In this world, Magic is Everything. All people, all races, are granted with the power to perform mystical and magical feats via grimories, mystical tomes granted to each and every child on their 15th birthday. Those blessed by the mana can have their names written down in legend.
Shattered Grimoires is the work of the mind(s) of Ardere & Shattered Grimoire's staff. All characters and content are copyright their creators, and may not be replicated without their creators' permission. Black Clover is owned by Yuki Tabata and published by Viz Shonen Jump. All images belong to their original owners. The theme you are currently viewing was made by Eliza of ElizaCodes exclusively for Shattered Grimoires.
Knowing know where to start, Gawain already had a bit of an edge over the version of himself that had existed roughly ten minutes ago. He knew how Ki worked in the general sense, how to figuratively tap into the natural world and read the ebb and flow of motion that constantly surrounded him. Since he was already capable of zeroing in on something as small as a rat within a certain radius, he did not exactly worry himself too much with things such as the size of objects and creatures he was tracking. That much already seemed to be a base that had been covered straight out of the gate, which seemed to be where him being a prodigious youth saved him the effort of training for several weeks, months or years. In a way, it made things rather boring as learning how to do things as quickly as he did while become an adept within minutes took away some of the difficulty of day to day life.
When picking up new things at such a rate, there was never really something as an extensive learning curve, which was one of the reasons why he never bothered to take up a hobby. That said, he never really had the time and patience for any hobbies anyway, so in a sense that was just a win-win for him. No, the only thing he really cared about was proving people wrong, getting stronger and proving that the four leaf grimoire he had been given hadn’t been awarded to the wrong person by mistake. Gawain had something to live up to, even though he was the only person that really felt like it. In the sense of his magical prowess, thanks to Griswold, he had a bit of an instruction manual on how it worked and how it was best utilized. Yet another thing that gave him an edge over most upstart mages such as himself, though he knew full well that him having a manual with instructions was only going to get him so far.
Not really knowing a single spell at this point due to the fact that he had never truly touched his grimoire after receiving it, the pressure he had felt when everyone had looked at him in awe during the ceremony had been strenuous to say the least. For all his life, the only things he had ever been taught were how to fish and pick weeds, before he had been taught to haul corpses, evade carrion feeders and wield weapons. Going from such things to becoming a mage was simply a difficult concept for him to grasp, yet it was a step that he was going to have to take eventually. For the time being however, it was better to focus on one thing before moving towards the next, which was to get this whole Ki thing down beyond the basics.
With his tools kept handy, the boy wandered throughout the woods some more, pushing through the shrubbery and the dense foliage, aiming to get to a place that would further test his sensory capabilities. Before, the only form of life he could pinpoint was that of a rat, a single rat. This meant that most of the other animals had more than likely already heard him and decided to move deeper into the forest for their own safety. A clever move to be certain, as most humans that came here looking for animals didn’t do so for the sake of training, but for the sake of hunting and killing so they could feed their families and make some money on the market. Right now, they were in no real danger, as Gawain had come for a somewhat more honorable purpose that did not include killing forest critters, though he did plan to use them for his own gain.
At the end of the day, he imagined spooking them a little bit so that he might train and get more skilled was by far the better outcome, though the animals themselves were not smart enough to understand as much. No matter.
Reaching a point far deeper in the forest, Gawain was fully aware of the fact that if something bad were to happen to him here, help was not coming. No, by the time they found him here, there more than likely wouldn’t be anything left of him but mangled bones and scraps of clothing. He was aware of the creatures that could be found in the deep woodlands of the Clover kingdom, he had heard the stories from sources both credible and not, as the sheer amount of old wives tales regarding outlandish monsters were often disregarded and shrugged off as nothing more than just that. Old wives tales. Until the country was first attacked by demons, most people did not believe them to be real, to be nothing more than something the church used to lure people into their places of worship. But it had been made abundantly clear that they were in fact real when they started murdering people left and right before butchering a great deal of magic knights.
It was one of the many reasons why Gawain never understood why his former mentor had been a magic knight for such a long time. Sure, there was some merit to be had when being the person who protected the poor and the downtrodden, though he would never want to be forced into a position where he would have to protect people who actively made the world a worse place for everyone other than themselves. Because that too was part of the knight’s job, protecting people who did horrible things just to escort them to a prison cell, or even worse. To protect people in positions of power that could make all of the bad things they had done go away so the law would never apply to them. It was something he and Griswold had debated many times, this being the main reason why Griswold had stopped being a magic knight and shifted his focus to heading to other portions of the world.
In a way he considered it admirable, to leave a system as broken as the justice system when he knew that there was no changing it from inside without killing a whole lot of people that were just misguided. After all, there was no getting to the real culprits without going through a lot of people assigned with jobs to protect them, and killing those who were only doing their job would just have made him a mass murderer and an outlaw. He’d have been given no thanks for ridding the world of the cancer that infested it, and so he had decided to move on to other parts of the world, getting rid of evils along his path.
While admirable in its own way, Gawain also felt it sad that someone who had the power to make enforce true change had left the country indefinitely. After all, he was still here, arguably bound by the same laws, even though he himself cared very little for following any that did not resonate with his character. Though he wouldn’t go around killing or maiming people left or right, nor planned on stealing from anyone that didn’t deserve it, there were plenty of things he could think of where he did not really feel like following the laws. And as long as he could master his magic in a timely fashion while also getting a better feel of this whole Ki thing, there was a good chance that he might be able to get away with doing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it. So that was what he would focus on first.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath in before slowly exhaling, feeling as though the very air that left his body moved outward to the very edges of his sensory range, attempting to mark every living or otherwise moving object within that general area within his minds eye. With it, he could sense various presences up in the trees, a few moving along the ground, as well as some that weren’t all that deep within the ground itself underneath the trees. It went to show just how much of a boon this type of extrasensory sight could provide as it went beyond anything human eyes could perceive. Due to the plethora of presences he sensed, it was difficult to make out what every shape was, though he had all of their locations down pretty accurately. And that was arguably the most important factor when taking into account the fact that all of this training was to become a better fighter and a more successful mage.
While he could not yet attest to the fact that his old mentor was right, Gawain had been told that to use Ki in a battle of magic meant that his concentration came at a heavy cost. Not only did the sheer concentration make it more difficult to move around at full speed without losing said focus and making a mess out of their sensory, it also did a number on their spellcasting. Apparently with enough training, someone eventually became capable of slinging around various spells within very little time, blasting them back to back in an onslaught of mana. When doing so whilst utilizing Ki, it seemed as though the exact number of spells one could cast within that same timeframe went down considerably. It was for that reason that just knowing how to use Ki was nowhere near enough. One had to properly get into training it beyond just using it, they had to master it to the point where they did not even need to deactivate their Ki anymore. To reach a state of being where it was as much a part of themselves as breathing, something that just happened automatically.
Or so Griswold had told Gawain, meaning it more than likely held some truth to it.
At this point however, he did not believe that something like that could really be achieved, given how much he still had to push himself to keep all of these different sized animals within his mind. Shaking aside all other thoughts so that he could put his focus on his surroundings, the first thing he did was hone in on the creatures in the trees. Obviously these had to be birds, as his ears were very much open this time. Unlike the previous attempt at Ki where he had tried to shut down all of his senses so his Ki was all there was to keep him aware of his surroundings. Now, it seemed that he could do it just as well while keeping his ears open to pick up on anything beyond his current sensory range. After all, if he heard some kind of bestial noise from further up ahead, it was better to get a move on sooner rather than later. And if something big and scary did enter his sensory range, that twenty meters of space was more than likely not enough to get away without the use of magic.
Hearing the chirping up above, the birds couldn’t have been all that big, meaning he had already exceeded his previous record of smallest animal, that being a rat. But maybe that was just him trying to find praise where there was no need for it. After all, the rat was also the first animal he had been able to register, meaning there was no way of knowing if he had been capable of sensing animals of this size before this point in time.
Fine tuning his senses to the point where he could say with certainty that there were two birds up in the tree and that they were roughly the size of mice, his focus shifted, moving to the creatures moving along the shrubbery up ahead. Though a fair deal bigger than the rat and the birds, they still weren’t what you’d call massive, being roughly the size of a very small dog. The fact they moved on all fours further went to enforce this assessment. Aside from that, he could not tell what kind of creatures they were though, prompting him to open his eyes for the first time since first utilizing his Ki. Feeling a fluctuation for a bit due to shifting his focus between various senses, not limited to sight and hearing alone, Gawain took a moment to ground himself before gradually moving forward towards the image he could see in his head. Walking in a patient manner as he tried to avoid obstacles, it was not long before he could see what the creatures were.
Badgers.
Having never really seen any in the flesh, he had heard stories about them and how they lived in burrows beneath the ground. This gave some credence to the idea that the animals he sensed a short distance under the tree’s roots were in fact also badgers. Being fairly large for forest critters, they did not seem like the kind of creature that would really pose a threat to him if he got any closer. In fact, they would more than likely just retreat underground and wait him out as he was too big for them to fend off properly. A thing they more than likely understood once they picked up his scent. But as it were, that more than likely wasn’t going to be happening unless something changed in the environment. After all, he had made an attempt at approaching the animals while moving against the direction of the wind, a method he had learned from the black knight to conceal his presence from animals and beasts for as long as possible.
For when the wind moved against you, it also meant that it blew your scent away, allowing you to sneak up on animals that relied on their noses to locate prey along with their ears to listen for movement. And as long as Gawain moved carefully and with grace, it would be some time before he was found out by the animals. Or rather, that was how it could have been if he had wanted it to be so.
“Booo!”
Jumping out from behind a tree and out into the open, the badgers were visibly spooked, dashing for the safety of their burrow and moving out of visual range. But that would not hide them from his Ki, and that was exactly the point. Walking with heavy steps above their burrows, Gawain aimed to move around with enough pressure to where the badgers might feel it down in their home, moving further away from where he was. Whereas one might consider this to be him picking on helpless little animals, it was in fact a very valuable form of training that he would not be able to get anywhere else. Had the black knight seen it, he would more than likely shake his head and berate him for such actions, and rightly so. Once all of this was over and done with, he would come back here and leave the badgers some food, hoping that that much would settle the debt he owed for spooking them so much.
For now though, he needed to continue. Sensing the badgers move below the surface, he himself moved to match their frantic attempts at escaping his presence, which should have most likely been harder for someone who had only just gotten started doing this kind of thing. Accurately tracking their numbers, he could tell that there were some of them that were moving, as well as one bigger one that kept sticking to the same place. Then again, there was something else that was off. Something about the rough shape of the outlier, the one that kept to their spot, it seemed like there was something deformed about it. Ceasing his movement to get a more accurate read, he focused all of his attention towards it, which was when he learned exactly what was going on here. The badger wasn’t malformed with strange growths, it was protecting a nest of young that had more than likely only been born recently.
Feeling somewhat terrible about using these animals for the sake of training, especially now, Gawain distanced himself from the nest immediately. Who knew what might be caused if he chose to stay and uphold his antics. What if they tried to move the young from the nest and fell victim to some other forest creature. If such a thing were to happen, he’d likely never have been able to forgive himself.
Hoping that by moving away as swiftly as it did, it might keep the badgers from pulling something drastic, instead of moving towards the civilized world, Gawain moved deeper into the forest mostly without thinking. All he cared about at that point was moving away from the animals he had more than likely wronged. In a way it was strange, for something as advanced as a human being to worry about the fate about animals that couldn’t even comprehend his species, that couldn’t even comprehend what it was like to have to worry about anything themselves. They were animals, they acted solely out of instinct and nothing more. Normally, Gawain never really worried about anything or anyone other than himself, simply because he had no one and nothing to worry for. Sure, he valued his life a good deal, though that was more or less all there was to it.
There were no relatives to worry about, since his father had been killed by raiders while trying to protect him and his mother. His mother had died after receiving a superficial wound from one of Skjaergards’ walking dead, or rather the disease she was afflicted with as a result of said wound. And aside from that, Gawain never had any brothers or sisters or other relatives that he was aware of, no grandparents, uncles or aunts to speak of. For how horrible it had been for him to lose his parents the way he had, in a sense, it had bestowed him with one of the greatest gifts anyone could ever have given him: Freedom. True freedom, not the kind of thing people believed they had when they no longer needed to go to school or when they had made so much money they no longer had to work a day in their life.
True freedom.
For when one graduated from school, they were only free for as long as it took them to find a job to which they would then in turn become bound again, losing said fleeting freedom. For the latter, once they lost the money they had earned or when prices across the country went up, so would their newfound freedom evaporate as quickly as their funds did. No, the kind of freedom that was attained when one no longer had anything left to lose, when all of the cares they had in this realm were stricken from the face of the planet, leaving them with the option to do whatever the fuck it was that they wanted. That was freedom. Anything else was no more than a simulacrum, a pale imitation of the real deal, and that was what Gawain had attained some years ago. It was the reason why he never feared the other raiders back on the archipelago.
When he had been tossed a rusty old hand-axe and was told to kill someone who had badmouthed the man that had once purchased him and his mother, Gawain did not really feel good about doing it. Having no access to any real magic aside from the large quantities of mana that were present inside of him, the fact that Skjaergardians didn’t have a need for such things and used special weaponry and armor instead made killing one another a lot easier and more fair. For it was there that everything came down to skill, hard work and mastery gained through practice and training. In the world of magic that had been formed within Clover and its neighbor countries, someone who had been born with powerful mana and even more powerful magic could outclass those who trained for years and years without really even trying. That wasn’t fair in the slightest. Still, this was the category he himself fell into, simply because he had been picked by a four leaf grimoire.
And though he had not tried to use a single spell thus far, part of him knew that once he did, he wouldn’t find using them all that hard. Hell, he’d even push his luck by claiming that using said spells would come naturally to him in mere moments before he’d end up mastering them fully. That part wasn’t so much arrogance, it was merely how he was built. And as many liked to claim about themselves without substantiating merit, Gawain truly was built different, which was something he would prove to any who wished to see it.
Now that he had crossed a good bit of distance and put some space between him and the badger burrow, the best thing would have been to continue his training, putting it to use again while looking for birds and the like. If he could find any and track them even as they flew, it would allow him to keep track of how far he might be able to push his sensory radius, which as of half an hour ago was still no more than twenty meters, and flimsy at best. If nothing else, the mental imaging had already gotten a lot more precise, especially when he could allow himself to focus on one thing in particular over all of the others, as that was when things reached their most clear state. But that would also need to change, as in real fights regarding life and death situations, one did not have the luxury of simply focusing on what was happening in front of them while disregarding quite literally everything else.
It was the quickest and most sure fire way to get oneself killed in a matter of moments, as a real warrior always planned ahead. They made sure to get a lay of the land before and during the fight so they would not be caught off guard easily. They made sure to scope out the capabilities of their enemies while going about fighting them, all the while hiding what they themselves were truly capable of. Until the moment came where they had figured out enough, which was when the time came to strike. That was the kind of stuff that separated the true combatants from those who were merely pretending, those that believed themselves to be capable and ready to play with the big boys. And for a fifteen year old, Gawain certainly felt like a big boy, a young man even. The funny thing throughout all of his pondering was that, for as busy as he was in his mind, he had entirely forgotten to turn his Ki off again. Something that would come in quite handy in the next ten seconds.
For in the next ten seconds, his Ki warned him of several large presences entering into his field of sensing. Turning to face the direction it came from, he only had very little time to respond before two mountain lions came pouncing on him. Being rather quick and nimble, the fleet footed Gawain made his way off of the ground with an athletic leap. Reaching for the nearest branch, he used his upward moment along with a tug from his dominant hand to tug himself past it, allowing him to plant both feet firmly on top of it. Making it seem relatively easy to jump into a tree, the truth was that he barely made it in time to get out unscathed. Not expecting the strain the use of Ki placed upon his body, it appeared as though his former mentor had been quite right to warn him about this. Sometimes however, being told something only went so far, as experiencing something first hand was the real educator.
Being above ground level, advantageous as it might be, would not keep him safe for very long as the large predatory felines wasted on time using their own jumping power in tandem with their large claws to quickly make their way up the same tree. Prompting Gawain to climb ever higher, he knew that as long as he used his Ki to track the beasts, he would not need to focus his eyes upon them. This granted him the opportunity to look for a way out while his other senses kept track of just how close the predators got to him. But right now, the only way out was up, so he would keep climbing up with the nimble momentum of a monkey, seemingly unfettered by gravity, though this was obviously not the case. Feeling how the two hunters were closing the distance by making their way up, they clumsily fell over one another in an attempt at calling dibs on the hunt, which only kept them stationary for less than a second.
While they struggled to move by one another and get to their query first, Gawain looked down once and only once in order to make sense of the strange movement he picked up from his elevated position with the use of his Ki. And as he looked down, the strange moves of the felines were almost visible to him. Not so much in the sense that he could see what they were doing with his eyes, but as if he could see and feel the muscles moving in their bodies, allowing him to account for it properly and adjust the direction that he was supposed to be heading into as a means of putting a greater amount of distance between himself and them. Where he would have normally taken a moment to celebrate yet another evolution to his skills, there was really no time for any extended hyping or drawn out partying, not until he managed to get these two beasts off of his back. Considering to reach for his grimoire, he took his hand away right before touching it so he could reach for the branch above instead.
Thanks to the animals tangling together for a bit, Gawain was given a short second in which to make an attempt at getting out. But that was really all the time he needed to enact his plan. Having found his exit, he made his way to the furthest edge of the branch he was on and made a leap for it, crossing the distance between this tree and the next. Landing with some level of grace, he would not wait for the big cats to figure out their own way across. On the contrary, he simply kept running before leaping towards the next branch, using it as a catapult to launch him up into the air with a final leap. Tossing him through the air like a pebble from a slingshot, he barely made his way on top of a steep cliff roughly the size of the tree he was in. Once there, he did not wait for the cougars to catch up as he simply kept running. Running until his legs couldn’t carry him any longer. Fortunately they managed to run for long enough, for when he finally collapsed to his knees there wasn’t a single thing his Ki could pick up on.
Knowing himself to be in the clear, he took a moment to catch some deep breaths and wipe some of the sweat off of his brow. Damn mountain lions, believing him to be a snack and disturbing his training in such a rude manner. If he had possessed any spells at this point, he would have sent them packing in an instant. But foolish as he was, he had ventured deeper and deeper into the forest for the sake of training. He had even considered the possibility of dangerous beasts dwelling in the deep forests, though arrogance had been the thing to get the better of him. And that was truly the stupid part. He believed that he had exorcized himself of arrogance some time ago, believing that everything he believed about himself to be mere statements of truth. Perhaps in that belief, arrogance was also a deciding factor. Perhaps he did not base these beliefs on proven merit of worth.
Punching the ground while exclaiming a bunch of swear words, he allowed himself to fall backwards into the grass. With his eyes pointed upwards towards the slowly darkening sky, he wondered whether or not Griswold had gone through similar ordeals. The way he had put it a long time ago, he had never been much of a prodigy, being relatively old when he truly began grasping what magic might be able to do for him. As it turned out, it was the sole reason why he had focused himself so hard on mastering the human form. Gawain had seen how he crushed rocks in the palm of his hands and could shatter boulders with his fists, all without the use of beneficial empowering spells or mana. He had seen him run laps around him while he himself moved as fast as his legs could take him, all without seemingly putting out any effort. It was humiliating, humbling and grounding at the same time.
For even if he was this supposed prodigious youth he was made out to be, and was made to believe himself to be, his level of capability was leagues beneath that of the black knight.
As he watched the birds in the sky above, he thought about how difficult it was going to be to match that kind of skill. Knowing his focus was never going to be on mere brawn, Gawain had to place his focus on things such as his physical speed, which would most certainly become one of those things he had to improve as much as possible as early as possible. Along with that, there was the Ki that he was focusing on so heavily right now. Perhaps in those fields he might be able to surpass the black knight at some point. All in all, there was one thing he had to excel at at all costs, and that was in the use of magic. If he was truly to be some kind of prodigy or even someone who was blessed by mana, he would have to push himself past what Griswold was capable of doing with his magic. In that sense, there was quite a lot of pressure weighing down on him, as surpassing an archmage that had found several demons throughout his life was no small feat.
And that was when he realized something. The birds. The birds that were flying through the skies above him, he could see them all. But he couldn’t just see them, he could “see” them. Where he was initially tied to a maximum range of roughly twenty meters, he could now perceive the birds in the sky with his Ki. This meant that his senses were capable of stretching a considerably longer distance, which he would have learned to do in little to no time at all without truly being aware of it. But now that he thought about it, there was a reason why he allowed himself to collapse earlier. This was likely because somewhere in his mind, he knew that the cougars were no longer following him because he knew that they had fallen so far behind that they could no longer pose a threat to him. Had it still been the case where he could only sense for roughly twenty meters, he would never have allowed himself to take a break and potentially become a bite-sized snack for the predatory felines.
Maybe in his mind, he had already realized that his range had more than doubled from what it had been not too long ago, it just hadn’t fully registered yet. Now that it did though, it reaffirmed quite a few of his beliefs, as well as granting some more credence to the fact that he very well might be some kind of wonder boy prodigy. Following the birds with his Ki, another thing he came to figure out was how the image he had of them was not as still as before, nor did it become hazy once his target started moving. No, it all became a lot more easy to keep track of things, which meant that aside from the range, the means of tracking had been improved upon as well. Having to keep himself from physically fist pumping in excitement, he wondered if this entire ordeal had maybe been the trigger for him to grow his skills out that much faster, given that he was very much in a situation that could have cost him his life as he still very much lacked any actual magic spells.
This still presented a bit of a problem though, as a mage who was keeping himself from experiencing his own magic was problematic to say the least. Feeling like much of this whole ordeal with him being a prodigy for owning a four leaf grimoire would only become real once he actually opened the damn book, he had been keeping it closed. But no longer. With all that had gone on today to allow him much more control over his Ki while lowering the drawbacks of using it by a fair deal, he could honestly say that he was getting nearer to a point where using it in battle against other warriors or mages became almost plausible. But as long as his use of Ki was not truly perfect yet, what spare time he had would need to be put towards the goal of perfecting it, as nothing mattered quite as much as this. It was after all something he had picked up from his former mentor, and with him being gone and no longer having anyone to truly compare himself to or go to for instructions, it was up to him and him alone.
Getting up from off the ground, Gawain began walking back towards the civilized world, figuring he still had a bit of money left to get a decent meal for. He had something worth celebrating after all, and money in and of itself was fleeting. If he ended up broke by tomorrow, that just meant he’d need to go through some effort to get more money or go and hunt in the forest. Regardless, money had no value to him aside from it being spent whenever he felt like it in quantities he wished to spend it in. Without a home of his own, there was no need for saving as there was nothing to save it at, and he refused to become like some kind of squirrel saving nuts in trees for a later point in time. He was a capable individual, albeit a young one, meaning he could likely get a handful of money from some odd jobs here and there. That, or he could snatch the purse off of some rich asshole that had more than they could spend. He might even give some of it to the orphanage he had once escaped from if he was feeling generous.
Right now though, just going out there and getting something to eat seemed like the best idea he had had all day. With the nearest town appearing over the hills, he pondered whether he wanted to go for spare ribs or steak, as these were usually served in most of the towns he visited. It was only natural given how most of these rural areas had no shortage in cows and pigs, and actually preparing spare ribs and steak was fairly simple. Still, as he had come to find out when he personally tried to cook them back at the enclave, it being fairly simple did not mean that any idiot with a cooking plate could make it delicious. With a bit of luck however, whatever tavern he was going to be walking in on had a somewhat potent chef in the kitchen. For now, he could only ponder on the answer as he still had quite the hike in front of him.
