Chapter 212: This Is the Battle to Save the World
"Of course, because we have a fallback plan this time, it really doesn't matter even if we fail.
At the very worst, we just go back to the original path and continue using the method found by the humans of this parallel world to save humanity."
Although the final decisive battle was about to begin, Emiya Shirou did not say any more rallying words after telling Emiya-MW and the others to get ready. Instead, he spoke about how it wouldn't matter even if their plan failed.
In fact, this was indeed the case.
Do not let Emiya Shirou's use of the Disc of Cursed Transformation to create a "Big Daddy" for himself deceive you. Just like Kenjaku in the Jujutsu Kaisen world—who planned to sacrifice the entire population of Japan and use the despair, fear, and other negative emotions born from their deaths to create an unprecedented Cursed Spirit—he dared to claim that this Cursed Spirit could destroy all of humanity.
Even though part of the reason for that was that Tengen, who served as the vessel for the Cursed Spirit, had barrier techniques capable of blocking the small black hole generated by Tsukumo Yuki's self-detonation.
However, [Pandora's Box] had been cursed by the gods and had given birth to a world comparable to Earth over thousands of years of accumulated curses. If it were truly based on this vast, world-evolving curse to transform into a Cursed Spirit, how could it be inferior to the Cursed Spirit that Kenjaku wanted to create?
But precisely because the transformation of [Pandora's Box] into a Cursed Spirit was caused by the Disc of Cursed Transformation that Emiya Shirou projected, as long as Emiya Shirou canceled the projection of the Disc and retrieved it, [Pandora's Box] would naturally revert from its Cursed Spirit form back to its original state as [Pandora's Box].
Compared to before they crossed into this parallel world, when they were unaware of the situation and could only harbor the mindset that they had to defeat the Cursed Spirit of [Pandora's Box], Emiya Shirou felt it was necessary to remind Miyu Satsuki and the others once more: if defeating the Cursed Spirit of [Pandora's Box] required them to make sacrifices, that would be completely putting the cart before the horse.
"However, if it can be defeated, I hope everyone can still try to do so. After all..."
Determining the concept of creation, imagining the basic skeleton, copying the constituent materials, imitating the production technology, empathizing with the accumulated experience, and reproducing the accumulated years... Having completed all these numerous processes, Emiya Shirou chanted his magecraft incantations in his heart, while simultaneously speaking aloud to Saber and the others: "...This is, in every sense of the word, the battle to save the world!"
"—Trace on!!"
Likewise, not only Emiya Shirou—during the time Emiya Shirou was speaking, Saber, having completed the tasks Emiya Shirou had entrusted to her in advance, also loudly chanted the True Name of the Noble Phantasm in her hands: "—[Excalibur]!!"
And in this world where the displacement had already been completed, Emiya Shirou swapped his inner Reality Marble with the real world. He trapped the Cursed Spirit of [Pandora's Box]—which had been unable to stop venting its existence and seeking to continue eroding the real world since its birth—inside Emiya-MW's Reality Marble. In the process of trapping it, he also actively moved the position of the [Pandora's Box] Cursed Spirit into the optimal range for Saber's "Excalibur" beam!
Rumble!!
"That's truly exaggerated. Is that the Cursed Spirit Emiya mentioned before?"
"First, gather a massive amount of negative emotions to create a world similar to a Reality Marble. Then, like hatching an egg, use the Reality Marble—which is essentially a world-egg—to accelerate the birth of its own Deterrence (Cursed Spirit) just like a real world..."
The principle of curse-transformation is not complex. With Emiya Shirou's half-baked magecraft knowledge, after studying it several times in the Jujutsu Kaisen world, he could understand what was going on. Tohsaka Rin, a mage with the lineage of the Tohsaka family, could naturally see the essence of this curse-transformation as well.
But knowing it is one thing...
"...I never thought such an absurd thing could actually be realized by Shirou?!" Tohsaka Rin couldn't help but hold her forehead. "I thought Shirou was joking before... No, I should ask, where on earth did he find those ridiculous items he projected!?"
She wanted to use this to confirm if her eyes were deceiving her, or if she had accidentally developed a fever and burned out her brain. After all, this was "Deterrence" (World's Suppression/Will)!
Who is the first obstacle a mage must overcome if they want to reach [the Root]? That is undoubtedly Deterrence. To prevent overly powerful beings from threatening Earth and the ordinary people who make up the majority of human society, both [Gaia] and [Alaya] will interrupt the research of any mage attempting to reach [the Root]. Consequently, knowing how to block the intervention of Deterrence has become essential knowledge for any excellent mage.
And when it comes to blocking Deterrence, is there any method that can compare to using one Deterrence to checkmate another?
Tohsaka Rin could almost imagine that if Emiya Shirou's technology for manufacturing Deterrence were exposed, the Mage's Association would undoubtedly declare Emiya Shirou "Sealing Designated" and rush to seize this technology.
"But it is for this reason that Shirou had the Emiya of this parallel world use his Reality Marble, using a world to oppose a world, in order to weaken the power of the Deterrence, right?" Tohsaka Rin said. "Because it has become Deterrence, it will instinctively fight this Reality Marble first, rather than us."
Originally, this task should have been best suited for the real world. But because the Earth in this parallel world had been eroded for thousands of years by [Pandora's Box], it had almost become a part of the world inside the box. They had no choice but to use the Reality Marble to provoke the resistance of the [Pandora's Box] Cursed Spirit through the Reality Marble's erosion of the world.
Likewise, this was now Tohsaka Rin's task: to further strengthen this Reality Marble and weaken the [Pandora's Box] Cursed Spirit by using the experience and magecraft recorded by the Tohsaka family on how mages can block the intervention of Deterrence.
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