Full name of the other series: "Hell Mode: Yarikomi Suki no Gamer wa Hai Settei no Isekai de Musou Suru"
'Dear Mr. Emiya;
I am sorry to inform you that there has been a mistake in your cycle of reincarnation and your soul has been moved into a new body in my world without having gone through the proper blank slate protocols. As such, you are very poorly adapted to the logic that I have put into place to manage my world.
As a result of this, you will notice that it will take a hundred times as much experience for you to 'level up' and 'gain skills'. This will put you at a huge disadvantage in your new life.
In order to make it up to you, I am going to give you this spell book to help you on your way, as well as the highest class of talent, 'Summoner'. Hopefully this will make your new life slightly less difficult for you.
I wish you the best and hope that you enjoy your new life to the fullest.
Sincerely your,
The Goddess of Creation, Elina
PS. Never really tested the book out. Sorry if it is a bit buggy. =P'
Shirou just stared at the open book as it floated over his face, half convinced that he was just having a bazari dream. But no matter how much he blinked, the book didn't go away, nor did the message written in it.
It had been a year since he had died following his battle with Angelica and been reborn in this new world as 'Allen', the child of two serfs who worked in a newly formed village. Though they lived in an existence that bordered on slavery, his new parents weren't bad people, if a little dim. They still didn't realize that one year old babies aren't supposed to be able to understand words, which was a good thing, because Shirou was not known for his acting skills.
Being a baby he had spent the last year of his new life just staring at things and embarrassingly drinking his mother's breast milk, all the while trying to puzzle out the universe. Something that had been hard to do as he had had zero magical energy. As in really zero, not a single drop of it in his entire body.
It wasn't until that night, the night of his first birthday, that he felt the slightest drop of magical energy returning to him. It was small, barely enough to trace a few normal short swords, but after a year spent completely dry, it was like a gift from the heavens. It had been surprising enough to him that he had woken up from his baby sleep, leading to him finding the open book in front of his face, a gift from a 'Goddess'.
After a few seconds, Shirou mentally shrugged his shoulders and chose to just accept it and read the book. He found that he could turn to pages by just willing it to happen, which was good as he couldn't exactly use his hands. He could also make it appear and disappear at will, which was also handy.
Turning through the pages, Shirou was becoming more and more shocked at what he was reading.
'Was the Goddess even trying?'
Spelling mistakes and poorly worded descriptions were everywhere. There was an entire part of the book labeled 'memos' which contained the message 'feature is not yet implemented', and all of the page numbers in the index were off by three.
The book was completely half assed.
While flipping through the pages, Shirou came to something called his 'status sheet'.
[Name] Allen/Shirou
[Age] 1
[Occupation] Summoner
[Level] 1
[Lifeforce] 4 (40)
[Magical power] 2 (20)
[Strength] 1 (10)
[Durability] 1 (10)
[Agility] 2 (25)
[Intelligence] 3 (30)
[Luck] 0 (5)
[Skill] Summon [1], Create [1], Delete
[EXP] 0/1000
(((
- Skill Level
[Summon] 1
[Create] 1
- Skill EXP
[Create] 0/1000
- Create-able beasts
[Insect] H
[Beast] H
- Holder
[Insect] H 0
[Beast] H 0
(((
...Now Shirou didn't know the most about popular culture, but even he would recognize the terminology of a video game. Though he didn't really find this so hard to swallow.
The Grail War card system had been around for years, and worked off of a letter based system. So the fact that some god created an entire world that did the same was completely believable.
According to a small side note, the numbers in the ()s was the amount he would have when his body was fully grown, while the other number was his current value. So he had 4 health and 2 magic power.
Moving past that, Shirou started to try to figure out how exactly he was supposed to use the spell book, moving through the pages until he found one that had ten empty slots that looked like they could have cards in them, as well as a quick description on how to perform a summoning.
'Create Insect level H.' Shirou gave the book a mental prodding.
He felt the little amount of magical energy he had get drained away by the book as one of the empty slots began to glow. A card appeared in the slot, with the depiction of a grasshopper on it, along with a stat listing of its own.
[Type] Insect
[Rank] H
[Name] None (please give it a name)
[Health] 3
[Magical Power] 0
[Strength] 2
[Durability] 5
[Agility] 5
[Intelligence] 1
[Luck] 2
[Divine protection] Durability 1, Agility 1
[Special ability] Jumping
Not seeing any reason not to continue, Shirou went ahead and summoned the monster out of the card.
It was a bug… a tiny little bug.
Shirou was somewhere between having his mind blown by how he had just created this thing with only enough magic energy to create a butter knife, and being hugely underwhelmed by the 'monster' itself.
He tried to give it commands, but it seemed to be unable to understand them and just kept hopping around aimlessly through the room. So after a few moments of whining at the thing, Shirou gave up and just unsummoned it.
It appeared that while it was in its card form, he could store it inside of the book and he would gain its 'Divine Protection' as an increase to his own stats. In the case of the bug, that was +1 Durability and +1 Agility.
As he looked at his own stat page to confirm this, he found that his creation skill had gained 2 experience in relation to the 2 magic power he had put into the creation of the bug. Now it read 'Creation 1: (2/1000)'.
So he only needed to do it another 499 times before he would grow to level 2… but he only had a max magic power of 2. With the rate that his magical energy was returning, he would probably be able to cast Creation 1 three times a day, maybe four, so it would take about 150 days or so… and that would only get him to level 2.
...This could take a while.
Well, it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
The Goddess Elina looked down on the baby Allen as he started to try to figure out how to use the magic book.
"Well, that should work that whole 'Demon Lord' issue out, sooner or later." The Goddess said, clearly proud of herself as she figured she had successfully navigated around the rules of not interfering with the balance between good and evil. All she had to do was find the soul of a capable human and drop them into her world without any direction and let him do things of his own free will.
She wouldn't be responsible if that reborn individual decided to dedicate his life to the annihilation of the Demon Lord and all his monsters, and she had heard from a guy that 'Emiya Shirou' was one of the most bullheaded individuals when it came to protecting the human race from anything that threatened it.
There was just one tiny little problem… She picked the wrong Emiya Shirou.
[Name] Allen/Shirou
[Age] 3
[Occupation] Summoner
[Level] 1
[Lifeforce] 12 (40) +10
[Magical power] 6 (20)
[Strength] 3 (10) +10
[Durability] 3 (10) +6
[Agility] 7 (25) +8
[Intelligence] 9 (30) +2
[Luck] 1 (5)
[Skill] Summon 2, Create 2, Synthesis 1, Expansion 1, Delete
[EXP] 0/1000
- Skill Level
[Summon] 2
[Create] 2
[Synthesis] 1
- Skill EXP
[Create] 4212/10000
[Synthesis] 15/1000
- Create-able beasts
[Insect] GH
[Beast] GH
[Bird] G
- Holder
[Insect] H 6, G 0
[Beast] H 10, G 0
[Bird] G 1
Shirou watched as the 'G-rank' bird flew about in his tiny bedroom, the parakeet imitating his own voice as it flew around.
With nothing really to focus on except for training this new found power, Shirou had unlocked the second level of summoning when he was only one and a half years old. Only, once he had spent the 1000 magic power needed to advance to the next level, he had just been hit in the face with a stop sign, as he couldn't summon any of the new things due to his low max magic power. The only thing he had really gotten out of it was an increase to the number of card slots from 10 to 20.
He had to wait until his third birthday before he had enough magic in order to make use of the level 2 'Create' skill, or the new 'Synthesis' skill.
Shirou had only just unlocked enough energy that day, and hadn't had much of a chance to test it out, but it seemed like 'Synthesis' could take two monster cards of the same type and fuse them together into a monster of that same type of a higher level. Cards of the same level but two different types could also be merged in order to create something new.
So by feeding it two H rank insects, Shirou could create one G rank insect… a frog. And by merging a frog and a mole together, he got a parakeet...
It's almost like the Goddess didn't give any shit at all when she was making this thing.
As much as Shirou mentally joked at the strangeness of the book, he couldn't deny how powerful and absurd an item it really was. He couldn't even venture to guess how exactly it worked, or its limits.
So far, he could summon at the G rank, a frog with a 'taunt' ability, a mole that could dig, and a parakeet that could copy voices. Nothing powerful, but the idea of what he could have to go through in order to create such things with magecraft made his head spin. He might just be summoning frogs right now, but eventually he might be summoning dragons.
Though he could only imagine how long that would take. It had taken him 150 days to reach level 2, and the Experience requirement for 3 was 20 times as high, as there were 2 skills that needed to be maxed out for 10 times the cost.
By Shirou's figuring, with his magic energy pool growing as he got older, it would take another two years for him to reach the next milestone if nothing else changed. Then assuming the pattern continues, it would take another 10 years to reach the one after that, unless he could increase his amount of magical energy somehow.
With everything taking 100 times longer, if his goal wasn't something conceivably possible within the course of a year for a normal person, Shirou wouldn't be able to do it even if he spent his entire life.
Though he didn't really have anything better to do then to try. It wasn't too different from when he was trying to learn Magecraft, despite his lack of talent… only that had been to try to become a hero and to protect Miyu. With his ambition of being a hero dead, and without his little sister, what was he even working towards?
"Allen, are you sure you don't want to run around or something?" Theresia asked Shirou as he sat down near the back door, a piece of wood in one hand and a sharp rock in the other.
This had been the first day he had been allowed outside since he had been born, so the woman had been confused when he had only picked through a few sticks and rocks before sitting down to rub them together.
She couldn't understand that Shirou was starting to craft what would one day be his first bow.
With his magic energy being limited and mostly reserved to further his future prospects in summoning, Shirou wouldn't be tracing weapons for a little while. As such, he would need something he could make use of now.
It would take around a month for him to complete the bow like this, but as he has already said, he had the time.
Shirou looked up at the woman who had given birth to him and just nodded his head. "I'm good." He said before returning to his task.
"Oh… alright then." Theresia said uncomfortably. She had been keeping Shirou inside for his entire life so far, for safety's sake, so she had probably expected him to be more excited about finally being allowed out of the house.
Shirou didn't necessarily want to disappoint her, but acting like a child… was just not something he could do. Even in his previous life, he had never really understood how to act like a child. Miyu had been better at it than he had been, especially when she wanted him to spoil her, but she too hadn't exactly been a master of acting normal.
Theresia was a young woman, around twenty years old. If you count the years from his previous life, she and Shirou would be the same age. It made thinking of her as a mother difficult, and his pity for her made it even harder.
As a serf, she was part of the lowest rung of society who were owned by their landlords, hardly any different than a slave. Her light brown hair was long, thin and tangled. Her diet of almost only potatoes and the occasional monster meat wasn't exactly balanced, leading to her skin looking a little unhealthy and rough, a trait not helped by the heavy manual labor she had to do as a serf, and the tattered rags that came with it.
If she had grown up in another time and place, without the hardships that this world had caused her, she would have probably been beautiful. She might have even had a future. But instead, she was born a serf, and in all likelihood, she would die a serf, probably during childbirth.
Theresia hadn't yet realized that she had missed her monthly bleedings, but Shirou had. It would be another seven months before she would have to give birth again. It would be a roll of the dice to see if she and the baby would make it, without any money for medicine or even a proper midwife. Not to mention no time off from work until her pregnancy became too overbearing for her to work.
And the funniest thing was, she was comparatively well off, as her husband was a capable hunter, and the landlord who owned their lives was a somewhat reasonable individual who didn't abuse his power without reason.
She was at what most people would call rock bottom, but took comfort in knowing that it could be a lot worse. Her cheerful and upbeat attitude towards life was… admirable?
Shirou did his best to help her out around the house and ease her burden, what little could be done with his tiny and weak body, but even so, he couldn't help but to keep an emotional distance from the woman.
"Honey, I'm home!" The cheerful voice of Rodan, Shirou's 'father' came from the front gate as the man returned home from his work.
Shirou's birth happened to be on the same day as the fall harvest festival, so Rodan had been busy performing the preparation tasks for the festival for the landlord, even though his normal duties on the farm had already been completed. He'd also taken on double duties there so that his wife could stay home with Shirou for his birthday.
"Welcome back." Theresia replied with one of her wide smiles as her husband put down his packs and went to embrace her.
Rodan was only a year or two older than his wife and had the same light brown hair and green eyes. He was well muscled, though Shirou didn't know if it was from his hard work in the fields, or as a result of him 'completing the trials of god'. That seemed to be what people called leveling up.
After embracing his wife, Rodan looked to Shirou with a wide grin. "Hey champ, how's your first day of freedom been?"
"It's been fine, dad." Shirou said, not even understanding how awkward his own words were, as Rodan chuckled and patted his head.
"Hasn't changed much, I see." A gruff chuckle came from the gate.
Shirou recognized the voice of Gerda, the family's next door neighbor. The man could best be called a gorilla, with muscular trunks for arms and legs. Like Rodan and Theresia, he had light brown hair and green eyes.
The man had come by a few times since Shirou's birth, though Shirou would hardly claim to know the man. He only knew that, like Rodan, Gerda was a hunter and a serf. Beyond that, Shirou wasn't too sure, nor was he terribly interested in the man.
However, there was something with Gerda that did catch Shirou's attention, if only because of the rate at which it was bouncing up and down.
"Hey!" The three-year-old girl shouted at the top of her lungs as she waved a pair of poorly made wooden swords at Shirou. The girl had bubblegum pink hair, done up in a pair of pigtails, crystal blue eyes and a wide smile that didn't seem to fit on her face. "Wanna play!?"
Her existence was so vibrant and energetic that Shirou momentarily questioned reality as he simply stared at her.
"Krena, that isn't how you are supposed to introduce yourself." Gerda said as he placed his hands on the little girl's shoulders, trying to calm her down. It seemed like a fruitless effort. "My daughter's a bit of a handful." The man chuckled weakly as the little girl continued to swing around her wooden swords.
Shirou looked between the tiny girl and the massive man.
...They looked absolutely nothing alike. Was the girl adopted, or did she just take after her mother completely?
He supposed he wasn't in the position to be throwing stones though, considering he had red hair with a few white locks and golden eyes, even though both his parents had brown hair and green eyes. He also had large patches of skin that had appeared to be burned a darker color, darker even then his family's farm's tan, including almost half his face and his entire left arm.
The damage done to his soul during his final battle with Angelica was carried with him into his new life, and the results of absorbing far more Mana than his human body could handle was on display to the world.
"Hey… I don't suppose Allen could… play with my daughter for a bit." Gerda said as he started to receive some hits to the head from the excited child.
"Seems like a good idea to me. Since they are the same age, they should learn to get along." Rodan said cheerfully, pushing Shirou forward, not really asking for Shirou's opinion on the matter. "Go on son, don't be shy."
Inwardly sighing a little, Shirou put down his stick and rock and went to greet the girl.
As he drew close, Krena's father let go of the girl, taking a few steps back with his hands out, as if he had just released a vicious animal that might lash out at him, rather than a cute three-year-old with pigtails. Krena herself stood as tall as she could as she thrust out one of the wooden swords to Shirou. "Here!"
Shirou took the wooden sword and gave it a quick test swing.
Poor material choice, and the shape was awkward, the balance of the weapon was completely off. But Shirou could deal with that.
"Heee!" Krena squealed with excitement before moving into a ready position. "Knight Krena requests a challenge!" She said proudly, clearly having recited this many times before.
"...Alright." Shirou said with a nod of his head.
"No! That's not it! Respond properly!" Krena said, stomping one foot and giving a pout. "We're playing knights, so play knight."
"...Knight Allen accepts your challenge." Shirou said, deciding to just go with it. He kind of just wanted to get this over with so that he could get back to crafting his bow.
However, he was in for a surprise, as the moment he accepted the challenge, Krena rushed him with a well executed overhand swing.
Even with the 'blessings' he was receiving from the summons' cards, he was still slower than her, and she was stronger than he was too, and not by a small margin. While she was a tiny little girl, her strength and speed were at the level of a full grown adult. If he hadn't kept his footing light out of habit, he would have been knocked straight over by her first swing.
As is, he managed to absorb the attack by letting his rear leg slide as he accepted the blow before parrying her wooden sword to the side.
After that, he expected the girl's momentum to cause her to fall to the ground… only she didn't. She recovered quickly and continued to push an offensive against him. Though she was only three years old, her swordsmanship was nearly at the level of a high school athlete, with her footing and grip nearly perfect and only a few obvious holes in her form.
If Shirou had been an ordinary three-year-old, he would have probably been seriously injured. Instead, he was doing his best to out maneuver the girl, hoping to find a way to end the fight without hurting her.
Was this kind of thing normal in this world? It must have been, because his 'parents' started to laugh at the 'cuteness' of it, before going inside with Gerda to talk about things and start making dinner, leaving the children alone to 'play knight'.
Shirou continued to spar with Krena, until he had the chance to trip her up, causing her to fall down onto the grass. Shirou braced himself for the girl to start crying, but instead she got back to her feet with a wide smile on her face.
"Wow, you sho good! Whis way better 'an with daddy!" Krena cheered happily in the slightly broken speech of a child her age. "Let go again!"
"Again?" Shirou said, wondering if he was ever going to be allowed to get back to crafting his bow, when a rattling of the fence surprised the two of them, drawing their attention.
There was a rabbit just on the other side of the wooden face, only it was like no rabbit that Shirou had ever seen. It was the size of your average dog, with white fur and unblinking red eyes, a foot long spike of a horn extending out from its forehead.
A horned rabbit?
Shirou had heard his parents mention this rather weak monster's existence, but this was his first time actually seeing one that hadn't been cut up into tiny meat cubes.
The rabbit stared at the two children for a moment before letting out a piercing scream and slamming its body into the fence. The wooden boards cracked and splintered on the first impact before breaking away entirely as the monster rammed the fence again.
As it broke through, the rabbit continued to run at full force, straight towards Krena, moving at a speed that could match a race horse and with his horn pointed straight at the girl.
Luckily, Shirou had already been moving in and intercepted the attack with all of his weight behind him, his wooden sword crossing with the monster's horn, managing to change the direction of the monster's charge just enough to cause the rabbit to go off course, with Shirou being thrown backwards into Krena, knocking them both over.
The strength behind the creature was shocking, being comparable to that of a tiger. With his child's body, there was no way Shirou would be able to block an attack from the monster without some kind of run up and a good angle advantage, even with his blessings giving him about as much strength as a level 1 adult.
Was this seriously an E-rank monster? The lowest quality of monster that could produce a magic stone? Why the hell was it so strong?
The rabbit struggled to burn off its momentum and turn around, preparing itself for another charge.
"Stay here." Shirou said before moving to the side, striking his wooden sword against the ground again and again to draw the monster's attention.
Like a bullfighter, Shirou prepared himself for the monster's charge, bending his knees and steadying his breath. He didn't have any magic energy in order to try to reinforce his body, so he would just have to make do with what he had.
As the rabbit charged again, Shirou collapsed backwards, creating a ring with his arms for the rabbit's head to pass through.
As Shirou's arms wrapped around the monster's neck, it felt as though his arms would be pulled from sockets. But he managed to maintain his grip and swing himself up so that he was on top of the rabbit's back.
The monster slowed its charge, before attempting to buck Shirou off, but before it could get the boy loose, Shirou pulled back his wooden sword and jammed the hilt straight into the monster's eye.
It let out a horrible scream of pain, its body seizing up from the pain, giving Shirou a chance to work the piece of wood even deeper into the monster's skull. Blood gushed with each twist of the sword, splatting all over Shirou's arm.
It was tough going. Even the vulnerable, squishy eye was requiring all of Shirou's strength to damage, and he was made to work for every inch.
The monster rolled over, trying to get Shirou to let go, but the boy was relentless, and soon, his attack reached the monster's brain, and after a few final twitches, the creature lay dead.
Shirou let out a sigh of relief as the tension left his body. Only for him to wince as Theresia let out a scream.
The noise hadn't gone unnoticed by the adults who had come outside, spears in hand, to find Shirou laying on the ground next to the dead horned rabbit, covered in blood.
"Allen!? Allen are you alright!? Speak to me!?" Theresia cried as she and her husband rushed towards him.
"I'm fine. It isn't my blood." Shirou said calmly. He had a few scratches from the rabbit monster rolling around on top of him, but that didn't really matter.
"Wow! Dat was amazing!" Krena cheered, bouncing up and down next to Shirou with her wide smile still spread across her face. There was a light glow surrounding her body.
"No way… she passed the Trial of God?" Her father said with a mixture of wonder and worry.
Shirou glanced at his book, invisible to the eyes of others, to find that the horned rabbit had earned him +10 EXP, enough for a normal person to grow their first level.
It seemed that despite not having done any damage to the rabbit herself, being a target was considered enough to be given EXP and she leveled up. Meanwhile, Shirou was now at 10/1000 to reach that first level up.
...That hardly seemed fair.
"Allen saved me! You're my hero!" Krena cheered, jumping onto Shirou and giving him a hug with strength that seemed to be around 50% more than what she had previously, and without a care about the amount of blood that drenched Shirou's body.
Shirou blinked in confusion as Krena looked up at him with a smiling face. Then, for some reason, Shirou smiled and started to pat her head. "I'm glad you are alright."
"He… he's smiling." Theresia gasped, a hand over her mouth.
Since his rebirth, Shirou had not been one to smile or laugh. There were often times that Theresia and Rodan had wondered if there was something wrong with him.
Shirou supposed there had been. He hadn't had a reason for living. But now… he might have found one.
"I will keep you safe."
So I was in a Graduate's Numerical Analysis class this semester.
Teacher was having it online, it was early in the morning, her voice was one of those voices that becomes irritating over a microphone and she was really not not a great teacher that first week, she was slow and didn't seem to know what she was doing.
It ended up causing me panic attacks and I stopped attending classes. ...but it was all online and nothing was due until the last day a class.
That day was today and I hadn't gone to a single lecture since week 2 or done any work for the class till today.
9 homeworks (each of which was 8 proofs) and a project, all for a class I have not taken. Took me 7 hours. I had 2 hours to spare. I fully expect to get an A.
Damn I'm good.
...It's a good thing people just expect you to be an eccentric and autistic nutter if you have talent, or else I might actually get in trouble. Instead they just shrug their shoulders and accept it when I just stop going to class but still get everything done.
Apparently one of the professors in our department disappeared off of the face of the Earth for a year during a mental break down and came back with a stack of research notes scribbled on the back of paper bags. They welcomed him back without complaint. There are also cases of top students disappearing and coming back years later to take their final exams.
