Emiya Shirou Doesn't Want to Work Overtime [249]

Boom—!

Shirou Emiya ran like a phantom through the empty streets.

He had already realized—this was no longer Misaki City.

Misaki wasn’t a large city to begin with. When he and Shana had searched for Friagne, they had nearly scoured it end to end.
Most places remained vivid in his memory. He wasn’t the sort to forget a landscape after so short a time.

Whoosh—! Whoosh—!

While he raced forward like a gusting wind, his hands didn’t stop moving.

He notched two sword-arrows as he ran, drawing and releasing them mid-sprint—one aimed at Friagne’s heart, the other at his skull as the Crimson Lord fell from the sky.

The arrows left his hands like twin streaks of silver light, piercing the air with pinpoint precision toward their target.

Shirou’s archery talent was exceptional to begin with, and with Chiron’s instruction, he’d grown beyond human limits.
He had never before tried shooting a moving target while himself in high-speed motion—but it was not beyond him.

And then, suddenly—something abnormal stirred.

Whoom—whoom—!

A murky violet blaze rose before Friagne without warning. In a blink, it swallowed both of Shirou’s projected sword-arrows.

A tall man in a black suit and dark sunglasses appeared beside the falling Friagne, without a sound or flicker of presence.
A swirl of purple fire bloomed beneath them midair.
A circular barrier formed at that instant, surrounding Friagne to block the flames’ spread.

But the man didn’t so much as glance at the wounded Friagne beside him. He only cast a meaningful look toward the approaching Shirou Emiya.

“Finishing something that shouldn’t be my business… Friagne, don’t forget to pay up.”

His voice carried a note of tired amusement.

“I know. I’ll pay the Power of Existence,” Friagne coughed out, “but—first, I have to heal.”

That explosion had nearly taken his life.
Fortunately, Friagne had long stockpiled a vast amount of Power of Existence for his own ambitions.
When he sensed that the sword-arrow was wrong, he had instantly wrapped himself in white cloth with an Unrestricted Spell, repairing himself and the cloth even as the explosion struck.

Without that, he couldn’t possibly have survived such a blast.

Snap—!

As Shirou rushed forward, a strange, unnatural sound echoed beside him.

“!”

The air across the entire street froze.
Shirou’s heart—tempered through countless battles between life and death—began hammering violently in his chest.

A suffocating wave of danger swept through him.

It was an instinctive, primal awareness—one that screamed his life was in mortal peril.

“[TRACE—ON]!!”

There was no hesitation. In the face of death, Shirou poured all his circuits open.

BOOM—!

A thunderous detonation split the air as the street beneath his feet exploded apart.

Dark-red flames, wild and roaring, tore through the stone and shattered earth.
Within them whirled countless blades—razor-edged, shrieking, shredding air and matter alike.
It was as if the ground itself had erupted in fury—everything beneath Shirou was pulverized into dust.

Like a tidal wave of hellfire, the crimson blaze surged upward.

In the instant Shirou sensed it, the entire district beneath him disintegrated.
A storm of heat smashed against him like a living grinder.

Threads of light spun before him, his shortsword rapidly transforming into armor that wrapped his body.
A pair of bestial wings unfurled from his back.

Through the immense shockwave, Shirou forced Incursio to open its wings and launched himself skyward.

One by one, buildings below crumbled into powder under the roar of flame.
The dark-red fire, laced with blades like a spinning mill of destruction, devoured everything in an instant.
Nothing remained but drifting ash and endless gray dust.

In the span of a heartbeat, the world below became ruin.

Crimson Denizens cared nothing for the distortions their battles brought upon the human world.
They didn’t hesitate to turn city streets into battlefields—never considering the damage, never sparing the helpless.

As long as the Fūzetsu remained, no Flame Haze outside could sense the chaos inside.

Because Fūzetsu didn’t just create a battlefield—it cut off all cause and effect.
Whatever was destroyed here could later be “mended” by Power of Existence, patching over reality’s distortion.

But that was the duty of the Flame Hazes.
Crimson Denizens couldn’t care less.

That merciless power had now turned the entire city block into a vision of hell.
Dark-red flames raged across the earth, sword-like winds slashed through everything without pause, annihilating utterly.

Only ruin remained—a wasteland burned into a sea of fire.

High above, Shirou Emiya stared down at the devastation beneath him.
His expression shifted—something deep within him stirred.

“I’ve seen… hell again.”

His steady eyes began to tremble.
The hand gripping his bow tightened until veins stood out along his wrist.

This landscape—this sea of flame—was too familiar.
It dragged him back to that memory carved into his brain, etched into his very soul.

Was it like this back then too—this same despair?

In what kind of despair did Kiritsugu find me?

And how… did I end up carrying the lives of all those who could not be saved?

“Unforgivable.”

“Unforgivable!”

“UNFORGIVABLE!!”

Shirou could only stare at the disaster below, shouting in fury.
Within such destruction, no living thing could survive.

And within a Fūzetsu, humans had no means to resist—no power to flee.
They could only be swallowed without knowing, without hope.
They would die, forgotten by all.

Shirou struck his own chest in anguish.
He couldn’t do anything. Not even what Kiritsugu had done—charging into the inferno to search for the faintest trace of hope.

Because right now, there was something he had to do—something more important.
He couldn’t let these lives end for nothing.

He would bear them—carry their deaths upon his back.

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This is a fan translation of 卫宫士郎不想加班 by 此世无存. All rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!