Tsk, looking at the ripple, a trace of dissatisfaction appeared in Xia Yu's eyes.
The Gate of Babylon she had plundered was incomplete. It wasn't that Usurper of the Celestial Wind was lacking, but rather this Noble Phantasm was unlike ordinary ones—its sheer volume was too massive. If it had been a single sword or bow, she could have snatched it in an instant...
But even so, the haul was enough to make her beam with joy. Despite having only a few brief seconds, she had still seized seventy percent of the treasury.
Seventy percent!
Just the various mineral-type treasures inside could pile up into a mountain, the kind that would make Ishtar refuse to ever leave if she saw it, let alone the fact that minerals were only a portion of it.
There was a dazzling array of legendary Armaments, ranging from swords, spears, halberds, and axes to shields and armor. Xia Yu couldn't even count them all.
She had to admit, although Gilgamesh was arrogant, he did possess the capital to back it up.
Snagging seventy percent of the treasury was already considered a massive harvest. Sigh, if only he hadn't died so decisively, her haul could have been even greater.
Whatever, I shouldn't be greedy.
Seventy percent was pretty good. Moreover, compared to those treasures, this Noble Phantasm itself was what truly warranted attention.
The Tarnished's spatial storage required her to switch bodies, and Xi's Painting Scroll needed a physical medium, which wasn't all that convenient. A Noble Phantasm, however, was different. Just like Usurper of the Celestial Wind, it was plug-and-play regardless of which body she occupied.
Xia Yu felt that if she continued accumulating things like this, there would come a day when she could stack enough abilities to turn even the frailest Furina into a super soldier!
With that pleasant thought, Xia Yu happily stowed away Judgment of Shamash and looked around.
The forest within a radius of several kilometers had suffered devastating destruction from their clash. The central area, in particular, had been completely glassed.
The sheer power of Judgment of Shamash was truly exhilarating, truly living up to its title as the most destructive Divine Key.
Firefly was incredibly powerful in all aspects with her stats maxed out, but she lacked such a decisive, final-blow technique!
Of course, she might not actually be lacking it. After all, Firefly genuinely possessed planet-busting strength.
Kafka had mentioned during a bartending event that she once passed by a planet's polar region where waning gravity was churning the glacial tides. She casually chipped a block of solid ice off the surface of a glacier welling up from the deep sea to mix a drink.
As for why the gravity was waning?
Because the planet's companion star had shattered.
What? You're asking why the companion star shattered? You'd have to ask our darling Firefly about that~~~
A companion star, in a binary system, refers to a celestial body whose mass is smaller than the primary star but larger than a satellite. Such phenomena typically occurred between stars, though there were cases of planets having companion stars.
In Firefly's final war as part of the Iron Cavalry of Glamoth, they killed the Swarm Mother. The cost was that, under the bombardment of orbital weapons, Firefly was the sole surviving member of the Iron Cavalry of Glamoth.
Then, using her potent awakened spiritual power, she reshaped her SAM Armor and sublimated it. To use an analogy, it was like upgrading a Mecha from the Real Robot genre to the Super Robot genre.
In that state, Firefly was genuinely capable of busting a planet.
Naturally, it sounded immensely powerful, but a planet-busting tier still didn't meet the standards of an Emanator. She would be considered the top echelon right beneath an Emanator, as Emanators were all galaxy-level threats.
However, Xia Yu couldn't unleash such overwhelming power. She was undeniably strong when using Sam, and she could feel that latent power hidden within... Xia Yu understood that what she lacked was simply Firefly's level of resolve.
I can only say that Super Robot types are just like this. It's truly a matter of willpower...
Xia Yu felt that if she wanted to awaken such immense power... it would probably be quite difficult. Primarily because whenever she encountered a hurdle that Firefly's strength couldn't overcome, she would just directly switch to Acheron and activate Naught... If even Acheron's strength wasn't enough, planet-busting power probably wouldn't help much either. It was a dead end both ways.
This was the price of having an out. Firefly's true power slumbered within her body like a seed. Without the courage to seek life in death, or the experience of breaking before rebuilding, she would never be able to touch the threshold of awakening.
But Xia Yu didn't feel discouraged. If she couldn't get it, so be it. With Acheron acting as her safety net, she didn't really care about such things. The current Sam was already exceptionally strong.
She wasn't greedy; it was all free power she got for nothing, anyway.
It wasn't as if she couldn't utilize the power of that 'seed' at all; she could draw out a tiny sliver of it. In her final confrontation with Gilgamesh, it was precisely by relying on that sliver of power that she managed to break through the clash between Judgment of Shamash and Ea, directly launching a surprise attack on his main body.
After all, this was the true weight of a baseline planet-busting combatant. If she could completely master Firefly's power, even ORT would have to eat a few huge slaps to the face before being turned into a roasted spider!
Presumably, Gilgamesh never expected someone to pull off such a stunt. I mean, if you were so strong that you could tank the maximum output of Ea, charge all the way up, and kill me, then why the hell did you waste half a day trading blows with me?
Of course, Xia Yu had her reasons for doing so.
Mainly because it was thrilling.
The feeling of dancing on the blade's edge in combat was incredibly exhilarating. Even though the vast majority of those Noble Phantasms posed no threat to the SAM Armor, Xia Yu still chose to intercept and dodge them.
It was mostly to indulge her desire for battle.
Including the final beam struggle between Judgment of Shamash and Ea—it was unnecessary, but it was satisfying!
Case in point: after finishing this fight, Xia Yu was in a spectacular mood. With her hands clasped behind her back, humming an off-key tune, she strode back toward Fuyuki City with a joyful bounce in her step.
However, the current situation in the urban district... was actually quite poor.
Illya stared dumbfounded at the massive flow of traffic preparing to flee the city.
"What's going on with them?" Her little head seemingly couldn't comprehend the sight.
"Hey, I'm telling you, it has to be a Nuclear Bomb, right? It absolutely has to be a Nuclear Bomb!" On the street, a group of students was discussing in terror. "Aside from a Nuclear Bomb, what else could possibly have that kind of destructive power?!"
Hearing his words, the worry on the faces of the surrounding people deepened. Obviously, the majority of them thought the exact same thing.
"No, it doesn't quite seem like a Nuclear Bomb," a bespectacled person nearby spoke up. "That light lasted for several minutes... and it was accompanied by flames and an ominous red glow. Nuclear Bombs don't have those characteristics, and we didn't see a mushroom cloud either, did we?"
"Then it must be a new type of Nuclear Bomb!" another person declared with absolute certainty. "A more advanced, more powerful Nuclear Bomb!"
"But... the main thing is, my Geiger counter isn't showing anything?" The bespectacled young man pulled a small device from his pocket, speaking in distress. "I haven't detected any nuclear radiation at all, okay? Everyone doesn't need to panic so much!"
"There's one scenario where a Geiger counter would also stop working," someone said, becoming even more panicked upon hearing this. "And that's when the total amount of radiation has exceeded its measurable range!"
"Give me a break." The bespectacled youth looked at him speechlessly. "It's already been half an hour. If the nuclear radiation was truly that severe, so much that a Geiger counter couldn't even measure it, how could we possibly still be standing here chatting?"
"Stop showing off your half-baked knowledge, okay? Spend more time reading a book when you have the chance. Either way, this couldn't possibly be a nuclear attack!"
"But it's better to be safe than sorry," a middle-aged woman beside him sighed. "Sawai, I know you're very confident in your knowledge, but no matter how convincingly you speak, you can't deny one thing."
"Regardless of what that was—whether it was a nuclear attack, a meteorite, or even the birth of a monster or the awakening of a Demon King—it's definitely not a good omen."
"Just now, it was only deep in the old forest, and no one knows what it was. But what if it happens in the city center next time? Sawai, are you going to gamble with your family's lives?"
"No... I just..." Hearing this, the young man named Sawai also froze.
"You're still young, Sawai, so you probably don't know clearly, but ah, this place, Fuyuki City... it truly has some problems," the middle-aged woman said anxiously, a hint of reminiscence flashing in her eyes. "That great fire ten years ago... didn't that also start out of nowhere?"
"The government said it was a gas leak... What kind of gas leak could burn down an entire neighborhood? Modern cities aren't like Tokyo during the shogunate era, full of wooden houses where a single fire could burn down a massive area! This is all reinforced concrete!"
"It's normal for you young folks not to remember," she shivered at the thought. "I saw it from a distance back then. Those flames... they weren't right. They really weren't right!"
"They could even burn straight through solid stone!"
Pulling herself out of her terrifying memories, she pleaded, "So, Sawai, don't be stubborn. Take your mother and leave this city quickly. If you don't believe us neighbors, are you really going to trust the government?"
Sawai opened his mouth, but ultimately couldn't say a single word.
He had been convinced.
After all, he couldn't actually gamble his mother's life on the assumption that everything was fine, right?
People like him were not a minority across the entirety of Fuyuki City. In a panic, they packed their belongings and drove their cars, swarming onto the roads leading out of the city. Many couldn't distinguish whether it was a nuclear attack or not, but for Japan—the only nation to have suffered the iron fist of nuclear weapons—it was always better to be safe than sorry in such matters.
No one wanted to test the explosive yield of a Nuclear Bomb with their own flesh and blood.
If it wasn't a Nuclear Bomb... then that was even more terrifying, okay? Heaven knows what that was, and whether it would strike the urban district next time.
Now, all roads leaving the city were severely congested. The Fuyuki City government was on the brink of collapse.
Boom!
Two F-15 fighter jets roared across the sky, flying toward the suspected site of the nuclear strike.
Seeing this, Kotomine Kirei silently closed his eyes.
He didn't possess much emotion and his heart was hollow.
But that didn't mean he wouldn't feel powerless when faced with such a massive mess.
Even if previous Holy Grail Wars caused large scenes, there were always ways to cover them up.
But it was broad daylight right now!
With such brazen audacity, the massive spectacle had been witnessed by the entirety of Fuyuki City!
As the local priest, he would be the one left to clean up this disaster. Furthermore, the Manager of the Spiritual Land in Fuyuki City was still a minor... As her guardian, the entire burden of this incident would fall squarely onto his shoulders...
Just thinking about the upcoming workload gave him a massive headache.
Such an enormous amount of work truly wasn't something he could handle in a short period of time.
Moreover... thinking of this, he once again raised his head to look at the barren forest in the distance.
Gilgamesh was dead.
Or rather, even if he wasn't dead, he had been defeated.
Kotomine Kirei had watched with his own eyes as the monstrous flames thoroughly overpowered the crimson light, swallowing the storm formed by Mana completely... Fuyuki City harbored another top-tier troublemaker.
Thinking of this, a person's figure surfaced in his mind.
Could it be that person from today?
...Highly unlikely.
Mostly because her frail appearance didn't seem like someone capable of fighting Gilgamesh to such an extent. Besides, there weren't any traces of Magecraft on her either.
Kotomine Kirei couldn't fathom how that person could possibly kill Gilgamesh.
But regardless, there was definitely a connection. After all, once he told Gilgamesh about this matter, the latter had appeared extremely intrigued.
He had presumably gone looking for that person.
So, it would be best to observe a bit more. With a person like this thrown into the mix, coupled with the impending Holy Grail War...
A faint smile curled the corners of Kotomine Kirei's mouth.
This is truly fascinating!
On the other side, Tohsaka Rin's heart had already turned to ashes.
Such a colossal incident was simply beyond her ability to handle; she could only rely on Kirei now.
But could Kirei even handle it?
Recalling that eccentric priest, Tohsaka Rin felt it was highly unlikely.
"Ahhh! What is going on! These baffling people!" She yanked on her twin-tails, rolling back and forth on her bed, and screamed with a look of utter breakdown, "Do they really have absolutely no intention of following any rules?!"
"Aren't they afraid of receiving a Sealing Designation from the Mages' Association? And why Fuyuki City?! Right at this crucial time, too!"
"Could this be some rule-breaking Magus summoning a Servant? Otherwise, why would a Magus of this caliber come to a backwater place like Fuyuki City?"
"No way, I have to face a Servant of this level next? This is cheating! It's a foul!"
Compared to the despairing Tohsaka Rin, Matou Sakura was clearly in a very good mood.
"Senpai!"
She stood prettily in front of Emiya Shirou, standing on her tiptoes as she looked at him with eyes full of anticipation. "Fuyuki City isn't safe, Senpai. Why don't you go travel somewhere else for a while!"
"I can," Emiya Shirou nodded without hesitation. Then, looking at his junior's delighted gaze, he added, "As long as Sakura comes with me, I'll go!"
"But Senpai... I can't leave." Hearing this, Matou Sakura lowered her head, avoiding Emiya Shirou's gentle gaze. A hint of gloom flashed across her eyes. "I really can't leave. The family... has matters to attend to recently."
"Okay, then I won't go either," Emiya Shirou nodded upon hearing this.
"But Senpai!" Matou Sakura suddenly grabbed his hand. "Fuyuki City... is truly dangerous right now!"
"Since it's dangerous, we should all leave together. We'll bring Shinji, and Fuji-nee..."
"We can't, Senpai. My brother... he can't leave either." Matou Sakura painfully turned her face away.
"Sakura, I won't ask what's exactly going on," Emiya Shirou took a deep breath as he saw this. "But I'll always be waiting for you at home. If you run into any trouble, come find me!"
"...I will, Senpai..."
The two of them just stood there, holding hands and gazing at each other.
Meanwhile, observing this from afar, Illya pouted unhappily.