While the sky above Urakyoto was tinged with the fire of a still unknown threat, a few kilometers away, in the commercial heart of Kyoto, the atmosphere was considerably calmer.
Well, to a certain extent.
"You don't need that."
"Of course I do."
"None of them are practical."
"Swords aren't practical, Holy Vagabond. They're a lifestyle."
The conversation—if you could even call it that—was taking place in the middle of a traditional Japanese sword shop. Not one of those decorative, mass-produced ones for tourists. This was one of those exclusive boutiques that sold genuine, hand-forged katanas, steeped in centuries of history and priced to make anyone less passionate about blades run for the hills.
Jalter stood with her arms crossed, next to a display where a katana with a blade as dark as obsidian rested. Her expression was half-skeptical, half-bored, like someone who had already lost this argument before. Several times.
On the other side, holding a sword with the enthusiasm of a child in a toy store, was Salter. She twirled the blade carefully, watching the light reflect off the steel as if it were poetry in solid form.
"You have an unhealthy obsession with dark swords," Jalter commented, glancing sideways. "And the most expensive ones, curiously."
"Of course. A common blade doesn't suit my style, you should know that. You've got your own 'style' with that whole 'I'm a cursed, silent saint' thing."
"I'm not cursed."
"Then it's just natural bad mood, huh."
Jalter raised an eyebrow and said sarcastically, "Funny, coming from a Fallen King who was a tyrant to her people…"
"A good king rules with an iron fist…" Salter replied with a crooked smile, before turning back to the katana. "This one… has a soul."
"Swords don't have souls."
"You don't understand the art."
"No. I just don't dramatize inanimate objects."
The shop attendant, a little old man in a simple kimono with the patient look of someone who had seen it all, observed the two with the same caution one might have when facing a pair of tigers exchanging low growls. He didn't dare interrupt. He merely slipped away discreetly to the back of the shop, claiming he was "going to fetch more maintenance oil." He never came back.
"…Kazuya's going to kill us if you buy another katana," Jalter muttered, stepping closer and briefly touching the scabbard of the weapon in the other's hands. "Especially if it's another one you'll just leave in the corner of the room because it has 'aesthetic energy.'"
"He'll understand." Salter shrugged. "He always does."
"That's the problem."
Both fell silent for a moment.
Jalter looked out the shop's window, watching the calm movement of the neighborhood, the clear sky over Kyoto, tourists strolling carefree, a group of uniformed students crossing the street as if nothing but routine mattered.
"You think he's okay over there with Yasaka?"
"Probably. He has a weird talent for making alliances where no one else can."
"Or for getting into trouble."
Salter sighed, her gaze softening just a bit.
"…But it's always for a good reason."
Jalter's expression soured. "…I changed my mind. We should be there with him."
"You're the one who wanted to take a walk…"
"Yeah, yeah… But… if there's any fighting and he gets himself in danger, I'll march over there even if I have to walk across this entire city."
"You won't be alone."
The two exchanged a glance for a moment. It was brief, but genuine.
The kind of look that said, "If the whole world falls, I'll fall with you, as long as he stays standing."
"Alright… but since we're here, help me choose." Salter turned, holding one of the swords. "This one or the one with red details?"
Jalter rolled her eyes.
"Why not just take both?"
"…Seriously?"
"No. That was sarcasm."
"You shouldn't joke about that, I have a history."
"This one… it's special. Can you feel it? The vibration, the perfect weight… It speaks to me."
"If that sword starts talking, I swear I'll drop everything and head back to the underworld."
"Not literally…" Salter replied with the patience of someone used to this. "But it has history. You can feel it. Look at this. This balance…!"
"Salter."
"Hm?"
"You have fifteen swords. Do you really need to be this picky?"
"Fourteen. And that's exactly why I need to choose carefully. The one I bought online broke too easily during training with my Lancer version…"
"Oh, my bad. Just fourteen, then. Totally reasonable."
Salter finally turned, looking at her with a very serious expression.
"Swords aren't numbers. They're extensions of the soul."
"Your soul seems to want to multiply into a warehouse stockpile."
"You don't understand."
"I don't want to understand… Just pick one already, let's go. I'm hungry…"
Salter glanced at the shelf one last time, like a priestess about to choose a sacred relic.
She closed her eyes for two seconds, took a deep breath… and then pointed to the katana with a dark handle and subtle gold details.
"It's this one."
Jalter crossed her arms. "Hallelujah."
"It has the cleanest cut. And it balances perfectly between attack and defense. Ideal for any scenario."
"You're not even going to use it."
"But if I do… it'll be with style."
Ten minutes later, and with a fright to Kazuya's credit card (not that he needed to worry about money) included in the package, Salter left the shop with a long box wrapped in traditional cloth, tied to her back as if it were the most precious gift in the world.
Jalter followed with her hands in her pockets and the expression of someone who'd rather be home watching TV. But the truth was, she was… fine. Even with all the sword nonsense.
"So…" Salter said after a while. "You mentioned you were hungry, right?"
"Finally, a priority today."
"There's a little festival nearby. I saw it while we were coming back from the shop. Skewers, games, some food stalls."
"If they have stick fries, I'll marry the owner."
"You're already married."
"To an idiot who left us loose in Kyoto to go play diplomacy with a giant fox."
And so, they turned the corner into a narrower street, where colorful flags swayed in the breeze, and the sweet smell of tare sauce and grilled meat mingled with the sound of traditional flutes. It was a local festival, simple, the kind that brought together neighborhood residents and kids running around in kitsune masks and light yukatas.
"There." Salter pointed to a stall with skewers grilling slowly. "Chicken, pork… and look, even tofu."
"You're getting tofu?"
"Of course not. That's just there to pretend the menu's healthy."
They grabbed their skewers and sat on one of the low benches nearby, surrounded by paper lanterns and the muffled sound of a drum in the background. Salter took her first bite calmly, while Jalter devoured hers as if she hadn't eaten in hours.
"I always forget how good these simple things are," Jalter murmured between bites.
Salter nodded. "Better than castle banquets."
"No doubt. No gossiping servants. No politics. Just food and… you."
Salter raised an eyebrow. "You're getting sentimental."
"Blame the soy sauce."
They ate in silence for a while, watching their surroundings. Kids laughed as they tried to catch goldfish, an elderly couple walked hand in hand. A teenager played the shamisen clumsily at the corner of a stall.
Everything was very… ordinary.
Until it wasn't.
Without warning, a purple mist began to spread through the festival streets. It came like a gentle breeze, almost imperceptible. But in seconds, it swallowed the sound, the light, and even the smell of food in the air.
It was a strange sensation.
The lanterns stopped swaying.
The flutes fell silent.
The children vanished.
When the mist cleared, everything was different.
The stalls were still there, but they were like pieces of an abandoned theater set. The sky, previously tinged with orange hues from the morning, was now a uniform, lifeless gray—no sun, no clouds. No wind. No time.
Salter dropped her skewer to the ground.
Jalter took one last bite of hers before standing with a sigh.
"Ah. Here we go."
"They didn't even let us finish eating…" Salter commented, wiping her mouth with a handkerchief from her pocket.
"It's always when we're eating."
The eerie silence was broken by a dull impact on the asphalt, a few dozen meters away. The ground cracked. The stalls shook. A streetlight tilted with the thud.
Heracles had landed.
No exaggerated armor, no dramatic aura, just him—a massive, rugged-looking man wearing torn sweatpants and a sleeveless shirt. His gaze was wild, his shoulders broad, his stance that of someone who thought every place was an arena.
Salter arched an eyebrow. "Look who's back."
Jalter snorted, "I told you he'd want revenge after the last humiliation…"
"You." Heracles' voice rumbled like muffled thunder. "You got lucky last time."
He took a step forward. The concrete groaned under his feet.
"I went easy on you. I was distracted. But now…" He lifted his chin, a half-arrogant smirk on his face. "Now, I'm going to teach you two bitches a lesson you won't forget."
Salter crossed her arms, completely unfazed.
"Don't you ever get tired of embarrassing yourself?"
"You came all the way here to get beat again?" Jalter mocked. "Or just to interrupt my lunch?"
Heracles growled, his smirk fading.
"What I'm going to do to you has nothing to do with dinner, you arrogant demons."
Salter took a step forward, rolling her wrist as if warming up. The box with the new sword was still strapped to her back, but she didn't touch it.
"You want a fight? Let's go…"
Heracles snapped his fingers hard.
The very gravity around him seemed to sink.
The ground crumbled under his feet, creating an uneven crater. An abandoned car on the street began to creak, its windows cracking under the air pressure. The gray sky grew even duller.
"Get ready," he growled, the muscles in his right arm bulging. "I am Heracles. And today, you fall before true strength!"
Jalter snapped her fingers. "I'm almost yawning."
Salter, on the other hand, smiled—one of those smiles that mixed boredom and amusement.
"Alright, then."
She exhaled, as if accepting an inevitable task. And in a simple motion, she pulled the newly bought sword from her back. No explosions of light. No high-pitched sound or magical glow. Just the sound of cloth sliding and the new blade meeting the air for the first time.
Salter extended her arm in front of the corrupted Saint, stopping her with a calm gesture.
"Leave this to me."
Jalter frowned. "You sure?"
Salter smiled.
"Absolutely."
"Just you?" Heracles let out a hoarse laugh. "I thought you'd learned your lesson last time… Come at me together. Better chance of surviving."
Silence.
Jalter narrowed her eyes.
Salter just laughed.
"You didn't understand anything, did you?" she said, twirling the katana's handle. "I'm more than enough."
"Don't talk nonsense," Heracles replied, leaning forward like a bull about to charge. "You're not even using your real sword. The one that cracked the ground. The one that sent me flying last time."
"Oh, that one?" Salter glanced briefly at the blade in her hands—thin, modest, no special ornamentation. "I'm not using it."
"Afraid it'll break?" he mocked, with a grin of clenched teeth.
"Afraid?" She arched an eyebrow. "Please. This one… I bought today."
"Straight from the shop around the corner. Probably not even properly sharpened. But you know what's funny?"
She pointed the blade's tip at him.
"Even so, it'll be enough to take you down."
Heracles snorted.
"You're so arrogant it's almost stupid."
Salter just walked toward him.
Jalter crossed her arms, watching in silence, but with her jaw clenched.
"If he lays a finger on you, I'm stepping in…" she warned.
"He won't even get close…" Salter replied without looking back.
Heracles charged. Fast as a train.
The ground exploded under his feet as he leaped, his fist aimed directly at Salter's chest.
Salter didn't back down.
She moved at the last second—a step to the side, a slight twist of her hips, and the newly bought katana grazed his arm.
She didn't try to cut deep.
Just a shallow pass.
A sharp sound, like metal meeting nerve.
Heracles landed behind her, skidding sideways, stumbling. He stopped with his right foot sinking into the cracked asphalt.
He stood still for a second.
Then he looked at his arm.
A thin, clean cut ran across his bicep, like a line drawn with a ruler. Blood dripped slowly.
The pain came after.
"This sword…" he murmured, incredulous. "It's real…?"
"No. It's just from the shop," Salter replied, now standing still, looking calmly over her shoulder. "Cheap, according to Jalter. You should listen to her."
Heracles roared and turned with renewed fury.
But the truth was, something in the depths of his eyes hesitated.
"You really want to keep going?" Salter asked, her voice still casual. "Because honestly, I was thinking about finishing my skewer."
Jalter snorted and rolled her eyes, finding her a bit too showy…
Maybe it was just an impression… but for a moment, it seemed like the brand-new sword in Salter's hands had become part of her.
And that the legendary hero before her… finally realized it.
But he was a hero! He wouldn't back down and needed to kill this bitch! He took a deep breath and activated his Sacred Gear. Straight into Balance Breaker! A brilliant aura enveloped his body.
He possessed a high-level Sacred Gear called [Variant Detonation], which could generate explosions on anything the wielder touched. In the past, he could create missiles with his Balance Breaker, but after his defeat at the hands of the two women before him, who caught him off guard, he discarded that ability in favor of pushing his destructive power to the limit.
The silence between them shattered like glass under strain.
Heracles charged. Without warning, without a call. A direct punch, powered by [Variant Detonation], came like a warhammer, too fast for something that size.
Salter blocked with the katana.
The impact was like a car crashing into a concrete pole.
The blade didn't break.
But her feet were pushed back, leaving furrows in the ground as she resisted the brute force. Her arm trembled, her shoulder throbbing from the shock. Still, she remained standing.
"You got stronger…" she commented, spitting to the side. "Congrats. But it's still not enough."
Heracles didn't reply, just came again. And again.
Fists cloaked in explosions, each blow swallowed by a muffled boom of power. He wasn't holding back. Each attack could pulverize mountains.
And Salter… responded.
She dodged by millimeters, each movement elegant and precise. Slashes tore through the air. The shop-bought blade gleamed in short, quick arcs, aiming for joints, ribs, legs—not to kill, but to destabilize.
"You'll break your arm fighting like that with a store-bought toy!" Heracles roared.
"Better than using that brick brain of yours…" she retorted, spinning in the air and sliding under his attack, driving the blade into the side of his hip.
Blood gushed.
But he didn't fall.
Instead, he spun, landing a side kick that sent her crashing into an abandoned stall. The bamboo structure collapsed around Salter, who rolled over the planks before stopping on her feet. That attack caught her off guard…
She looked at the sword. The blade was now bent. It trembled in her hands.
"Hm. Starting to give in."
Heracles rushed at her with a shout, energy missiles exploding around like warlike fireworks, destroying the ground, shattering poles, and pushing wind in all directions.
Salter leaped forward, zigzagging between the projectiles, using the scenery to rebound and gain momentum. When the two met in the center of the destruction, it was like a clash of titans.
The katana struck directly against the giant's forearm, which was preparing a punch.
CRACK.
The blade snapped.
A dry, almost disappointed sound. The tip of the sword flew backward, spinning in the air until it lodged in the ground with a dull thud.
Salter looked at the remaining piece in her hand.
"…Knew that was going to happen."
Heracles grinned. "It's over now."
She looked at him.
"You talk too much."
He came with a charged fist, but Salter was faster…
Holding only the handle with the remnant of the blade, she moved like a short spear. Using his own strength against him, she spun under the blow, propelled her body, and drove the broken blade into the soft spot under his armpit, an exposed point between his armored muscles.
A shock ran through Heracles.
He stumbled. A muffled sound escaped his lips, half-cough, half-sigh.
Salter pulled back with the same motion, spinning backward with a leap. Dust rose where she landed.
"Really, I don't know how you have the nerve to be arrogant without the strength to back it up…" she said, tossing the broken sword handle aside. "And now, I'm getting annoyed."
Jalter, from a distance, raised an eyebrow. "Now?"
Heracles recovered, blood dripping down his side. He breathed heavily. The grin from before was gone.
"You'll need more than that to take me down."
Salter took a step forward.
A muffled snap broke the air as she flexed the fingers of her right hand.
And then—
Her body glowed in shades of purple and dark blue for an instant, as heat gathered around her like an invisible furnace.
"Ah," Jalter murmured with a half-smile. "Things just got serious."
Heracles took a step back. Instinctive.
It wasn't fear. It was his body instinctively recognizing what was about to happen.
Salter slowly raised her left hand, her fingers opening as if grasping the void.
With the dry sound of metal forming in the air, Excalibur Morgan appeared in her hand, as if it had always been there, just waiting for the moment to be summoned.
"…You should've stopped while you could still breathe," Salter said, her voice lower, firmer. "But now, I'm ending this."
Heracles roared, a primal shout. His aura exploded, Mighty Comet missiles appearing again, now dozens, perhaps hundreds, forming an arsenal ready to fire from all sides. Though he had discarded the missiles to increase his destructive power, he hadn't lost that ability… It was more like he had learned a new application after the fight with those two bitches.
"DIE THEN, DAMN IT—!!"
She took a step.
Just one.
And then she vanished.
A sound—like an inverted explosion—echoed where she had been.
Salter appeared in front of Heracles before he even realized.
Boommmm!
A horizontal slash.
His chest erupted in blood.
Before he fell, another slash, vertical this time.
And then…
A third strike.
This time, she launched herself upward with a spin and descended with the sword imbued with energy.
"EX — CA — LIBUR…!!"
The purple light exploded from the blade, piercing the gray sky like a shooting star of pure destruction.
"MORGAN!!!"
The impact wasn't loud.
It was deafening.
Booooooommmm!
And Heracles…
Was swallowed by a beam of black light that tore through the air.
When the light vanished…
Only dust remained.
Jalter approached calmly, still fiddling with one of the skewer sticks in her hand.
"You destroyed the street and several buildings," she commented.
"He pissed me off."
"You always break everything when you're pissed off."
Salter shrugged, with no hint of regret.
"I told you I didn't need help."
Jalter clicked her tongue and looked around.
"…You know what's funniest?" Salter said. "This wasn't even a festival anymore."
Jalter slowly rolled her eyes. "Seriously? And here I thought Heracles' little final attack had vaporized the takoyaki."
"I'm not kidding," Salter insisted, serious now. "This place… it's not Kyoto."
Jalter frowned.
"An isolated space? It feels a lot like that magic the master uses sometimes…"
"Yeah, it seems like it was created by the enemy to isolate us…"
Jalter took a deep breath, letting the skewer fall to the gray ground.
"Someone played dirty."
Then, the ground trembled.
The particles in the air began to vibrate erratically, as if they had lost their molecular stability. The mana density in the environment spiked to absurd levels in seconds, making the hairs on both their necks stand on end, as if static electricity had invaded the very air.
Jalter slowly raised her eyes. Salter tightened her grip on Excalibur Morgan's handle.
The space in front of them tore open.
Like old paper being ripped apart by hand.
A black hole spun slowly in the air, distorting everything around it as if gravity itself had gone mad. From within it… something emerged.
Tall.
Taller than any human.
Maybe two and a half meters, maybe more.
Its feet touched the ground with a muffled sound, and each step was accompanied by a hiss of energy that corroded the environment like acid.
It had the general shape of a man, but its body was entirely covered in plates of black flesh that seemed to pulse with living energy. Its eyes… didn't exist. There was only a red light burning where a face should have been.
And worst of all: it was smiling.
Without a mouth.
Just an insane curve of flaming energy where a jaw should have been.
Salter and Jalter immediately locked eyes.
Without a word, both raised their hands.
FLARE—
FWOOOOOSH!
Their civilian clothes exploded into fragments of mana and black light.
Their Servant armors covered their bodies with the sound of distant bells and whispered screams. A spectacle of black and purple light in stark contrast to the dead world around them.
Both ready to fight.
"You felt that, didn't you?" Jalter murmured, twirling her sword.
"It's different from anything I've ever felt," Salter replied, gripping the sword's handle. "And that's what worries me."
The being… moved.
In a simple way.
One step.
And with that, it extended an open hand, as if greeting someone.
But the energy forming in its palm was anything but friendly.
A simple ball of dark green energy formed. It was an unstable singularity, spinning in two directions at once, radiating thermal and gravitational energy at insane levels.
The space around it warped.
The air was sucked in, creating a violent vacuum.
The light… bent.
And then, the being launched the sphere forward, and the world exploded.
First came the atmospheric collapse.
A sudden pressure drop sucked all the oxygen within a 300-meter radius.
The sound died.
And then the energy pulse hit.
The explosion that followed surpassed the speed of sound instantly, Mach 3 at the very least, generating a supersonic shockwave that swept everything in its path.
The ground was vaporized in an area nearly two kilometers in diameter.
The simulated structures of this artificial dimension were pulverized in the blink of an eye.
Glass and concrete turned to plasma.
The air ionized at temperatures exceeding 20,000 degrees Celsius, creating a vertical column of energy that rose like a cosmic spear into the gray sky.
The sound came after.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!
A reverberation so powerful that the entire ground shook, as if the dimension itself was about to rupture. A low, muffled noise, like a thermobaric bomb detonating underwater.
Salter and Jalter had already moved.
Saber Alter leaped high, a burst of dark energy under her feet. Mana Burst activated at the exact moment the attack was launched, creating a whirlwind that propelled her body out of the destruction zone.
Jalter, meanwhile, raised a circle of black flames around herself, launching sideways with the speed of a curving bullet. Her silhouette streaked through the air like an inverted beam of light.
Both landed on opposite sides of the newly formed crater.
The scene was now nothing. Just a devastated field, with the sky trembling and the edges of space distorted.
Salter raised her sword.
Jalter twirled her flaming sword.
"He's not a loud idiot like Heracles," Salter murmured.
"No. He's worse."
Both stared at the creature, which merely tilted its head, studying them like a child watching ants.
…It was something that shouldn't exist.
If Kazuya were there, he'd think he was imagining things because that "humanoid being" looked like Sirzechs.
A Super Demon!
And now, it stood before them.
Ready to fight.
____________________
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