When he felt the sudden feeling of the tip of an arrow being burrowed into his shoulder, he couldn't suppress the cry of pain that arose from him. Sakura's eyes widened.

"Senpai!"

"I'm fine!" Shirou shouts back.

How in the world did they find us so fast?! No, how did they even manage to catch up to us so quickly?! Shirou ponders, ripping the arrow out of his shoulder with another hiss of pain and tossing it to the ground. I was moving as fast as a Servant for a couple of minutes at least! Also, where the hell did that arrow come from? Archer's clairvoyance…

Shirou turns to Sakura and quickly loops an arm around her waist, once again charging prana into his legs. But before he could launch himself forward, sharp jabs of pain suddenly surged through his legs. He falls over onto the ground, bringing Sakura down with him as he shuts his eyes and lets out another cry of pain.

"Senpai!" she shouts again.

Her head perks up at the sound of the whizzing of more arrows. She quickly jumps away just as Shirou rolls to the side, right before more arrows could pepper the ground where he was on just a moment ago.

"Trace on!" he shouts, getting up from the ground and into a crouching position. In his hands, sparks of green energy explode before disappearing just as quickly as they had appeared. Now, grasped within his right hand, was a black bow. Within his left, an arrow.

The redhead quickly nocks the arrow into the bow as he turns around and upwards at the high branches of the trees behind him to eye the Hunters perched on them before firing at them. As it leaves his hand and travels through the air, the arrow dissolved into a blur of light red energy. However, before it could reach its target, another arrow suddenly shot from another tree, the silver arrowhead colliding with Shirou's own arrow and sending it careening off of its flight path. He fires a few more arrows, but just like the first, they're all intercepted

The redhead curses. He should've known that trying to use archery against trusted archers of the goddess of hunting wouldn't be so effective.

The bow in his hand dissolves into green particles of energy. Holding out his hands, he chants his usual "Trace on!" More green energy explodes from his hands as the black and white blades of Kanshou and Bakuya appear in them, just as more silver arrows shoot out from the trees above. Prana surges into his limbs as Shirou slashes away at the arrows, parrying them out of the air.

"Sakura, quick!" Shirou shouts. "On my back!"

The purple-haired girl just nods as she quickly hoists herself up onto the redhead's back. Shirou slashes away at another arrow before crouching his legs, charging more prana into his legs and ignoring the stinging pain in them.

But just before he could push off the ground, a huntress, one that Shirou doesn't recognize, suddenly drops from the leaves above, landing onto the silty ground with her legs crouched a hand to the ground. In her other hand was not her bow, which was strapped to her side, but a silver hunting knife, which was glowing slightly with a silver aura.

But most notable was the glowing, silver aura that was wrapped around her body. It wasn't bright enough to stick out significantly, even in the darkness of the night, but it was definitely there, in the form of energy that surrounded her like a transparent, silver flame.

Shirou quickly straightens himself, partly out of slight shock of the Hunter's sudden appearance, but then just prepares to dash forward anyway. He was confident that he could just burst right past her. Maybe he wouldn't even have to come in contact with her.

That was until the Hunter suddenly shot forward on her own. But that wasn't what had surprised him.

What had surprised him was the sheer speed that she had dashed at him with.

Shirou just barely manages to raise Bakuya just in time to block the Hunter's knife. He had planned to get back into position quick enough to counter attack with Kanshou before the Hunter could get back into stance, but what he hadn't expected was the force of the slash to be strong enough to push the white-bladed sword up and push Shirou backwards, putting him out of position. Sakura quickly gets off of his back, rolling to the side just as Shirou regains his footing before he could fall onto his back.

The Hunter had already lunged in for another attack.

Trace on!

Prana surges into Shirou's arms as he swings Kanshou upwards to meet the silver hunting knife. The two blades clash with a shower of sparks, the force of each stopping the other in the air.

But Shirou just simply puts some more force into his sword arm before easily pushing the Hunter's blade upwards, easily overpowering her in the clash.

The Hunter "tsks" to herself as she is forced to take a step back to regain her stance.

Shirou darts forward before she could fix her posture and swings Bakuya at her neck. In a flash, the Hunter brings her knife up to her neck to block the attack, parrying the white blade with it, but she doesn't manage to get her guard up again in time to block the sidekick that he sends into her gut. The Hunter's eyes widened just as she was suddenly sent flying into the nearest tree hard enough to violently shake it, causing another Hunter to suddenly fall out from the leaves with a surprised sound. Her body, too, was surrounded by a faint, grey aura.

That explains how they manage to catch up to us, Shirou thinks to himself, his eyes shifting to the trees around them. The goddess enhanced their physical abilities. And since we're in a woodland area, as a goddess of nature, looking for us would've been easy. But why isn't she using any of her godly powers to just use the nature around her to bring us back to her? Is she playing around with us?

I have to get out of here as soon as possible.

"Sakura! Hop onto my back! We're getting out of this forest!" he shouts.

Sakura just nods, quickly throwing her arms around Shirou's neck and mounting onto his back once again. The moment that he is sure that she is secure on his back, he takes off.

More arrows shoot out from the trees behind him, but he zigzags tightly around nearby trees, causing some of the arrows to hit nothing but tree trunks or the ground trailing behind him, occasionally parrying away arrows that would've hit him even with how he was running.

He manages to continue his run for a dozen more long seconds before things began taking a turn for the worse.

Just as he had curved around another tree to dodge some more arrows, a Hunter suddenly appeared from the foliage above, her knife blade aimed downwards at his head as she dropped directly towards him from above. Shirou immediately slashes upwards with Bakuya, the white blade colliding with silver in a shower of sparks.

The Hunter drops to the ground in a roll, landing several feet away. Shirou immediately turns to the right and takes off in that direction. But before he could get too far, another Hunter drops from the trees in front of him, obstructing his path with a bow in her hand. She quickly aims the bow at him and lets the arrow loose, the projectile blurring as it flies through the air. Shirou just simply blocks it with the flat side of Kanshou's blade before darting towards her and swinging Bakuya at her. She quickly drops the bow in her hand and, in a flash, draws her hunting knife to block the blade.

He feels Sakura drop from his back and hears her shout his name. He manages to duck into a crouch just as he hears the sound of the whistle of a knife blade slicing through the air right above his head from behind. The Hunter in front of him attempts to slash at him, but he rolls out of the way before the knife blade could reach its target.

Shirou "tsks" to himself as he quickly gets back onto his feet.

And not much later, just as he had anticipated, the sound of many twangs and whooshes filling the air.

However, he doesn't turn to regard it. He doesn't even take his eyes off of the two Hunters.

Instead, it is Sakura who turns up to the barrage of silver arrows, fired from the Hunters who had kept up with them from the branches of the trees above.

She just simply raises a hand up into the air.

Red markings suddenly creep up from under the collar of her white dress. They spread outwards and out from her sleeves and around her hands, like a disease. The swirly, flame-like red marks crawl up her neck, just barely licking the tip of her chin. The expression on her face is set into one of deathly cold placidity.

The ground under her suddenly caves into itself, replacing silt with a goopy, dark mud so that she was standing in the center of a small pool of pitch black goop.

The essence around her rises from the ground in front of her before spreading throughout the air into a thin, translucent black film that hovered in the air above the ground, protectively sheltering Shirou and her.

The two Hunters that Shirou was facing widened their eyes in surprise, staring up at the translucent black shield hovering in the air which seemed to completely blot out the moonlight above so that the only source of light below was the glow of their own auras.

Shirou takes that opportunity to strike.

The first Hunter he targets snaps back to attention the moment he pushes off the ground and raises her hunting knife to meet a strike with Kanshou. The other Hunter stabs her knife at his side, but Shirou twists away to dodge the blade while swinging Bakuya at her. She just barely manages to jump away in time, just barely avoiding the white blade. Shirou immediately twists around to face the other Hunter, swinging both blades at her in an outwards X-shaped pattern. The Hunter leans backwards, just barely dodging the blades, but Shirou uses the forward momentum from his attack to continue his forward dash, twisting his body to aim an elbow at her face. He mercilessly jams it into her face.

The sickening sound of bones cracking mixes with the Hunter's pained shout as blood splatters. Then he grabs the disoriented Hunter's wrist and spins her around a full 180 degree circle, swinging her full force into the other Hunter, sending both of them flying into a tree hard enough to violently shake it.

Both Hunters slumped to the ground, unconscious as the auras around the body still glowing with light.

With that done, Shirou stops the flow of prana flowing into his limbs, wincing as sharp stabs of pain dug into his arms and legs. He was already intimately familiar with the pain though, so he was able to bear a few seconds of it.

Once it ebbed away, he turned around to assess Sakura's situation.

Arrows still rained down around the purple-haired girl, but just as they were about to enter the ring of bubbling black around her, they disappeared into small, dark-purple rifts, which appeared right in front of the arrows' paths and seemed to swallow them.

Sakura herself just looked up at the Hunters perched on pine tree branches, a blank look on her face, teetering on the edge of slight annoyance.

"Senpai, what should I do with them?" she asks as Shirou steps into the ring of dark energy, her voice empty and almost completely devoid of emotion.

"We just need to make them go away," Shirou says. "Though try not to kill them. I don't want to risk having an angry goddess on our tails all the time."

"She's probably going to just keep chasing us regardless," Sakura says.

"Well yeah, but it's better than making her mad," Shirou says. "Maybe we can create enough of a ruckus to convince her that chasing after us won't be worth the time or the effort."

Sakura just nods.

With that, she raises her arms.

The dark pool of energy around her feet, now glowing a dark indigo rather than an inky black, suddenly enlarged rapidly. Within the span of just several seconds, the silty ground of the woodlands forest was replaced with that of a bubbly, dark purple film. At this point, the Hunters had already stopped firing, acknowledging that they were just wasting more arrows in doing so. The several of them who had taken to the ground from the trees were immediately taken by surprise at the sudden change of the ground, but their surprise turned into wary confusion at the sight of nothing else happening as the Hunters above them were split between eyeing their comrades with concern and keeping their watch on their two opponents.

But then all of their gazes would be peeled away from both targets.

As a booming loud, unearthly screech filled the air, followed by the sight of a large, inky black creature shooting up from the ground behind her.


There weren't many things that confused Artemis, the goddess of the Hunt.

After all, she was a goddess. She was alive long before the first humans had walked the Earth.

Yet it was on that day that she would experience something very, very new.

A couple of something's, actually.

She watched from above through the eyes of a hawk flying above the battleground as the red-haired teen consistently evaded her Hunters, even with the Hunt Goddess's Blessing she gave them all. Not only that, he had even managed to defeat a few of them in close combat, getting away without so much as a scratch as well.

She was about to intervene and swoop in to grab the couple herself, but then the girl finally stepped up to show off her own abilities.

The goddess was aware of the plum-haired girl's attempts to teleport the redhead and herself out of the forest, but since the forest was Artemis's natural domain, she was able to use the natural energy around and "contain" the two of them within it. On top of that, the light of the moon above shone down onto the ground through the pine leaves, adding another layer of control she could if the situation called for it. She was willing to do no more than that much, giving her hunters ample opportunity to treat this excursion as a hunting exercise of sorts.

She didn't know how she hadn't sensed the darkness within the girl. At first, it appeared small, acting as no more than just a small pool around her feet and a near-invisible shield that seemed to swallow all of her Hunters' arrows. But then it expanded from around her feet so quickly that the goddess herself almost missed its growing circumference. The circle stretched as far as the eye could see, easily encompassing the whole woodlands forest. It had become so massive so quickly that all Artemis could do was widen her eyes in surprise.

The first thing she noticed was that the glow surrounding the Hunters whose feet were touching the ground had disappeared.

Artemis was about to swoop to the ground and just grab the two herself before something disastrous could happen, but then she notices something else, making her stop.

What the-...why can't I feel the forest?

That something else would be the complete absence of the aura of nature that she had once felt in abundance, even after she took to the skies.

It was unlike anything she had ever experienced. And as a goddess, that shouldn't be a thought that would ever cross her mind.

But what could that possibly be? she thinks to herself. What could possibly sever the connection between a goddess and her natural domain? Is there even a god with such an ability?

Then her thoughts are broken by the sight of a large shadowy figure suddenly shooting up from the ground behind the girl.

It was unlike anything Artemis had ever seen before. For one, it was absolutely massive, easily towering over the pine trees. It resembled something of a black ghost with several white dots for eyes and a visibly bright white outline, but it seemed paper thin.

What in Olympus is that?

Then it let out the most unearthly screech that Artemis had ever heard. The sound grinded against her ears in a way that no sound from any woodland creature could.

By the time the shadowy giant had reared up its large, flat arm, the goddess was no longer just watching.

A silvery white light surrounded her body as she suddenly shot forward towards the giant, colliding into it like a glowing, silvery white missile and causing a huge, sparkly explosion.


A/N: I'm not all too good at character writing, but what I'm trying to portray Artemis as is an overly confident goddess with a somewhat affectionate student-teacher kind of relationship with her Hunters. How well is that working so far? Oh, and regarding Artemis, I plan to have a fight scene directly involving her in the next chapter and I'll try to find that fine line between overpowered and underpowered. Canonically, she could probably just Thanos snap away Shirou and Sakura, but if that were the case, then we wouldn't have a story. So I'll be adding some abilites to Sakura's arsenal, but they should still make sense considering how she is literally a Grail and all. Anyways, until the next chapter!

Unrelated A/N: When you start a Terraria death mode Calamity run and the first slime you see hits you for more than 50 damage.