The Huntsman of Red V2

Chapter 9 Yellow and Black: Prologue

Time comes and goes much like the ebbing of the sea's waters, calm yet steady, never ceasing despite the changing of the seasons. He'd watched as his Master grew from a petulant young child into a thirteen-year old brat right before his eyes.

It didn't matter to him whether the passing years had been productive or not. As a Servant, Shirou only had the interests of his Master in mind now that he had all but confirmed the none-existence of a Grail War.

Out of everyone in Remnant, he alone seemed to be the only Servant. A fact that astounded him more than the level of Ruby's latent energy that was enough to constantly sustain him. Moreover, he could not ascertain the purpose of his summoning.

Was there a grander intention? Or was everything the result of a freak accident?

He had no answers and could find no magic history he could research in all of Remnant's Kingdoms despite the abundance of mana in the air. He found it strange, almost as if magic had been taken away to be replaced by individual Semblances, but he digressed.

The seasons had passed on an endless cycle, and his progress in understanding his situation had stagnated.

Well, whatever. He wasn't exactly one to linger on things that had no immediate answer.

As a Servant he'd simply do his duty as a Servant until his eventual passing. Yet if he only had a single complaint, it would be his appearance.

Heroic Spirits were generally summoned at the age of their strongest, but due to the uniqueness of his situation, his current age remained stagnant at eighteen. Worse, his youthfulness made him look even younger by two-to-three years. Assuming that his current demeanor was a result of natural laws of the World of Remnant, then there must have been a reason that his prime summoning age was eighteen; a time in his life in which he carried the greatest naivety, charging head long into situations he could not possibly account for on his own.

He sighed, chalking the oddities of his summoning to his abysmal Luck Stat which ranked the lowest amongst all his skills.

As much as he'd like to say that nothing eventful occurred in the passed years, much was to be said about the introduction of a new Kingdom in Remnant, Vermillion. Its population was generally comprised of Faunus with an ample number of humans mixed in, but conflict was kept to a minimum through screening and regulations that went over Shirou's head mostly because he had no need to know them.

What was important was that Excalibur Galatine had served its purpose; the light of its radiance creating the first 'night less' Kingdom by maintaining the sun through its connection with a leyline beneath the earth.

Galatine's might was as the sun, its rays piercing through the dark and forcing the Grimm back. This characteristic of Galatine's light astounded all who witnessed it. Further testing even revealed how lethal it could be to weaker Grimm, part of their bodies spontaneous combusting into thin smoke.

Galatine already had the properties of cleansing Evil even before Shirou tampered with it through Alteration. All that Shirou had done was magnify the cleansing effect and incorporate an immovable aspect into the sword after stabbing it shaft-deep into the bedrock.

Part of the reason Vermillion prospered so quickly was the amount of interest and fanaticism that Galatine obtained, bringing in excess food and water from hovering bullheads filled with executive personnel. No matter how hard they tried though, Galatine could not be moved. Coupled with the fact that there were no records at all from the Huntsman Schools about the Huntsman of Red, his mysterious disappearance led others to conjure a false impression.

That the Huntsman of Red was the vessel of a forgotten God of Light and Prosperity.

To make it worse, the story had proliferated when a group of fervent individuals erected a plaque near Galatine that said that only the worthy may wield the sword.