'second sorcery

Honestly? One of the greatest fics I have ever read.

I must admit, I was *not* expecting this chapter to hit as hard as it did, holy shit. Actually, everything from 39 onwards hit me. Damn.

To this day I’m wowed by how well you were able to integrate the two worlds, but the most impressive part has to be the thematic links, which in my view elevate this story past being just another crossover fic. The execution was all there, but the idea of the Sekirei filling Shirou’s void fit perfectly and allowed the story to trend towards what felt like a natural conclusion. I would’ve liked to see a little more with Rin and Saber, or even a brief fight between Saber and Miya or Karasuba, but I understand why you didn’t go there as it would’ve been too hard to fit into the rules and development as you’d established it. Overall a fantastic story.

Eirei. A-ray. You utter madman. I cannot believe it.

The only reason why in every fanfic Shirous parents are dead is because they actually are lol. If Shirous parents were alive you’d think they would look for him at the hospital. It was implied heavily when he was losing he memory of his past life that he was told to run because they were dead.

Amazing fic and a very nice ending. Even though i have some disagreeances with character moments and problems with lore, story itself is very solid. I really enjoyed the fic even though my reviews might have suggested otherwise...(sorry but I'm rather bad at exceeding things I enjoy)

Shirou's post flight state scenes where amazing. Love pretty much everything about them

Rin being the one to put shirou on Kiritsugu 2.0 way is pretty interesting idea, even though I kinda disagree. Considering that she made a promise to Archer and this way of life is as far away from the point of this promise as just outright telling Shirou to kill himself, imo she wouldn't have chose that. And well Shirou himself wouldn't have followed up on it due to once again archer.
But again she's pretty pragmatic and with her thinking that this would end quickly she might have went with this plan. But as it usually goes with Rin the most important part of the plan didn't work, but it didn't work in the best way possible because he met his flock in the end

Shirou never laughing with Rin and Saber seems kinda silly to me, but honestly I too can't remember the time when he outright laughed in UBW it may have more to do so with him not doing this openly than not having fun, since he for sure love to troll Fujinee, Rin and even Saber. But Fujinee is the main victim for sure

Rin not joining his harem due to pride is contentious imo. I can kinda see where you're coming from, but again Saber exists. This is honestly the main reason why I prefer UBW good end over "True" end. Sunny day clearly shows that she's ready to damage herself for his sake and even share him with another girl.
Saber seems more probable in my eyes, but she too stopped pursuit of her dream for Shirou's sake so it isn't 100%.
This can be explained with them having problems at the moment and not like this is a big problem anyway bruh

Rin finding a way to bring Shirou back is very nice and prolly exactly what would've happened (if they wouldn't have been taken hostage that is) especially considering that as Case file and Adventures of El Meloi II show they're on a pretty good terms

Also fish seggs reference to FSN H scenes is peak. 100/10

"Thirty minutes" Homura...
Higa arc speedrun seigi no mikata% WR fr fr

*Shirou is indeed lowkey hypocritical in his dream, but it is more due to the fact that he differentiates people who "deserve" to be saved and not. It is due to the fact that even pre 5th HGW events he already knew that he can't really save everyone, so he made a compromise in killing "villains", regardless of their connection to him. It is to the point where he was deadset in choking out his best friend in Fate, was ready to decapitate his crush in UBW and also one of the reasons why Mind of steel is even a possibility. In reality if Sakura was a genuinely bad person during church events of HF route, he prolly wouldn't have turned into Kiritsugu 2.0 after killing her. He would've grieved, but not to the extent where he would've turned his heart to iron.
*Other part to this is that Shirou also emphasizes things like them being magi. If they're a magi they willingly walk with death, so it's ok to kill them. That's pretty much exactly how his logic went with Shinji, excluding whole "killing entire school" part. Same should also apply to soldiers and alike.
*Tbh him being "ok" with killing isn't really surprising. He might hate the deed more than anything else, but he is still a sword after all.
Ofc all of this is my views of his character and nothing more

Shirou being ok with counter force potentially controlling every aspect of his life is really cool. Parallels between CF and Justice start to be drawn by themselves. Since Hero of Justice is someone who specifically works for the sake of said justice this translates into Shirou having no problems with said influence. Of course those 'paralels' aren't without flaws, since his view of justice involves saving everyone, but it is still pretty interesting nonetheless

"This isn't interesting at all!"
Bruh Homura got some kinks huh

Miya's view of the situation is hilarious. It's so funny how she created her own reality in her head lmao.

Shirou finally revealing the truth is really nice. They deserve to know it especially after NotBazette showed up with a party.
Also I don't think that others would've been alright if Shirou got captured by mages. Considering their policy they would've been investigated and found out as aliens, which in turn would've made them into targets as well.

Tbh feel like Shirou shouldn't be surprised by then getting sad with his flock getting hurt by his selflessness. After all Rin, Saber and Archer have already beat the truth into his head.
Also kinda surprised there was no classical monologue about him not being worthy of them. Seemed like the right time.
Though I wonder is his dream kept "secret" from them for future reveal?

Ps: welcome back to the part of the review where I talk about lore stuff. As I IIRC already said Shirou's projections don't disappear, since they come from an entirely different world and are so perfect that world doesn't see anything wrong with them. And he didn't develop UBW in 2 weeks. It started developing from the moment he was reborn in Fuyuki fire, otherwise he wouldn't have had small army of random projected stuff in his shed which was there for several years.
Also kinda feel that something like Caladbolg, caliburn or any other old sword would've worked as a proof, but they may have simply not believed him so it goes both ways I guess

Tbh I disagree with this fic's portrayal of his relationships with Rin and Saber. He clearly fell in love with Rin and she fell for him. This is rather blatant with him just outright stating that they're dating to lancer and picking a fight with him because he was jealous. It goes even further when you realize that the only reason Rin kept Saber around is that Shirou would've been devastated without her, since the only difference between "True" and "Good" ends are how close Shirou is to Artoria and has nothing to do with Rin herself. She sabotaged her own magus abilities, the ONLY thing she cared about prior to UBW, for him. His love for Saber is a bit more vague, but it's much easier to explain since he did indeed fell for her from the moment she showed up and Nasu himself describes her as his soulmate. As for Saber well she's pretty much outright states that Shirou is her master even though Rin holds the command spells lol. They didn't enter relationship just to maintain Saber around, well Rin maybe did but not Shirou. He genuinely fell in love with them during the 2 weeks of the war, just like they did with him.

Their "break up" however is pretty much one of the only ways it could've happened. Really don't have any problems there. Except if association found out what his RM does, cause if yes than Rin and Saber would've been tortured to death to find Shirou. Actually depending on how important genuine RM's are for mages (and they very much are considering that they're almost as rare as literal true magic in living humans) it would've happened regardless. The only way in which they would've been at least somewhat safe is either Shirou committing suicide, or taking them with him

His "interpretation" of 5th HGW events are hilarious tho lmfao

An amazing chapter. I imagine this is pretty much exactly how post UBW Shirou would've handled the situation, or at least very close. He definitely would've wanted to help Haruka, but would've seen the problems with their escape. Instead just keeping them safe is a much better alternative. But I completely disagree with him going with "the path of the shura". Entire point of his fight with Archer is to not compromise on justice and try to save everyone. He would help them in the best way he can regardless of consequences, it's just that sending them away to their own death is not the best course of actions for anyone. Kerrys way has been shown to be very wrong numerous times through the series and Shirou saw the results firsthand

On the other note IIRC church isn't actually xenophobic. They specifically hate dead apostles for being dead apostles (eating humans, being a threat to human order and gaia by just existing and other wholesome stuff being the reason). Daemons are specifically exercised as a non violent way of dealing with them. Don't remember for sure but they don't have much problems with oni's and phantasmals either...ofc this won't stop Burial agency heads from being a little bit silly and causing either composite genocide of their species for funnies, or forcing them into slavery, or just experimenting/torturing them

Writing this now is kinda pointless in regards to the story itself, but it may help people who read reviews so yep

Shirou's projections don't have a time limit on them that we know of. Bare minimum they can exist up to several years and still showed no signs of degradation. And it was before he even knew that his powers come from UBW. After he traces an object it for all intents and purposes exists as a real thing and doesn't even directly connect to his prana, so even Kiritsugu's origin bullet might not work on them

Other thing is that Shirou doesn't use 7 steps as of end of UBW and instead just "pulls" weapons out of his RM. All steps are done automatically by UBW. This greatly increases his already ridiculous speed of projections (even in Fate where he used 7 steps, Shirou still was able to react to Gil's GoB spam, project Caliburn and block Goldie's arrows by copying Artorias skills and stats)

Also I don't know where "equivalent exchange" thing about Rule breaker comes from. There are no mentions of it anywhere I looked for and this would mean that Shirou has more magical energy than Holy grail since RB severed connection between it and Sakura, which makes little sense. To begin with UBW, as a RM, already goes around equivalent exchange by creating objects like Caliburn for very low amount of od

Btw I kinda wonder why Shirou didn't just NP spam him? Whom am I kidding we all know that the reason is that his Archer ass doesn't like to show his abilities and prefers to be on a deathbed instead

Fight itself is amazing tho. I really like this style of writing where every little step is properly explained