Manaka tilted her head as she watched Rider. Instead of looking annoyed that her attack missed, her smile only got wider.
"Wow, you really are fast for someone so big," Manaka said, clapping her hands. "You even managed to yank your little Master out of the way before my mud could touch him."
"Now that is a nasty trick," Iskandar barked back, resting a hand on his sword. "What kind of foul magecraft is this supposed to be, girl?"
Waver swallowed hard, staying right behind Rider as he stared at the black puddle in fear.
Manaka did not care about his bold attitude at all. If anything, it just made her giggle like they were playing a game.
"Since the mud cannot reach you over there, I guess I will just have to bring you to the mud instead," she said with a bright smile.
She pointed two fingers forward. The black pool bubbled up, and two thick pillars of mud rose into the air, quickly turning into two armored figures.
They made low, distorted groans and pulled out black swords. They were shadow Berserkers.
"Rider, look out!" Waver shouted in panic.
"Stand firm, boy!" Iskandar ordered.
The two shadows charged forward with no defense at all, swinging their black swords straight at Rider.
Iskandar planted his feet on the ground and raised his sword to block. The first hit slammed against his blade with a loud clang. The force shook his arms. Even without real bodies, these things hit with wild strength.
Before he could push the first one off, the second shadow swung at his side. Iskandar shoved the first one back with raw power and blocked the second blade with his sword. The shadow pushed down with all its weight, growling through its armor.
"Get off!" Iskandar shouted.
He slammed his shoulder forward, knocking the second shadow off balance. Stepping into the opening, Iskandar swung his sword with both hands and slashed right through the first attacker's chest.
Because it wasn't a real Servant with a real body, it couldn't take a solid blow. The shadow broke apart instantly and splashed into black mud all over the ground.
The second shadow lunged right at him, not caring at all that the other one just died. Iskandar did not give it a chance. He stepped in, stabbed his sword straight through its throat, and twisted the blade. The shadow made a wet choking sound before falling apart into another puddle of black mud.
Iskandar lowered his sword and shook out his arm from blocking those strikes. He frowned at the puddles on the ground.
"They hit hard enough," Rider grumbled, wiping a drop of mud off his face. "Yet they just turn to mud the moment I cut them. What kind of monsters are these, girl?"
However, before Waver could relax, the black mud on the ground started moving again.
Manaka did not care at all that they were destroyed. With a simple wave of her fingers, the spilled mud snapped right back together and rose up.
In just a few seconds, both armored shadows were back on their feet, growling with their swords ready like nothing had happened.
Because she controlled the mud and her energy refilled the second she used it, putting them back together took no effort at all.
Rider's eyes narrowed. He saw the problem immediately. Hitting them was like trying to cut water, but as long as that black pool was on the ground to remake them, standing here fighting was just a complete waste of time.
"You know, Rider, Saber managed to hold her own against three of them," Manaka said right after the two Berserker shadows finished rebuilding themselves from the mud.
"Three?!" Waver screamed in surprise, his panic spiking because he remembered exactly how strong Saber was after watching her clash with Lancer on the first night of the war.
Rider didn't say a single word in response to what she said, keeping his focus entirely locked on the armed shadows standing in front of him.
"So I'm curious," Manaka hummed, touching her lips with a finger while wearing an expression full of innocent curiosity. "I wonder if you can do the same as her or not."
With a casual snap of her fingers, the black pool bubbled violently once more, surging upward to form a third armored shadow right out of the mud.
"GRAAAAAARRGH!" the new shadow roared the very moment it fully materialized.
The sound was so loud and full of raw bloodlust that the civilians watching from down the street slapped their hands over their ears in pain. Their minds could not understand what was happening, but their bodies reacted on pure survival instinct.
One man turned and bolted in blind panic, and immediately the entire crowd followed, screaming and running away as fast as they could.
The newly formed Berserker shadow slowly walked forward, taking its place beside the other two until they formed a crude half-circle around their target, leaving Rider boxed in with one Shadow standing directly in front of him while the other two flanked him on either side.
Seeing that formation, Rider knew the situation was bad. Taking down one was easy, and handling two was manageable, but fighting three endless, regenerating shadows while keeping his master safe behind him was a terrible idea.
"Hold on to me, boy!" Iskandar yell.
Before Waver could even answer, Rider grabbed him by the collar with his left hand, effortlessly lifting him off the ground.
With his right hand, Iskandar swung his sword upward, slashing the blade straight through the empty air to tear open a massive rift right above the street.
A massive crack of thunder shook the area as blinding bolts of lightning blasted out of the rift, crashing into the ground all around them.
The violent electric shockwaves swept outward, tearing up chunks of stone and forcing the mud and the three shadows backward to create some distance.
Two giant bulls charged out of the lightning, pulling the Gordius Wheel behind them with a loud roar. Sparks and electricity crackled everywhere as the chariot came down right beside Iskandar, and he pulled his Master up onto it.
Waver barely managed to climb onto the chariot before Rider pulled him into place, and he grabbed onto the side as the two bulls stamped their legs against the ground.
"Wait, what are you doing?!" Waver shouted, looking around at the street below them. "You're seriously summoning this here?! In the middle of the city?!"
"Do you think I have the luxury of worrying about that right now, boy?" Rider replied, his voice unusually serious as he tightened his grip on the reins. "If I hadn't summoned it, we'd already be dead."
Waver looked back at Manaka, then swallowed his next complaint.
Across the street, Manaka was staring at the Gordius Wheel with open interest. Her eyes followed the two bulls, then moved towards the wheels and the lightning running across the chariot. She seemed more interested in what Rider had summoned than Rider himself.
"How interesting," she said, her smile widening. "So that's your Noble Phantasm? I've never seen a chariot quite like that before."
Rider didn't answer her. His eyes remained fixed on the girl standing in front of them, while the three shadow Berserkers were already beginning to gather themselves from the mud.
He couldn't afford to let this continue. Those things could be destroyed and brought back as many times as she wanted, and fighting them while protecting Waver would only put them at a disadvantage. Worse, the girl was standing in the middle of the city, surrounded by people who had no idea what they were dealing with.
If she was allowed to keep doing this, more people would get caught up in it.
"Boy, hold on tight."
"Huh? What are you-"
Before Waver could finish, Rider raised his sword, and the lightning running through the Gordius Wheel grew stronger. The two bulls lowered their heads as the chariot began to move forward.
"Let's see how you handle this!"
The Gordius Wheel surged ahead, its wheels throwing off sparks as the bulls charged down the street. Rider aimed straight for Manaka, while the lightning spreading from the chariot struck the black mud along its path.
The mud began to break apart under the force of the attack, scattering and evaporating as the lightning tore through it. The three shadow Berserkers tried to move in front of the chariot, but the rushing attack swept through them before they could properly stop it.
Manaka remained where she was, watching the approaching chariot.
She didn't look frightened. If anything, she seemed delighted.
"Oh, are you coming straight for me?" Her smile widened as the bulls drew closer to her.
Iskandar tightened his grip on the reins as the two bulls charged forward, pulling the Gordius Wheel behind them.
Lightning burst beneath the wheels, spreading across the ground as the chariot picked up speed. Manaka stood directly in their path, watching their approach with a cheerful smile before casually raising one hand and moving her fingers.
Iskandar narrowed his eyes. For a brief moment, he caught several flashes of purple color around her fingertips, but they appeared and disappeared so quickly that he couldn't make out what she was writing.
Then she lowered her hand, and the effect struck the entire area.
The bulls continued charging, but their movements became incredibly slow from Manaka's perspective.
Their legs still moved, and the Gordius Wheel continued advancing, its wheels still turning, but everything caught in the effect was moving as though time itself had slowed down. Even the lightning crackling around the chariot seemed to slow down through the air.
Iskandar tried to pull on the reins, but his movements were just as slow as the bulls'. Even raising his sword had become a painfully slow effort.
"What kind of-" His words dragged out as his mouth moved at the same slowed pace, making it nearly impossible to finish his sentence.
Beside him, Waver tried to call out as well. "Ri... Ri..." His mouth barely moved, and the words came out painfully slowly.
Manaka watched them quietly, her cheerful expression unchanged. "Oh, it worked!" She sounded genuinely pleased as she began walking toward the slowly moving chariot, looking at Rider as though she were watching a toy struggling to move.
With each step she took, black mud emerged beneath her feet and spread across the ground, flowing outward toward the approaching bulls.
It quickly reached their hooves while they continued their slow charge, and they cried out as the mud climbed around their legs.
Their movements carried them forward even as more of the black substance covered their legs, eventually spreading toward the Gordius Wheel and gradually swallowing its wheels.
"Hmm, I wonder how long you can keep that up?" Manaka walked alongside the chariot before placing one foot against its side and climbing aboard, while Iskandar struggled to move.
She reached out her hand to touch him. Just like she had done to Saber and Lancer before, she could interfere with his Saint Graph through physical contact and shut it down, leaving him unconscious.
She had already used the same method on two Servants, so there was no reason to expect Rider would be any different.
However, just as her fingers were about to reach him, Iskandar's voice suddenly rang out.
"Ionioi Hetairoi!"
A brilliant light burst across the area, filling Manaka's vision until she could no longer see anything around her. When it finally faded, she suddenly found herself falling to the ground.
The chariot, Rider, and Waver were nowhere to be seen, and the black mud that had covered the ground had disappeared as well.
Manaka slowly got back up and looked around. The city was gone, replaced by a vast desert stretching out in every direction.
Recognizing it almost immediately, her smile widened.
"Oh, so this is Ionioi Hetairoi. Seeing it with my own eyes is much better than knowing about it~"
She looked around at the endless sand stretching out in every direction under a bright sky and a harsh sun, the whole place completely silent and empty.
She tried calling the mud beneath her feet again, wiggling her fingers to draw the black pool back up, but nothing came out because the boundary of the Reality Marble completely cut her off from the street in Fuyuki and the mud couldn't cross into an isolated space like this.
"Hmm." Manaka tilted her head with a totally unbothered expression, seeing as this was her first time standing inside an active Reality Marble and the way the space worked was immediately obvious to her.
In the outside world, the planet itself was always fighting back, with Gaia and Alaya constantly pressing down on any weird anomaly and crushing anything unnatural unless someone had enough raw output to force their power past the world's resistance, which was the only reason her narrow circuit limit held her back from what she wanted to do.
In here, those restrictions didn't exist at all as she can feel it herself.
This place wasn't a real world, just an artificial space projected straight out of a Servant's soul that was held together entirely by Rider's Prana and memories.
Because her connection to the Root, she saw right through the whole trick, watching every single weak point in the barrier light up clear as day while the entire desert hung together on Rider's alone.
"Fufufu," a soft laugh slipped out.
Rider probably dragged her in here to cut off her mud and take the advantage, but by isolating her from the real world, he accidentally removed the only thing actually holding her back in the first place.
While Manaka was still looking around the desert, the sand beneath her feet suddenly started vibrating as a deep, rhythmic rumbling echoed across the space, shaking the ground like an earthquake.
She turned and walked up the slope of the nearest sand dune, reaching the top and looking out into the distance where she finally spotted Rider.
He wasn't alone. Stretching out behind him all the way to the horizon was an army of tens of thousands of soldiers, completely filling the desert with infantry, archers, and cavalry. Standing right at the front was Rider, mounted on his famous warhorse, Bucephalus. It was completely obvious to her that every single person in that massive crowd was an actual Servant.
Every single one of them was tied to this place through their bond with Rider. And looking across the crowd, she could tell right away that several of those generals were even stronger than their king.
[IMAGE]
Seeing thousands of Servants all gathered together in one spot, the empty look she had worn this entire time finally vanished.
Her eyes light up with genuine excitement for the first time since meeting with Rider.
"I wonder if I can use them all as batteries~" she murmured happily to herself.
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A/N: This chapter was absolute hell. It literally took me twelve hours to write, no joke. I even fell asleep in the middle of it because my head hurt so bad trying to figure out how to write this.