Despite the fact that I've been thrown in an unfavorable position, it's been generally a good two days. No matter the struggles, I've been lucky enough to always make some progress. I can take failing at something since at the very least I can learn what not to do next. Stagnation however, will be the noose that kills me slowly.
I've been searching the whole day for clues regarding Structural Grasping, Reinforcement and Projection. I'm not entirely surprised that I didn't find anything regarding Projection, considering the fact that it was considered a largely useless skill. Which meant I didn't even hope to find something towards its specialized version called Tracing. It's Shirou's own unique brand of magecraft after all. Unless he somehow became a scholar and wrote a book about it, then there would be nothing on the topic.
What I was hoping to find information on was Structural Grasping and Reinforcement. Any magus worth their salt would see that those two skills are an invaluable addition to their research, especially Structural Grasping since it will allow them to gather unbiased information from objects directly. Reinforcement on the other hand should be a common enough skill that anyone would find the use of it in their day to day lives.
Unfortunately my luck seems to have run out. I received zero information regarding Structural Grasping. It was not mentioned even once. Which is weird since I thought with how useful it is, someone would have made a note about it. Was Structural Grasping also Shirou's unique magecraft? I honestly can't remember. It might've been, since I remember him as the only one doing it in the main show, but I can't be too sure.
Reinforcement on the other hand was mentioned a few times, but was mostly mentioned in passing, never going in depth on how it works. Which is not ideal, but I'll take what I can get at this point. So with barely any information to go on with, what can I do to learn more about this mystical world of magecraft? I guess it's time to go with the good old fashioned scientific method.
Ever since I activated my circuits, I never really stopped experimenting with them. How could I? They were incredibly awesome. Whenever I get bored from reading, I try to turn them on and off for no reason. Heck, even when I am in the middle of something, I continue experimenting with them. I couldn't really do anything magical yet, but with every use I continue learning something with this new sensation of mine.
Firstly, while magical circuits are part of the soul, they very much have a presence in the physical world. Whenever I turn them on, they generate a bit of heat just like any other part of the body. And just like any part of the body after heating up, they need to cool down or risk being damaged. I realized that was why I was sweating so much after I came back from the reality marble. My body was desperately trying to cool me down. What most likely happened was that I was continuously using a huge amount of my mana, and I couldn't stop the flow of it being used, causing my body to overheat. That's also probably why it was causing me so much pain.
I observed my circuits through the "Fake Structural Grasp" method I was using earlier. Yeah I know, very creative of me. I wanted to know how much time would it take for my circuits to reach a point in temperature where it would make a noticeable discomfort on my body. I left my circuits on for around a minute just to start with.
What I found was that I pretty much couldn't see any difference. There was a bit of warmth that was true, but if I wasn't looking for it, then I wouldn't notice it. After that I tried to up the intensity of the flow of mana, like higher pressure water going through the pipes. This time, I could sense the difference. While not uncomfortable, I could definitely feel some strain on my circuits. Eager to test my limits, I upped the intensity once again. If the normal rate of intensity is one, then this is a five.
Now we're getting somewhere. I could feel my body heat rising, and I'm starting to sweat a bit. My back for that matter was heating up faster than the rest of my body. The familiar strain behind my eyeballs was also starting to come up. It's not painful, so I heightened the flow again. This time I'm going at it as much as I can before I feel like dying. Ready? Three, two one, go!In hindsight my tactics were less a scientific method, and more of a "Let's see what the hell would happen if I try this" method. Despite that, I still simulated my inner scientist as much as I could and made sure to record all of my thoughts and findings on a piece of paper.
Day 1 of Magecraft Training
Magical Intensity Limit: "57 times the normal amount"
Next experiment: "How long can I keep my circuits open"
I know, I know. It's barebones. But I am of the opinion to keep it straight and simple, especially for recording numbers and progress. You need to see my work out notebook that I stopped using after getting lazy, for recording how much weight I can pump. That one's literally just numbers.
It took me only 30 seconds before it reached almost the same amount of pain I was experiencing last night. This time however I'm in full control, and I managed to turn it off pretty quickly so I was mostly fine.
What I did was I increased the intensity every couple of seconds, pausing for a while to check if I was on the verge of killing myself by overheating. I managed to reach an intensity of around 57 before I was forced to turn it off. In the end my shirt was soaked, my back was sore like it went through an intense exercise, and my eyeballs felt like they were going to explode. At that point I decided I needed a break.
Said break involves having a really cold drink to see if it helps cool my body down and looking out the window. This has been my go to spot whenever I needed to relax since it has a nice view of flying lizards. Despite them trapping me in here, the dragons were still cool to look at. Even from a distance I can tell that they were gigantic. I mean how the hell do they even fly with that size and shape? They clearly weren't aerodynamic. You can definitely tell they had some form of assistance from magic to take flight since it looks so unnatural. Even then, their bodies are so heavy that they needed to jump from a ledge to fly, or run for a bit like a plane on an airway. Perhaps I can take advantage of that when I do my breakout. Actually, let me write that down since it sounds important.
Survival Tip #1
Dragons require magic to fly. They also need to run like awkward turtles or jump off a high place to start flying.
"There, that sounds good enough". I said, talking to no one.
After a while, my circuits managed to cool down quite a bit. I don't know if the drink actually managed to help lower the temperature of my circuits, but it definitely cooled down my body. Besides, It's all about the placebo.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
It's time to move on to my other experiment then. I turned on my circuits to their default intensity and counted the seconds.
"One One-thousand, Two One-Thousand…"
And I counted.
"85 One-Thousand, 86 One-Thousand"
And I counted.
"200 One-Thousand, 201 One-Thousand"
When I reached 500 seconds, I decided it was taking too long, and left them on. I had a lot of stuff to do, and I'll estimate later how long it will take for the heat to be unbearable.
The rest of the day was spent reading the remaining books, observing the dragons some more, and trying to interact with the magic circles around the house. The results of these activities are met with varying levels of success.
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The rest of the books were mildly useful, and the trend of no information regarding Structural Grasping, Reinforcement and Projection remained the same. I'll have to check later if I missed something, but otherwise I'll have to go through the route of seeing if there was a "How to Learn German for Newbies'' somewhere, because I've run out of English books.
The dragons remained the same, and I mostly observed their habits. I noticed that they were only active during the day, but rested at night. Which is good, meaning they have to sleep like the rest of us mortals. That went into Survival Tip #2. Also, they did not approach the castle up to a certain point. In fact, I don't think they even notice the castle, which makes going outside perhaps not as much of a death trap as I previously thought.
More importantly, clearly the cause of this behavior from the dragons comes from some form of bounded field around the castle. Which means they aren't completely immune to magic! That quickly went to Survival Tip #3.
I had the most success with the magic circles. In fact, they were downright easy once I figured them out. The key was using my own magical energy to interact with them. My circuits were already turned on, and it took some trial and error, but I managed to pour in my own mana to the magic circle. My own mana was already flowing inside of me, and all I had to do was include the circle in that flow, like a vein that was cut, but the blood spilling was included in another system. At that point, the circle did all of the work.
I managed to light up the house quite a bit, turning on the magical bulbs and chandeliers. The doors' circle on the other hand locked when I activated them, which caused a minor panic when I accidentally locked myself in a room. All I had to do to open them however was absorb the mana back into my system to deactivate it, though there was some loss of energy in the process. Good to know.
The most important takeaway here however was I finally managed to do some actual, physical magic! Sure, it required the help of tools, but it still counts! At least it counts in my book. I was using mana before yes, but I never really affected the world around me.
That being said, there are still a few magic circles that I'm not able to do anything with. They absorb the mana, but they do nothing visible and just quickly dissipate. I'll have to experiment with them more later.
And with those discoveries, I ended my day, ready to go back to sleep. I felt like I forgot something, but with the amount of important things I needed to do, at some point it was inevitable that I would forget some minor things. That's why next time, I must make sure to write down everything important that comes to mind. With that note, my third day on this alien planet ended.
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Correction, what I forgot wasn't minor. In the anime world, I guess it never is. Because my Unlimited Blade Works is staring me in the face right now. What changed this time? I didn't say any of Shirou's chants before I fell asleep this time. I made sure of that. So what's different? I looked at the desolate world of swords, and found nothing different with it. It's still full of swords, the earth still has no life, and the sky is.. Wait. The sky is not just a void anymore. If I focus my eyes really well, I see something up there. Multiple somethings actually, 32 of them by my count.
Huh, I have no clue what they are since they don't seem to be complete yet, but I know what they represent. Shirou's world has 27 gears on the sky representing his magic circuits, and mine has 32 equivalents that I can't identify.
Speaking of circuits, I finally remembered what I forgot. I never turned them off. In fact they are most likely still running now. They never really got hot enough to be unbearable even when I was powering up the magic circles.
In fact, they were so well adept at keeping my energy running that at some point during my busy day, I forgot to turn them off! Is this a sign of good quality magic circuits, or is this something common for magi?
After some time pondering about it, I decided to take a walk. Like I said before, what's there to do in a world of swords besides checking out the swords? And so I did just that. This time, I noticed that the voices hanging in the background before were significantly muted. It was still there, and I can feel them slowly getting louder, but I can handle it for a while.
I decided to observe one of the swords, the same mundane, slightly rusty looking one from the last time I was here, and touched its hilt. Like the last time, the voices besides one stopped. And I could hear that one voice becoming clearer. Were the blades.. Talking to me?
Well that's new. That never happened to Shirou I'm sure. The sword in my hand right now was definitely talking, so I studied it intently. I felt for it, like I'm feeling for my circuits. This time, I opened up the flow of my mana, bleeding the energy out like I did for the magic circles, and I made the sword part of the cycle.
It worked like a charm, and I could now understand the words the sword was spouting. I'm eager to learn of its wisdom. "House.. Ground.. Eat your veggies.. Pass it.."
It was a bunch of nonsense, like a newborn babe just learning to talk. Through my bond with it in the cycle I made, I could make out that it was a family sword, passing it through generations, but never once seeing action. For all intents and purposes, it is a mundane sword, forged by mundane means by a mundane man. But it was old, dating back from the 18th century. It has seen multiple generations of the same family line born, grow old, die, and repeat.
It has allowed the sword a small amount of history and personality spanning multiple generations of the family it resided in, until one day it was displayed in a museum where it was seen by EMIYA.
Yes, the EMIYA. Not Shirou Emiya, the magus. But EMIYA, the Servant, Heroic Spirit, Counter Guardian. The dog of Alaya. I immediately checked if all the other swords were the same.
Most of the swords are mundane. Most did not even have a weak spirit like the previous sword and were completely "dead". But one thing that they did have in common was that they were all seen by EMIYA.
When I was not touching and focusing on one sword, the voices came back in full force, and they were getting louder. But even amongst them, there are some that stood out, their speech clear even from afar, so I picked one and allowed their voice to guide me to them.
It led me to a sword so awe inspiring that any person would notice that it was out of the ordinary. In fact, it wasn't a sword at all. It was a lance, more than six feet long. It looked simple, but the extreme age and smell of blood coming from it was unmistakable. Immediately, I knew what it was. I have found a noble phantasm.
I walked towards it, excited at the prospect of bonding with a noble phantasm like I did with the previous blades, when I noticed a man sitting next to it, with his back turned to me. My heart jumped at the surprise of the sudden intrusion and wondered, where the hell did he come from?
"Hello?" I instinctively asked.
The man didn't move and remained seated, so I had the opportunity to observe him. He was ripped to hell. Red lines of tattoos covering his body that barely wears anything besides a few pieces of armor. His helmet that sat beside him has a red vertical mane, and finally a red cloak that covers his back.
I was still wary and guarded. But three days of social interaction depravation made me a wee bit desperate for another human being's presence, so I came closer. At a certain distance, he finally reacted, and slowly turned around to face me, his muscles rippling as he did so.
"Finally found the courage to conquer the spear huh?" The man said. As I saw his rugged face, his iconic helmet and cloak. I immediately knew who he was without bonding with the spear. I came face to face with the Heroic Spirit, King Leonidas of Sparta.