Chapter 14
Beta: Worldbringer of Joseun
Cover: LousGndiner
Last night was a rough one. Honestly, Illya wanted to start the day off by sleeping in, but due to their recent company, that would be unwise.
With Lord El-Melloi II and Taiga around, they had to move around to make room for them. The Clock Tower Lord had offered to sleep on their chair, the wooden one that came with the room, which Illya would have allowed if it weren't for Shirou and Sakura's welcoming nature to offer their own respective beds instead.
That lead to Shirou and Sakura opting to share a bed, giving Taiga Sakura's bed. Rin decided to give up her bed, because she didn't want to see her prospective professor sleep uncomfortably on a chair, and snuck herself onto Shirou's bed too.
Given that there were only four beds, with six people to share, it was a tight fit for the three of them. Illya shoved her bed beside them to give them more space, and slept with them. She was their guildmaster, she could do what she wanted. Although, Illya vaguely remembered that Taiga said something about Shirou becoming a playboy.
Overall, last night ended with two beds shoved together. Rin, Sakura, Shirou, and Illya slept in the makeshift double bed while Taiga and Waver had their own beds.
"Illya, I can't have you being distracted!" Rin echoed out. Illya noted the lack of 'Midget' nickname. "You're the alchemist, right? Tell me if I'm reaching the right consistency with this."
Illya sighed and rolled her shoulders. She was having some back pain recently but couldn't put a finger on why. Whenever she asked Rin, the twin-tailed magus would just give her the stink-eye.
She eyed the workplace. It was nothing compared to the sophistry of the Einzbern estate – or at least what little she remembered while she was on their cutting board – but it was enough. A few breakers with test liquids, most likely formed from items that were squeezed like grapes, and several containers with a variety of colored dust in them.
"Looks a little watery, at least compared to the EXP potion we're going for," Illya mentioned. "What materials have you tried?"
"A bit of every elemental stone and every item I could identify from the EXP potion samples we have," Rin replied as she swirled a vial. She frowned once she saw the color shift a bit from blue to green. "Damn it… I thought that'd do it."
She put down the failed potion and Illya idly checked it with the menu.
Weak Potion of Elemental Resistance. It granted a twenty percent reduction from all elemental damage. How in the– Illya hummed in realization.
"The elemental stones must've done this," Illya muttered. "What gave you the idea to use those?"
"When I diluted the EXP Potion and isolated the ingredients," Rin began. "I found most of them, like phoenix extract and dragon blood, but I still couldn't identify a few other parts."
Rin turned to the side and shouted out a door. "Ferlna, can you hand over the ingredient list?"
The Lander appeared and did so without a fuss. Although, she had to flip through several other similar papers. "I take it that this attempt was not successful?"
"Nope. The elemental stones together were similar to the missing ingredients… but not similar enough," Rin finalized. She held up a quill and scratched it off the parchment list. "We'll have to try other combinations. This will take ages."
Illya agreed with the sentiment.
Ever since they had awoken in the morning, Rin had badgered her to come into the back room of the Arcadia to help out. Illya finally agreed because Hamelin wouldn't be out and about today. She saw most of their members – members she'd already seen before so she couldn't update her hit list – basically camping out in front of Crescent Moon.
She did feel bad though. Krentelfal got bored quickly, so he elected to wait in the Arcadia proper, to read a few books he said. Hopefully, a joke book, if they even made those. She hadn't heard him crack one lately… or at all. Weird.
At the sound of slow tapping feet, Illya turned and merely raised a brow at their tag-along. "Lord El-Melloi II? Might I ask what you're doing?"
The Lord of the Clock Tower sent a glance their way before returning to the list he held in his hand and a vial in the other. Was he just playing around with the ingredients? It certainly seemed that way.
He had been wandering the room and picking up every item he could get his hands on. Root forbid him being one of those ultra looter-type players, who always grabbed whatever they could to sell or use later… if that 'later' ever came.
"You can just call me Waver, you know?" He replied, putting down the vial but still reading the list. "We aren't anywhere near the Clock Tower anymore so formality has lost its meaning. I was only formal earlier as a form of greeting. I'd imagine that we are well past that stage now."
Illya twitched. "Alright, Waver, still wondering what you're doing."
"Simple. Looking over the list."
"And, pray tell, why?" Rin asked as she wrote something on her parchment. Likely a list of new ingredients to send Krentelfal off to find.
"When you told me of your plan to recreate the EXP Potion, it honestly baffled me," He said. "However, I cannot help but think that you're going about this the wrong way."
If Rin was any regular Magus, then Illya would have expected her to pull out an irritated frown, but to her credit, Rin barely managed to keep that from happening and simply twitched her brow.
She wasn't a regular magus, but she was still a magus. She got irritated too.
"You see, why test for ingredients when you have the best sample to test available?" He put forth the question. "You have already isolated more than ninety percent of the potion, but are still unable to replicate the EXP boosting effect. A piece of the puzzle is missing."
"Yeah, that's right…" Rin muttered.
"That process will take too long, likely a year before you even make any head-way," came Waver's honest assessment. "There might be a simpler alternative."
There was?
"By all means, go ahead and tell us," Rin said with a wave of her hand.
Lord El-Melloi II merely walked over to a separate table. "This is where you keep the EXP Potions, correct?" After receiving a nod in reply, he picked up an EXP Potion and poured it into a cauldron. Luckily, they still had a few spares.
"Alchemy in this world is, in the most basic sense, mixing and mashing together ingredients to create something new," he said as he took the other ingredients, the ones they confirmed to be in the potion.
Illya blinked and narrowed her eyes.
Is he…?
"However, the process as we know it in our reality is much more complicated. It acts on chemical reactions. Creating gold is but one achievement we can perform through alchemy. In other words, a highly scientific process." he explained as he laid them all out before him in a neat line. Following that, he poured the EXP potion into a small cauldron.
… Yep, he's actually giving a lecture.
"I assume that you are all aware of the Law of Irreversibility?" He prompted, to which Illya and Rin nodded. However, Ferlna shook her head. Seeing this, Lord El-Melloi II explained. "In the simplest sense, what is made cannot be returned to its base form. Glass is made by super-heating special sand known as Silica Sand, but it cannot be reverted. The same with gold and lead. If we made gold, returning it to lead would prove to be impossible. These are but two examples."
He swirled the potion-filled cauldron for but a moment. It was small enough for him to do so without issue, like a bowl of flour. "I imagine that, through this law, none of you tried to do reverse or split it apart for it would be a fruitless endeavor, am I correct?"
Illya nodded, mildly curious to see the Lander write down that information in a flimsy parchment notebook. "It is as you say, but I presume there is some other point to this lecture?"
"Yes, there is. Tell me, why would alchemy be considered a brand of magecraft when magecraft is rarely used in the process?"
Where on earth was he going with this? Illya grumbled inwardly. It's magecraft because they use magecraft on the materials and reform it, much like how modern society – as she had come to learn from television programs and games – although in a much more precise and efficient manner.
The Einzbern family was one comprised of alchemists, with the unparalleled ability to create Homunculi with relatively mundane materials, a replica of humanity mimicking how people created souls through childbirth. The only reason it was called magecraft was because they succeeded through manipulation of mysteries where modern man failed without it.
Humanity's belief was power. It was what empowered Servants with Noble Phantasms, shaped through myth and belief. If people had believed that the creation of a Homunculus was possible through alchemy, then they focused on that possibility and made it into reality. That was why alchemy was considered magecraft in the moonlit world.
"It's because alchemy uses magecraft to achieve its mysteries, correct?" Rin confirmed, which Illya accepted as a horridly simple abbreviated explanation but she didn't want to hold up whatever the Lord of the Clock Tower was trying to achieve with pointless semantics.
"Correct. Alchemy performed with magecraft is magecraft," Waver pushed up his glasses. "However, what can we call alchemy performed without magecraft?"
"That's just chemistry, right?" Illya replied. Of course, she'd know that. Alchemy faded from modern society once people started using it more, which ended up turning it into chemistry, a science one would learn in any modern school.
"Yes, correct again. With this basic understanding, think of this. Alchemy with magecraft achieves the 'conceived to be impossible'. Alchemy alone achieves 'mundane wonders'," Waver said. "Now, those were both with regular ingredients. Tell me," he says as he gestures to the laid out ingredients. "-are these regular ingredients?"
Illya widened her eyes.
"No, they are not," he cut off once he saw her reaction. "These are ingredients that are made through magic, they do not follow the common norms we associate with our mundane alchemy. Similarly, they do not follow the same rules our magecraft-influenced alchemy follows."
He picked up a feather, a raven's feather if Illya recalled. "Our magecraft-alchemy would normally imbue these materials with mana so that they follow our conceived notions. In the case of this raven feather, what will be brewed will follow whatever a raven symbolizes, such as death from the goddess of death, Morrigan, if we followed Celtic lore, or of ill omen with western medieval conceptions."
He ignored Ferlna's raised brow at the mention of an unknown god, returned the feather to its rightful place and refocused on the cauldron. "However, these are already imbued with magic so they will scarcely accept any mana from us at all, nor will they accept the beliefs we enforce upon them. You used a compound of various elemental stones earlier. I presume you did so because all of them put together could symbolize nature itself to harmonize the player with the outside world. In doing so, you hoped to increase the experience gained through something akin to symbiosis. Am I correct?"
Rin's brow rose, which was subsequently followed with Illya's own. "That's… I'm surprised you figured that out."
"However, that failed," he continued as he picked a few elemental stones from a nearby shelf. "You could not enforce the concept of nature or symbiosis because there is already mana within the stones, even when reduced into powder. A flame stone will represent flame and a lightning stone will represent lightning."
Rin sighed. "… so we can narrow down the ingredients by discovering which items preconceived representation fits the bill."
Illya sighed in tandem. Just when she was excited too. "Impossible. To my knowledge, there are no items like that."
"True," Waver said. "No raw ingredient item, at least easily accessible ones in Akihabara, exist to use. While that brings us back to square one, it does not detract from our progress."
Ferlna fixed her glasses, already a few pages into her notebook. Admittedly, she looked a little lost. The differences between magic systems probably befuddled her. "Is that so? In what way?"
"Simple. If we have to add belief behind items to use them in magecraft-influenced alchemy, then what happens when you remove the belief from the finished product?"
"… the product is rendered null," Illya muttered. "It cannot be used. It just becomes an amalgamation of ingredients without purpose. At least until they can be repurposed."
Illya remembered when they would tear out her innards, weak and faulty, only to replace them with better ones lined with magical circuits. They would even remove them when they found better alternatives instead of just waiting until they have all the best parts. It built tolerance, Old Man Acht would say.
She never argued back then.
She didn't want to be one of the many bodies under the castle. The only thing good that came out of that were her maids Sella and Leysritt.
It pained to remember them.
"For magecraft, like alchemy, to be understood, it needs to be broken down."
Illya felt it, mana escaping Waver's adventurer body yet concentrated in his palm. He held it over the EXP potion and, with a flick of his fingers, watched as the EXP potion glowed in all of its splendor.
He lifted his finger and the glow dimmed– or rather completely faded as the mana in the potion surged towards Waver's fingertips. Once that finished, he grabbed the pot.
"Take away the mana…"
He held it towards them…
"And like you said, we've rendered the product null."
It was liquid. Black tar-like liquid.
Rin inspected the tar the EXP potion left behind. "Ah, I understand now. We can break this down and get the raw materials from it."
Without wasting a second, Rin grabbed the pot with little resistance from the Lord of the Clock Tower and poured it over a cloth-covered table. Rin flicked her wrist and used her magecraft. A simple separation spell used to teach young alchemists the difference between similar components.
With it, the tar separated. It moved like slime before settling into six distinct vials.
"Six ingredients!?" Rin shouted in surprise. "But… we've been using close to twenty! How could just six make an EXP potion?"
"It is likely not just six," Waver explained. "However, when the EXP Potion was made, it was likely through six components. Do not get ingredients and components mixed up. Components can be made with several ingredients."
He held his hand out once more on the first black vial. Mana escaped him and entered it.
In Illya's own words. The null product cannot be used. It just becomes an amalgamation of ingredients without purpose…
… At least until they can be repurposed.
Illya widened her eyes when it became red and watery. A quick inspection through her inventory later showed what it was. "Dragon blood extract. Not complete dragon blood, but diluted with water."
Rin followed suit on another vial, watching as it became yellow and extremely consistent. "Phoenix egg yolk? They laid eggs?"
"This is like a mystery box, isn't it?" Illya muttered as she turned another vial into what it truly was. "Faerie dust?"
"That's already three ingredients we've never even used," Rin complained. She grabbed her list, scratching several out and writing a few new in. "Dragon blood extract should be easy to acquire. Adventurers were selling it for dirt cheap in the market. Phoenix eggs and Faerie dust will be an issue."
"They sell Phoenix eggs in the Summoner Bestiary," Ferlna called from behind, still looking a bit lost, but noting down everything that was happening. At least they'd have a nice log of events later. "If you would like, I can go and purchase a few."
"No need," Illya dismissed. "We can send Krentelfal off to purchase them later, once we identify the remaining components."
"Interesting…" Waver muttered. Illya turned to look at the latest vial of sludge he injected with mana. "A damage boost potion."
Rin raised a brow. "What's that?"
"Exactly what it means. It increases both physical and magical attack of a player… to the exact percentage that a regular EXP potion does. Odd," he muttered. "Then, the next vial would be…"
Illya had already injected mana into it. "Heal Boost, just like the EXP potion increasing recovery effects. Is this thing just a mix of potions?"
If it was, then that was lazy. Come on, world. If you were going to bring the game into real-life then be less lazy about it.
Waver suddenly spoke. "Dragon's blood belongs to one of the strongest phantasmal creatures to ever walk our earth. Even in Theldesia, they are creatures of renown, with some of them predating the formation of countries."
"Wouldn't something like that just imbue draconic properties instead?" Rin asked.
"Likely why it's diluted, where only traces of dragon remain." Illya followed. "Faerie dust is likely the dust component. No potion item can be made without some form of dust."
At least, in the game's alchemy menu. You needed dust, liquid, and at least a third ingredient of your choice to create anything – you could go wild with the number of ingredients, but the chance of failure and wasting the items grew substantially higher too. Faerie dust was a popular choice due to it being able to give most potions a longer effect and increasing the success rate to create such potions.
"Speculation, but we could try it out later," Rin added, a hint of a smirk on her face. "Turning into a dragon could be interesting."
"And it would make you stand-out," Illya reprimanded. "Transformation items exist in-game, but they're either cash items or drops from bosses."
"Even better!" Rin's small smirk grew. "Stand out? Midget, we can take over the entire market with this!"
"This doesn't make sense…" Ferlna suddenly muttered from her notes. "Dragon blood has never interacted with faerie dust before, let alone phoenix eggs. Each of them alone can create wonders, but they always interfere when used together in any ratio."
Illya blinked. "They do?"
Then again, she never really studied potion recipes. She only kept her mind on map rotations and locations to farm gold and experience solo.
"Perhaps the answer lies within our last vial," Waver prompted. "If the prior ingredients could not bind together, then the last component should be the binder for them all."
Rin held the damage and heal boost potions. "Something that could also bind two completely finished products? Must be some kind of miracle-material."
Illya nodded. It would be like fusing two compounds and expecting the final result to have properties of both, instead of completely new ones.
"The final piece of the puzzle. It likely holds the reason for the EXP boosting properties, if prior ingredients are anything to go by," Waver concluded. None of the prior components had anything to do with experience boosting. "If this component is a miracle component of some kind, then we'll be finding out."
They all waited with bated breath as he injected mana… injected mana… still injecting…
"Something's wrong," Rin stated. "Why isn't it reforming?"
Lord El-Melloi II furrowed his brow and forced more mana out, to the point that his mana bar actually started to visibly decrease.
He's a level 90 Enchanter, and those of the class had a supremely high mana pool. He should have at least twelve thousand mana, disregarding any possible boosts that his equipment gave.
He was burning such an enormous amount of mana, rapidly.
"It feels like a wall," he explained. "Removing the mana proved to be easy, but injecting it seems to cause a rejecting reaction. I cannot put any mana into it because I lack enough of it."
"Even when we're so close… there are still problems," Rin muttered. "What if all of us poured mana into it?"
"Even then, not enough," Waver said. "It felt like breaching a steel wall with a toothpick. Even if we combined all the mana of all players in Akihabara we would barely start a reaction. Recreating the EXP potion was likely made to be impossible. Whatever this ingredient is, it is certainly unique."
Not enough… mana?
Krentelfal hovered into the room. "Are you all well? I was reading a wonderful retelling of my legend but the surge of mana caught my attention."
Mana…
"Krentelfal, are you still draining mana from me?" Illya asked.
"No, not really. I've taken more than enough to sustain myself for a millennium."
There's the answer.
"Krentelfal, can you pour mana into this vial?" Illya asked as she held up the bottle. "Don't be afraid to use all that mana in one go. I can always give you more."
Waver blinked. "Always give more– you speak as if you have an unlimited source…"
"Well then, with pleasure, Lady Illyasviel!" Krentelfal exclaimed.
He took the bottle in his hands and held his breath.
"This is–!?" Ferlna shouted in surprise.
In one short second, Illya saw his body pale. His armor becoming rapidly translucent and his fleshy form becoming far more skeletal. Hair fell as his head rapidly bald into a skull… all the while, the vial glowed like a newborn star.
"I said 'Don't be afraid to drain my mana', Krentelfal!" Illya shouted at the idiot! She ignored the fact that this wasn't her exact wording, but seriously, was he trying to off himself!?
His form bettered, but he was toeing the line between death and oblivion. Not life and death, because he was already dead.
"How much mana is he using!?" Lord El-Melloi II finally exclaimed as he covered his eyes with his arm. "It's as if… as if he has an unlimited source of–"
His eyes widened behind the safety of his elbow.
Having no doubts that Waver deduced where all the mana came from, Illya simply focused on her pseudo-familiar. In one second, the vial became a newborn star. Ten seconds later, it faded. Krentelfal returned to as pristine as he originally was, albeit a few ghostly sweat drops dripped down his brow.
"That was… quite a harrowing experience." The old ghost muttered. "I feel old, quite a bit older than I actually am. Isn't that a harrowing notion?"
"Sorry for that, Krentelfal," Illya apologized. "But your effort paid off. The vial changed back."
"Splendid," the knight celebrated. "However, I hope that I will never have to do that, ever again."
With a swish of his fingers, Krentelfal held up the newly changed vial. The vial that had lit up the whole workshop. It was lucky that there were no windows. Otherwise, the entirety of Akihabara would've noticed them.
"It is…" Ferlna muttered. "Red. I expected something blue."
"The vial is blue, but the contents are closer to wispy pink," Illya corrected.
"Well, what is it?" Rin asked, coming out from under the table. It was like she expected it to explode or something… but with the amount of mana poured into the damn thing, that was a safe assumption.
What in the world even took that amount of mana? That was enough power to wipe a continent off the face of the earth! Not even a continent from the Half-Gaia project of Elder Tale, but something like Asia in their homeworld.
Without wasting time, Illya opened up the menu and inspected it.
"… Looks like Krentelfal won't be needing to do that again," Illya muttered.
Rin blinked. "Well? What is it?"
"Blood."
"Blood? Like Dragon's blood?" Rin muttered. "No, even that took less mana. What would require that much mana? It's not regular old blood, is it?"
"It might as well be regular old blood," Illya continued as she held up the vial and simply stared at it. "After all, it's running through each and every adventurer in Theldesia."
She held a vial of blood.
Adventurer's Blood.
The blood of adventurers was used to make experience potions.
It… it made sense. No other creature on Theldesia could live forever. Lore on adventurers stated that they never died, so they could theoretically hold infinite experience. If their blood held a bit of their 'experience', then that could mean ingesting adventurer blood provides more? No wait, that doesn't make sense.
Blood types had to match, otherwise, there would be rejection… which could explain the two-hour time limit the potion had. Or maybe all the other ingredients could have influenced it somehow, make the body reject it less.
Wait, if potions could be made from any ingredient, then maybe the adventurer body was just incredibly tolerant of everything?
Illya didn't know. She didn't like that.
"This… changes things," Illya muttered. "This changes a lot of things. Rin, you mentioned that our Lander friend here wants to conduct a few experiments on our physiology?"
They needed to know more.
Rin nodded. "Ferlna, we're speeding up. Do you have injections or anything in here?"
While Rin walked away with Ferlna in tow, Illya turned to the Clock Tower Magus. "I suppose thanks are in order, Lord El-Melloi II. We wouldn't have found out what the missing ingredient was without your input."
"Thanks aren't needed. You were just as necessary as I was," he concluded. He took out a cosmetic smoking pipe. Why those existed in Elder Tale at all boggled her mind. Maybe it was something exclusive to the English servers. "… More importantly, the infinite mana you seemingly had access to. I have a hypothesis that I merely need your confirmation of."
No use hiding it. Not like Illya planned to hide it from the Clock Tower magus in the first place. "If your guess was Heaven's Feel, the Third True Magic, then you'd be right."
He inhaled his pipe and, after a few moments of silence, exhaled accordingly. "I suppose you cannot access it by yourself, seeing as you had a surrogate use it in your place." Another nod and Waver Velvet sighed. "I'm certain that I do not need to explain to you how valuable of a piece you are, especially in regards to the rest of the adventurers… and to the magi in our world."
At Illya's second nod he turned and walked away.
"… I'm going out for a bit of fresh air. I'm certain that the both of you are talented enough to extract adventurer blood without triggering the royal guard system."
"We'll need to extract it from ourselves," Illya said. "The royal guard system is linear, it doesn't account for self-harm." After all, suicide was still possible, even if you reform back at the Cathedral, not that Illya was willing to try.
With a nod, the only male magus left the room.
"Krentelfal, are you still ready to go?"
"Well, I'm not feeling as dead as before, so it would appear so," he answered. He paused and chuckled. "Oh wait, I am dead!"
Snicker.
"We have to gather a stable supply of Dragon's blood, Faerie dust, and Phoenix eggs," Illya explained, as stoic as she possibly could, before she opened her inventory. "Take this bag and go buy them from the market."
Krentelfal nodded and made to leave.
"I'm… not bothering you with these orders, right?" Illya asked suddenly.
The ghost paused only to chuckle. "Not even a bit, Illya."
When he disappeared, Illya sighed.
They were close to their goal. The Lander's anger against adventurers was admittedly decreasing, at least to her knowledge. Sakura managed to leave a good enough impression on them, and Shirou was also doing well within the craftsman circle. Their contributions may seem minuscule, but without it, other Landers could start some trouble.
Loose reasoning, but Illya liked all her bases covered. It wasn't as if Shirou and Sakura could help them with the potion, or with Illya's own private hit list. Might as well make them do something they like to do.
… Actually, Sakura might enjoy taking care of a few animals. Having a stable source of those would be a great idea. If they wanted to be able to mass-produce the potions, they'd need a stable source for the ingredients.
Or get a few pets to use for materials. There were dragon mounts, faerie companions, and phoenix followers, but they only lasted a few days before they needed to re-summon them. Sure, they sucked and nobody brought them along for raids – developers and their trigger-happy Nerf gun – but they were cool and cute. That was enough for most of the player base.
The other alternative was just hunting. The problem with that idea was the level of these monsters were at least as high as Illya's own. This would mean that, if they wanted to farm these ingredients via monster hunting, then they'd all need to be at Illya's level at the very least to even enter the zones–
Uh, great… another headache.
It was a good thing that they were only minor ones, but she'd rather have shoulder pains over these any day. Maybe she needed to take a day off, all the stress must be getting to her.
At least they should be able to finish within the week if no complications arose.
"Illya! These Landers don't have syringes!" Rin called. "I'm going to cut into my wrist. I don't know if blood will come out because of our physiology but I'm going to try it anyway!"
"It's just one thing after another," Illya noted.
From within the Eve-Marrow Inn, Taiga chugged a mug of tasteless alcohol. She was an adult and she could do what she wanted!
However, these things tasted like dirt. It was like… dry water, but dry water you can get drunk from. Not the most pleasant of drinks. Hell, she could probably make something with a bit more taste if it weren't for the small 'can't cook without making black paste' issue. Wait, was dry water even a thing?
"Sakura~, when is your shift over?" Taiga asked, bored out of her mind.
"Hmm… my shift ends in an hour," Sakura answered. "Sorry. I promise to make it up to you afterward."
Taiga gave her the stink-eye. "You better… Being a part of a secret society of psychos…"
Her former student wearily laughed to herself as she cleaned a mug. "Psychos… that's one way to put it."
Taiga simply sighed once more and swirled the mug in her grasp.
Magic, or Magecraft as they kept correcting her, existed in their world. Sure, magic was in this fantasy land and even Taiga could use a bit of it thanks to her Samurai class, but not a lot because Samurai's are tank classes. However, magic in their world? In the world that she studied in? Screwed around with her friends in? That ridiculously regular world?
That took a bit to sink in the first time that ass of an Enchanter had told her about it. A whole society, that'd dissect babies if it'd help them out, just the idea of it freaked her out.
Then she learned of Second Owners. Like the name implied, they owned the city they lived in. Waver said that it was technically the leyline or whatever that was, but Taiga didn't really pay attention to that part.
Tohsaka Rin was the Second Owner of Fuyuki. She was a part of those child-murdering monsters… at least until Shirou and Sakura cleared up that misunderstanding.
Shirou and Sakura…
A frown threatened to develop at the thought of her adorable little students. A little brother she had spent the better part of her life growing up with and a little girl she'd happily call sister if given the chance. They were a source of light in the endless monotony of her adult life.
Then she learned they were a part of the psychos.
Tohsaka wasn't one, and Taiga sure as hell knew her precious students weren't psychos either… but they were still in that part of the world.
In their world, Taiga thought she knew darkness. Her grandfather was a part of the local Yakuza, having weeded out every other group far before she was born. She was the young heiress that could do whatever she wanted, which she used to become a teacher.
She had power… but what good would that power bring if she couldn't help the two people closest to her?
Sakura was the blood-sister of Tohsaka, who had been sold to the Matou family. Between the two, grandpa always made sure to tell her about the Matous. Avoid them, he would say. That family is filled with monsters, he said.
Taiga never believed him.
The Wolf Fang Samurai felt her eyes wander towards her student once more… to the student who suffered her entire life while she only thought about her next meal. The student who wore a mask to fool everyone around her.
She should've believed him.
If she could… maybe child protection services could… no, nothing would've helped. If even her family, which she knew to be the number one force in the city, feared what went on in that family mansion, then what could she have done?
Nothing.
And that realization alone made her want to cry.
She did, last night. When everyone else was asleep, she had left the room for a midnight stroll, just something to get her mind off of things. She could always reenter after being white-listed by Illya, so there wasn't an issue.
She had walked and walked until she had found the rooftop of the guild building.
The bright and clear moon should've been relaxing to her.
It wasn't. It just broke the wall she had built and sustained throughout that night.
There, she cried. There she screamed out her frustrations and it was there that she cursed the unfairness of the world.
She couldn't show them her outburst. She wouldn't let them see it. She was Fujimura Taiga, the teacher who always smiled. The person who always lightened the mood in the room. The elder sister that they relied on for almost their entire lives…
Except, they never truly relied on her, did they? They probably saw her as someone to protect. Someone to shield away from the ugly horrors of their world.
Powerless, again.
Taiga growled subtly and merely downed another mug of tasteless alcohol.
Damn it! At this rate, she was going to drown in her own sorrow!
"Hey, Sakura," Taiga suddenly started. "What's it like, working in a tavern?"
She slowed her mug-cleaning and gave her an odd look. "… Sensei, even if you're bored. I don't think you should try and help out in the tavern."
"Where did you get that idea?" Taiga blurted out. "I'm not that bad! I just wanted to know what you do around here."
Sakura simply smiled in relief. Come on, she wasn't that bad, right!? "Mostly cleaning the mugs, but whenever there's a customer I take their order for mister Ashe to cook." because adventurers seem to only make black paste. "I also clean the tables. If there's nothing to be done, I leave and help with the surrounding shops. It's been a fun few days. Everyone is so nice."
Taiga hummed.
Sakura was doing a lot, it would seem. She knew that both she and Shirou were both supposed to bring up Lander opinions surrounding adventurers, but this was a big city. She must be overworking herself.
"Ever want to take a break?" Taiga prompted.
"No, not really," she honestly answered. "I like to be kept occupied. Keep my hands moving and the like."
A short bark came from beneath the counter.
"Oh?" Sakura muttered as she looked down. "Raijuu, do you want to take a nap?"
At the second bark, Sakura put down her mug and picked up the little pup. It leaped onto her busom and burrowed under her robes. A moment later, it was as if he was never even there.
Taiga blinked.
"Does he always sleep there?" she asked. "Snugly fit underneath your robes?"
"Yes, but it does worry me," Sakura admitted. "He's usually sleepy. I thought he was tired, but he rarely moves around or plays."
"Is he hungry? I get tired whenever I'm hungry, so much so that I don't even do any work," Taiga said without a hint of shame.
Sakura shook her head. "I don't think that's it. I feed him regularly and make sure he eats but… maybe I need a second opinion. Maybe dogs from this world work differently?"
Taiga shrugged. She sure as hell didn't know. She never even had a pet, never saw the appeal. "Isn't there a Bestiary in the city? Maybe you can go and ask them."
"Hmm… I suppose I should," Sakura finally accepted. "Maybe tomorrow? I don't have a shift then, and it's a weekend so there's less to do."
Do Lander's even take weekends off? Taiga wasn't so certain, but nodded anyway.
"Hey, can I get another mug?" A random adventurer called from the other side of the bar.
"Be right with you!" Sakura answered, grabbing a clean mug to hand off.
Hmm, looks like this place was going to be busy soon. The Tiger of Fuyuki liked to drink, but the swill she was drinking didn't even qualify as something to drink. Let alone enough to sate her thirst. Maybe Shirou would be free?
Wait, where even was Shirou? Maybe Sakura would know.
"Hey, Sakura. Do you know where Shirou's working? I'm bored so I want to check up on him," she asked.
Sakura hummed to herself, having returned from a table. "If I remember, it should just be down the road. If you take the first turn down the main road, you'll enter the market. Shirou should be working in Meltraus' shop."
Taiga took out a few coins and paid her tab before leaving. Of course, she bid Sakura her own farewells. She wore a smile and walked jovially out the front door like she always would.
Inside, she wanted to run up to that plum-haired girl and hug the living daylights out of her. But she was working, and Taiga knew better than to interrupt that.
At least when there were no stakes on the job. She'd happily drag them away for a chat any day of the week.
Taiga knew the plan and how high the stakes were, Illya had explained it to them last night along with all the truths and confessions about what they kept hidden from her. On one hand, she was thankful they didn't keep secrets from her anymore. On the other hand, she wanted to scream at them for keeping those secrets until now.
Chances were, those students of hers were never going to tell her about their secret lives until the day she died.
That thought alone scared her more than she thought it would. What if she woke up one day and learned Shirou was dead!? Gone without a single reason as to why!?
All she'd have were empty condolences from some no-name mook from whatever church existed in their city! If that ass of a priest was any example. Seriously, the guy had just given her the creeps whenever he showed up. Not that his replacement was any better. The chick seemed to love church donations a little too much.
She really did wish she had a good night's rest. After staying up crying to the moon in frustration, a little shut-eye should've been good, right? A little breather from her frustrations was fine, right?
Nope! She just had to dream about… about that weasel of a brat, Shinji! Sakura's own brother.
Her students said nothing about him, but Taiga knew he was involved. If Sakura was, then her brother would be too... if he was still around.
She remembered.
That day, when the school sky bled, when she lost all feeling in her body, and when everyone around her fell like a house of cards. She remembered it as if a bad dream.
She recalled her shallow breathing as if she was barely clinging onto her very life.
She remembered footsteps, noticing someone was walking among them.
She noticed them stopping before her, followed by mocking laughter.
Taiga knew who laughed, even as those footsteps faded away into memory.
At first, she believed that it was nothing more than a dream. A horrible thought that she had one random day. Or even a delusion from the supposed gas leak.
Gas leak… that was the excuse they always used, wasn't it?
It never was a dream, was it?
Taiga didn't know what Shinji was doing after that fateful day, but when he never showed up for classes… well, there was only one conclusion. Especially when the Matou manor collapsed on itself.
She should've felt bad, but that lingering nightmare always made her think otherwise.
Taiga took a calming breath. That wasn't good, she needed to be a pillar of happiness for those two to rely on. A bastion for them to take respite. Losing her cool here would do no good.
She shook away the dark thoughts crawling up from beneath and simply looked at the city for what it was worth.
It was honestly kind of weird seeing huge buildings cracked and covered in vines, but compared to the valleys and forests she already trekked through, it proved to be underwhelming.
She made sure to visit the Cathedral when they arrived, just to make sure they wouldn't revive back in the Nine-Tails Dominion. That place was probably already nothing but rubble, with all the infighting that went on there.
Something thudded against her iron boots so she turned down to see an orange, having rolled to hit her.
Then she saw another roll by.
And another.
Taiga blinked and turned her gaze to the source… before swiftly picking up the oranges and made her way to an old lady. "Excuse me, grandma! Let me help out!"
"Oh? What a kind adventurer."
She was spindly and likely barely holding herself up. She held a cane to keep her balance and a basket in the other, which was where the oranges had likely fallen.
"Let me carry your bag for you!" Taiga exclaimed. "Don't worry, you can rely on me!"
What kind of upstanding teacher would she be if she didn't set herself as an example? Even when the old lady refused, Taiga pushed for it. She was likely to drop even more if Taiga didn't help out.
It was a nice distraction.
Eventually, the old lady relented and Taiga carried her bags for a while. They ended up in the market place, where Taiga was originally heading. Convenient!
Once the old lady was comfortably sat at a stall, where her daughter was apparently selling other fruits and vegetables, Taiga left to continue her journey. Ignoring the short detour, the Tiger of Fuyuki found herself in front of a beginner level armor shop.
"Excuse me!" Taiga called out. "Is Shirou in here?"
The attendant jumped in surprise. "W-What's your business with him?"
Suspicious… Taiga narrowed her eyes. Was he being a playboy again!?
"Do I need a reason to visit family?" She added, to which the attendant relaxed briefly before heading inside. Taiga heard her call her little brother's name and excitedly smiled once she heard his voice call back. "Shirou! I'm bored! Let me see what you're doing!"
Only waiting a second before the attendant girl let her in, Taiga streamed straight into the workplace.
"Wow, it's hot in here!" She whined.
Heat instantly assailed her. She could already feel herself sweating a tad bit.
"It's a forge, Fuji-nee. Of course, it'd be hot," her brother-in-all-but-name answered. "Speaking of which, I'm not so sure you can be here?"
She just shrugged. "I could go everywhere in-game before. Why not now?" She even made it to the guildhall roof last night.
"Because that'd be breaking and entering," a burly voice answered to her side. A quick glance to it showed a wall of muscle. She turned her head up, only to meet a pair of eyes staring down at her. "What're you doing here?"
"Ah, Meltraus-san," Shirou called. "This is my elder sister, Fujimura Taiga. She arrived in town yesterday."
"So I see," he rumbled.
Taiga hummed to herself. This guy was Shirou's boss?
She heard of how Shirou somehow landed an apprenticeship under a local blacksmith, which actually surprised her, but this guy… yup. He fit every stereotype of a hard-working old master. It was surreal. Not as surreal as giant bats chasing after her, but surreal nonetheless.
She stuck her hand out. "Hello there! I'm Shirou's legal guardian, at least until he turns twenty. Nice to meet you!"
The Lander stared for a bit before he held out his own hand, to which she shook vigorously. Got to be nice to the guy who took care of her little brother for a month, right?
She stopped once she felt the guy loosen his grip and faced Shirou once more. "So, what were you doing?"
Shirou smiled. "Just making several swords. Meltraus finally decided to level me up from daggers. I'm having an easier time, surprisingly."
Taiga heard the old master grumble under his breath, but not the exact words. Something about prodigies. Swords though… hearing about how her little brother could make swords, not like how he was smithing from metal but out of magic, even back in their own reality, was weird.
Learning of the death battle happening right under her nose? Less weird and scarier. Learning that it happened periodically every century, and only recently happened twice in a decade, was less scary and more horrifying.
Learning her students were a part of it? She nearly broke down right when she heard of it, especially from their own mouths.
"Swords… eh?" She muttered with a hint of melancholy. Hopefully, Shirou didn't pick up on that. She came here to try and take her mind off depressing thoughts but it looks like it didn't work.
She watched as Meltraus left to grab a cooled blade, adding a hilt on and using some kind of resin, probably, to stick it on. The sword looked cool though, it reminded her of her own blade. Taiga was level 80, a testament to how long she spent shirking off her teaching duties, but her Katana was only level 78. A meager two-level difference to her own, but she kind of needed more optimal gear.
Especially if this plan of theirs failed. Not that she wanted it to fail! It's just that, it could fail. She just wanted to be as prepared as she could be, you know?
A new idea popped into her as a Cheshire grin formed. "Hey, Shirou. You busy?"
Her former student looked to Meltraus, who shrugged and continued his work. "I guess I'm free at the moment, so not really. Why?"
"Make me a sword!"
He blinked.
"Sure."
"I'm glad you're a smart kid, Shirou," Taiga replied. What wasn't said, was that Shirou was just so used to her random requests that he answered without hesitation, even as both Meltraus and Melhia gave him an odd look.
"If you use materials from the shop, she'll have to pay for them," Meltraus added before he screwed the pommel onto a now-finished iron sword.
Taiga just waved it off. "It's fine, I have gold to spare."
A lot. You didn't reach level eighty without having a lot. She had enough to buy the best armor in the city! Sure, she'd be dead broke after that, but it was enough! That's what mattered.
"I've been your practice dummy longer than anyone else, or at least enough to get a grip on what kind of blade would be best," Shirou added. Grabbing a tong and a few ingots. Oh, they'd make a low-level sword, but if she spoke up now it'd be awkward… wait.
"Shirou," Taiga asked. "I forgot to ask, but what level is your blacksmith subclass?"
He turned to her before even heating the ingot. "Forty, why?"
Eh? He was nearly halfway done with the subclass? In this amount of time? Sure, power-leveling a class could be done, she did it with her own production class before she switched to Duelist a week before they arrived in this world, but isn't that too fast?
"You've been making iron daggers this whole time?" Taiga added, knowing that iron daggers gave the least amount of experience for leveling the subclass. There were a few of her grandpa's employees that played the game just to try and give her free stuff, which she usually declined. Usually. The five-percent mount movement speed item was too good to pass up. "How did you reach level forty with just those?"
Shirou just shrugged and heated the ingot. "I don't know. It just became this high. Maybe it's my affinity for swords."
Affinity… yeah, when Taiga got the quick explanation about origins and what Shirou's was, she didn't realize it'd have this much of an effect.
Her little brother saw himself as a sword, or something close to it. She really didn't know what to think about that. Oh yeah, he was broken too at least according to Tohsaka, which was something.
He had two different ingots on top of each other, super-heated by the forge. He hammered it until they were as flat as a regular ingot but nearly twice as wide. He nearly cut it in half, but that was just to help fold the thing outward. He threw dust in between before he held it back in the forge to reheat.
Or at least, that's what it looked like. Taiga had zero ideas about what was going on, but he was doing, whatever it was he did, several times in a loop. Folding it in with itself and throwing some weird dust or powder in between the cracks.
Taiga just blinked.
At least this was a nice distraction to her previous thoughts.
Shirou paused for a bit and focused on the ingot. He nodded to himself before he hammered it again, but much harder. He was stretching the blade out, by the looks of it. Soon enough, it looked as long as her own Katana… hang on.
That wasn't as long as her Katana, her's was shorter. So why was he…?
"… Torashinai was about this long?" he muttered to himself. "The weight will be off if I don't shave it off later. Where's the oil treatment box?"
As Shirou left the blade, keeping it at an angle so it doesn't droop while it cooled down, to reach for a box on the shelf. Meltraus looked over and subsequently widened his eyes. "Boy! Back away!"
"Huh?" Taiga could only let out.
It happened quickly.
Meltraus stepped in and tossed her incomplete blade back, watching as the metal warped and bent. She was about to shout about how it was ruined but noticed how the blade kept glowing.
Until suddenly, it burst.
Shards flew everywhere. Taiga saw them and moved to try to shield herself with her gauntlets.
A shield suddenly appeared, the attendant from earlier having grabbed one large enough to block them all from harm. The shards impacted it tumbled to the dirt, losing the heat stored within and becoming brittle pieces of black iron.
Once the excitement died down, Taiga let out an audible gulp.
"What," Taiga muttered. "I… are swords supposed to explode like that?"
"When a blacksmith's level isn't high enough, the resulting blade breaks," Meltraus sternly berated. "The higher the level of blade attempted, the more volatile the resulting break will be."
"Eh, really? That's how it works!?" Taiga blurted out. "That's normal!?"
"Boy, what did you even try and make?" He continued without paying heed to her. "Most failures end up falling to pieces. Just falling. This exploded into pieces."
"Level?" Shirou muttered once Melhia put away the shield. "Ah, right. Most of the daggers and swords we made were always level ten or lower."
What did Shirou even try and make?
"I… think it was higher than my own level," Shirou admitted. "But I don't know how high it was. I was just trying to make Torashinai, but as a Katana."
Taiga felt pride swell up from within her, but bottled it for now. This wasn't the time and place for that. She eyed Meltraus walking over to the remaining pieces, picking up the largest one that still looked like a blade. It looked more like a malformed Tanto now, or a mini-Katana.
"This…" the old grandmaster muttered as his brow furrowed. "Boy, clean up this mess."
Unable to argue, Shirou went to do just that. "I'll help out," Taiga added. She felt bad. All this happened from her request, even if she had no idea why.
She looked at another broken shard before throwing it into an ingot mold, which Shirou used as a makeshift basket. He was probably going to reform it into an ingot later too.
"Was this really because my level wasn't high enough…?" Shirou muttered.
"D-Don't worry about it, Shirou!" Taiga said with a smile. "This was just a minor setback. When you get a higher level, we can just try again!"
She put up a strong front for him. A smile so that he wouldn't worry and simply relax to enjoy the moment, just like she had always done.
… These days, that was all she could seem to do, it would seem.
The tavern was loud with cheer.
Even though night had fallen, the Landers decided now was the time to party. It was the end of a week, the end of many harvests, and a day for them all to rest.
Well, some would rest. The ones who had jobs to oversee the city walls would continue off into the night. Shame, Halfas thought. They could've been merry with the rest of them.
Deep within the heart of the Lander district, many fellow people of the land gathered to make merry, in a place where adventurers dare not enter.
As divisive as the thought was, even if Halfas liked Adventurers, they weren't the shining examples of heroism that he once thought of them as. Even when they were nothing but emotionless puppets working to please them, Halfas truly believed that they were here to protect them.
And then, the May incident happened.
Last month, adventurers spontaneously developed personalities and spoke with fluency previously thought impossible.
Halfas saw it as something to be rejoicing over! Finally, they'd be able to talk with their protectors and learn about them!
However, their protectors drowned in despair. Until recently, Halfas didn't know why. The Arcadia girl from the capital, Ferlna if he remembered correctly, was there to explain what she had learned, what she knew, and what she wanted them all to achieve.
It was an experience Halfas would not forget anytime soon, perhaps even when he entered his two-hundredth year, he would not forget. A young, strapping elf of ninety like himself was quite desirable if he recalled.
The tavern door opened and closed, yet nobody stopped their merriment.
Only Halfas did, raising a mischievous brow at his new neighbor.
"Fancy meeting you here, old friend~" he drawled, soon downing a mug of ale with little issue. He was an elf, but he was not a light-weight by any measure~.
"How's your end of the city?" his neighbor said, cutting straight to business.
"Not even time for a little chat, Meltraus?" he teased. "I wonder if young Melhia misses me?"
"The day she misses you will be the day my arms fail me," he shot back, and wasn't that a scary thought? Even in his age, the old human was far stronger than many of his species. "Don't change the subject. How's your end?"
Halfas' teasing smile faded and apathy took his place.
"Same as every other district. Adventurers are causing ruckuses, ignoring their fellow men around them. Why I've seen some scare children away," he replied. "Honestly, the more I look at our former protectors, the more I see the desperate children that young Ferlna spoke of."
"How long until…"
"The end of the month, perhaps earlier," the young elf replied. "With how the people of the other districts act… they grow agitated. It is only in your district that they are amicable. Lucky, aren't we?"
Meltraus grunted in irritation. Oh? He's particularly touchy today, isn't he? "Did something happen today?" Halfas asked.
He snorted. "Something. That'd describe it."
Okay… something was unquestionably wrong.
"Meltraus, this is serious, isn't it?"
"The smith within me says so," he muttered passively, something that he never did. Meltraus? The old stern smith that opened up his emotions to nobody? Him, of all emotions, passive? "Something…" he rumbled once more. "… yes, that's all I can use to describe it."
He grabbed a mug, which the bartender wordlessly handed over. Meltraus would pay his tab, he always did.
"The boy failed to make a blade," he finally said.
"Not surprising, we all meet failure eventually," Halfas shrugged. "You failed your first mastery test, and I fail all the time! No reason to be so befuddled, now is it?"
Wordlessly, Meltraus reached from beside him – a bag he carried when he entered – and placed it on the table beside him. Without even needing a prompt, Halfas reached over and took it.
Whatever was causing his dear old friend, and he certainly meant old, to meander about in confusion was inside the bag. Halfas only felt around before he reached the steel fragment.
A single glance at it and Halfas frowned.
He never frowned, not on a festive night like this.
Slowly, all background noise faded from his notice, as it had likely faded for Meltraus the second he saw it.
"This is no normal blade," Halfas concluded.
Halfas was a blacksmith in name alone. He knew what a good blade was when he saw it even when his hands were clumsier than a drunken dwarf. He had a better eye than even most of the craftsmen race.
"This failed?" Halfas asked, even if merely to confirm.
At the old master's nod, Halfas sighed as he gently pushed the fragment back where he found it.
He could tell the boy was not ready. The blade, he had only barely attempted to make, was not ready. This was something they both knew, but from a cursory glance, any master worth their skill could tell what coursed under the blade.
A human could use magic, an elf was sensitive to it, and the boy could use it on his blades.
Perhaps the boy tried to use his spell on the still formed sword, but it failed. Perhaps he hadn't used any and this was simply the result of his skill, limited by the levels that all life on Theldesia were blessed by.
Whatever the case, the broken fragment was news.
Even as it withered away into nothing but a clump of failed metallurgy, Halfas could feel the 'potential' slowly fade away.
With time, that adventurer, Emiya Shirou, would be capable of a great many things. Surpass Meltraus? Perhaps in a year. Less, if he was diligent. That wasn't their main concern.
What the young smith could make… something that was only spoken of in myth. Myths from when his father was but a child in his grandmother's womb.
That 'something' could start wars, as it had between adventurers long ago. They fought over one of these items, and the Landers at the time could only whisper about the lengths the immortals would go through to obtain them.
The young elf sighed deeply and downed one more mug.
After all, it wasn't every day you'd find a blacksmith with the potential to craft a Phantasmal-class item.
A/N: Not late, for once.
Thanks again to my beta for helping and pointing out flaws in the chapter and oversights I made. It really helped.
Basically, I'm juggling lots of shit. I only managed to find time to write because this was my semester break. My time management is shit, mostly because I'm still playing three gacha games, got semi-back into DOTA 2 even when I dropped it a year ago, tried Code Vein for the customizer alone but discovered I'm dog-shit at playing it, and go and farm the new frame 'Grendel' in Warframe.
Now onto something related to the story. Alchemy scene was basically almost entirely BS, but considering we know zero percent of what comprises the EXP potions and how alchemy is performed in Elder Tale other than selecting possibly ingredients and clicking 'create'. This was just my extremely fantastical spin on it.
Aight, not much else I wanna say. As usual, leave a review when you notice an error or PM me if you have a question. I'll try and answer whatever I can, but I kind of want to enjoy the free time I have this semester break.
Although, if you ask for me to update, remember this. I only update this story on EVEN numbered months, so I can update my other story on ODD numbered months. This is what I do, and what I've been doing for the past year. Just a reminder.
That, and I got this as a PM:
"Hello!, Im young sexy cute single girl! I like video games and manga^^Im looking for a guy to have some fun with. If u want to join me google AGRIPALITA"
Lmao, scam pepega. If I wanted to beat my meat I'd open up nhentai lmao.
Until next time,
Kappa.
