After clearing up a few questions that hadn't really mattered, yet kept lingering in the back of his mind, Shiomi felt noticeably lighter.
After making so minor adjustnts for everyone whose Magic Circuits had been overloaded, the thirty minutes of rest were gone in the blink of an eye.
"Feeling better?"
With three minutes left before they were due to head out again, Shiomi spoke to U-Olga Marie, who had remained alone on the deck the whole ti, keeping her distance from the people of Chaldea.
Or rather, refusing to speak with them.
And with the battle in such a critical state, even Olga Marie, the one who most wanted to talk to her, had no energy to spare for it.
"...Although ORT used my heart as a substitute to activate itself," U-Olga Marie said quietly, "it's fine now. Since I know my heart was taken, I just have to regenerate and repair it."
"You don't need my help?" Shiomi asked again.
"You have more important things to worry about, don't you?" U-Olga Marie glared at him.
Even she didn't know what she was thinking. There was so much she wanted to say to him, yet once they were face to face, she couldn't get any of it out.
So all she could do was remind Shiomi in that stiff, awkward way that instead of worrying about her, he should be thinking about how to deal with ORT.
Shiomi nodded in understanding. "It's almost ti. You... never mind. Whatever it is, we can talk after we deal with ORT."
Without wasting another second, he turned and headed toward the front of the deck.
The others, who had more or less recovered enough to carry out the summoning ritual again, also rose to their feet and waited for his orders.
Shiomi nodded to them, then gave Sakura, Caren, and the others a quick pat on the head as encouragent before walking straight over to Morgan.
At the mont, Morgan was talking with Tiamat alongside Artoria and the others.
It seed they were each introducing themselves to Tiamat. Tiamat looked less than pleased, but there was no ti for any kind of "Tiamat inspection" to judge whether they were fit to be Shiomi's partners.
"It's ti."
As Shiomi spoke, he took Morgan's hand.
The Unity God manifested.
Before Shiomi could say anything else, Gilgash and Enkidu had already seized the initiative, leaping from the deck and closing in on ORT through the raging wind.
Compared to the mont when it had first switched to acting through its true body, ORT was still giving off intense radiation, but not to the point that Chaldea could no longer approach it.
"So this is the Unity God." Tiamat touched Morgan's arm and shoulder. "How nice... to be able to understand each other so completely like this."
Then the Unity God jumped from the deck.
rlin and the others followed one after another, drawing closer to ORT and preparing to match the pace Gilgash and Enkidu had set as they launched their attack.
According to the plan, once the battle began again, the people remaining on deck would prepare to perform the summoning ritual.
It was already more or less certain that the Servants they had previously summoned could no longer manifest again. From this point on, everything would depend on the will and strength of those still standing.
"It's coming!"
As Gilgash and Enkidu bombarded ORT's true body with a storm of Noble Phantasms, Morgan, who was steadily closing the distance, suddenly sensed sothing unusual in its magical energy.
ORT, which had been passively taking hits up until now, was about to counterattack now that more magical energy signatures had moved within range.
Seven or eight golden tentacles, like chanical arms, extended from the top of the disc and lashed out at them all at once.
"Oh dear, that won't do." Riding atop Sibuxiang, Taigong Wang deftly slipped past one of the chanical arms trying to seize him.
The Old Man of the Mountain swung his sword and knocked aside one coming straight at him. "It seems... it ans to hunt us down as prey."
"Well, it is a predator. That's simply its nature."
Even as Morgan spoke, she was dodging and coordinating support with the other Servants, making sure that no matter how ORT's tentacles struck, they couldn't catch any of them.
"It's not just that." rlin drifted through the gaps between the tentacles like a flower petal. "There's no awareness of communication, no will to engage. It's unlike what happened with Tiamat, unlike what happened with Goetia, and even unlike what happened with Koyanskaya..."
Tiamat's eyes widened as she fixed her gaze on ORT. Her Eyes of the Stars were of an even higher order than Shiomi's, and they exerted overwhelming suppression and interference on ORT's movents.
"Since it has no intention of listening, then there is no need to hesitate."
As she said that, she brought her hands together and fired an intensely concentrated beam of magical energy.
A single blast on a scale large enough to wipe out half a city left only a few visible wounds on ORT's true body.
"And... even if you avoid a direct hit, just being exposed to the cosmic storm ORT is creating causes constant damage." Morgan raised her hand and glanced at the back of it, where the radiation had eroded her skin, only for it to rapidly heal again through her self-repair ability.
It wasn't just the Unity God. The Servants on the front line were dealing with the sa thing.
They endured the erosion of the cosmic wind on their Spirit Origins while continuing to launch their strongest attacks without hesitation.
"Don't worry. Leave things like injuries to us."
Mari spoke softly then. For once, even her usual flippant tone was tinged with seriousness.
Standing back to back on a path of flowers that stretched into the sky, the two Magi of Flowers faced the battlefield.
"This is the primordial sky, without walls, without cities, without nations. The origin star that shines in the depths beneath the earth. Witness the form the soul takes to exist... [Garden of Avalon], [The Everdistant Utopia]!"
"Distant paradise, opened hope, let offer you a breath of fragrance. Even far beyond reach, it surely exists there. Go forward with your budding hope... [Winds of Avalon], [The Utopia Beckoning from Afar]!"
Two Noble Phantasms, similar yet not quite the sa, unfolded at that mont.
The paradise of the Inner Sea of the Planet, the ideal land known as Avalon, spread out within the fantasy tree sea ravaged by ORT.
Within it, they received the protection of that ideal land, healing their wounds and restoring their magical energy.
Clearly, the release of those two Noble Phantasms' true nas had stimulated ORT to so extent. Its enormous disc-like body began to tremble.
"This is... interference across a wide area to seize magical energy?"
Morgan saw the flow of magical energy in the air change, surging violently toward ORT's position, and couldn't hide her shock.
"That won't do."
At so point, Taigong Wang had already risen to a position higher than ORT itself.
"Fall, [God-Striking Whip]!"
The long whip that Taigong Wang usually kept in hand, even using it as a fishing rod at tis, descended from warped space and struck directly above ORT.
The imnse disc lurched violently from the blow, its flight posture thrown badly off balance as it began to list and wobble in midair.
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