105: Chapter 105 Mash Kyrielight has been confirmed to have left the stage.
In the scene, the blinding white light gradually dispersed.
The heavy, oppressive roar ceased.
The entire world suddenly fell silent, leaving only the mournful wailing of the wind.
PD trembled as he checked his own status.
He discovered that he was still standing where he was, completely unharmed, without even a single corner of his clothes being scorched.
At the very front of the position, that massive cross shield still stood like an insurmountable mountain, firmly embedded in the scorched, vitrified earth.
It had not shattered, nor had it collapsed.
It had perfectly fulfilled its vow.
But...
Behind the shield, the pink-haired girl who had held the handle with both hands and always called him 'Senpai' with a smile... was gone.
"Mash...?"
PD called out blankly.
However, there was no response.
On the screen, around that cold, massive shield, a flurry of crystalline, snowflake-like powder drifted up.
It wasn't snowing.
Those were the ashes left behind after being completely evaporated and carbonized under several hundred million degrees of heat, without even a moment to let out a scream.
Her heart did not yield, so the shield would not fall.
But her body had been burned away by the heat capable of piercing through the planet.
[Mash Kyrielight, retirement confirmed.]
Looking at this emotionless system prompt.
Looking at the Servant portrait at the bottom of his retina, which always occupied the first position in the formation, had accompanied him through countless days and nights, and had blocked countless fatal attacks for him...
At this moment, it had completely turned into a gray, unselectable state.
The entire Blue Star gaming circle fell into a deathly silence at this moment.
There was no usual barrage of comments, no clamor of cursing the developers, and no voices discussing tactics.
An emotion called 'heartbreak' turned into a physical blade, stabbing fiercely into every player's chest, crazily strangling their fragile nerves.
"This has to be a lie..."
A-Dai sat in front of the live camera, her hands still in a grasping posture in mid-air, her eyes filled with blankness and confusion.
"Mash...? Stop joking, this must be another one of Old Thief Gu's pranks, right? It's definitely a forced retirement, she'll be resurrected in a while..."
She hurriedly reached out her trembling hand, frantically clicking on the grayed-out portrait belonging to Mash on the holographic control panel.
However, every click was accompanied by the heartless 'beep beep' of rejection.
A-Dai's breathing began to quicken, and tears fell like broken strings of pearls, large drops hitting her haptic suit.
"Why... she only just learned what color the sky outside is..." A-Dai covered her mouth tightly with both hands, suppressing the heart-wrenching sobs in her throat, but the tears simply wouldn't stop, and she didn't even care that her delicate makeup was ruined.
She remembered the short-lived girl who reached out to her in the ruins of the burning Fuyuki City; she remembered the resolute back that didn't flinch even when facing the Lion King's judgment under the walls of Camelot.
"She's just an ordinary girl! She just wanted to live one more day, to see this beautiful world... Old Thief Gu! How can you be so cruel?! How dare you take her away from us!!!"
A-Dai completely broke down, wailing as she slumped over the holographic console, her shrill cries echoing in the live stream room.
But not a single comment appeared to mock her loss of composure, because all the viewers in front of the screens were already weeping uncontrollably.
It wasn't just A-Dai.
Chu He took off his glasses, rubbing his red eyes with trembling hands, unable to say a word for a long time, as if a piece of glowing charcoal was stuck in his throat.
PD stared fixedly at that lonely massive shield, as if an invisible hand was strangling his throat, making it difficult to breathe, tears stubbornly swirling in his eyes.
They were [Players]!
They had just crushed thirty million Demon God Pillars outside!
They were omnipotent in this game; as long as they had materials and stats, they could even kill a god for you to see!
But now, they had a team of max-spec Servants and mountains of rare materials in their warehouse for nothing, only able to watch helplessly as that fragile girl was burned into ashes by several hundred million degrees of heat just to protect them!
This blunt knife cut into their hearts, leaving them bloody.
"Give Mash... back to me!!!"
Accompanied by PD's heart-wrenching roar as he slammed his fist against the VR pod wall, the entire FGO forum completely exploded.
Countless red-eyed players frantically pressed their holographic tactical panels, attempting to use [Command Spells] or consume precious saint quartz to issue a resurrection command, wanting to relight the grayed-out portrait at the bottom of the battle interface.
It was useless.
The system only gave a cold prompt: [Target spirit origin has dissipated].
However, the Demon God King Goetia in the game paid no attention to the players' pain.
"What a boring sacrifice."
Goetia looked down at the shield that had lost its owner below the throne, his terrifying, alien face full of incomprehension and disdain.
"Even if you blocked one shot with your life, so what? Without the protection of that shield, with only you fragile insects left, what will you use to block the next strike?"
Following his cold declaration, that terrifying band of light encircling the Earth brightened violently once more!
An even greater heat, enough to incinerate all things, began to gather above the throne!
The second shot of [The Time of Birth has Come, He is the One who Points to the Beginning (Ars Almadel Salomonis)] was about to fall!
Despair.
A deeper, colder despair than before enveloped all the players.
Without Mash's protection, the Servants they were so proud of wouldn't last even a second. All resistance became futile, and all anger had nowhere to be vented.
Could it be that the end of human history would really end miserably at this moment, following the sacrifice of that girl?
Just as the players across the server, with red eyes and gritted teeth, prepared to use their own bodies to tank this light cannon...
Inside the previously deathly silent Temple of Time, a faint sound of footsteps suddenly echoed.
"Tap... tap... tap..."
The footsteps were slow, without any fluctuation of magical energy, yet exceptionally steady and firm.
Step by step, from the depths of the darkness, they approached the throne filled with despair and high temperatures.
"Honestly, I was thinking I could find an excuse to slip away..."
A slightly helpless male voice, which usually sounded a bit weak but was now incredibly gentle, rang out abruptly in this deathly silent temple belonging to the Demon God.
All the players jerked their heads up.
They saw a man wearing a crumpled white lab coat, who usually seemed timid and would scream in the communicator at the slightest danger, had at some point passed the Master and stood in front of that lonely cross shield.
It was the head of Chaldea's medical department, the 'coward' who loved strawberry cake and was often teased by everyone.
Dr. Roman.