Three weeks. That is the time left before I consume all of the food left frozen in the cold room. If this was back at home, then I would’ve scolded myself for stocking up too much. Here, where there are so many unknowns, three weeks will not be nearly enough. I need to make sure I find a renewable food source before it runs out.

I can ration and eat twice or less a day which will extend my timeline to a month. I’ve done it before during self-isolation. With my sedentary lifestyle enabled by my office job, and unwillingness to do any unexciting exercises, I found out that I can eat only twice a day and not lose weight. I doubt I will be as inactive here, but it’ll have to do.

Those were my thoughts while sitting at the kitchen table alone, eating the fried chicken I cooked through the magical stove in the kitchen, with the not so magical frying pan. It’s another evidence pointing to the fact that up until a few months ago, somebody was still living in this castle. Unprocessed meat like this only lasts in the freezer for a couple of months, at most a year if it was frozen really well.

There was an assortment of meat in the cold room. There was pork, chicken, beef, and some others that I wasn’t familiar with. It was all meat however, and they were all the food I could find in the entire house. I guess I will have to stick to a carnivorous lifestyle in the future. The nice variety of spices available would hopefully allow me to not get sick with eating purely meat.

Now that I’m mostly secured in the short term, it’s time to think long term. What I’m lacking most severely is information. Where the hell was I? How did I get here? Can I go back home? Do I even want to get back home? Because if not for the fact that I can die anytime soon, I would love to stay here, in a world of magic. Let’s be honest here, a lonely guy like me has not much to go back to. Oh I’m going to miss my siblings very much. I love them with all my heart, but they are adults now and can take care of themselves. This new world is something I wanted deep in my heart.

I guess it doesn't matter right now, I have no idea on how to get back even if I wanted to anyway. And there’s no better way to get information than through books! Well, besides Google of course. Hopefully at least one of these is Magic for Dummies or something similar.

----------------------------------------

I have already expected that there's a good amount of chance that I wouldn't understand the language of another world. What I didn't expect was that I wouldn't understand it because it was in German.

Oh yes, I'm pretty sure this is German. I don't speak the language, but I've seen enough German texts that I recognize it at closer glance. At the very least, I recognized the alphabet, and wasn't that curious for another world? One would think that for an alien world, it would also have completely alien writings. Do languages transcend worlds somehow through the convenience of magic? Or is this castle I woke up in related to my home world?

While the majority was in German, there was also a good amount in other languages. Most of them I also can't read unfortunately like those few Japanese books I saw. But through some cosmic luck or some God taking pity on my soul, there were also some English textbooks among them.

I immediately took to reading them like a man on a desert finding water. There was not much information regarding this place I was in. In fact there was no mention of this place at all. Which is understandable, considering nearly all of them have titles geared towards research such as: "Curses and their Drastic Change of Use with the Decline of Magecraft" or "Leyline Cycles: A Complete Guide"

Now this is both good and bad for me. Since now there is direct written proof of magic for me, and I don't have to completely fumble my way through if I want to learn. Bad, because since these are research books, they are not beginner friendly at all.

There was one book however that I took notice of. Not because of its contents, but because of its title. "How Wizardry Should be in the New Century". Like a flash of lightning in a new moon, the title triggered some deep seated memory in me.

If this book is what I think it is, then I might finally have some idea of where I am.

With slightly shaky hands, I picked up the book and checked its spine. And sure enough it says in big classical font: "How Wizardry Should be in the New Century, by W. Velvet"

I can't describe the excitement that ran through my veins enough when I saw that name. “W. Velvet”, short for Waver Velvet, was the Master of Rider in the Fourth Holy Grail War, a Lord of the Clock Tower, and was a character in a fictional series.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Here, apparently he doesn't seem as fictional, and even managed to publish this paper that was mocked by his teacher and classmates. Guess he really did well for himself right after the war.

This is huge for me. I am familiar with Magecraft, or Thaumaturgy as some might call it, through some wikias I read before so I am not completely lost. Of course, as a complete mundane person before this, I am not ashamed to say that I have no idea what the hell I would do with this information.

Ok let’s sort out what I know about magecraft. They only do what can be theoretically possible through mundane means, such as a fireball being replicable by a flamethrower, or a wind spell being replicable by a leaf blower. If you manage to do something out of this limitation, such as say, dimensional travel, then congratulations, you’ve reached the Root, and now considered a true magician. Or at the very least close to one. Please enjoy your new privileges of having either, infinite mana, infinite lifespan, infinite body doubles in other universes, infinite matter creation, or infinite anything really. Who cares? What matters is that you’re now a god amongst mortals.

In order to trigger their magic circuits and create a mystery, Magi “hypnotizes” themselves by visualizing some shock inducing event. Such as getting stabbed, getting hit by lightning, or being crushed to death. It’s quite violent, but what better way of inducing shock than by thinking of dying? And yes, I crossed referenced these information with the books I have to check if I’m correct. Surprisingly, Waver’s book is quite helpful in this regard.

While very much not for beginners since it’s still a thesis, because its goal is to “revolutionize” the use of magecraft, there are many points in the paper where he references in passing how to activate your circuits and other stuff for newbies. Frankly, it’s quite well written. While I don’t claim to fully understand it since a huge chunk of it is jargon to me, it is written simply enough that a high school student will be able to understand what his main objective was, and it’s to utilize one’s internal mana, or Od, in the most efficient way possible. Thereby allowing a person with low Od to compete with generations of bloodline and magic crest advantage. At least in theory.

It also states somewhere that reciting a personal aria out loud can help in triggering mysteries with more ease. That put a smile on my face, and almost made me chuckle with giddiness. It’s Shirou’s aria after all, and every fan of the series knows about it. The aria is different for every person, but If I remember correctly, Shirou used a gun’s hammer being fired as his trigger, and his famous aria being, “Trace On”.

My brand new body reacted uncontrollably when I whispered those words. My limbs froze, my neck unable to turn, and my breath hitched. It’s as if it has no choice but to react, subservient to the primal instinct ingrained within this body. A shock then ran through my system, feeling like a thousand fire ants just ran through my veins. I then promptly blacked out.

----------------------------------------

I woke up in an open field filled with blades. Blades of every kind. Blades of war, blades of kings, blades for shaving, blades for farming, demonic blades, holy blades, blades of legends, blades of peasants. Every kind of blade possible is in here, and I can’t even see where it ends and where it begins, giving me a slight headache.

This is most definitely Unlimited Blade Works, or at least something similar to it. There are some differences here and there that is different from what I remember. For one, the ground wasn’t red and dead like the soil of Mars. This one actually looks like soil from Earth, though also devoid of life. The sky was.. It wasn’t there. It’s just a black void up there, as if the world wasn’t complete yet. There was a light source somewhere that allows me to see, but I can’t seem to find it. I simply can perceive the place without a light source, which just adds to the uncanny look of the world. There was also this slight noise, permeating through the air, from every corner of the world.

This.. this is a game changer. If I have this Reality Marble and the swords within, then escaping out of the dragon mountain just became a whole lot more possible. The difficulty rating just changed from “Absolutely Fucked” to an easier, “Mission Impossible”. Even if I have this available to me though, I still have to learn how to use them, bring them out to the real world through projection. And until then, this is mostly useless. Shirou learned rather it effectively after ten years with the help of his future self. I’ll have to learn it in a month or I’ll die of starvation. No pressure.

Meanwhile, I decided to check out the swords while I’m here. What else is there to do in a world of swords anyway, besides checking out the swords? Walking, I went towards one of the swords buried in the ground. It was mundane looking, rust somewhat creeping up its edges, but it looked old and well used. As I neared the sword, my headache continued to worsen, the noise increasing with it too. They feel like whispers of nothing and everything, and were just at the edge of my hearing. I don’t remember Shirou saying anything about the noise. Where is it coming from?

When I finally reached the sword, the whispers were now screaming, and they were coming from everywhere. I can feel my headache growing to a full blown migraine. I touched the sword, feeling its hilt. All of the whispers suddenly turned silent except one, and before I could understand what it said, the world fell apart, and I’m back at the physical world, surrounded by books.

I looked out the window and noticed it was night, filled with stars strange to me. My body was hot, sweating like a pig. But I made a huge amount of progress today. Mind and body exhausted, I fell asleep for real this time.