give himself new limbs. He did, manifesting four Divine Beast-class creatures called the Four Great Daemon Beasts, each roughly as strong as an Ancestor, that fight independently and serve him. Merem himself has no combat ability of his own.
Basically he likes collecting relics, and joined the Church's vampire-hunting Burial Agency to access their sacred artifacts, operating under a disguise of an elderly priest persona that's actually his shapeshifting Left Arm, the "King of Rats."
...
[Author's Thoughts]
I wanted to start adding comedy chapters in between FUH too, do tell, does it hit or nah? And another chapter is coming later today, one where we're trying an entirely new way of how fights can happen, in fact, this idea itself came from the new Danmachi story I'm writing, so I thought to better try and get experienced in writing it here before there.
Let's see how it goes.
Have a fun day, everyone!