After finishing dinner at home, Shirou immediately said goodbye to Taiga Fujimura and set out on the return trip to Einzbern Castle.
He had never expected Rider to invade Einzbern Castle while he was away, and he had expected even less that Tokiomi Tohsaka would be pushed that far by him, far enough to kidnap civilians with nothing to do with the Holy Grail War.
No, Tokiomi Tohsaka probably would not do something like that.
Shirou figured this was most likely Kirei Kotomine's doing.
He could settle the score with them later. Right now, the top priority was getting back to the forest on the outskirts.
If he took a bus from Miyama Town, it would take at least an hour and a half. By the time he got there, Saber and Rider would probably already be done fighting.
At moments like this, Shirou really had to appreciate how thoughtful Irisviel was. She had already prepared transportation to take him there and back.
"Good evening, Sella, Leysritt."
When he arrived at the designated place, he found the two Einzbern maids who had been standing by all day, along with their mistress's silver car.
"Good evening, Young Master Shirou."
The moment Shirou sat down in the back seat, the large-breasted homunculus in the passenger seat spoke in an emotionless voice.
"Hold on, Leysritt. What's with this 'Young Master' title?"
"It was the Lady. No, the Madam, who told me to address you that way."
Leysritt said, "From now on, we are to address her as Madam, and call Shirou 'Young Master.'"
Who promotes themselves to a higher generation like that?
The red-haired boy was left speechless.
"But Sella isn't calling me that."
"..."
The flat-chested maid gripping the steering wheel kept her face tight and said nothing, but she looked thoroughly displeased.
After thinking for a moment, Shirou said, "Let's not go with that. It sounds weird, and I'm not used to it. Just call me Shirou."
"...Is that alright?"
"Yeah. I'll explain it to Irisviel too."
Shirou noticed Sella glance at him through the rearview mirror. Then she roughly started the engine and, with practiced ease, merged into the sparse nighttime traffic.
Did I end up making her hate me? Shirou wondered.
...
A sudden burst of intense light flashed from the forest in front of Einzbern Castle. It was a torrent of Mana mixed with the aura of the Age of Gods.
Rider. Iskandar, the King of Conquerors, drove his divine bull chariot through the sky wreathed in lightning.
"Master of Saber, you have my thanks! You actually prepared such a wide battlefield for me.
If the battlefield were too cramped, the sons of Zeus, these divine bulls, would have no fun trampling the enemy at all.
Now then, Saber! Let my wheels and your Holy Sword decide which is superior!"
Rider yanked on the reins, and the valiant bulls let out a long, thunderous bellow. Streaks of lightning carved across the night sky as the chariot charged straight at Saber below.
Back in Saber's time, on fifth-century Britannia, the island still held a great many phantasmal creatures.
But although the King of Knights had no lack of experience fighting Magical Beasts and Phantasmal Beasts, she had rarely faced a true Divine Beast.
The Divine Beast that had manifested alongside the King of Conquerors was called the God Bull.
According to Greek mythology, Zeus, the God King of the heavens, once transformed into a bull when he seduced Europa.
And so, the force that drew the chariot offered to Zeus took the form of a Divine Beast tied to the God King himself, one that housed the Authority of thunder and lightning.
Only when Iskandar drew the short sword at his waist did the chariot reveal its complete form as a scorched-earth weapon.
The Divine Beast's iron hooves and the chariot's wheels would crush the enemy, and every stomp of the bulls' hooves unleashed a vast spread of violet lightning. As the wheels turned, they amplified Mana, creating the effect of endless thunderbolts striking everywhere the chariot passed.
With attack power, defense, mobility, and range all maxed out, the Gordius Wheel truly was a Noble Phantasm built for devastation.
The chariot drawn by the bellowing bulls fell toward the ground like a meteor, and its target was, of course, the petite girl swordsman.
"Take this, King of Knights!"
Rider roared as he dove.
Before the lightning Authority of the almighty god, any human being was powerless and fragile. Even great heroes and kings were no exception.
But if the opponent was dragonkind, a species that surpassed even Divine Beasts.
A violent surge born from colliding Mana swept through the entire forest.
Saber had actually stood her ground and stopped Rider's chariot with her sword.
More precisely, the instant before the chariot could run her down, she made a nimble leap to the side and slipped out of its path, then gripped the Holy Sword in both hands and slashed at the wheel.
Mounted on the chariot's wheels were enormous scythe blades taller than the girl herself. As the divine bulls charged at full speed, those sharpened edges spun like rock drills.
Faced with that storm of blades, any famous sword would have been shredded to pieces in an instant and ground to dust. Yet they could not leave even the faintest scratch on the Holy Sword's scabbard.
Even so, Saber, weighing less than ninety kilograms, was still thrown back by the impact of the chariot.
But in the instant before she was flung away, she swung Strike Air with all her strength and actually knocked the chariot slightly off course. Because of that, Saber escaped the Gordius Wheel's follow-up attack, its lightning, without a scratch.
Forced onward by the momentum of his charge, Rider missed his chance to press the attack.
He pulled on the reins to correct his direction, then rose back into the sky.
"Hahahaha! Just as I thought, you are not so easy to bring down, King of Knights!"
The King of Conquerors laughed boldly, but when he lowered his head to look for his enemy, he found that the small blonde girl had vanished.
"Hm? Where'd she go?"
"In the forest!"
Beside the King of Conquerors, Waver pointed toward a patch of woods not far away.
"I saw Saber dash into the forest. She must be planning to use the terrain!"
Iskandar froze for a moment.
The Gordius Wheel had just gone off course at a speed that broke the sound barrier, and Waver had actually managed to keep track of Saber in that instant?
This kid might actually be...
The corners of the King of Conquerors' mouth lifted slightly.
"Hahahaha! Well done, boy! Leave the rest to me!"
The chariot, which had just returned to the sky, dove once more. Waver nearly lost his soul from fright and clung tightly to Rider's waist.
"W-wait, what are you planning to do? Didn't I just say Saber hid herself by using the terrain?"
The King of Conquerors bellowed without a care, "If the enemy has hidden in the forest, then I will destroy the whole forest along with them.
Watch closely. This is the King of Conquerors' devastation!"
Rider charged into the forest without hesitation.
The lightning-wreathed wheels crushed the surrounding trees as easily as sheets of paper, laying waste to everything around them like a raging storm of thunder and lightning.
Before the King of Conquerors' iron charge, neither the Einzbern barrier nor the ancient trees with centuries of history were any different from ants.
However, just as the King of Conquerors rampaged at will, a silver figure suddenly burst from the shadows of the trees beside the chariot.
The King of Knights emerged from the darkness.
Artoria attacked Iskandar from the side of the chariot, the one angle from which it could neither charge into her nor properly defend itself.
With one slash, she scattered the lingering lightning. Then, using Mana Burst, she closed the distance in a single rush. From midair, Saber brought her blade down at the King of Conquerors standing atop the chariot.
Saber did not choose to release the Holy Sword or attack from long range. Instead, she used an assassin's method and went straight for a decapitation strike.
Because both Strike Air and Excalibur required a brief charging period.
Even if it was only a few seconds, that was still enough time for Rider to turn the chariot around and run her down.
So she chose to release Invisible Air and Avalon, and end her enemy's life directly with the edge of the Holy Sword.
"I've got you! Haaaaaaah!"
At the sight of the swordswoman charging in on a storm wind, Waver clutched his head and screamed.
Yet the King of Conquerors did not panic in the slightest. His eyes widened as he raised the Sword of the Kupriotes high.
"Hyeaaaaaaaaah!"
Rider let out a furious roar.
Faced with this unavoidable strike, the King of Conquerors, a man not famed for martial skill, actually chose to meet the King of Knights, the incarnation of the Red Dragon, in a contest of strength and swordsmanship.
No matter how one looked at it, this was courting death.
So that was it. Was Alexander the Great, who conquered half the world, really just a reckless brute as simple-minded as he looked?
Just as Waver hugged his head and thought, It's over. We're dead, he felt something.
A vast torrent of Mana was gathering and condensing.
The enormous energy that suddenly surged from the King of Conquerors' body possessed the highest concentration and purity in the world of Magecraft. It was also the only power in this world capable of contending with a dragon's breath.
That torrent of Mana, so divine it could almost be called godly energy, came from Rider's skill, Divinity [Zeus Thunder].
He was both a king of men and a son of a god.
This skill resembled Saber's Mana Burst, yet was fundamentally different. Through the power of Zeus Thunder, Iskandar could strengthen his body and heighten his divinity, causing all his abilities to surge explosively.
If this had been Alexander in his youth, the skill would probably only have been Rank C. But manifested in the prime of his life, it had reached Rank A+.
That was not only because of the legend that he was a son of Zeus. It was also because after Iskandar's death, his successors continued to worship him as a god.
Among those successors were even people who tried to establish Iskandar as the central chief deity and lead Magi of the Age of Gods in building an entirely new mythological system within the realm they ruled, Egypt.
Just like Romulus, the divine founder who rose into the heavens wrapped in lightning, the King of Conquerors Iskandar likewise possessed the qualifications to become a chief deity.
"Hyeaaaaaaaaah!!"
Rider's sword, wrapped in divine energy, crashed against the Holy Sword blazing with Mana.
"!!"
The King of Knights and the King of Conquerors. The Red Dragon and the Divine Child. Without even releasing their Noble Phantasms, merely pouring Mana into their blades and smashing them together with brute force, they created a shockwave that swept across the land.
Saber was driven several steps back by the shockwave, and only barely kept her balance by thrusting the Holy Sword into the ground.
As for Rider, because the chariot had been struck from the left while still charging forward, it kept rushing on for more than ten meters before flipping over and throwing both Rider and Waver off.
"Hahahahaha! Incredible! What power, King of Knights! My arm is still shaking even now."
Covered in dust, Iskandar casually shoved away the tree trunk pinning him down and spoke in his usual carefree tone.
"It is a little discouraging, but it seems that when it comes to martial skill, I simply cannot beat you."
Rider looked thoroughly disheveled, but in that exchange he had not actually come off much worse.
For a Servant not known for personal combat ability, being able to clash head-on with the King of Knights, even for a single exchange, was already an impressive feat.
What supported Iskandar was not only divinity, but also the bearing and greatness of a king.
Rider grabbed Waver, whose eyes had rolled back, jumped back onto the chariot, and returned to the sky.
"But, Saber, I have already seen through your plan. The same trick will not work a second time."
"..."
Saber's expression turned grave.
With her surprise attack having failed, she was now completely on the back foot.
From the look of Rider, he seemed intent on settling this with a Noble Phantasm clash.
...
At the same moment.
Just as Shirou and the others finally came off the highway and were about to enter Einzbern territory, they got into a traffic accident.
A figure appeared in the high beams.
The person had appeared so suddenly that Sella had to jerk the wheel hard to avoid hitting him head-on.
"Bang!!!"
They crashed into a large tree by the roadside.
The good news was that the driver and both passengers were tough enough that even a head-on crash into a tree at 120 kilometers per hour would not injure them.
The bad news was that Irisviel's beloved sports car was completely wrecked.
"When Madam handed the car keys to Sella, she clearly told her to be careful," Leysritt said expressionlessly.
Sella's face went pale.
"Ugh. N-no, it's not my fault. R-right, it's that person's fault!"
She slammed the door open and got out, ready to go argue with the one who had caused the accident.
"You there, what is wrong with you?! Why would you suddenly stand in the middle of the road?!"
"Let it go, Sella."
Shirou got out of the car as well, but the moment he saw the figure standing in the road, he froze.
Blocking their way was an elderly priest.
From appearances alone, he was probably already over seventy. His hair was completely white, yet his gaze was sharp, and his entire body gave off an air of calm competence.
Beneath those simple clerical robes, one could vaguely make out the solid lines of well-developed muscles.
Hands on her hips, Sella demanded angrily,
"That car is Madam's favorite treasure! How exactly are you going to compe..."
Suddenly, the old man vanished on the spot.
"...Huh?"
Sella let out a blank, stunned sound.
The reason was simple. The old man who had been around ten meters away just a moment ago had instantly appeared right in front of her, with his clenched right fist already raised.
The elderly man in priest's robes, Risei Kotomine, threw a punch at the homunculus, one that would have pierced straight through her chest and shattered her heart.
Before that tragedy could become reality, Shirou reacted first.
He lunged between them, wrapped one arm around Sella's waist, and blocked Risei Kotomine's iron fist with his other hand.
"Boom!!!"
Then he and Sella were both blasted into the bushes by the roadside.