Shirou in Another World.

Volume 1: Beginnings CH5

One year later.

Shirou's training had been developing quite nicely.

His afternoon workout routine had settled into a fair compromise between him and Yamashiro. Ideally, Shirou wanted to continue on to the higher intensity of exercises, but Yamashiro argued that working too hard will divert important nutrients that could be used for his growth. Growth that would be important for the future, since it would give him more height and greater reach once he reached adulthood. In exchange, it was agreed to extend his sessions from 2 hours to 3 hours. That way, he could still increase his stamina.

As for his training in the field of magic, it had improved in many areas. In terms of strength, you could say that Shirou had managed to push his prana output to 4 units per circuit. A 25% increase from the maximum of 3 that he was capable of a year prior.

Speed had a similar degree of development. Shirou could confidently say that he learned to increase and decrease the rate at which he produced prana. In fact, he even tried experimenting by going as slow as possible, and was rewarded with a different set of results. The real breakthrough was the change in his casting speed and the extent of his mana analysis. Shirou managed to cut down the time needed to scan an object's mana print. He had also moved on from scanning fist-sized objects to larger boulders.

His control was another matter entirely. The progression was slow. Switching from circuit to circuit proved far more difficult than constantly focusing on one. Shirou would continue to train this aspect because it looked to have potential. He wanted to see what would be possible if he could cast a spell chain. But that was after he learned more magic.

At this moment, he was training a different sort of craft.

Reinforcement.

He had successfully been able to replicate the enhancement effect from a year ago. While it brought bad memories of Sakura's abduction, he powered through and focused on learning it. Reinforcement was one of three magecraft spells that he could use at the time.

So it only made sense for him to work on developing the ability.

For some reason, it proved easy to use only on his body. It wasn't mastery, but Shirou was confident that he could use Reinforcement for a decent period of time.

The problem was when he used it on other objects.

The sound of exploding wood reached his ears, followed by a burst of laughter from Taiga. She had been watching from the side as Shirou practiced Reinforcement on some firewood collected from the forest.

"You know...magic isn't needed to cut wood. But it sure does make it faster!" The woman giggled at her own joke.

Shirou's brow twitched at Taiga's jibe. Wait until he showed her what Reinforcement did to his body...

He was capable of doing it on his body. So why wouldn't it work on other objects? Was it because other objects had a different form of magic compared to his body? But that didn't make any sense, Shirou could easily inject his prana into the object to scan its mana print and it wouldn't break apart.

Not like it did with his Reinforcement.

So it was a matter of control then, Shirou guessed. Looks like he would need to experiment on the amount of prana he was injecting into an object.

Unfortunately for him, his inability to Reinforce other objects was not a lack of control, but rather a lack of information. Shirou's circuits had kept his memories of self reinforcement from Unlimited Blade Works. But he himself didn't know the process to cast the spell itself. Shirou was skipping the part where he would find the structural defects of said object, and injecting prana into those weaknesses to reinforce them.