2 Chapter 2: Knights

Beta read by n1ch, Shigiya, Solitary heart and 8kagi

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-Eostia, Ken-

"Nngh..."

Archer opened his eyes, seeing the familiar clear blue sky. Turning his head, the bowman surveyed his surroundings, making sure that there weren't enemies nearby, ready to attack him.

It wasn't uncommon for him to be teleported in the middle of a heated battlefield or even that one time he woke up inside a burning plane, which was dropping down at high speeds; If it wasn't for the fact that Ayala was an emotionless entity, he would of thought that she had a sense of humor.

Thank god she was more merciful this time around. 

Checking his gear, the black armor was made from a special carbon alloy from a parallel future, while looking aged from constant use, was still serviceable. It was able to resist anti-tank rounds and all kinds of armor-piercing munitions. Though against noble phantasms? Weapons capable of rivaling nuclear warheads? Might as well go naked for all the good it'll do. But he liked the armor, got him through a lot of tough scrapes and it did provide him with better protection than regular Kevlar or steel armor, while being far more flexible, giving him ease of movement.

The shroud of Martin, a cloth he managed to turn into two sleeves, provided some level of defense against corruption and negative curse effects, thanks to its holy attribute.

Unlike the Shirou Emiya from one of his many realities, who was given the shroud by Kotomine, to help seal away his grafted arm; Archer wasn't sure exactly how he had come across his own shroud—though he vaguely remembered getting the shroud from a certain curry-loving clergy... he thinks. 'It's like looking through a fog, everything of my distance past has become too vague for me to remember.'

A memory lost from the countless years he spent as a Counter Guardian. Heck, before being summoned in the Grail War, he could barely even remember Issei, Taiga, or even Illya's faces. They all became blurry and distorted with time.

'Yet I still remember that man's face…' Still able to remember a tired, battered, but overjoyed old man, smiling with tears streaming down his face as he saved the little boy from the raging fire. A memory so strongly engraved into the being known as Shirou Emiya, that it was the catalyst that created his whole personality and existence.

Not wanting to dwell on the past, Archer focused on the present, more so on his mission of eliminating this Vault person. 

"Quite the gruff-looking guy… reminds me of Fergus Mac Róich in a way." Though Vault looked more like a bandit than like the wielder of Caladbolg, they still had some levels of facial similarities.

Being the envoy and one of the main garbage disposers of the Counter Force, EMIYA didn't need to gather information on who his target was and what they looked like. Everything was in a way, downloaded inside his brain to save time and eliminate the problem as quickly as possible. Depending on which point in time they were sent to, sometimes the Counter Guardians only had hours to kill their targets or destroy the entire city they lived in to get the job done.

"So a mercenary leader no less… I wonder if he'll rebel against this land's current ruler and cause a bloody war or something. For Alaya to deem a ragtag mercenary leader as a big enough threat to send me must mean that there is more to this than I may think." A quite common scenario he dealt with a lot during his career.

These kinds of people only wanted to rule over the world for their selfish desires. 

Not that Archer cared to begin with. He long since stopped asking why, and instead just got the job done, not caring for the reason behind it no more.

"I'll just kill him and get this over with." 

A vacation she said, return whenever he felt like it, she said. Humph, like he'd ever believe that!  He highly doubted that she knows what a day off is, let alone a vacation. She's a bigger slave-driver than Rin, and that's a high bar, to begin with, and she's just as greedy. Alaya NEVER lets go of her assets, especially the Counter Guardians. Freeing a single one would need the intervention of a True Magic-user or a freaking miracle itself. And knowing about his E-rank luck, Archer definitely knew that he wouldn't get what he wanted so easily.

As to not have that little bit of hope which would grow eventually, the more time he spent here. He decided to crush it as soon as possible, instead of having someone destroy it later. 

"Now… where the heck am I?" 

Verdant trees filled his view, surrounded by fauna, he immediately realized that he was summoned inside a forest. A light breeze blew across his face, smelling a faint floral scent. With the birds chirping and the water of a nearby river flowing, it was a serene environment for anyone who would stumble upon it.

"[Trace on]" He turned on his switch to activate his 27 circuits. The mental image of a gun's hammer being fired played in his head, akin to cocking the trigger, prana surged through his body. 

'–!?' Something was wrong.

"Heurg! Too much!"

Immediately, he felt two very worrying differences in the prana flowing in his circuits. First, this world's magic density was way too high to be considered normal! It felt like he was sent back to the age of gods. Archer shut down his circuits, fearing he might explode if he wasn't careful.

Secondly, and more worryingly…

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… Alaya wasn't providing him with the near infinite source of prana like he'd always get during his missions.

"Was I summoned as a Servant?" No, that couldn't be possible, he needed to be summoned by a master and that required a large source of Magical Energy like the grail to anchor him to the world. He felt neither of these things as he expanded his senses. Not to mention whenever a Servant is summoned, they get all of the basic knowledge of the world and its modern inner workings. 

He got none of that.

Trying to turn into his astral form proved to be a waste of time as nothing happened.

"What is going on? What are you playing at, Alaya?" 

For the next hour, Archer sat down under a tree and concentrated on controlling the flow of prana coursing through his body. This shouldn't normally be a problem, his status as a Counter Guardian and the changes his body underwent during his time in the system, helped him regulate an immense amount of strain, yet he couldn't do it anymore.

'Has she been telling the truth?' To his horror, the small amount of hope he tried to crush before began resurfacing once again. 'Have I been given another chance?'

He felt weak, like being human once again… no longer feeling his connection to the Counter Force.

Should he still go on with his mission? What's forcing him anyway… She was no longer controlling him at the moment, he was free to do what he wanted if his theory was correct. But then again, this was Alaya he was talking about, nothing is ever as simple as it may seem at first with her.

"I'm… I'm human… how?" Near the river bed, Archer looked at his reflection in the water and saw the familiar white hair and tanned skin he received from a combination of excessively using his reinforcement and spending years under the sun when he participated in the Middle Eastern war.

His steel-grey eyes stared back at him, not much much-if anything-had changed about his face. 'Thank god for that.' Seeing his younger face once more would have been a hard pill to swallow. Now he just looked like he was around his twenties.

Taking a deep breath, he very carefully reactivated his circuits. "Trace… on."

The air shimmered with wave-like blue energy which condensed into two different swords. 

Kanshou and Byakuya, translated from their original name; Gan Jiang and Mo Ye.

The "Married" twin swords that represented the Yin-Yang, crafted by the blacksmith Gān Jiàng of Wu during the Spring and Autumn Period of China. 

They were crafted more for the sake of crafting, as if questioning the meaning of the swordsmith, than for any real idea behind their creation. They were created without vanity and lacked a sense of purpose found in the other swords. They contain no fighting spirit to defeat others nor a competitive spirit to beat other weapons, and they contain neither the desire to be famous nor the faith to accomplish great deeds.

'A weapon truly suited for someone like me. Representing my true self better than anything else, heh.' Archer thought, a rare tender smile gracing his face.

They were his favored weapons to project, having become his symbols after wielding them all his life. He and Shirou Emiya found the craftsmanship of the blades to be extremely captivating and beautiful, and the swords suit their natural style of fighting. Despite not having a wielder in the legends, they are still Noble Phantasms in their own right.

"Not exactly the most powerful of Noble Phantasms, still good enough for me." Having the capabilities to inflict extra damage on monsters and beasts and giving him a slight buff, they weren't the worst by a long shot. But it wasn't the best as well, as many times during combat they would break from heavy impacts. Even when reinforced, when going up against legendary Noble Phantasms like the Gae Bolg, they were bound to break sooner or later.

To test out his new human body, Archer began performing some of his sword moves and stances. To an outsider's eyes, his moves looked both mesmerizing and beautiful, like he was dancing with the sword themselves.

"Hmmm, my strength and speed no longer measure up to even the average Heroic Spirit, though I can use my [Reinforcement] to compensate for it… to an extent at least." That was a downside of being human again. It was a widely accepted fact that even the weakest of servants could best a reinforced expert combatant. 'Unless you're the Vice Director of the Clocktower. That woman can make even Apostle Ancestors shiver in fear.' Barthomelo Lorelei was nothing short of a monster in his eyes. 

Speaking of monsters.

If memory serves him well, Rin once destroyed a stone pillar with a reinforced kick… but he didn't remember in which reality it was from.

"The swords aren't breaking down…"

Alaya did tell him that this world was outside her current influence. That's why she asked for a third party to send him here, alone she was incapable. That didn't mean that his weapons wouldn't disappear and will stay in this plane of existence forever, no. It just means that without Gaia's will–trying to erase his projections now gone–they will break apart at a much slower rate… probably lasting for weeks, months or even longer instead of just a few days—he didn't know for sure. Creating a full weapon that can continuously exist without needing a steady supply of prana would be teetering in the domain of true magic; something which Archer wouldn't be capable of at any point in his life.

He still saw himself as a third-rate Magus after all. 

Dispersing his swords, Archer decided that it was high time for him to leave this place and find the nearest civilization. Judging from the info he got about Vault, the time period he was in would most likely be in the middle ages… 

"This world isn't Earth or even a version of it… Does this count as an alien planet?" Archer hoped, he really REALLY hoped that there weren't any Types around or the equivalent of a Beast on this planet, or he could kiss any attempts of a vacation goodbye.

He preferred going up against a Grand Servant than to even come close to a Type. Heck, even gods were manageable.

Grrrrrrrrrrr

The rumbling of a beast escaped his stomach. Since he was human once again, Archer realized that he could no longer sustain himself on prana alone. 

He was hungry, something he didn't feel after a long… long time.

"Now I have more things to worry about, but I don't mind it." 

With a sigh, he continued walking to the east, a direction he chose because that is where the river water was flowing to. There was bound to be a settlement at the end of it.

He soon came to the edge of an empty grassland and a hill with the mountain range in the back extending as far as the eye could see. The longer he walked the less dense the forest was becoming with recent signs of cut-down trees and even random markings on the tree trunks, which meant that he was getting close. Low and behold, a small village soon came into sight. 

It was a small one, with a dozen wooden houses, surrounded by dirty walls and with few plumes of smoke escaping from their chimneys; he could guess that this village wasn't abandoned or anything.

"Let's see if they're friendly with travelers." Archer was aware of his… unique looks. Tanned skin and white-haired has always, on some occasions, pushed hostile villagers in war-torn regions to throw rocks at him thinking that he was an enemy or a spy. Now that he was in a foreign world, where he knew little to nothing of the local culture or history, aside from the pieces of information about Vault and his cronies. 

Archer used [Gradation Air] to project a simple full-body cloak that hid his features and armor. 'I'll need to find a place to sleep for the day, get some food and gather more information about Vault and the Kuroinu. Alaya may have given me a lot to work with but I still feel that there are some missing elements. If everything works out perfectly, I'll be able to hunt him down this month.'

Unfortunately, his luck decided to come to play the moment he approached the village.

"Hold!" He heard the voice of a woman-most likely guard-stop him. "Identify yourself!" a brunette with long hair down to her waist and hazel eyes, she was a beautiful young woman.

"What in the…" That was all Archer could say as he saw the armor the guardswoman was wearing… or rather the lack of it.

How can such a thing offer any sort of protection, other than being used in a porn movie!? A knight helmet that didn't cover the face, standard pauldrons followed by well-crafted vambraces. But it was the front that made Archer question reality. There was NOTHING covering the front aside from three pieces of metal hiding the nipples and the genitalia area! An apt description would be a bikini chainmail more than anything else. 'Have I run into strippers or a band of perverts by any chance?'

Just where had Alaya sent him!?

Was there an invisible magical spell in the front that he wasn't sensing? 

"Didn't you hear me!? I said, identify yourself!" The rather rude woman shouted at his face with many of the equally lewd-looking knights circling around him. Some even slowly drew their swords which immediately got imprinted in his reality marble; giving more information about the owners and the world to deal with this situation.

"Please help me, I'm a traveler from a land far away, here to seek shelter from those damnable demon beasts. I beseech you to have mercy on me and grant me protection from these monsters!" A bit over-exaggerated in his opinion but it'll do. Being polite and well-spoken was always better to get on people's good side. 

And also, acting like his usual self would garner a lot of hostility instead. Rin did call him a big jerk after all. Not that he could help it on some occasions.

"Really? You look exactly like those evil Dark Elves. You could be a spy for all we know. " She snarled, looking at him with disdain and repugnance. "I might as well cut you down right here, monster." She drew her sword, this one looking more decorated than the others, with a hint of gold on the handle, and aimed at his neck. From reading the sword's history, Archer knew that he was dealing with a captain, Brynn Deliha.

'Ouch, she hurt my nonexistent feelings.' But one thing did catch his attention. 

Dark Elves. 

Magical creatures that have long gone extinct in his own world. Some say, just like the fae, many magical creatures were locked in their own dimensional world, unable to access the human world. This, of course, happened after the era of gods came to an end with Gilgamesh being the one who ended it and started it all.

"Please, you're mistaken noble knight, my skin color is merely the result of hours spent working under the sun and my hair is a condition I have." He slowly removed his hood showing off his entire face. And to help with the tense atmosphere, he decided to offer a smile to the clearly agitated knights. It wasn't one of his smug smiles, but a normal one he had once in the past when he still acknowledged himself as Shirou Emiya.

He could have used hypnosis, but that area of magecraft was never his strong suit. Archer was confident to successfully cast in on a single person, but an entire squad of them was impossible. 

"..."

Unknown to him, Brynn's and the other female Knight's stance slightly changed all of a sudden. With the captain's hold on the sword faltering for a bit. For a second there, Archer heard all of their collective breathing stop for a second, earning a raised eyebrow from him.

If he had paid a little more attention, he would have seen a slight hint of red on Brynn's cheeks. "See? Normal human and not a spy or a Dark Elf." He tried to dissuade the situation even more by chuckling a bit, unknowingly scratching the back of his head; a bad habit he retained from his past self.

"I-I see…, pu-put your hood back on, stranger, I don't want to see your ugly mug ever again, you hear me!?" Rather hastily, Brynn put away her sword and with the remaining knights behind her doing the same, as she backed away rather quickly. "I got my eyes on you! If I see the slightest abnormal behavior from you, then I'm killing you myself!"

"Ca-captain?" One of the knights called out to her, surprised by her actions, as she saw her captain quickly turn away from them. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine!? Why wouldn't I be okay!? Don't ask such unnecessary questions!" Brynn screamed as she walked away at a faster pace, not looking at her confused subordinates. They all looked at each other in confusion about their captain's actions, but shrugged it off. With shy goodbyes and curt nods to Archer, they left the area following their captain.

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Leaving a confused Archer all alone on his own. "Just… what happened?" He asked himself, wondering what caused the woman to become so flustered. Was his face that similar to Dark Elves, that it scared them away? He would need to be more careful in the future then, if that was the case.

Putting back his hood, this time projecting another cloth around his mouth to further hide his face, Archer made his way inside the village whose name was written on a nearby board.

Grünes Bergdorf

"Weird, so they use German here, but they don't speak it… why do I feel like I'm being pranked here? Hugh, whatever… I got a job to do." 

Not dwelling on the matter anymore, Archer made his way inside the village to find a place where he could sleep, gather further information, and eat. 

He wondered if they'll let him cook his own meals.

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The next few chapters are already available on my p@treon at /NimtheWriter. With more early access chapter to come soon.

(By the way, Brynn is an existing character in Kuroinu. I can't attach a pic to this site so just google Kuroinu female knights, you'll see two girls in 'armor'. Brynn is the long haired brunette one. The series didn't give her a name so I made one up myself.)