"This is getting ridiculous." Shirou grumbled to himself as he narrowly evaded a large black dog, that was nearly the size of a horse, that had pounced at him. In a simple counter attack, Shirou slid the iron katar in his left-hand across its middle. In his previous world, such an attack would have been instantly lethal, but because of the 'defense' that existed in this world, the blade left nothing more than a flesh wound. Reinforcing his right arm, he stabbed into the monster's heart with the steel rapier, pushing through the monster's defense with brut force.
[+222 EXP | Steel Rapier Sword: Mastered: +1 attack, +2 speed]
Shirou immediately changed the weapon in his right hand from a steel rapier to a bronze gladius. Turning around to face the last two hounds of this pack. Seeming to have not noticed out their companions had just been killed, the two changed forward together, jumping at him with their open jaws.
Shirou plunged both his weapons into their mouths, killing them both instantly, their own momentum doing most of the work.
[+222 EXP | +222 EXP | Level Up: Lv. 14]
"Cancel [Dual Wielder]." Shirou said as the battle finished. The blade in his left hand disappeared without any fanfare leaving him with just the bronze gladius.
After mastering the iron twin-blades, Shirou gained the ability [Dual Wielder], allowing him to dual wield any two onehanded swords, rather than just swords that possess a shared identity as dual weapons. He found it useful as he could work towards 'mastering' two forms at the same time. However, using [Dual Wielder] caused him to rather rapidly drawn his 'SP'.
What was SP? Shirou didn't have a clue. It wasn't Od or Mana, and it wasn't Lifeforce. His best guess was that it was somehow spiritrons, the soul material that makes up one's magic circuits and could best be described as 'sort-of-kind-of' existing within the physical world. Though Shirou felt this was unlikely, since if he was being drained of his spiritrons his magic circuits would have likely dissolved and his soul would have probably collapsed on itself. It was entire possible that SP simply didn't have any equivalent within his own world.
However, as he drained his SP to use the abilities of the Legendary Holy Sword, he felt himself tire. Even if it was the kind of tiredness that came from simply over exerting yourself, where you would recover from by just waiting a few minutes to regain your breath, it was a form of exhaustion, which meant that something was being taken from him. He just didn't know what.
Glancing around at the cut-up bodies of the monster dogs that had attacked him, Shirou gave a sigh and began to go around absorbing the corpses into the jewel on the Legendary Holy Sword, which he was starting to just call Jian, a Chinese word meaning sword, since even mentally saying the whole name each time was starting to get exhausting, and because it had violently protested when he called it Yan, short for Yandere.
He had long since realized that 'she' was both conscious and intelligent, even if she only ever communicated with him with the occasional textbox, or minor electrocution. He also realized that she didn't actually want to kill him and as such did the only thing he could do in a relationship like this one; teasing.
"You know you are going to get fat if you keep eating like this." Shirou said as he finished feeding the corpses to Jian. A text window came up in response to his remark.
[Mass stored inside of a legendary weapon has no effect on its weight.]
"Are you sure? My wrists are starting to feel a little tired." Shirou teased. Jian didn't respond to this taunt, instead choosing to show Shirou a little of the items that she had created by converting the monsters. Shirou glanced down the list of item drops.
It was rather disturbing, watching a horse sized dog being slowly pulled into a three-inch-wide hole as if it was being sucked through a drinking straw. Its bones cracking as the thing was pulled into an impossible shape, and its guts being squeezed out of the wounds… it was enough to freak out even Shirou, even after all the shit he had seen while dealing with the Dead Apostles. However, the results of doing so were worth it.
It was weird. He would feed Jian the monster's whole and then the sword would preform some kind of process that removed the monster's life energy from it to be stored away inside of the jewel for future use. The rest of the body would then be dealt with in the same way as a hunter preparing a kill. On the list of items obtained were entries about the monsters' meat and skins, as well as any teeth or bones they had which could be of use. Anything of any value was extracted and stored in some kind of subspace within the sword's jewel. That he pretty much understood. What Shirou didn't understand was where the potions, money, stones, and various other valuables, like tools and clothes, came from. They all certainly hadn't been present on the monster's body. Shirou was absolutely sure that none of those dogs had been wearing a bowler hat.
"Jian, can you move any meat below 'very high' quality into your cooking subroutine?" Shirou asked the sword. The items for meat in the range of 'low' quality to 'high' quality disappeared from the list and a progress bar appeared in the corner of Shirou's vision with a countdown timer. Shirou regretted buying all the food that he had back at the market, as it seemed that Jian had a built-in way of cooking the meat that he gained from monsters.
It was kind of strange, as regardless the quality of the meat, or what part of the animal it came from, the output quality was still the same, but it was edible, and while not great, it was still better than the military style rations he had bought before. Plus, as long as he kept it in the subspace, it wouldn't ever spoil. After that days hunting, he was already sitting on over 4000 pounds of cooked monster meat, enough to feed a thousand men and women for an entire day, and that wasn't even counting the higher quality meats that he was saving for his own use. He had enough food on him to feed a large village for a whole week.
What was strange was that Jian would only absorb monster corpses and other raw materials, like plants, metals and stones, even though other things were stored inside if they were generated from the corpses. So Shirou couldn't store his backpack inside of the subspace, and after Jian ate his map and turned it into a Paper Sword, he wasn't about to test and see what she would do with his history book or the monster egg. She did however willingly store his money. Which was nice, since the large bag of coins had caused him to be attacked by two groups of bandits that day alone.
Not knowing what to do with said bandits, Shirou just feed everything they owned to Jian, gave them a sound thrashing, and then called it a day. Wasn't like he could escort them all the way to town. It wouldn't be safe for them. Not when he was constantly being attacked almost every ten minutes. He had been attacked by four groups of giant centipedes, three packs of dogs, two groups of bandits, a twelve-foot-tall rabbit wielding a giant carrot, and several other smaller encounters. He had only been walking for around eight hours. How could anyone get around in a world where you couldn't go ten minutes on the road without being attacked by something? The incompetent adventurers from the castle would have been ripped to pieces by this point.
Maybe it was just Shirou's own bad luck and this wasn't normal. It would have been the same kind of bizarre luck that had gotten Shirou involved in the Holy Grail War in the first place. The young man took a moment to curse his E rank luck.
Luck, the inherent ability to defy fate, had to be the worst ability in existence to have. It sounds nice until you realize that fate usually means getting up in the morning and have a normal day without anything life threatening happening to you. So while Luck can help you survive disasters where most people would have died, people with unusual amounts of Luck tend to have unusual things happen to them; like say, being sucked into another world and forced to go on an adventure with a sword that acts like an extremely jealous girlfriend.
Naturally, heroes almost always had a considerable amount of Luck. Otherwise they would have likely never gotten themselves into the situations that made them heroes.
Even as he started to continue on his way down the road, Shirou eyes moved farther down the list of item drops, seeing if there was anything that might be usable, as Jian wouldn't try to use the item drops to unlock new forms without him telling her to. If the monster's body parts themselves were used for unlocking, then she would do it whenever she was absorbing the monster, but the random potions and other valuables would go untouched and remain in the drop space.
He spotted a medium remedy potion listed with the drops. He had already used lesser remedy potion on the sword in order to unlock a 'Petit Medicine Sword', which could increase the effectiveness of medicine. Perhaps the medium remedy potion would do the same. "Jian, can you use the medium remedy potion in order to unlock a new sword?"
The medium remedy potion was removed from the list of drop items and another progress bar appeared in Shirou's vision. It looked like it would take 30 minutes for Jian to process the potion into something usable. While copying swords happened instantly, using the random items to unlock sword forms wasn't always instantaneous. Shirou suspected that it was based on the complexity of the item and how far removed it was from the idea of a sword. Monster bones and teeth, as well as raw metals and stones were processed almost instantly, while meats, plants and medicines took a lot more time.
Shirou looked at the clock in his menu in order to figure out when the potion would finish being processed, only to see that it was already almost 8:00. The sun was setting and soon it would be dark out.
Originally, Shirou had planned on just sleeping outside in the forest that night, but after the sheer number of monster attacks he had gone through, that no long seemed like a good option. Perhaps he should just teleport back to town and sleep at an in, then teleport back to where he left off the next morning.
He was about to go back when Jian interrupted him.
[Without clear landmarks, transport to a location is not possible.]
"In other words, I either sleep out here tonight, or I am starting all over tomorrow morning." Shirou said with a sigh. "Well, I guess I should leave the road a little before I set up camp for the night."
Shirou returned Jian to the twin-blades form and sheathed the blades before raising his now free right hand. "Trace on." Angurvadal, the Stream of Anguish, appeared in Shirou's hand, light flowing from it in order to illuminate his path.
Shirou had found that so long as he was not using it in any sort of combat related sense, Jian didn't mind other weapons. Of course what counted as a weapon, and what counted as being used for combat was up to her to decide. A kitchen knife being used to attack vegetables was still attacking something with a weapon and therefore off limits. Even if the blade didn't touch his hand, and he just fired it like a bullet, Jian would still punish him for it. However, using a legendary weapon like a flashlight was perfectly okay.
Of course, Angurvadal was more than a simply light. Within its legend it would glow with fire and begin to sing when enemies were nearby. As such it would be his security during the night. If anything, man or monster, attempted to attack Shirou in the night, Angurvadal would let out a horrible noise and irrupt with light, both blinding and deafening the attacker momentarily. Hopefully Jian wouldn't see the impromptu trip-mine/flash-bang as an attack. But if she did, the mild electric shock she would give him would surely wake him up if he managed to sleep through Angurvadal's activation, as the sound and light from Angurvadal wouldn't affect Shirou the same way it affected anyone attempting to ambush him.
Shirou didn't bother setting up the tent. It didn't seem as if there was going to be any rain that night. He would just sleep on the ground, in a projected sleeping bag… Wait…"Why did I buy a tent again?" Shirou asked himself, scratching his head. If he needed a tent, he could just project one. It was such a novel concept, being able to project items other than weapon and armor, that Shirou had completely forgotten about it. Shrugging his shoulders, he took out the packed tent and just fed it to Jian.
[Requirements met: Tent Sword Unlocked – Equip Bonus: Rest Effectiveness Up (small) (unmastered)]
Shirou couldn't stopped himself from rolling his eyes. He was starting to wonder if there was literally a sword for everything. Maybe he should try feed her a house next.
Shoving Angurvadal into the ground, Shirou projected a sleeping bag and began to lay down for the night.
Weapon Copy
[The Legendary Weapons can copy weapons of the same category for the hero's use, so long as they meet level requirements.]
Jian none-to-subtly demanded to be fed.
Shirou could only groan.
"What do you mean you can't find him!? Have you checked all of the inns in the city!?" Princess Malty demanded of the Church's Shadows as she sat in her carriage after stealing everything that the Shield Hero owned in the fool's sleep.
"Forgive us Princess, however the Hero of the Sword disappear without a trace just after visiting the Hourglass of the Dragon's Era. We had our best watching him, but he still slipped straight through our fingers." One Shadow reported.
"We have checked every inn in the whole city, but there is not a single trace of the man. He is good, better than we are. As to be expected of a true Legendary Hero." A second Shadow added with something like awe in his voice.
Malty held in a curse. She had had her heart set on having the Hero of the Sword, but now it looked as though she would have to pick another.
Malty was the first Princess of the Kingdom of Melromarc, and she was long used to being able to use her status, intelligence, and beauty to get whatever she wanted. However, there was one thing that those qualities couldn't get her, and it was something that should have been hers by right of birth; the throne.
Even though she was the first Princess, and was adored by her father, her mother hated her and always had. And since her mother was the one who got to decide who was next in line for the throne, the crown was poised to go to her bratty little sister, Melty.
But Malty wasn't about to just give up on her birthright, so she made a deal with the Church of the Three Legendary Heroes. She would convince her father to summon the heroes to their country and help to set up the Shield Hero to be known throughout the land as a villain, and in exchange they would support her to become the next Queen.
Of course, while the Church was the national religion, her mother wasn't the kind of woman who would care about that. She would need more than just the Church if she wanted to get her crown. What she needed was a hero.
Melty was too young and bratty to win the heart of a hero. She didn't have the same kind of experience with controlling men that Malty had. So if Malty managed to get hitched with one of the three heroes that actually mattered, then not even her mother could deny her the throne.
It was going to be the perfect story. She would extend the hand of kindness to the one that everyone believed to be the devil only to be heinously raped by him the moment they were alone. Then she would have run off to cry into the shoulder of the hero of her choosing and they would feel bound by honor to seek out justice for her and to protect her from then on, so long as the Shield Hero still walked free. But now, when she was already half way done with her little play, she finds out that the leading man is nowhere to be found.
Well, it was not like it really mattered. Any of the Heroes would do. But if she was going to be whoring herself off for the crown anyways, she had wished that she could have at least got the best man possible.
The Hero of the Sword hadn't been as unrefined and rude when he had first appeared as the others and had already managed to win her father's approval. He had also shown himself to be a fighter of the highest quality, easily taking down higher-level men even before obtaining the abilities and power associated with being a Legendary Saint Hero. And while the Bow and the Spear both had their charms, the Bow was too childish for her tastes, and if she went with the Spear Hero, then she would be having to constantly defend her claim on him from the various other women he would be trying to charm. Plus, the Hero of the Sword had just been better looking. He had the kind of stoic, regal appearance that was befit a future King and would have looked perfect standing by her side as she sat upon her throne.
Well, maybe it was for the best. The Sword seemed to be much smarter than any of the others were. He would have been much more difficult to control.
"What's done is done. Where is the Spear Hero?"
Alright, maybe Shirou was too quick to dismiss the Tent Sword.
After sleeping for just 4 hours, he already felt completely energized and ready to go. He actually slept much better than he had his previous night in the castle. Then again, he had half expected for people to try in infiltrate his room at night in order to place subjugation magic on him while he was in the castle, so it wasn't the most restful of places, despite having an actual bed. It really did surprise him that he hadn't been attacked in the night.
Shirou called up his status menu and glanced at the clock in order to check the time, finding it to be around 6:15. The sun would probably be rising soon.
Shirou reached over to his pack and brought back out the history book he had been given from the castle library. He had spent roughly 6 hours the night before struggling to read his history book in the light produced by Angurvadal, while at the same time having one hand extended over Jian at his side, trancing weapon after weapon from his Unlimited Blade Works for her to copy. The Legendary Holy Weapon equivalent of petting your cat.
Multitasking while reading a language you were unfamiliar with. Hard.
Even so, the book had been very enlightening, and Shirou had learned two very important things while reading the book. First was that the Legendary Heroes of old had a damn good editor, as there was not a single mention of a fuck up anywhere to be found.
Shirou knew a lot about mythologies, and he knew perfectly well what Gods and Heroes were really like. They weren't all knowing and benevolent beings who were completely perfect in every way, they did selfish and often times short sighted things, and people usually suffered from them. Even the ones that really were benevolent still made mistakes. So, whenever you find a holy text that doesn't mention any of these kinds of events, that is often because the holy texts had an editor who went through and removed all of the stories that were controversial.
Point was, every mention of the heroes having flaws had been erased from history… or at least it was for three of the four. The Shield Hero was strangely absent from the history book all together, hardly even mentioned as existing in footnotes. Maybe that was just how things were. If the Shield had the same kind of restrictions on it as the Sword, not letting you wield any other weapon, then Shirou could understand it being difficult for the Shield Hero to distinguish themselves without a means to deal blows to their enemies. Maybe that had been the real reason no one had wanted to follow Naofumi. Still won't explain why the King hated him on sight.
The second thing that jumped out at him was that these heroes always seemed to have prior knowledge of the world around them, meaning that they all probably played video games about the world before coming to it. Shirou wondered if any of the previous heroes came from the same timeline as he did. Actually, he hoped that they had. It would mean that time flowed differently between the two worlds.
The oldest mentions of the Legendary Heroes were around 1000 years old, but the game had only existed in Shirou's world for 3 years. So if the heroes were first brought to the world just a few months after the game came out in his world, that would mean that 1000 years here is around equal to about 3 years in his world. This translated into meaning that 3 days in his world was equal to 1000 days in this one, or about 2 years and 8 months.
If he could finish everything within 2 years' time, he could still make it back home in time to see Illya through her operation. Shirou had to believe that it was possible. He would do whatever it took to finish his task within those 2 years.
"Jian, you awake?" Shirou asked the sword.
[Holy Weapons do not require any recharge time for basic use.]
"I see. I was just wondering, you are able to copy any weapon that possesses the quality of being a sword, right?" Shirou said, seeking clarification of the sword's abilities.
Weapon Copy
[The Legendary Weapons can copy weapons of the same category for the hero's use, so long as they meet level requirements.]
"Well then, can you copy this?" Shirou said, tracing a normal iron sword. "Alteration."The sword began to twist in on itself as Shirou added the meaning of being an arrow to the sword's identity. Then he held it next to Jian's jewel for her to try to copy.
[Weapon Copy – Complete: Iron Sword Arrow? (0/10) – Quality: Normal→ Low (Degraded Copy) – Base Power: 2 – Proficiency: (0%)]
"Degraded huh." Shirou humbled. It seemed that while Jian had been able to copy the weapon over, the modifications to the sword's idea had caused the final product to be weaker than his trace, resulting in a level down in quality, similar to his own tracing. A degraded copy of a degraded copy. Still, it had worked.
Next was for part two of his master plan, something he had never tried before, making a bow that was a sword.
It took Shirou several tries before he managed alter a bow into a sword without it becoming unusable. Once he had something that he would be able to identify as 'being' a sword but could still be used as a bow, he tried copying it into Jian's own growing arsenal of weapons.
[Weapon Copy – Complete: Steel Sword Bow? (0/10) – Quality: Normal → Low (Degraded Copy) – Base Power: 3 – Proficiency: (0%) – Level Requirement: 8]
"Alright, lets see if this works. Activate [Dual Wielder]." Shirou said, equipping the Steel Sword Bow in his left hand and the Iron Sword Arrow in his right. He pulled the arrow back and aimed it at a tree a good hundred feet away before letting the arrow fly.
…The arrow went around four feet away from Shirou before stopping in the air and falling to the ground. Then Shirou received a very painful shock.
Legendary Weapon Rule Violation: Hero Cannot Discard Legendary Weapon
Shirou scowled at the popup window. "You could have just told me that before I tried you know." Shirou sighed. "Cancel [Dual Wielder]." He said, letting the arrow disappear and turning the bow back into swords and storing them. Oh well, it wouldn't have been like he could have used a Caladbolg form anyways. He already checked and Caladbolg had a level requirement of 165, and as it seemed that the more levels he grew, the more EXP it took to gain those levels, it would probably be a whole year or more before he would be able to use a Noble Phantasm of that caliber. "I just can't catch a break with you, can I?"
Jian didn't respond to the question. Instead she informed him of something else.
[Incubation time complete. Monster egg is ready to hatch.]
Shirou went to the magic incubator and found that the seal holding it shut was now released and that the egg was starting to crack. He carefully opened up the incubator and held the egg out in front of him, wondering what exactly he was supposed to do. He'd never been involved in hatching eggs before.
Somehow he suspected that a normal hatching didn't go the same way as this though, as all of the sudden the egg shell burst into pieces with a small popping sound, leaving him with a bright red chick in his hands, one roughly twice the size of a normal baby chicken, a piece of the egg's shell balanced on its head. The puffy red creature looked up at him with eyes that were distinctly too large for its small body and gave out the most cheerful 'Gueee!' sound.
The word kawaii, came to mind.
With surprising strength for something with such a small body, the bird jumped from Shirou's hands and landed onto of his wig covered head, immediately grabbing it and rolling around in the fake hair like an energetic puppy. "Hey, stop that." Shirou chuckled as he reached up to try to dislodge the little one from his head, not that the little bird listened. His chuckles turned surprised concern when the bird let out a cry of pain and fell from his hand.
Shirou caught the little bird before it hit the ground and watched as the Filolial twitched in his hands, a magic seal visible on its chest. "What's going on?" Shirou asked no one in particular, but Jian still responded, and a menu filled is vision.
[Monster Slave Seal Controls]
In the menu was a little of actions classified as forbidden and the level of punishment associated with breaking the rules. And on the top of the list was 'disobeying orders'. Shirou quickly disabled the option and the punishment ended, leaving the poor chick in a confused state.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know that would happen." Shirou said, trying to comfort the baby bird. Luckily, the little Filolial was quick to bounce back and was again chirping away. "Don't worry, I won't do that again, I promise. I'm not the kind of person that you shock someone for doing something as trivial as wielding a different weapon. *ouch*" Shirou hissed as Jian punished him for his comment. Apparently, she wasn't amused by his comment. "I'm I your slave?"
[A wielder of a Legendary Weapon cannot be subjugated by a slave seal.]
"Good to know, but that isn't what I asked." Shirou said with a sigh. The bird started making noise, trying to get his attention. "You're probably hungry. I'll get you some food." Shirou said getting and getting the seed paste he had brought with him. He projected out a dish for the bird feed and set it down for the young Filolial to eat. The little thing must have been hungry, because it wasted no time in eating it.
[Do you wish to add the Filolial to your party?]
"Yeah, that way he can get some EXP and start to level up. I'm a little curious to see just how the accelerated aging works." Shirou admitted as he pet the bird with one hand. A window opened up in front of his vision.
[Shirou: Lv 14]
[Filolial 1 (female): Lv 1]
"Oh, she's female." Shirou said, correcting his pronouns. "I guess I need to name her." Shirou said, looking down at the bright red creature as it stuffed its face with the seed paste, making a mess of itself. "How about Firo?" Shirou said, just sticking with the name that Illya had used for her stuffed animal. The bird stopped eating for a moment to give a 'Gueee' of approval before returning to its meal. "Firo it is then."
[Firo: Lv 1]
[Some items can help unlock new forms for the Legendary Weapons. Try to give your weapon a sample of everything.]
Shirou looked down to where the fragments of the egg lay and picked on of them up, feeding it to the sword.
Requirements met: [Beastmaster's Sword II (0/30) Unlocked – Base Power: 7 – Equip Bonus: Monster Status Up (small) (unmastered) – Proficiency: (0%)]
Requirements met: [Monster Egg Sword (0/25) Unlocked – Base Power: 4 – Equip Bonus: Cooking +2 (unmastered) – Proficiency: (0%)]
Glancing over the new weapon forms, Shirou was suddenly struck with an idea. He took the projected sleeping bag and tried to feed it to Jian.
[This is not a real object. It cannot be processed.]
"Oh well, guess that was to be expected." Shirou said with a small shrug of the shoulders. While 'traced' weapons were so close to being the real deal that even they themselves didn't realize they were not real, all basic projections were really just packs of prana given shape. He was still mildly disappointed. "Alright, the sun's up now. We should be hitting the road. Come on, Firo." Shirou said, lifting up the Filolial. The bird quickly ran up his arm and preached itself on his head, settling into his wig and giving out a cheerful cry as it claimed its perch.
It was time for another day.
I'm giving Shirou Firo partly to keep her around and partly because I want to give Naofumi Midori (The Trap)
Mostly because I want to have a scene where Motoyasu is trying to save the poor 'girl' from the evil Shield Hero only for Naofumi to flip up the dress to reveal Midori's HUGE penis. (He is said to have a member fit for a King.)