"I shall have Gawain guard the main gate, my King."
"..."
"Your decision, if you please—"
"God of War, Set! Goddess of Slaughter, Anat! Reside within my arms! Astarte, Goddess of Fertility, bless this blood-soaked earth once my victory is won! I, the greatest and mightiest Pharaoh, the incarnation of Ra, shall now become the sun of Chaldea and manifest my glory! My beloved Nefertari, as Hathor, bless the advent of Ozymandias! This is truly a battle to save the world! For the sake of the heroes I have acknowledged, I shall incinerate every foe and save all that is! Now, come!! Lion King, you who close off the world behind your wall of knights! Now—the God-King shall strike you down!!"
"Yes. —Sphinx Wehem-Mesut. Protect them all—"
"On this earth, nothing is impossible for the Pharaoh! All of creation lies within my grasp!!!"
"Gather, my brothers!! Today, we shall carve our valor into the memory of the Lion King!! Come, brave men! Let us show them our Hegemony—!!!!"
"""""YES! YES! YESSSSSS!!!!"""""
—Combat has commenced!
"Now, let's see if this can even be called a 'battle'—"
Holy City, Royal Castle Camelot
"Left wing, completely annihilated! Casualties have exceeded eighty percent! We can no longer maintain the line!"
There, spread across the battlefield, was the vivid manifestation of the end—despair made manifest by fate.
"Right wing! The line has collapsed! We're being crushed by a sea of apes—Gwaaaaaargh!"
To the west, the divine beasts and chariots led by the Sun King unleashed an inexorable bombardment, trampling everything in their path from the Sun Boat.
"Tch—Pull the troops back! Retreat! Do not throw your lives away if you've survived this far!"
To the east, the Hanumans—divine beasts of Indian pride—raged and tore through the ranks, creating human ladders to scale the castle walls. Simultaneously, the King of Conquerors galloped across the field, his chariot a thunderous storm that scattered lives like autumn leaves.
It was a massacre. A slaughter. The disparity in military power was laughable. The Round Table had only six knights left to lead their Enforcer Knights and mortal soldiers. Though elite in quality, they were being overwhelmed.
"...We were arrogant! From the moment of that first rebellion—the Holy Selection—we should have executed the Masters on the spot...!"
The forces they faced were simply too catastrophic. Chaldea's army used 'Divine Beasts' as vanguards and 'Servants' as generals, led by a coalition of 'Kings'—it was the world's greatest manifestation of hope, rising to face extinction.
From the blood-colored sky fell hail and rain of gore as sandstorms choked the air. Horrific plagues of gnats, locusts, and frogs swarmed the battlefield, while Sphinxes blotted out the sun. On the ground, the Hanumans—divine apes with the martial prowess of ten soldiers each—mowed down the holy defenders.
Heavenly decree, luck, momentum, and spirit—every element of the world conspired to bring the Holy City down.
"Do not give up! If we retreat, the rebels will—Guh!"
Even Gawain was not immune to the fangs of the assault.
"Is this—tch, a curse...? No, it is a 'Plague'...!"
—'The Death of the Firstborn.'
One of the Ten Plagues struck even the Servant Gawain. Coughing up blood, he felt a wave of exhaustion and agonizing pain wash over his body, forcing him to his knees.
"Sir Gawain?!"
"I am fine—fulfill your loyalty!! Do your duty!!"
The sun, reaching its zenith, was choked out by the sandstorm. Exposed to a calamity that even the Lion King's Blessing could not deflect, Gawain slowly forced himself to stand.
"—If it has come to this, I have no choice but to unleash the Holy Sword to break this stalemate...!"
Intuiting his own impending destruction, the Knight of the Sun prepared to reveal his ultimate technique to turn the tide.
"Oh! Sir Gawain is releasing the Holy Sword! With this, the heavens will be on our side—"
The soldier's optimism was cut short as he was cleaved in two. There was no room for hope on this battlefield.
A figure clad in a blue cap, an unzipped jersey, a miniskirt, and futuristic armor stepped through the cataclysm toward Gawain.
"Target: Buster Gorilla, Class: Saber, confirmed. ——Proceeding with business-like disposal."
Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion. There was no sentiment in her stance; she viewed the beast before her simply as a 'foe.'
"You are—"
Gawain's eyes widened. Even as a knight of the Lion King, he could never forget that radiance. Despite the black-and-white holy swords in her hands and the glowing azure eyes, he could not mistake that kingly aura. It was undoubtedly the one he once revered—
"King Arthur—!!!"
"Have we met? I only know of the Knight of the Round Table, Sir Gawain. I have no acquaintances among gorillas serving lions."
Heroine X brushed off Gawain's cry with a casual coldness.
She understood. She knew exactly what kind of resolve the Lion King's Round Table had embraced to accept their fate. But X had decided that it didn't matter.
Without hatred or sentiment, without sympathy or rebuke, she faced Gawain simply because he was a 'Saber.' That was her respect for his resolve. The Round Table of the King of Knights only existed within Chaldea; she had no 'mercy' to spare for a brother who had become a beast—least of all a Saber.
"..."
Gawain accepted that noble rejection in silence. He gripped his sword, grateful. If there was no path to reconciliation, he would entrust his destiny to his blade, regardless of the end.
"Now then—Sabers must die."
Artoria (Heroine X) took her stance with her twin holy swords. Neither yielded. Their fighting spirit clashed, carving out the space for a true duel.
"I have one question, Lord Goritynn," Artoria asked as her mana flared. "The rest of the Round Table... they were not defeated, were they?"
It was a strange question. To an outsider, it made no sense, but Gawain understood its weight. He answered quietly.
"Of course not. …Second Seat, Percival. Third Seat, Kay. Sixth Seat, Gaheris. Ninth Seat, Palamedes. Consultant King Pellinore. Prospective Eleventh Seat, Bors. After they were summoned, they showed their loyalty to the King in the form of rebellion. To prove their faith—they turned their blades against the Lion King. And we… we cut them down."
To stop the Lion King, to admonish her, the Round Table had splintered. They had turned on their own brothers, knowing full well what it meant.
"I see. So the Round Table did not fall to common grave-robbers. ——You understand, then, that the Lion King is no longer the King Arthur of old?"
"Naturally. When I was summoned to this land, the King told me: 'Knight of the Sun, wielder of the other Holy Sword. This time, fulfill your wish.' She told me I could do as I pleased. I could leave the city, or I could even strike her down… You cannot imagine the joy I felt. Once, I was called the King's right hand, yet I could not cast aside my personal grudges, and thus I brought about the King's death. …I cannot repeat that folly a second time."
Artoria listened to Gawain's confession—filled with resolve, truth, and old wounds—in silence, adjusting her cap.
"King Arthur is not who she once was. Her Majesty knows this better than anyone. If she did not, she would not call herself the 'Lion King.' She gave us all a chance from the beginning. The Round Table of Britain is dead. Our world is dead. Upon that ruin, the Lion King declared she would protect the world—no matter how self-righteous that protection might be."
That was their resolve. That was the Lion King's Round Table. Accepting their status as sinners, they slaughtered their brothers to serve their King as beasts, all to protect the world.
"That is all there is to say. —The Round Table of the King of Knights no longer exists in this land. The one standing before you is merely a beast."
If that was the Lion King's choice, then this time, he would be the knight who supported her without fail.
"Therefore—I shall uphold my loyalty! This is my oath! This is the brilliance of the faith I grasped even as I fell into monstrosity!"
Having said his piece, Gawain finally invoked the true power of his holy sword.
"This blade is the shadow of the sun, the heat-haze of the flames that purge all 'impurity'—!!"
It was the sister-blade to Excalibur. If Excalibur held the light of the moon, this was the other holy sword of the stars that manifested the radiance of the sun.
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