Chapter 60: Return
"Ugh, the pain..."
Emiya Shirou subconsciously pressed his hand against the source of the agony, but then he suddenly froze. The moment his skin made contact, a sensation of wetness and viscosity transmitted through his nerves.
It was blood. And the location of the bleeding was his heart.
"I see. I'm back."
There was no panic.
With the mental fortification brought by his Projections and the tutelage of Joseph Joestar—once the most powerful Hamon user—Shirou quickly calmed the disorientation caused by the spacetime shift of his return.
(PS: Although many meme that Jonathan's body has the strength of [Star Platinum], strictly speaking, the strongest Hamon warrior was young Joseph. The Pillar Men and the Ultimate Lifeform are his most prominent battle records.)
Along with his steadying mind, he shifted his breathing rhythm. Hamon power began to circulate successfully through his entire body. It proved that his experiences in the world of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and the knowledge he gained there were not illusions; he could successfully apply them in the Nasuverse, the world where his original body resided.
Naturally, the Hamon breathing also served to mobilize his life energy. Otherwise, if he had tried to refine magical energy using his inherently flawed method of activating Magic Circuits, the wound through his heart might not have killed him, but he surely would have died from the backlash of an incorrect circuit activation.
"Good. This proves my initial hypothesis was correct. While the system's travel doesn't let me bring back the abilities themselves, the knowledge remains. In that case..."
—Trace on!
Purple vines manifested from Shirou's hand. They coiled around and covered the bloodstains dripping onto the floor, rapidly performing a "spirit photography" according to Shirou's thoughts to produce a Marauder's Map-style layout marking his targets.
It didn't stop there. The purple vines that finished the reading quickly transformed into green tentacles. They began to extend outward, following the coordinates provided by the map to capture the object Shirou sought.
Even with the healing and life-reinforcement effects of Hamon, refining magical energy for Projection the moment he returned to the Nasuverse caused Shirou's breathing to falter slightly. After all, the essence of refining magical energy is to squeeze one's own life force and
convert it into mana capable of driving magecraft. This was no simple task for someone currently enduring a fatal wound.
Fortunately, the preparations were complete. Through the localization of [Pseudo-Hermit Purple] and the long-range capture of [Pseudo-Hierophant Green], a stray cat that happened to be passing by Homurahara Academy was snatched up by Shirou.
Yes, Shirou went to all that trouble just to catch an animal. After all, even though [Crazy Diamond] can restore someone who has practically turned to dust, its one weakness is that its healing ability cannot be used on its own user.
If it couldn't be used on the user, then Shirou simply had to make it so he was no longer the "user" of [Crazy Diamond].
[Whitesnake] has the ability to extract Stands into "Stand DISCs" and can interfere with the minds of others by inserting "Command DISCs." Since Shirou had these in his Stand reserve, he simply had to use [Pseudo-Whitesnake] to extract the [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond] DISC, place it into the stray cat, and give it a command to heal him.
The pink humanoid Stand encased in diamond-like armor, [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond], appeared over the cat. It placed its all-healing hands over Shirou's heart.
However...
Squelch————!!
Shortly after Shirou had successfully circumvented the weakness of [Crazy Diamond] through this chain of Stand manipulation and repaired his heart, the healed organ split open once again. This wasn't because Lancer had returned; it was simply the result of the curse laid upon Lancer's demonic spear.
"As I thought, simply repairing the wound is useless?"
[Pseudo-Crazy Diamond] exerted its power again. The Stand's restoration ability and the spear's curse began a constant tug-of-war within Shirou's chest. Although using one's heart as a battlefield was dangerous, because the two forces were deadlocked, the curse couldn't finish Shirou off, even if the Stand couldn't permanently fix the heart. This actually made Shirou's complexion look much better than his initial near-death state.
Of course, the stray cat maintaining this restoration ability was becoming quite exhausted.
But this was only temporary. The Tohsaka Rin of the original timeline had already shown the Shirou with past-life memories how to break the curse of the spear. Shirou had prioritized repairing the heart with [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond] specifically to prepare for the final treatment.
Because...
"Do it, [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond]!"
Having reached a certain resolve, Shirou's movements became firm. He threw a new Command DISC onto the cat. Controlling the cat, he directed [Pseudo-Crazy Diamond] to drive its fist with great force into his own body—piercing through his heart!
"DORA————!!"
Thus, by the time Tohsaka Rin caught up to the scene, following Lancer's trail, this was what she saw:
Lancer had vanished for some reason. Not only that, but Emiya Shirou—who was supposed to be hunted by Lancer—was standing there perfectly fine, playing with a stray cat. Then, an entirely invisible attack erupted from Shirou's chest, blasting a hole through his heart large enough to see the scenery behind him.
But in the next second, that hole suddenly vanished. Not just the wound, but the blood and flesh scattered by the attack disappeared as if everything that just happened was an illusion.
"Ar... Archer, what was that...!?"
Tohsaka Rin, who happened to stumble upon this scene, turned her head toward Archer (EMIYA) with an expression as if she had seen a ghost.
"Was that... Lancer's Noble Phantasm?!"
(p.s. as the setting is now Nasuverse I decide to use the Japanese format Last Name First Name from now on, mostly because it sound better and there is no other foreign name that would contrast the Japanese Names)