Fate: How About a New Savior?

Even though he was inside the carriage, Shiomi felt like he had entered an entirely different world.

The chaos of the battlefield and the jostling of the chariot had vanished completely.

It was a small-scale Reality Marble.

Only a lingering, seductive fragrance filled the plush interior. Medb had him pinned beneath her. The pink-haired queen, wearing a look of amused appraisal, stroked Shiomi's cheek.

"Oh my, your face is covered in blood—but it doesn't look like yours." Medb extended her slender tongue, aiming to lick his cheek, but Shiomi turned his face away.

He couldn't move. His hands were bound tightly by her whip.

But Medb wasn't the least bit irritated. On the contrary, her expression grew even more delighted. She used the whip's handle to lift his chin with force.

"Not bad. You're wild and untamed. Conquering a man like you—that's what I find most exciting."

"I thought you said you only had eyes for the Mad King?" Shiomi scoffed.

"Of course I only love my little Cu," Medb purred near his ear, "but that doesn't mean I can't conquer other men~"

"Fionn and Diarmuid are both dead now, thanks to you. I've nearly run out of Servants worth offering you. But if—"

Her hands roamed over Shiomi's body, caressing him with deliberate, seductive motions, trying to erode his will bit by bit.

But his gaze never wavered. Like forged iron, completely unshaken. And that infuriated her even more—especially since she'd just seen him flustered and thrown off by a single kiss from Scáthach.

Irritation flared in Medb's heart once more. She gripped his face tightly.

"Tell me, what's so great about that Scáthach? Or do you just have a thing for older women?"

Shiomi narrowed his eyes with a mocking grin. "If you have to ask something like that, Queen Medb isn't all she's cracked up to be. You claim to command countless warriors, but in the end, it's all just lust."

"What?" Medb's eyes twitched in irritation.

"You snap your fingers and men throw themselves at your feet, kiss your toes—but you don't understand what it means to truly love someone. No... I doubt you've ever loved anyone. Not even once. Even when you got brained by a wheel of cheese, I bet there wasn't a single soul you could say you truly loved."

Shiomi chuckled to himself as he said it.

His laughter was like a razor, slicing straight into Medb's heart and dragging out a resentment she could never bury.

Suddenly, she wrapped her hands around his neck.

"Don't look down on me, Master of Chaldea. I have loved a man. A man who wouldn't look at me, no matter what I did!"

A man who scoffed at the wealth she promised.

A man who caught her, then released her without laying a hand on her.

She could never forgive him. She tried everything to break him, to make him kneel. But that man, even in death, never yielded to her.

And that's why she fell for him.

The man who wouldn't obey her. The man who looked at her with contempt.

The man who stood alone to defend a nation—not to boast, but to smile and quietly bring his story to an end.

"In the end, you're no different from a brat throwing a tantrum—wanting something only because you could never have it. Even after death, even as a Servant, you didn't change. You wished on the King of Magecraft's Holy Grail just to create the Mad King, turning him into the enemy of all humanity..." The contempt in Shiomi's eyes deepened. "You don't love anyone. You only love yourself."

He tore down the one feeling Medb had believed in most—without a hint of mercy.

"Shut up! Don't think I don't know about you!" Medb snapped. "A two-timing bastard like you has no right to talk down to me. In the end, you and I—we're just the same!"

Smack.

She slapped him across the face, but Shiomi's expression didn't budge.

"That's exactly why I said you don't understand a thing. Not when you were alive, and not now as a Heroic Spirit. You've never known even a shred of real human emotion." Shiomi scoffed, completely unfazed.

Medb found herself suddenly disgusted by the man beneath her. That sharp tongue of his—it wouldn't taste sweet no matter how she bit it.

Kill him?

But he healed even faster than Little Cu with the Holy Grail. Could she even manage it?

No... she'd have to do what she did best—subdue him the way she knew how.

"Hmph. Every man says the time they spend with me is the happiest of their lives." Medb bared her pearly teeth, her smile alluring. "Let me give you a taste."

"No thanks," Shiomi replied, yawning.

"This is my domain," Medb hissed. "I control the flow of time in here. Even Scáthach won't make it in time to save you, so don't even—"

"A Reality Marble is just the manifestation of your inner world. If that world wavers—if even a sliver of doubt seeps in—your Noble Phantasm collapses from the inside."

Shiomi's hand shot up and gripped her throat.

Only then did Medb realize—the sounds of the battlefield, which should have been completely shut out—were echoing faintly in her ears.

No wonder his hands were free.

"It is a tricky Reality Marble," Shiomi said coolly. "But your curiosity was your downfall. You gave me the chance I needed. Hand over the Holy Grail. Do that, and I'll let you vanish peacefully with the Singularity."

"That thing... isn't in my hands anymore," Medb gritted out between clenched teeth.

The tables had turned. From an outsider's perspective, the queen who had straddled him now looked like a helpless woman pinned down by a villain's grip.

"I see," Shiomi said, cutting the conversation short. "It's stifling in here. Cool off a little... Queen Medb."

A roaring gale surged through the cramped carriage. With her throat clutched and consciousness slipping, Medb's grip on her domain weakened further.

Moments later, the seemingly indestructible chariot exploded from within. The two bulls were hurled away, trampling Celtic warriors in the process, bones snapping under the force.

Scáthach, in the middle of a battle and preparing to attack the chariot with Magecraft from outside, froze as she saw her beloved disciple burst out from Medb's domain—a place no man was supposed to escape from.

Countless blades of wind tore into Medb's body, shredding her apart. Her voice was drowned out by the howling storm.

With her Spirit Core ruptured, Medb collapsed against a rock on the edge of the battlefield, blood pouring freely from her wounds. She weakly lifted her head, watching as Shiomi calmly walked through the Celtic warriors, untouched, making his way straight toward her.

"Yo—"

A low voice rang out. Shiomi's spear suddenly pivoted mid-step, colliding with another crimson spear that had come from the side.

"Little Cu... You've recovered…" Medb tilted her head back, voice faint. "Looks like... I made it just in time... stalling them myself..."

"You made it, huh?" Shiomi raised an eyebrow.

"Then let me show you... the legend of my 'Twenty-Eight Warriors.'"