The situation was going beyond her expectations; she expected that she would have to save the boy`s life, and the trend of the battle went as she expected. Still, highlighting the nature of battles between denizens of this moonlit world, the situation changed in an instant. If she hadn`t made timely use of her transformation magecraft and used her familiar to block the blade, the one life support would have been Elijah.
According to her background research, the weapon Elijah used was a replica of "Sahrur", a weapon associated with Ninurta, a Sumerian god. While calling this weapon a replica is tarnishing the name of the art of replication, the mere mystery being associated with it was enough to make this counterfeit a formidable music code. This was also the source of success in its owner`s career, while Elijah had never tackled the true horrors of the world or the real enemies of magi, he did have a blood-soaked reputation for catching fugitive apprentices and cleaning up magi-related leaks of mystery.
As she looked at the boy standing up with quivering legs and spasming arms, she guessed it to be the side effect of whatever magecraft he used. As he stood up, the snakes conjured by the woman had disappeared into black smoke, leaving behind nothing for him to understand about the creature that blocked his sword.
While observing Shirou`s moment during the fight, she sensed a buildup of mana in him, and then he suddenly accelerated as the mana covered his body surface. Then in an instant, the blade held by the boy lit up in its eerie glow, and she instantly deflected the blade. With her expertise in poison, while being unable to instantly comprehend the properties of the curse, she was able to detect its metaphysical weight and categorised it as one of the troublesome kind.
After screaming in pain, the middle-aged man in a show of his judgment, immediately pulled out two vials and drank one while pouring another one onto the wound. He briskly walked up to the judge and, while dressing the small cut on his shoulder using a white cloth, declared the completion of his mission and asked for permission to leave.
With a nod from the woman, he maintained the pace and left the hall. Once outside, he put his hand to his mouth and screamed like a vampire under the hands of the holy church. While he had put on a brave face, his face was full of sweat, and the pain from such a small wound was unbearable.
According to him, this was twice as painful as the time he had his wrists severed from his arms by a target who practices a form of water-based magecraft. When he removed the bandage and looked at it the cut was already black like it had been left out in the open and had been infected, plus the bleeding was neither stopping nor increasing, If he bled out at this steady pace he would likely bleed out to death hence he rushed out to get himself cured.
After a few minutes of awkward silence for shirou, the female magus broke her silence and declared
"Mr. Emiya, you have successfully passed the evaluation and are hence hereby recruited as a sealing designation enforcer of the association."
She handed him a contract and disappeared, leaving him standing there. After this ordeal, the major feelings in his heart were similar to a blue-balled man. He felt like someone had stopped him from hitting a punch after he had opened his arms; he just wished for the fight to be a little longer and to land a better cut on his opponent`s neck.
He proceeded to the part of the building written on the paper to do his paperwork and begin to work.
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Well, stating his expectation was destroyed would be an understatement, while he imagined being given repeated tasks and finishing them in an instant, the mission board remained blank for the rest of the months would be apt. The hall was barren, alongside the mission board, and only once had he spotted a woman with flaming red hair and teeth like earrings who looked like she was an architecture student lost in here.
When he approached her, intending to help her, he learnt that she was his senior. She taught him that missions issued here are only sealing designations, which happen once in a blue moon. Then she mentioned that the last one had resulted in the death of dozens of enforcers while hunting the target.
She dropped her name "Bazett Fraga McRemitz" while leaving him and, in a carefree manner, and offered to show him the ropes of their line of work once she was free, to which he immediately agreed.
Shirou stopped reminiscing as the class on the "transfer of mana" ended, and the hustle and bustle started again. Students began moving around the room, and he slipped out unnoticed. He had no interest in socialising with these children who were more trouble than worth it.
As he traversed the building's winding path, he found himself suddenly alone. He moved through a garden, overrun with wild grass in every direction. Nature had gradually begun to take back areas abandoned by people. After looking around, now fully bored, he slammed his foot against the broken pavement and burst into a brief sprint. With a quick exhale, Shirou's legs shimmered with circuitry as he stomped on a vine emerging from the wall, grabbing onto the ledge of the floor above.
With a powerful swing of his hands, he swung himself onto a smooth red carpet. The interior of the corridor was ancient, there were chandeliers and candle stands jutting out of the walls, while some of them had been inverted and converted to sockets for electric bulbs.
This was unconventional for magi who loved antiques and old decorations to violate the architecture like this, but then again, this was under the faculty of modern magecraft. So their mindset of being progressive was expected. He walked up to a door in the hall and began rummaging his pockets, brought up the key and put them in but as his hand was about to turn the knob it stopped.
With a shake of his head, he turned around and stood face-to-face with the door on the opposite side of his room and gently knocked. With the sound of something falling, the door opened and revealed a 14-year-old girl with dark black locks and greenish blue eyes. As soon as she crossed her eyes on the boy, her face scrunched up, and she slammed the door shut with such force that if shirou had taken a step forward, he would have had his nose smashed in.
Releasing an endearing and irritated sig,h he knocked on the door again, its opening was accompanied by Rin screaming
"Why are you here? Go and fight someone and die in a ditch somewhere!"
"My words are worth nothing to you!"
"Tohsaka, calm down, I went and got checked up. They did say that it would heal up in a week." defended shirou, but he was promptly caught by the collar and pulled inside by her, which was accompanied by the slamming of the door shut as she shouted
"In a week! Yeah, if you were not oddly receptive to healing magecraft and Reines's mystic code, you would have been in deep trouble and might even need to replace the limb or regrow it."
Suddenly, her stomach growled and she stopped. Hence, after pushing her onto the couch, he pacified her temporarily and went to the kitchen while saying
"Tohsaka, you behave like this when you are hungry, so let me make something real quick for you."
Instead of her usual temper tantrum, she became unusually quiet after this, so shirou went to the stove while humming a song, leaving behind a Rin with a tomato-like face who was muttering
"Idiot! Rascal! Do you think I will starve without you? I am someone who has mastered ways to survive without cooking, so don`t underestimate me. Besides, I was worried for you, risking injury like that and overloading your circuits."
"It is a miracle that they haven't developed cracks."
She continued doing this while caressing her shoulders that shirou held to push her onto the couch.
(A/N: some wholesome stuff was there, and some lore-building was done, now it is stuff that we should talk about.
The mace that was against our boy is Sharur`s failed replication. Sharur is a divine weapon, a talking mace of the Sumerian god Ninurta; its name stands for "smasher of thousands". So it was not a replica but a weapon based on the legends, and its partial success makes it a rare mystic code, way above the common ravel and on the level of the gauntlets etc, made and used by the church.
The legend includes homing and throwing to hit targets far away as common elements, hence the final move by him was a way to replicate that and was supported by the magecraft of following the wind`s flow The move was surely deadly for our boy unless he did something like he did. So guys, author out.
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THANKS FOR READING :)