"I don't know if this will work, but it's my only shot!"
He grabbed the pendant and pressed it into the nexus of the magical energy formation. The small amount of elemental power remaining in the pendant surged into the leyline. The gentle trickle of feedback he'd been receiving instantly became a raging tide.
I knew it—
I've been so dense. The "magical energy" of this world needs to be channeled using a local power source.
The surrounding aether particles were dyed a deep purple by the newly introduced elemental energy. His body, which had been growing faint, solidified once more as it was filled with power. However, the burning sensation from the over-circulating mana did not subside. It traveled from his palm up to his shoulder, then to his collarbone, and was now beginning to spread toward his heart.
"This is not good…"
Even though he had solved the mana supply issue, the overload on his Spirit Origin and magic circuits was intensifying. The "projection" in his hand was like an open vortex; despite having absorbed such a vast amount of magical energy, it remained a bottomless pit. Muramasa could feel the mana within it constantly constructing and fusing, layering upon itself to build a weight of planetary scale.
"Just what I (this old man) wanted—"
If he couldn't even master a single sword, what kind of top-tier bladesmith would he be?
It's not enough. The raw materials aren't enough.
Even as a projection, the Star's Holy Sword required a sufficient amount of "humanity's image" as material. Therefore, the Holy Sword was "calling out" to the smith who was forging it. It needed the one thing that could best represent the individual known as "Senji Muramasa," the one thing that could best embody the image of humanity in this "era."
It needed that to manifest.
Muramasa's hand trembled from the excessive mana circulation, his skin darkening as the magic heated up. Patches of the same dark color began appearing on his arm, spreading further with each passing moment. Space itself warped under the influence of the magic,染成 a fiery red. The red was not from the magic itself, but an encroachment from another space—the very thing Muramasa intended to show the Holy Sword.
"Divine Core," he chanted softly. With each word, the state of mind in his chest expanded dramatically. The magical energy turned his inner image into reality, gradually eroding the surrounding space and transforming it into his own inner world.
A world devoid of life, filled only with emptiness—
"Analysis."
FWOOSH—
The Reality Marble, which should only deploy when he activated his Noble Phantasm, opened under the combined will of the Holy Sword and Muramasa himself.
Flames ignited in the infinitely deep void, spreading in an instant to the horizon. They dyed the misty sky a dark crimson, illuminating a desolate land bristling with a forest of steel.
Countless blades stood upon the earth, forged from innumerable days and nights of memory and obsession. Serpent-like flames scorched the ground until it cracked, engulfing every single sword in a fiery inferno.
"Let me see it!"
The blades at his feet were the first to shatter, transforming into streaks of light that fused with the Holy Sword in his hand.
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK!
A chorus of shattering sounds began to ring out as more and more weapons melted into molten iron and scraps, flying toward the mold in his hand. Countless blades that had stood upon the earth, condensing memories and obsessions, all became the flesh and bone of this Holy Sword in an instant.
It's still not enough. The will condensed from all the swords he had ever forged was not enough to pay the price of borrowing the Holy Sword's concept.
The world itself began to stir at Muramasa's will. The rising temperature, nearing completion, approached that of a star's surface. Even when forging his own "Noble Phantasm," he had never experienced such a phenomenon.
Having come this far, neither his pride as a smith nor the Holy Sword in his hand would allow him to stop. His survival instinct was at war with his smith's obsession.
Since I can't complete it as a projection, I'll adjust it the way I know best.
"It's time. Time to bring down the hammer—"
"Hah… I knew you would do this sooner or later, but you're even more impatient than I thought, big brother."
A slender, gentle voice appeared out of thin air. The ethereal tone carried a hint of divinity, mingled with an indescribable sadness and affection. An invisible wave of sound pushed back the unbearable heat, forming a thin layer of frost on the wasteland of iron and fire.
"A voice? In this space…?"
The still-forming shell of the Holy Sword cooled and solidified with the frost, falling to the ground like a slumbering thing. His regret lasted only a moment before his combat instincts put him on high alert.
Scanning his surroundings, Muramasa finally found a ripple in the space nearby.
First, a delicate, lotus-root-like foot, unshod. Then, silver-white hair dancing in the wind. Following that, the hem of a dress, a face, a body. The surrounding space rippled as a girl in a sleeveless floral dress fully materialized from the void.
"Hm… or perhaps it would be better to use the name you gave yourself, old man?"
Her ruby-red eyes stared at the stunned Muramasa, an inorganic smile playing on her lips, as if she existed somewhere between a living being and an inanimate object.
"You seem to know a lot about me."
The moment he saw her face, his body trembled uncontrollably. The name she had called him flashed in his mind, and he stared at her as if trying to see through her very being.
"Don't be so serious."
Her voice remained light and airy, masking its emotionless truth beneath the soft tones unique to a young girl. Her gaze then fell upon Muramasa's face, his body, and the curl of her lips deepened, gaining a little more life.
"You're a little different, aren't you?"
"But, on the inside, you haven't changed at all. In all sorts of ways."
Her one-sided monologue didn't anger Muramasa. As his Karmic Eyes watched her, they captured fragments of her own karmic destiny.
"You're the one who summoned me here, aren't you?"
He didn't ask who she was. Muramasa went straight to the most important question.
"You surprised me. You're not going to ask who 'I' am?"
The girl put on a surprised expression, but it looked somewhat forced on her face, like a doll that hadn't been properly adjusted.
"If you wanted me to know, you would have told me already. Besides, it doesn't matter who you are. All I need to know is who my client is."
The response was typical of him, and the girl's expression returned to its previous state.
"I knew you'd say that."
"In that case, you can just think of me as an ordinary magical girl~"
Muramasa's brow furrowed slightly. His vessel was that of a magus, and he had been granted knowledge in that field. If the person before him was a magus, she should know the weight of the word "Magic." Or was she saying it fully aware of that weight?
As he pondered, the girl raised her index finger.
"But your earlier guess was a little off. It wasn't a summoning. It was a transfer."
"Just as you suspected, when you offered yourself to that Holy Sword, I preserved what little was left of your spiritual core, and after reshaping it, I sent you here."
A small black box materialized at her fingertip. Her gaze shifted from Muramasa to the cube in her hand.
"It's not my style to ask, but why go to all this trouble?"
Forcibly preserving a Servant on the verge of disappearing, then going through the effort of sending him to another world. It was all too much.
"If you're thirsty, you just drink water. Why buy a block of ice just to melt it?"
"Hm?"
For the first time, the girl's smile turned to one of contemplation. It seemed a thousand reasons swirled on the tip of her tongue. After carefully filtering through them, she answered:
"There are many reasons, but the main one is…"
"Because I care. So there's nothing else to be done, right?"
-------
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