[EMIYA SHIROU]
[THE GAMER]
[LV 15 - 6570/15000]
[HP: 1500][MP: 35][MC: 27][ST: 600][PT: 15]
[STR: 30][DEX: 30][INT: 20][WIS: 30][CHR: 44]
Days went by, during which Shirou fell into a simple routine. Mornings were dedicated to school, afternoons to take and complete Quests around the city when he wasn't honing his skills with the sword at the dojo, and in the evening, he kept attempting to reverse the damage to his Magecraft.
So far, he had very little success with the latter. He went through the steps as Kiritsugu had taught him from scratch, but no matter what he did, he couldn't seem to active his natural circuits.
Therefore he decided not to bother with it more than strictly necessary. He would allocate an hour each day to meditate and try to find the switch, but that would be the end of it. If he were an ordinary magus, the state of his circuits would be a major impairment, but because of the [Gamer Body], he had no such limitations.
There was another thing he had realized while he tried to fix his circuits. He could only perform magecraft that had an energy consumption inferior or equal to the number of circuits, but since he could create them from his nerves, he could perform as many as he wanted. Ordinarily, that would make him a cripple in relatively short order, but simply sleeping would completely restore his body to pristine conditions.
[+ 1 INT for deducing something important]
This prompt pretty much confirmed his theory. He would grind the hell out of his [Nerve Circuit]. While in the confine of his Workshop, the success rate for the skill was 100% so he didn't risk losing valuable INT points by failing to perform the technique.
To be honest, the best quirk of the [Mystic Eyes of Game Perception] after the [Gamer Body] was actually seeing how his efforts influenced his growth. He wasn't what you'd call a quitter, but much like anybody else, the inability to discern his own progress was quite demotivational.
Well, for him, at least, that weakness no longer applied.
Of course, that didn't mean it would be easy. Every night spent in this way raised the current level of his magic only 1%. Even if he spent every single night working on that skill alone, it'd take years to max it out.
And he still had to work on Projection and Reinforcement, which progressed more or less at the same rate, albeit being just at level 3 and level 2 respectively. He wouldn't be seeing any practical use of either for a long-ass time.
At least he could almost entirely forgo the need for sleep. He had sufficient stamina to stay awake for several days if he didn't exert himself too much and could replenish some energy by eating the food he made while leveling the [Cooking] skill. He made a point of sleeping only the night before going at the dojo, since his teacher was the type of person that would run him into the ground mercilessly.
All in all, everything seemed to be looking up for Emiya Shirou.
In hindsight, he should have known that the other shoe would drop sooner rather than later.
[QUEST Home Delivery: COMPLETED]
[Reward: + 500XP, + 1 CHR]
[Title Achieved : CHARISMATIC]
"Huh?" he asked, as he read the message prompt.
[CHARISMATIC]: You have a lot of Charisma (50). People are more inclined to listen to you. Most women and some men will find you attractive. +15% discount when buying from a woman.
As a ten-year-old, Shirou didn't have much interest in girls liking him. And while a 15% discount was nice, the thing he found more interesting was the ability to have people listen to him. He had seen his classmates arguing and sometimes coming to blows over things that only kids would argue about. He would have very much liked being able to make them stop with just words in the past. And now he could.
Seeing it as yet another tool to his arsenal he never once thought that it could have any drawback.
"E-Emiya-kun?" one of his female classmates called. She was stuttering and blushing something fierce. "W-would you like to eat lunch together?"
"Hold up!" another one called out. "I was going to ask him."
"Well, you didn't."
"Wait a moment, I was going to ask him too," yet another one announced.
"Please, calm down everyone," Shirou replied. The quarreling girls immediately stopped bickering. "There's no reason to fight over this. We can all eat lunch together. Let's all get along."
"Yeees~" the three girls agreed cheerfully.
Weird, he thought, but the [Charismatic] perk really did what it said.
But that was only the beginning, as he was forced to acknowledge that same day, when upon opening his shoe locker he was submerged in a slew of love letters.
[QUEST: A Lovely Dilemma]
[OBJECTIVE: Answer the love letter]
[Reward for success: + 10 EXP]
[Consequences for failure: none]
[QUEST: A Lovely Dilemma]
[QUEST: A Lovely Dilemma]
[QUEST: A Lovely Dilemma]
[QUEST: A Lovely Dilemma]
[QUEST: A Lovely Dilemma]
[QUEST: ...][QUEST: ...][QUEST: ...][QUEST: ...]
[QUEST: ...][QUEST: ...][QUEST: ...][QUEST: ...]
A new Quest prompt appeared for each letter. The experience he could gain was negligible, but Shirou knew he would feel bad if he just ignored them.
He spent the afternoon answering letters and breaking young maidens' hearts.
Fujimura Taiga was a conflicted woman. On one hand, her ward was shaping up to be an incredible young man even though he was just a tiny ten-year-old. On the other, him being the recipient of a heap of love letters was a troublesome thing.
Shirou was a collected and mature young man (the term kid no longer applied to him in her mind), but being the crush of no less than 25 girls would get to anyone's head. As her legal guardian and big sister, she had a duty to see any potential arrogance stomped out of him.
For that reason, that very same evening, she went over to his place to discuss this recent turn of events.
Normally, she wouldn't visit before dinner time, but the circumstances were such that she felt necessary to address the issue as soon as possible.
She let herself in with her own copy of the key and found the house to be completely silent. Was he out? No, the light in the dojo was on, so he was probably there, practicing.
She found him indeed in the middle of his physical routine.
Shirtless, doing push-ups on the wooden floor, beads of sweat dripping down his body.
Taiga was momentarily speechless. Shirou was young but his body already showed the promise of what it would grow to become. The faint outline of muscles could be seen shifting underneath his skin as he moved up and down, seemingly tirelessly.
She swallowed, heat rushing to her face.
She didn't know how long she had been staring at him, but she couldn't bear to look away. When he finally stood up, she observed almost dazedly how a single bead of sweat worked its way down his chest and onto the hint of his abs.
"Fuji-nee?" he asked, snapping her out of her reverie. "How long have you been there?"
"Wha-? Oh, Shirou, hi. Ah ah," she laughed awkwardly. She couldn't believe she had been ogling her ten-year-old surrogate brother like a piece of meat.
"Was there something you wanted? It's too early for dinner."
"What? Ah... what did want to talk about again? Oh, right. I heard there was some commotion today. Something about love letters?"
Shirou grimaced. "Yeah. I don't know what that was all about. I spent the entire afternoon writing polite refusals. Maybe it was some kind of practical joke?"
"Ah ah," Taiga laughed, still making a conscious effort not to look at his exposed chest. "I don't think that's the case, but I'm glad you are not getting a big head over it."
"Why would I?" He shrugged. "I didn't even know most of those girls' names before today. Frankly, it was a bit unsettling. Maybe it was the summer heat?"
"It's Spring," she retorted half-heartedly. She had almost lost the battle with her impulses and she was now looking at his chest while pretending not to.
"Well, I guess that... Uh, Fuji-nee? Are you sure you're feeling alright? Your face is all red."
"What? Oh, ah, it's nothing. I just... nevermind that, Shirou. I'm just glad that you have dealt with the problem like a gentleman."
"... was there any other way to deal with it?" he asked. Probably, Taiga figured, the thought of taking advantage of those innocent girls' feelings had never once crossed his mind.
"Nope. None at all."
"Well, good. Look, I'm going to take a bath and then get started on dinner. Why don't you go have some tea in the meantime? I'll be right there."
"Yeah. I'll do that."
She watched his every step as he left the dojo. God, what was wrong with her? She needed to get herself a boyfriend and fast.
[Crafting/Cooking has reached lv. 20]
Shirou acknowledged the prompt and it disappeared on its own. He was getting better and better at using his Mystic Eyes. Most things no longer required him to actually interact with the message prompts. The ability interpreted his reactions and acted accordingly. That way, at least, he wouldn't look like a moron waving at things visible only to himself, or risk walking into an object because the prompts hid it from view.
While that was all well and good, Shirou was nonetheless quite troubled. His schoolmates were acting strangely, what with the lunch issues and the love letters, and of course, Shirou couldn't help but think it was a result of his ability.
He understood the concept of charisma, but more as a magus than a man. If there was one thing that he had figured out, it was that his ability actually affected only himself. The behavior of the people changed in accordance with their perceptions of him, but it wasn't their perception that was being altered.
The opposite would have been hypnosis, and he didn't possess that ability; otherwise, it would have shown on his skill-list.
Knowing this more or less absolved him from the moral issue of unwittingly manipulating others, but the problem remained that people would be influenced by his presence nonetheless.
He needed to be careful with what he did or said.
[+1 WIS for thinking things through]
He hadn't noticed Taiga's behavior, or at least he didn't understand the reason for it. Having yet to experience any sexual attraction of his own, he lacked the knowledge to recognize the signs. If he had, he probably would have made a run for it and he would have never returned.
But he didn't, just as he didn't notice her stare on his back while he cooked.
That night, Taiga went to bed feeling extremely troubled. She didn't know what had gotten into her, looking at Shirou the way she had. Worse yet, she couldn't exactly refute her reasons for it.
Shirou was very good looking, what with that red hair and those dazzling golden eyes, not to mention how his body was shaping up.
She didn't know how she hadn't noticed it before.
She didn't know why she was noticing it now.
Was it because of the love letter incidents? Did they somehow make her aware that Shirou was, in fact, the object of female affection for good reasons?
And above all, why was she still thinking about it? All those qualities aside, he was a ten-year-old, her student, her ward and her surrogate brother. Feelings of attraction for any of those four categories were wrong on all levels, which meant that it was four times wrong in her case.
Now, had Taiga just accepted her feelings and moved on, she would have been just fine. Instead, she obsessed over them, day in and day out, making it impossible for her to ignore them.
The eventual result would be something she could never take back.
Last Updated: 07/15/2016 - Last Edit: 09/10/2016
Beta: Warellis, Akemi Homura-san
AN: Sup everyone. I'm taking a bit of space to thank by beta readers Warellis and Akemi Homura-san for the constant help they have been giving me with this story.
Secondly I wish to clarify how Shirou's ability works.
The [Mystic Eyes of Game Perception] and the [Gamer Body] don't affect others. As his [CHR] grows, people will find him more attractive because he's actually becoming such. It's not Magecraft and therefore no amount of resistance to spells will give protection from it.
This story lacks the Vitality and Luck parameters, it's been pointed out. I left them out purposefully because:
A- Vitality is pretty much fucking useless. It determines how many HP the character has but even with the [Gamer Body] people in real life don't do tanking. Furthermore, Shirou's [Die Hard] ability stacks Stamina with HP, so he wouldn't be putting any points there either, cause he'd rather be spending them in stamina.
B- Luck in a game affects the quantity and quality of the mobs drops, however in this story there is no such system and in the Nasuverse Luck is a different thing. It's the ability to defy fate. If Luck could be increased at will, all the other stats would be pointless because with sufficient Luck one wouldn't have to do anything at all and things would just go their way entirely on its own. It's hax as fuck and thus I dropped it.
Well, that's it for now. Thanks for reading and (hopefully) reviewing.