Chapter 1: I Am a Sword Bone, Iron-Blooded and Fragile-Hearted
“Synchronization, start.”
From the shadows of the warehouse, a man’s voice echoed, as if someone was chanting an ancient incantation. Then, the metal sword in his hand was enveloped by a profound domain. “Basic structure, constituent materials, decipher… alter, reinforce.”
And so, certain phenomena occurred unnoticed—
Elements surged in the gloom, an invisible, powerful magnetic field emerged, as if a massive, unseen furnace had been assembled between heaven and earth, and the fire of the spirit danced upon the weapon. The old metal was ‘killed,’ and new metal ‘regenerated.’
A successfully reinforced short sword was freshly produced, its edge sharp and gleaming, clearly containing a sharpness that surpassed ordinary steel blades.
“Hoo… reinforcement successful.”
He casually swung the short sword, drawing a graceful arc in the air, easily piercing through a thick metal plate. On the ground nearby, dozens of standardized longswords, equally sharp and of varying lengths, stood upright.
Gripping the newly forged short sword, its smooth blade reflected the clear features of its creator. The blade flipped up and down, then revealed his dark red hair and his attire—
A UNIQLO color-block raglan sleeve, with an Adidas black and white battle jacket over it.
This type of outfit was considered a classic popular style in this era. But when combined with certain specific elements, such as reinforcement magic and projection magic, a certain fact became unequivocally clear.
That is to say…
“I transmigrated as Wei Gong Shirou.”
This happened recently.
And it was as simple as closing and opening his eyes.
The moment before, he was still complaining to a netizen about how FGO was a money pit, a grind, and had low production capacity. He never expected to transmigrate into Wei Gong Shirou, the protagonist of Type-Moon’s “Fate” series, the next second.
When he first transmigrated, he was still in disbelief, but his appearance and clothes matched, and he also sensed an astonishing power spread throughout his body, which should be the magical energy generated by Magic Circuits.
As an initial Magus without a lineage, Wei Gong Shirou’s aptitude was still relatively excellent.
Then he tried Wei Gong Shirou’s most proficient reinforcement magic and projection magic, and found that he could quickly and easily reinforce various metal weapons. As for projection magic, after a period of exploration, he estimated he was close to mastering it.
So-called reinforcement magic refers to magic that enhances the attributes of an object by circulating magical energy, such as increasing the sharpness of swords and knives.
In Wei Gong’s view, his reinforcement magic was already proficient. What he needed to do next was to improve efficiency, achieving rapid completion without chanting, and to improve his proficiency in projection magic.
Projection magic is a technique that uses magical energy to create replicas of real-world objects. Because items created by this magic usually only last for a few minutes, it is considered highly inefficient and a waste of magical energy in the magical world.
But Wei Gong knew he was different. When projecting sword and weapon-type items, he could project anything he had seen, and it could be done without consuming too much magical energy, and the projected products could exist for a long time.
The reason Wei Gong could do this was because he had awakened an Origin called “Sword.” Once a Magus awakens an Origin, they gain extraordinary talent in that area. Wei Gong’s Sword Origin acted upon his projection magic, allowing him to break through the limitations of general projection magic.
To be fair, compared to reinforcement magic, projection magic was Wei Gong Shirou’s greatest skill with the most room for improvement. The only problem was that he hadn’t inherited the memories and had to learn from scratch.
“Let’s try the projection steps again… Identify the creative concept, envision the basic structure… Empathize with the growth experience…”
Wei Gong Shirou was once again enveloped by an invisible domain, but his attempt to “conjure weapons out of thin air” without materials failed. The chanting, like an ancient incantation, seemed to get stuck, missing some crucial prerequisites.
What was missing, after all?
Wei Gong Shirou was momentarily lost.
He thought carefully again. Tohsaka Rin had said in the original work that failed projections were due to the Magus’s own fantasy not being firm enough. A qualified projection magic first requires understanding the material, properties, and even history to make the fantasy more solid.
So, before projecting a noble phantasm, he needed to analyze the noble phantasm? But he didn’t have a noble phantasm on hand?
Troubled, Wei Gong left the warehouse and returned to his bedroom to go online. If all else failed, perhaps he would have to rely on the almighty netizens.
—
“Hey! Justice Man, long time no see you online. Are you going to work again this time?”
A blonde, blue-eyed beautiful girl’s avatar popped up, flashing a message, “Too bad I don’t have any specific commissions I want recently, oh. If you can humble yourself, this young lady wouldn’t mind offering a butler position—”
The person chatting with Wei Gong Shirou had the ID “Genius Girl Charlotte.” Charlotte is a typical Western name, and Wei Gong Shirou didn’t know which Charlotte it was. It couldn’t be Charlotte Corday from the French Revolution, could it?
“Young lady, please don’t make fun of me. And the nickname ‘Justice Man’ really isn’t great…”
Wei Gong Shirou’s online name was “Ally of Justice.” Perhaps it was because he often lurked without responding, which displeased the young lady, so she gave him an unpleasant nickname. His avatar was eternally the same—a lonely back figure with a flowing cape, which at first glance had a heroic feel but also a hint of shabbiness. In contrast, Charlotte’s avatar, accessories, and profile were all incredibly luxurious, exuding the aura of a cash spender.
Charlotte’s “online persona” was also that of a young lady from a prestigious family. He didn’t know if it was true or false… She and another person in the chat room, whose persona was a certain local nobleman called “Gao Lu Governor,” did share many high-society topics.
For example, which restaurant under the family’s banner had mediocre food and should be reported to the Elders to re-evaluate its star rating; the guest list for recent social dances was getting longer and longer, and several newly purchased private estates had been added, but after careful appraisal, the interesting places were few and far between; last year’s birthday gift was a pair of Desert Eagles, and he hoped this year’s birthday wouldn’t be a playboy-style sports car like a Bugatti Veyron…
Charlotte and Gao Lu Governor also occasionally complained about unreliable Elders in their families. Charlotte probably had a stubborn grandfather who was dedicated to academics and always assigned a lot of homework to his granddaughter, while Gao Lu Governor had a philandering father who never acted properly and always had different women by his side—
His tone when discussing it didn't sound like complaining, but more like he was brewing some chilling hatred…
Wei Gong Shirou never interjected in such topics. After several times of lurking and observing, he silently tagged the two as “Energetic Young Lady” and “Arrogant Showy Young Master,” respectively. As for why he didn’t join the conversation, the reason he gave was perfectly sufficient and strong.
—His parents were deceased.
“Currently hiring a butler, excellent benefits. Young hero, are you really not considering it? Selling yourself, not your skills, oh.” Charlotte sent a “grinning face” emoji.
“Thanks, but no thanks.” Automatically ignoring the last slightly off-kilter remark, Wei Gong felt a bit of a headache.
At one point, he had a sense of déjà vu of Luvia smiling and waving at him—if he remembered correctly, the Finnish noble young lady, the blonde drill-haired Luvia, had hired him as a butler in a certain world line… She was actually after his body.