"Entertain me, trash."
"...."
Rin, Shirō, Artoria, Archer, and even Gilgamesh froze at the phrase, sharper than any blade.
The contempt radiating from Damian chilled the air more than the golden light still crackling around him.
Gilgamesh stood still for a moment, then burst into thunderous laughter that grew until it became a roar.
With each laugh, his golden light intensified, and an oppressive magical wave surged from his position. The ground shook, and a heavy pressure pressed on everyone's chests.
Archer reacted first, grabbing Rin by the arm. "Move! Now!"
Rin regained her composure instantly. "Retreat!"
She threw several gems that exploded into columns of smoke to cover their escape. Shirō, jaw tight, carried the weakened Artoria and staggered back with effort.
Soon Gilgamesh's laughter stopped abruptly. He dropped his hand, revealing a face twisted with rage.
"Running away? No one leaves like that! You insulted this King!"
From his back, hundreds of golden weapons appeared again, raining down like deadly light upon them.
Rin felt a chill run down her spine. Archer summoned twin swords in his hands. Artoria tried to rise to strike, but pain bent her over.
Then, as before, a blue flash materialized.
In a whisper of steel, the falling weapons were sliced apart just a few meters above their heads, the fragments and the energy surrounding them fading into shimmering dust.
Damian remained suspended before Gilgamesh, his stance firm, as if he had just swung his sword.
He didn't even bother looking back.
"Don't you understand words?"
"If all you plan to do is kill them to enrage me, then you're too stupid."
That sentence lit the fuse.
The fire in Gilgamesh's eyes became real, and a golden storm erupted around him.
The entire sky of Fuyuki turned into a dark gold, the clouds torn apart by energy.
"Arrogance!"
The roar of the King of Heroes made the ground quake.
"A mere bastard dares to speak to me like that? This KING will show you what true despair means!"
With those words, the world changed color.
The golden ripples behind him expanded wildly, covering the heavens. They were not tens or hundreds of divine treasures… but tens of thousands.
From every ripple emerged weapons glowing with destructive light, dense as a swarm of golden bees.
Damian looked up at that celestial army and gave a disdainful smile.
"Is that all?"
That question alone was enough to unleash more fury. Gilgamesh's rage intensified, and dark red magic burst from his body.
"I'm not done yet!" he roared, raising his right hand, where a golden vortex spun in his palm, twisting the space around it.
"Enuma Elish, The Star of Creation That Split Heaven and Earth!"
A crimson pillar pierced the sky.
As it passed, space shattered, revealing the void of the abyss.
In his hand appeared Ea, the red-golden sword whose mere presence tore the air around it to pieces.
"..."
On Damian's frozen face, a faint trace of interest appeared.
"Spatial cut, huh? Heh, not bad," he murmured, slowly resting his right hand on Yamato's hilt while gripping the scabbard with his left.
With that, the magic roaring around him fell into absolute silence. But it wasn't calm… it was cut.
Every flow of magic was brutally severed by a superior force, reduced to fragments incapable of altering reality.
The contrast between the two was extreme: Gilgamesh, wrapped in golden magma and crimson pillars of power. Damian, surrounded by a void so dense that even light seemed to be devoured by darkness.
"Jahahahaha! Bastard! Feel the pain of when the whole is split in two!"
Gilgamesh laughed with madness as Ea's power reached its peak, ready for a strike capable of tearing the world apart. Around him, thousands of treasures trembled, humming with anticipation.
"..."
Meanwhile, Damian remained still. He slowly closed his eyes, his breathing deepened, and his lips moved.
"Absolute Void."
!
An indescribable sensation of nothingness descended upon the world.
Gilgamesh's heart shrank. 'Something's wrong!' A mortal threat enveloped him. Without thinking, he swung Ea with all his strength.
"DIE, TRASH!"
A crimson pillar roared and tore through space, while thousands of divine treasures fell in a multicolored rain, covering the entire sky as they crashed down upon Damian.
And just as that attack capable of erasing the world exploded, Damian drew his sword.
His eyes remained closed, yet he didn't miss by a single millimeter.
The path of Yamato was so fast it surpassed the limits of vision, leaving only a blue gleam burned into the retina.
"..."
The madness on Gilgamesh's face froze. His arm, still raised, hung motionless in the air. The world, in the instant Damian unsheathed his blade, was "cut" from his perception.
"What…?"
Time seemed to stop. It wasn't time itself—it was his perception that had been severed.
The magic vanished.
He could no longer feel his power, nor Ea's, nor the torrent of energy from the treasures. Every energetic reaction had dissolved into nothingness.
Sound was extinguished.
The roar of Ea, the whistling of the weapons, even his own heartbeat and breathing… all faded into total sonic death.
The air was still, without temperature or touch.
It was as if his body floated in a void that denied all physical existence.
Sight… remained, but without "reality."
Everything was a lifeless painting. There was no threat, no presence. Even though his eyes were open, he had become a "blind man" deprived of all senses.
An absolute "void."
Even the concept of space had been torn from his being. And in that instant, the King of Heroes fell into pure terror at the loss of himself.
His pride, his power, and his treasures were "denied" by a single cut.
Sunk into the abyss of nothingness, his trembling pupils managed to glimpse Damian.
The unsheathing had been too fast to comprehend, but the act of sheathing the sword was clear.
Yamato, radiating an icy blue light that cut through all existence, was handled by Damian with calm and precision.
He held the sword before his face, as if performing a solemn ritual. The tip aligned with the sheath, and he slowly began sliding it in with hypnotic control.
The friction between blade and sheath was silent, yet within that void, the invisible trace could be "seen" advancing. Gilgamesh, paralyzed between fear and silence, could only watch that eternal gesture.
Until finally…
Klang
The sound burst within his "void."
It did not come from the outside, but instead broke directly into the "severed" senses of Gilgamesh, piercing through his soul.
Boom
In an instant, everything that had been stripped from his perception returned at once: sound, magic, air, touch, temperature, presence… everything rushed back upon him like a tidal wave.
"Ugh—AAAH!"
Gilgamesh roared in pain and horror, his body trembling violently, nearly falling from the sky.
Then he heard it.
Crack…
The countless treasures suspended in the air began to fracture, like a sandcastle finally collapsing. Without a sound, they disintegrated into fragments.
The brilliant golden light in the sky went out like thousands of candles extinguished at once.
In its place, a rain of golden dust descended slowly, a majestic torrent falling from the heavens.
That rain was the requiem of the Gate of Babylon.
Then, Gilgamesh looked down at his sword, the supreme Ea.
Bzz…
A thin blue mark shone across the blade, the trace of Yamato's cut.
Then, CRACK
Spiderweb-like cracks spread across the entire sword, and the crimson glow vanished instantly.
"N-No… IMPOSSIBLE! Ea!"
For the first time, genuine fear crossed his eyes.
!
The sword that only he could wield, the symbol of his divinity and sovereignty, disintegrated silently in his hands.
Millions of black specks floated around him, and the blade turned into crimson ashes that slipped between his fingers, carried away by the wind.
Crack-Crack
At the same time, the golden armor that covered his body—the symbol of the pride and glory of the King of Heroes—also began to crack.
From his chest, the fissures spread throughout his entire being.
The breastplate, the bracers, the pauldrons, and the greaves crumbled, falling apart like fragile pottery breaking under the passage of time.
Golden fragments slowly fell from the sky, mingling with the shimmering dust of the destroyed treasures.
"..."
Without his armor, Gilgamesh's body was completely exposed.
He floated in the air, with empty hands and torn underclothes. Blood ran from the corner of his lips and dripped from his chin.
Dazed, he looked down at his bare hands, then raised his eyes forward.
Damian had already sheathed his sword. Yamato rested calmly at his side, hanging from his waist, and his gaze remained cold, watching from above the fallen KING.
Over the ruins, only the soft murmur of falling dust could be heard. An absolute silence, heavier than any roar before, enveloped everything.
Rin, Shirō, Artoria, and Archer had even forgotten the idea of escaping.
They stood motionless, staring at the indescribable rain and at the KING in its center, stripped of his divinity, reduced to dust.
"You did well."
Damian's voice broke the silence, coldly arrogant.
"You achieved what few can."
!
Those words ignited what little remained of the King of Heroes' dignity. The humiliation turned into a fury so intense that it erased his pain and exhaustion.
"..."
He raised his head with a strangled roar. His crimson eyes blazed with murderous rage.
He could not bow to such disgrace.
He wanted to curse, to scream, to tear his pride from the abyss into which it had been cast.
But he couldn't.
"...?"
Suddenly his face froze.
He couldn't make a sound. His throat seemed sealed by invisible ice; neither air nor magic would answer him.
He instinctively raised his hand, trying to point at Damian.
And that gesture triggered a reaction that froze the faces of everyone present, even his own.
His right arm began to disintegrate…
First the tip of his index finger… then his palm… The golden dust spread upward like a burning blade.
It wasn't destruction.
It was "total dissolution."
The anger, the fear, the despair on his face… all those intense emotions faded away one by one.
Lowering his gaze, he watched as his arm and shoulder turned to dust. He could even feel his entire body beginning to dissolve.
Now he understood…
That cut which had erased his senses, destroyed the Gate of Babylon, and pulverized Ea… had not only reached the outside world.
…it had also reached him.
From the moment that katana moved, his fate had been sealed.
The force of that strike was so absolute that even his death had been "delayed" until this very moment.
"..."
Gilgamesh slowly lifted his head, looking at the man suspended in the air with the same distant expression.
His left arm, the only one remaining, hung lifelessly as his body continued to disintegrate.
But there was no longer fury or despair on his face, only an unfathomable calm.
Then, his lips curved into a faint smile.
It wasn't mockery, nor anger, nor resignation. It was simply… a smile.
Within it lay understanding, as if he had glimpsed a truth beyond pride and a spark of curiosity toward that which had surpassed his comprehension.
It was like the last golden flower blooming in hell… brilliant… fleeting.
He slowly closed his eyes, the eyes that had once gazed upon the world with arrogance.
Time seemed to stop.
A second later, the body of the King of Heroes completely disintegrated, dissolving into the golden rain still falling over the ruins.
His form turned into a radiance purer and brighter than the Gate of Babylon itself, a light that contained both the silence and the eternity of annihilation.
The wind blew soundlessly, carrying away the golden particles that danced in the air before fading into the sky of Fuyuki, as if announcing the end of an era.
Over the ruins, only Damian remained suspended, coldly watching the vanishing dust—the symbol of the final fate of the King of Heroes.
"..."
In the distance, Rin, Shirō, Artoria, and Archer remained motionless, hollow, unable even to breathe.
He who had once been invincible, who looked upon others as lesser beings, who possessed the power to destroy all… was erased from existence by a single cut.
________
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