Chapter 43 Stand Users Attract Each Other
The clouds dispersed, and unobstructed skylight shone down from above. Ayaka's hair stirred, and the last trace of gunsmoke brushed past her feet, dissolving into the wind. But Ayaka herself remained standing frozen in place.
The extraordinary offense and defense that had occurred before her eyes left Ayaka dumbfounded; her brain, unable to keep up with the situation, lost its capacity for thought, leaving her capable of nothing but "idling."
It wasn't until she realized the spot beside her where Saber had been standing was now empty—and that Saber was already chatting and laughing with the young man—that Ayaka gasped, startled out of her trance. Still somewhat dazed, she dashed straight toward her own Saber.
"Are you okay? Saber?"
By any metric, he didn't look okay. Rather than the injury to his shoulder guard, the sight of one of Saber's hands appearing charred and burnt was startling. This was the first time Ayaka had seen Saber's body no longer whole.
At times, Ayaka had even mistakenly believed that Saber was someone who could absolutely never be wounded. But that delusion had been cleanly demolished by the strategy that had reached Richard.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. I took someone else's things without asking, so I got scolded this time."
The golden swordsman spoke as if he found it a rare experience rather than an embarrassing one, waving his hand nonchalantly with an "I don't mind" look on his face. "Rest easy, Ayaka. As long as you are still providing me with magical energy, this small injury will heal itself soon."
'In other words, you are still helping me even now' he seemed to say.
Ayaka was half-convinced. Following Saber's admiring gaze, she looked bewilderedly toward the ally who had just made even Saber suffer a minor loss, but who was currently paying them no attention at all.
Immediately, several strings of question marks appeared above her head:
"What are you doing?"
Standing before a collapsed wall, Shirou—brushing away dust with a brush that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere—turned his head. "Cleaning up the aftermath, of course."
'Are you saying that after swinging a sword like that just moments ago, you've now transformed into a construction worker without the slightest sense of incongruity?'
It seemed Saber had kicked off that wall with too much force, causing half of it to collapse. The red-haired boy began to clear it without saying a word. Then, after a brief hesitation, he called out to Artoria:
"Toria, can I trouble you with the dents I made on the ground? Just clear out the broken materials."
Artoria didn't say anything but exchanged a look with Ayaka, then moved to cooperate with the red-haired boy without any resistance.
The battle was over; it was time to repair the public property damaged by the fight.
After clearing all the various material fragments from the cracks, Shirou placed his hand against the wall. In the next moment, blue lines extended across the damaged structure, even spreading onto the ground.
With a surge of light, a brand-new, intact wall appeared where the light faded. Even the ground became flat again, leaving only the cleared fragments piled lonelily to one side.
To Ayaka, this completely violated the law of conservation of mass; it was extra mass created out of thin air.
Shirou still couldn't learn reinforcement-style structural repair, so he used projection as a substitute instead. Fortunately, no magi knew that Shirou was using what appeared to be a High Thaumaturgy Reality Marble for this, so he was "Safe."
"100 points!"
Ayaka looked at Saber, unsure of how to evaluate this.
Richard, however, marveled as if he were won over. "I always thought I placed great importance on honor... I didn't expect someone could naturally attend to such minute details... Truly worthy of respect."
'This won't work! These two guys are completely of the same breed! What on earth do they think their life's work of superhuman techniques is for!?'
Ayaka's head throbbed. She felt that if conditions permitted, the person beside her would also claim he wanted to compensate for the Opera House. They really had too much in common.
Richard smiled with great enthusiasm and walked with deep interest toward Shirou, who was still tidying up. Standing just a meter away from Shirou with almost no sense of personal space, he looked up at the high wall just as Shirou did and chatted:
"Though that sword technique where the sword attracted each other was also exciting enough to make one's blood boil... could you tell me first, how did you judge that I would use your weapon to fight?"
Shirou had injected magical energy into the weapon Richard seized in advance, prepared a Broken Phantasm, and let it explode at the most lethal moment. The prerequisite for this was successfully predicting that Richard would use his weapon.
"I'm ashamed to say, but I actually just took a gamble... I only knew that you seemed to have a high demand for switching weapons and finding good ones. I wasn't entirely certain you would definitely take someone else's."
Shirou was able to know Richard's combat style because of the nature of Projection's synchronization. It was like history being carved directly into his mind; the various traces that surfaced were all information. His armory read the life of Richard's sidearm, and the warning it gave was: Projected swords will be used against you by this man.
Just as the red Archer wouldn't be foolish enough to use Nine Lives in front of Heracles, Shirou wouldn't be naive enough to fire a rain of swords at Richard only to gift him weapons. If he was going to "gift" a weapon... it would naturally be a custom-made one.
It would either be a Broken Phantasm, or if they were within Unlimited Blade Works, he would use a sub-species of Broken Phantasm to attach self-destruct functions to all armaments.
With some prior information as a premise, Shirou was not generous enough to let Richard borrow a weapon that could be used to attack him.
Shirou asked a question more seriously than Richard:
"I don't intend to hide it. I could associate your fighting style with using this sword in one hand and another weapon in the other. But I didn't know the reason you developed this habit; even your proficiency in using an opponent's weapon was just an inference. ...How exactly did you end up with such a habit?"
"That, eh."
Richard said meaningfully, "Probably because my Noble Phantasm ruins my own weapons if I use even a bit of my full power—in fact, without a good weapon, I can't even display its full power. It's a troublesome ability, isn't it?"
"Then what is your Noble Phantasm?"
It was unlikely Richard would tell the truth, so Shirou gave up helplessly. It would be better to check for himself.
With the world of swords reflected in his pupils, Shirou pulled a nameless sidearm from the hill.
"Trace on."
The blue ball of sword-shaped light in Shirou's hand did not coalesce into a specific form. Although he didn't project a physical entity for Richard to see, Shirou began to deepen his empathy with the growth experience and the reproduction of the accumulated years.
He closed his eyes, continuing to carefully sense the "life" of the sword.
Shirou couldn't activate Richard's Noble Phantasm through this sword; from this, it was evident that Richard's Noble Phantasm was not a martial art or a famous blade, but required a certain Mystery belonging to himself. However, at the deepest depths that one can only see with total concentration, Shirou noticed one thing.
Projection reads even the fresh usage marks that left the sword no longer pristine. The advantages and disadvantages are two sides of the same coin; a projected weapon is projected along with the accumulated durability loss, but in exchange, Shirou can also feel the experiences that caused the wear and tear.
When this mark was made—even the sword's very existence dissolved into a vast throb; someone's dazzling light caused everything, including this sword, to resonate.
Shirou opened his eyes and cast an inconspicuous glance in Artoria's direction.
"A bombardment of light... is it?"
Richard's expression was complex, a mix of suspicion and surprise. "You can even know that?"
But he soon brightened up again.
"Oh well, it doesn't matter. What are your thoughts?"
Sigh...
What a terrifying discovery. "Stand users"—or rather, Heroic Spirits of the same attribute—really do attract each other, don't they?
'I hope this Noble Phantasm didn't just copy-paste Excalibur's code.'
Read ahead (60 chapters) by supporting me on buymeacoffee com/varietl or ko-fi edwriting