Chapter 179

Struggling to stay conscious in the throes of death, Kuzuki launched a fist into the newly risen Avenger's side, hoping to inflict a grievous wound on her. With the distance between them, it would be impossible to dodge unless she pulled out her hand from his stomach. In that case, his other hand circling from the back for the base of her spine would catch her.

Yet it was stopped in its tracks like a mother catching a baby's hands, first the right fist that was supposed to crush her sides, then the spear hand with the fingers aimed at her spinal cords, one single arm moving within the span of a second to block both blows with god-like speed. Kuzuki could feel the wind batter his face as she moved, his glasses knocked askew. Abstractedly, he noted that his fist was crushed, along with the fingers in his left hand, and they dropped to his sides, the strength in them spent.

Without warning, he pushed his head forward in a headbutt, acting with a formidable drive that refused to let her go untouched as his forehead descended on her nose. If his hands were crushed, and he couldn't move his legs, he would use his head. It was logical, yet also foolhardy.

In response, she pulled out and moved back.

His guts spilled out on the floor as he fell forward with the momentum of his headbutt, blood and intestinal juices mixed together spilling onto the sacred temple grounds. His head smacked on the stone tiles with a clear crack, his body still as stone.

"k, KUZUKIIII!"

His voice tearing with anger, Shirou ran forward blindy. A shoddy projection of a bokken appeared in his hands, his mind too clouded by rage to properly reinforce it. He was confused when his eyes were abruptly covered with what felt like slender fingers wrapped around his face.

A second later, the bokken flew away as his grip loosened, the wooden sword spinning upwards into the air until it smacked into the roof of the corridor, snapping in half and landing back on the ground in two pieces.

Shirou himself was caught by Avenger, and slammed into the ground bodily. With one single hand on his forehead, he felt himself stop dead in his tracks, then go weightless as Avenger pushed him down, his legs flying upwards while his head descended faster than the rest of his body with her hand pushing him.

He felt his vision black out for a moment, a violent shock running through the back of head and jarring his brains. In reality, he had landed on Kuzuki's still warm body in front of Avenger, with the flesh saving him from certain death. If he had been slammed into the stone floor, he was sure to sustain heavy cranial damage and fractures from the back of his skull to his entire spine when he impacted on the tiles.

His body knocking into Kuzuki's body only made the teacher elicit a weak whimper, more blood squirting from the gory wound in his stomach as he clung to the last thread of consciousness, the pain and agony pushing away his ability to think. With one fluttering eye on the verge of shutting, he glimpsed a silver sabaton behind Avenger manifest out of thin air.

"MORDRED!"

Avenger's grip on Shirou loosened at the sound of the shrill cry, dropping the boy and swiveling around just in time to catch the blade of Excalibur swung horizontally at her in a forceful slash.

Unnoticed by her, a small portal at ground level opened, with dark turquoise ripples fringing it. From within the circle of darkness, an emerald bolt lanced out and struck her ankles.

Unbalanced, all it took was a triple simultaneous activation of Mana Burst as Saber applied it on her arms, waist and legs, the strength solely focused on driving away Avenger. With a burst of displaced air, she went flying and smashed into the far wall lining the border of the temple.

Letting out a ragged breath, she lowered her sword, limping on her left leg as she stood between the hole in the wall where Avenger had broken through and Shirou.

"Avalon."

Unable to spare any strength to speak more, she left Shirou to figure it out as she stood warily, watching the wall and the boundary for any signs of Avenger.

From behind her, Shirou could see the unhealed wounds that still bled on her legs, the red lines scored by the razor sharp cards of Ruler, with parts of her dress blackened from near misses by the exploding red cards. It was also well that he couldn't see her face from the front, because it was still a mess, her nose straightened but still leaking trails of red from her nostrils, one eye bruised until it was a barely open from the puffy swelling surrounding it, the other obstructed by a cut just above her eyebrow bleeding droplets of liquid into her eyes. She could still feel a faint ringing in her head, and the lightheadedness made it hard to stand without swaying from side to side. Nevertheless, she was determined to defend her Master, recovered or not.

Reminded by her tip, Shirou turned his gaze away from her back and looked back at Kuzuki's body, the skin turning pale as his blood leaked away. Closing his eyes and focusing his mind, the tips of his fingers pointed at Kuzuki as his Magic Circuits warmed up again, this time properly forming the image in his mind and going through each step. Holding the golden scabbard in his mind, everything was replicated down to the smallest detail, the years it spent dwelling in his body etching it's existence into his soul until he was intimately familiar with it, perhaps the only person alive who could boast such a connection with a fae relic.

The space in front of his hand warped and distorted, a warm light filling the air as an oval space filled with blue bolts, golden particles gathering around the crackling area. In a matter of seconds, the legendary scabbard was made, and without sparing a moment more, Shirou pushed it down into Kuzuki's body.

The dying man could barely feel anything at that point, coldness filling his body as his mind retreated into darkness. Caster, Saber, Shirou, Ryuudou Temple, everything faded away. Just before he felt the last string tethering him to his body cut, a rush of heat filled his body, calling his spirit back to it, reaffirming his will to live as he drifted into a fitful slumber instead of the sleep of death. His stomach started aching, a slow fire building up in his abdomen, but the fact that he felt pain even in his sleep proved that he was still alive.

From the outside, one could see his body start to knit itself back together, the copy of Avalon doing its job as he was slowly put back together, piece by piece. Granted, it wasn't pretty, and he was still in danger of dying, but the bleeding had stopped, courtesy of Caster expending her energy to perform some basic first aid. Beyond that, she was unable to do anything more as she handed over the rest to Avalon, gambling on it's immense regenerative capabilities.

Shirou and Saber weren't given a chance to catch their breaths. The moment Shirou gave Kuzuki Avalon, Avenger pounced on them.

Swinging her sword as fast she could, Saber reacted and leapt back, covering Shirou and Kuzuki as her sword made an arc in the air, before she transitioned into a swift stab accurately aimed at where Avenger dodged as she twisted in the air to avoid the slash.

Unfortunately, her resistance was futile. For the second time of the night, Avenger grabbed Excalibur with her bare hands, her other already on course towards Saber's face.

With startling speed, Saber dropped low, releasing Excalibur and instead pummeling Avenger with her fists.

The move came by surprise, but Avenger met it calmly, hurling away Excalibur as she knifed Saber's wrist with superior speed, breaking her left hand, then parried the right fist as she leaned in with her shoulder and after landing on the ground, shoved inwards. With her injuries slowing her down, Saber couldn't do anything to counter.

Shirou ducked as his Servant went flying over his head into the wall, her breastplate cracking from the force exerted by the shoulder ram as she was sent shooting further away than the first time. A couple of trees toppled behind Shirou in the distance, the thundering crash unable to distract him from the sight of Avenger's red eyes turning to fixate on him.

Trying to stand up, he found his legs weak and unresponsive, but he gritted his teeth and rose up anyways, only to slip on the slick puddle of blood that was carpeting the floor, courtesy of Kuzuki and the hole in his stomach. Flailing his hands, he landed back on his ass.

It took a moment for his brain to process that Avenger was now standing right in front of him, and that he was missing part of his right hand, including the thumb and index finger.

In the heartbeat when he slipped, Avenger had dashed forward and sliced the air with her bare hands, using enough force to chop off part of his hand that was stuck up in the air to counteract his body falling for the sake of balance. If he hadn't slipped, the upper half of his head would be gone.

Such miracles never came twice in a row, and he found nowhere to dodge as her leg came down in a crushing stamp.

The sound of shattering bones and squelching meat filled the air as Shirou's thigh turned into splatters of flesh and blood, the jagged bone clearly exposed in the middle. Retaining enough presence of mind to move, he had barely been able to shove his body and Kuzuki's body under his out of the way, the pool of blood lubricating the tiles and actually assisting him, but instead of his stomach, her leg had instead claimed his right leg. It was better than being stomped into two, but not by much.

A scream wormed its way into his throat, but he didn't have the leisure to release it as he traced the sword Caster had given him to trace on that night. It was filled with holes, hollow and weak, but through tear-filled eyes, he was able to see it break after fending off a single punch. The shock tore through his arms, his right hand already in agony after being sliced, his leg screaming and yowling through his nerves as bolt after bolt of pain made its way through his body, but he was already tracing the same hollow Noble Phantasm again. Beneath him, he could feel Kuzuki's body disappear as he fell back on stone tiles, Caster finally gathering enough energy to transport him elsewhere, but she could do little to help Shirou escape.

With what precious little strength she had left, she channeled the leylines through her staff, her left arm spontaneously combusting from the overuse of her own physical container as a conduit. Fighting through the sensation of searing heat, she stretched a barrier over Shirou, the same one that her Noble Phantasm allowed her. Sweat evaporated from her body as the flames consumed her, the orange flames crawling up her shoulder as her fair skin dripped onto the floor like wax.

It blocked the second punch that came, Shirou unable to trace the sword in time. The air rippled with the shockwave of the blow, Shirou wide-eyed at the invisible barrier stopping the fatal blow in its tracks. Turning around, he started crawling away, blood trailing from his hand and leg, ignoring the sensation of the flesh tearing loose from his right stump as most of his leg detached and fell on to the ground.

Even with pain stabbing his body like heated knives, he still couldn't stop clinging to one thought.

He had to save them.

Right now, he wasn't moving because he wanted to save himself. It was to put distance between him and Avenger so he would have time to trace the weapon he needed to defeat her. In his half-delirious mind, he could picture one thing that could destroy her, a weapon wielded by an immensely powerful Servant that he had witnessed before with his own eyes. It didn't matter that he'd never tried to project it, it didn't matter that he had tried and failed to project Caster's low-level Noble Phantasm catalyst. He would do it, or die trying.

From the start, being saved by someone on the roof of that school building, he had demonstrated his lack of power to act and contribute in the Holy Grail War over and over again. His heart demanded he save as many as he could, but the body was weak.

If he could turn that around right here and stop Avenger here, to save Caster, Kuzuki and Saber, his death was nothing.

As he crawled, he summoned the image of the weapon in his head, the shape, form and design it had been created with, each line and curve taking shape in his head.

Judging the concept of creation.

It was not a sword, but something used on horseback, ending a sharp point that could pierce any armor in the era it was most widely used in.

Hypothesizing the basic structure.

A long cone, with a flaring guard, red spikes menacingly arranged on the body.

Duplicating the composition material.

He didn't know, but he filled it in with the material that made up Avalon, performing a makeshift replication as he filled in the information from the scabbard onto the weapon for this section.

Imitating the skill of its making.

The fae relic was surely one of the greatest artifacts made, and he applied it to the weapon. The process of creation imbued his mental blueprint with proof, strength that affirmed its existence, even if it was from something else entirely.

Sympathizing with the experience of its growth.

The history of the weapon, it's experiences in the hands of it's wielders. There was no experience he could put in aside from his own and what he had seen of his Saber in his dream, and it failed to click. With no time to agonize over this step, he moved on.

Reproducing the accumulated years.

This was something he simply could not do. The Mystery imbued wasn't properly imaginable, and unless he had a convenient tool that could just record a weapon's spiritual weight, he couldn't do it. As such, he just put in as much Mystery as he dared.

Excelling every manufacturing process.

A redo. This was essentially him rechecking everything and then applying everything into the real thing, putting the blueprint into practice on the block as he 'excelled' the original six steps. There was no easy way to describe it, but the closest thing that could be said to be an approximation was that he was making it more defined. To exist in the real world and persist without being crushed by Gaia, it had to have substance, he was basically adding that in the final step.

Through the adrenaline-fueled haze that kept his body running, he watched as the weapon took shape in his hands, the pain doing nothing to stop him.

Avenger advanced on Shirou after getting stopped by Caster's momentary barrier. She was unhurried, casually strolling on the trail of blood left behind by his body, confident that he was unable to escape. The moment she sensed his Magic Circuits opening though, she leapt forward.

Blue bolts of energy lanced through the air around Shirou, dancing around him as they disturbed prickled the grass he was crawling on. His face was lit up, his pupils reflecting the blue light as his body turned feverish, the blood leaving his body failing to counteract the massive rise in temperature from his Circuits straining themselves beyond reason. Seeing the world blur in front of his eyes, he chose to close them, focusing solely on the feeling clenched in his mental hands, the weapon he was holding that would defeat Avenger. Putting all the discomfort he felt to the side, he tugged on his Circuits, willing them to perform at their best, believing that the weapon would appear in his hands from the air itself.

"Trace On."

Final brilliant flash lit up the clearing as all the jagged bolts converged into the long rod of energy taking shape in his hands, a brief beacon of light that lit up the trees and temple buildings.

Just as Avenger was about to bring her leg crashing down on his head, she felt a pinprick tingle of her senses, and her head whiplashed to the right.

Floating in the air, a translucent image of Marmyadose was taking shape.

Craning her neck, she bent her back, forming a U-shape as she dodged in anticipation of the golden beam. In exchange, less force went into her kick, her foot going off course as she moved.

Shirou was too engrossed in the process of tracing to notice his ear getting pulled off as her foot clipped the back of his ear and ripped it loose, a empty hole now visible on the right of his head as a tuft of auburn hair floated to the ground, sticking to the blood on the ground.

Meanwhile, the blast never came. Instead, the Marmyadose that was forming dispersed without a sound, simply a bluff from Caster who didn't have enough energy to even throw a bullet of ether.

Realising it, Avenger sank her body to straddle Shirou and obliterate his head with a punch, but she realized the boy was already on his back facing her, with something in his hands that almost completely blocked her view of him.

Of course, she ignored it and punched him.

Her hand scraped against a red crystalline spike, the tip failing to penetrate her skin as it disintegrated into dust after snapping off in the middle, and then her fist made a dent on the metal of the weapon, sliding on the surface to make a hole in the ground right next to Shirou's head.

Using the lance he had just traced, Shirou parried her and activated it at once, putting all his remaining strength into one final gambit.

The traced Rhongomyniad was heavily imperfect, the red spikes crumbling to the touch from Avenger's punch, even denting the main shaft and making an unsightly mark on it that would never appear on the real thing. He was keenly aware that it was 'hollow', something that wasn't even qualified to output 10% of what the original could manage, and it certainly wasn't going to tear the sky apart and whip up a storm like he had seen on that fateful night on the school rooftop. Still, he had to believe it was enough for Avenger. He'd come so far, using the hard-earned seconds given to him and the energy he had left to create this imitation. If it failed here, it was over for him. And not just for him, but everyone in Ryuudou Temple too.

So it would work, because it was the only way they would be saved.

For the first time since he lost his leg, he felt the adrenaline start ebbing away, the injuries all over his body making their presence known as he registered the lost ear, the fingerless hand, the absence of a leg. The loss of all that blood was making him lightheaded, and the fever brought on by his still burning Circuits didn't help. Growling, he gnashed his teeth firmly as he glared straight at Avenger, her second fist coming down in slow motion for him. He could feel mana surging through the black lance, awaiting his signal to let loose and consume the area in destruction, mana laced winds that tore apart the clouds.

Struggling to breathe, he screamed the spell out with his raw throat.

"Split the heavens and earth, RHONGOMYNIAD!"

The world turned white in front of him, and then his eyelids closed shut.