White Ink

17

A straight rush and the creature was upon Shirou its movement appearing to be more akin to teleportation then pure speed. There was absolutely no time to dodge as the claws speared at the speed of thought towards Shirou's heart.

Fortunately Shirou had been focussing on Avalon in anticipation of the demon's imminent attack and millimetres from his heart he glowed gold and the demon's hand fell short as it was unable to enter into the fae realms.
Suddenly the demon was sent staggering two metres back as a straight right by Arcueid plunged into its chest. Shirou momentarily thought he saw a hole in the skin opening up the beast and displaying eldritch organs before with a blink of an eye it was gone. The beast lunged at Arcueid and this time matched its strength with hers. Arcueid was the loser this time as the beast managed to slice of her forearm with one of its claws before she could land her strike. A follow-up attack sent Arcueid stumbling backwards. And a blow to the back of the head sent made her momentarily lose her footing and land on the floor. All of this happened in a span of under a second.
The demon plunged its claws down towards the blond vampire when jets of water speared towards it. Countless streams of water pierced the beast their speed easily surpassing sound and the pressure comparable to the ocean depths. This however only seemed to knock the beast of balance and irritate it and its next lunge took it once again towards Shirou. A wall of ice formed with barely a thought but the creature plunged through the ice like it was paper and froze. The duration of its pause was but a second but it gave enough of a breather for a furious Arcueid to lunge at the beast slamming it through a wall and into the next room.
Shirou quickly reached towards a shaking Illya and sent her home via teleportation. Turning to the head of the burial squad he was surprise to find the usually green eyed now sported a pair of glowing eyes one pitch black and the other white like the sun. She seemed to be slightly out of breath and was unpacking some form of device. "Go on without me," she said her usual vicious tone absent replaced with a tone of utter professionalism. "That thing's a True Demon. They usually can't be beaten or driven off but with this group of people we may just manage it."
She looked at him her mismatched eyes looking rather more intimidating than usual. "Your job is to find a way we can destroy it or otherwise seal it. I'll join the vampire in the whole fighting bit now go."
Shirou turned and headed out into the other room past the Aozaki, who was now standing and analysing the conversation, and what he saw made he stop dumbstruck for a moment. Arc and the demon were exchanging blows their sheer speed rendering them almost invisible and there were visible gusts of wind from the intensity of the exchange.
It was at this point that Shirou regretted that for all the durability and strength that [Ryuujin's Perfect Body] gave him it barely improved his speed at all. He could launch a blow incredibly fast by building up water pressure in his arm and infusing mana so that he was pushing the water contained within while he attacked normally. He took note that if he survived this he was going to do something to build up his speed and reflexes. Focusing on the creature in one of the moments that it slowed down he read its history using the fourth.
"It is a Demon?" He started though that statement was tinged with uncertainty. The being that fought in front of his eyes resisted his comprehension like only one other being had ever done before. He focused his power pushing through the blockage and he was confronted with information that he couldn't understand. Again and again he tried to force the knowledge in his head but he could feel his human brain resisting this attempt to learn this knowledge.
The chimera in front of him refused to be understood and it was really starting to piss Shirou off. He stared at the creature until his eyes felt like they were on fire and his brain felt like it was being dissolved. "I am Shirou Inke," he repeated inside his head. "I am a master of the fourth magic and I am going to use it to understand this creature." The words repeated inside his skull again and again. The world grew blurry besides that statement even as his head dulled he repeated it. I ,,, Inke,,,, master,,,, magic,,,, understand,,,, creature.
Something broke inside his head like a pane of glass he never knew existed. Suddenly the world was so much clearer to him. He saw gravity, space and time distilled to their essence, rendered down into mere words and concepts as if the universe were a mere story in a book told by an omniscient god. The entire universe unfolded itself in front of him and he found himself disappointed. He saw the pointlessness of life, how the scenario repeated itself ad nauseum amongst countless parallel worlds. He saw beautiful unique creatures and how life was all just one trick that was mundane once it was understood. He saw the way that the creature was made and the way that the vampire was made and the way that humans were made. He idly realised he had achieved a greater comprehension of the universe and remembering a statement long ago he turned his head towards the root to the place that his life had begun.
Pain struck him. He felt like he blacked out a few moments there. But knowledge about the creature flickered through his brain. As his aching brain struggled to make sense of it he found himself paling. "We need to cut it off from the world. It's drawing shape and strength from it."
"Good let's see if we can do something about that," the voice came from his side and he jerked his head to see Narbareck unfolding an item wrapped in cloth. "I have a way to separate it from Gaia if you can stall for a bit," she continued. "I won't be able to fight so I need you to protect me."
Shirou nodded his head. This was no time to be arguing he walked in front of Narbareck and trained his eyes upon the feuding duo trying to accustom himself to the speed they were travelling at. However he got more worried as he saw the fight continue. The differences were subtle but as somebody who spent a lot of time around Arcueid it was immediately apparent.
She was changing, her attacks came with more brutality and with more unpredictability and she had stopped striking with her fists and was now clawing at the opposing monstrosity with her fingers. As worried as Shirou was for the moment it looked Arcueid was winning.
The True Demon, for that's what it was, was beyond powerful. In addition all of the damage was shapeshifted away. Hands lost grew back and changed into scaled forearm. A hole in the chest resulted in its torso melting and reforming into smooth grey skin. Even when Arcueid tore its head off the resulting head grew back into an avian variety. But it was slowing down now. Every single exchange of blows was won by Arcueid and the vampire had now begun to use her marble phantasm more and more. The creature naturally destroyed the human order around it and if Shirou hadn't created his own magical system and repeatedly convinced the world it was real he might be having a problem with his magecraft. As it was he cast and finished his spells quickly to allow for minimum degradation.
The flip side of this for the creature was it transformed Arcueid into an actual monstrosity to fight. Winds sliced it into pieces, lightning formed and tore chunks from the beast and he even saw Arcueid cause the creature to spontaneously generate with a gesture. The creature's regeneration had slowed down and now the wounds lingered. Finally Arcueid simply leant forward stuck her fingers through the creatures eye sockets and tore the head off its head.
Turning from creature Arcueid looked at Shirou. Her teeth were elongated and her eyes were glowing red. Her face was contorted into a glare and her hair waved wildly. Shirou despite his mild arousal at his friend's sudden change had more important things on his mind.
"It's not dead Arc," he shouted. But it was too late as from the body of the discarded exploded and from the corpse a figure emerged and decapitated Arcueid with a single swing of its hand. Shirou gulped as he beheld the new creature. It was over six feet tall and had two horned antlers on the top of its head. It had brown eyes and hair and it was without a doubt definitely female. In fact if Shirou had to judge he would say it was about an E-cup female the True Demon deciding that clothes were not a thing that was absolutely necessary.
Shirou's unfortunate surprise could have led to a nearly fatal incident as the beast immediately rushed him in the same manner as it had before. Once again before it reached him however it paused.
"[Alien Stomach World]," he heard a voice behind him say and the world warped. The four walls of the underground workshop disappeared to be replaced by fleshy masses tendrils protruded from the sides moving as if to grasp something. The smell changed and Shirou realised that sometime during the transition he had been plunged underwater. Quite acidy water as it was but he'd honestly swum in worse. He should probably feel sad that some places in the ocean had apparently greater acidity than this beings stomach, but he was just too overwhelmed to care at the moment.
They were in another world that was somehow inside a stomach that was used to summon the other world. Shirou was already feeling overwhelmed so he decided to table his analysis for later if there was one. Jumping back he noticed Narbareck take the lead and step in front of them.
The being, he should really address it as the woman now, shook its head gazing about in wonder of the room around it. This wonder didn't last long as it was suddenly attacked by a white blur that took a chunk of the arm. Another white blob was destroyed by the swing of her hand. However more and more of those white blobs appeared and withing ten seconds the woman was striking everywhere taking down scores of those white blobs before they touched her, the chunk missing from her arm already healed.
Shirou pulled himself together and started analysing the creature. The analysis came easier this time and he blanched at both the power of the thing and the method that it came about. Touko had not actually created it in some weird experiment gone wrong but uncovered it from its resting place where it had lain for centuries before. The worst thing was he currently had no idea of anyway to kill it.
Twice before had Shirou fought incredibly high level foes in the form of Dead Apostle Ancestors and only recently was he able to come to appreciate both how tough they were to kill.
The first one, the pirate was a testament to how even the strongest could be brought down by something unexpected. As ready to fight Sumire as he was, he wasn't prepared to take an origin bullet to the reality marble. The backlash had knocked him into the water, a vampire's natural weakness, and right out of the fight. Even so Sumire confided in Shirou that she had gone back about half an hour later and finished him off and that even underwater he was recovering.
Nrvnqsr was a trainwreck of a fight but even then he had prior knowledge of how to beat him and a True Ancestor on his side. Even then he was at his weakest having not eaten for a long time and he was technically still not dead. Shirou's original plan of sending it into space was vetoed due to cost considerations. He hadn't earned any money back then and sending stuff into space would be prohibitively expensive not to mention illegal. So Shirou had gone with the second plan and buried the jar of Nrvnqsr under the sea floor in the middle of the pacific.
Unfortunately Shirou couldn't think of a way to kill the woman in front of him. Her regeneration seemed to be on par with Arc's who Shirou noticed had not been dragged into the world. So Narbareck must be intending to capture her someway. He immediately refocused on the battle.
Things that seemed to be like nerve fibre streamed from the walls crackling with electricity. Unfortunately the creature dodged them and then charged at the young member of the church. However when the creature swung its arm it suddenly found its hand deep into the white blob that took the opportunity to strip the flesh from its body. The creature destroyed the white blob that Shirou suddenly realised was an actual leucocyte and turned towards Narbareck.
It charged again but suddenly the space between them warped and the path was blocked by tentacles that grasped at the female making Shirou feel some slight amounts of cultural awkwardness. The woman tore free and once again nerve fibres sprung from the ceiling. She made to jump but once again she was paused.
However this time was different. The woman had apparently had enough of all these obstructions as a massive wave of prana erupted from her and the world cracked.
Narbareck lost that impassive face that she had on the entire time. She raised the stomach once again and the world seemed to buckle in anticipation…. before the stomach was obliterated by the True Demon her hand crushing the stomach as well as Narbarecks hand.
Shirou recognized it as teleportation this time and not speed idly noting that for something apparently exclusive to the Age of the Gods all three in this rapidly decaying world have some form of teleportation. This thought was quickly discarded as he used the remains of the disappearing water to launch an all-out attack upon the woman causing her follow up attack on Narbareck to go off centre and only destroy her arm rather than her chest. The last of the world disappeared and Shriou once more found himself in the workshop of Touko Aozaki.
Arcueid had recovered but he really wasn't sure about her mental state and the True Demon was now eying him up.
"Man I'm really glad I got Illya out," Shirou thought to himself.
With Illya (At The Perfectly Safe Emiya House)
"Man, I hope big brother is okay," Illya thought to herself as she left her room to head downstairs. While she normally would have been complaining about missing the fight, she was just glad to be away from the chimera. She was still going to get him back for making her run away from that earlier demon. Suddenly she heard a series of noises coming from the entryway.
Briskly walking towards it she came across two men standing in the entranceway and a slightly burnt Satsuki on one knee. "I'm only going to ask once more," the blond haired one with the rather dapper clothing said. "Where is Kiritsugu Emiya."
"Dead," replied Satsuki.
The man contemplated the answer for a bit before he then huffed. "Then you're useless to me," he said raising his arms.
An attack on Satsuki was something that Illya would not allow however. She quite liked the girl. She was always friendly with her and they formed an alliance of watching magical girl shows whenever her brother was not around to ruin it.
Hair curled up in her pockets took the form of four birds and her Storch Ritter opened fire. The dapper gentleman managed to cancel his spell and dodge leaving the shots to damage Shirou's wall but his companion took a shot to the shoulder. The man whipped his head towards Illya who stood in the doorway.
"An Einzbern Homunculus," he said. "So the man must be here." His face morphed into a smile. "And your type are so rare, especially now, you'll fetch a fortune."
"No," Satsuki stood up.
"What do you mean no," the man said. "You're hardly in a position to defend her. Face it you've lost. I'll make it quick."
Satsuki shook her head. "I didn't want to do this," she said. "This will probably cause some serious damage to the surroundings but as you've threatened his sister I'm fairly sure Shirou will retroactively authorise this."
"Oh one last trick up your sleeve," the man scowled. "I won't let you use it." He clicked his fingers and a small flame came out. Satsuki merely stepped to the side and watched it go past and burn a painting of Shirou's featuring a mountainous landscape.
The man stood looking at his hands. "What," he said. Next to him his partner was still clutching his shoulder but he attempted to use his mystic code to no avail. Suddenly a lot more nervous they both began backing up and then stopped.
There in the doorway stood Nine. His hands were full of grocery bags; he had evidently been busy shopping in the morning. His face however was something not usually seen on the cheerful Nine. Frankly speaking he looked pissed.
"Sorry to inform you," Satsuki said not looking sorry at all. "But I activated my ability a bit before I told you I had it. "This place has absolutely zero mana now." At this Nine's frown deepened but he still kept it directed towards the two men obviously blaming them for having pushed her so far. "I would advise you not to resist what happens next," she said as Nine slowly walked forward towards them. "Man Shirou's going to be pissed at this," she said.
With Shirou (Currently Being Pissed About Something Else)
The fight had gone on for less than ten seconds and already Shirou had found himself a bit out of his league. For the first time in a while he pushed [Ryuujin's perfect body] past its initial level to the point that he felt less like a human and more like a particularly vicious tidal wave. His jets of water were now no longer like spears but more like the abyss crushing down on each pound of flesh. And still this creature didn't show any signs of flagging. Arcueid was going wild and Shirou wasn't sure if she was avoiding attacking him because she didn't register him as an enemy or if she didn't register him as a threat.
The problem was that nothing was causing it to attack any less ferociously and it was slowly becoming immune to both Arcueid and his attacks. Twice he had managed to trap the thing. Once in ice when he had frozen the water he had used to attack it and another time when he tried to use his magic to restrain the creature directly. Both times she had simply flexed her prana and escaped from the trap.
Shirou decided to take the initiative because if the current stalemate between the two continued the city would eventually be the loser. He teleported behind the creature and silently activated his ultimate spell. "[Amessunu Istenis]," he said aiming the spell at the ladies endowments. The spell worked as planned air took on the properties of the abyss and the spell being condensed into such a small relative area upped the sheer damage a bit leading to the entire chest of the lady being obliterated.
For a moment he felt successful and then he only felt cold as a hand plunged into his chest in retaliation. Even without her chest the woman was still able to do some damage and to his despair he noticed the chest start to grow back as she retracted her hand. She didn't have the chance to do any further damage as Arcueid pounced and tackled her out of the way.
Shirou fell to the floor spent. Avalon kicked into overdrive and started to heal him. Earlier he had even broken his taboo to not use the fourth on living beings and the creature had still managed to survive. Any concepts he applied caused the creature to either manipulate her body in such a way that they didn't apply any more or to actualize her immunity to a particular concept by the release of prana.
He mentally ticked off the option of kill True Demon in his head. The creature had proven capable of shrugging off his toughest weapons. The only option left was to seal it.
"Wait that it," Shirou jolted up his body protesting as the last of the wounds were healed by the mythical scabbard. "I can send it away where it can't get back." He quickly did a thorough analysis and sighed at what he was about to do.
Standing up he watched the two fighting again although this time Arcueid was losing as the creature was releasing prana to jets of water. Seeing this Shirou felt happy that a True Demon had acknowledged his magecraft as worth copying, but he schooled himself for the job he had to do.
Reaching inside himself he felt the weight of the weapon in his right hand. He stilled his breath and focused the entire world narrowing to him, his weapon and the True Demon. As one last precaution he quickly added that always accurate concept that he used on his gun. Then he teleported.
Appearing behind her a straight thrust speared through her chest, her attempts to dodge proving ineffective against the new concept attached. Almost in slow motion he saw the claws coming towards him so he quickly activated the special ability of his weapon.
"[Avalon The Everdistant Utopia,] he intoned. And the hands didn't reach him because the beast was in Avalon. However that wasn't good enough. He added prana unit by unit until he felt the third ability of the scabbard activate.
Avalon's primary ability was to heal. Its second ability was to bestow intangibility to the wielder as the wielder would be transported to Avalon where the owner could not be harmed. The third ability functioned as a higher version of the second and acted as a gateway to Avalon whereby a person could enter the land of the fae and also the fae could if they so wished enter our world.
The woman attacked him in an odd parody of the way that Nrvnqsr attacked him almost a year ago. Claws that would tear him to shreds didn't reach him and with one last bit of exertion the beast dissolved into sparks having left this world.
Shirou breathed in and out heavily and raised his head just in time to see Arcueid lunging for his neck her eyes glowing and her face contorted in an expression of feral rage.
"Motherfu…" was all that Shirou managed to say before the True Ancestor hit him and everything went black.
Author Note This is actually a chapter I'm happy with. Most likely it will be one more chapter of this really, really long Arc and then some filler. For the record the creature that they faced this chapter was a True Demon. In other words Ex grade bad news. Arcueid was the only one who could fight it and she pushed herself beyond her limits to do so leading to the results at the end of this chapter.
Vault 166 Yup its far more likely the demon would one-shot him.
Yukie Shiki It's a line taken from the Enuma Elish which proceeds the flood myth. It describes the mixing of salt and freshwater in the creation of the world.
Tobias97 snowyassas1n Thanks for your advice. Honestly I keep all my chapters double backed up so I might just risk it.
KRKing As much as I would love to answer that question I don't give spoilers. Unless they're appropriately vague.
The Rupture Nope just your run of your mill potential killer of all humanity. With a bit more time it probably would have classified for beast class. Thankfully it was appropriately ganked. And yes I do love shocking revalations how could you tell.
Guest Thank you. They went well. Don't worry I never said the date. They finished on the 25th.
Archelone You give good advice. Thank you for that and please continue. I wasn't entirely happy about that infodump as well, but at that point I felt like I had to justify why the fight went that way and you saw the result. Also the only amazingly overpowered magician we have is Zelretch who was old when Arc was a child. Aoko barely uses it and she nearly wiped out the universe the one time she did.