Hello everyone, me again.
How are you all? I hope well.
This story is a rewrite of my "Fate/Heavenly Demon" story, I didn't like how I directed the story and how I wrote the story in general.
It shows my lack of experience and also the difficulties of trying to translate the story with a translator. The format of this story will try to be short for more comfort when translating and editing the chapters.
I am also in the middle of writing the third chapter of my Oregairu x Genshin impact crossover story, I will upload the chapter soon but it will take a little more time since I just started playing the game and what I know about the game comes from youtube videos explaining the history
With nothing more to say, I hope and enjoy the story.
"no thoughts" = speak
" no sound " = think
no future = memories
Fate/ Holy Sword Demon
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Fire.
It was what filled the sight of a red-haired boy.
Tar.
He was the cause of the fire.
The boy was walking through what he considered hell, the cries for help and calls for help were ignored by the boy and soon stopped abruptly.
dead.
He kept walking, many times the tar caught up with him but he kept going. The fire had no mercy and burned everything, the tar drowned everyone unfortunate that was not fast enough, the redhead's mind cracked with each step he took and the memories began to disappear.
The moment came when only the crackling of the fire was heard and nothing else.
they were all dead.
he was alone.
With little strength in his legs, he kept walking but didn't get very far and fell exhausted. The sky had a hole that ejected the tar and caught the eye of the redhead.
I wanted to live, I didn't have the strength to do it but I wanted to live.
a plea, a last breath, and the result was just a thought.
His surroundings began to blur, a golden glow caught his attention, and a man was standing in front of him.
" A superb smile " was the last thing he thought before falling unconscious.
…
Open.
The redhead's closed eyes slowly opened and his blurred surroundings returned to normal.
an unknown ceiling.
"It's good to see you woke up"
A man smoking a long pipe sat cross-legged on the edge of his blanket. Age could be seen from the unkempt beard and dull eyes.
"What is your name?" The man waited for an answer and studied the boy's eyes.
Empty.
Eyes that no average person should have, much less a child.
He waited until the boy answered him, he had a lot of things to talk about and they couldn't start if he didn't even know what to call the boy.
"Shirou" the voice hoarse and with little or no strength but managed to speak.
"Shirou... my name is not important but from today..." the man pointed the end of his pipe at him "I will be your teacher"
It was the beginning of the relationship of a broken sword and a heavenly swordsman.
…
"Hold that pose for twenty more minutes"
"arg"
The redhead's new life would be considered torture for anyone but judgment was nonexistent, he didn't understand what was good and what was bad or what was fun and what was boring.
Shirou had to wake up before dawn and start training, jogging, running, jumping and different exercises had to be completed before noon, the next thing was to prepare food for him and his teacher and then continue training, prepare dinner, and sleep.
Added to all this was the presence of weights on his arms and legs.
The teacher had explained that it was to learn martial arts much better or something similar.
"What has you so distracted, brat?"
His teacher stopped him, the man noticed that the boy was not as focused as in the first days. He stood in front of the boy and continued to smoke from his pipe.
Shirou was breathing hard and it took a while before he was able to talk to his teacher.
"Why am I training master?"
"Ha, it took you a month to ask that"
The teacher moved a little away from the redhead and sat on the ground, tapping next to him for Shirou to come closer and sit down before speaking.
The sound of the wind and the atmosphere of the small hut that they used as their home, created a relaxing and calm environment. The area was near a lake so the temperature was refreshing.
"I know what you went through and I also know that you are not a 'normal' child, I took you under my wing to collect a favor that I owed to an annoying old man" He paused to smoke his pipe "The deal was that I would train you the best I could, it was something simple and I didn't waste the opportunity"
"...because I?"
"I don't know, the old man handed you over and I didn't ask, it didn't seem important to me"
In the short time, he lived with his teacher, Shirou knew that he was someone lazy, often vain, carefree, and above all arrogant.
The man took another drag on his pipe and blew the smoke from his lungs. The teacher didn't want to influence the boy and that's why he waited for Shirou to ask, it's the process that the old man had told him.
don't influence him and teach him everything you know and more. was what he had ordered.
"Tricky bastard "
"What are you going to teach me?"
"I'll teach you many things...mmmnnn, all my sword arts, I'll teach you how to use bows, spears, and other things but nothing impressive...yes, many things" The teacher nodded with a smile as he smoked "but the most important thing is that I'll teach you to be strong"
"...be strong…"
"If you have the strength, you can do whatever you want, it's an absolute law" he looked at the boy next to him and he was looking at him attentively "You can run faster than the wind, you can destroy mountains... You could avoid whatever you want"
Fire, tar, death, destruction, despair.
the fire.
Could you prevent that from happening again if you had the strength?
The master hadn't said those words by coincidence, he could see talent when there was one and the redhead he was given had a monstrous one for martial arts.
" I want to see how far he can go " was the last thing he thought before ordering Shirou to train again and he noticed that he was doing the exercises with much more enthusiasm.
"The exercise is necessary to prepare your body to absorb qi, After you finish you will immerse yourself in a medicinal mixture that I will put in a barrel, I will teach you how to create the mixture and then you take care of it"
"Yes, Teacher!"
"Qi comes from your body, your body is your greatest treasure and we have to make it unmatched, the stronger your body is, the more qi you can gather"
"Yes, Teacher!"
He liked his new disciple.
…
"Teacher, it worries me to see you smoke so much"
"brat, you are too green to worry about me, focus on your training"
The redhead's movement became more fluid, even with the weights, but he was practicing the sword technique his teacher had shown him but his attempts were disastrous at best.
The "sword" he used to train could not be considered a sword but a heavy piece of iron that he could not even lift and at best could only lift a little off the ground.
Shirou had never complained about the training, quite the opposite, he did the training with great dedication and almost emotion. Each new training meant another method to get stronger.
"In our body, there are two hundred and six bones, six hundred and fifty muscles, and three hundred and sixty meridians, you have to understand and control the bones and muscles, the meridians are somewhat more complicated since you have to unlock them"
While Shirou was struggling to lift the piece of iron, his teacher explained other things and the redhead had to remember everything at the end of the training. It was difficult but not impossible for the redhead.
"The medicinal bath that I taught you is responsible for cleaning your thirty-six main meridians so that you can unblock your meridians much easier but it will be a bit painful when it happens..."
When the sun went down and the birds fell asleep, Shirou was breathing hard on the ground and looking at the night sky, the thousand stars, and comparing it to the sky hole of hell.
The sky was beautiful.
Today's training had no progress but it did not discourage the redhead, his teacher had already explained the situation to him.
if you can't do it well it means you can improve.
He can improve, he wouldn't worry about it.
…
"So heavy…"
"Why would it have to be lightweight?" The teacher had a smirk on his face as he swapped out his student's weights for heavier ones.
A year had passed since his arrival and Shirou's body already had a great amount of strength but not enough to satisfy the teacher and student pair. The reason for the weight gain was because of the redhead himself and the teacher agreed very quickly.
"You can also have a heavier sword, do you want it?"
If the redhead accepted, he would have to fight again to raise the sword to his waist, he didn't want that. The redhead quickly denied and the teacher laughed at his student's expense.
"You should go out to get used to the new weight, but it will only be for today, tomorrow we will continue with your usual training without decrease"
The redhead walked out of the hut slowly, a single step was already damn hard to take.
The teacher sat in front of his house and continued smoking his pipe while watching the redhead walk away, his thoughts were varied but many were related to the redhead.
" His talent is not mediocre at all, what the hell was the old man talking about? "
When the redhead was handed over, the old man had told him to be patient as he didn't have much talent but the man wondered if the old man's eyes didn't work anymore or if he had absurd standards.
He began to teach him the art of the sword a year ago and had started by teaching him simple techniques for novices, but the redhead was like a sponge and he learned them very quickly.
Was that the reason why he gave up the heavy iron sword early, he had to slow down his learning speed a bit so that his body could keep up. He planned to give him the sword when he turned a few more years and his body grew but fate had other plans.
" Maybe I have to stop his sword training and teach him other things...I have an idea. "
He did not know the trade of crafting or blacksmithing but he had a friend who was a master of that trade.
…
"No"
"You have no choice, it's an order"
A few weeks had passed since the redhead's weight had increased, and that day they had received a visit from a man who fell into the category of giant.
Muscles on his muscles and coal black hair, he hadn't made an effort to look elegant, his clothes were dirty with carbon black stains. Shirou smelled an odor very similar to coal on him as well.
The man had no mercy for the man and forced him to teach the redhead his trade. The teacher had a superb smile that made the blood of the man of fury boil but he knew that he could not do anything.
If he didn't want to die, of course.
"Brat, I hope you are happy, The man here is called Zhou Xuanji, but just tell him old Méitan, he will be your blacksmith master"
The old Méitan, who did not seem so old, looked at the student of the monster who forced him to teach. Big muscles, amber eyes, and red hair.
"Do you know what his spirit root is old man li-?" the edge of the redhead's master's pipe interrupted the man
"Don't say my name idiot" The pipe was in the old Méitan's throat and he slowly lowered it "It has a top quality sword spiritual root and two other high quality fire and metal spiritual roots"
"T-THREE?!" The blacksmith forgot that he was about to die "You say he has three?!"
"It is the minimum that I demand for someone to become my disciple"
"Are you crazy, you have in your hands a talent that has a top-grade spiritual root and two other high-quality ones-"
"One way or the other." he interrupted the blacksmith carelessly "Shirou, you will go to learn with him every morning in the village to the west and you will return at noon so we can continue with your training"
"Yes Master"
The old Méitan was envious of the old man for having such a monstrous disciple but at the same time he was excited to teach the redhead everything he knew, his two spiritual roots of fire and metal would greatly benefit from his teachings.
A grin from ear to ear spread over his face but a blow from the demon's pipe brought him back to reality.
he didn't know if he was lucky or unlucky to teach the redhead.
…
"You fucking brat! Do you think this qualifies as good work?!" The sword in his hands was snapped like dry noodles with just his hands "It has to withstand blows, not look pretty!"
"I'll do it again sir!"
"Fuck, of course you'll do it again!"
Zhou Xuanji watched as the redhead grabbed the bisected sword from the ground and hurried to his work area, They weren't the only ones in the forge but everyone else was used to what had just happened.
"Old Méitan, you don't have to be so hard on the boy, he tries a lot"
"Don't call me that, it's not like I wanted to be mean to the child, the old devil forced me to act like that"
"O-oh, well then I'll go back to my work" The blacksmith fled when he heard the mention of the boy's teacher.
Meanwhile, Xuanji kept thinking about the sword that the redhead had created, It was something very nice to see but it wasn't good for fighting, but that wasn't what he was thinking.
one week.
The redhead had shown him a finished work in very good condition in just one week.
at only eight years old.
" What the hell is that old demon feeding him? "
He was reporting the progress of the child of the week to the old demon and had learned some very surprising things. the first thing had been that he had not taught him any cultivation methods yet, the strength the boy had was purely physical.
Cultivation methods, or meditation methods, allowed their practitioners to enhance the qi within their bodies and increase their quantity to improve their bodies.
" Why doesn't that old devil teach him his cultivation method? That method along with his sword techniques was what catapulted him to fame. "
He had many questions but none were answered by Shirou's teacher, he was only in charge of teaching the redhead how to create weapons and armor. He was worried about what the boy would become in the future and could only pray that he wasn't a monster.
ironic for someone who had the nickname Demon Smith.
…
"It's never easy to hurt someone Shirou..."
Another year had passed and Shirou had turned nine. His hair had grown and reached his neck but he had it up in a ponytail, his body had small muscles but they had brutal strength.
Today was one of the rare days when his teacher allowed him not to train to focus on something else. They were in the woods south of his house and his teacher had brought him to teach him his next training.
"Martial arts had been created at first so that the weak could defend themselves from the strong but before the weak knew it, the strong had also learned martial arts" he stopped for a moment to look at his student "Do you think that was fair?"
"No, the fort was only used to maintain its state and not to defend itself"
"It's a typical but incorrect answer" he gave a small laugh when he saw that his student didn't understand "Shirou, you have to understand that the weak was no longer weak, he became strong and the strong was no longer strong, he became weak"
"..."
"So the weak, who was previously strong, learned martial arts and became strong again. Martial arts can be considered a race of the weak to become strong and survive, in that race there can be deaths and murders."
"Why do they have to kill each other? Can't it be solved in another way?"
"There is no such thing as absolute goodness, human beings are greedy, envious, lustful, fearful... I think you know what I'm talking about"
Shirou remembered hell, deaths, and events vividly.
A woman abandoning her children, a man pushing others into the tar and fire to get them out of his way, and another man burglarizing the houses that supported their structure.
there were many others but they all received the same ending.
The woman was set ablaze, the man tripped and fell into tar, and the other man was crushed by building debris.
"There will come a time when you also have to take someone's life into your own hands, you will control the life and death of a person for some reason that neither you nor I can expect"
"I will not, I will never murder anyone"
"Then you will die without achieving anything" The teacher took a deep drag on his pipe and blew out the smoke "I will give you a simple example, Do you know why the death penalty exists?"
"...no teacher" Shirou was not ashamed to say that he did not know about a subject, after all, he had no memory
"If someone murders twenty people, they have to pay for their actions, but if they were only locked up when they got out, what do you think the murderer of twenty people would do?"
"... The punishment has to make him regret it, locking him up is not the solution but killing him is not either"
"What do you propose?"
"..."
He did not know.
The question was too ambiguous and without details that Shirou couldn't give a concrete answer. Whom did he murder? Were they civilians? Were they innocent? And above all, why the murderer?
"If the murderer was a psychopath and killed women and children for pleasure, what do you propose to do?" The teacher noticed the redhead's lack of response and added details.
"…" The case presented was too extreme and one in which he agreed with the death penalty
"If you want a different case. A soldier of the king, his victims were unscrupulous criminals just like the first case and he was the first to kill them because his wife and daughters were in a nearby town."
"..."
"You can live these cases, you may also kill an innocent person, but in order not to regret your actions you have to be prepared when that moment arrives"
It was the last thing he said before leaving the place, allowing Shirou to think calmly. It was a dirty trick of him to make such exaggerated cases but he had to prove his point.
The time will come when you have to kill and you have to be prepared.
…
"Mmmnnn, it's a good weapon...it's more resistant than the previous one" the blacksmith Zhou Xuanji said analyzing Shirou's latest creation "It's a good sword but It's not an excellent product"
"..."
The blacksmith gently placed the sword in the redhead's hands and stopped to look at it for a moment, since last month the redhead had been depressed and hindered his learning.
"Your restlessness can be seen behind your back... what's wrong, Shirou?" The blacksmith had grown very fond of the redhead in the whole year he had been teaching him.
" what the fuck did that old devil do? The blacksmith also knew that the redhead's mood was because of his master.
Over the year he had been repeatedly ordered not to teach him any art of the forge, that impediment slowed down the process that Zhou Xuanji had planned.
is not ready. was what he had said.
"Old Méitan... have you murdered someone?"
Shirou knew his blacksmith master from the whole year they had spent together, he was someone easily irritable, he had anger issues, he had no patience and he didn't take care of his hygiene.
But he was someone loyal, he got attached to people easily and that's why he acted like he was angry with that person, you could talk to him about many things and he always forgave everyone.
He was a good person.
"Yes... I have" he answered sincerely and received the surprised look of the redhead "My hands are stained with the blood of many people, both wicked and just and unfortunately also innocent"
Zhou Xuanji knew the redhead's circumstances, the old devil had made sure of it. He couldn't lie to her about something so important, he had received the rejection of many people for what he did in the past and he accepted all that because he deserved it.
His youth is plagued with regrets all because of his obsession with blacksmithing. His techniques were unmatched thanks to that but no one wanted anything from him thinking that his weapons were cursed because they were created by hands bathed in blood.
Shirou was stunned by his teacher's response, more questions appeared and his expression became complex.
"The class ends for today, go and put the ideas in your head in order... don't come back until you solve your problems"
Shirou didn't know when he left the forge or when he reached the forest where his master told him about the concept he abhorred.
He believed that there was no need to go to the extreme where he had to murder a person, hell made him understand the preciousness of life and made him question himself.
why did he survive?
Hell had caused Shirou to question and regret, being one of the survivors, what made his life different from that of the others? If their lives had the same value, why couldn't the others be saved?
Death was an uncomfortable concept for the redhead, it made him remember the same questions and the idea of murdering someone directly clashed with the values he had created since the fire.
He was not prepared to find the answer.
This is the new direction I want for my story, The first arc will be a few chapters in the world of martial arts and then I have something interesting planned with the holy grail war.
At the end of the chapter, I will be adding some notes to explain a little better the concepts that I want to integrate into my story, Those who already know the stories of Chinese martial arts will already know those concepts but many will not understand them.
* concepts *
- Qi: If you know dragon ball you will understand it but if you want a more detailed explanation. It is the physical energy of nature and the body, you have to think of it more as a "force" and not as an energy as such.
- Spiritual root: It is a set of elemental veins of the martial arts system, They have the same elemental affinity as the magecraft system but they are not connected since one is a physical system and the other is a magical/mystical system.
- Cultivation: It is the growth and evolution that martial artists acquire, it is another term to refer to martial arts as well but I will be interspersing between concepts.
Cultivation = martial arts
Cultivation = Meditation