IBHJ 1080

Shirou raised his demonic sword and brought it down in a powerful arc. A crimson blade beam, strong enough to tear the sky apart, shot towards the Lord of Salvation.

The mud figure didn't move. He faced the earth-splitting attack with chilling calm. There was no explosion, no clash of energy when the beam hit. Instead, with a quiet "pop," the blade beam vanished, like butter melting on a hot stove.

Shirou's eyes narrowed. No, not vanished. It was assimilated!

The Lord of Salvation raised his silver gun and fired. The bullet, transformed into a silver streak, shot towards him. At his current level, even bullets moving at speeds imperceptible to normal humans were as slow as snails to him. He easily tracked its trajectory and raised his sword to deflect it.

"Crack—"

A sharp cracking sound rang out. His eyes widened in shock. It wasn't the seemingly ordinary bullet that had shattered, but his demonic sword True World, the Moon's treasure forged over a lifetime by Crimson Moon!

The moment the bullet hit the blade, it shattered effortlessly. Another crack followed as the bullet tore through his outer layer of defensive Noble Phantasm, a barrier strong enough to withstand even Beast-class attacks.

Shirou's eyes widened. He twisted his body sharply, the bullet whistling past his ear. It pierced the tree wall behind him and disappeared.

He turned to look at the Lord of Salvation. It looked like an ordinary bullet, yet it had just destroyed his demonic sword and his most powerful defense. No, it didn't destroy them, he realized. It assimilated them.

That bullet was just an ordinary bullet. But in the hands of the Lord of Salvation, it became unstoppable. No magical sword, no authorites, could stand against it.

There are three questions that have puzzled philosophers forever: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?

Only Akashic Records holds the answers.

Who am I? Akashic Records.

Where do I come from? Akashic Records.

Where am I going? Akashic Records.

Everything in existence—matter, ideas, thoughts, stories, even dimensions—comes from Akashic Records and will return to it. Everything is part of Akashic Records. That's why nothing can resist the Lord of Salvation, the embodiment of Akashic Records.

It's the ultimate philosophy, the beginning and end of everything. It holds all possibilities within it. The Five Magics, Divine Spirits, Foreign Invaders... nothing escapes the origin of the Akashic Records. Only those who have "graduated" from the universe, like the Enlightened One, can refuse it—but only refuse, not fight. After all, even he is part of the Akashic Records, and the philosophy he represents falls under its domain.

Shirou wished he didn't have to face such a powerful monster, but this monster was his enemy. And perhaps an enemy like this was the only thing that could truly challenge him now.

The Lord of Salvation gestured, and the space around Shirou ripped apart like paper. Countless blades of mud erupted, flying towards him with deadly speed. They curved and twisted through the air, some aiming for his throat, others for his legs and torso.

He saw the mud blades coming and dodged, not trying to block them head-on. But as soon as he moved, his eyes narrowed. He felt a jolt—a sense of disorientation.

It was as if time had reversed. One moment he was dodging, the next he was back where he started, the mud blades rushing toward him again. Light flared from his back, and black, red, and silver mud hands shot out, grabbing the blades. Shirou used the opportunity to launch himself away from the attack.

He watched the mud blades retreat back into the void, his brow furrowed. He had dodged, but somehow, he'd been pulled back?

Was it time manipulation?

No. That alone wouldn't be so troubling. Something else was happening, something far more disturbing...

Just then, the space around him shattered. Sixteen massive mud blades, like a mountain of knives, surged toward him from every direction.

He concentrated, and light exploded from his back. His three-colored mud formed thirty-two evil hands, reaching out to grab the blades. But just as they were about to make contact, the hands vanished. They were simply gone, leaving Shirou completely defenseless. The blades sliced towards him.

He felt the chill of the blades as they rushed towards him. With precise timing, he spun his body, narrowly slipping through the gaps between them.

He escaped the deadly attack and fixed his gaze on the Lord of Salvation. His worst fears were confirmed.

This wasn't time manipulation. It was something far worse: the assimilation and erasure of possibilities!

He hadn't been able to dodge the first attack because the Lord of Salvation had somehow erased the possibility of him dodging, of him using his mud hands to defend himself. Then it erased the consequences of those actions, forcing Shirou to remain in place.

On the surface, it might have looked like time manipulation or causality manipulation, but it was something far more complex and terrifying. This was interference on a fundamental level—the erasure of the future itself.

Shirou stared at the Lord of Salvation, his grip tightening on his demonic sword. Time manipulation was an impressive ability, the kind that would amaze ordinary people and most magi. But to someone like him, it was nothing special. At his level, he knew beings who could manipulate world lines on a whim.

Time manipulation was useless against him. This erasure of possibilities, however, was deeply troubling.

But there was a weakness. Perhaps because this wasn't the main body, the Lord of Salvation's power had limits. It couldn't erase possibilities rapidly or consecutively. The fact that he had escaped its attacks at all was proof of that.

And that was his chance.

His eyes gleamed. He kicked off with both feet, running along the spacious tree hollow, searching for an opening to strike.

It was possible this inability to fire consecutively was a ruse, a deliberate weakness meant to lure him into a trap. But that didn't seem logical. In their earlier clash, if the opponent could have erased possibilities twice in a row, he would already be dead. Who besides someone like Gilgamesh would play such a game?

Shirou didn't try to block the Lord of Salvation's attacks. Instead, he moved like lightning, running along the walls of the tree. He pushed off harder with each step, building momentum, changing direction in sharp bursts that left gouges in the wood. The Lord of Salvation launched volley after volley, but his speed kept him just ahead of the strikes.

Suddenly, as he was dodging forward, he felt himself pulled backward. But he didn't freeze up. In an instant, he converted the backward pull into a flip, his body rotating through the air. His instincts screamed at him to move. The spot where he had been standing a moment before was shredded by countless mud blades, the barrage tearing chunks from the tree's wall.

Shirou didn't pause, pivoting on his heel to run in a different direction.

He estimated the interval for erasing possibilities to be between 30 and 70 milliseconds—perhaps even shorter, if it was a deliberate attempt to mislead him.

Hundreds of encounters, measured in microseconds, flashed by. Caught off guard at first, Shirou quickly learned to break free from the erasure of his possibilities. He dodged the Lord of Salvation's attacks with ease, gaining a sense of the intervals in its ability.

But how could he land a fatal blow in such a short timeframe?

As he ran, Shirou calmly analyzed the situation, his gaze fixed on the enemy's head. With his enhanced vision, he could see an eye within the head of filthy mud—Velber's third eye.

That eye was the anchor for the mud figure's existence, the focal point for the Lord of Salvation's consciousness projection.

The Lord of Salvation might be invincible, but that eye was not. If he could destroy it, he could win!