Merry Christmas to you all! Have you been good boys and girls? If so, then enjoy the chapter!

Okay, here we go. First arc, the introduction is finished, this chapter starts the second arc. When what I want is really to get to the third arc… At least I managed to get another 20,000 words out. Not bad considering this is the second draft and most of the first had to scrapped.

Chapter 4

Shirou eyed the sliced rug in his hands and shrugged. He wasn't a tailor, his best effort wasn't much. As such, anyone who looked would be able to tell that it was a rather patchwork job to sew the split ends back together.

But this was the best he could do. He wasn't Illya or Rin who could use magecraft to restore objects back to their original form. That wasn't what he capable of.

Getting up, Shirou stretched, feeling the warmth of muscles moving again. The castle wasn't cold but sitting in the same place for so long wasn't exactly easy. But on the bright side, he was done now.

Looking around the throne room, Shirou could see the repaired traces of the room. Gashes in the stone had been filled in with what mortar Salem had provided. The glass window had been magicked by her into a state identical to before she had tossed one of the rebellious Grimm through it. Which just raised the question, why she would want him to do this second-rate quality when she was better at it than he was beyond him. Well, unless it was just because she felt like it was his responsibility to fix what he broke. Which was fair.

It had been over a week since he had arrived. A week of fixing the castles, making meals and answering Salem's endless questions. By the sheer quantity and what those questions were about, Shirou was now sure that she was definitely a magus. No one else studied or questioned that intensely while knowing so much about the supernatural. And a magus would find sense in building a castle out in the middle of monster-infested nowhere. Said something about Shirou's quality as a magus that he wanted to leave here.

But he was now done. The last of the repairs were finished and he could finally see about finding a new life. And a new purpose to exist.

But what should he seek? He had thought about it ever since he had arrived. He didn't deserve to take up the dream of being a hero. He didn't have a loved one or family left to protect. He didn't care about the Root and couldn't see any reason to.

And also, what should he seek? Issei used meditation and a deep personal connection to the Buddha to find purpose. Shinji's hidden ambition to be a magus was something he developed from his childhood and had defined his entire life. Sakura…had defined her life purpose in terms of him, something that he was still uncomfortable about. Rin had the pride of her family. Saber had the duty towards her kingdom. Rider had sought to protect her loved ones. Berserker had sought atonement for his sins.

Any of those were decent purposes for life. But so many of them were inherited. Shirou had only inherited from his biological parents their last words for him to live and from Kiritsugu, the ideal of being a hero of justice. The first simply wasn't enough and he had chosen to repay Kiritsugu's debt to Illya instead of his dream.

He needed to do something else. Maybe a journey? Or meditating? Only meditating hadn't revealed anything else. Nothing other than more bits of the Reality Marble. He got another line on the stanza he was making for himself. But he also had the feeling that if he didn't have a purpose, he would never be able to complete or manifest it.

Inheriting a dream wasn't enough, meditating was more likely to reveal his Origin and Reality Marble than a purpose, and for a journey to be a good idea, he needed to have somewhere to travel where he wouldn't starve to death. Wastelands without any living life had a minor disadvantage in searching for a purpose in life.

Pondering more about how he could search for purpose in life, Shirou sought out the only other life in the castle.

Salem had accepted that Shirou Emiya was an alien. Yes, he was a human with magic, but his knowledge and life were too different from anything she had known or heard of.

Staring at the results of Watt's DNA sequencer, Salem leaned back in the chair, deep in thought.

Shirou Emiya's genetics were different. Not dissimilar from humans, whether the humans that the Brothers had created or the humans that had evolved after the gods had left. Frankly, it was odd enough from a biological standpoint that all three types, herself, modern humans, Faunus and now Shirou too were compatible in the breeding sense. Evolution with a mirror path along the same lines of creations? Unlikely from probability alone but scientists still changed their beliefs every few generations or so. Given the evidence in front of her, they probably would rewrite the theory of evolution again. Not that it had been very good in the first place given that it still couldn't explain how Faunus traits passed down from one generation to the next.

But that wasn't her concern. She was just concerned about proof for Shirou's words. This was a good indication but wasn't definitive. If he had had extremely different genetics, she would have known for sure. If his genetics matched her own or modern humans, then that would have disproved it as well. As it was, it was inconclusive. Which meant more tests. Preferably of a different nature.

But what kind? His clothes, which were in need of replacing with all the holes they possessed, had signs of modern industry. His magic proved that he wasn't a modern human or Faunus. His knowledge didn't match ancient humanity.

She was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that he was what he claimed. A human from another planet where the Brothers would have just been one of many if they had still been around.

And questioning him about it had only revealed that the Gods were cast down by the will of the planet itself. Which implied that the gods hadn't created the planet despite their claims. But the gods being liars in that too shouldn't really be all that surprising. Hypocrites, the lot of them.

That said, Shirou had known a bit about the three events that had led to their downfall. An event 14,000 years in his past where an alien had invaded and had devasted numbers and life until a human had defeated it. A rejection of the gods by a demi-god with the purpose to bind humanity to the gods over 4000 years ago. And finally, the creation of magecraft to end the monopoly of the gods over miracles and magic about 3,000 years prior.

The first was beyond her. She had not a clue where she could get aliens that were capable of wiping out all life and gods. Shirou might qualify but given his attitudes, general strength, and that he hadn't killed her, she doubted that he would try to annihilate civilization and commit wide-scale genocide.

The second would require the Relics at the very least. Something that Ozma had been intent on denying her for thousands of years. Right now, she needed the Maidens to unlock the vaults where they were kept. Vaults held in major cities full of people and defended by armies and dozens of Huntresses and Huntsmen. She had already decided to acquire the Relics so it wouldn't be harder than normal. But she would probably need to invent a ritual to invert their purpose without activating them. Now that would be truly difficult. More difficult than taking and keeping them out of Ozma's hands, which was already hard enough.

Of course, that was assuming that Ozma hadn't lied to her and that the gods hadn't lied to him. She wouldn't put it past any of them.

The third though…

Salem hummed in thought as she got up from the chair and walked out the lab door. The third was the trickiest yet also the most possible. The Brother of Light had presumably given the new humans the ability to use Aura and Semblances. The connection between light and a person's soul being used indicated it. The further fact that everything other than her Grimm, which were creations of the Brother of Darkness, had Aura seemed to hint at it even further.

But magic was a gift from the God of Darkness, not the God of Light. Semblances were not magic though you could masquerade one as the other.

She might be able to take magic, the one thing that separated the original humans of herself and Ozma from the modern mankind, and make it public. Give it to every human and Faunus. Ozma had already done that in a way. He had split his own power and gave it to the four Maidens as well as various champions.

But that wasn't what Shirou claimed that Solomon had done. He hadn't split his God-given power to give to his people. He had used it to create a Foundation that any human that qualified could tap into. And once that first Foundation was built—whatever that was, Shirou hadn't known—other Foundations had started springing up.

It seemed to her that what this King of Mages had done was to create a Foundation for a magecraft that created new Foundations for Magecraft. Shirou hadn't been too sure about that but agreed it might be possible. He had also mentioned about Magic Crests first appearing afterwards but that wasn't relevant.

What had followed was picking over his brain for every single thing he knew about Solomon and the other two events.

Shirou hadn't claimed it was much and he was right, it wasn't. But then again, this world wasn't his world. Magic worked differently here, history was different, and the gods were different. Doing the exact same thing here would probably result in a different result. No, what she needed to do was take what Shirou knew, figure out what really happened, and adapt it to Remnant.

Which meant experimentation and research. She thought she had finished millennia ago when nothing she had been able to invent or discover had been able to kill her. She had pushed magic further than anyone else. She had discovered new fields of magic, explored them, and then found even more advanced fields from there. She had invented new techniques, spells no one else had been able to imagine, and achieved things that not even Ozma was capable of.

All of it had been for naught. She had not been able to die.

But if that old knowledge helped her here, if it made her capable of inventing magecraft and spreading to everyone… That was precious. This was a way to spit in the Brother's eyes.

The fact that humans and Faunus would just use it to kill each other wasn't her concern.

"Salem," Shirou greeted in the hallway.

"Shirou," she nodded back, wondering what he had come seeking her out for. Was it about lunch? Hmm, what would she like to eat today? Over time, food had turned from an agony into something pleasant, something that she could look forward to.

"Just finished the last of the repairs," Shirou began.

Not about lunch. A pang of disappointment rang in Salem's mind before she realized what this meant. If repairs were finished, then he would be leaving soon.

"Is there anything else I need to do to pay for passage?" Shirou asked, his stance casual like that of a person asking for something normal rather than how to escape from the heart of the Grimmlands.

Salem's thoughts raced. She didn't want to, couldn't let Shirou wander away from her influence. She couldn't afford for him to go to Ozma. The questions she had asked would tell Ozma much about how her plans will change. Ozma could then use his Relic of Knowledge to learn both her new possible plans as well as what Shirou had known. Or even what Shirou hadn't known even.

However, she was in Shirou's debt as much as he was somehow ignorant of it. If she created the impression that she would ignore her debts and wouldn't compensate people for working for her, she would lose her minions and it would be much, much more difficult to recruit new ones. Further, Shirou could possibly rebel and then he would certainly join Ozma.

She needed to let him think that she was honoring their bargain but just drawing him further onto her side until he could not escape, until her enemies were his enemies.

What could she do, what could she do? If she could contact her minions, she could send one of them to travel with Shirou. If she wasn't so sure that Cinder would betray her if she learned just how much power Shirou represented, she could have Cinder seduce him. But long-term seduction did not work well with keeping the agent ignorant. Putting the two together would definitely result in Cinder figuring it out.

Could she give him a scroll and bug it? Infiltrate a virus in? But that would require Watts, who she couldn't reach right now.

She couldn't send Grimm after him. They no longer listened to her. She had tested it further and while they obeyed her previous orders from when she was a Grimm, they did not acknowledge any new ones.

If more mundane methods wouldn't work, then what about her magic? What spells could she use?

Perhaps she could set up a scrying spell? But all it would take is a sudden movement or change when she wasn't watching and she would lose track of him.

But by then, maybe one of her minions would have returned and she could send him to accompany Shirou. Tyrian would be…complicated but able to do at least an adequate job until she could replace him with someone else. Even Cinder would be able to keep an eye on him for a brief time, though it would be detrimental to Cinder's mission of tracking down a Maiden. Watts or Hazel would be best until Shirou was firmly on her side. But which one—

"Do you want to come with me?"

Salem blinked.

"I'm sorry, but are you asking me, the Queen of the Grimm, to join you in wandering Remnant?" She asked gesturing at her appearance.

"You aren't Queen of the Grimm anymore," Shirou shrugged. "And now that you look just like any other human, would anyone be able to tell who you were? Also, it seems like you would be lonely all by yourself here."

Salem blinked and laughed. She laughed and laughed.

Oh, yes, she had forgotten that she now looked just the same as any other human. Which meant that Ozma would not receive any reports about her if she appeared.

In other words, she was now a piece on the board. The Queen disguised as an invisible pawn. One that only Ozpin would recognize and she could walk past any of his agents and never attract their suspicion. And with her traveling with Shirou, she could easily manipulate their course to never go anywhere near Ozpin or Vale.

"Was it something I said?" Shirou asked, looking confused.

"No, I just had forgotten that I was no longer Grimm," Salem chuckled. "I would love to go with you and see the world."

Well, it looks like luck was smiling on her. The answer to her problem dropped right into her lap. She could turn Shirou herself even while letting him go and paying her debt. The best solution to her dilemma.