After gaining his Psychic Power, Emiya didn't immediately transmigrate.
Instead, he spent several days familiarizing himself with his abilities. He had no idea what kind of danger he might encounter after leaving his world.
Preparation came first.
Language Comprehension posed no problem at all. Once the ability awakened, Emiya realized he could understand dialogue in movies and shows without reading subtitles.
Japanese, English, Hindi, Italian, Latin, German, French, Russian.
None of them were an obstacle.
Not only could he understand them, he could also speak them fluently.
With this ability alone, he could call himself a language expert. Hundreds of languages, living or dead, posed no difficulty. There wasn't a single language on Earth he couldn't read or write.
Even oracle bone script was included.
Next came Psychic Power.
The Psychic Power he obtained for ten energy points wasn't enough to crush the world, but crushing ordinary people was well within its limits.
It was an extremely versatile ability. Offense, defense, utility-it covered everything, and it was reliable.
That versatility was exactly why Emiya had chosen it.
After several tests, he discovered that if he released all of his psychic power at once, he could lift ten tons for roughly ten minutes.
After that, the power would be completely depleted.
The side effects were unpleasant. His mind would become cloudy, his vision darken, and in severe cases, he could pass out on the spot.
After experiencing it once, Emiya never pushed his psychic power to exhaustion again.
He also experimented with finer control.
Housework, moving objects, cleaning-by splitting his psychic power into invisible hands, he could handle all of it effortlessly.
At the beginning, he could only form two hands.
After several days of practice, that number increased to four.
As his control continued to improve, Emiya believed he could create even more in the future.
Beyond psychic hands, he developed other techniques.
Psychic Knife.
Psychic Shield.
Psychic Bullet.
In essence, they were nothing more than psychic power given different shapes.
A Psychic Knife was an invisible blade formed from compressed psychic power, thrown directly at a target.
After testing it several times, Emiya confirmed its effectiveness. At sufficient speed, it could slice a piece of wood cleanly in half and leave a several-centimeter indentation in steel.
Cutting flesh would be trivial.
Psychic Shield involved shaping psychic power into a defensive barrier.
He hadn't tested whether it could block bullets. Before gaining his powers, he was just an ordinary person who had only ever seen guns on television.
However, he had secretly run an experiment.
A car traveling at seventy miles per hour failed to break through his Psychic Shield.
As for how he conducted that test, that was a secret.
Psychic Bullet involved compressing psychic power into a dense projectile and firing it at extreme speed.
At first, it could only knock over a few soda bottles.
With practice, its power steadily increased.
Now, it was enough for him to hold his own against an ordinary person.
All of these techniques looked flashy, but they were simply applications of psychic power. Developing them wasn't particularly difficult.
It took Emiya more than two weeks to fully grasp his two superpowers.
That left only one ability untested.
Transmigration.
Once activated, it would send him to another world. Emiya hadn't used it before because he wasn't prepared.
Now, after two weeks of practice, he had mastered Language Comprehension and Psychic Power.
He was starting to feel restless.
Finally, that morning, Emiya decided to try it.
Before transmigrating, he activated his psychic power and formed a spherical barrier around himself.
Then, he activated his other ability.
Transmigrate.
In the next instant, his vision blurred. A sensation of weightlessness followed, and then he dropped.
Splash.
He landed in water.
The psychic sphere pushed the surrounding water away. His clothes remained completely dry.
From head to toe.
Looking around, Emiya realized he had appeared inside a small bathroom.
He was standing in a rectangular bathtub. Half of the bathwater had been forced out by the psychic sphere.
Fortunately, the tub had been empty.
That made him sigh in relief.
At least he hadn't landed on someone. Or walked in on a naked girl bathing.
Looks like I'm not the protagonist.
As he stepped out of the bathtub, the bathroom door suddenly opened.
A boy walked in, a towel wrapped around his waist.
Their eyes met.
They stared at each other in silence.
Thankfully, the towel spared Emiya from witnessing anything traumatizing.
The boy had a handsome, delicate face. Slightly golden-brown hair. Brown, cat-like eyes.
He looked familiar.
What surprised Emiya more was the boy's reaction.
He didn't scream.
He didn't panic.
He looked... accustomed to strange things appearing in front of him.
Completely calm.
After a few seconds, the boy spoke. His voice was low, gentle, and steady.
"I don't know who you are, but could you come back after I've finished my bath? I'll return your name to you then."
Return my name?
Emiya froze.
Then it clicked.
He looked at the boy's face more carefully and asked, testing the thought aloud.
"Natsume Takashi?"
Surprise flashed across the boy's expression.
In the past, yokai always mistook him for his grandmother, Reiko Natsume. Being recognized by his real name caught him off guard.
Still, he nodded.
"That's right. It's me."
Emiya laughed.
No wonder he looked familiar.
Natsume Takashi. The difference between 2D and 3D had thrown him off.
"I've got the wrong person," Emiya said. "I'm not a yokai, and I'm not here for your name. I'm human. A real one."
That surprised Natsume even more.
"A human?"
"That's right."
"Then why are you in the bathroom?"
"...Would you believe me if I said it was an accident?"
Emiya sounded helpless.
He wasn't lying.
Before transmigrating, his target hadn't been this world at all.
He had aimed for the world of Toriko.
The reason was simple.
Gourmet Cells.
Psychic Power alone wasn't enough for high-level worlds. Emiya knew his limits. That was why he had set his sights on gourmet cells.
Once implanted, gourmet cells activated within the human body.
By consuming gourmet food, a person's life would evolve. Their strength would surpass that of ordinary humans, breaking past natural limits.
More importantly, gourmet cells required no cultivation.
They grew stronger just by eating.
For someone lazy like Emiya, it was a perfect match.
And beyond that, the Toriko world was full of gourmet ingredients.
Jewel Meat.
Century Soup.
Rainbow Fruit.
BB Popcorn.
Just reading about them made Emiya, a citizen of a foodie nation, drool.
But reality didn't match his expectations.
He had aimed for Toriko.
Instead, he ended up in the world of Natsume's Book of Friends.
That told him something important.
His transmigration ability had a flaw.
It could send him to other worlds, but it couldn't accurately choose which one.
It was random.
That was annoying.
Emiya rubbed his temples.
Looks like I forgot to set that when creating this ability.
No wonder.
Seeing Emiya's troubled expression, Natsume gradually began to believe him.
He didn't seem to be lying.
Perhaps because of his childhood experiences, Natsume was good at reading people. He trusted his judgment.
"Alright," Natsume said. "I believe you have your reasons. But if possible, could you leave now?"
Under normal circumstances, he would have listened.
He might even have tried to help.
The problem was the location.
And his current state of dress.
"Alright," Emiya replied.
He understood.
The atmosphere really wasn't suitable for a long conversation.
There was also something oddly philosophical about the scene.
So he nodded, activated his ability, and vanished, returning to his own world in an instant.
That was when Emiya confirmed another detail.
His ability could randomly send him to a new world.
But once he had been there, he could freely travel back and forth.
In other words, if he wanted to, he could return to the world of Natsume's Book of Friends the very next second.