Chapter 60: Time Flows Like a River

(A/N: I was a little busy guys so I am sorry, and I have written about half of the next chapter so I will post it soon. then we will have 1 chapter pending that I will write and post later.

life`s pretty fucky wucky sometime, guess that's what I get a college student whose college is fucking delaying the opening for no damn reason.)

Shirou`s vision flashed like a rushing train and when he stabilised again, he noticed that some time had passed. Artoria was getting better at using her sword and with age, her mana output was also slowly increasing. What they didn't know was that aging makes dragons slightly stronger, which is deep-rooted in the concept of the species as a whole.

Hence the girl who is conceptually a dragon benefits from it and she is not a reckless child as she was in the past. her brother and the lord`s daughter spent their time in fields and gardens, enjoying the romance. But as always peaceful times come to an end and demons can't resist their nature, so the inevitable happened.

One fine morning the lord of the castle returned to his room, he had been spending the last few weeks in the army encampment along with his son-in-law. The two men had several sleepless nights preparing their army for the attack of the neighbouring territories who had made a marriage alliance recently.

As soon as the lord opened the door he was stunned, the intense smell of body fluids and flowers hit him on the face. Scrunching his nose he looked at the bed and mana started bellowing off his body tearing apart the shirt he wore as the muscles bulged due to the enhancement of mana.

On the bed, 2 women were lying naked in the arms of a white-haired man and a 3rd relatively young girl had her face buried in the man`s crotch. Merlin sensing the change in mana smiled slightly at the lord who screamed "Fight me man whore!"

Looking at this the magus of flower stood up and waved his hand making his staff and his clothes cover his body and he vanished in a shower of pink petals. This left the lord stunned and he turned his gaze towards his wife, daughter and the woman who raised him. When his eyes fell on the white stains on the bed and the ladies' legs, he screamed out the order for the knights and soldiers to gather.

The lord dashed off towards to gate as he ordered the female guards to throw his wife and daughter into the dungeon. The 3rd woman who Merlin wooed was his father's confidant who had a part in raising him hence witnessing Merlin being mother fucker enraged him enough that his blood vessels burst.

Taking with him the gathered forces of 50 knights the lord issued an order to catch Merlin and anyone related to him and then have them executed. This chase led to very unfortunate circumstances for Sir Kay as he was caught by the raging lord when he was about to kiss the man`s daughter. 

The middle-aged knight was already seeing red and charged at the young knight screaming bloody murder forcing the blond man to retreat after taking a punch. Looking at her father chasing kay the lord`s younger daughter exclaimed 

"How handsome!"

As the gathered forces looked at their young lady like she was a retard sir kay escaped and found out what had happened en route to artoria. When the brother reached his sister he explained the situation to her in brief and after some contemplation, she decided to retreat.

They could easily defeat the 4 dozen knights but artoria was firm in her decision to not release Caliburn inside the city, hence the comedic scene of a man raging like a bull chasing after the two retreating youths came to be. Finally, due to their high-quality steed, they left the pursuers in dust and Merlin appeared on a tree branch greeting them.

Looking at these interactions shirou had a confused face as the thought echoed in his mind 

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And time flowed like a river as time and tide wait for none. Shirou and kiritsugu received an unexpected boon when the family that employed them for the assassination allowed them to keep the katana as a souvenir and sent it to them in a courier. By this time Shirou's mystic code was ready.

The problem he faced was that swordsmiths normally just forge the blade and there existed a special profession who specialise in sharpening katanas. Normally a katana takes about 2 months to be sharpened, shirou could just sharpen it himself and use it but he feared that leaving the sharpening process incomplete might damage the blade in the long run hence after a lot of thought they approached the reclusive sharpener who does the work for Tatsuo.

After solving the personnel problem the next issue that arose was the blade`s nature, a demon blade would not be friendly to use. Hence proving the stereotype correct shirou found that the sword applied the curse onto anyone holding it but at a low frequency. So anyone except shirou its creator and master touching it will get cursed.

For magus, this is not a problem as their circuit`s passive resistance is enough to offset the curse of the blade but the polisher was a normal man, who bore the risk of having his heath slowly drained away by the curse and dying. Mana itself was already poisonous to the body and adding a curse provided the risk of death.

Finally, with the help of their tunner the young masterish Melvin, they found a pair of gloves made up of the leather of phantasmal species that allowed to isolation of mana inside and outside it. The old man who sharpened katanas used gloves when he polished the sword and finished the work completely unaware.

Still, he complained about how this sword was ridiculously hard and it took him a lot of effort and 4 times the time to sharpen it. He also complained about how his whetstone was ruined by this blade, he finally shut up when he was paid thrice the original amount. After receiving the mystic code shirou used the remaining magically conductive wood to make the handle and sheath of the blade.

He acutely felt that how the quality of materials was not up to par with the blade and would get easily damaged, he left the task of finding better material to his future self and wrapped some old black strings that he got from a pawn shop when he went along with rin when she was scavenging for gems, around the handle.

The final look of the blade was an ordinary-looking black sword handle sheathed in a black sheath, the only iconic feature was on the handle a green topaz was visibly embedded and there were specks of red and black floating on the inside that most people would consider an optical illusion.

With the addition of two more swords to the emiya household Shirou's time continued, he repeatedly tried to reach the state that he had when forging the sword but he didn't have magic circuits of rin nor the environment of ritual so he couldn't go into the concepts of the blade. Still, it would be a lie if it was told to be done too fruitlessly, shirou finally overcame the wall that he encountered in the basic magecraft.

He now practised the magecraft simultaneously, he analysed an object and tried to protect it from the information he collected. He observed that he could sometimes vaguely understand some concepts of the things he analysed, by now he was able to replicate things that are blades and have very little mystery at a 1:1 ratio.

It was November in the blink of an eye and the boy`s physical training focus had completely shifted, now the magus killer pushed him to learn various skills as he had achieved the most he could achieve with his still-growing body. He had achieved significant progress in magecraft too, he now could feel the surface-level concepts of any blade he traces.

He also made a straddling discovery too, his projections carried a diminished amount of mystery that he grasped from a mystic code. This was supposed to only be possible for magus who had pushed this particular magecraft to the peak but shirou understood that was far from the visible peak and let's not talk about the true peak of this magecraft.

When it was December the father and son planned a trip to Britain to meet Melvin. Sitting in the plane shirou reminisced about the problems that this process of crest transfer had caused him. He remembered the random bouts of pain that suddenly assaulted him at random times, the searing pain on his back was unbearable a lot of times. How many times head nearly activate his magic circuits on reflex due to the prickling sensation in them due to the crest?

(A/N: The scene with Merlin was me taking liberties but the fragments of information from various sources suggest that both the guy`s fooling around with women had gotten them chased numerous times. Plus you guys have to remember that this is Artoria Lily now, she hasn't been given the Excalibur and started forming the Knights of the Round Table.

They are just practising chivalry now and she is learning about the land she would rule. You guys can probably guess who is the family that organised the hit, the hint id they are in Tokyo and isolated themselves.

Plus the sword thing came to my mind later, so rectified this plot hole that would have eventually formed later as to how can something called a "demon" and "cursed" be so easy to use.

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THANKS FOR READING:)