Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

At the tip of the lightsaber, where the girl's finger was pressing against it, Alice's indifferent gaze fell upon it.

Then the pale light surged back, contracted, and collapsed once more, carrying with it the massive mass devoured by the sword, at a speed far exceeding the speed of light, into a pale lightsaber over a meter long. The hilt of the lightsaber was firmly held in the hand of the West Sea Team captain—

—She strode forward.

Silent and unhurried.

The vast expanse of space was shattered with a single step.

And the next moment—

Her figure suddenly appeared before Alice like a fragment of a malfunctioning video, and with a low shout, she unleashed a powerful lightsaber slash.

'Buzz—'—The sound itself is nonexistent. At the moment the sword is swung, only a booming sound, like the world's lament, resounds in the swordsman's perception.

—And just as the swords touched, Alice's words finally ended in her ears.

"...because attacks based solely on physical phenomena are meaningless to transcendent species."

After speaking, his sword pierced the sky.

She saw the lightsaber in her hand tear through the void, and saw her sword sever Alice's form as easily as a hot knife through butter. She clearly sensed the structural destruction and conceptual annihilation of her target, and the next moment, the pale light bursting from the severed part of Alice's body completely engulfed the form!

Tearing apart, shattering, turning into dust without leaving a single atom. From the destroyed form, a massive surge of energy, like a gamma-ray burst, erupted in all directions. This unparalleled, colossal storm caused even the sword-wielding captain of the West Sea team to instinctively take several steps back!

One step, one ray of light.

The mass equivalent to the entire solar system, which had been swallowed by the previous pale sword light, was released here in the form of mass-energy conversion.

In other words, a complete star was compressed into a clump of less than one cubic decimeter, and then exploded in a massive burst at the moment of impact. Theoretically, in the conventional universe, there is no material structure that can maintain stability under such an energy burst.

And that is indeed the case.

The swordsman knew his sword had not missed. The swordsman knew his strike had hit its mark and had its effect.

Judging from feel, intuition, and power, this sword strike clearly hit its target and destroyed the material structure known as the form of Alice Margotrovid.

She succeeded.

Her all-out attack killed... or at least defeated her opponent.

Only then did she relax her tense body, letting the sword fall, and she gasped for breath in the vastness of space.

'Huff—huff—' She defined space for the devastated void around her, designing an air structure that allowed her to breathe. As the enormous tide that appeared to be oxygen but was actually an energy vortex was absorbed into her body through this 'ordinary human' recovery method, her condition visibly improved.

"Did it work?" she asked herself.

“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “But I should have already driven her out… even if it’s only temporarily, she shouldn’t be able to infiltrate again anytime soon.”

She sighed softly, witnessing the solar system before her now reduced to a shattered void—just an insignificant parallel worldline. Even if everything were destroyed, severing it wouldn't cause much damage to her true self. As she released her senses, resonating with her 'selves' in other parallel worldlines, she observed the restoration of countless parallel worldlines.

All distortions were corrected. All 'Satin Love Songs' were either returned to the correct point in time or their existence was simply erased.

Everything fell silent.

In all the parallel universes online, Artoria Pendragon once again drew the Sword of the Chosen at the right moment, continuing her tragic life as a Knight King—and soon, she confirmed that the source world that belonged to her was still hers.

We won.

Even if it's a temporary victory, it's still a victory.

She changed her mind, and the 'she' in the main world line took action to erase this parallel world line that no longer had a solar system. And just as everything turned into a blurry ambiguity, about to vanish like bubbles, she left this abandoned parallel world line.

She traveled to another world line—one that, after consulting the data with the main god, she learned was a derivative scenario of [Fate/stay night]. In that world line, she could enjoy a love as rich and mellow as fine wine, a time for relaxation when she sometimes felt weary.

So she closed her eyes and, following the connection between the mediums, traced back to the time of that love affair. The next moment, she sensed herself being attached to the template, manifesting as a servant in that script…

【Shirou...】

She suddenly jolted awake, and in the next instant, her eyes snapped open!

"I told you, it's meaningless, Captain of the West Sea Team." — She saw Alice standing in front of her with a smile, and in her perception, the person standing in front of her was clearly the boy who had given her unforgettable memories!

"You! You took Shirou—" She suddenly calmed down, looked around, and in the instant she released her senses, she confirmed that this was the same world line of the Fifth Holy Grail War in Fuyuki City, where everything except the male protagonist was exactly the same as in the [Fate/stay night] script!

“…The phenomenon of Dao erosion.” She said in a deep voice, gripping her longsword tightly as she stared at Alice before her. “But how could you possibly deceive my senses…no, deceive this world!?”

“The phenomenon of Dao erosion.” Alice nodded gracefully. “It’s very simple. I just need to erode your perception, this world, this universe, into a part of me, and then naturally you won’t feel anything.”

"You—!" Her pupils widened slightly, and the next moment, she was stunned to find that the Command Seal floating on the back of Alice's hand had actually taken effect on this body that housed the Servant panel! That magical artifact, which was originally only capable of exercising limited command over Servants like her in the [Fate/stay night] scenario and was merely a mortal-level magical creation, had actually become a shackle on her divine body!

The rules of the universe, magic, sorcery, the very essence of magic, were altered—no, actively adapted to the will of this individual named Alice. Like a fawning puppy finding a new master, it unhesitatingly abandoned its former servant and humbly wagged its tail before its new master!

She was abandoned in part by her source world!

Just as she was about to abandon another timeline and fight to the death, the woman before her did not attack immediately, but instead asked her a question.

“While I don’t care if you’re in a hurry to die, if you’re not in a rush, I have something to ask you.” Alice looked at her and asked with a slight smile. “Captain of the West Sea Team, do you—have ideals?”

"What?" The demoted servant frowned. "Why are you asking this?"

"There are some things I don't understand, so I was just asking." Alice shrugged and sighed softly. "But judging from your reaction, it seems not."

"..." The captain of the West Sea team remained silent for a few seconds. In those few seconds, she thought of countless ways to deal with the current situation, but in practice, they still yielded no results—she knew that she could not delay time when time was meaningful.

“My ideal…” she said slowly, as she struggled with Alice for control of the rules governing the universe’s magic. “…I want to go back to before it all began, to cut off all the tragedies. To let a successor better than me complete everything I was unable to do in the past.”

“But those shortcomings are no problem for you now,” Alice shrugged. “You can easily change your past, adjust your source timeline, and transform this entire kingdom into whatever you desire, whether it’s the Eternal British Empire or the Immortal Age of Gods, it’s up to you. Why make things so complicated now?”

However, the captain of the West Sea team simply shook his head. "That's just patching up loopholes, not making amends. To use my current power to change the past would defeat my original purpose."

“…I see.” Alice looked at her, a slight smile playing on her lips. “You’re still thinking in the way of mortals, not even the way of a true god. You’re still clinging to some personal principles from your old days, without transforming them into the principles or ideals that support your actions…I knew there could be a true god like you who denies himself, and I knew you could hide it so well.”

"What do you mean?"

“It’s nothing.” Alice shook her head. “Thank you for sharing. I’ve resolved my doubts. I’ve never understood how someone like you, with unresolved inner conflicts and a lack of decisiveness, could reach the level of a true god. How could you, in your divine form, still be able to stall for time with me here—I always thought you possessed an extraordinary treasure, which is why I was quite wary until just now. But now—”

"I don't need to be so careful anymore."

"you!?"

"Command Spell, Saber, commit suicide."

With Alice's voice and the magical mechanisms still operating under her will in this universe, the shackles that the captain of the West Sea Team had put on herself directly gripped her throat—her hands raised the pale lightsaber she held against her will, and in her eyes filled with anger, resentment, and a little confusion, she plunged the incomparably sharp sword into her heart!

Her physical form on this online world suddenly disintegrated.

But the radiance emanating from the depths of her soul suddenly surged upwards. She leaped to the upper reaches of the solar system, summoning her new body and all her armor!

The Holy Sword, the Holy Lance, the Holy Armor, the Holy Shield, and numerous other powerful weapons and equipment—those once wielded by the legendary entity of King Arthur, and theoretically incapable of being used simultaneously—all appeared on her new body in an instant, their strength elevated to the absolute limit that the material universe could bear. And the next moment, the sword and spear struck down together!

No chanting, no charging, no unleashing of her true name. As she wields her weapons, they respond to her, unleashing a terrifying power that could never exist in history—a surging storm between galaxies, the most extreme and horrific natural disaster in the universe. Boiling void erupts suddenly along the pale trails carved by her spear and sword, and before it even falls, the solar system on which this worldline exists is already on the verge of collapse due to the gravitational tides!

Then, it suddenly collapsed.

That physical force, which had no possibility of being resisted in the physical universe, was completely annihilated and eliminated before Alice raised a single finger.

All things return to nothingness, because Alice seized the power to set most of the physical laws of this universe and molded them to her desired form. When the rules are altered, when the laws of thermodynamics and the conservation of energy are arbitrarily disregarded before her and her opponents have no way to seize them, all these powerful physical or energy attacks are not even worthy of scratching her.

Her outstretched finger continued forward, leaving no room for retreat, and all the West Blue Team captain's various techniques were annihilated at her fingertips. Her fingertip then collided with the West Blue Team captain, who stood atop the solar system, and blasted him directly out of this worldline that Alice had corrupted and distorted!

The captain of the West Sea team should have screamed, but both her screams and the blood she vomited were swallowed up by the ever-altering laws of the universe and the constants of physics. The captain of the West Sea team should have struggled, but all her armor and weapons were redefined into inorganic dust by that single finger, rendering her powerless.

All she could do was activate the pale light that represented her own being and hold it in front of her like a shield. Even so, this only piece of armor that could sustain her life was tainted with powers that didn't belong to her, through repeated forced traversals of parallel worlds!

This is a slow, yet inevitable death.

Before her mind could even process a solution, two-thirds of the parallel worldlines she could control in her source world were reduced. The crucial main worldline drew ever closer, and she finally managed to gain a foothold when she had only a quarter of the worldlines left!

Then, she saw Alice, tens of thousands of parallel worlds away, raise her palm and gently blow a breath toward her.

It was just a breath, a collection of particles carrying a tiny amount of kinetic energy. Yet, each particle was rapidly growing and expanding as it continuously traversed her parallel worlds. From a molecule, it became a grain of sand; from a grain of sand, it became a mountain; from a mountain, it became a burning sun!

When a person exhales a breath, the total number of molecules in the breath is approximately six to the power of 20.

When Alice's aura crossed numerous parallel worlds and arrived in front of the West Blue Team captain, a galaxy of sixty trillion stars and hundreds of times more derived planets had already fallen!

The Milky Way contains approximately one hundred billion stars. When this galaxy, which cannot possibly contain any material entities, arrives, its unparalleled gravitational tides will churn the spatial structure—equivalent to several times the size of the Virgo Supercluster—into a chaotic mess devoid of logic and order!

Physical laws and common sense can no longer confine her.

One bite, and a galaxy of stars appears.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Past Lives and Old Deeds

A universe with stable material laws cannot allow this level of energy to accumulate in one place.

This excessive accumulation of energy is enough to drive order itself toward destruction.

The clone Alice's oft-repeated phrase—'Unless we destroy this finite multiverse'—wasn't just empty talk. In fact, she could do it, and so could some of her companions. And not only them, but even within the Middle Continent Team, there were many members capable of wielding this level of power.

The four initial states are merely isolated star states that have not yet set foot in the sea of ​​stars.

The fourth continent—its upper limit surpasses that of giant planets, becoming a cosmic continent with its own dimensional structure.

The four high-level stars are stars of the primordial world, equivalent to a single universe, an endless single plane star.

The upper limit of the four highs is Quasi-Saint—Alice did not become a Quasi-Saint.

But she already knew the path to becoming a quasi-saint.

And so, Alice gazed upon the West Sea team captain, now trapped in a life-or-death situation. She gazed upon the suddenly frozen, silent timeline.

A new rule replaced the old one, a new logic replaced the old logic. In the instant that the falling galaxy was about to engulf the West Sea team captain, the very concept of energy was eliminated.

How can a universe exist without the concept of energy?

It's impossible, so such a universe is destined to end.

However, before the end, a pale hand reached out from the void.

Everything came to a standstill—the objects frozen even included the West Sea team captain, who, despite having achieved true godhood and theoretically able to travel freely throughout the timeline. With a familiar figure appearing in Alice's sight, this complex web of events finally came to a conclusion.

Ah… no wonder the West Sea team captain was able to fight Alice with the body of a true god. No wonder, despite becoming a true god, she was completely inept at manipulating time-based combat and merely created physical phenomena. No wonder, despite not having broken through her mental barrier in the Moon World, she was able to wield such power at the final moment of the battle.

Everything has a reason. There's no reason why Alice, as the arbitrator, would go through so much hardship, gain so many opportunities, and undergo so many trials. Instead, when she advanced, a whole bunch of other nobodies leveled up at the same time. While the opportunities that the main god can provide are as numerous as the stars, the resources required to overcome the key steps are far more precious than the gathering of stars.

The captain of the West Sea team couldn't obtain as many resources and opportunities. The reason she was able to appear in Alice's sight at this moment in this manner was simply because someone was looking after her, forcibly elevating her status.

Alice sighed softly.

“Why bother? You’re clearly not involved.” She sighed at the familiar face who had appeared. “This war has nothing to do with you. You could have easily stayed in your safe zone and welcomed the next era. You don’t need to take risks, you don’t need to get involved, so why put yourself in such danger?”

"Because I have ideals, and I want to fulfill them." Her interlocutor revealed her appearance, displaying the image of a beautiful young goddess. A massive stone tablet floated quietly behind her, acting on her authority and suppressing this battlefield that would have collapsed directly due to the lack of basic elements.

she says--

“A cataclysmic change is imminent. And I, my beliefs compel me… to achieve something.” She uttered that name. “Therefore, I must exist here… Mangotrund, the god.”