Chapter 36: Steel is my body
As shirou fell out of the window his back was towards the ground and sunlight directly fell on his face. His left arm was outstretched as if trying to grab the heavens and the bright sunlight reflected off the 3 blood red command seals on his arm.
The command seals glowed briefly signifying the beginning of their activation but were abruptly stopped by his body. Shirou was very confused about why his future self didn't do anything while falling from a fatal height.
While thinking this his freefalling body crashes on the ground following the laws of gravity. The fall from the 3rd floor is fatal for a normal human. Shirou instinctively took a guarded position to avoid hitting his head and fell revealing a small pool of his blood.
Pain shot through every corner of his body and the agony forced him to open his heavy eyelids, in his blood-stained vision he saw a school building a little far away and a playground with the splatter of his blood.
"Why?" groaned shirou.
Despite the pain shirou noticed that his back was fine and he had somehow endured the fall but his body was lying in a small blood pool which didn't make sense. Feeling a stabbing pain in his chest he moved his eyes and saw his chest gushing like a fountain.
There was a black blade-like tip sticking out of his chest, looking at it all the pieces fell into place. He though
< rampage of my origin?>
As if proving his thoughts he felt intense pain in his body as he witnessed a curved white blade tip grow out from his stomach. Following this like a bomb had gone off inside his body from the impact, his body began melting like wax and blades burst out from the inside.
"Saber— sa…be….r…" croaked shirou.
Under his gaze, his body starts melting and blades protrude from his flesh making him look like a porcupine. He said absent-mindedly
"A-Ah, I… quickly have… to….stop it !.."
His body became unable to move, his thoughts became sluggish and the agony became a constant background presence. He felt his thoughts being cut apart and tried to move his left arm only to find it had melted off and what remained was a mass of blades.
Along with a last painful breath and while coughing blood his heart stopped and his blood-covered vision began to twist and turn.
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Waking up shirou was surprised to find that no swords were sticking out of his body this time. He was acquainted with waking up to the pain of the cuts after having a vision. After taking a bath he went to prepare breakfast.
After his morning practice of magecraft, he discussed the dream with his father. This resulted in kiritsugu contacting Melvin to fast-forward the transplant of the crest. Hearing about the gruesome death of his son kiritsugu again felt the helplessness that he felt when he was made aware of the grail`s truth.
Walking to his school shirou encountered Issei who said
"You are back emiya? Welcome back." hearing this shirou smiled as he greeted him back and was pulled out of the gloom from his gruesome death. He thought
< I might suffer but at least I have some people sincerely worrying about me. Tohsaka, issei, Shinji and Taiga Nee I will make sure to prevent the future shown in the visions so we can continue our current life.>
Shirou returned from school in a good mood, the meeting with his friends had washed away the remaining gloom from his torturous death. Reaching home he rushed to prepare snacks as today was the day of Taiga`s return.
Shirou remembered how Raiga had boasted about his granddaughter thrashing people at the tournament. He also praised her taste when she took her tiger-striped shinai and beat up people left and right.
She had a 90 per cent knockout rate hence making her reputation as the tiger of fuyuki spread much to her displeasure. She was very excited about winning the competition and qualifying for nationals hence in her joy-filled state she asked shirou to be prepared for extra harsh training.
She claimed that if shirou went to competitions in future and didn't have a performance as overbearing as her then he would spoil her name.
He was pulled out of his reminiscence by the ringing of the doorbell.
"I missed you shirou. Especially your cooking." then she continued
"And what competition half of the people in that tournament were not even at your level when you have only rained for a little more than 6 months."
After this, they went to the dojo changed into robes and held their shinai opposite to each other. They began circling each other and testing. Taiga said
"Shirou, let's see how much you have improved in my absence." and rushed towards him.
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Shirou and Rin clashed in the clearing, shirou used a wooden sword he had carved with circuits to conduct mana to deflect a finn shot. Then instead of attacking he took a defensive stance and held his sword with both hands.
Proving his foresight right Rin`s fist leaking copious amounts of magical energy slammed onto the sword making it crack. Taking advantage of the force shirou slipped back and poured his remaining mana into the sword and threw it at Rin.
With her rudimentary enhanced senses, she jumped towards the left but the sword exploded pushing her off balance and shirou pointed the knife at her forehead. Kiritsugu walked onto the field, separated the children and said
"Shirou wins this round."
Looking at the reaction of both of them he began explaining the mistakes made by them in the match. After they finished the discussion both of them went to a tree and sat down side by side.
Rin asked
"So this was the latest mystic code you made?"
Shirou just nodded. After his last dream, he began reading the basic books that kiritsugu had got from Altair. Among them, he had the most progress with mystic code creation. As kiritsugu had visited Melvin twice over the last month, he had brought various materials for shirou to try mystic code creation.
The 1st thing he tried was alchemy but as expected he had a very average talent in it. After trying runecraft, engravement, and pure spell enchantment he found himself just average in all of them.
he tried forging driven by the idea that swords are most of the time forged. When he used some conductive wood as well as a rudimentary fireplace to make a wooden sword he achieved remarkable success. He obviously failed the attempt but found it to be much easier than the other methods to make the body of the mystic code.
Hearing about this kiritsugu went through the Fujimura family to hire a master blacksmith specializing in blades to teach shirou. The Fujimura family being eccentric themselves didn't consider it for long but rather encouraged shirou.
Under the "Regulations for the Approval of the Production of Art Swords," the Fujimura family searched for a master swordsmith from a long lineage under the request of kiritsugu. They are still searching for a good candidate.
Shirou and Rin had a conversation about magecraft where he inquired about what the actual effect of her projectile magecraft was. Rin said
"That magecraft is based on a rather simple curse of Nordic origin, the curse is called "Gandr". It originates from the mystery of pointing fingers at people being considered rude. This curse simply decreases the physical function of the body part on which it is used."
"The basic form of this curse is applied by touching your target with your index finger and then applying the curse. You can use more mana to remove the requirement of touch and make the curse a projectile."
"So what you use is this form of the curse?" asked shirou.
Shaking her head and making her twin tails sway Rin said
"No, what I use is an advanced version of this curse called finn shot. It's different from the curse in a very similar way to the difference between a perception barrier and a ward.
"Both of them a bounded fields but the perception barest is the barest of the basics while a ward is a little advanced and includes the perception barrier. Similarly, the finn shot is an advanced magecraft using gandr."
Later they discussed how Rin was using it at the lowest power to not injure shirou as a normal finn shot has force equivalent to a bullet. Then shirou asked about its effect on normal people and Rin said that just a single exposure is enough to make a person very ill.
Then she told him that if the curse hits the heart then it can easily kill with a heart attack.
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That day passed with shirou diving into the practice of magecraft and he had very good progress in structural grasp by using it countless times to micro-monitor the process of making swords.
The next day was Monday and kiritsugu had to go to Melvin on alternate Sundays.
(A/N: so we are about to start the blacksmith stuff as well as the crest transfer. and tell me what do you people think of the lesson on gandr in the chapter. and it was not without reason as this curse would be used in a special way latter.)