Tear Jerker / Wandering of a Sword Hero

• Immediately after being summoned, Shirou begs for the King to let him go back to Illya, swearing he will come and fight the Waves as long as he's allowed one week to stay besides her as she's about to undergo surgery. The narration mentions Aultcray isn't indifferent to the Sword Hero's distress — of course he would know how it feels to lose a beloved sister — but cannot grant his wish.
  • How bad is Shirou taking his accidental abandonment of Illya? He unlocks his Cursed Series weapon, the Sword of Sloth, barely a few minutes after the summoning.
• Jian's mini-chapter reveals two awful downsides of developing a human-like intelligence: heartache and self-doubt. Once the Legendary Holy Sword's self-awareness became advanced enough to understand human emotions, she realized that Shirou has every reason to hate her because ultimately she was the one that separated him from his loved ones in his home world by choosing him as her wielder. Jian also becomes less sure of herself after the incident with the Mutant Griffin definitely proved that Shirou is indeed weaker than he would be without her, and he'll remain so for a long time until she can grow strong enough to compensate for it, making her deadly afraid of being abandoned by him due to holding him back.
• Chapter 37 has one for those who know how the event goes in Canon. During his first Wave, Naofumi trapped a group of knights in his [Shield Prison] in retaliation after their leader's failed attempt to kill him via Unfriendly Fire with two large AOE fire spells that destroyed the village Naofumi's party fought so hard to protect, leaving them to die in the fire they started under the guy's orders and without stopping to consider that not every knight in there was likely to be in on it. Shirou may have saved the knights and punished the actual culprit right afterwards, but chances are that few, if any, of the knights that allied with the Shield Hero in canon for the next Wave and on will do so in this story.
• It's not hard to feel bad for Aultcray once he realizes that he may have inadvertently killed his own sister in his Roaring Rampage of Revenge when he realizes that Aurora(Atla) and Sol(Fohl) are Hakuko Demi-humans.
• Atla reveals to Shirou that she is Unable to Cry (produce tears to be precise) even if he were to die. This was after she tells him that his aura disappeared after taking a strong attack, implying that she wanted to cry right at that moment, but was unable to.
• Rishia, after she devoted her entire life to the Bow Hero after her traumatic experience as a slave, was accused by Itsuki of being a traitor and a spy and kicked her out of the party in an even worse way than canon, being thrown down a flight of stairs. She was immediately Driven to Suicide like canon, though this time she planned to throw herself of a tower instead of drowning herself in the ocean, and would have been successful had Shirou arrived too late to save her. Shirou had to temporarily suppress all her memories so she can hopefully find the will to live on her own.
• The third mini-chapter gave us some details regarding Azu and her father Tyr's backstory.
  • He laments at humans' extremely short lifespan compared to his, which included the Shield Hero of his time.
  • He fathered many children with his wives over the years and tried to instill to them a sense of justice based on what little he understood from the Shield Hero. He failed spectacularly and most, if not all, of his children grew up to be monsters who will kill for fun, and oftentimes each other. It caused him to fall into a depression and stop having children altogether.
  • After centuries of being depressed and no purpose in life, Tyr finally learned happiness from Rhea, Azu's mother, and Azu herself. But then, the Aotatsu Clan burned Rhea and stoned Azu to death's doors all because of their jealousy. No wonder Tyr went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and didn't want to discuss the topic before. And worse for Azu who was just 5 years old when it happened and left some scars on her.
• Chapter 46 reveals Atla's connection to Avalon is causing her to get dreams of Archer's memories sometimes. Several times now Shirou's had to stay up with her when she's woken up shaking (and in one case vomiting) from the memories.

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