Hello! I'm back with a new chapter.
Thank you so much for the reviews! I'm amazed at how many followers I got for the first chapter.
I apologize for the delay, you have to align the events well to give the right introduction to the story. I intend to create a very broad storyline with our protagonist who will interact with a large number of characters, showing all their good and bad facets.
His new powers will be shown little by little, if they will be similar to the previous ones this is for me to know and for you to discover. ;)
Happy reading everyone.
Disclaimer: the To aru majutsu no index series is owned by Kamachi Kazuma and the Fate series is owned by Type-Moon.
Starting life in a new world
It had been four years since he had been reborn into this new life. Living a life from scratch with a teenager's mind isn't exactly an experience everyone could claim to have gone through. And it can have both positive and negative sides, especially negative ones when you are in the early years of life still unable to be self-sufficient.
Going back through the stages of breastfeeding, defecating in a diaper and learning to walk again was by far the most humiliating and mortifying experience the reincarnated esper had ever experienced, and he was completely powerless to prevent it.
Doing things like that for so long had severely tested his pride, so much so that he could feel his dignity being shattered. Thank goodness no one from his old life was here and would have seen such a thing, otherwise he would never have recovered from such humiliation.
At the moment, he was leaning against a balcony of the Einzbern estate while looking at the snowy landscape outside the castle, in the middle of the snowy forest he could see two figures side by side, a black-haired man playing with a white-haired girl. The sight of his father and sister of him only highlighted the difference between his new and old family.
The thought of his old life, made him a little sad, as there was a strong chance that he would never see the people of his old family again.
The reason?
In the short time he lived he discovered a long series of important details.
The most important information of all was that this was no longer his world.
The ex esper was reborn in a new world, similar but at the same time different from the previous one. And although he did not yet know all the details, he could already distinguish some fundamental differences.
First of all, supernatural power still existed, but it functioned according to different laws and was much inferior in quality and quantity than at home.
He did not consider himself a genius of magic and magical organizations, but in his previous life he had learned enough to know that there was something fundamentally different.
After his various interactions with magic, with Leivinia Birdway, Aleister, and the contract with Qlipha puzzle 545, he had developed a fairly good understanding of magic and a natural sensitivity to environmental mana. In his world, magic was in abundance and you could feel it even in the air you breathed; in this world, however, magic was scarce, like a previously abundant resource but which is now dwindling like an oil field that was running out little by little.
He did not notice this detail until he was two years old and his body was physically developed enough to perceive the world around him through his senses.
Speaking of magic, it seemed that here the wizards (or the magus as they were called), made use of the so-called magical circuits to practice magic or better magecraft as opposed to the use of the idol theory.
The white-haired boy looked at his hand as bright red lines appeared on it. He no longer had his esper powers, now he only possessed these magic circuits that made him a magus. He was no longer the esper Accelerator, now he was just Homura von Einzbern, or Homura Emiya von Einzbern if he also inherited his father's surname.
The science boy turned magic boy. He seemed almost comical.
Also, according to a brief description from his parents, magecraft and magic were two completely separate categories. Magecraft was referring to the supernatural phenomena practiced by most magus and which could be replicated by modern science, while True Magic was what was considered impossible to replicate by modern means and is considered a true miracle that all magus aim to achieve but only very few have succeeded.
Homura was reborn in a family of German magicians called Einzbern. An elite magus family dedicated to the study of alchemy, a powerful and influential clan that has maintained a pure lineage for centuries, which is why everyone in this family had white hair and red eyes, including his mother.
The thing that bothered him a lot, though, was why the Einzbern had maintained a pure lineage for so long. Apparently the real human Einzberns had long since disappeared and had left their work and legacy to their creations, the homunculus - humans artificially created using the magic and blood of the original Einzberns. And in simpler words with scientific terms ... they were clones.
Just like his mother.
And by extension himself who was half homunculus.
Tch.
The child cursed mentally.
Fuck! He knew it! It must have been the fucking cosmic karma for the things he had done in the previous life!
It sounded so damn ironic, this probably explained the reason for his reincarnation, it seemed that the universe was trying to fuck him again.
Despite these annoying elements there were still some positives in this life.
Suddenly Homura felt something soft covering his eyes and blocking his view.
In this regard...
"Guess who I am?" said a velvety, angelic voice.
"You are mom." the boy said nonchalantly.
"Exactly!" she replied cheerfully removing her hands from her son's eyes.
The child turned and looked at his mother's face.
Irisviel von Einzbern was a very beautiful woman, with long snow-white hair, a face as pale as porcelain, and red eyes. A typical trait of the Einzbern homunculi, which he and his sister had inherited, an unusual coincidence that he had retained most of the features of his previous life.
Most of the artificial humans he had dealt with as both Accelerator and Homura were people with dull personalities, her mother being one of the exceptions. On the contrary, she had an overly emotional and cheerful personality, with an aura of positivity and kindness coming out of every pore. A trait that his sister had also inherited, who looked like a miniature copy of their mother. His twin was pretty much the opposite of him in terms of personality, he thought wryly.
"What were you doing here Homura-chan?" Irisviel asked with a smile.
Homura frowned slightly at her nickname, but she didn't show it.
"Nothing mom, I was just looking at the snowy landscape for a while and I also looked dad and Illya playing."
"Do you want to go play with them?" she asked.
"I don't really feel like it, I was just taking a breath of fresh air before going back to reading in my room." he replied. In fact, he had developed a little hobby of reading in this life, as for the first time in a long time there were quite a few things he didn't know and he wanted to learn.
His parents were surprised that he had learned to speak so quickly and fluently in both German and Japanese. He had obviously been careful not to immediately give the impression that he was more mature than his infant body showed, otherwise his parents and other adults around him would have become suspicious.
So he tried to play his physical age a little bit showing hints of above average intelligence from time to time when his mother or father opened a book to him and read him a story or a book about the outside world, just to learn the same words written in books.
And they considered him as simply an intelligent child.
He suddenly felt her mother wrap her arms around his waist and lift him off the ground holding him tightly to her with his cheek rubbing with hers.
"My Homura-chan is so smart, so studious and intellectual, I really raised a little genius!" she said gleefully.
She was hugging him tightly and too fondly, and he could only indulge her like any helpless four-year-old (albeit reluctantly), longing for the days when he was the all-powerful Accelerator and no one could force him to do anything.
His mother's constant cuddling was unbearable and he could only blush embarrassed. And even though they were alone, he swore he heard Misaka Worst and other people laugh uncontrollably at him from another dimension.
He had to get out of this hell.
"Mom, will you put me down please?"
In response, his mother looked at him with a pout.
"Homura, don't tell me you don't want to be with your mom anymore. Don't tell me you already want to be a big boy and leave your mom sad and alone." she said with false drama.
Homura could only sigh mentally, it was all obviously a play, but rejecting her directly would have offended her in one way or another and the idea of doing so left a bad taste on his mouth.
"No Mom, I just want to go back to reading, I really like the books that you and Dad have shown me. Including those about the outside world and about magic." he said in the kindest way possible. God, it was embarrassing to pretend that age. But it was a small price to pay to hope for a quiet life and not upset his parents. Especially her mother, the woman was too pure and innocent to ever have seen the darkness of the world, and she didn't deserve her peace of mind to be compromised by her son's bad temper.
She surprised him when she was kind and innocent, despite the same facial features as her, he barely believed they were mother and child.
Irisviel is a wonderful mother and she is more than I deserve.
Her mother seemed lost in thought as if she were considering something.
She suddenly smiled.
"I have an idea! I could come with you and personally teach you the family arts. It would be so nice to do it together!" she said.
Homura thought about it for a moment. He could read a book and learn its contents in no time, but putting that knowledge into practice was very different, and considering the varied nature of magic there were still some gaps in knowledge that needed to be filled. And asking someone with more experience like his mother could be extremely helpful.
He nodded.
"Good, let's go!" the woman said with a beaming smile.
They re-entered the castle, with him still in her arms as they headed for the library.
Walking down the corridor, Homura thought back of all the less pleasant and antiquated elements of his new home.
They lived in a real castle, and although it wasn't full medieval in style, it was still very old-fashioned by the modern standards he was used to. Not only because of the appearance of the building, but also because it was almost completely devoid of technology. In his old world, wizards apparently had a certain contempt for technology and science, and in this new world it was even worse. Not only did wizards distrust technology but considered it inferior in every way to magic, posing as arrogant nobles who considered plebeians all those who made one of technological tools.
Fortunately, his father was rational enough to make full use of modern tools by properly evaluating their effectiveness, and this unconventional side of him compared to other magus led him to be labeled as a heretic by members of the Einzbern clan. Kiritsugu heatedly argued on more than one occasion with family head Jubstacheit von Einzbern to install a telephone line and basic modern equipment for him to do his job, until he obtained consent.
Inwardly Homura was grateful that his father was a man of common sense not to behave like the typical magus, they were already forced to live in an isolated area in the European Alps with almost no contact with the outside world, were it not for Kiritsugu, Homura he would believe he was reborn in a medieval era if not even in a fantasy world like a typical Japanese isekai.
Looking back on his father, he couldn't help but wonder why he interacted with this family of wizards. From his father's various interactions with the Einzberns, he could describe the relationship between the two parties at best strictly professional and formal and at worst as subtle but great contempt. He hated them, they hated him, so why did these so different people interact with each other?
The boy looked at the person next to him, and immediately understood why.
His mother. Irisviel von Einzbern.
The woman his father loved.
For love, men were willing to put up with people they hated. Even though he didn't know the details of how the two had met he knew that his mother was apparently an important member of the Einzbern family even though she had a somewhat detached relationship, one day the family needed her father for an important job and they had hired him.
On that occasion the two met and fell in love little by little, according to Irisviel, her father was much more serious at the time and she was less emotional, he taught her about the outside world and helped her to develop more emotions, and indirectly she also helped him. He thought back to the times his mother told stories to him and Illya, that his father saved her life while she was attacked by wolves and he has been by her side ever since. Even though he knew she was omitting down the details of the story to make it sound fairytale, he could tell she was being honest about what happened.
The story of a killer who becomes kind after saving the life of an artificial human being and building a family.
...
Emiya Kiritsugu is definitely my father.
"Here we are almost there. Kiritsugu would have preferred you to play some different games or read other books instead of magecraft, but if you like studying them I will not stop you. If you want to deepen your studies we could ask your grandfather ..." Irisviel was immediately interrupted by her son.
"I don't like grandpa, mom." Homura said with a touchy expression. It took a great deal of willpower to hide his true emotions.
The thought of his grandfather, the head of the Einzbern family, the old man Acht, irritated him endlessly.
To say he didn't like him was an understatement.
His grandfather was an asshole at best.
He walked around with that aura of pseudo-nobility as if he felt superior to everyone, on the surface he could show himself as refined as an old man of the upper class, but behind that mask was hiding an arrogant being with general contempt for human life.
He had lived long enough in the darkness of Academy City to know that kind of person, the same pieces of trash as the various scientists conducting twisted and repulsive experiments. Old Acht was the same, the only difference was that he hid it much better with his supposedly noble and serious attitude. An attitude that seemed shared by the rest of the clan. And that pissed him off further, believing himself to be noble when they're just murderers, the arrogance and shamelessness of it disgusted him.
And considering the creation of Homunculus (or clones) as in the Academy City, it was clear that not only were these people doing experiment that broke international law, but Acht and the rest of the clan were dangerous and amoral individuals who could pose a threat to him and his family. Despite being officially members of the Einzbern clan, he, his sister and their parents were far from out of harm's way.
If he had his old body, he could easily tear these third-rate wizards apart and convince his parents to get out of this castle and live quietly elsewhere.
Yet one thought made him hesitate, was it the right thing to do? Besides his parents and his sister, he didn't care about anyone else. Yet no member of the clan had actually done anything against them to deserve a reaction from him, and anyway, for better or for worse, he had been given a second chance in this new life. He couldn't waste it, a life without murder, no suffering and no destruction, even if he met criminals he could handle the situation better without killing anyone, he would surely make a difference.
The reincarnated magus smiled mentally.
I could swear not to kill anyone, but I certainly don't need to swear not to break the legs of idiots like old Acht, and then throw them in a prison for the rest of their lives.
"I understand, in fact the grandfather is not exactly the most pleasant person and often leaves a bad impression on others, despite his great knowledge as a magus." her mother said sympathetically.
Homura couldn't help but snort.
"Here! We have arrived!" his mother said cheerfully.
Homura slipped out of her thoughts when her mother called him, noticing that she had arrived at the library.
The Einzbern Castle library was quite remarkable, a huge room full of shelves containing countless books containing the vast secrets of thaumaturgy. Homura observed the room in its entirety, it was quite ancient but remained constantly clean and free of dust thanks to the work of the servants, and the various books carefully preserved with some form of magecraft (the magus were very serious in preserving the thaumaturgical knowledge). As a renowned and rich magus family they indeed enjoyed a vast collection of tomes, from the simplest to the most complex and archaic in nature.
"Here we are!" Irisviel said as she set him down. "You can go sit down, I'll be back in a minute."
Homura went to sit towards a central desk, despite its small size, he could easily move a chair and sit on it. Being a child had his disadvantages but he was overcoming them little by little.
He watched her mother come back with a book and a box. She placed them both on the table, he glanced at the writing on the cover of the book: Fundamentals of Thaumaturgy and Alchemy.
"Well, now let's start our first official magecraft lesson!" she said cheerfully.
Irisviel had noticed that her son was quite withdrawn and spent little time playing like his sister Illya. So she was glad she found a hobby that she and her son could do together.
"Good. First let's repeat the basics together then we'll move on to something more detailed." she said as she sat down beside him and opened the book she had taken.
She began to explain the various basic characteristics of thaumaturgy, some of which she had already told him such as the nature of magecraft and magical circuits. She explained how most magus had an average number of 20 magic circuits with an average production of about 25 units of magical energy. He said how Einzbern he and his sister were born with a very high number of high quality magical circuits and if he wanted he would learn high level magic very easily, it was good news, being able to use useful tricks in the future would be been beneficial. He wasn't that he craved power, but he couldn't afford to be helpless in the long run.
Some new things he learned were the history of magic and the difference between the age of the Gods when magic was abundant and a large number of divine spirits and ghost species roamed the world, and the age of Man which is the present age, where the magic creatures have all but disappeared and the magus rely on the magical circuits connected to their souls to replicate the thaumaturgy.
His mother also explained to him a new term of fundamental importance in the wizarding world that he would never forget for years to come: the Root.
A place beyond time and space from which souls originated and through which the magical circuits drew energy to replicate supernatural phenomena. It was also the source of all knowledge and the so-called Akashic Records, magicians worked all their lives in an attempt to reach the vortex of the root and obtain the ability to create true miracles, True Magic.
Supreme power in a mortal body? It reminds me too much of the level 6 research experiments at home.
In addition to the fact that only 5 people in human history had reached such a milestone, it further proved that these wizards were idiots who wasted their lives on an almost impossible goal. The way they raged for power reminded him of many Academy City esper and some scientists who were too obsessed with research.
Shaking his head from such thoughts Homura went back to listening to Irisviel, it was better to leave aside the comparisons with his old life for now.
"And finally, we come to the classification of the elements that a magus can use."
The young magician listened to his mother as she explained.
"The elements fall into five broad categories: earth, wind, fire, water and ether. And a mage's elemental affinity to one or more elements establishes a magician's specialization and versatility in thaumaturgy."
"How do you know what your element is, Mom?" he asked.
"Through a process called Consecration, which can be magical or a fairly simple set of tests to establish your elemental affinity. But we'll go into the details later. Now we'll just focus on general theory and a few simple spells."
Irisviel then took a couple of tablets with a pentagram on them from the box and placed a piece of bronze in the center of each.
Homura looked curiously; it would be the first time he would practice magic so he would be very careful.
"Remember Homura, the main rule of modern magecraft is the principle of equivalent exchange. To get something you always have to sacrifice something else of the same value even if you use magical energy. Same thing is true in the alchemical processes that I am about to show you, for obtaining an object requires sacrificing the same amount of material to create it." she explained.
From Homura's perspective it was like recreating a supernatural phenomenon with esper skills, bending slightly the laws of physics to achieve something but never actually breaking them. The first law of thermodynamics established that nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, matter and energy could only be transformed.
"The foundations of alchemy are the spells of structural analysis and alteration. Whether it's changing the physical properties of an object or its chemical structure, the rules are always the same."
"I hope it wasn't too complicated and I explained it well, would you like me to repeat it if you didn't understand something?" Irisviel asked worriedly. She had explained many things but she had let herself be carried away and she forgot that her son was a 4 year old boy.
"It's okay, can I know more?" Homura asked.
"Sure! Now my darling I'll show you how it's done."
Irisviel put her hands on the lump of clay, he looked at it and suddenly the lump of clay lit up and began to change shape.
Her mother moved her hands lightly as she molded the material into a different shape, eventually she formed a toy-sized clay knight.
"Here! This is a basic form of alchemy, do you want to try it?" her mother asked cheerfully.
In response, Homura put both hands on his piece of clay and concentrated on activating his circuits and taking advantage of the structural analysis. Activating a power was something he had learned from his previous life, so activating his magic circuits was easy despite the differences with his esper ability.
Analyse.
He analyzed the molecular structure of the bronze. He visualized the actual form in the mind and replaced it with the one he wanted to make.
The energy passed through his body like an electric shock and flowed towards the object.
In a few seconds a bronze knight was formed identical to the one who made his mother.
"Very good! You got it right on the first try! You're so good!" she said cheerfully as she stroked his head.
He felt a little embarrassed with his mother's displays of affection.
"Well, now I'm going to show you something a little more advanced, it's just for demonstration for what you might learn in the future, so don't worry for now you just have to observe." her mother said.
She placed her hands on the toy knight she had created and spoke a few words in ... German? Or what seemed like a more archaic version of German. Homura was proficient enough in languages to notice. Was it a spell?
A moment later the knight lit up and began to change color from brown to gray. No. It wasn't correct, it wasn't changing color, it was being transmuted into a different material.
"Finished, this is the transmutation of matter itself, I have transformed the bronze knight into an iron knight. When you are older, I will teach you how to do it." Irisviel smiled as she looked into her son's curious eyes as he watched the toy soldier.
She loved her son dearly and doing this pastime with him filled her heart with joy. He always had a shy and lonely side that led him to shut himself up in books, rarely did he participate with his sister or her parents in some family pastime. So Irisviel felt very happy to have found a way to spend time with her son that he himself appreciated. Obviously, she would only teach small things at a time in Homura, thaumaturgy was a very difficult and sometimes dangerous profession, she taught her son the basics because she knew he was smart enough to understand them.
For that reason, she would teach him alchemical spells on elemental transmutation only when he was more experienced, a child cannot be expected to easily learn how the atomic and molecular structure of the elements works after all.
She then noticed that Homura was putting his hands on his rider.
"Don't rush Homura, changing the shape of an object is one thing, but transmuting it alchemically and much more difficult, requires a strong understanding of the materials, practice, concentration, knowledge of spells and ..." before the woman could continue a small glow lights up the table.
She looked in the direction of the glow and saw that in her son's hands was now a fully ferrous toy knight.
She gaped at what her son had just done.
"Homura-chan how did you do it?" she asked, looking for an explanation for what she had just seen.
"I read some chemistry books that you and Dad gave me about the nature of the elements and I already knew the atomic structure of iron." he explained, even though it was a half truth, he knew all about science from his previous life already.
Irisviel looked at him in surprise.
"And tell me, did you do it without saying the spell?" she was quite careful, and she had not heard any words from her son's lips during the transmutation.
Could it be ... She thought.
"Ehm, no. I just imagined making an iron knight by pouring out my mana, but I didn't feel the need to cast a spell. Why was that important?" the child asked innocently having no idea what he had accomplished.
Irisviel knew it was not unheard of for a magus to perform a thaumaturgy without uttering the spell, but it only happened in three cases. The first was when a spell was so simple that it didn't have to be pronounced, but the transmutation was a medium-level spell. The second was when a magus was so well versed in a certain spell after uttering it so many times that he no longer needed to do so, and this was not the case as he had just taught his son these spells today.
And this then led to the third possibility, which considering what she had already seen in Homura only confirmed her final assessment.
Homura wasn't just smart.
He was a full-blown prodigy.
A/N: Here is the new chapter for you. What do you think of Accelerator / Homura's reaction to his new life?
Homura is experiencing a good existential complex in his homunculus/clone body. lol
I honestly always thought that Kiritsugu and Irisviel would make the ideal parents for Accelerator, they have so much in common. I thought it would be a shame not to create a scenario where this actually happened.
Irisviel really embodies the concept of the ideal and kind mother that a child would like to have, even our protagonist's heart of ice could melt with her?
Irisviel started teaching her son, however she will only teach him magecraft, not the ideology of the magus, as like her husband Kiritsugu, she has a strong moral sense and she knows what is important for the well-being of her children.
I also showed a little taste of his new powers.
For those who expected more interactions with Illya and Kiritsugu, you will see it in the next chapters.
Thanks for following.