Chapter 71 Panoply vs. Panoply
Emiya Shirou stood in the center of the indoor hall. Behind him stood the gathered members of Clan Calatin; less than ten meters in front of him was the Chief, with John shielded behind him.
He was surrounded by the violence of numbers. Multiple fluctuations of magical energy from different sources seeped out, weaving together until the mana itself distorted the very air of the room.
The scene looked like a one-sided suppression of a criminal—yet, if one were to zoom in on the sweat sliding down each face and dropping from their chins, the conclusion would appear vastly different.
The Chief knew his own expression was far stiffer than Emiya Shirou's. He was blocking the door the Chief needed to exit, while Clan Calatin blocked Shirou inside. To any observer, Shirou was the one who had made a mistake and ended up pinned.
Only the Chief didn't believe it.
After a silence that echoed through the hall, Shirou spoke first:
"First, how should I address you?"
His voice carried a simple, grounded impression. The question was perfectly reasonable, yet in this setting, it felt somewhat off-beat.
Hearing this, the Chief shook his head:
"Orlando Reeve. Just call me Chief. You are Emiya Shirou, correct?"
"So you really do know my name."
The youth smiled faintly, looking quite helpless. And indeed, the Chief had been caught monitoring him; now that the target had come knocking, the Chief was the one in the wrong and owed an apology.
...Provided he had only come to complain about the surveillance.
The long sword left its sheath. The Chief gripped the weapon with one hand, the blade held vertically before his face, bisecting the world into left and right halves.
"Forgive me, I cannot fully trust you yet. May I have your permission to conduct this conversation while holding a weapon?"
Shirou nodded plainly: "I understand."
Just as the Chief began to ponder what to say next to test him, Shirou scrutinized the blade in the Chief's hand. Before the Chief could react, Shirou took a step forward and spoke:
"The True Name of that sword is [ ], right? The effect of its True Name Release is to attach a Rank B reinforcement to the next strike, correct?"
"...!?"
The Chief doubted his own ears. Shirou had uttered a name he had never even heard of.
The youth seemed equally surprised and stopped in his tracks, tilting his head in confusion: "Can you not perform the True Name Release yet?"
Blood rushed to the Chief's head. Almost the instant those words fell, he felt a faint chill crawl up his spine. This sensation wasn't a non-human "heterogeneity," but a daunting "abnormality."
"It's fine. If it's you, I'm sure you'll be able to release it soon."
Shirou realized he might have misspoken and added a hasty follow-up. But from the Chief's perspective, it sounded like he was saying—If it were me, I could release its True Name.
"..."
Taking a breath to maintain his composure, the Chief lowered the exposed blade slightly.
"You can see the True Names of Noble Phantasms?"
"Yes."
Shirou nodded slightly. "I'm relatively skilled in analysis-type magecraft... though, this probably isn't exactly magecraft. I'm just good at grasping the structure and compositional concepts of objects. Actually, a long time ago, I couldn't use anything except Reinforcement, so I might have just gone too deep down this particular path."
'Grasping the structure of objects?'
The Chief knew that just as an Imaginary Numbers magus needs the ability to comprehend coordinates, this technically didn't count as a standalone spell. But using it to analyze Noble Phantasms was a physical impossibility. If it could be used for that, the Chief wouldn't have waited for anyone else—he would have used it himself.
No matter how many times one scans a Noble Phantasm, the only information obtained is "it is a massive existence."
Noble Phantasms—the proof of heroes, materialized miracles, the crystallization of humanity's yearning for wonders, the ultimate weapons known as "Noble Phantasms." They are not objects meant to be understood by human power; even the famous swords forged by men are leagues away from the rank of a Noble Phantasm. This was common knowledge in the world.
Compared to the incomprehensible existence before him... the Chief felt he was the one who looked like a normal human.
'Emiya Shirou could previously only use Reinforcement? Then how did he survive the Holy Grail War in the Far East?'
Catching a brief glimpse of the hidden depths behind those simple words, the Chief realized the danger almost instantly. Aside from everything else, based on Shirou's own disclosure, the information and strength of the twenty-eight Noble Phantasms currently drawn were already etched into the youth's pupils.
Yet the youth showed no fear. This tranquility gave the Chief a powerful sense of crisis.
"I am of the school that doesn't believe in a free lunch. So, tell me directly: why expose your own information proactively?"
Shirou pondered for a moment before saying: "Probably because I also have questions I want to ask."
"Meaning?"
The defensive stances of the twenty-eight men remained frozen, the cold light of their weapons flickering in the solidified air like a reflection of their inner state. Since they were Noble Phantasms, any single one that hit would easily pierce a human body.
Twenty-eight against one. Their combat power should be more than enough to suppress a single human.
But despite the cluster of Noble Phantasms surrounding him, as if he were used to it, he didn't give them a single glance. Shirou's gaze pierced straight through the Chief.
"False Caster camp. You should be acquainted with the masterminds of this Holy Grail War, right? I want to know their specific forces, their objectives, and their location."
From the moment he knew the Police Department was a Master faction, a hypothesis had formed, though Shirou couldn't be certain then. It wasn't until this morning that Shirou was fully convinced this place must have established contact with Faldeus or Francesca.
As the words landed, the Chief momentarily wore a look of being unable to speak. As if he had bitten into a bitter melon, he fell into silence.
Sensing the reluctant atmosphere, a female secretary named Vera looked at the Chief, then raised the gun in her hand on his behalf. The sound of a hammer cocking rang out.
"We have no intention of killing you. However, we must ask that you leave for the time being; our Chief is currently preoccupied. Whatever the dispute, provocative behavior is illegal. If you wait patiently, we will notify you of the results in due time."
Looking up at the hall's ceiling where a warning shot had been fired, Shirou did not project a weapon immediately.
"..."
Instead, Shirou spoke, and non-verbal incantations flooded the ears of everyone present.
"!?"
A surge of waves erupted and began to sweep through. Blue luminescence formed around Shirou, and a violent wind gusted outward.
Faced with this unknown situation, a stout man with a shield blocked the female secretary, while a man with a hammer shielded the archer. Curved blades, halberds, and broadswords immediately formed a clamorous battle array.
What was happening?
No one understood. Only the aura of magical energy violently eroded the Noble Phantasms in their hands; everyone was bound by an inexplicable sense of alarm.
In short, the world began to break.
The crowd buffeted by the rising wind felt their temples throb violently; their very life force seemed to rush toward the tops of their heads. Functions that hadn't been broken, the foundations they had lived upon until now, were shaken from the base, bringing an instinctive anxiety with them.
'He can't be allowed to release this power, or something terrifying will happen.'
Top-heavy and dizzy, a saw-like instinct seemed to stroke their medulla oblongata. Everyone's expression changed drastically.
There was only one fixed response: they had to interrupt him before he finished the spell.
Yet, the Chief had not yet given the order to stop him.
'Chief, what are you doing, Chief?! We get that you two must know each other, but even if you're going to negotiate, you shouldn't hand your life over to the other party first, right?'
The female secretary stared urgently at the dazed, out-of-sorts Chief. Hesitating for less than half a second, she made up her mind and said in a tone that still sounded like she was asking for instructions:
"Forgive me, I am taking temporary command! —All members, avoid lethal blows, but at the very least, stop him from releasing that magecraft!"
Simultaneously, she raised her gun and fired a shot forward.
The supersonic bullet cleared the distance between them instantly, but the response the secretary saw was...
An object crystallized out of thin air. A short sword with no support whatsoever blocked the bullet's path, forcibly parrying the magic bullet that originally carried a mana-draining effect.
Emiya Shirou didn't move from his spot. Only after the deed was done did he grab the object that had appeared in mid-air, taking it down like a physical item.
"A magecraft that creates objects... Alchemy? Ether? No, Projection?"
Information gained from a failed attack serves as a correction for the next offensive—this was what made Clan Calatin so troublesome. However, Secretary Vera failed to understand the direction the information was pointing, rendering it useless.
But even if she hadn't left that state of intense focus, the secretary's part was over; her gun entered its reload phase and could not be used at that moment. All that could be done was to leave it to the others to take over.
Like a startled rabbit, a swordsman among Clan Calatin closed the distance to Shirou's face the moment he grabbed the sword. His blade was level with his eyes as he drifted forward at high speed, settled into a lunging stance. He locked his assigned Noble Phantasm onto the youth's shoulder, firing a flash with lightning speed.
A human body cannot resist a Noble Phantasm. No matter how powerful a human is, they will be torn apart if touched by one. Although the human swordsman holding the Noble Phantasm didn't intend to kill him, the principle remained the same.
Since this was a tactic prepared to combat Heroic Spirits, a human fighting Clan Calatin had to ensure they weren't touched even once to maintain an equal exchange—that was the second difficulty.
But how could that be possible?
Because this wasn't a series of duels; even if he could parry the Noble Phantasm held by the swordsman, there were twenty-eight people attacking on the field, weren't there? Long-range and melee combined, wide-area and focused-point coordination—it was like a hail of bullets. One strike from each person could drown the opponent; one was bound to hit eventually.
Furthermore—he had already charged into a magus's inner sanctum. Could a magus really resist a Noble Phantasm in close quarters? The human swordsman couldn't help but think from a detached perspective.
But in the moment he was distracted, a shock suddenly erupted in his hand.
"Gah!?"
His consciousness sank. A blunt strike from below made the swordsman's hand go numb, nearly losing his grip on the sword. Simple pain could be endured, but worst of all, the blade was forced upward uncontrollably, rendering the strike void.
The swordsman looked down—the back of the blade held in the youth's hand hadn't met the point of the sword head-on; instead, it had bypassed the blade from an angle he thought impossible to exploit, striking his elbow and thus affecting the sword's path.
It wasn't even a matter of pain anymore—had the edge of the blade been used, his entire arm would have been severed.
The swordsman had intended to use a feint lunge to actually club Shirou's neck with the flat of the blade to knock him out and stop the incantation, but now he didn't even have the chance to marvel at such shared tactical intuition. The swordsman was wide open, his forward momentum unstoppable; his vulnerable chest was moving toward the youth of its own accord.
'Without backup, I'm definitely going to die!'
" Adelina! Yuki!"
He heard the command calling the archers; there was still hope. The now-immobile swordsman held onto a sliver of hope, using only his eyes to look to the sides.
"Wha—!?" "Wait!?"
But what he saw were two flashes sharper than his previous lunge—an absurd sight as if two more of the youth had branched out. The flashes precisely struck the bows being drawn by the two archers. The female members, accustomed to one-sided long-range combat, couldn't react in time; their stances were broken, and they couldn't fire a single arrow.
They were simply slower. Not only had they not considered the possibility that he would fire without a bow, but they had also failed to match his speed in a direct shootout.
Then, due to the chain reaction of failed support, a sword hilt slammed directly into his chest, and the swordsman collapsed as if retching.
"Yanni!" "You bastard!"
In his tilting vision, the last thing the officer saw were the shield-bearer and a companion with a greatsword moving in.
It wasn't that they wanted to fight him one-by-one; it was that if they supported him too early, a three-man encirclement would obstruct the archers' line of fire. By the time they realized the archers couldn't support them and rushed in, it was too late.
But since they were already there, there was no turning back. The stout man raised his shield to crush the youth beneath its surface, hoping to knock him back, only to find that neither of their positions changed. The man couldn't move forward, and Emiya Shirou wasn't knocked back; he simply blocked the shield's surface with his blade as if he had anticipated it.
He demonstrated through action that since the weapons' performance was equal and there was no disparity in quality, simple strength could cancel it out. The youth's feet didn't budge—until the greatsword-user swung his weapon.
Only then did he move for the first time.
"Trace on."
Where Emiya Shirou's afterimage appeared was behind the two men. And what appeared before him was—a greatsword larger than both of their weapons combined.
The stout man and the greatsword-user both swallowed hard simultaneously.
At almost the same time, javelins and throwing knives flew in from the sidelines as support. But against the javelins, he projected an identical javelin to counter them; the throwing knives were simply parried away with a swing of his sword.
But it was strange—even if the ranged attacks were blocked, why hadn't the other people's melee support arrived?
The two couldn't help but steal a glance, only to witness several whirling light bullets bouncing chaotically through the crowd like a "Crane Wing" in flight, throwing the situation into total disarray. Then the greatsword arrived; the two raised their arms to block almost instantly—and were blown backward together.
Two consecutive skirmishes occurred in the span of three or four seconds. After knocking them back, Shirou didn't pursue. He simply retracted his stance and released his zanshin.
The hall became unnaturally quiet. Clan Calatin finally noticed that the words he had been chanting had stopped.
It was over.
Everyone knew their objective had failed. Because of that, there was no need for him to continue the pursuit or containment. Once he activated that magecraft, the very definition of the battle they had fought until now would cease to exist.
But honestly, Shirou felt that what he had done was actually unnecessary from the start.
Since everyone was in the same building... actually, he didn't need to enter the interior of the police station at all. Scanning the Chief's location could have been done from outside.
The conditions for pulling a target into a Reality Marble only required being within a specific range and knowing the target's existence. If Shirou had finished the chant outside and deployed it there, he wouldn't even have had to enter their territory.
Even without harming anyone—even without meeting this group of warriors—Shirou still had a way to make the Caster camp exit the stage easily. He would only need to choose to isolate the Chief individually during the deployment and use the Rule Breaker on him within [Unlimited Blade Works].
It was just a matter of sincerity. A personal visit vs. meeting in an environment as threatening as a Reality Marble carried entirely different connotations. Shirou had left room for sincerity; as long as the other side wasn't relentless, Shirou wouldn't use [Unlimited Blade Works] to end the situation.
Even now, though the chant was finished, Shirou wasn't in a hurry to immediately replace the surrounding Chief's office.
Shirou's gaze met that of the Chief, who had been "offline" until just now. The Chief didn't even know what Shirou's plan was... but in that final moment of straightforwardness, he seemed to see something he envied, and his complex eyes truly admitted defeat.
"Fine. Allow me to take responsibility and discuss this with you in detail."
The Chief put away the katana—the one whose name he had only just learned. He clutched his forehead and lowered his head, enduring a sense of dizziness.
"Just now, they... no, we, have offended you."