Honestly, even after I’d built up resistance from getting hit by Longinus from King Arthur, the Wild Hunt in London, it still hurt like hell.
From the start, the output was on a completely different level. He’d probably gritted his teeth and fired it with every intention of killing me for good. But...
“This won’t work anymore...”
Devour was less like the kind of copy ability you often see in media and more like an adaptation skill.
“If I had to compare it to something, it’d be Mahoraga from Jujutsu Kaisen...”
The difference was that I didn’t gain a new ability so much as become outright resistant to it.
“Shall we go?”
“Yes, senior.”
Ritsuka and Mash stood beside me, both dressed properly for battle.
“We’re ready too!”
“It’s an honor to be able to join you in taking down the Lion King.”
“King... this time for sure...”
Arash, the Hassans, and even Bedivere...
“So this is the sortie...”
The already dark sky... the sky?
“...Am I really seeing this?”
“I-it’s a pyramid!!!”
I didn’t even have the energy to stop Da Vinci from getting excited beside me. Why?
“Why is there a pyramid in the sky...”
Then a voice rang out from within the temple.
“Hah! I wondered why the Lion King had advanced so aggressively yesterday, but it was because of you!!”
“Mash, prepare for battle...”
“Yes...”
Ritsuka’s quick judgment was the right one.
“I don’t like helping that Lion King bastard, but... in any case, you will sleep here!! You most vile existence!!!”
Countless bombardments came raining down from the sky.
“We have no choice but to fight!!!”
Arash shot down dozens of beams in midair, but he couldn’t block them all.
“Mash!!!”
“Yes!!”
I warned Mash in advance of what I was about to do.
“...Devour it.”
I pulled out the white fang I’d used yesterday and struck the temple head-on.
“Hah! This temple is protected by my radiance—”
Boom!
“...So you can break through after all...”
Even as the enemy’s mighty fortress was breached, she immediately regained her composure and resumed her bombardment.
“Mash, now!!!”
“Yes!!”
At Ritsuka’s command, Mash immediately deployed her Noble Phantasm and blocked every attack.
“Arash! Launch me at the temple!!”
My own strength alone wasn’t enough for a charge—my speed and power would both fall short. Arash answered my words not with a reply, but with action.
“Get on quickly!!!”
“Got it!!”
I was launched from something like a giant ballista Arash had made, hurtling toward the pyramid.
“If you come at me like that, I’ll just shoot you down!!!”
“Too bad. Not while I’m here!!!”
Arash covered me, shooting down the dozens of beams aimed my way.
“I’ll devour it all!!!”
Using Devour, I accelerated even further and reached the pyramid.
“You bastard!!”
“Sorry, but I’ve got someone else to deal with after this, so let’s wrap this up here!!!”
I began devouring the pyramid with Devour.
It took only a few seconds for the white fang marks to spread across the entire structure, like a plague crawling over flesh.
“Ghk!!”
“Why the hell is there so much divinity in this thing!!”
Under normal circumstances, this would’ve taken thirty seconds at most, but keeping me occupied this long was starting to wear me down.
“I’ll take you with me at least!! Ramesseum Tentyris!!”
“The hell is that!?”
Suddenly, the temple plunged downward at a violent angle, and I was dragged straight toward its tip. And below me...
“That lunatic’s going to crash two pyramids into each other?!?!”
“Even if you have not yet committed your sins, I cannot allow you to remain. Go keep Apophis company in the underworld!!!”
“No!!!”
At this rate, I’d be crushed to death. Then I really had no choice...
“Fine, let’s eat this thing!!!”
It was the first time I’d used the white fang twice in a single day, but if I wanted to live, I had no choice.
“Aaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!”
“Chyaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The clash between the one trying to crush me and the one trying to chew me up was dead even. One side was a perfectly ordinary human, and the other was an existence that wouldn’t sound strange if you called it a divine spirit, but...
“Kiaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!”
The human will to survive was too strong, and I had the power to back it up.
“This is insane...!!”
It looked like the descent of a great demon. I chewed through the massive divinity—the pyramid—crunching it under my teeth, and in the end, the only thing left behind was a deathly pale Albus.
“Mister!!!”
“Ugh...”
“Albus!! Are you okay?! You...!!!”
“What the hell is this...”
I barely managed to lift my head and look at my body. White spots had bloomed all over me, and my hair had turned half-blond.
And on top of that...
“Albus! You just absorbed a Servant’s attack, and your Spirit Origin...”
I could tell for sure. From that battle just now, I’d grown stronger. I didn’t know what the principle was or how I’d gotten stronger, but I had definitely grown stronger.
“The pattern is strange... Even among Extra Classes, something like this...”
“Let me rest a little... damn it...”
“I had a feeling, but you’re really serious about this...”
“It seems even the one called the King of the Sun has come to kill you...”
“The hell? Isn’t it too much to have the final boss show up right after the mid-boss?”
“Back in North America, you even fought Cú Chulainn’s five-stage transformation, so this is only fair!! Come on, Mash!!”
“Yes!!!”
“You’re brave, girls who gaze at the stars... but...”
She drew a spear and delivered a death sentence.
“That one must be ended here, no matter what. If you would stop me, then perish with it.”
No sooner had her words ended than the surviving soldiers and Wintak appeared.
Then Bedivere, who had been silent until now, raised his voice.
“My king! Right now, at this very moment!! I have come to return what I could not return to you!! Sinbedivere!! I stand here now!!”
“Bedi...vere...? Such... a knight... ngh!!”
“She’s stunned!! All-out attack!”
“Gyaaaah!!!!”
She unleashed her spears like a madwoman, as if she had gone berserk, but...
“Greed”
Already, I’d built up resistance, so attacks that wouldn’t have worked on me in the first place were now even less effective. And the newly strengthened Devour had reached the point where it could absorb attacks before they even became attacks in the first place.
The countless spear strikes blooming from the goddess’s hands were devoured before they could even be fired.
“What the hell?!?!?!”
“Somehow, I feel like I can do it...”
In my hand, the thunderbolt that had once torn my whole body apart now flickered white.
“World Discipline Apocalypse”
It was only a mimicry of the authority of the chief god Zeus. But the difference in fuel made up for everything, and it unleashed an output even greater than what the god himself would normally produce.
That’s right. Right now, this man had devoured an enormous amount of divinity and reborn that power as his own.
“What is this!!! Gyaaaah!!!!”
The massive thunderbolt was a scene like a god punishing humanity, but in reality, it was humanity punishing a god.
Then I suddenly caught sight of Bedivere charging at the Lion King with a shining sword in hand.
“Hey!! If you go now, you’ll die!!!”
“It doesn’t matter!! Thank you for bringing me this far!! Everyone at Chaldea!!!”
Saying that, Bedivere drove the sword into the Lion King, who was still too dazed from the thunderbolt to react.
“I return this sword to you...”
“I see... so that was it... Bedivere... You have fulfilled your duty. Sleep well...”
He thrust the sword into her chest, and she turned to dust.
Normally, the battle would have ended there and we would have returned, but...
“I acknowledge Bedivere’s efforts... but no matter who else, you... you alone cannot be allowed...”
The Lion King—no, the Knight King—stopped me in my tracks.
“At this point I have to ask: what the hell am I to you?”
Whenever we entered a Singularity and met a Servant who seemed even a little strong, this was usually the reaction. Even kind-hearted Arash had treated me as dangerous, which was proof that this power was anything but normal.
“Our ancestor Vortigern... and the traitorous knight who destroyed Britain, created by my mother...”
But she couldn’t say any more. She crumbled away like sand.
“What the hell is this power, anyway...”
And just like that, the journey through Camelot came to an awkward end.
“”
After that, we returned to Chaldea, but...
“Mister!! Let’s make bread together today too!!”
“I’m tired. Go on without me...”
“But... just one more thing with you, Mister...”
“Ah, fine!!”
I was so drained from being dragged around without a break because she wanted to make even one more memory with me that I felt like I’d die from sheer exhaustion.
If anyone reading this wants to curse me out, try spending eight hours shopping with an energetic little sister or niece.
But there was one problem...
“At this point, we can’t train you anymore. We’re going to have to call in a teacher.”
“Sorry, Master!! As a Servant, I think this is my limit!”
“My flames don’t work at all anymore, and hand-to-hand combat doesn’t work either... I give up! There’s nothing I can do!!”
I’d become too strong. Too strong to the point that even Heroic Spirit-class Servants could no longer spar with me.
“At this level, you’d definitely be among the very top even of divine spirits. My magecraft hardly works on you anymore...”
“So I guess I should roll the gacha?”
“It would be better if we got a support or a buffer rather than an attacker. Ideally, I’d like to be summoned as a Caster...”
After consulting with Gongmang, the answer for strengthening our forces was clearly the gacha.
“We haven’t done it in a while anyway... but Fujimaru...”
“Everyone in Chaldea knows she has terrible luck, so we’ll have to tie her up and do it anyway...”
We even got approval from the Director.
“Right... before that, make some tea.”
“That’s abuse of power!!!”
“...I need to talk to you for a moment...”
“That look on her face... this must be something important...”
I boiled water, brewed the tea, and handed it to her.
“You’re pretty good, even if you’re not on Fujimaru’s level...”
“I’m better at cooking.”
“I see...”
Then there was a brief silence...
“Albus, you, Fujimaru, Mash, everyone in Chaldea is so precious to me. Right now, this moment is happier than any moment in my life...”
“I was hopeless when I found out I was terminally ill, but now I don’t really think about it anymore.”
“...Mash says that every single moment right now is happy...”
“I can’t understand it, and I can’t relate to it, but I should respect it... Seeing you two like this, you really do feel like Naruto and Sasuke... one who had nothing from the beginning, and one who had everything taken away...”
“I don’t really know what that means, but there’s one thing I do want to say for sure...”
She let a single tear fall from the corner of her eye and offered her thanks.
“Thank you... Because you and Fujimaru are here, my life is so happy right now...”
“And yet if she doesn’t solve this, she’ll die, so what the hell...”
“Yes, well, I should probably get going now...”
Grip—
“...Don’t go... please don’t go...”
“...Huh?”
For a moment, I was so stunned that I asked again in genuine confusion.
“J-just stay and help with paperwork too!! Your typing is ridiculously slow, so let’s use this chance to improve it!!!”
“Ah... well... but you’re going to die soon anyway, so what’s the point of learning...”
“Shut up and sit down!!”
”
I wanted to keep being with him. I wanted to keep spending time like this. So, swallowing my embarrassment, I held him back with a pathetic excuse that didn’t even make sense.
And so the two of us...
“You made another typo!!! And you’re so slow!!!”
“That’s the best I can do!!!”
“If you can’t make 300 by tomorrow, I’m cutting your pay!!”
“Nooooo!!!! ...But I’m going to die anyway...”
“Internet privileges revoked!!!”
“Nooooo!!!!”
Even while scolding me, for some reason Olga Marie was smiling, as if this moment alone made her happier than anything else.
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