Emrys slowly surfaced from a restorative nap, several hours after he'd collapsed.
He didn't open his eyes — he'd had no use for them in months — but his mind resurfaced with a gradual clarity, like a light returning in stages after a long blackout. First came the familiar rough texture of the sheets under his fingers. Then the stubborn smell of hot metal and coal that soaked into every corner of the workshop, even this small room. Then, finally, that sensation so natural to him now that he barely noticed it anymore: the presence of his haki, spread effortlessly all around him, tracing the outline of the room, the bed, the door, and further off, the dull rumble of a still-active forge.
He stayed still for a moment, simply savoring the fact that he no longer felt the heaviness that had weighed on his entire being the day before.
No more dizziness. No more of that feeling of having my veins drained. Just... normal tiredness, the kind you get after a long sleep.
He breathed in deeply, let the air leave his lungs just as slowly, then stretched with deliberate care, one limb at a time, to chase away the stiffness that had built up. Once satisfied, he let himself fall back onto the mattress, arms crossed behind his head, and started running through the events of the day before in his mind — not so much to remember them, he hadn't forgotten a thing, but to try to measure just how far-reaching they were.
I never would have imagined it would go this far.
He thought back to the moment he'd first activated Structural Analysis with that kind of intensity. To the flood of information that had rushed through his mind. To the layers, deeper and deeper, that he'd uncovered without even meaning to dig that far.
Iended up confirming the existence of God with a single rock.
That still struck him as thoroughly unbelievable.
But I don't feel like dwelling on that right now. What matters is that the boost given to Structural Analysis is straight up broken. And now that I think about it, I bet the same goes for Projection.
Emrys held out his hand in front of him and repeated the instinctive gesture from the day before.
Gae Dearg materialized in his palm, the hilt settling naturally into his fingers.
Oh, right... Emiya always says "Trace On" before projecting anything. Might as well try it, just to see.
He let go of the spear, which scattered into particles of light, then held out his hand again.
Trace On.
Gae Dearg reappeared, faster than the moment before — almost no delay at all, this time.
Ha. So it's not just for show. The incantation clearly speeds up the projection.
He stayed quiet for a moment, brow furrowed, taking note of what the projection itself had revealed to him about the weapon.
"That's what I thought," he finally murmured. "The rank of the weapon is exactly the same as the original. And it holds itself together on its own — it doesn't need a constant feed to stay materialized. My magical energy was only spent at the moment of materialization."
He spun the weapon in the air with one hand, without even sitting up. He hadn't gotten up, but oddly enough, he could do that without the slightest effort, as if his body already knew how to handle a blade it had never held before yesterday.
"On top of that, I instinctively use Diarmuid's technique, even without having to look into his past. And I've only figured out all this with fewer than four uses."
Why Emiya, though?
I'm not really the type to like "overpowered" characters; I prefer the ones with interesting abilities. But I'm not stupid enough to pick a character who'd have a hundred percent chance of getting killed in a world where there's no way to power up at all. That means there must be ways to get stronger here. The problem is, I don't know a single one.
Emrys released the spear, which scattered into particles of light.
Emiya isn't even a brute-force type of character. I like his versatility, the fact that he's got a weapon for every situation. And the simple fact that I wasn't disappointed to see the program had thrown in some bonuses — especially one as broken as Drainda — on top of a enhancement to his potential, confirms what I already thought: Emiya would need that to actually be considered strong in this world.
Emrys sat up and finally got out of bed.
That's what I'd already figured out on my own. Now, with what just happened, things have changed again. The fact that Structural Analysis got boosted to the point where I could sense the exact moment a rock's atoms bonded, on my very first real use of it, shows this world is even more dangerous than I thought.
He reached the bedroom door, fumbled for a moment before finding the handle, and opened it.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
"Morning, Dubs."
Dubs answered with a grunt, without pausing his work.
Emrys already knew, thanks to his haki, that he was still in Dubs's workshop — or rather in a room right next to it. He had no idea why the room was human-sized, or how Dubs had managed to shrink down the day before, but that wasn't his priority right now.
When I saw "enhanced" on the character sheet, I figured it just meant a small bump. Turns out I can go all the way to breaking down the tiniest details of something's existence.
Most of what he'd learned about the rock had been useless, and a good chunk of the information had evaporated from his mind as quickly as it had come in. Like the exact bacteria count sitting on the surface of the stone.
Emrys headed back toward the pile of rocks, guided effortlessly by his haki, determined to keep training.
If every bonus I've been given is this kind of broken, then the danger level of this world is even more insane than I thought. Seriously, though, what even is this world? And why didn't they leave me any memory of it?
Emrys sighed at a situation that kept getting more complicated by the minute.
"Sigh. Nothing I can do about it. All I can do for now is train like crazy while I wait to find some real opportunities."
He sat cross-legged in front of the pile of rocks, picked a dull gray fragment barely bigger than his fist, and pressed his palm against it.
His magical energy began to stir. But this time he kept in mind what he wanted to do with it, and the structural analysis began without a hitch.
Mineral composition, crystal lattice, a few surface cracks. Nothing alarming, this time.
He repeated the exercise several times, switching rocks each attempt, just to get the hang of it.
"Hold on, actually..." he suddenly muttered. "If saying 'Trace On' makes projection faster, it should work for analysis too, right?"
He set his hand on a new rock.
Trace On.
The difference was immediate. The flow kicked in almost before he'd even finished the thought — smoother, faster... and way too deep. He instantly recognized that sensation of tumbling through the layers of matter, composition giving way to crystal lattice, then to the atomic bonds themselves.
He cut it off, hard.
"No. No, no, no, not again."
He stayed still for a moment, hand still pressed against the rock, catching his breath.
"Okay. So the incantation doesn't just speed things up, it also pushes the default depth further. I need to learn to rein that in before it spirals like yesterday."
He tried again, more carefully this time, cutting the flow the moment composition and weak points appeared, without letting it dig any further. After a few tries, the reflex settled in: the information came in fast and clean, and all he had to do was ease off his focus at the right moment to keep it from digging deeper.
"There we go. Like that, it's manageable."
He was about to move on to something else when a new idea struck him.
"Wait. In canon, Emiya never touches anything he analyzes. He just looks, and that's enough." He fell silent for a moment. "I don't have working eyes anymore. I must've defaulted to touch without even thinking about it. But if what I really need is a vector, and not specifically eyes..."
He pulled his hand back from the rock, left it resting in front of him without touching it, and stretched his haki toward it.
"Trace On."
Something answered.
It wasn't as sharp as through direct contact — the information came in slower, filtered, like it was passing through a veil — but it came through. The rock's internal cohesion, the general layout of its crystal lattice, a tiny crack he probably would never have caught by touch alone.
"...It works."
He stayed still for a moment, almost bewildered by his own discovery, before a grin spread across his face.
"Well, would you look at that. I just had to think of it."
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Dubs's hammer kept ringing out behind him, indifferent, while Emrys, sitting in the middle of his pile of rocks, had just realized he might be holding one of the keys to his progress in this world.
He picked another rock, a bit farther this time, about two meters away.
Trace On
The flow returned, a little slower to settle than before, but present all the same. The rough texture of the surface, the internal strata, a tiny pocket of air trapped inside the rock for who knew how long.
"Okay, okay. That wasn't a fluke."
He tried it a third time with a rock five meters away, tucked at the far end of the workshop, half-hidden behind a workbench. The result stayed blurry: a vague impression of presence, a shapeless mass with no detail, like looking at a silhouette through a fogged-up window.
"Right, that clearly needs more practice."
He tried again several times, adjusting his focus with each attempt, until a bit of clarity finally cut through the fog — not complete, but enough to make out the rock's general outline.
He ran through a few more analyses, alternating between touch and haki depending on the distance, more to lock the reflex into habit than to push any real limit.
Then a riskier idea crossed his mind.
What if, instead of a single object, I tried a whole area at once?
He thought for a second about deploying his haki at full range, then immediately thought better of it.
"No. Bad idea. Given what happened yesterday with just one rock, I'm not testing that at full power right off the bat."
He settled on something more reasonable: a five-meter radius around himself, no more, covering the floor, the nearby workbench, and a handful of scattered rocks.
Trace On.
What followed had nothing to do with analyzing a single object. A flood of information hit him all at once: the composition of the floor beneath him, the stress points in the workbench, the cracks in half a dozen rocks all at the same time.
He cut the flow almost immediately, but a dull pain still exploded behind his skull anyway, like someone had driven a needle straight between his temples.
"Aaah— okay. Even limiting it to five meters, that stings way more than I expected."
He stayed still for a moment, head in his hands, letting the pain slowly fade.
"Guess it's a good thing I didn't try that at full range. A full-power area scan probably would've left me in the same state as yesterday."
A grin spread across his face anyway.
A bird's-eye view like that, in the middle of a fight — terrain weak points, enemy structure, obstacles, all at once — that would completely change the game. I just need to learn how to handle it without turning my brain to mush every time.
He stayed sitting there a while longer, letting the headache fade slowly, before getting up carefully.
Clang! Clang!
Dubs's hammering stopped abruptly. The giant turned his head, no doubt noticing the wince Emrys was struggling to hide, and grunted out a question whose meaning left little room for doubt.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Emrys answered, waving a hand vaguely, a slightly strained smile on his lips. "Just a little headache. Nothing serious."
Dubs let out a grunt that sounded almost like a reproach, then went back to his anvil.
Emrys let out a tired little laugh, rubbing his temples.
"Honestly, at this rate, headaches are gonna end up being my whole brand."
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