/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the explicit answer about Nine Lives between Fate and Heaven's Feel is that Fate Herc has still has armored skin that Archer can't penetrate with the axesword, while Black Herc still has multiple lives, necessitating the application of Nine Lives (which doesn't kill nine times, but as many times as it needs to, taking into account how durable/regenerative the opponent is), but his skin has been corroded by the shadow so Shirou doesn't need to produce A rank attacks with Herc's otherwise mundane weapon.