"Attunement, begin."
In the shadows of the warehouse, a young man's voice rang out like someone reciting an ancient aria. The metal sword in his hands became enveloped by a mysterious field. "Basic structure, constituent materials, analyzed... altered, reinforced."
And then, unseen by anyone, something extraordinary happened—
Elements churned in the darkness. An invisible, powerful magnetic field manifested, as if an enormous unseen forge had been erected between heaven and earth. A spiritual flame danced across the weapon's surface. The old metal was 'killed.' New metal was 'reborn.'
A successfully reinforced short sword emerged, fresh from the process. Its edge gleamed razor-sharp, clearly containing a sharpness that transcended ordinary steel.
"Phew... reinforcement successful."
He gave the sword a casual swing, carving a lazy arc through the air. It pierced through a thick metal plate like butter. On the ground beside him stood dozens of standardized longswords of varying lengths, each one radiating the same deadly edge.
Gripping his newly-forged short sword, the smooth blade reflected its creator's handsome face. He tilted it up and down, catching glimpses of his dark red hair and his outfit—
A UNIQLO color-blocked raglan sleeve shirt, layered under a black-and-white Adidas track jacket.
Pretty standard fashion for this era. Classic everyday wear. But combined with certain specific elements—like Reinforcement magecraft and Projection magecraft—a certain fact became undeniable.
In other words...
"I transmigrated into Shirou Emiya."
It had happened just a while ago.
One blink, and boom—he'd crossed over.
One second he'd been roasting FGO with his online buddies—complaining about the gacha being a money pit, the dead weeks with nothing to do, and the pathetic content output—and the next second he'd transmigrated into Shirou Emiya, protagonist of Type-Moon's Fate series.
When he first arrived, he could barely believe it. But his appearance and clothes matched perfectly. Plus, he could sense an astonishing power coursing through his entire body—that had to be the magical energy generated by his magic circuits.
As a first-generation magus without any lineage, Shirou Emiya's aptitude was actually pretty decent.
He'd tried Shirou Emiya's specialty magecraft—Reinforcement and Projection—and discovered he could easily reinforce various metal weapons. As for Projection, after some fumbling around, he figured he was close to getting the hang of it.
Reinforcement magecraft meant running magical energy through an object to enhance its attributes—like increasing a blade's sharpness.
In Shirou's estimation, his Reinforcement was already at a proficient level. The next step was improving efficiency: completing the process instantly without the aria, while also raising his Projection proficiency.
Projection magecraft was a technique that used magical energy to create replicas of real-world objects. Since projected items typically only lasted a few minutes, the magecraft community considered it extremely inefficient—a waste of magical energy.
But Shirou knew he was different. When projecting bladed weapons, he could replicate anything he'd seen before, and it barely cost him any magical energy. Plus, his projected creations could last far longer than normal.
The reason he could do this was because he'd awakened to the Origin of "Sword." Once a magus awakened to their Origin, they gained extraordinary talent in that domain. Shirou's Sword Origin applied directly to his Projection magecraft, allowing him to break through the normal limitations.
Honestly speaking, compared to Reinforcement, Projection was where Shirou Emiya had the most room for growth. The only problem was that he hadn't inherited the original's memories—he had to learn everything from scratch.
"Let me try the Projection steps again... judge the concept of creation, hypothesize the basic structure... sympathize with the experience of its growth..."
An invisible field once again enveloped Shirou Emiya. But his attempt to conjure a weapon from thin air without any materials failed. The ancient aria sputtered and stalled, as if missing some crucial prerequisite.
What was he lacking?
Shirou felt momentarily lost.
He thought harder. In the original work, Rin Tohsaka had said that failed Projection came from the magus's visualization being insufficiently solid. Proper Projection required thoroughly understanding the material composition, properties, and even history—only then could the visualization become concrete enough.
So... before he could project a Noble Phantasm, he needed to analyze one first? But he didn't have any Noble Phantasms on hand.
Troubled, Shirou left the warehouse and returned to his bedroom to get online. If all else failed, maybe the almighty power of internet friends could help.
"Hey! Justice Boy, haven't seen you online in ages. You picking up work again?"
A chat notification popped up, featuring an avatar of a beautiful blonde, blue-eyed girl. "Too bad I don't have any specific commissions for you lately. But if you're willing to lower your standards, this lady wouldn't mind offering you a butler position—"
The person chatting with Shirou Emiya had the username "Genius Girl Charlotte." Charlotte was a typical Western name. Shirou had no idea which Charlotte she was supposed to be—surely not Charlotte Corday from the French Revolution?
"Give me a break, milady. And that 'Justice Boy' nickname really isn't great..."
Shirou Emiya's username was "Ally of Justice." Maybe he'd lurked too often without responding, which annoyed the young lady enough to give him that unflattering nickname. His avatar never changed either—just a lonely silhouette with a cape billowing in the wind. At first glance it looked heroic, but also kind of shabby. Meanwhile, Charlotte's avatar, accessories, and profile were all lavishly decorated, radiating whale-level gacha energy.
Charlotte had built her "online persona" as a daughter of a prestigious noble family. Whether it was real or fake, who knew... She had plenty of overlapping high-society topics with another user who claimed to be some aristocratic young master—"Governor of Gaul."
Topics like: which restaurant under the family's umbrella had mediocre food that should be reported to the elders so they'd send inspectors to reevaluate its star rating. Or how the guest list for recent social balls kept getting longer, and they'd acquired several new private estates, but after careful inspection there were barely any interesting spots. Or how last year's birthday gift was a pair of Desert Eagles, and hopefully this year wouldn't bring something like a Bugatti Veyron—such a playboy-type sports car.
Charlotte and Governor of Gaul also occasionally complained about their unreliable elders. Charlotte apparently had a stubborn grandfather obsessed with academic research who kept assigning her mountains of coursework. Governor of Gaul had a shameless father who surrounded himself with different women every day—
When he mentioned this, his tone didn't sound like mere complaining. More like he was nursing some deep, cold hatred...
Shirou never jumped into these conversations. After lurking and observing for a while, he'd quietly assigned them mental labels: "Energetic Young Lady" for Charlotte, and "Arrogant Flashy Young Master" for the Governor. As for why he didn't join the discussions, his reason was perfectly valid and ironclad.
—His parents were both dead.
"Currently hiring butler, excellent compensation. You sure you don't want to consider it, hero? Sell yourself, not your skills~" Charlotte sent a grinning emoji.
"Thanks, but really, I'll pass." Automatically ignoring that last suspicious sentence, Shirou felt his teeth ache.
For a moment, he had a vivid mental image of Luvia smiling and waving at him—if he remembered correctly, in one timeline, the Finnish noble heiress Luviagelita Edelfelt with the blonde drill hair had hired him as her butler... because she was thirsty for him.
[End of Chapter 1]