IBHJ 1409

After Shirou seized control of the Azure Destruction and launched a punch that hurled the Lord of Salvation beyond the solar system, the colossus stood still—like a divine sentinel—on the edge of existence, staring him down across the void. In a voice that resonated like a bell tolling across galaxies, he said, “You’re finished.”

“Finished?” The Lord of Salvation arched a brow and gave a crooked smile. “Shirou-kun, you don’t seriously think that overgrown armor set of yours is enough to handle me, do you?”

“If it were just me, of course not. But—”

A thunderous crack split the stars.

“Add us to the equation,” came a woman’s voice as Gaia emerged from Cosmic Alaya’s brain.

The Lord of Salvation turned toward her and quirked his brow again, almost amused. “Cosmic Alaya? Even without fully materializing, you two still won’t be enough.”

But before the words had time to settle, golden light suffused the emptiness of space.

A presence arrived, gliding through layers of existence with the gentleness of falling petals and the weight of an entire era. It was the Enlightened One—not a projection, not an avatar, but the true form itself. Invited by Gaia, returning a karmic debt born from enlightenment granted by Earth's very birth.

“Pure Land…” the Lord of Salvation murmured, and for the first time, his expression tensed.

Then came the rest. Celestial radiance from Heaven. Movement among the Outer Gods. Curious attention from domains beyond human comprehension. Eyes that had remained closed for eons were now opening—and none of them looked kindly upon him.

“This isn’t just about us anymore,” Shirou said, his gaze cold. “You’ve drawn the attention of everything that exists beyond. They want you gone too.”

The Lord of Salvation chuckled, though there was no mirth in it. “I see. Because I left the Root, I lost my invulnerability… and you worked with First Emperor to chip away two-thirds of my essence. So now, the others smell blood in the water.”

He was cornered—badly.

As the strongest of the Golden Universe, he had once reigned as a transcendent force. Upon infiltrating the Root, he had reshaped himself into something far beyond Bodhisattvas and Holy Spirits. But in order to complete the Salvation Unification, he had to do the unthinkable—leave the Root behind, shed his invincibility, and return to the reality in physical form. Only by surrounding the Root from the universe could he crush it and unify all.

That choice was now biting him back. His emergence had been incomplete—his scale, disrupted. One-third of his summoning channel had been hijacked by the First Emperor and the Azure Destruction, leaving him short of his original scope. And the beings who’d long tolerated his existence? They weren’t tolerating anymore.

Universal unification at the cost of everything? That wasn’t salvation. That was erasure.

“No,” he growled. “This isn’t over. Void—descend!”

The Golden Gate flared open behind him, and from its blinding depths came a shrill roar—a flood of void insects. Not just in the Milky Way, but in every divine and demonic realm: Outer Gods’ territory, Pure Land, cosmic Heaven. A full-on infestation, summoned across all planes.

Shirou didn’t hesitate. He charged.

The insects were horrors—parasites that fed on galaxies like fruit. Pure Root creatures, impervious to anything except transcendent power.

Thankfully, Gaia had already reactivated the cosmic Alaya’s protection around this sector. Shirou’s counterattack carved a line through the swarm, holding the worst at bay. But elsewhere, the damage was devastating. Distant systems blinked out like candles, their stars ruptured by chitinous legs and falling like fireworks across the void.

“It’s complete!” Arcueid’s voice rang out from the Moon.

She’d finished it.

The final link.

The revival of cosmic Alaya—now fully awake, its reach spreading through the entire stellar region. Simultaneously, Gaia moved. She activated the Throne of Heroes—a relic from the ancient Tethys civilization—and connected it directly to Alaya with a sound like a blade locking into place.

On Earth, the Heroic Spirits shuddered.

The fake Grand Saint Graph forged by the First Emperor disintegrated into a sea of data. A moment later, their very existence shifted. They no longer needed mana. No longer needed Masters. They had been reborn as Cosmic Heroic Spirits—independent and immortal within Alaya’s range.

Power surged through them.

Their Noble Phantasms—sublimated. Their legends—unshackled.

Even the First Emperor stared at his hands in disbelief. “Me? Recognized… by Pan-Human History?”

It was done. Even he had transitioned into a Cosmic Heroic Spirit.

“Leave a few to mop up the mutated creatures,” Gilgamesh barked. “The rest of you—get out there and kill!”

“Kill!”

“Kill!”

“Kill!”

A thousand Heroic Spirits lit up like constellations and launched themselves from Earth into the stars, their Noble Phantasms igniting the dark. The void insects screamed as stellar-level weapons tore through them.

And just like that—Shirou, Gaia, and the Enlightened One were free.

The Lord of Salvation looked up to see the entire sky burning with war.

The past was gone.

The battle had begun.

Transcendents, Outer Gods, Pure Lands, Heaven, Hell—each one erupted in retaliation. Their judgment was swift.

For one target to provoke so many was rare. Unheard of.

Their fury, when focused, could incinerate entire universes. And now, that fire was falling.

Not to destroy blindly. But to judge. To bring an end to the one anomaly that even transcendents refused to tolerate.

The Lord of Salvation had gone too far.

And the multiverse was done watching.

The Lord of Salvation wasn’t foolish. Naturally, he had no intention of taking the full brunt of a coordinated transcendent assault.

But the Enlightened One anticipated as much. He anchored the Lord of Salvation in place—suspended between dimensions. At the same time, Cosmic Alaya flooded his consciousness with cascading shockwaves of raw information, scrambling his thoughts and locking his body in a moment of static.

And Shirou didn’t waste that moment.

He surged ahead with the Azure Destruction, arms flaring with blue flame, and collided with the Lord of Salvation, locking him in an unbreakable hold.

The Lord of Salvation's eyes widened. “Do you intend to die with me, Fujimaru Shirou?!”

Even now—after everything—panic had crept into his voice. The being who once stood above all, who thought himself untouchable, was beginning to crack.

Shirou answered through gritted teeth. “You think I’d die with filth like you?”

He wrenched himself free from the Azure Destruction and leapt away. Cosmic Alaya caught him in mid-air with a field of gravity-defying quantum threads.

The moment Shirou escaped, the combined attack from the higher realms arrived.

A transcendent harmony surged down from above dimensions—a choir not of sound, but of purpose, of judgment, a convergence of divine wills beyond any single existence.

“No—!” the Lord of Salvation howled as the universe flooded with infinite light.

Every inch of space shimmered white-hot.

Could such an attack, one empowered by the collective force of all transcendents erase this monster that had once clawed his way into the Root?

The answer came in the next moment.

The light faded.

And from its heart, a figure emerged, charred and cracked—smoke trailing from gaping wounds across his form.

But he was alive.

No—he had endured.