Chapter 100: Two Options
Here it is, the 100th chapter. I want to thank you guys so much for sticking with this poor excuse of an author. You don't know how much it means to me. There were times where I thought of dropping (mainly when that sh*t of getting reported for supposedly pornographic content happened), but it was you guys that motivated me to keep going. Thank you, just thank you. I hope to continue bringing more chapters and improving in a lot of things, be it grammar, consistency, or just overall way to tell my story. With its ups and downs, I am glad I started writing because I could meet so many awesome people! By the way, I am happy you people enjoyed the last chapter as much as I did writing it. Blackbeard is someone I like writing as he gives much more freedom than other characters when it comes to displaying his personality.
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"Master, I think you are only making your grave deeper." The blond-haired girl stated, although there was not a single shred of worry in her voice.
"That's cruel, Miss Anne! Your love meter is hard to rise, but I won't give up! Now, I choose you! Help me get the old hag's Holy Grail. Eric Bloodaxe went and died before I could get him back. LOL!" He pouted at her, making said woman take some steps back out of sheer repulsiveness.
EMIYA couldn't stand this guy anymore, so he hurriedly materialized a bunch of arrows and shoot them at him in quick succession.
As much as Anne wanted to let that cockroach die, she couldn't do so, at least for now. Equally as quick as Archer shot his arrows, the blond-haired woman fired her gun and intercepted each one with her bullets.
"I knew it! You are just a tsundere! Duhuhuhu." Now she was genuinely regretting having stopped those arrows.
"Fire. Fire everything we have and sink that ship immediately!" After coming to herself from her shocked state caused by Blackbeard's words, Drake wasted no time and ordered her crew to assault his ship with a tone that didn't allow a no for an answer.
Her subordinates were a little taken aback by her expression, but promptly went to load the cannons. When it came to battle, a Captain's words were law, and there was no room to disobey.
Something strange happened when they fired, though. As if the cladding of the ship was cotton, the cannonballs bounced, leaving behind practically zero damage.
"Nice try, but My Queen Anne's Revenge is not going down that easily! What are you going to do about it? Cry? Unless you are a kid, my immunity to those things is level MAX!" Blackbeard mockingly laughed at the pink-haired woman. He seemed to be her natural enemy.
"Gh...!" Drake clenched her teeth. This man sure knew how to get on her nerves. To add salt to the injury, Blackbeard's crew threw ropes to board her ship.
"Sanson, go after the white-haired kid!" They would get nowhere with Drake's huffing, so Seth commanded his Servant to begin the counterattack.
Zhuge Liang didn't specialize in close combat, and Altera wouldn't get on the same ship as Blackbeard no matter what —Not that he couldn't understand her— leaving the Executioner as the only option.
As for him, his job would be to take care of a sneaky little rat. "Why don't you come to say hello at my face instead of trying to sneak-attack me, Hector?"
Seth used his spear to parry a thrust coming from the Great Hero behind his back. "Oh? Did you know who I am? This old man is happy." Despite his actions, he carried with him a friendly expression, coupled with a tone of the same characteristic.
"Don't play that game with me. It won't work." Seth pushes Hector's weapon back and then kicked him in the gut to create some distance between the two.
"Aren't you being too rough? I just want to take it easy. Leaving that aside, wouldn't you be so kind as to give me that little girl over there? I need her for something important, you see." He scratched his head with a troubled expression before pointing at Euryale. Even after Seth told him that his facade did not affect him, Hector continued using it. Old habits died hard.
"That's a problem. I don't feel like doing that. You would understand the feeling of not giving a woman to the enemy, right?" The Egyptian God decided to humor the Defender of Troy a little bit. Two people could play the same game, after all.
"Hohoho. You sure hit this old man where it hurts." Once he finished speaking, he dashed in Seth's direction without a prior warning.
Seth also did the same and intercepted him. Hector's face had lost all traces of friendliness and was now in serious mode. "Then, I will have to take either of them by force." He was unmistakably referring to Stheno. No matter which one of them he took, it would work in his favor. If they weren't enemies, he would have thanked him for bringing a "replacement" to this Singularity.
"I want to see you try." The Lord of the Desert also was done playing their short game. Hector's motives were unknown to him, but that didn't change the fact he was mistaken if he thought that Seth would allow him to touch even a single hair of theirs.
As they wanted to avoid interruptions while they fought, the two spearmen jumped atop the yard on the mast. Without delay, Hector and Seth began to exchange blow after blow. Neither wanted to let the other get the advantage.
Meanwhile, Drake, Mash, Asterios, Zhuge Liang, and Altera were killing the infinite pirates that Blackbeard was sending. They looked like the Hydra, for each head you cut, two more appeared. It took some time for them to realize this, though.
Euryale was helping Sanson by shooting the pirates that got close to him and keeping the fight one versus one. It wasn't much of a problem for Assassin to kill those mobs, but a momentary distraction in doing so could prove fatal, especially in a battle between Servants.
Stheno, who was the one with zero combat power, had been using her Noble Phantasm none stop, converting their enemies into allies. It got to a point where her face muscles started hurting. Euryale at least had the advantage of doing it just by hitting a target with her arrow.
It didn't help the fact that these men were in the same direction as that creep. Just imagining herself smiling at him was enough to give her chills enough to freeze the sun itself.
"Euryale-chan #2 is in love with me♪ She is smiling at me♪Oh yeah! Blackbeard gang rise up!" As always, Teach was in his fantasy world.
Safe to say, his words made Stheno falter. "Don't let him get into your head! Your Master is supplying enough Magical Energy to use your Noble Phantasm continuously, don't make that go to waste!" Even though he said that to her, Zhuge Liang still wanted to strangle Blackbeard for his comment earlier.
"Why don't you try smiling at that thing, you dead fish eyes?!" The Eldest Sister, for the first time, lost her composure and shouted at Caster.
"Now is not the time to fight between ourselves! Concentrate on sending these scallywags straight to Davy Jones' Locker!" Drake made sure to remind them to focus on the objective instead of infighting.
"What do we do? We can't use large scale attacks, or we risk destroying our ship as well!" Not that Mash had anything like that in her hands, but many of the others did. Altera, EMIYA, and Kuro, to name a few. Sadly, two of them were dealing with a Servant and the other, even though she was "free," couldn't use her full power, lest she wanted to blow everything up, as mentioned earlier.
"Grr...Kill..." Asterios was grabbing pirates and throwing them at Blackbeard in the distance. The said man was just dodging them while comically moving.
That, for sure, was not the answer Mash expected. Luckily for her, Romani came to the rescue, although not entirely. "Blackbeard never possessed a legend where he commanded an army of uncountable pirates! It must be the work of the Holy Grail without a doubt. I am talking about the fake one!"
"He does?! But how can we retrieve it? Every woman would rather suicide than getting close to him, and the men are all busy fighting!" Not mentioning the ones who were fighting Servants, there was Asterios left, who wouldn't leave Euryale's side no matter what, and Zhuge Liang was firing multiple energy beams as fast as possible against the neverending wave of enemies.
"Hey! I can still hear you! Please continue. Wait, that's not right. Please be harsher! Nuhuhuhu!" Seeing a...creature so horrendous blushing was not pleasant at all. What's more, it gave you nightmares.
"Ju-Just hold on a bit more! I am sure the others can attack Blackbeard the moment they finish battling their opponents!" Dr. Roman didn't know what to say in this situation other than to wait. Despite being a man, Teach's way of acting still affected him.
What he wanted might take a while, though. EMIYA and Anne were evenly matched. They couldn't shoot the opposite ship as the other would prevent it with their projectiles. The scale was more in Archer's favor as his movements were agile, and he could move from place to place and aim from all kinds of positions. While there was no doubt about Anne's ability with her rifle, being a Rider kind of restricted her.
The opposite was happening with her partner. Mary had the advantage as she knew how to use her weapon to fight more than Sanson did. He was someone who brought dead through execution, not a swordsman. She was different. As a pirate, she fought for her life numerous times. Your ability with a weapon was the deciding factor between who lives and who dies in those situations.
With Seth and Hector, no one of the two could fight to their full potential, but the Egyptian God had the overall advantage. There had been many circumstances where he couldn't go all out, so he knew how to better fight in those conditions. The Trojan Hero couldn't say the same. Defensive battles and ones where he was at a disadvantage were his specialties. That only applied in the case where he could make use of every tactic possible and not hold back in the slightest, which was not what was happening.
"Say, were you the one who sent that thunderbolt before? That was scary~ I don't want to fight you if it is possible." Hector, returning to his easygoing attitude, spoke to Seth.
"You talk as if you were not the one who stopped it." He responded, totally ignoring the last part. The exchange of blows continued per usual, going from fast and weak to slow and intense.
"Ahahaha...I suppose I did something like that. I wish you could have taken it easy, though. I am too old for that kind of stuff." Hector laughed it off. To catch your enemy by surprise, you would have to act like you were nothing, even when they already knew of your true self.
"Oh, is that so? You seem quite energetic to me. I fear the moment I let my guard down; you would strike me with your spear. My defenses are not the best, after all." Seth said as he used the butt of his spear to hit Hector in the chest, a blow that was blocked by him. The Egyptian God was not stupid. He was aware of the other form of that spear, or better said the original one.
The Trojan Hero might be using it as a spear for now, but he could also use the sword form. If he let him get into a dangerously close range, Hector could switch to it and wound him in a surprise move. That's why he was trying to keep the fight at a semi-melee range.
"Appearances can be deceiving. Isn't the same with you? It's not like you are as normal as you make it out to be." Saying this, he went for a slash at Seth's chest. However, this turned to be a feint as when the black-haired man deflected his spear. Hector used the momentum to leap backward.
"This old man says thank you!" Making full use of his Disengage Skill, the Trojan Hero gained enough distance to make his move. 'All right...time to get serious.'
Doing a backflip, the brown-haired man aimed his spear at where the others were, particularly at Fujimaru and Drake, who were the only humans there aside from her crew.
'Tch. You sly bastard.' There were only two options. He could go down and stop the spear throw, which would most likely result in him getting impaled, or chase Hector and get that blow head-on. He didn't doubt the latter was what the man wanted, especially considering that he could change his spear to a sword and deal more damage to a single person that way.
That guy certainly didn't hold on for years against Greece being dumb.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone