Here we are again, last time we left off our favorite living gacha simulator right before he started sparring with one of the few actual archers within the Archer class. Let's see how the young hero does against a true veteran.
"Dark Lion's Smash!" Izuku didn't know what caused him to yell this specific attack name but it just felt...Right. Regardless Arash's eyes widened as he tried his best to dodge the fierce attack. His B+ agility barely keeping up with the greenette's OFA empowered 5* install.
The Archer servant was gonna have his work cut out for him.
Using his bow and arrow creation skill Arash immediately sent out two blunted in quick succession at Izuku who, despite his explosive speed, had a significantly lower Agility of C, which itself was halved from the installation. Add that to the fact that his explosive power came from an unstable and self-damaging ability and it was no wonder that the arrows would easily hit their mark.
Two hits, two future bruises for Izuku's face. High endurance or not, Arash's arrows would leave a mark if they kept hitting him directly. 'R-Right, step one, I gotta get better at moving around.' The problem was that he was going far too quickly for his mind to react, maybe if he lowered the power…
Slowly, painfully, but surely Izuku managed to reign in OFA to the point where it stopped hurting. Which if he had to estimate was at about half the intensity of its full glory, give or take. His muscles still tingled with power but at least now he wasn't convulsing in pain from every twitch or accidental movement.
Going in for another attempt Izuku found it much easier, though still a bit jarring to move around. His speed was cut in half, which while still dizzyingly fast for the formerly quirkless boy was much easier to handle than his previously blinding speed. And it went without saying that not pulling a muscle with every movement was a definite plus.
"Good work Master! You seem to be adapting quickly to your chaotic power. Maybe that card of yours is lending you more than its strength?" Or maybe his Master was just that good? That has yet to be determined but Arash had high hopes for the young lad.
"T-Thanks, but I'm still barely holding on. One for All is crazy, it's so much harder to activate than magecraft and its raw power makes doing it while controlling the output each time tricky…" If only it worked like Reinforcement where he could just use a static amount of ener- "Wow I'm an idiot."
"?" Arash was a bit taken aback by the self-deprecating comment that seemingly came out of nowhere.
That was until he saw the aura that appeared around his Master each time he used that dangerous power flare-up before weakening significantly and finally stabilizing. The result being a dark green aura of raw power surrounding his master who's fist was now in front of him oh cra-!
"Dark Lion's Mane! Pouncing Smash!" The name of the attack could use some work but it was more than good enough where it counted. Izuku's armored fist crashed into Arash's face with a somewhat sloppy but still effective straight punch, sending the surprised Archer across the training field.
Of course, this was Arash we were talking about. While he wasn't the most powerful servant out there, not even close, he was one of the most durable ones. A-ranked Endurance and an A-ranked EX-ranked Robust Health skill made sure that he bounced right back from the hit. Albeit with a grimace on his face. 'Ouch, good thing I can just card myself later, that would probably leave a mark if I had to stick around.'
"Not bad master! Not bad at all, but don't think that a single good hit will mean I'll let you off lightly. Since you've made a pretty big breakthrough I suppose it's my turn to bump up the difficulty neh?" Arash began to use his impressive Clairvoyance skill and the pacing of the battle immediately shifted into a defensive one on Izuku's part.
After all, how do you fight someone who is not only faster than you but also more experienced and with the ability to more or less read your mind? All Izuku could do was try to get used to his new speed and maneuverability to dodge the barrage of arrows that was sent at him as best he could.
So not very well. "Ah! Ow! Why the face! Oh god please go for the face again!" Two to each shoulder, one to the face, and another arrow to a certain piece of Izuku's anatomy that he'd rather not mention later and the green hero inevitably tripped over himself, leaving him open to a direct hit from Arash's arrow.
"I think that's enough for now master. You did far better than I expected but you aren't quite ready to face a servant yet. I'll dispel myself and let Emiya-san and Medea-san take over since their skill sets are closer to what you need assistance with." With that, the bow-wielding Archer broke up into blue particles only for the previously mentioned servant to take his place.
Izuku immediately felt the additional drain on his mana supply, yet another factor to consider in his training. Emiya cracked his neck as soon as he appeared much to Medea's displeased look. One that the silver-haired Archer ignored. "It feels good to be out of that head of yours for a while. It's spacious sure but way too cluttered." He teased which did get a slight giggle from Medea.
"True enough, intelligent as he may be our master tends to overthink things far too much. Now, let us begin with his training. We shall begin with a bit of theory work involving the basics of magecraft of which Archer and I are masters of." Medea's mastery was unquestionable, but never let it be said that Shirou Emiya didn't master the little magecraft that he had access to.
Even compared to a Caster servant, Emiya's skills in material transmutation were legendary and impossible to replicate without incredible amounts of time and resources.
"We'll begin with the basics among basics. Magic circuits and the conversion of mana and od into prana. A skill so basic that it is the equivalent of breathing for a mage. Which only makes it more fascinating that our dear Emiya somehow managed to mess that up." Despite his usual aloof demeanor Emiya couldn't help but blush at this. He was an idiot as a teenager, sue him!
"And before he tries to justify it, you did the equivalent of jamming a burning rod into your spine hundreds of times without once thinking that you were doing something wrong. There's a limit to stupidity before it becomes absurd." Knowing this, only made her defeat to her co-instructors younger version even more embarrassing.
"Moving on! Let's make you those circuits shall we, luckily you already have quite a bit of Od within you and I have quite a bit of experience *cough creating *cough circuits on myself. Add in a bit of structural analysis and Caster's mana generation and-" Emiya muttered while grabbing onto his master's right arm.
"GAAH!" The future hero screamed out, collapsing as he felt a pain far more severe than anything he'd experienced before. Even compared to breaking his bones from misusing OFA.
"Right, I probably should have warned you about that. My bad. Well, it shouldn't hurt nearly as bad from now on. Go ahead and open up those new circuits, it should be a similar feeling to what summoning a servant or installing a craft essence feels like." Emiya quickly apologized before pretending that him frying his master's nerves and soul into magic circuits was normal.
"A-and y-you did that to y-yourself how many times in the past?" Izuku had to ask, the pain making him stutter for once instead of his nervousness.
"Just count yourself lucky that Alaya likes you and that those new circuits are permanent. Now get going, we don't have all week." Grumbling, Izuku got back up, still holding his arm as phantom pains made it twitch. He focused and did as Emiya asked, almost immediately noticing the familiar sensation of a new energy source appearing in his body.
"It still hurts a little to use, but nowhere near as bad. My arm feels warm and...Maybe a little numb? Is that normal?" His teachers both nodded so he took his word for it. "So, I know how to access them, what now?" He asked, eager to make use of his new power, he would make that pain from earlier worth it.
"To start with, try to pour a small amount of energy into this orb," Emiya said, projecting a bare-bones iron ball in his hands. "Gently, too much energy and it will explode, and if you don't do it quickly enough, all you'll do is waste prana. The exact methodology for magecraft is highly individualized, we'll let you try to figure it out on your own at first and jump in if we think you need a push."
Izuku was surprised by the laissez-faire style of teaching but from what they said a person's basic magecraft was unique to them so there wasn't much they could do for him without ruining an important part of the process. 'So just pour it in right? It shouldn't be that har-' *Crack 'And those are shards in my hand!'
"*Sigh, I warned you. Get used to this, to be a magus is to walk with death, even more so when you're fresh off the circuit like this." Emiya said, making Izuku grumble before he tried again with another sphere courtesy of his fellow counter guardian. "Don't get discouraged, this took me a while the first time too." The rare gesture of sympathy from Emiya got to Izuku and helped him redouble his efforts.
Hours later, Izuku's POV
'There has to be some kind of trick to this. Emiya told me to pour my prana into the orb right? Then maybe…' Instead of pouring the energy in as if it were water into a balloon I 'covered' the sphere in the energy and let it 'soak' into what I could now identify as tiny cracks in the iron.'
Iron spheroid, 98% Fe, 1% C, 1% trace elements, 2 kg, original creator: Gai$-/Emi$ . Lifespan: 2.4 hours. Age: 1.3 minutes.
A stream of information entered my brain directly, shocking me enough that I lost control of my prana and the sphere's already short lifespan was cut shorter. "Not bad, you not only managed to access the sphere's information, but you even reinforced it, albeit for a short time. You're making decent progress." Emiya complimented, having seen exactly what I had done.
"Your efficiency could use some work though. But that will come in time, I'll give you a few tips on how to control your prana easier later on. For now, let's try to perfect your structural analysis to the point where you can do it multiple times without fail." Medea added making me sigh, this was probably going to take all day.
It did. The next day, regular POV
"His talent is insane, it took me weeks before I could even use structural analysis and he became adept with it within a day." Granted once he got that one down reinforcement and alteration came somewhat naturally to him, the only thing limiting him being his...Misunderstanding of what a magic circuit was. But still, his master was showing prodigious progress.
"Quite. Who knew a boy from the modern age without a single inkling of magical history would be the one to give most magi a run for their money. Let us see if his talent is limited to the basics or not." Medea decided, Izuku had already mastered structural analysis to an acceptable level and had even learned to reinforce objects to a certain degree during his attempts.
"Let's start with his origin and element, we'll move on from there." Normally they would finish off his training in material transmutation but Medea was curious. If Izuku was this talented with something he might have no affinity for, then how quickly would he learn something relating to his element?
"Master, you can stop for now and come over here. We need to run a few tests on you before we continue, all you have to do is sit down in this magic circle and follow our instructions." Izuku stopped his mana flow and did as he was asked. Truth be told he was getting rather frustrated doing the same thing over and over again with only minimal(in his mind) progress.
Now, most of the time, mages would use esoteric, and in Medea's mind, outright juvenile methods to discover one's element and origin. Tarot cards, tea leaf reading, personality tests. Most of which were wildly inaccurate or overly simplified. However, as a mage from the age of gods, she had something much better in mind. The magic circle was simply a way to keep the residue and clean up to a minimum.
Using her item creation skill, Medea crafted a short sword of pure Ether Clump material. It was essentially a blank slate, pure mana given form into a clay-like substance and hardened into a solid by Medea's will. It's only useful property? It was completely elementally neutral and an excellent magical conductor!
"The element is the easiest to find, all you need to do is pump mana into this sword, don't worry about the output, just go wild. Emiya, you know what to do." They were going to abuse the silver-haired man's unique skill in structural analysis to be as precise as possible with Izuku's test results.
Immediately upon receiving Izuku's full mana flow, which was suitably impressive befitting a person who could handle summoning multiple heroic spirits at once, the blade crafted by Medea exploded into thousands of different colored shards. Afterward, the shards themselves were destroyed in various ways.
Explosions, flashes of light, some simply turned into tiny grains of sediment which were scattered by the explosion-generated wind. Strangely after a few seconds, none of the remnants expected of such messy reactions could be found in or outside of Medea's magic circle.
"What a rarity, four elements. A significant affinity for fire and a minor affinity for wind. An unusual element of light and finally a connection to Imaginary Numbers. Our master is going to be a monster in terms of energy and spiritual manipulation." Emiya explained the earlier light show with his analytical ability, it made sense when he thought about it. A connection to Imaginary Numbers explained Izuku's talent for handling class cards. The more common elements were merely a nice bonus.
"A rarity indeed, now for the origin. This test will be a bit more uncomfortable for you Master, I apologize in advance." Origins were far more intimate than simple elemental affinities. They were the very soul of a being reduced to its base parts. The driving force that separated the individual from Akasha.
And to reach this origin, Caster needed Izuku to sleep. Sleep and confront the deepest depths of his mind and soul. Every positive, negative, or neutral experience that he had ever gone through would be reviewed by Izuku's soul and judged accordingly. It would be a harrowing experience for practically anyone, regardless of their past. But for her master?
Let's just say that having an analytical mind only worsened the experience many times over.
Izuku was going to be tossing, turning, and sweating for a good while and neither servant was thrilled about being forced to watch. They could only hope that their master would finish his experience with closure and a new understanding of himself rather than more trauma.
I'll leave this here for now, mostly because I have no idea what I'm going to use as Izuku's origin. Not from a lack of ideas mind you, it's the opposite in fact. I've already gone through analysis, duality, determination, equity, obsession, hero, and even nerd but none quite fit. Some were close, others were just funny, but none really encapsulated Izuku in a single word.
So I'm asking the readers for ideas on this one. What do you all think Izuku's origin should be? The only rule I'm putting down is that it should be limited to two words. And they need to be related to each other at least tangentially.
Examples: Analysis/creativity, obsession/dedication, severing/binding, etc.
Well, that's all for now. Thank you all for reading and as always, have a great day.