A Noble Phantasm?
Even before her opponent dropped into his stance, Surtr already saw right through his intentions.
In truth, she had been keeping her guard up against this very move from the start.
The cursed spear of reversed causality that guaranteed a pierced heart the moment it was thrust—Gáe Bolg.
To anyone encountering it for the first time, Lancer’s Noble Phantasm was an outright instant-kill cheat code.
Even armed with prior knowledge, Miss Surtr had no realistic way of hard-blocking the concept itself.
Setting aside broken cheats like relying on sheer absurd luck or divine instincts to twist fate, the only valid counterplays were having resurrection skills or fleeing beyond its effective range.
Options one and two were completely off the table, leaving retreating out of range as her sole theoretical option.
Except she wanted this fight wrapped up immediately.
Dragging the skirmish out risked alerting other Servants lurking across Fuyuki, which would only turn an already chaotic situation into a multi-sided nightmare.
Mere evasion wouldn’t cut it.
She needed an overwhelmingly destructive counterblow to end this clash right here and now.
And the precise instant her opponent unleashed his Noble Phantasm was her golden opportunity.
Activating a Noble Phantasm required reciting its True Name.
Brief as that fraction of a second might be, it was more than enough time.
Spending less than 0.01 seconds formulating her counterstrategy, Surtr acted without a shred of hesitation, hurling Lævateinn straight up into the stormy sky.
Lancer clocked her bizarre move, yet his charge didn’t waver for a millisecond.
As long as he ran her through before she could pull off whatever trick she had in mind, none of it mattered.
Digging his boots into the soil, he erased the five-meter gap in the blink of an eye.
“Your heart is mine!” He roared his declaration of absolute victory.
Yet a beat faster than his lunge, a towering pillar of scorching inferno erupted from Surtr’s position like a violently detonating volcano.
The roaring tidal wave of fire swallowed the entire glade, surging outward to engulf the earth.
Licking tongues of crimson flame crept up Lancer’s limbs, the blinding blaze instantly obliterating his line of sight.
A gust of blistering heat blasted past, and in a mere split second, Surtr’s silhouette vanished completely within the sea of fire.
“Tch…!” Having lost his visual lock on the target, Lancer was forced to abort his thrust, swallowing the True Name already perched on the tip of his tongue right back down his throat.
The sensation of being forcefully interrupted mid-strike left Lancer violently irritated, but he had zero luxury to complain.
Aborting a full-power thrust left his body locked in brief recovery frames, exposing a glaring tactical opening.
‘It’s a trap!’ The moment the realization struck, the suffocating stench of sulfur flooded his nose, and a primal alarm bell screeched inside his skull.
Violent tremors shuddered beneath the soles of his boots as colossal dark silhouettes danced through the roaring flames.
In the next instant, a terrifying behemoth formed of churning magma tore straight out of the raging inferno, towering over the earth like a primordial titan.
The molten giant hoisted its massive arms to the heavens, catching the flaming greatsword plummeting from the clouds.
Unfathomable light and heat coalesced around the blade, resembling a miniature sun cresting over the pitch-black night.
The apocalyptic glare drowned out Lancer’s entire vision.
Centuries of battlefield experience and honed predatory instincts took over, compelling him to raise his hand and rapidly trace defensive runes through the blazing air on pure reflex.
Then, the sun crashed down.
A fan-shaped cascade of incinerating hellfire tore across the forest.
Torrential rain evaporated before it could touch the ground the ancient trees along the trajectory were vaporized into ash in a fraction of a second, while the drenched soil liquefied into a bubbling, molten slag splashing violently in all directions.
The crimson inferno devoured every single thing in its path—the woods, the landscape, and Lancer himself standing right at ground zero.
A long moment passed.
As the roaring flames gradually subsided, a desolate, fan-shaped crater spanning nearly a hundred meters carved an ugly scar across the mountain slope.
Lancer was nowhere to be seen.
After confirming that no trace of hostile aura remained, the magma giant melted back into the scorched earth, while the surrounding fires miraculously snuffed themselves out in total defiance of physics.
A soft gust of warm air rippled through the clearing, and like a shimmering mirage, Surtr materialized out of thin air amid the surviving trees.
It was a little trick inspired by a novel she had read in her past life: manipulating heat signatures to bend airflow and warp light, creating an optical camouflage effect.
Quite similar to the Invisible Air barrier used by a certain blonde knight who loved wearing blue dresses.
While a keen eye could spot subtle spatial distortions upon close inspection, when paired with the blinding distraction of an erupting inferno, it had been more than enough to dupe Lancer in the heat of the moment.
Recalling Lævateinn to her side, Surtr cast her gaze over the devastated glade.
A small patch of earth near the center displayed distinctly different blast patterns from the surrounding glassed terrain.
That had clearly been Lancer’s defensive position.
There was a ninety percent chance the blue hound was still kicking.
He had likely mitigated the lethal brunt using Nordic Runes, and combined with his absurd Battle Continuation skill, the guy was the type who could get right back up and bounce around even after dying.
The fact that he wasn’t lying here meant he had probably been evacuated via a Command Spell.
‘He really is an exceptional warrior.
The same trick won’t work twice on him, and running into him again won’t be half as easy.’ A bit of a headache.
Furthermore, his overall demeanor tonight had caught her off guard.
He was noticeably far less bloodthirsty and much more reasonable than the ruthless killer she remembered from canon.
The only logical explanation had to be his Master.
But whether Kotomine had somehow had a change of heart, or Bazett was currently serving as his Master as originally intended, remained an open question.
She’d need to conduct a thorough investigation later.
Regardless, while no definitive victor had been crowned, the brief skirmish provided a reliable benchmark for both Servant capabilities and her own combat parameters.
In terms of pure physical stats, she didn’t lag behind Servants at all, and likely held a noticeable edge in raw brute force only an out-of-spec monster like Berserker could probably contest her head-on in sheer muscle.
As for firepower, that magma-fueled strike clearly packed Anti-Army level destructive yield.
Any standard Servant caught unprepared would be vaporized on the spot.
She held clear tactical advantages, but it was far from an auto-win ticket.
Recklessly bulldozing through opponents was definitely off the menu.
‘Well, that’s a problem for future me.
First order of business is dealing with Medea.’ Setting her thoughts aside, Surtr walked back to where she had stashed Medea’s “corpse”.
During the duel, she had deliberately steered the clash far away from the tree, preventing any tragic collateral damage where the hostage got nuked alongside the attacker.
Bending down, she scooped the unconscious witch back into her arms and slipped away into the night before the Holy Church’s clean-up squad could show up.
Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the city, inside a Western-style villa known as the Phantom Mansion.
A few days prior, the secluded estate had quietly welcomed its new resident.
A burst of spatial distortion rippled through the basement, and Lancer’s battered figure stumbled into the room.
His slick blue ponytail was completely gone, and his azure bodysuit was riddled with gaping scorch marks that exposed raw, blackened skin underneath.
“Tch.
I really got played like a fiddle.” Lancer clicked his tongue in disgust.
He seemed completely numb to the excruciating burns covering his body.
So long as a spiritual core avoided lethal trauma, a Servant could regenerate minor flesh wounds in no time using prana.
Far from feeling dispirited by the pain, a savage thrill buzzed through his veins even though he had tasted defeat, tonight’s scrap had thoroughly satisfied his itch for battle.
While fighting to the death on the spot sounded exhilarating, the Fifth Holy Grail War hadn’t even fully assembled its roster yet.
Checking out of the war this early would be a massive waste, and he still wanted to test his spear against the rest of the Heroic Spirits.
“My thanks for the pull, Master.
Otherwise, I might have checked out for good tonight.” Lancer tossed a casual wave toward the woman seated across the stone desk.
She was a striking woman dressed in a sharp maroon suit, sporting short, wine-red hair and matching burgundy eyes.
Her features were refined yet sharp, radiating the unapproachable chill of a hardened operative.
“If you were eliminated before the war even began, it would have caused me immense trouble.” Bazett replied flatly, deliberately averting her gaze from his newly bald head.
After living under the same roof for several days, the starry-eyed reverence she once held for her childhood mythological hero had long since worn off.
“If possible, I would strongly prefer you drop that nasty habit of playing with your food.
If you had gone for the throat from the opening second to execute Caster, none of this mess would have occurred.” “Come on, Master.
Mopping up half-dead targets is boring as hell can’t blame a guy for lacking motivation.” While he respected her authority and generally obeyed tactical directives, slacking off during tedious chore assignments was second nature to him.
It was a bad habit, but he had zero intention of fixing it.
“Now that Caster has been secured by that unknown party, our next encounter will likely be significantly more troublesome.
From here on out, I will be deploying alongside you.” Knowing his stubborn personality all too well, Bazett didn’t waste breath lecturing him, moving straight to finalizing their next move.
“Heh, then the other Masters are in for a rough time.
Let’s hope they can last more than a couple rounds against you.” Lancer let out a low whistle.
He had personally experienced his Master’s combat prowess firsthand during their sparring match on the very first day of his summoning.
Without a shred of exaggeration, a colossal, insurmountable canyon existed between Bazett and every other modern magus participating in this war.
Relying purely on her reinforced martial arts, Iron Fist discipline, and ancient runic magecraft, she was capable of throwing hands directly with Servants in close quarters.
And if she decided to draw her family’s ancestral Noble Phantasm, the absolute best-case scenario for her target was mutual destruction.
Calling her an eighth Servant on the battlefield was no overstatement.
For their duo, as long as they didn’t run into some completely absurd, world-breaking anomaly, securing the Holy Grail was practically a foregone conclusion.
It wasn’t arrogance it was a cold, calculated fact.
Not to mention, they held another terrifying trump card in their deck.
Bazett’s gaze drifted toward the corner of the desk, a flicker of sorrow and reluctance dimming her eyes.
Lying quietly upon the velvet cloth was a severed, blood-caked right arm, its pale skin densely covered in intricate crimson engravings.
The accumulated stockpile of reserve Command Spells preserved by the Holy Church across multiple Holy Grail Wars.
Tonight was destined to be a sleepless night for Fuyuki.
The explosive clash between Lancer and Surtr had ignited widespread public panic, thrusting the infamous Fuyuki Gas Company back into the media spotlight after a ten-year hiatus.
The company’s PR department, initially dismissive and later profusely apologetic, bent over backward in front of reporters to reassure anxious citizens that similar “underground pipeline ruptures” would definitely not happen again.
Meanwhile, in a sprawling clock tower estate on the far side of the Eurasian continent, a certain someone’s blood pressure was steadily reaching critical levels.