(A/N: guys my tests are heer again so the schedule is fucked again like a back alley who–
, *ahem* so yeah i will upload irregularly for some time, till my exam and projects etc are over and i hope the fucking animals stop trying to kick me.)
What shirou didnt know was all this was just political shitstorm, someone was not happy with waver but couldnt do anything to the man hence he is targeting him. Normally, magi look down on enforcers as heretic magi and spellcasters, and that is, until one is sent after them to hunt them down. They experience being chased, hunted, brutally murdered and harvested like a pig or brought back alive to the clock tower to be sealed inside a tube.
Things progressed, and a middle-aged man wearing a leather jacket and a shining bald head appeared. From his looks, the boy guessed that the man often worked in the sun, as his skin appeared quite tanned and sunburnt. Plus, he smelled like depression and midlife crisis personified. As soon as he stepped into the room, he greeted the woman with a flattering smile, which allowed the boy to learn that her surname was "Arashino."
"Let's skip over formalities and begin this assessment. Fatalities are strictly prohibited here as per the laws of the lords."
"I will be responsible for safeguarding the life of the participants, now BEGIN!" she said.
As soon as her words fell, nothing changed. Both men stood still like they were in the moment before. Breaking this standoff, the older man sighed as he opened his rucksack and said
"Nothing personal, kid, a man gotta do what he has to do to put food on the table and live. The earlier you learn this, the better."
As his last syllable echoed, he dashed forward and withdrew a stoneish-looking mace from his sack while his feet left imprints on the ground. Shirou`s eyes constricted as his eyes fell on the thin layer of faint mist-like mana covering the man`s body, and a mace with lion heads printed on its white body sent shivers of discomfort through his body.
(image)
In an instant, the man was upon him, and he swung his mace at the boy`s shoulder. Shirou performed a classical nukitsuke in response. The weapons collided with a bang, and without any surprise, the boy was sent flying. The judge didn't make a move, she summarised that even if the strike had landed, the injury would at most be a broken shoulder; it would have been painful and disabling, but not fatal.
Shirou felt his arms go numb and his muscles quake under the strike. The man was also surprised, but for a different reason. He was slightly shocked by the boy's reaction speed, but the real matter was the sword, which he had expected to shatter like glass under the mace. The white mace appeared to have been carved from stone, and the crude imagery of the winged line drawn on it looked strangely lifelike, as if it were eyeing the boy viciously.
The boy's constricted pupil gradually dilated, revealing a faint reddish-black tint, quite unlike the appearance of mystic eyes, which felt rather eerie. Realizing he was far out of his depth, he quickly reinforced his body, causing the gems on his gloves to emit a soft green light.
He stepped in towards the man`s left side and drew his sword in an arc along the blade`s path of motion, releasing a plume of red mana that looked like flame for an instant, and, like an oil-soaked rag catching fire, the dim glow surrounded the blade. The enforcer showing his experience quickly shoved the handle of the mace with a knob like structure onto the path of the balde.
As soon as the weapons touched each other, the glow on the sword started flashing erratically, and shirou felt a tremor traveling through his hand that nearly numbed his limbs and made him drop the sword. Dodging another overhead strike from the mace, he instinctively counter-attacked in a way aiming to slice the man`s neck and cheek in half. The combat proficiency of the other man shone through as he was overwhelmingthe boy slowly and steadily as they fought, but the boy with his uncanny perception in the battle was weaving through the small gaps in the barrage even then he still had suffered few bruises and cuts by the shockwaves that transferred through when he parried the unavoidable blows.
He was baited into attacking fake openings numerous times and hence paid the price in the form of injuries. After the battle continued for an instant, the baldy grew unsure of the outcome, hence he jumped back and stomped his legs on the ground. He was aiming to use his magecraft seriously now, being based on the vibration of objects and their natural frequencies, it was aptly named resonance magecraft.
The vibrations he generated disrupted the flow of mana in the objects he touched. This allowed him to take numerous targets by surprise as their circuits faltered for an instant, and he smashed his mace on their heads.
The point is that he had never fought against the true horrors of this world, but rather rogue magi, so he had an inflated sense of capability and a high success rate. Hence, he was tasked with beating up the boy and disabling him, if possible, under the guise of assessment by someone from the magi families. According to Elijah, the mercenary turned enforcer, this is also good for the boy, as he likely doesn't understand what he is stepping into and is presumably an heir of some third-rate declining magus family working as a political pawn for somebody.
He thought
He channelled vibration into his shoes, and a small explosion echoed in the room as Elijah was propelled forward in an instant, and the mace on his hand glowed with blue light due to the mana being condensed on the winged lion seal as the magus shouted out the incarnation.
"Berech uti hu melech locham"( Bless me o warrior king)
"Lehitorer o,manpetz shel alfim" (awaken o smasher of thousands)
With a silent roar, he twirled his body around like a ballet dancer and threw the mace towards the boy, which sailed towards its target like a hawk at its prey. The tangy smell of feathers filled Shirou`s nostrils, and his heart pounded in his chest like a drum. The thought that crossed his mind was
The glowing tip of the hammer overlapped with the tip of a red spear, piercing through him in his mind. The ring around his eyes started surging like waves of mud as he gritted his teeth, and all the circuits across his body flared. He felt like magma was being poured into his back, but pain was an old friend, and common sense had long flown out of the window.
Ms. Arashino quickly fumbled with her kimono, and several white snakes peeked out of her sleeves, their bodies taut like springs. She was prepared to save the boy`s life, do her job, and do a favour to a certain interesting man.
When the mace finally approached him, Shirou`s mind could keep up with the flow, but his body couldn`t, so he did the simplest and brutal thing he could do to overcome this deficit and used
"Time Alter: Accel!"
As soon as the mana flowed into the crest on his back and burned onto his skin, the world slowed down, it was like he was running on 1.5x and the world on 1x. Which was close to the truth, as he couldn't handle double accel in his current condition, he had used the info he got from the classes to modify the mana feeding method of the crest and activated the spell at half the efficiency.
As he thought this, his body was already moving even though it felt like someone was twisting his muscles like noodles, and he was breathing inside water, and simultaneously, a press was compressing his heart. Still, he moved, and the phosphoric fang was immediately set ablaze with mana; the circuits climbed onto the blade as they filled its structure with more mana and strengthened it and slightly deepened its purpose of existence.
The curse on its edge was nearly visible to the naked eye as a thin red glow on the red blade`s edge. With a bang, a white snake as thick as a finger struck the edge of the blade and deflected it. However, its owner zoomed it back with a grunt and used the rebound force to strike again, leaving a 4-inch-long cut on the shoulder and scapula of Elijah, who had turned around to a tight position to avoid fatal damage.
Across the man, the boy breathed deeply as he collapsed onto his knees, and the mana on the blade dissipated like flickering red fireflies and the gems on his gloves already filled with cracks, shattered and fell onto the ground where he had stabbed the sword tip into the ground hence lightly staining it with blood. The man later let out a scream of the dammed, showing the pain had hit him after a delay.
(A/N: I am dead tired, so I will explain the mace in the next chapter.
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THANKS FOR READING :)