Princess Ariel ended up leaving Boreas Castle after all.
Even though Ariel herself was reluctant and didn't really want to part with Shirou right away, the Boreas family clearly couldn't handle the princess's antics anymore.
You see, when Ariel was captured this time, the entire Boreas family almost wanted to explode with all their power, putting the entire Fitoa territory on lockdown.
While Shirou successfully rescued Princess Ariel in the end, stopping the Boreas family's lockdown from going any further, this incident was a huge ordeal for the entire Boreas family's mind and energy.
Even Sauros, the head of the Boreas family, couldn't take the princess's trouble, begging her to quickly return to the royal capital.
Although he couldn't say anything awful out loud, the Boreas family was secretly trying to kick her out.
Even if Ariel wasn't easily embarrassed, she couldn't insist on anything at this point and could only say goodbye.
And this time, to prevent Ariel from encountering danger, the Boreas family even sent out Ghislaine and Shirou, asking the two experts to escort Ariel.
You can imagine how important that was.
However, Shirou was a bit annoyed.
He clearly didn't want to keep interacting with Princess Ariel. He had a hard time getting used to many of her actions. But Shirou couldn't disobey the Boreas family's orders, so he had to grit his teeth and escort Ariel out of Fitoa territory with Ghislaine.
Once they left Fitoa territory, other territories would take over the task of escorting Princess Ariel.
The Boreas family had already done their best here.
…
"It's such a shame. Just thinking about not seeing Shirou soon makes me want to cry every night,"
On the road leading out of Fitoa territory, Princess Ariel looked at Shirou with a charming expression, as if trying to tempt him.
"I heard that the princess's nightlife is quite rich, so there's no such thing as loneliness,"
Shirou sighed, "Even without me, Princess Ariel, you won't change, right?"
"How do you know about that?"
Hearing Shirou's words, Ariel showed a surprised expression.
Due to the corruption and decay of the palace environment, most nobles had strange and weird tastes, such as the Boreas family liking girls with animal ears and the Notos family liking big-breasted women.
As a princess, Ariel was a well-known lesbian in the palace. All the palace maids and female servants were targeted by her.
Ariel was only more restrained outside the palace.
Otherwise, the women of the Boreas family might not have been able to escape.
Of course, while this matter was widely spread among the palace nobles, almost no one outside the palace knew the inside story.
Most people's perception of Ariel was still that she was a beautiful, gentle, dignified second princess, the most perfect woman in the world, and so on.
This shows how good Ariel was at hiding herself on a daily basis.
As for why Shirou was able to know such private things, the reason must be easy to guess.
Ariel thought for a moment, and her gaze shot like an arrow towards Luke beside her.
"Luke, you're a piece of work, telling Shirou the stories about this princess? Your courage seems to be getting bigger and bigger!"
"Your Highness, please spare me!"
Luke begged in an exaggerated manner.
Since witnessing Shirou's battle with the Nakuljad Northern Saint brothers, he deeply realized his weakness and changed his past contemptuous attitude towards Shirou, becoming very respectful.
Therefore, during the time that the princess was rescued, he had been trying his best to follow Shirou and learn swordsmanship.
Although his talent was average, his attitude after this incident could be said to have become much more serious.
Shirou thought that if he worked hard, he might have a chance to break through to the upper level.
It was also in this process that Luke and Shirou formed a pretty good friendship, and could even be considered good friends who talked about everything.
At least Luke was very sincere to Shirou, even telling him some of Ariel's secret matters while practicing swordsmanship together.
Not only that, Luke also told Shirou a lot of important information about the nobles of the Asura Kingdom, especially a lot of news related to Darius, which gave Shirou more confidence in killing Darius and provided considerable help.
As for the inheritance of the Natos family, Luke was still somewhat concerned, at least not directly handing over the inheritance to Shirou.
However, Shirou himself had no interest in the inheritance of the Natos family.
Therefore, both parties tacitly ignored this matter, which evolved into a pretty good relationship. Luke could even be considered Shirou's first male friend of the same age in this world.
"Hmph, I'll deal with you later, Luke."
Ariel obviously didn't really want to target Luke. She just said it in a joking tone, and then looked at Shirou with a serious expression, "I'm afraid this is really goodbye, Shirou. Are you really unwilling to go to the royal capital with me? I really need you…"
For a young girl whose appearance and temperament were top-notch to say to you, "I need you."
If it was an ordinary person, they probably wouldn't be able to resist the other party's charm and would be completely lost.
But for Shirou, Ariel could never change his mind, because he was carrying too much on his shoulders and couldn't give up everything to go to the royal capital with Ariel.
Of course, if one day Shirou became strong enough to solve all the enemies, he might consider lending his power to this princess.
"Sorry."
Shirou expressed his attitude with a short sentence.
Seeing this, Ariel couldn't change anything, but looked at Shirou with regret. After searching around in her chest, she took out a token.
"This is?"
Faced with Shirou's confusion, Ariel said frankly: "This is a token that I specially give to my guardian knight. With this token, you can freely enter and exit the palace with permission, and you can also persuade some people in my name at certain times. Don't worry, as long as it's what you want to do, Shirou, I will allow it, no matter what."
"..."
She didn't expect Ariel to give herself such a valuable thing.
Shirou was a little embarrassed to accept it, but Luke forcibly stuffed it into his chest.
"You are more suitable to hold this thing than me."
Luke looked at Shirou with bright eyes, "However, I won't admit defeat. I will definitely become stronger and catch up with your pace, Shirou!"
"..."
Faced with Luke's determination, Shirou was silent for a moment, and finally nodded silently.
He put the token in his chest.
Ariel and Luke's figures disappeared into the distance with the carriage, completely disappearing from sight.
"Let's go."
Ghislaine didn't have much feeling for Ariel and Luke, and just said calmly.
Shirou also nodded silently and returned to the Boreas family with Ghislaine.
…
The princess's ordeal came to an end completely, and Shirou's life entered a long-lost peaceful routine.
After his tenth birthday, Eris's relationship with Shirou became much closer than before.
She became more serious and attentive during swordsmanship classes, and even occasionally clung to Shirou, asking him to comb her hair.
While combing Eris's hair, Shirou often inexplicably recalled the time when he used to comb Miyu's hair.
This made Shirou feel inexplicably sad. While missing Miyu, he also couldn't help but try to restrain himself from thinking of Eris as a substitute for Miyu.
He didn't think he had any right to be Eris's brother, nor did he have the right to regard her as his sister.
In order to control his inner thoughts, Shirou even took the initiative to distance himself from Eris.
He began to spend more time on swordsmanship and forging.
His forging skills had already reached their peak. The subsequent forging was just to make the already extraordinary forging skills even more powerful, creating more works that would shock the world.
There's nothing to say about that.
Let's mainly talk about swordsmanship.
After the battle with the Nakuljad Northern Saint brothers, Shirou clearly realized the shortcomings of his swordsmanship, but at the same time, he also found a way to make up for his swordsmanship.
That is magic power release.
Due to his young age, Shirou's aura foundation was not solid, at least not reaching the level of Ghislaine's years of training and aura that was so thick it couldn't be thicker.
So, if Shirou wanted to catch up with Ghislaine's level in a short period of time without spending a lot of time training himself, he had to use tricky methods.
And magic power release was the method Shirou discovered that could catch up with those senior Swordsmen.
After all, most Swordsmen don't use magic, let alone hone their magic power.
Swordsmen in this world generally look down on magic. At least they won't actively practice magic, because most magic, except for a few things like the sword magic Shirou developed, is difficult to use in actual combat.
This gave Shirou a chance to take a shortcut.
Because he discovered the method of magic power release from Artoria's skills, as long as he used magic power release, he could use the magic power that was originally useless in his body, along with his aura.
Ordinary people's swordsmanship can only be wrapped in aura, but Shirou's swordsmanship can not only be wrapped in aura, but also in magic power, and he can even use reinforcement magic.
With triple blessings, Shirou's short-term explosive power would reach an unimaginable level, and may even directly increase by one or two levels.
Just like when he instantly killed the Northern Saint, Jad, with the strength of a half-step Sword Saint.
With this idea, Shirou's training in swordsmanship can be said to be more comfortable. Not only was his strength getting stronger little by little, but he also had a trump card that could change the situation in actual combat.
The only pity was that Shirou couldn't wrap his aura in the dream-summoned form.
It may be the separation between worlds.
This meant that the upper limit of the dream-summoned Servant Emiya form was locked from the beginning.
And this was undoubtedly what Shirou had always wanted to cross. What he had always wanted to do was to surpass the limits of Servant Emiya and reach the true peak that the original world's self had never reached.
In this way, time once again began to pass silently.
Two years passed like a white horse flashing past a crack, quietly passing by.
Shirou turned fifteen.
It was mentioned earlier that five, ten, and fifteen years old in this world were all extremely important milestones.
The entire Boreas family began to prepare for Shirou's fifteenth birthday in advance. Even Buena Village sent news that the Greyrat family wanted to celebrate for Shirou.
Shirou didn't have too many feelings about all of this.
It wasn't that he was too ruthless, but he had been almost madly repeating and using his time every day recently, trying his best to squeeze every minute of his time to try to improve his strength further.
Finally, when Shirou swung the sword in his hand at an extremely fast speed, he felt a bottleneck quietly fall.
Shirou suddenly realized a possibility—he had broken through the bottleneck of an upper-level Swordsman and mastered the true Longsword of Light.
This also meant that he had broken through the bottleneck of an upper-level Swordsman and possessed the name of Sword Saint!
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