Xyrin Empire
Chapter 474: Ah, So High

Chapter 474: Chapter 474: Ah, So High

The heavy stone axe—if that thing could truly be called an axe—howled through the air, and each swing brought with it terrifying wind pressure. The over two-meter-tall giant wielded such a weapon as if it were as light as a feather. Under the oppression of absolute power, even someone as strong as Saber could not contend in a mere brawl.

And the man in the red windbreaker, who had been instantly killed in the first strike, knew he couldn’t gain an advantage in direct combat, so he turned his attention to the silver-haired little girl. Compared to confronting that monster, it seemed much easier to kill the relatively fragile magician.

Unfortunately, while the plan sounded good, it fell apart in practice. Even a berserk war beast like Berserker retained an instinct to protect its master. Saber, already injured, failed to keep the immensely strong giant occupied. If not for his agility having been greatly enhanced by a certain commander, Red A might not have died, but he would have lost half his life.

As for Zuotian Tsuruya, who just made a stunning entrance, she was now reflecting: As a unit that should have been commanding from the rear, she had rushed forward and engaged in close combat with the Berserker, and her only battle result was running back screaming after clutching her head, which had been hammered like an eggshell. What was there to do if not reflect?

In terms of combat power, Zuotian Tsuruya, who was not good at fighting and only half-skilled, was obviously no match for that giant. Therefore, after applying several speed and defense-enhancing status halos to Saber and Red A, Tsuruya and I both entered the ranks of the spectators.

Now with Tsuruya’s halo support, combined with Saber and Red A’s personal strength not being weak, they were unlikely to be defeated easily. But to win seemed difficult.

"Energy nova..." Seeing that the giant’s offensive showed no sign of weakening, I started to hesitate whether I should make a move in advance. But just when a small-scale energy nova was about to explode under Uncle B’s feet, a continuous screech from the high sky suddenly interrupted everyone’s actions.

It was as if something was tearing through the air, plummeting at high speed.

Hearing this familiar sound, even someone as brave as Saber jolted and immediately leaped backward. The man in the red windbreaker paused for a moment, and after seeing Saber’s movement, he too realized what was happening and withdrew from the battle, not understanding why. The only slightly experienced person left on the scene was Emiya Shirou, who immediately looked up into the sky, and I could faintly see the cold sweat suddenly appearing on his forehead.

Emiya Shirou’s movement seemed to be a signal that drew everyone’s eyes skyward while also interrupting the ongoing fight—even Berserker instinctively sensed the anomaly and looked up, letting out an angry roar.

And then he was smashed into the ground by a large fireball falling from the sky...

The second landing pod, a several-ton chunk of interstellar alloy, tore through the atmosphere at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. The accumulated kinetic energy, not even a legendary demigod hero like Hercules could withstand, plunged the nearly three-meter-tall giant into the cement floor like a pile driver, and the fierce shock wave that followed swept up countless fragments of steel and concrete like a surging tide, spreading outwards in all directions. Saber and Red A, who had already retreated to their respective masters’ sides, immediately raised their weapons, using their superhuman blocking skills to fend off the flying debris. As for Tsuruya and me, we had nothing to fear; we had a variety of energy shields to choose from, and I even had the leisure to pick a chocolate-colored one...

But there was one person on the scene completely unprepared.

The little girl named Ilya, facing the sudden catastrophic change, seemed to be petrified and could only open her mouth wide, staring dumbfounded as her Servant was crushed into a heavenly pit by a strangely shaped cylindrical block of alloy, oblivious to the steel and concrete "bullets" about to engulf her.

"Ilya!"

In such a situation, the perennial good guy Emiya Shirou reacted first as expected, then leaped out of our defensive perimeter, trying to rescue the stunned little girl.

"Damn it, you idiot!"

Faced with such a foolish act, even I, who was also known to be a good guy, couldn’t help but curse. Being a good guy is fine, but at least think before you act! Anyone here could have saved that girl; as the only one with a combat strength of 5, jumping out was just messing up our scene!

With utmost speed, I accelerated on the spot, breaking the sound barrier, and surged forward to grab Emiya by the collar. With a throw, I tossed him behind Saber, while I sped on without slowing down to Ilya’s side, placing my hand directly on her head.

With my palm as the center, a translucent spherical Energy Shield instantly expanded, protecting the dazed Ilya inside—oh, and the Shield was chocolate-colored, by the way.

Why do I feel that this method of shielding a target is so bizarre? What’s the principle behind those Holy Knights casting shields from a distance?

All this happened in the blink of an eye, less than a second. The scattering fragments sparked ripples after ripples against the Energy Shield, each with a force probably no less than a close-range exploding grenade. Only then did I realize just how tough that unfortunate Gunman had been; a landing pod dropping without slowing down was badass!

Seconds later, when all the dust settled, saber swung her sword to scatter the dust with a gust of wind, revealing a massive Heavenly Pit that had completely destroyed the street and a large area around it.

Even though this was the widest part of the street, it seemed that some residential houses had still suffered fatal damage.

Don’t worry, Mr. Emiya, I will help fix your house.

From the corner of my eye, I caught Shirou Emiya standing petrified next to me, his face crumbling as he looked at his home’s walls which had collapsed and the yard which was half-destroyed. In my heart, I silently promised him help—why not say it out loud?

Because once I say it, it would be hard to go back on my word.

"The pit in the backyard still hasn’t been filled," he muttered.

The straightforward King of Dai Mao, whether intentionally or not, chose this moment to rip the wound open again with his remark, making the already hunched half-baked magician look even paler.

At the center of the Heavenly Pit before us, a high-tech "Spaceship" reflecting silvery brilliance was still emitting steaming heat. Despite the fact that Humanity of the New Eden Federation had significantly improved their spaceship materials with the help of Xyrin Technology, after such a rough landing, the landing pod was undeniably deformed. Thus, seeing the landing pod’s sliding door being kicked open from the inside didn’t come as a surprise.

"Pat pat," light footsteps echoed one after the other as a pair of twin girls stepped out of the landing pod; the former had black hair and eyes with an icy expression, while the latter had blood-red cat eyes filled with curiosity and mischief.

Pandora and Visca, huh? Looks like Sandora won’t be showing up for a while.

At this moment, everyone was still in a stupor; no one noticed that beside the landing pod, a large lump black as charcoal was slowly trembling until the roar that belonged to the Berserker suddenly brought everyone back to their senses.

Not dead, as expected. Even Lancer had survived the impact of the landing pod; let alone the Berserker, whose life was tougher than Little Strong’s. Like a small mountain slowly rising, the smacked-down Berserker stood up, the charred earth and rocks falling from his body. And right next to him, merely half a meter away, two eternally one-meter-two figures also turned their heads, their gazes following the Giant’s movements upward.

Looking up... and up... and still up... Pandora and Visca’s necks were practically at a ninety-degree angle, while Uncle B leisurely stretched his limbs, unabashedly flaunting his height, which was as tall as double Pandora’s and then some.

The Berserker howled to the sky, setting off car alarms in the distance—speaking of which, with such a ruckus, how come the police haven’t shown up yet? Could it be because of the strange white fog all around?

Gazing upward with a 90-degree angle at the mountainous Giant in front of them, Pandora and Visca suddenly fell into an eerie silence. Perhaps their innate sense of danger still lingered, and the mindless Berserker couldn’t help but lower his head to get a look at the situation below. So, two conditions were met instantly:

Height, looking down.

Are you trying to shorten your life, Uncle B?

"Ah, so tall," mumbled Visca.

"Yup, so tall," Sandora nodded blankly.

Then, before anyone could react, the two little girls had already fiercely grabbed onto the gargantuan legs of the Berserker. Immediately after, a brilliant azure light exploded from behind them, and in just a moment, the twin sisters, who had entered some kind of berserk state, vanished from sight.

All that was left on the retinas of the onlookers was a burning afterimage, like the V left by a flash of lightning. Sandora and Visca, each clinging onto half of the Berserker’s body, shot away from each other at nearly a hundred times the speed of sound, disappearing into the horizon.

The legendary hero, Herculean in strength, was instantly dismembered under the double-barreled output of an engine equivalent to a Xyrin Battlecruiser.

I wonder if good ol’ Uncle B can even resurrect after dying like that... It seems Sandora and Visca are truly angry this time.

"I mean, you two were a bit too impulsive this time, weren’t you?" While I can understand the feelings of two unfortunate Shortys when facing a giant more than twice their own height, these little rascals’ thoughtless actions still made me speak out through our spiritual connection, unable to help myself.

"It’s okay, since that foolish big guy can still come back to life, we’ll just stop after killing him ten more times," Visca’s crisp voice echoed in my mind. Alright, I take back what I said; it seems these two had not only thought this through but had also researched the necessary information...

The instant kill didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

How powerful could Sandora and Visca’s maximum output be?

Perhaps one simple example could explain it all: Once, in her Glory Form, Visca had activated a gravity attack using the power of the Star Ring that ripped the entire Atlantis Continent from its tectonic plate and chucked it into magma. And for a planet-level warship, such gravity weapons were as trivial as handgun shots from a tank.

And the strongest "Titan" from the myths could only uproot a mountain. What’s a mountain compared to an entire continent?

Hercules was only half a "god" at best.

Even if Sandora and Visca in their Apostle Forms couldn’t be as powerful as a planet battleship, they absolutely had the strength to tear apart any so-called Heroic Spirit with their bare hands—unless their opponent’s body possessed an "indestructible attribute" on a law or conceptual level. But for these two little rascals capable of annihilating an entire interstellar fleet by themselves, Hercules’s body was just too frail.

There was a dead silence, so quiet you could hear a pin drop, as everyone fell into a bizarre state of rigidity. Everything that had unfolded before their eyes was as clear as day, and it was not a question of doubt but rather that it was all too decisive, too direct, leaving every person in a state of mental shutdown.

That incredibly formidable monster, the giant who had severely injured the Heroic Spirits Saber and Archer, had held an absolute advantage just a second ago, but in the next moment was torn in half by two little Lolis who appeared out of nowhere?!

Time seemed to stand still, with the blood mist belonging to Berserker still suspended in the air, slowly descending, and then hissing as it touched the bottom of the crater. There lay a massive pool of melted metal and magma, a lava pool of about two meters in radius formed by the afterburner from the little girls’ skyward burst which melted the ground and part of the landing pod’s outer shell, reminding everyone with the glaring red of the lava that the scene just now wasn’t an illusion.

After a while, I felt the little girl Ilya in my arms tremble suddenly, then she began to walk forward as if unconscious, murmuring to herself in a daze: "Berserker? How could this... Berse..."

This was bad; the shock was too much.

The piercing screeches of air rushing by suddenly became louder and closer, rattling the heavens. In the night sky, two bright spots rapidly expanded in my field of view, then plummeted meteor-like to the ground, leaving two little girls, Pandora and Visca, half-kneeling before me after having completed their grisly corpse-flinging task, now victoriously returning.

The arrival of the two "murderers" seemed to jolt the already somewhat disoriented Ilya back to awareness. The little girl, who had been aimlessly walking towards the large crater, turned her head and stared blankly at the Pandora Sisters, with a sudden flash of terrified yet angry flames in her eyes.

Was she thinking of avenging Uncle B?

Noticing the little girl staring at them, Pandora and Visca simply tilted their heads slightly and then, as though on cue, they boldly strode forward to meet her.

The already frightened Ilya immediately stepped back in fear, and upon seeing this, I quickly grabbed the two little ones and took a few steps to stand in front of Ilya.

"You should go," I motioned with my hand, indicating she was free to leave. After all, this little girl was no enemy. Today’s conflict... well, if you have to blame anything, blame it on Uncle B’s parents’ genes. It’s not Uncle B who’s wrong; it’s the DNA!

"Hercules faced twelve trials, but if you were to die here, he truly wouldn’t be able to resurrect," I added in her mind after seeing her stunned expression.

She immediately looked shocked and after staring at me with complex emotions for a while, she suddenly turned and quickly ran back the way she came—yeah, she even stumbled once.

Only after her silhouette disappeared into the night fog did I lead Pandora and Visca to the crowd. They too had recovered from the shocking one-hit kill they had witnessed. Seeing the two seemingly harmless little girls, they immediately had the expressions of people who had just seen a monster.

Of course, they were at least calm, particularly after noticing that the two girls who had just killed a powerful Heroic Spirit were very obedient to me. Tohsaka Rin even mustered the courage to ask, "Um... so, these two girls are...?"

Pandora and Visca exchanged a glance; the former remained silent, while the latter immediately curtsied with the lively movements unique to little girls and cheerfully said, "We are photography enthusiasts from the Centaurus α Star Cluster, who had to make an emergency landing here while trying to dodge an innocent Space Ultraman during maneuvers near Earth orbit..."

Emiya Shi Lang paused, then interrupted Visca’s introduction with a cough, "Ahem, if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t it the Alex Star Cluster?"

A bead of sweat formed on Tohsaka Rin’s forehead, "Does it even matter what they say it is when you have no idea?"

"Anyhow, we’ll be imposing on you for a few days," said Zuotian Tsuruya, looking at the now-ruined front courtyard wall of the Emiya Mansion, her expression full of apology and her tone embarrassingly awkward.

The sudden appearance of the little girls with astonishing means had resolved the invasion, and they swaggered into the Emiya Mansion as new guests. Tohsaka Rin’s face was a mix of emotions as she bid farewell and left, clearly, the young girl with a mentality far more mature than her age was weighing the current power dynamics of the Holy Grail War in her mind. Her primary concern was what we, the inexplicably arrived "aliens," intended to do in the entire event.

On the surface, it seemed neither I nor Tsuruya had any interest in the Holy Grail, nor any intent to interfere in the Holy Grail War. But after today’s incident, Tohsaka Rin suddenly had a premonition: it seemed that the entire Holy Grail War had ended in another way after yesterday’s "spaceship crash"...

Another person weighed down by heavy thoughts was Saber.

As the former king of Great Britain, titled as the Military God, despite her frank nature, she didn’t shy away from deception or stratagems—it was a soldier’s instinct. The so-called "photography-loving alien friends" that appeared one after another with such exaggerated strength, it wouldn’t be surprising what sort of connections she would make.

Perhaps the only lucky one was Emiya Shi Lang, oblivious to all this, ignorant bliss indeed. They say the happiest people in the world are always fools. Just look at how blissful Silvia is usually with her carefree nature... (To be continued, for more, please visit www.qidian.com. More Chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)