The group kept moving forward and soon arrived at the Basherant Duchy.
This country is located on the northern edge of the central continent. You could say it's the entry point to the northern lands. If you want to reach the Ranoa Kingdom and other northern countries, you have to go through the Basherant Duchy.
As a northern area of the central continent, the Basherant Duchy definitely has many monsters.
Compared to the Asura Kingdom, which sends out knight orders to fight monsters regularly, the Basherant Duchy clearly doesn't have as much power to clear the roads.
So, the group met more monsters along the way than they did near the Asura Kingdom before. The monsters' power also increased a lot.
Monsters that the Counter Arrow adventurer team could have easily dealt with before became harder to handle in the increasingly difficult fighting environment, and the adventurers started to feel tired.
But thanks to the cleverness of Bruno, the merchant, Shirou and some other passengers who could fight were brought onto the wagons. When it was time to fight, the passengers would help out on their own, so they resisted the monster waves.
This kind of day went on for a while, and all the adventurers and passengers couldn't help but feel worn out.
But Shirou, on the other hand, was very happy with this situation.
Because all his skills improved in the real battles with the monsters. His skills other than swordsmanship made great jumps after being tested in real fights.
If he wasn't thinking about the safety of the group, Shirou even wanted to go into the endless forest alone during the journey, to become stronger in endless battles.
...
Snowflakes danced in the sky.
Shirou was wearing thick clothes, but they weren't clothes for keeping warm. Instead, he was wearing the armor that the Sword God had given him.
To complete the Sword God's request for him to swing the Longsword of Light while wearing the armor, the best way Shirou could think of was to wear this armor every day, even when he slept, to get used to the weight of the armor and its ability to absorb magic and spirit energy.
He believed that one day he would be able to fully adapt to this armor and swing the Longsword of Light while wearing the heavy armor.
Of course, Shirou couldn't do that yet.
Right now, when he put on the armor, his own power got limited by the armor. The strength he showed was no different from an average C-rank adventurer.
Besides using the armor to train himself, Shirou also had another purpose for not wearing thick clothes: he planned to use the special environment of the northern continent to train his ability to fight against the cold, to be able to fight in cold environments.
The Sword God's request wasn't just for Shirou to learn all the swordsmanship techniques.
What the Sword God wanted him to do was to adapt to any environment, to develop a body and adaptability like those of a dragon.
Shirou agreed with this.
Since he was trying to match the Dragon God, what he had to do wasn't to surpass and defeat the Dragon God in one area, but to bring all his skills up to the Dragon God's level, to reach where the Dragon God was.
To do that, from how to use different weapons to how to adapt to different environments, to how to react in real battles... Shirou had to do his best in every area.
As a weak human, the only way he could catch up to the Dragon God's footsteps was to put everything he had into getting stronger.
So, even after arriving in the northern lands, Shirou didn't buy any cold-weather gear. He was completely using his own body to adapt to the freezing environment.
This was definitely a difficult thing, and he could get sick at any time, but Shirou didn't care. He forced himself to ignore the biting cold wind, using his human body to stand up against harsh nature.
However, the human body can resist heat and cold, but there was still one thing it couldn't resist.
That was hunger.
Even a tough adventurer would starve to death if they didn't eat for a few days.
That's why groups like Bruno's attracted strong people to join them.
After all, as long as you stayed with the group, even in the ice and snow of the northern lands, you wouldn't starve to death because you couldn't find anything to eat.
Shirou was also very grateful for the group's existence. If he could, he would even like to show off his cooking skills to repay them.
But sadly, the group didn't have any cooking equipment, and the food was all dried food and dried fruit that could be stored for a long time.
He could understand that this was for the sake of long-distance travel, but it also made Shirou lose the opportunity to show off his cooking skills.
Since he couldn't cook, Shirou usually spent his time keeping his weapons in good shape.
He was carrying many weapons, all of which he had brought with him when he left the Holy Land of Swords.
Because North God the Second told him that he couldn't use swordsmanship, Shirou naturally chose to carry as many weapons as possible. Specifically, those were bows and arrows, spears, long knives, daggers, and shields.
Even though Shirou could completely use projection to create weapons during battles, he also needed to train at other times. If he had to project every time, it would be inconvenient, so he prepared all the weapons he needed before leaving the Holy Land of Swords.
So far, he had somewhat adapted to how to use different weapons, but because there were so many different kinds, he seemed like a beginner instead.
This caused Shirou to often be looked down upon by others, and it also caused Susanna and Sara to have those kinds of attitudes towards him.
Even though Shirou really wanted to change their views, he didn't know how to do that, so he often showed a helpless expression.
"What's wrong? You don't look well, Shirou."
As Shirou was taking care of his weapons, a voice came from behind him.
Shirou turned around and saw a female fighter with light brown skin and her dreadlocks all tied up behind her head. She was Susanna, who was mentioned earlier.
Susanna had a personality that was very caring of others. She was a good person, but sometimes her excessive concern made the person she was caring for feel helpless.
"No, it's nothing."
Even though Shirou refused, Susanna still said with concern, "Are you okay? But looking at you, it seems like you have something worrying you."
"This..."
Hearing Susanna's words, Shirou couldn't help but look at the person next to her.
Standing next to Susanna was the blonde girl Sara.
Sara was probably about sixteen or seventeen years old, looking about the same age as Shirou. She had a slightly forceful expression on her face, and she was wearing light leather clothes, dressed like a swordsman. But she didn't have a sword at her side, and instead, she was carrying a bow on her back.
The girl's role in the team was archer. Her skills were pretty good. While she wasn't perfectly accurate, she was a good support.
For some reason, Sara had shown a displeased attitude towards Shirou when they first met.
Later, because of Susanna's matter, their relationship became even worse. Sara often showed obvious dissatisfaction towards him, which made Shirou feel very helpless.
Now that Susanna was mentioning why he was troubled in front of him, Shirou really didn't know how to describe his thoughts.
"Cough cough..."
As an experienced adventurer, Susanna immediately realized Shirou's thoughts.
She made herself seem as calm as possible and said, "Well, Shirou, you're going to the Ranoa Kingdom, right? We're going in the same direction. We have some time to travel together. If you want, you can work with us more. We can teach you some adventurer experience and skills."
After thinking for a while about Susanna's suggestion, Shirou nodded in agreement.
But he didn't really want to learn from this group of average middle-level, or at most upper-level, adventurers. Instead, he planned to show off his skills in front of them.
If they knew that his strength was actually very great, Susanna probably wouldn't bother him anymore.
After Shirou nodded in agreement, Susanna happily led him to where the adventurers were.
Since it was almost evening, the group was setting up camp to rest, and some of the adventurers were sitting around the campfire, chatting.
After Susanna led Shirou and Sara over, she suggested to the adventurers that they have a match with Shirou.
Susanna's purpose in doing this was to have experienced and skilled adventurers show off their strength, so that Shirou, who was too skilled in many things but not really good at any of them, would realize the importance of studying one skill deeply.
As long as he understood that learning too many skills wouldn't make him stronger and would instead slow him down, Shirou would probably understand what he really needed to do.
Susanna thought that her plan was perfect and didn't think that anything would go wrong.
First, she had Shirou and the Counter Arrow adventurers introduce themselves to each other.
Shirou said that he was a North God Style swordsman, and his adventurer rank was C.
Susanna and her teammates weren't surprised and thought that this rank was reasonable.
Susanna then introduced her teammates. Besides the archer Sara, who they already knew, the others were:
The team leader Timothy, an upper-level mage.
Mimir, a middle-level enchanter and doctor.
Patrice, a middle-level North God Style swordsman and beginning mage.
These five people made up a B-rank adventurer team.
Susanna originally wanted to personally show Shirou the Water God Style skills, but she thought about it and gave up. Instead, she had Timothy show Shirou the power of magic first.
Timothy was good at fire magic. After a short chant, he could release upper-level fire magic.
Since he had seen Rudeus casually throw around upper-level and even saint-level magic since he was a child, Shirou didn't feel anything about Captain Timothy's strength.
However, he himself became interested in the existence of magic.
Because he had been too focused on studying swordsmanship these years, he had neglected the important skill of magic.
He had clearly learned middle-level fire magic and earth magic from Roxy when he was a child, but after so many years, he was still at middle-level in these two kinds of magic.
As Shirou thought about this, he recalled the things that Roxy had taught him when he was a child, and he showed the adventurers two kinds of middle-level magic.
By the way, he also recalled and used sword magic too.
Even though he basically stopped using sword magic after he became a Sword Saint and instead used projection magic directly, he hadn't forgotten this skill.
Also, possibly because Shirou's forging skill had improved, the strength of his sword magic was also much higher than before. Now, it was even close to the level of projection.
This made Shirou wonder if he could take his sword magic a step further and turn it into a skill similar to Unlimited Blade Works.
That would definitely allow him to further reduce his reliance on Servant Emiya.
While he was thinking, Susanna and the other adventurers were all surprised.
Shirou's magic rank wasn't exaggerated. It was only middle-level, but combined with his age, it could be said that he was quite talented.
Not to mention that Shirou also knew the unheard-of skill of sword magic.
Susanna temporarily wondered if she might have misjudged Shirou. He might not be an ignorant young man.
But then she became even more concerned about Shirou because she felt that since Shirou's magic talent was so excellent, there was no need for him to practice swordsmanship. He could completely put all his energy into studying magic.
Susanna then started to persuade Shirou to study abroad at the Ranoa Magic Academy and learn magic. She felt that if he was given time, he might become a saint-level mage.
Shirou didn't expect that his actions would have the opposite effect, and he almost couldn't hold back.
While he was confused, Sara suddenly appeared.
The girl seemed to have developed some kind of competitive spirit because of what happened just now, and she said anxiously, "You... come out and compete with me in archery! Since you're carrying a bow and arrows, you must know how to use a bow, right? Let's have a match!"
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