[Complete] Ch 13.5 Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain Sheathed Against Injustice? (Patreon)

Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain 

Sheathed Against Injustice?

Story Starts

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Chapter 13.5

Of Acts of Evil and 

Reclamations

"Your nose is bleeding again," Alicia Forestlight said beside him.

Shirou wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip. Crimson smeared against his skin. He'd stopped noticing the metallic taste hours ago.

A contingent of elves from both Dionysus and Loki Familia had volunteered to ease his burden, now encircling Babel Tower at various levels. They rotated in shifts, firing Black Keys at shadows whilst he handled the longer shots. The arrangement worked well enough—their eyes were sharp, their aim true, and their presence meant he didn't have to watch every angle simultaneously.

He was perched at the tower's highest accessible point, which gave him an unobstructed view of Orario in all directions.

Any other day, such a view would have made him smile. The walled city stretched beneath him like a living map, its districts radiating outward from Central Plaza in concentric rings. Beyond the walls, farmland and forest rolled towards distant hills. The sky above was clear, wisps of cloud catching the moonlight.

Unfortunately, parts of the city were burning. Pillars of smoke rose from half a dozen locations within the walls. He could even see a dark smudge on the horizon where Melen lay—the port town was under attack as well.

Shirou looked down and locked eyes with Filvis, who stood three levels below on a platform of embedded swords. The black-haired elf held his gaze for a moment, her expression unreadable, before turning back to scan her assigned quadrant.

The archer squad had their own communication crystals, a dedicated frequency for coordinating fire. He also carried the general crystal linked to every Familia representative, allowing each force to coordinate with the others across Orario.

He had learnt to tune out both.

Shirou turned towards Alicia, who had her hand extended with a handkerchief. The fabric was pale blue, embroidered with silver thread at the edges.

"Thank you." Shirou gave the elf a small smile and waved off the offering as he projected his own—plain white cotton, serviceable. "I did not want to stain yours."

Alicia's cheeks coloured faintly. "Lady Riveria has insisted that you take a rest."

The communication crystal crackled. More voices chimed in—Rienne’s gentle concern, Laurier’s pointed observation about diminishing accuracy—though someone, unhelpfully, pointed out that he hadn’t missed a single shot. Several others he couldn’t immediately place. All of them insisting, in their various ways, that he should step back.

Then he saw movement.

The figure he'd been watching for the past several minutes finally broke cover. A robed man emerging from a collapsed storefront ten and a half kilomedr to the southeast, moving towards the secured perimeter with one hand hidden beneath his cloak.

Shirou traced another projectile and nocked it.

The heavy black metal sang as he drew. With this weapon, his theoretical limit was approximately six kilomedr. But Orario sprawled far beyond that range—the city measured over eighty-two kilomedr in diameter. To cover the sectors he'd been assigned, he needed every shot out to forty-one to behave the way a shot at five hundred medr did.

So he had to cheat.

Using Alteration, he'd increased the tensile strength of the bow's limbs and applied an acceleration vector to his projectiles. The same technique he'd used when tracing floating swords and launching them like Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon.

He released.

Crack.

The Evilus member crumpled before he could reach the checkpoint, the blade-arrow punching clean through his chest.

Everyone down there was capable. Riveria's magic could level city blocks. Ottar could carve through an army single-handed. Finn coordinated their forces with the precision of a man born to it. He didn't need to be everywhere at once anymore.

He still couldn't sit still.

His nose bleeding, though. That was something else entirely.

Using Structural Analysis continuously—sweeping it across the city in whatever direction he happened to be looking—took a toll. His circuits heated to uncomfortable levels with the constant output. The technique wasn’t meant for sustained use over hours, let alone the better part of a day. A normal human mind wasn’t meant to process that amount of information—luckily for him, he was blessed with a Falna, so he just had the headaches and the odd nosebleed.

"I'll rest after both sides of the sector push a few more blocks," Shirou said to the elf.

For some reason, the elves had taken it upon themselves to nag him every few hours, reminding him that their entire purpose here was to relieve his burden. He suspected Riveria had something to do with it.

"Umm, Miss Forestlight," Shirou said.

"By this point, I'll allow you to call me by my first name." Alicia's ears twitched. The communication crystal crackled again as more elves from the archer squad offered their own names, declaring that they were comrades in arms now and formality was unnecessary.

His eyes met Filvis again. Her brow rose—clearly amused as the tables turned and he found himself on the receiving end of stubborn concern.

"Ah, yes. I was wondering if you—"

BOOM!

The explosion hit like a physical blow.

Shirou grabbed Alicia, steadying her against his chest as Babel Tower rocked beneath them. Stone groaned. Glass shattered somewhere below. The platform of embedded swords vibrated like struck tuning forks.

He looked down towards Central Plaza.

The Dungeon entrance had blown open. Debris scattered across the flagstones—massive chunks of the seal that had held since Ouranos first contained the pit. Monsters poured through the gap in a flood of scales and fur and chitin. Minotaurs. Hellhounds. Bugbears.

Shirou traced more swords—a dozen, two dozen, three—and made it rain steel. Blades fell point-first into monster flesh, punching through skulls and spines and magic stone cores. At the same time, he embedded another staircase of weapons against Babel's face, providing the elves a path down.

He could see the guards who'd been securing the plaza's perimeter turning inward, their formations shifting to meet the new threat. Civilians screamed. Someone shouted orders. A woman clutched a child to her chest and ran.

"Messengers—inform your leaders!" Shirou spoke into the general crystal, his voice flat and clear. "Overwatch support will cease. We're securing your deities first."

He leapt from the platform.

Wind tore at his clothes as he fell, jumping between the swords he'd embedded against the tower. Each landing lasted a fraction of a second before he pushed off again, descending in a controlled plummet.

Goddess Astraea stood directly below him, her walnut-brown hair catching the light. Beside her, Loki held a glass of wine with remarkable composure for someone surrounded by emerging monsters.

"I have created over a thousand blades."

Shirou twisted mid-air as three floating swords manifested above him. They launched without pause—one embedding in the maw of a hellhound, another taking a second beast through the eye, the third punching through the chest of a charging minotaur. The creatures fell.

Behind him, the elves had also begun their descent, killing monsters and securing civilians as they went. Countless orders flooded the communication crystal—Riveria's measured commands and Shakti's clipped directives.

Shirou traced Kanshou and Bakuya as he landed. The married blades sang as he slashed through a bugbear's throat, the creature's momentum carrying its body past him as blood sprayed from the fatal wound. A hellhound leapt at Loki from the left. His boot met its gut with a solid crack of breaking ribs, sending it tumbling.

He didn't pause. Wordlessly, he grabbed both goddesses by the waist, dismissing his swords as he tucked them against his hips. More blades manifested overhead. They launched in rapid succession, clearing a path through the chaos.

"Eeeep—watch where you're holding!" Loki squawked, wine sloshing.

Shirou caught Riveria's eye across the plaza. The High Elf stood amidst fallen monsters, her staff glowing as she threw spell after spell into the breach. Alicia and her squad had surrounded her, forming a safe space for civilians to crowd into. He gave her a nod.

Then he leapt again, back towards the tower, embedding more swords as handholds and footholds. He went straight for the nearest window—a workshop level, based on the forges he'd spotted earlier.

Loki still had her hand wrapped around her wine glass. The liquid hadn't spilt.

He came through the smithy window feet-first. Goibniu and Hephaestus stepped back from the sill to let him land. The smith god’s hammer hung loose at his side. The red-haired goddess studied Shirou with her single crimson eye, an eyepatch covering the right, but said nothing.

"Wait a moment, Lady Loki. Let me set you down." Shirou crouched low, gently laying both goddesses on the stone floor. Astraea's feet touched ground first, her composure utterly unshaken. Loki followed, still clutching her drink. "Okay. You're secure."

He nodded towards Goibniu. The smith god returned the gesture, his weathered face impassive.

Shirou's golden eyes met Hephaestus's single crimson one. She studied him with open curiosity—assessing, measuring. He held her gaze for a heartbeat before turning back to the window.

Central Plaza was still in chaos. He could see members of Ganesha Familia forming a ring around the medical tents, their shields raised against the monster tide.

Shirou leapt down towards them.

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Crack.

Another shot from the archer.

Hephaestus looked out the window. Even her eye couldn’t follow it—the projectile travelled too fast to analyse. Not even a streak of light. Just the sound, there and gone before she could draw breath.

She turned towards the unassuming weapon leaning against the wall.

Black Keys.

Neither black nor shaped like a key. Her discerning eye had already learnt its properties—Tsubaki had fished this particular specimen from the retrieval team collecting the ones fired by the elven contingent stationed above.

‘Well, elven plus the sole human archer.’

It wasn’t divine. Not even close to anything she had created back in Tenkai. More like blessed was the accurate term—achieved by transmuting something already blessed into a weapon. On top of that, an enchantment of binding that froze a target’s movement when their shadow was pierced.

In this world, such a weapon was closer to a spell given form than a magic sword—no, that wasn’t right either.

Whilst deities here could influence the development of this world far more than in other realities, most gods remained more interested in living the life of a mortal. That was why Hephaestus had lowered herself to Gekai—to escape the monotony of perfection. She didn’t truly possess a mortal body, but being forbidden her Arcanum, something that had been second nature at the forge...

Clink.

Hephaestus realised she’d been staring at her anvil. She shook her head and placed the piece back into the forge.

On the opposite side of the workshop, Goibniu worked at his own station, hammer rising and falling in steady rhythm.

‘Where was I?’

No one had truly bridged the gap between magic item and weapon. Magic swords were basically spells with a limit—that much was true. But they weren’t truly swords. They were spells given a sword’s form.

This was nothing new to Hephaestus. Even as a deity disconnected from her omniscience.

Whilst a deity’s Arcanum was technically not sealed—they were simply sent back to Tenkai once they reached a certain threshold of using their divinity, or fell by another’s hand—the one thing they were truly disconnected from was the Root. The omniscience they’d possessed in heaven.

Either way—

BOOM!

The workshop shook. She and Goibniu dropped low, bracing against the floor as the building trembled around them. An explosion, somewhere beneath them.

The structure held. Panicked screaming filtered up from below.

“You okay?” Goibniu’s voice was steady.

Hephaestus nodded, bringing herself to her feet.

BAM!

The door burst open.

“Goddess!”

“God!”

Two of their children rushed in, one from each Familia. “Are you hurt?!”

“I’m fine, lad.” Goibniu was already moving towards the door.

“I’m good,” Hephaestus said. “Go check on the other rooms.” They’d opened many rooms of Babel to the civilians.

“Yes, go assist them,” Goibniu added, turning back from the doorway.

The two exchanged a glance, nodded, and disappeared the way they’d come.

Both deities turned towards the window, looking down at the mayhem.

People were panicking. Monsters rushed from the Dungeon’s entrance in a tide of scales and fur and gnashing teeth—hellhounds, goblins, minotaurs, and worse. The adventurers who’d been securing the plaza’s border turned inward, re-forming around the deities and the civilians huddled in the tents.

Shink. Shink. Shink.

Hephaestus and Goibniu looked up. Swords materialised from nothing, embedding themselves into Babel’s stone face in a descending staircase. Elves leapt down, using the blades as footholds.

“I have created over a thousand blades.”

The words reached her through the open window, and something in her resonated. An authority—adjacent to her own.

She was a goddess of smithing and metalwork, of fire and volcanoes—and, like Goibniu, she held dominion over carpentry, over artisans. When the archer spoke those words, they reflected back at her. A kinship. A recognition.

She couldn’t quite understand what it meant.

Goibniu, beside her, didn’t comment. She didn’t need him to.

He’d told her about his interactions with the mysterious archer. Shirou Emiya had hired his Familia for a discreet smithy—soundproofed walls in a residential area, work that ensured no noise escaped. According to Goibniu, they still had another job pending. The Evilus attacks had pushed back their custom work in favour of supplying Orario’s defence.

‘Perhaps I should claim the patron title of carpentry as well?’ Her children would benefit. Whenever a new member joined and wanted a personal smithy, they too asked Goibniu Familia for the work.

The archer—Shirou Emiya—conjured two blades. One black with white accents. One white with black accents.

They were beautiful.

They were expertly crafted.

Hephaestus could recreate something similar in Tenkai, given time and her full power. But to see something of this quality here in Gekai, forged by mortal hands—or conjured, rather, which raised its own questions—she forgot to breathe.

It was almost like a crystallised legend.

Shirou Emiya kicked a hellhound out of the air, the beast tumbling across the cobblestones. He grabbed both Loki and Astraea by the waist—and the paired blades burst into pale motes, discarded as though they were nothing.

Hephaestus’s jaw tightened.

Then he leapt, embedding more swords into Babel’s face as he climbed.

“Eeeep—watch where you’re holding!”

Quality enough to pierce stone. Quality enough to bear the weight of three bodies climbing at speed.

His trajectory ended at their window. Goibniu and Hephaestus stepped back.

The archer landed on the sill, crouching to fit through the frame. “Wait a moment, Lady Loki. Let me set you down.”

He lowered both goddesses onto the workshop floor—Astraea first, then Loki, wine glass and all. “Okay. You’re secure.”

He briefly acknowledged Goibniu with a nod—recognition of the smith god he’d employed, perhaps, or simple efficiency. Then his golden eyes met her single crimson one.

Something hitched—and before it could take hold, it was gone.

The archer leapt back out the window.

Hephaestus steadied herself against the anvil, her hand finding cold iron. Her heart—this lessened body’s heart, the one that let her feel as mortals felt—was racing.

“Children, I am unharmed.” Astraea spoke into her communication crystal, calm, authoritative. “Shirou collected both myself and Loki when the attack began. We’re now in Babel, in Hephaestus’s workshop. Please maintain your positions. This may be a diversionary assault.”

Loki, meanwhile, had already perched herself on the windowsill, legs dangling over the chaos below, taking a long pull of her wine.

“Could someone inform Loki Familia that their goddess is secure?” Astraea shook her head at her counterpart.

“Relax, relax.” Loki waved her free hand. “Finn’s got it handled. This is just the appetiser.”

Below, Shirou Emiya was on the ground again, the twin blades flashing in his hands as he carved through the monsters spilling from the Dungeon entrance.

Hephaestus still couldn’t understand what she’d felt when their eyes met.

‘A thousand blades.’

She turned the phrase over in her mind.

Goibniu caught her eye. His expression gave nothing away, but she knew that look. He’d felt it too.

“Interesting lad,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” Hephaestus watched the archer disappear into the press of bodies and monsters below. “Interesting.”

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End

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