"Ha!!"
With a fierce battle cry, Mash shattered a skeleton soldier into pieces.
But almost imdiately, another massive wave of skeleton soldiers, ghouls, and wyverns surged forward.
Ritsuka had been talking with Adam when she heard the sharp whistling sound overhead. She quickly dodged, narrowly avoiding a wyvern's diving attack.
Her communication link with Adam had also been cut off. Looking at the dense swarm of monsters surrounding them like a colony of ants, she grumbled helplessly:
"Why are there so many monsters here?"
"We only just cleared them out a few minutes ago. How are there already more?"
If Adam were here, he would have wholeheartedly agreed with her complaint.
After all, every Singularity he had experienced was like this—fights breaking out every few lines of dialogue. It was incredibly annoying and never let anyone finish a thought.
Ritsuka was currently taking cover behind Mash, but even that offered little safety.
Wyverns constantly harassed them from the air, while the overwhelming number of ground monsters had nearly encircled them completely.
If things continued like this, they would face attacks from nearly every direction except straight down—a semi-spherical offensive.
A single defensive Servant like Mash had no hope of holding them off alone.
Mash clearly recognized their dire situation. She glanced at Ritsuka, who was busy dodging wyvern strikes.
"Senpai, we can't keep this up! The two of us won't last much longer!"
Ritsuka looked toward the direction the monster horde was advancing. They were heading for a hill, and from its peak, the spires of the distant fortress were visible.
Although the monsters were currently attacking them, it didn't seem like Ritsuka and Mash were the actual target.
The pair had simply gotten caught in the middle of the monsters' march. Their real objective appeared to be the fortress ahead.
At the fortress, the walls were badly damaged, but the soldiers outside the gates remained organized, holding their positions. Several archers stood ready along the battlents.
They were trying to repel the monster assault and prevent them from breaking into the city and slaughtering the civilians inside.
Whether they could actually succeed was another question entirely.
Including the archers on the walls, they numbered fewer than a hundred n.
And their opponents…
This was only the first wave, consisting of a few dozen monsters.
The second wave behind them numbered in the hundreds.
And the final wave looked to contain over a thousand.
The fortress itself was in grave danger.
But at least compared to their current position in the middle of the second wave, the fortress had friendly forces present.
So Ritsuka looked toward the fortress and made an imdiate decision while Mash shouted.
"Let's head for the fortress first!"
Her decision wasn't just for their own safety—she also wanted to help the people inside defend against the monster invasion.
At the very least, they could buy so ti. She had already contacted Adam, and he should arrive with support soon.
"Understood."
Mash naturally grasped Ritsuka's intention. Without any unnecessary words, she silently carried out the order.
With a clear goal in mind, Mash advanced rapidly toward the fortress.
They made it through with only a few close calls. Ritsuka nearly got snatched by a wyvern's claws at one point.
In the end, they reached the front of the fortress just ahead of the second wave.
——————————
At the sa ti.
In front of the fortress.
Dozens of soldiers were locked in combat with dozens of ghouls.
Though ghouls were physically frail, they were fast. Despite the soldiers being well-trained and wearing what remained of their battered armor, casualties were already mounting.
One man's armor was noticeably more complete than the rest—he appeared to be their commander.
However, the commander was already exhausted. Breathing heavily inside his heavy armor, having slain the most enemies earlier, he was clearly no longer capable of fighting.
Yet the battlefield offered him no chance to rest.
A skeleton soldier had sohow gotten beside him.
The ghoul raised its claws to slash down at the commander. He tried to dodge, but fatigue combined with the weight of his armor caused his legs to buckle, and he collapsed to the ground.
The commander watched helplessly as the ghoul's claws approached his now unprotected neck.
In that instant, despair filled his heart.
It's over.
At that exact mont, a massive cross-shaped shield slamd into the ghoul, sending it flying dozens of ters away.
The commander had narrowly escaped death.
He stared blankly at the suddenly appearing Mash and Ritsuka.
"…Who are you?"
Although Mash had taken out one skeleton soldier, dozens of ghouls still remained.
Another ghoul charged at Mash from behind. While she was focused on the enemies in front, Ritsuka dodged frantically from the rear. The ghoul's claws passed re centiters from her neck, but she managed to evade.
The battle was chaotic. Ritsuka shouted urgently at the commander:
"No ti to explain! We're here to help you!"
"Just think of us as travelers who saw trouble and decided to step in!"
She quickly reached out and helped the commander back to his feet.
Once standing, he caught his breath. After thanking Ritsuka, he threw himself back into the fight.
With Mash's addition, the dozens of ghouls in the first wave were quickly eliminated.
Mash alone had probably accounted for thirty percent of them.
The soldiers and the rescued commander were all stunned by her strength.
One horizontal sweep of her shield decapitated several ghouls. A powerful downward smash crushed several more.
My god, how could such a small body wield such an enormous shield?
The commander swallowed saliva that tasted faintly of blood and tried to steady himself.
He then approached Ritsuka, filled with gratitude toward the two who had saved his life.
"Thank you."
"If not for you two, I would have died back there."
Ritsuka had been looking toward the distant hill, seemingly confirming sothing. When she heard him, she turned around.
"I know you're grateful, but don't thank just yet."
The commander was taken aback.
"Huh?"
Ritsuka looked back at the hill, her brows furrowed and her tone growing heavier.
"The crisis isn't over. There are still monsters on the other side of that hill."
However, the commander didn't seem worried at all, which confused Ritsuka.
"Hey, I just said there are monsters over there. Why don't you look concerned?"
The commander casually waved his hand.
"It's fine. We have you and that shield-bearing knight, don't we?"
"With you two here, I don't think we have anything to worry about."
Ritsuka blinked, then recalled the scale of the monster army she had seen on the hill.
"But there are thousands of monsters on the other side of that hill…"
The commander froze for a mont, then half-removed his helt and dug at his ear.
"…How many?"
"Thousands of monsters…"
The commander was completely stunned.
Ritsuka looked at the soldiers again. Their armor was tattered; many weren't even wearing any. There were fewer than a hundred n total.
She rembered the two waves she had witnessed on the slope—together numbering in the thousands.
"Are these all that's left of your forces?"
The disparity was obvious. These soldiers couldn't even withstand the second wave, let alone the third.
Hearing Ritsuka's question, the commander let out a long sigh toward the sky. He glanced at the soldiers behind him, seemingly resigned to their fate.
"These are all we have left. A few days ago, we had several tis this number."
"But ever since that rumored witch appeared, hordes of monsters have been showing up around the fortress nonstop."
"Before, there weren't nearly this many. They only ca in small groups, and while we took losses, we could still hold the line."
"Recently, for so reason, the monsters suddenly gathered and began launching a full-scale attack on the fortress."
"We're almost at our limit, and the ssenger we sent for reinforcents hasn't returned."
Ritsuka was about to comnt on their dire situation when she heard the word "ssenger." She suddenly froze.
Images of the French reconnaissance unit they had recently knocked unconscious flashed through her mind. She pressed her lips together awkwardly and asked:
"ssenger…?"
"When exactly did you send out that ssenger team?"
The commander looked at Ritsuka, sowhat puzzled by the question, but since she had saved his life, he answered.
"About a few hours ago, I think."
Ritsuka: "..."
Mash: "..."
Ritsuka and Mash exchanged a glance, both realizing the sa thing.
Oh no. We might have accidentally ssed up sothing important.
Ritsuka patted the commander's shoulder apologetically.
Commander: "?"
Rembering how ridiculously capable Adam was, Ritsuka put on a confident "don't worry" expression.
"Don't worry, we don't need a ssenger. I already contacted my teammate for help!"
"Let tell you—my teammate is incredibly strong. A re horde of monsters is nothing to him."
"You just need to hold out until he gets here. The two of us will help defend the fortress until he arrives."
However, the commander clearly didn't believe her. He thought she was just trying to comfort him.
After all, her words sounded far too unrealistic. How could such an enormous swarm of monsters be dealt with so easily?
Could her friend summon actual miracles?
"…Regardless, thank you for helping us."
Ritsuka could tell he didn't believe her and wanted to argue further.
"I'm serious! Let tell you—"
At that mont, Mash interrupted her, staring seriously at the point where the hill t the sky.
"Senpai, we don't have ti to chat. They're here."
Ritsuka quickly turned around.
The second wave of the monster army poured over the hill.
Hundreds of monsters charged madly toward the fortress.
Their variety was much greater than the first wave—not just ghouls, but also skeleton soldiers and several wyverns.
The commander gripped his sword tightly, tension clear on his face. He pulled out the cross hanging at his chest, slowly made the sign of the cross over his heart, and kissed it.
It seed he was offering one final prayer to his faith.
After praying, the commander recalled the promise he had made to his fiancée before leaving.
"If I survive this mission, I'll marry you."
The battle resud, far more brutal than before.
The soldiers could barely hold their own against the ghouls and skeletons, but the wyverns were the most troubleso.
So wyverns used their ability to fly to specifically target the archers on the walls providing fire support.
Worse, every breath of fla from the wyverns could incinerate soldiers—armor and all—into ash.
"What the hell are these things!"
"Dragons!!!"
"Why are there dragons?!!!"
The commander witnessed the scene up close. He had been standing near one of the victims burned to ash and could clearly sll the scorched flesh.
Just as he prayed desperately not to encounter those wyverns…
One wyvern landed directly behind him, pinning his body down with a claw and roaring into his face.
"ROOOAR~~~"
Good news: The wyvern didn't want to waste its fla breath burning him to ash.
Bad news: It wanted to bite his head clean off.
Basically turning him into a future Louis XVI cosplayer.
Truly bewildering.
The commander tried to resist, swinging his sword, but after striking the wyvern's claw, his already damaged blade snapped apart.
He stared in despair.
Just as he could clearly feel the hot breath from the wyvern's maw, a spear with a flag attached pierced straight through the creature's head.
Schunk!
The spear then dragged the impaled wyvern's body and flung it aside.
Following the spear with his eyes, the commander saw soone he had already heard rumors about.
She shouted to the soldiers being attacked by the wyverns:
"Warriors, pour water on yourselves!"
"It will only protect you for a mont, but it can help you withstand a wyvern's flas!"
The commander stared at her in shock, a terrified whimper escaping his throat.
"Eek…?!"
The girl who had saved him then reached out to help him up.
"Sir, do you have any spare weapons?"
"Once you're ready…"
"Please fight alongside ! Let's go!"
Mash and Ritsuka also heard the shout. They turned toward the source of the voice and saw…
A blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman clad in battle armor, holding a flag-bearing lance, with a cross sword at her waist.
More importantly!
Her face looked almost identical to Artoria's.
Mash instantly recalled Adam's description of Jeanne's appearance.
"Senpai! That must be the one Adam-senpai ntioned…"
Ritsuka nodded, smiling at this tily reinforcent.
"Yeah, that should be Jeanne."
Jeanne reached out to help the commander up, but the mont he realized who it was, he scrambled backward in panic, as if seeing sothing utterly terrifying.
His expression was one of pure terror, as if he had just spotted a giant cockroach.
The commander fled while screaming:
"It's the witch! It's the witch! Everyone retreat!"
The commander, who hadn't considered running even when facing hundreds of monsters and wyverns, completely lost his will to fight the instant he saw Jeanne and bolted toward the fortress gate.
The other soldiers, upon hearing the word "witch," also panicked and ran for the gate. Many even started discarding their armor mid-run to move faster.
Jeanne: "..."
Jeanne fell silent at the scene. She looked down at the ground with visible sadness and let out a soft sigh.
"Ah…"
Although she had so expectations, she hadn't imagined the soldiers' reaction would be this extre.
It was almost like they had seen Satan himself.
Even so, Jeanne raised her lance, determined to contribute her strength to protecting the people inside the fortress.
Fortunately, there were still people who knew the truth and would fight alongside her.
Naly, Mash and Ritsuka.
The two had already moved to Jeanne's side.
"You're Jeanne, right? We've been looking for you for a while."
Jeanne swung her lance while slaying the monsters in front of her and replied to Ritsuka.
"Y-yes… that's ."
After confirming that this was the person Adam wanted to find, Ritsuka's face lit up with joy.
She then rembered that Adam had also gone looking for Jeanne and wondered if they had already t.
Several minutes had passed since her last communication with him, and she didn't know when he would arrive.
"Miss Jeanne, have you seen soone dressed similarly to ?"
After stabbing a wyvern to death, Jeanne turned to Ritsuka.
"You an… Mr. Adam, right?"
"You two must be his teammates."
"Mr. Adam is right behind . He should be arriving very soon."
Ritsuka breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that.
Although the situation was dangerous right now, once Adam arrived, everything would be fine.
However, Ritsuka might have gotten her hopes up too early.
If she were standing on the fortress walls at this mont, she would see an endless sea of monsters stretching into the distance.
The third wave of monsters had already crested the hill. More than a thousand of them slowly advanced into view.
The soldiers standing on the fortress walls watched in complete despair. An attack of this scale ant that even if reinforcents arrived, it would be far too little, far too late. There was simply no way to hold off thousands of monsters.
What Ritsuka needed to worry about now was whether they could even last until Adam arrived.
Although both Mash and Jeanne were Servants, circumstances had left them operating at only half strength.
The two of them could block the monsters' attacks, but with enemies coming from the front, sides, and air, they could only fight while steadily giving ground to barely hold their position.
Because they were forced to retreat, the fan-shaped safe zone they maintained for Ritsuka kept shrinking until they were pushed all the way back to the fortress gate entrance.
At this rate, they probably wouldn't last even a minute.
Then, Ritsuka seed to have an idea. She turned and looked at the gate. The entrance ford an arched corridor barely five ters wide.
A spark of inspiration hit her. If they fell back to the arched gateway, Mash and Jeanne would only need to defend the front. They wouldn't have to worry about attacks coming from every other direction.
This way, they should be able to hold out much longer than before.
However, Ritsuka hadn't accounted for one critical factor…
The terrified and ignorant civilians.
The very arched gate that could have bought them more ti was now slowly closing, shutting them outside.
Ritsuka stared in disbelief. That gate couldn't possibly stop the monsters anyway—it would only trap the three of them outside while they were busy fighting. She shouted toward the people behind the door.
"Hey! Open the gate!"
"We're allies! We were fighting alongside you just a mont ago!"
But the soldiers on the walls shouted down at her instead.
"Stop joking around! You want us to open the gate and let the witch in?!!"
"If you're standing with the witch, then you're obviously working with her!"
"You want us to let you in so you can kill us all?!"
Ritsuka rembered what Adam had told her earlier about the French people's misunderstanding regarding Jeanne.
Yet when she glanced behind her, she saw Jeanne still desperately fighting the monsters to protect the civilians inside the city.
Ritsuka glared furiously at the soldiers on the wall.
"Can't you see what's happening?!!"
"The 'witch' you're talking about!"
"Is fighting the monsters trying to break into the city!"
However, Ritsuka's words had absolutely no effect.
They still refused to believe her.
"Who knows what her real intentions are?!"
"She's probably just pretending to save us to trick us into opening the gate."
Another soldier on the wall chid in.
"Yeah, these monsters were probably summoned by that witch to begin with!"
"Even if she's fighting them now, it's only because they've gone out of her control!"
"If the witch gets killed by her own monsters, she deserves it!!!"
All the other soldiers on the wall joined in agreent.
"Yeah!"
"Yeah!"
"Yeah!"
Their voices carried clearly, many shouting with strong emotion.
These words reached Jeanne's ears. The painful accusations made her movents falter for a split second. A ghoul's claw nearly slashed across her face, but Mash managed to block it just in ti.
Still, Jeanne never stopped fighting the monsters. She didn't even spare a mont to thank Mash. It was as if she was silently enduring the slander.
But…
Ritsuka wasn't going to let this slide.
"God damn it!!!"
Ritsuka cursed in pure rage. She clenched her fists tightly, teeth gritted, glaring at the ignorant soldiers on the wall with burning anger.
"You bastards!"
"I've been fighting with everything I have for you people, and this is how you repay ? Locking us outside?!"
Perhaps it was her imagination, but Ritsuka's figure seed to beco rounder and more chibi-like in her fury.
In full chaotic-evil mode, Ritsuka marched up to the five-to-six-ter-tall gate, planted her feet firmly, and began pushing with all her strength.
"What is she doing?"
"She's trying to push the gate open? With those skinny arms?!"
The soldier who had mocked her earlier pointed at Ritsuka and laughed while looking at his comrades.
Once one started, the rest of the soldiers also turned mocking eyes toward the scene.
They all knew fortress gates like this required battering rams to break through.
This slender girl thought she could push it open by hand?
Gates of this size were asured in tons, after all.
However…
Grrrrrrrr
Accompanied by the heavy scraping sound of the door dragging across the ground, the massive gate shifted slightly.
Everyone on the wall looked down in disbelief.
They saw that Ritsuka had genuinely begun pushing the multi-ton gate open.
The soldier who had been mocking her froze instantly.
"Huh???!!!"
Another soldier, equally stunned, ran back and shouted to the n inside:
"Didn't you lock the gate?!"
The soldiers guarding the gate had been staring blankly. They looked up at the wall, then slowly back at the gate.
The lock was still in place, but it was creaking loudly under the imnse pressure.
Several other people were also pushing hard alongside her.
Yet even so, the heavy gate was slowly being forced open.
Watching the gate gradually give way…
The gate guards swallowed nervously and shouted back up:
"It is locked! And several people are pushing it!"
"Are monsters attacking the gate?"
"Or is it the witch?!"
"The gate won't hold much longer!"
The soldiers on the wall: "..."
They fell silent for a mont before turning to stare at Ritsuka. They too were completely stunned.
"Huh???!!!"
Then one soldier snapped out of it and pointed at Ritsuka.
"Just as expected! She really is in league with the witch!"
"No normal person has that kind of strength?!"
"Where are the archers?!"
"Don't let her break through the gate!!!"
At his command, the archers reacted. They nocked arrows and aid at Ritsuka—the sa girl who had been helping them monts ago.
This distracted Mash, who was still engaged in battle. Hearing that Ritsuka was under attack, she imdiately turned her head and cried out.
"Senpai!!!"
Mash was already exhausted. The split second of distraction caused the defensive periter she and Jeanne had been maintaining to tear open.
Jeanne wanted to help but couldn't free herself from the surrounding monsters.
Ritsuka now faced arrows raining down from above and monsters about to strike her from behind.
In this mont of extre peril…
A brilliant golden light suddenly shone down from the sky above Ritsuka.
The golden radiance instantly scattered the monsters around her. The archers on the wall also froze and stopped aiming.
Everyone stared in awe at the pillar of golden light.
So curiously looked upward, trying to find its source.
But the beam shot straight into the heavens, its origin nowhere to be seen.
Then soone spoke up.
"What is that?"
Everyone turned toward the speaker. He was pointing into the air. Following his finger, they looked up.
There was sothing within that beam of light.
A white figure suddenly appeared above the fortress walls, positioned at the very center of the golden radiance.
The white silhouette was enveloped by multiple pairs of wings, slowly ascending in an oval-shaped formation.
All the soldiers on the wall had the brilliant image of that white figure reflected in their pupils.
Their eyes beca vacant, jaws slack and hanging open uncontrollably.
At this mont, nothing else existed in their vision.
Not only the soldiers on the walls, but also the soldiers and residents inside the fortress witnessed this sacred scene.
Many residents inside the city—especially those holding crosses in prayer—imdiately fell to their knees in reverence toward the holy light the mont they saw it.
Even those who only nominally followed the faith found their hearts completely filled with devotion. Their knees gave out as well.
So non-believers who witnessed the divine sight even thought they were dreaming.
"I must still be asleep…"
***
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