Chapter Six "Adventuring"

After leaving E-Rantel, the sun was at its zenith, and the Shirou and the Sword of Darkness could see a vast stretch of dense and primeval dark green forest in the distance. The thick tree trunks stood tall, while their leafy branches spread wide. Because light could not penetrate the depths of the forest, there was a feeling that they would be swallowed by the blackness. The gaps between the trees looked like a gaping maw waiting for prey to throw themselves into it.

Shirou was the only one out of the group that wasn't on edge for even the slightest sign of danger. Wild animals like wolves and bears were no threat to him. So too were the monsters that were normally seen around E-Rantel like goblins, orcs and ogres. Only something near the strength of a Servant or something similar had any chance to take him out.

"Emiya-san, you seem to be too relaxed…" Peter said in a very uncomfortable tone at how carefree Shirou seemed. "This stretch is a dangerous area."

"It'll be fine, don't worry," said Shirou in a confident tone that had been intended to reassure Peter, but it instead he seemed more concerned.

For the next several minutes, Shirou and the Sword of Darkness would continue to chat with each other with Shirou trying to make his comrades more relaxed and Peter trying to do the opposite with Shirou. Everyone continued to chat as they progressed forward, under the blazing sun that tanned the skin. Their boots were covered in the juices of trampled grass and smelled of plants.

As he watched everyone wiping their sweat, Shirou was extremely grateful for his clothes. His armor was made to not just to protect him from normal weapons like swords or bullets. It had also been created to resist weapons that also used temperature as a means of harm.

"Movement," Shirou said as he sensed something and he pointed in the general direction of where he sensed the movement from.

The Sword of Darkness readied themselves with weapons drawn, ready for a fight.

"Do you see anything?" Peter asked.

Shirou shook his head. The foliage of the forest blocked his sight, but he could easily resolve that issue. The first and most simple method was to jump up. The height would allow see past the foliage. He also knew several other methods, but Shirou reserved the need to do such a thing. Afterall, the reason why he was pretending to be a adventurer was to probe the abilities of the New World.

"What should we do?" Dyne asked.

"Fighting here is disadvantageous. The trees and foliage will block our vision to see if there are more attackers or anyone moving to attack us from the flank. We retreat to the plains. There we will have clear vision and not be worried either being ambushed by more enemies or flanked." Peter replied. "We shouldn't force our way in. If they don't leave the forest, we'll leave them alone."

"You heard, Peter! Let's retreat to the plains!" Dyne shouted to his comrades.

As they discussed their next move, there were movements in the forest, and then monsters slowly revealed themselves. There were fifteen creatures that were the size of children, surrounding six huge creatures.

The first group were the demihumans called Goblins.

Their twisted faces had flattened noses, while two fangs thrust forth from their ravening maws. Their skin was a bright brown, while their filthy, matted black hair looked like it had been styled by wax. They wore tattered clothes, which were a burnt sienna, though it was unknown whether it was dyed that color or stained that way by dirt. On top of that, they had fashioned tanned animal hides into a crude form of armor. Each held a wooden club in one hand and a small shield in the other. They were evil-looking monsters, born of the mating of human and apes.

The less numerous creatures were huge, roughly two hundred fifty to three hundred centimeters in height. Lower jaws jutted out from their chins. Heavily muscled arms as thick as tree trunks nearly dragged their hands on the ground due to their hunchbacked stance. They used logs as clubs, and wore animal skins around their waists. Tanned brown skin was covered in warts, while their muscular chests and bellies looked quite striking. At a glance, they looked to be very strong, and they resembled shaven, distorted chimpanzees. They were demihumans known as Ogres.

Almost all of them seemed to carry tattered bags. The monsters watched the adventurers warily as they advanced onto the grassy plains. They might have been some distance away, but there was an unmistakable hostility on their ugly faces.

"...There's quite a number of them. Looks like we can't avoid a fight."

"Mm, that's right. goblins and ogres are the kind who'll attack once they outnumber their opponents. Or rather, I should say that intelligent beings would probably not judge their opponents' strength simply by their numbers."

Shirou was half-listening to what was being said by the Sword of Darkness. Instead, he was more focused on the monsters themselves. This would be his first time fighting a non-human enemy. From experience he had honed from Earth as an Enforcer of the Mage's Association, Shirou deduced that the monsters were not a threat to him, but he didn't how dangerous they were for the normal human.

"Emiya-san?" Peter asked.

"I was listening this whole time. Retreat is not what I recommend. We don't know if the monsters before us operate by themselves or a group. If we were to retreat then they might contact their group and make our task of monster extermination in this area more difficult." Shirou replied.

"Fighting the monsters is also not wise. Fifteen goblins and six ogres are too much for us," said Dyne.

"Trace On," Shirou chanted, rather loudly.

There was rather no need to chant. He had long passed the need to need to chant that incantation when he used Tracing. When the Sword of Darkness looked at him in surprise, that was when his chanting served its purpose.

"You're a mage, Emiya-san?" Ninya asked in surprise, as he was the most surprised out of his group given that Shirou had looked like a warrior given his appearance.

"I am," Shirou said smugly before charging at the monsters.

The goblins and ogres felt that they were being looked down upon. They charged at Shirou in response with weapons drawn. The ogres were to first to reach Shirou as they were stronger and had longer strides because of their height. As they closed in on him, the ogres raised their clubs.

Kanshou and Bakuya were average in length when compared to most swords, but when compared to the massive clubs fashioned out of tree trunks that the ogres were using, they might have looked like a knife being brought into a swordfight. Given that Kanshou and Bakuya were vastly outmatched in the reach department, a normal person would've thought that Shirou would've been hit first before he could do anything to the ogres.

The onlookers had two opposing reactions. The adventurers watched in horror as they saw one of their comrades naively think he could take on ogres by himself and die as a result of his overconfidence. The goblins watched in morbid fascination at the murder of the human. What none onlookers was to see Shirou vanish in a blur. Only an afterimage of where Shirou had been last been seen and a gleam of reflected light could be seen. What they saw next made everyone staring and gaping in shock.

The ogre slid off and fell wetly to the ground, leaving its motionless lower body still standing. Yet, the spray of blood and organs and the vile stench that hung in the air proved that this was not an illusion. It had been cut diagonally in half. It was slain in a single blow. Not even an Ogre's mighty physique could save it from the fate of being cut in two. The scene didn't just include the death on a single ogre. All six ogres were dispatched in a similar fashion, but unlike the first ogre, they cut horizontally, some had been cut vertically and anything in between the two.

"...Amazing." Someone muttered those words, which carried clearly across the silent battlefield.

"...Absolutely incredible. This is beyond mithril or… no, could he be adamantium class adventurer?"

Cleaving a foe into two parts. That was not an impossible feat of arms. There were various factors that made the unbelievable act possible. The physical strength needed for the act was many times beyond that of a normal human can achieve. Swords skills of the highest caliber could only made such a clean cut possible. The swords used also had to incredible sharp and strong to be able to cut and survive the force applied to it.

It was not what made the factors of the unbelievable act what shocked the watching adventurers and goblins the most. What shocked them the most was that it was not just one ogre that had been killed so effortless, but six. The fact that Shirou had dispatched six ogres so effortless showed that it hadn't been a miracle, but Shirou was so capable that he could do it again, several more times if need be that shocked the adventurers and goblins the most.

In the face of such an unbelievable sight, the goblins unconsciously stopped moving. Some of the goblins were still able to maintain the unconscious thought to slow down and stare at Shirou, but the other goblins were so shocked that their feet just stopped moving. They either tripped over or their body were dragged along the ground until their body's momentum came became zero. The goblins began backing off with looks of fear on their faces. Shirou strode forth, shrinking the distance between himself and the goblins.

"What's wrong? Not coming?' Shirou asked. His casual, relaxed words resounded through the battlefield. These simple words filled the goblins with fear. After all, they had seen with their own eyes the vast disparity between their own power and Shirou's. "…Then, as for the rest of you…"

Shirou stepped forward. The ugly faces of the goblins froze, and they retreated even faster.

"Run away! Run away!" The Goblins, who had watched this scene in stunned silence, began fleeing as they screamed in terror.

A devilish smirk grew on Shirou's face. A face that only the Peter and his team saw as the goblins were busy running for their lives without looking back. Then Shirou pointed his hand at the fleeing like it was a gun.

"Bang!" Shirou laughed.

What happened defied what the Sword of Darkness' expectations. The fleeing goblins seemingly vanished. Not vanish like they were teleported away, but engulfed in a large, fiery explosion that appeared and disappeared just as quickly. It was like the explosion swallowed the goblins. The adventurers would've thought what they had seen had been all an illusion if crater and burning grass wasn't all that was a reminder that the fleeing goblins and explosion.

"So powerful and fast… There was no incantation too…" Ninya said in awe as he witnessed such a powerful magic.

"Was that a sword…? That I swore…" Dyne asked as rubbed his eyes as if was ensure if his vision had witnessed something correctly.

"Yea, it was definitely a sword… instead of a ball of fire… it was a sword of all things…" Lukrut confirmed as he was a ranger and his vision was the best out of his team.

"Emiya-san! What was that?!" Peter shouted in amazement as he rushed over to Shirou. "Why didn't you demand more vehemently to be tested by an official of the guild? If you had and forced them to test your abilities then you wouldn't have been forced to become a lowly copper-class adventurer!"

"If money and fame had been my goal then I would've done that, but my goals are not those. The reason I became an adventurer was to see how strong, skilled and experienced people are in these lands," Shirou explained as he turned to face the Sword of Darkness. "This was a demonstration of my abilities, given that showing you was faster than explaining in words."

"Please teach me, Emiya-sensei!" Ninya shouted as he threw himself at Shirou in a hug.

"Ninya!" Dyne and Lukrut shouted in a scolding tone.

"No, it's fine," said Shirou. "In fact, I might as well teach everyone else a thing or two."

- O -

Shirou and the Sword of Darkness began to set up camp. Although it was some time from dusk, the adventurers were already setting up camp. The wooden poles handed to Shirou and he erected them around the campsite. The poles went into four points around the campsite, and then thin, blackened ropes were tied around the poles, forming a perimeter. Finally, he tied a knot in one of the ropes and pulled it over to the tents, where they attached a big bell to it.

Primitive, but effective, Shirou thought impressed as he stepped back to observe the alarm system, which would let them know if anything was trying to creep upon the camp while the adventurers slept, that had been set up.

He cast his thoughts aside and calmly returned to his work. After hammering the four wooden poles into the ground, he tied the rope around them and then raised the tent over it.

"Thanks for your hard work," said Lukrut in a grateful tone.

"You, too," replied Shirou as he looked at all the food that Lukrut had cooked for everyone.

For a moment, Shirou was alarmed that a wave of magical energy washed over him until he recognized the presence of the magical energy. Shirou turned to see that Ninya, the mage of the Sword of Darkness, was pacing about the surroundings, incanting a spell as he went. He recognized what was being done as a fairly simple Bounded Field that any mage on Earth would learn began to manifest itself. A Bounded Field that would warn of any intruders.

As Ninya realised Shirou was staring at himself, he smiled and drew closer to Shirou.

"Ah, there's no need to watch me so intently. It must be pretty boring, right?" Ninya asked.

"I was just curious about your magical skills outside of combat, Ninya-san." Shirou replied.

"I'm probably far below Emiya-san… aren't I?" Ninya looked up at Shirou with unsure look.

"Kind of…" Shirou replied awkwardly as he didn't want to damage Ninya's already fragile confidence in his own magical abilities after seeing what Shirou was capable off.

"You're so skilled, Emiya-san. As a mage, swordsman and archer." Lukrut chimed in.

"Mm. Emiya-san, I think you have that talent. You're different from other people… kind of like you're not human at all…" Ninya said with a serious face.

"...Is that so? I am strong. I agree with that, but what strong am I compared to others in these lands?" Shirou asked as he recalled the martial prowess that Gazef Stronoff had displayed.

"It's just that after seeing you fight, you're clearly beyond the realm of humanity. Taking out an Ogre in one blow… No human is capable of that…" Lukrut commented.

"Lukrut has a point. A hero is someone who surpasses the realm of human possibility. I get that feeling from you too." Ninya agreed.

Shirou resisted the urge to laugh, but he did so internally. He certainly didn't surpass of human possibility. He was within it. Countless heroes, a great majority of their legends forgotten for except the a few like Hercules, had reached what was outside the realm of human ability, but that wasn't true. They were the pinnacle of human ability, not outside human possibility or there would be no such thing as Heroic Spirits. If any Heroic Spirit within the Throne of Heroes heard what Lukrut and Ninya thought about heroes, they would be insulted that they greatly underestimated humanity.

"Who knows? I might be a hero somewhere far away?" Shirou said in a half-serious and joking tone.

"You wish," said Lukrut as he laughed.

"I think he might be telling the truth…" Ninya said in a very serious tone. "Are you telling the truth… Emiya-san?"

Ninya's completely unexpected response made Shirou blink. When he looked at Ninya, he looked to see if Ninya responded that way because he was that sharp to come to that conclusion or if it had been purely a fluke. Shirou found Ninya's eyes shining with intelligence and concluded the reason why Ninya's friend had described at a genius to laugh magic at twice the rate it took for other mages was because of his intelligence.

"Wait… are you serious…?" Lukrut asked as he looked at Ninya, who nodded his head. "Now that I think about, Emiya-san is too skilled to be just any normal human. After we killed that first group of goblins and ogres, Emiya-san did stand in the back and gave us advise on how to become better while we hunted down monsters. Only a hero could be so talented to be so skilled in so many different fields of combat."

"You seem to know about magic," said Ninya. "I think my master would be eager to meet such a skilled and experienced mage such as yourself."

"Hmmhmmm…" Shirou hummed as he thought. "I actually wish to meet this master of yours. If it hasn't become obvious, I come from faraway lands. I became an adventurer to learn new things of these new and foreign lands that I find myself in. I have many questions related to magic practiced in these lands to ask to your master."

"Master would be honored. He is a scholar of the arcane arts unlike me, who uses magic for practical applications. I have no doubt in my mind that my Master will interrogate you about your knowledge of magic… heeheee…" Ninya laughed.

"Oi~ sorry to interrupt your conversation, but dinner's ready. Do you mind calling those three back here?" Lukrut called out.

"Let me go, Emiya-san." Ninya commented as he went to fetch his comrades that were still pitching up their tents.

When the group gathered for dinner the sun touched the horizon and the group had their dinner against the ruby radiance of its dying light. Dinner that was thick stew flavoured with bacon bits, as well as toasted bread, dried figs, walnuts, and other nuts.

"Mauk-san," Shirou called to Peter. "I recall your team name is Swords of Darkness, but I don't see a black blade among you…?"

On the topic of the group's weapons, Peter used a longsword with an ordinary enchantment, Lukrut favored the bow and arrow, Dyne used a mace, and Ninya used a staff. Peter's and Lukrut's backup shortsword were both blades, but neither of them had a color that was anywhere close to dark.

"Ah, so it's that kind of question." Lukrut smiled bitterly, as though someone had brought up an embarrassing memory. Ninya's face flushed bright red, a distinctly different color from the fire's glow.

"They're the swords of Ninya's dreams."

"Come on, that's enough, I was just being childish."

"That's nothing to feel bad about! It's important to have a great dream!"

"Give me a break Dyne, I'm serious."

Good-natured laughter accompanied Ninya's teasing by the other adventurers. Ninya, on the other hand, was so embarrassed that he was looking for a hole to crawl into. It would seem the name, Swords of Darkness, contained a secret that only its members knew.

"Well, the name 'Swords of Darkness' refers to the swords borne by one of the Thirteen Heroes." The smiling Peter stopped there, seemingly unwilling to go any further.

"What are they?" Shirou asked curiously.

"Emiya-san, you didn't know? …Well, it's not as though it's unforgivable. He was one of the Thirteen Heroes, but because people thought he had demonic ancestry, he ended up being more of an anti-hero instead. Therefore, his origins were covered up in the saga of the Thirteen Heroes… though I've heard that he was a very powerful person." Peter asked.

"The Swords of Darkness belonged to the man known as 'Black Knight.' It was one of the four swords he possessed. There was the demonic blade Kilineyram, which could emit dark energy, the blade of rot, Crocdabal, which inflicted wounds that would not heal, the fatal blade Sfeiz, which could kill with the merest scratch, as well as the evil blade Hyumilis, whose powers are unknown." Dyne explained.

Shirou became more curious about the Swords of Darkness that was being described to him. They sounded like Noble Phantasms, given that they were legendary weapons of a hero. A hero that had likely become a Heroic Spirit given how famous his legend was by the way the adventurers spoke about the Black Knight. After hearing the descriptions of the Sword of Darkness, Shirou looked into Unlimited Blade Works to see if he had any Mystic Codes or Noble Phantasms with the same or similar abilities as the Swords of Darkness. He was not surprised to find many weapons with the same or similar properties given that he had countless weapons.

The rest of the group continued talking. Their conversation radiating an air of camaraderie. Shirou remained silent most the time and only answered when questioned as observed the adventurers chatting happily in the campfire's light. They seemed very close to each other, but that was only to be expected of a group of comrades who trod the edge of life and death in each other's company.

His observation of the adventurer team, the Sword of Darkness, would've continued hadn't it been for his instincts telling him that he was in danger. His body reacted faster than his mind could. Shirou jumped back and when his mind was able to catch up to his actions he was about to shout out to the adventurers that they was danger. Before his mouth could open, Shirou was momentarily blinded by something bright.

Where there had once been camp with adventurers, there was nothing. Only long, narrow ditch that formed from the east and continued to the west. The size of the ditch becoming smaller the further it went to the west as if the thing that created the ditch was become weaker the further it travelled and unable to do anything but create a smaller the further it went.

"That was one ridiculously powerful magic spell…" Shirou muttered as he saw the lance of light that created the ditch to continue its path westward.

Shirou quickly turned his attention away from the lance of light that was disappearing into the distance and looked at where the Team Sword of Darkness once stood. Anger and sadness welled up. Anger at the one responsible for their deaths and sadness at the deaths of the ones that he had just started to become friends with. Those emotions quickly died as he had witnessed the deaths of too many that he had become somewhat numb to the deaths of humans. The only thing he could do now was to avenge the Team Sword of Darkness and stop whoever was responsible for their deaths from killing others.

Looking at the direction of where the lance of light had come from, Shirou saw figures in the distance moving around in rapid speed.

Shirou had to use Reinforcement on his eyes as the figures were several kilometers away and beyond what his incredible sharp, natural eyesight. There he saw ten humans. They were fighting a small girl.

To describe what the humans were fighting as small girl was grossly incorrect. She wasn't even human. He recognized her eyes immediately. Crimson eyes were not a special thing as many species commonly shared it, but the look he saw was something that only one group of species possessed. The creatures that descended from Type Moon and their creations. True Ancestors and their creations, Dead Apostles or more commonly known as vampires.

The humans were fighting beyond the standards of normal humans. They had the physical abilities that was reaching what low-class Servant with forgotten legends would possess. A formidable amount of power that each individual would be able to slaughter hundreds of humans soldiers or monsters singlehanded. Together the humans could slaughter thousands, but despite the incredible amount of power the humans possessed they were hardpressed in their fight against the vampire girl.

It was obvious what Shirou had to do.

"Gae Bolg!"

What do you guys think? Hope you guys enjoyed it. Please leave your comments and criticism on the reviews. The more detailed the better, will allow me to see my flaws and fix them.

Follow and Favorite. I am encouraged to write by the number of Follows and Favourites so please tag this story!

Oh and check my other fanfics.

Leona-do