Chapter Ninety-Three: The Reappearance of the Divine Age Tragedy

Rider would never forget the sight before him; beneath the primeval spear, shaped from a bud of life that kept on growing, all the myriad things in the world became a hollow, empty nothing.

Countless sky-columns stood between heaven and earth, flaring with lightning. They shouted and bellowed as they spun like tornadoes, twisted like the void, and shot upward into the sky like lances long enough to pierce the world.

Light streamed from Enkidu’s body as though a Milky Way had fallen from the stars in the void, burning with blinding brilliance.

The earth shifted, and from beneath Enkidu’s feet a life-tree as tall as a mountain raised him high, straight toward the clouds.

Purple lightning split the heavens, and life spread in impossible patterns through the inner landscape of his mind.

It was a terror like the heavens collapsing and the earth caving in, like doomsday itself arriving.

Even while charging in the lead, Rider could not help but lift his head and look up.

This was the breath of the planet.

When the Spear of Light touched the army he had long taken pride in, what remained was only utter emptiness.

The endless dunes shattered again and again. Soldiers swallowed in the blast could barely form a word; only harder winds rushed in from the void.

Compared with the impossible spectacle of Rider’s single-man host, Enkidu too answered with a power that erased everything.

Like a tail snapping at his heels, the Spear of Light erased Rider’s forces little by little. Yet even upon seeing that sight, Iskandar showed no sign of fear. He stared to the horizon at Lancer and loosed a cry like thunder.

“Warriors! In this scene of ruin and rebirth, this is our finest moment to display our sovereign might!”

Behind him came the proud voices of the Servants in his wake. Though more than half of that army, born across the gulf of time and space, had already been erased even before the enemy’s strike was finished, their morale had been fixed and unbreakable; therefore they still surged forward with an irresistible force, like a Don Quixote hurling himself at a windmill.

No one feared it. No one retreated. Gathered beneath Rider’s banner, no matter what enemy they faced, they would follow him without hesitation.

But before absolute power, all of it was futile.

Ripping light screamed down from the sky. Though every man behind Rider was, in the strictest sense, a Servant, none of it aided the battle; with each breath, hundreds upon hundreds of Servants were erased.

“This cannot continue...” Rider understood. The strength of the King’s host could not stand against the planetary breath that Lancer had released.

Yet having declared this march from the outset, Rider would not sit and wait for death. He raised a roar that could stand opposite Lancer’s thunder.

Across the void came a war chariot pulled by divine bulls. Iskandar stood upon his cherished horse, vaulted high, and swept forward through the sky from the side.

As his mana kept surging in, the divine-will wheels beneath Rider began to unleash colossal thunder and a hair-raising crackling as well.

The two celestial bulls were drenched in a violet thunder-armor, their pupils turning into dark whirlpools. They strained forward, thundering across the void toward the wedge from which the spear of light was fired. In that streaking afterimage, like flashes of lightning, Enkidu could only see a violet meteor hurtling at him with the force of Mount Tai collapsing.

“A will so radiant as the stars, such a noble soul… how enviable,” Lancer sighed, yet he did not stir in the slightest at Rider’s charge.

Because—this ends here.

The stellar breath had already passed through the world. Under that power, even the last Servant soldiers left from the previous shock were eventually erased.

The desert was purged. The air itself was split apart. Iskandar’s army, its dreams, and its innate barrier were all shattered beyond repair.

Though he did not turn, Rider still knew exactly what had happened behind him. If not for the power of the divine-will chariot that let him slip from Lancer’s core attack, he might have died already.

So strong... if Enkidu is like this, then Archer surely cannot be inferior.

Though it was a scene meant to inspire fear, Iskandar wore a crude, thrilled smile.

It is because one cannot oppose it. It is because one cannot touch it that there is value in challenging it!

What war could be more marvelous than meeting two adversaries at once that were worthy of being called one’s ideal enemies?

“It appears your journey ends here, Rider.”

Lancer pressed his lips together in a tiny, almost apologetic smile, yet his movements did not slow.

Around his feet, the earth rose in swells. The tendrils of the planet shifted once more at his will, and in an instant countless weapons rose from the ground, each no less fearsome than King Gilgamesh’s royal treasures, standing like forests sprung from the earth.

Those deadly implements slowly aligned toward Rider, taking the posture of things about to be fired.

Iskandar, however, did not hesitate or waver. He charged again toward the already-set storm of stars.

But the next moment, Enkidu’s movement suddenly froze.

“You were spared, Rider.”

His gaze, quiet and profound, looked toward the center of Fuyuki City just before his figure vanished, and he released a sorrowful sigh.

“What is happening?”

Rider, bewildered at Lancer’s sudden disappearance after all he had prepared for death, still did not have time to linger on the meaning of it. Remembering Lancer’s words, he sprang toward the chariot and hurried in the direction of his Master.

“Master, are you injured? I don’t sense any enemy nearby. Is it necessary to spend a command seal for this?”

Enkidu frowned as he looked at the old temple before him and at Danik, who sat weakly on the ground. After the dream-forge had been broken through, Danik had claimed this temple for himself as a temporary workshop.

“Of course it is necessary,” Danik replied with a feral smile. He looked at the holy mark on his hand, now blurred into a single line, and exhaled in satisfaction.

“I have finally reached this moment, Lancer. You should feel it too. This body is now your only Master.”

“Yes. The other bodies are dead. The collective consciousness called the Thousand-World Tree has become entangled with you, Master. Lose this talisman and you will be absorbed at once.”

Lancer stared at Danik, bewildered, not understanding what he meant to do.

“Right. But I can no longer go on. To stay alive, I must let my soul become independent. If I lose this body, I can do nothing at all.”

Danik struggled to his feet. Lancer moved instinctively to steady him, but before he had taken one step, a strange magical array appeared beneath his foot.

At once, bone-eating black smoke suffused Lancer’s body. Cracks, dangerous as fractures in white porcelain, spread across his skin.

“A curse?”

“From the Age of Gods. I wrested this from the Clock Tower with great effort, and today it has finally arrived.”

Danik looked at the flawless body before him and licked his lips greedily.

“As a weapon forged by the gods, you are nearly perfect, but against a curse that weakens and kills you, you have no resistance.”

Danik slowly tore open his own chest, letting the charm sink deeper into his flesh.

“Since you claim to be a weapon that obeys the Master completely, you can surely understand my wish. To survive, my soul must be separated and made to stand like a Servant’s.”

“This is the finest spiritual ground in Fuyuki. My soul, having just swallowed Kenneth, is sated and complete; every condition is fulfilled.”

Danik stretched out fingers already turning to dry husks, and his voice rose with a sound like a demon’s—desperate, pleading, and arrogant all at once.

“I have been locked in this cage of blood and bone far too long. This slow wasting, this crumbling toward death, this sensation so cruel it drives one to despair and denies all freedom—how can I have lived so long?”

“Lancer, can you unite with me and help me be free?”

The weakened Enkidu did not look at Danik. He looked toward Fuyuki City, toward that golden, nostalgic atmosphere.

“Gil… take care.”

In the most luxurious underground casino in Fuyuki City, Gilgamesh leaned back in his chair, looked down at the mountain of chips, casually picked a number, and waited with bored ease for the next round to begin. Around him, common folk had ringed him like flies, their eyes fixed on the roulette wheel.

The croupier had quietly set the mechanism to make the wheel stop at a chosen spot.

Before anyone could let out a gasp, a tremor came from somewhere, and the ball rolled to the very number Gilgamesh had chosen.

“You won again...” the croupier said, frustration in his voice. He looked at Gilgamesh, only to see the once flashy gambler now pale with fear.

“...Enkidu?”

The next moment, he rose straight up without so much as glancing at the wealth left on the table.

“Sir, your money has not been settled—”

“That’s fine. Just give it to me.”

At once, a young man stepped to the table and tapped the wood once with casual ease. From the shadow, a black-clad ninja emerged and took every coin and banknote Gilgamesh had won.

The croupier tried to intervene, but when the hooded, slight figure behind the youth flicked a wand, the crowd around them drifted into a dazed blur and dispersed.

“Has it all been handled over at Ryudou Temple?” Roland asked, reclining in a soft chair while laughing at the hole punched open by Gilgamesh.

“It is all taken care of. We only wait now for the Servants’ souls to be returned.”

“Good. Then it is time to finish. Notify Matou Zangyan.”

All the scattered trajectories always gather in the end. Thinking of what was to come, joy flared in Roland’s garnet-like eyes.

“And now, I shall also watch in full as this tragedy of the Age of Gods is played out once more.”

End of chapter.