IBHJ Chapter 917

The members of the Emperor's Conquest Guild were finally turning on each other. These were the top-tier adventurers in the Holy Land. And yet, they, who should have been allies, were now fighting against each other!

The room fell into a tense silence.

Mordred quietly retrieved her Grail and sword from the corner, glaring at Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Though she couldn't walk past the Heaven's Corpse's roots, she was ready to burrow underground and skewer their butts with her sword if they dared to hurt her mother. After all, Uncle Lancelot always said the best way to ambush an enemy was to watch their butts.

Crack, crack, crack.

The inn shuddered violently under the assault of the Angels of Destruction outside.

As time passed, Heaven's Corpse grew bolder. Its branches descended from the sky, plunging into the ground, causing the earth to crack open and sprout tall trees. The vampire city was rapidly transforming into a wooded nest under Heaven's Corpse's ecological remodeling.

Inside the inn, the silence was so thick they could hear a pin drop.

Faced with the hostile Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Shirou suddenly laughed. It was Artoria's laugh, crisp and clear.

Enkidu asked, "What's so funny?"

"Sorry," Shirou said, still smiling. "I just find this whole situation rather amusing."

Gilgamesh's expression remained unchanged, but Enkidu looked at him in confusion.

"If you want the God's Brain," he continued, "that's fine. But you won't be able to deal with that on your own, and you won't be able to obtain its God's Fragment."

Gilgamesh scoffed. "Are you suggesting that if the God's Brain remains with you, you'll be able to defeat that monster? You only just learned the truth about it from Enkidu, didn't you, nameless Heroic Spirit?"

Shirou instinctively glanced at Enkidu, who was standing behind Gilgamesh. It was clear she had told Gilgamesh he was a Heroic Spirit but had adhered to her principles and not revealed his true identity.

"Of course I can," he said, still chuckling. "The key to victory is right in front of you, yet you fail to see it. King of Heroes, this is a classic case of missing the forest for the trees."

Gilgamesh scoffed. "Hmph. All talk. In the end, you're just another Heroic Spirit summoned by this land. A mongrel who doesn't even understand what's happening in the land you were summoned in. What could you possibly know? What equation of victory could you have?"

"If it were just me, I couldn't do it," he admitted with a smile, then gestured towards Illya, who had been hiding in the back.

Illya looked up, startled, and pointed at herself.

He nodded.

Illya walked forward, a confused expression on her face. He placed a hand on her shoulder and said with a smile, "It's her. She's the one who can defeat the Heaven's Corpse. Just toss her outside, and we can take down that monster!"

"Eh?"

Illya's jaw dropped, and her eyes widened in disbelief.

Eh? Eh? Eh???

"Are you kidding me? Are you being serious? Me—you want me to go up against that monster?"

Illya pointed a trembling finger at the Heaven's Corpse looming outside the window, looking for all the world like a god of destruction. She was utterly bewildered, staring at Shirou with tears welling up in her eyes. "You're... you're joking, right? This has to be a joke?"

"No," he said with a gentle smile. "I'm serious."

The King of Knights' face was so sweet, her smile as bright as a sunflower bathed in sunlight. But to Illya, that smile seemed sinister and terrifying.

This had to be a joke, right?

Throw her out there to face that... that UO? The Ultimate One, the apex predator of the stars?

This had to be a joke, right?

If this is a nightmare, please, someone wake me up!

...

In the midst of the hunt, an angel suddenly dove from the sky. A three-eyed girl stumbled and fell in surprise as she turned to see the angel swooping down toward her. "Help! Someone help!" she screamed.

A flash of rainbow light, and a sword appeared, its point aimed at the falling angel. With a flick of the wrist, the sharp blade cut through the angel before it could even react.

The girl looked up to see a white-haired fairy holding a rainbow sword, standing protectively in front of her. Though she was called a fairy, her skin was tanned, almost like a human's.

"Thank you," the girl said, her eyes wide with gratitude and wonder.

The fairy turned her head, and the girl's face went pale.

The fairy was beautiful, with short white hair around a delicate face and eyes like red moons, burning with an intense light. Her whole body seemed to glow with a strange light, swirling as if it were forming mysterious words.

"Stay away from me," the fairy, Altera, said coldly, her voice as sharp as ice.

The girl, scared by Altera's cold look, could only nod silently, unable to even say thank you.

Watching the girl run off, Altera finally relaxed, leaning on her sword and crouching down on the ground.

"Why am I receiving Umbral Star's commands even though I'm not in my original body...?"

She leaned heavily on her sword, the patterns on her skin shimmering with an unsettling light. Her lovely face was a mask of both weakness and ferocious destruction, large beads of sweat dripping from her brow.

"This shouldn't be happening..."

Altera was the emperor of the ancient Hunnic Empire, known as the "Scourge of God" for ravaging across Europe and dominating countless civilizations. But her true identity was that of Sefar, the White Titan, the destroyer who laid waste to the Earth 14,000 years ago.

Her original titan body remained in the Moon Cell, a super-quantum computer deep within the moon, while her soul resided in the Throne of Heroes as Altera.

As Sefar, she was the destroyer of civilizations, driven to raze and harvest all cultures on Earth. But as long as her titan body remained in the Moon Cell, she could maintain her sanity and individuality as the Heroic Spirit Altera.

Being pulled into this connection point changed everything. She had felt it before, when the "God's Brain" appeared, and now, with the monstrous floating island looming in the sky, her instincts as Sefar were reawakening. They were eroding her sense of self, and the commands from the Umbral Star were growing louder in the depths of her soul.

"Search, disperse, harvest, return, unite..."

Altera muttered the words, a distant memory etched deep within her soul surfacing, triggering a sharp pain in her head. Her facial muscles contorted in agony.

In the depths of her memory, she saw a dead universe, a three-bodied starship carrying her, deployed towards this solar system by a passing Umbral Star.

It was standard practice for the Umbral Star to dispatch Sefar, one of its vanguards, to ravage and destroy civilizations within a star system. She would then harvest all life and samples before returning to the Umbral Star.

However, as they approached this star system, the starship carrying her and two other vanguards was ambushed. Eight monstrous beings attacked them. The fate of the other vanguards remained unknown, but she was shot down by a cross-shaped creature, crash-landing on the moon and being captured by the Moon Cell's autonomous defense system.

"It's... it's there!"

Altera gripped her head, fighting against her increasingly violent and destructive instincts as she stared up at the Heaven's Corpse. She recognized it - among the eight monstrous lifeforms that ambushed them, this floating island had been one of them!

"Ah...!"

The presence of the Heaven's Corpse intensified Altera's destructive nature, but she desperately fought to suppress it, like trying to hold back a volcanic eruption.

"No, I can't. There are still so many lives here. My friend... Artoria Pendragon is here. I don't want to hurt them. Please, disappear."

She gritted her teeth. The instincts awakened by the Heaven's Corpse filled her with a growing urge to destroy life. She desperately clung to thoughts of happier things: the admiration of the Huns in her past, the trust her Master Ayaka placed in her, and the care shown by her friends.

The more she focused on these memories, the brighter she felt inside. Gradually, the destructive urges subsided.

Was she controlling her instincts? No, not really. Her instincts were controlled by the Umbral Star, not herself. She was merely a cosmic weapon created by the Umbral Star, not a truly independent being.

The desire to destroy faded, not because she thought of happy things, but because the star nature triggered by the Heaven's Corpse was naturally subsiding.

Altera let out a sigh of relief, wiping the sweat from her face.

She looked up at the Heaven's Corpse, her lips pursed. The situation was becoming increasingly dangerous. As a player, she had also received the system message and the Vampire King's orders.

Fighting the very thing that had once shot down her original body by using her identity as a Heroic Spirit and a player seemed impossible.

Just then—

Ding ding ding!

A message appeared in her friend interface. So far, only "Artoria Pendragon" had added her as a friend, so it had to be from her.

She quickly opened the message:

Evil Flower: Altera, are you there?

Altera: What do you need, enemy?

Evil Flower: Enemy? I don't know what you're going through, but I need your help, Altera.

Looking at this message, Altera pursed her lips.