Shinji Matou at Your Service-Chapter 967: Knowledge is Power

Arcueid is incredibly powerful — this is common knowledge across most of the Dead Apostle circles. But just how powerful she is, only those who have witnessed it firsthand can truly understand. One such person is Blood.

Back in the day, around the 8th century AD, Dead Apostles were rampant, and humanity faced an era of extreme unrest. To combat this, the True Ancestors who still retained their sanity initiated a campaign against the Dead Apostles. One of the primary targets of this campaign was none other than one of the most powerful entities in the Dead Apostle world, the Black-Blooded Princess of the Eclipse, the Ancient Red, Altrouge.

To ensure the success of the campaign, the True Ancestors deployed a massive force. They first restrained Strout, Blood, and Gaia's beast, the Primate Murder, Fou. Then, they dispatched their strongest True Ancestor, the executioner Arcueid, to strike while Altrouge was isolated.

The result of the battle? Arcueid's waist-length hair was cut short, while Altrouge was gravely injured and fled in disgrace, along with her loyal knights and pets who fought desperately to protect her. To heal her wounds, she went into hiding for a long time. She adopted a loli form because it conserved energy, and she eventually made a contract with Zepia, creating the Night of Wallachia to aid in gathering the blood she needed to recover, as she could not move freely herself.

That blood-soaked night remained vivid in Blood's memory. The overwhelming power displayed by the White Princess was so immense that it reminded him of the origin of all vampires, the taboo of taboos — Crimson Moon Brunestud.

Even though Arcueid had significantly weakened due to Roa's scheming and her struggles against her vampiric urges, Blood still didn't dare take her lightly. The moment the battle began, he unleashed his signature technique, the Ghost Army.

In the blink of an eye, more than thirty swords pierced Arcueid from different angles.

Seeing an opportunity, Altrouge kicked her annoying younger sister away and didn't miss the chance to mock her.

"It's not like it was 800 years ago, my foolish sister."

"It's always the same!"

Still sliding from the impact, Arcueid snorted, and a pure white world expanded outward from her, swallowing the entire ghost army in an instant. The spectral soldiers disintegrated into their most basic particles.

"You are no match for me, Altrouge!"

As Arcueid made this declaration, the last remaining Emiya house collapsed with a thunderous crash, as the fundamental rules of physics in the area were suddenly and dramatically altered.

Gravity, repulsion, friction, temperature, speed, directionality, molecular structure...

Sometimes one of these forces changed, sometimes several at once.

These are invisible, intangible forces, but even the smallest change can have a massive impact on the world.

This was the result of Arcueid's growth over the last five years. Her time living with Shinji wasn't just spent freeloading, playing around, and causing trouble. She had learned things that neither her True Ancestor instincts nor the entire mystic world could teach her: science.

Many might think that Arcueid's greatest asset is her virtually immortal body with EX-level attributes across the board. With such a body, learning powerful martial arts would surely make her even stronger, right? But this way of thinking is extremely narrow-minded.

What is martial arts? It's merely a technique humans developed to compensate for their natural weaknesses.

Because they lack strength, they need to borrow power from the earth or target vital points. Because their bodies are fragile, they must dodge and weave. But these limitations don't apply to Arcueid. She has no vital points, she has enough strength, and she's not afraid of being hit. Would someone like her need to practice martial arts? The answer is obvious.

Arcueid's true treasure is her ability to manifest her imagination and alter reality — Marble Phantasm.

Before she met Shinji, her use of this ability was guided by her instincts as Gaia's daughter, mainly involving basic material manipulation. Her most common ability was to make the atmosphere disappear, creating vacuum blades. Her ultimate move was summoning a meteor strike.

But to any modern person with a higher education, these uses of her power are crude and inefficient.

Make the atmosphere vanish? Why not just add something to the air instead — that would be even harder to defend against.

Summon a meteor? Sure, kinetic orbital strikes are terrifying. But how much energy does it take to summon something on that scale? Why not use a more efficient, less taxing method?

Try harnessing atomic energy — fission and fusion.

Worried about nuclear fallout? No problem, there's an even cleaner, more efficient alternative — mass-energy conversion. Turn mass into pure energy.

If she truly mastered these concepts, even without the support of Gaia and Alaya, Arcueid could probably challenge an Ultimate One. At least, from Shinji's perspective, half of the Ultimate Ones don't possess abilities as terrifying as hers.

So, as they say, technology is the first productive force — though it's a bit unfair to mysticism, this is the undeniable reality of the Type-Moon world.

However, Arcueid has only been studying science for five years, and she's still far from truly understanding and utilizing it. But even so, it was more than enough to overwhelm her sister Altrouge, who did not know science and Blood.

Before long, Blood's ghost army had been reduced to dust, and both Blood and Altrouge were trapped in a small, blood-colored space. This was one of Altrouge's special abilities. Though she wasn't a pure-blooded True Ancestor and couldn't use Marble Phantasm, she still had some control over nature, which had allowed her to hold out against Arcueid's scientific onslaught thus far.

"This is impossible! How... how did you become so strong? What kind of power is this?!"

Altrouge was on the verge of madness. Even when she had ambushed Arcueid at her peak 800 years ago, it hadn't been this bad. What had happened to this world? What was this about her strength being taken away? What about her supposed weakness?

"The power of knowledge!"

Arcueid was becoming more and more excited as the fight went on.

"Shinji wasn't lying after all. Hehe, all that time I spent reading (actually only one or two hours a day) wasn't wasted. Now taste the might of my middle-school-level physics — Zero Friction! Roll, ignorant Altrouge!"

"Waaah!"

As expected, Altrouge immediately fell, and every time she tried to stand up, she slipped and fell again, tumbling over and over.

"What... what the hell is going on?!"

"You wouldn't understand since you've never been to school."

Arcueid burst into laughter, thoroughly amused by her sister's clumsy state.

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"Don't get too cocky!"

Altrouge shouted, both angry and embarrassed.

"If you think this is enough to beat me, you're dead wrong. This time, I've brought all my companions — Fou, bite her!"