Chapter 251
Before Karna could say anything else, Kiriya had already begun what could only be called an incantation.
"Now... this is the moment when youth burns at its absolute brightest."
His hands clenched at his sides, and his voice suddenly rose into a roar.
"Eighth Gate, the Gate of Death—open!"
The instant those words left his mouth, the power erupting from Kiriya’s body changed completely.
Compared with the Seventh Gate, the difference was so vast that it hardly seemed like an extension of the same technique.
A violent shock wave detonated outward with the force of a catastrophic typhoon, ripping debris from the ground and hurling it through the air, while even Karna had to brace himself with all his strength just to keep from being blown away.
"This pressure..."
For the first time since their battle began, genuine shock broke through Karna’s normally unshakable composure.
"It is more than ten times greater than before."
As the son of Surya, Karna had witnessed countless extraordinary sights during his lifetime.
He had stood against divine beasts, encountered gods and demigods, and crossed weapons with heroes whose names would be sung for millennia, yet none of them had ever produced the same disorienting impression as the human standing before him now.
The crimson aura engulfing Kiriya’s body no longer resembled ordinary chakra.
It looked like a world-ending flame born from the burning flesh, blood, and souls of countless living beings, and even Karna could feel an instinctive chill running through him as he stared at it.
"I’m coming."
Kiriya had been standing on the ground when he spoke.
By the time Karna registered the words, he was already above him.
’Fast!’
Karna instinctively moved to thrust his spear upward, but Kiriya’s speed had surpassed even his ability to complete the motion, forcing him to abandon the counterattack and raise the weapon defensively instead.
"Evening Elephant—First Step!"
Kiriya punched.
The blow never actually touched Karna.
The sheer pressure generated by the fist compressed the air into an enormous cannon blast and drove it downward with force comparable to a mountain falling from the heavens.
BOOOOM!
"Guh—!"
Even with Kavacha and Kundala reducing the incoming damage, Karna could not endure the attack unscathed.
The impact crushed straight through his defenses and inflicted devastating injuries in a single strike, launching his body downward like a meteor.
He tore through one level of the Hanging Gardens after another, smashing through dozens of floors before finally crashing into the lowest section of the fortress.
The pressure of the attack had distorted his body so badly that, under ordinary circumstances, anyone looking at him would have assumed the battle was already over.
"So powerful..."
Karna lay amid the shattered stone and slowly drew breath, his estimation of Kiriya rising yet again.
"To burn away one’s own life in exchange for such strength..."
His voice remained strangely calm despite the condition of his body.
"The pain that boy is enduring right now must be beyond imagination."
A faint smile touched his lips.
"If I am to die to a technique such as this, I can hardly complain."
Karna closed his eyes.
Above him, Kiriya descended through the ruined layers of the fortress, already preparing the second blow.
Then, at the exact moment the attack was about to fall, a voice echoed directly into Karna’s mind.
"By my first Command Spell, I order you—Karna, recover from all injuries."
A surge of overwhelming magical energy flooded through Karna’s body.
Bones restored themselves, torn flesh knitted together, and the damage inflicted by the first Evening Elephant vanished with astonishing speed.
The second command followed immediately.
"By my second Command Spell, I order you—Karna, raise your defenses to their absolute maximum."
"Evening Elephant—Second Step!"
Kiriya’s fist came down.
BOOOOM!
Golden light erupted from Kavacha and Kundala, brighter than ever before, and the reinforced armor endured the second blast.
Kiriya’s eyes widened slightly as the collision shook the lower levels of the Hanging Gardens apart.
"What?"
Then he saw Karna standing again, his injuries almost completely gone, and immediately understood.
"So he used Command Spells."
A grin returned to Kiriya’s face.
"Amakusa Shirou Tokisada reacts pretty damn fast."
That was exactly what had happened.
Amakusa had been monitoring the battle continuously, and the moment Kiriya opened the Eighth Gate, his Revelation began warning him with such intensity that he did not hesitate to intervene.
This Holy Grail War had already deviated heavily from the version Kiriya remembered.
Because of Kiriya’s existence and the threat he represented, Amakusa had stripped the other Red Masters of their Command Spells much earlier than he originally would have.
He now possessed eighteen of them.
Enough that spending a few to keep Karna alive was hardly a concern.
Kiriya’s smile sharpened.
"But the real question is... how many times can you reinforce him?"
He vanished again.
Over the next two seconds, three more Evening Elephant strikes erupted in relentless succession.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOOOM!
Each blow drove Karna deeper into the ruins and tore apart enormous sections of the Hanging Gardens around them.
Walls split, floors collapsed, and entire blocks of the floating fortress disintegrated under the repeated pressure.
From the First Step through the Fifth, the power of Evening Elephant increased with every successive strike, each attack building upon the momentum of the last.
Even Karna’s divine armor, strengthened by a Command Spell and capable of reducing hostile interference to a fraction of its original effect, was beginning to fail beneath that accumulation of force.
With no other choice, Amakusa burned through five more Command Spells in rapid succession, using them to reinforce Karna again and again just enough to keep him from being crushed completely.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
At the same time, Kiriya’s own body was reaching its limit.
Dense fractures spread through the bones of his arms and legs, the sounds coming one after another from inside his body.
Under normal circumstances, the agony alone would have been enough to tear a scream from him.
But Mirror Calm prevented that.
The Skill allowed Kiriya to preserve absolute rationality even while his body endured pain severe enough to shatter ordinary consciousness.
His mind remained clear, but no amount of mental discipline could stop his physical functions from fluctuating under the damage, and for the first time since opening the Gate of Death, a tiny opening appeared in his assault.
Amakusa seized it immediately.
"By my sixth Command Spell—Karna, release your strongest Noble Phantasm and kill the enemy before you."
For the first time, genuine fear had entered Amakusa Shirou Tokisada’s calculations.
Kiriya, after opening the Gate of Death, had become so overwhelmingly powerful that he seemed less like a human being and more like a god descending onto the battlefield.
If Karna was to defeat him at all, there was only one attack left with sufficient power.
The legendary spear capable of killing even gods.
Bzzzzzz—
Crimson light erupted around Karna’s entire body.
"Good."
Karna slowly stood.
"Since you have already wagered your life upon this battle, I cannot respond with anything less."
Divine light burned in his eyes, and his voice became solemn in a way it had not been even once before.
"You are the strongest opponent I have encountered in this second life of mine."
He raised his spear.
"So I will answer your resolve with the highest respect I can offer."
Karna had decided to unleash the single strike that could defeat even the gods.
In the Mahabharata, Karna had once been destined to fight Arjuna, the son of Indra.
Because Karna possessed the divine armor fused with his own flesh, Indra feared that his son would be unable to defeat him.
So the thunder god resorted to deception.
Disguising himself as a Brahmin, Indra approached Karna and begged him for his armor.
Karna saw through the trick immediately.
And yet he still cut the armor from his own body and gave it away without hesitation.
That act of supreme generosity became one of the defining moments of his legend and earned him his immortal title as the Hero of Charity.
Indra himself was so shaken by Karna’s nobility that, in return, he bestowed upon him a weapon formed from a portion of the thunder god’s own power—a force even Indra could not fully command.
A spear capable of annihilating any single existence.
Even a god.
And now Karna was preparing to reveal its true form.
The golden armor covering his body began to crack.
Piece by piece, Kavacha and Kundala separated from his flesh and broke apart, each fragment transforming into blazing fire before flowing toward the divine spear in his hands.
It was as though some ancient seal had finally been removed.
An immense divine presence erupted outward.
A pillar of flaming radiance shot into the sky, instantly shredding the storm clouds overhead until nothing remained.
From a distance, it seemed as though a second sun had suddenly appeared upon the earth, and the infinite heat radiating from Karna transformed the surrounding landscape into a sea of molten stone, waves of magma surging violently across the ruined surface of the Hanging Gardens.
This was Karna’s ultimate Noble Phantasm.
An EX-rank weapon.
And merely beginning to release it was enough to produce a spectacle that looked capable of destroying heaven and earth.
"So that’s the legendary Anti-Divine Noble Phantasm."
Kiriya planted his feet firmly against the shaking ground and stared into the overwhelming light.
Then he laughed.
Not nervously.
Not recklessly.
But with genuine exhilaration!
"Now that is ridiculous."
His grin widened.
"And that’s exactly how it should be."
"An opponent like this is the only thing worthy of the Eight Gates Released Formation."
While Karna had been preparing his Noble Phantasm, Kiriya had not remained idle.
He began drawing every fragment of strength remaining in his body toward a single point, attempting to prepare the most powerful attack he had ever used.
That alone was extraordinarily difficult.
The power unleashed by opening all Eight Gates was not gentle energy that could simply be guided wherever he wished.
It was violent beyond reason, constantly tearing through his body like a flood that had broken through every restraint at once.
Only one or two seconds had passed in reality, yet to Kiriya the suffering felt like three days and three nights of uninterrupted torture.
Every nerve in his body seemed to be burning.
Every muscle was tearing itself apart.
Every bone felt as though it were being crushed and rebuilt only to break again.
Under normal circumstances, the endless tidal wave of pain battering his nervous system would already have caused him to lose consciousness.
But Mirror Calm remained active.
No matter how unbearable the physical agony became, Kiriya’s mind stayed perfectly rational.
And because his thoughts remained clear, he was still able to perform an attack requiring extreme precision.
[Afterglow.]
This time, however, it would be pushed far beyond anything he had used before.
Clang... clang... clang...
Power gathered into the sword.
More.
And more.
Until the weapon itself began trembling violently in Kiriya’s hands, the blade ringing continuously under a concentration of force it had never been meant to contain.
Rather than allowing that strength to explode outward, Kiriya compressed it further, forcing the wildly surging energy of the Eighth Gate into an ever-narrower edge.
Every fraction of strength remaining in his body was being refined into a single strike.