Chapter 43 (Patreon)

“The real battle starts now.”

Kenjaku stood with his back to the moon, its pale light glinting off the black blades in his hands.

A black afterimage flashed in front of Ragnar Kagenou.

In an instant, the space between them was filled with clashing steel.

With a sharp swish, Ragnar’s Murasame cut through the falling rain and slashed straight for Kenjaku’s head.

Facing the fierce strike, Kenjaku bent backward, locked the blade with his legs, and twisted his body in one fluid motion.

Ragnar flicked his wrist, pulled Murasame free, and at the same time drew the Mortal Blade from his back.

Kenjaku kicked off and launched himself into the air.

“Trying to fight me from the sky?” Ragnar said coldly. “That’s suicide.”

He did not pursue. Instead, golden ripples spread open behind him as the Gate of Babylon manifested.

The Chains of Heaven shot from the golden light, catching Kenjaku off guard and binding him in midair.

“Chains… won’t hold me.”

In the next instant, Kenjaku’s body dissolved into black mist, slipping free from the Chains of Heaven.

“So that’s the Ripper’s technique…”

After absorbing the Ripper, Kenjaku had inherited its cursed technique as well.

Now transformed into mist, he became impossible to pin down, striking from one blind spot after another.

This won’t work, Ragnar thought as he parried attack after attack. I need to force out his Domain Expansion first.

At that moment, Kenjaku emerged from the mist again.

Holding the Mortal Blade, Ragnar drew back and unleashed a fully charged slash.

A vast black-and-crimson arc tore across the battlefield like ink splashed across the night.

Just as Ragnar expected, Kenjaku instantly atomized his body, letting the slash pass harmlessly through him.

And the moment Ragnar sheathed his blade—

Kenjaku’s black sword shot forward like a viper.

“Got you!”

The instant his blade drove toward Ragnar’s chest, Kenjaku felt victory within reach.

Clang!

The blade never pierced Ragnar’s heart. Instead, it struck something hard.

“What?!”

Kenjaku’s expression changed at once. His attack had been stopped.

At some point, Ragnar had produced a feather fan and used it to guard his heart.

“You took the bait, Kenjaku.”

“You exposed an opening on purpose…”

Kenjaku’s face darkened. There was no room to retreat now. He had already stepped straight into Ragnar’s trap.

“Clouds gather low upon the earth, formless at first, then take the shape of soaring birds. Birds strike, clouds conceal. Ever-shifting. Endless. The sound of metal and leather resounds through the field.”

Then Ragnar flicked the feather fan lightly.

Mist exploded outward and swallowed the area whole.

“This is the Great Strategist’s ultimate formation.”

“Do you recognize it?”

“The hell is this nonsense?”

Ragnar’s voice turned cold.

“Then learn it well, you frog at the bottom of a well.”

He vanished from in front of Kenjaku.

At the same time, eight black-and-red pillars descended from the heavens.

Using London itself as an Eight Trigrams field, the eight stone pillars fell into the eight directions—Open, Rest, Life, Harm, Delusion, View, Death, and Shock.

Within the formation, Kenjaku instantly lost all sense of direction. Even in mist form, he could not escape.

Eight Trigrams Stone Soldiers Formation.

Outside the formation—

Ragnar stood atop the Clock Tower, gazing down at the trapped Kenjaku while thousands of golden ripples spread open behind him.

The scale of the Eight Trigrams Stone Soldiers Formation was enormous, covering nearly all of London.

In a sense, it could even be called another kind of Domain Expansion.

Boom!

E-rank Noble Phantasms rained down without mercy, and Kenjaku, trapped inside the formation, could do nothing but endure the bombardment.

After all, if he could not even locate his opponent, how was he supposed to fight back?

“Could this be Ragnar Kagenou’s Domain Expansion? An open-barrier domain that covers the entire city…”

Inside the formation, Kenjaku could no longer move properly, and Noble Phantasms kept firing at him from every direction at unpredictable intervals.

“Honestly… you may be the most absurd sorcerer I’ve ever fought.”

What now?

Against a domain of this scale, ordinary cursed techniques meant nothing.

Should I use Domain Expansion? Kenjaku thought. But if I can’t catch him inside it, then everything I’ve done until now will be meaningless.

As he searched for a way to break the field, he suddenly noticed something impossible.

The buildings in front of him were moving on their own.

“What…?”

“How is that even possible?”

It was as though the Eight Trigrams Stone Soldiers Formation itself was shifting and rearranging freely.

As for the ordinary people trapped inside the formation, Ragnar’s guidance was subtly leading them out of London without their realizing it.

Kenjaku, however, could not escape by relying on memory alone. Anyone ignorant of the formation would never find a way out.

Within the dense white fog, Shoko Ieiri led the few survivors onward with difficulty.

Everything around them was swallowed in white. Visibility was terrible, and the entire city seemed to have vanished inside this unnatural mist.

“It feels like… something is guiding us out.”

Shoko spoke softly, keeping her guard up as she watched the movements around her.

Her eyes swept over the blurred outlines of the surrounding buildings as she thought in silence.

Before long, she realized that somehow, without noticing when it happened, they had already left the crowded center of London behind.

Then one of the survivors suddenly cried out.

“A pillar! There’s a giant pillar!”

The man pointed ahead with wide, terrified eyes.

Everyone turned in the direction he indicated, only to see a colossal stone pillar rising into the clouds. It was hundreds of feet thick, towering over everything around it.

The pillar was pitch-black, its surface carved with strange patterns and runes. Terrifying waves of cursed energy rolled off it without end.

“What the hell is that?!”

“And when did something like this appear?!”

The survivors erupted into panic and confusion.

To them, this place should have been familiar ground.

Now it felt like they had wandered into some completely different world.

Where the hell are we? Is this even still London?

But in the face of all that fear and shouting, Shoko said nothing.

She only stared at the massive stone pillar in silence, feeling the cursed energy radiating from it.

That presence…

A familiar sensation stirred in her chest, and she frowned slightly.

Could this be… Ragnar?

At last, the group fully emerged from the fog-shrouded zone.

Shoko slowly turned and looked back at London, still buried beneath that sea of white mist.

“We… we made it out!”

“Look! Why is there golden light over the city?!”

Shoko raised her eyes.

Far above London, golden radiance lit up the sky.

“You’re way too flashy, Ragnar…”

Then suddenly, a wave of black cursed energy rippled out from the fog.

“Move. Get farther away,” Shoko said immediately. “Don’t get caught in that black energy.”

None of the survivors argued.

The people who would have stopped to question things had already died inside the city.

So Shoko continued leading them farther and farther away from London.

Only when they had reached several kilometers beyond the city did they finally hear it—

the sound of sirens, along with the thunder of helicopter rotors as countless aircraft surrounded London from above.

Noble Phantasm: Eight Trigrams Stone Soldiers Formation

Rank: C

Type: Anti-Army Noble Phantasm

Description:

A legendary formation said to have been deployed by a great strategist during a desperate retreat. Constructed from massive stone pillars, it causes intruders to lose all sense of direction and wander to their deaths within the labyrinth.