IBHJ Chapter 964

Shirou clenched his jaw, summoning every beautiful memory he had, and started fighting back against the endless tide of negativity.

The beautiful moments he cherished were fleeting, but they were the sparks that kept him going, the anchors that held him steady in the face of countless hardships.

But this time, those precious memories weren't enough.

Reality wasn't a storybook, written to tug at heartstrings. Human emotions, to the Lord of Salvation, were nothing but a joke.

Like an ant's feelings to a human.

The gulf between them was simply too vast.

He was changing, mutating.

"Shirou!"

Morrigan had come to her senses. She looked at him, enveloped in the tide of mud, her face filled with panic.

Grandma Enos felt the same way. She was a magus from the Age of Gods, a high priestess who had received the most divine blessings. Even in the Wandering Sea, where magi from the Age of Gods gathered, she was a figure of great power.

But this was the Lord of Salvation. The one even the UOs feared, who had once destroyed Gaia's ancient civilization. What could a mere magus from the Age of Gods do against such a being? After all, even the gods were just descendants of the ancient civilization, inheriting only fragments of their technology.

"What... what's happening?"

A voice suddenly sounded beside her ear. Morrigan turned her head and immediately saw Artoria, Ayaka, Kiara, and the Gandharan, Charia.

It turned out that Artoria had been about to take Ayaka and the others home, but sensing the strange disturbances in the area, she had brought everyone back.

"My king... he's in so much pain. Why? What's happening to him?" Artoria's voice cracked with worry as she watched Shirou, trapped in the swirling mud.

"It's corrupting him... it's... Oh god! What kind of monster is that?"

Charia trembled. His divine eye had once seen endless malice and darkness within Shirou, but within that infinite darkness, there had been firelight, a small, pitch-black yet pure figure, and a vortex that held back the darkness.

But now?

He watched in horror as the endless darkness crashed over the firelight like a tidal wave. It swallowed the pure figure, dragged the formless vortex down into the abyss.

The light vanished.

The pure figure vanished.

The formless vortex vanished.

All that remained was a dead, dark sea.

No life, no time, no space.

Nothing at all!

Charia felt an overwhelming terror and collapsed in fear.

"Mmm!" Ayaka clutched her head, her face contorted in pain.

"Ayaka! What's wrong?" Kiara's voice was sharp with worry.

"My head-" Ayaka gasped, fingers digging into her scalp. "It hurts so much!"

Kiara understood why Ayaka was in pain - it was the mud tide swallowing Mr. Shirou.

That malice. That hunger to destroy everything. It was beyond terrifying.

Just a glimpse was enough to awaken a deep, primal fear in any living thing and send bodies into a panic. That's why Ayaka's head felt like it was splitting open.

Artoria watched Shirou suffer, her jaw clenched tight. "We have to help him."

"We can't," Morrigan's voice shook. "Nothing can touch that mud. Noble Phantasms, Mystic Codes, even divine authority - it'll swallow them all in a heartbeat."

She was right. That was the manifestation of the Lord of Salvation. It wasn't just physical things. Even time, space, and concepts would be assimilated.

The Lord of Salvation's goal was to become the origin point, the source from which all things came. Therefore, no substance, thought, or concept could escape its assimilating salvation.

"Let me try," Kiara said. "I have the authority of the Beast, the manifestation of desire without physical form. Perhaps it can pull Mr. Shirou free."

Morrigan's face twisted in frustration. "You don't understand. Desire is born of the mind, just another product of thought. That mud will swallow it just the same."

If mental manifestations like desire could escape the Lord of Salvation's assimilation, time and space wouldn't have been assimilated earlier, and she would have had countless ways to save Shirou by now.

But it was useless.

The Lord of Salvation's assimilation operated at the origin point. And since all things in the world came from the origin point, nothing could escape its assimilation.

Before Morrigan could voice another objection, Kiara sprang into action. The air behind her shimmered, and suddenly many pale hands appeared, stretching eagerly towards the trapped Shirou.

"It's useless— wait, how can this be?" Morrigan's words trailed off as her eyes widened in disbelief.

Kiara's ghostly hands were cutting through the Lord of Salvation's mud like it wasn't even there, reaching out towards Shirou.

"It's actually working!" Kiara exclaimed, surprise and excitement in her voice.

"Don't stop now, Kiara! You're almost there!" Ayaka encouraged, still clutching her head.

"Mm!" Kiara gave a sharp nod.

She was happy.

She had been born into this world because Mr. Shirou defeated Demonic Bodhisattva. It could be said that without him, she wouldn't exist. So, being kind-hearted, she had long wanted to repay this debt. But Mr. Shirou never needed her help. Now, only she could help him, and this made her incredibly happy.

Mr. Shirou, you've always been there for me. Now it's my turn to help you, Kiara thought, her heart swelling with determination.

To her, Mr. Shirou was the epitome of kindness, a person whose warmth touched everyone around him. Someone like that didn't deserve to suffer like this. If she could be the one to save him, to repay even a fraction of his goodness, she'd give it her all.

Artoria and Morrigan watched with bated breath, silently rooting for Kiara to succeed. Come on, you can do this! they cheered in their minds.

But the moment Kiara's hands made contact with Shirou, they were instantly destroyed. It was as if they'd been doused in the most corrosive flesh-melting acid imaginable, disintegrating in the blink of an eye.

"How... how can this be?" Kiara's voice trembled.

They had been so close. Just one step away from saving him!

No, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered. It wasn't just one step away. It was impossible from the start.

The bitter reality sank in. Nothing could truly escape the Lord of Salvation's all-consuming assimilation. The fact that her hands had passed through the mud tide at all was already a baffling miracle. But in the end, even that wasn't enough.

"What can we do? There has to be some way to save Mr. Shirou!" Kiara cried out, her voice tinged with panic.

The faces around her reflected the same mix of desperation and helplessness. Confronted with the sheer might of the Lord of Salvation, they felt as insignificant as ants trying to topple a human.

A sudden, agonized cry pierced the air. "Ugh—!" Shirou's voice, distorted by pain, rang out from within the roiling mud tide.

The grim reality of their situation sank in. The Lord of Salvation was infecting Shirou, steadily erasing everything that made him who he was. His personality, his memories, his very sense of self – all of it was being consumed.

Time was running out. If they couldn't find a solution soon, Shirou would be gone. In his place would stand a monstrous embodiment of pure evil, a far cry from the kind-hearted man they knew.

The urgency of the situation spurred them to keep searching for an answer, no matter how impossible it seemed, because they had all received help from Shirou in the past. But now that he was in trouble, they couldn't help him.

The feeling of helplessness was crushing.

The mud churned, leaving nothing alive in its path, snuffing out all life.

Everyone had no choice but to step back again.

"Ugh..." Shirou's cries of pain continued, and the helpless expressions on everyone's faces deepened.