Shirou Survives in the Wilderness / The Golden-Haired, Red-Eyed King

"Yes, thank you everyone," Shirou replied firmly with a smile.

Just then, the white-clad divine avatar appeared!

"This world... has gone astray and is beyond saving, so let it be destroyed!" the white god's avatar said mechanically, then raised his hand and emitted a white sphere of light.

"Run!" Shirou rushed forward, emitting the same white orb of light from his hand, and threw it in that direction.

As avatars of God, they appeared in one place simultaneously, thus their power was divided into two parts, which collided and canceled each other out.

"Get out of the way! This world is already distorted, and only destruction remains. You, the mutated individual, if you don't fulfill your responsibilities, then don't get in the way here." The white god spoke through his clone.

"No! The people here don't want the world to disappear! And what about alienation and all that! To me, the me I am now is the real me!" Shirou retorted.

The white light mixed together again, canceling each other out.

"Hmph!" The divine avatar grunted.

However, the clone controlled by the god had far more experience in using power than Shirou. The white spheres collided with each other, this time producing a violent shock.

"Whoa!" Shirou was sent flying by the impact.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the divine avatar once again emitted a ball of light.

This time, the white light engulfed everything. At the critical moment, Scheherazade opened a passage and pushed Shirou inside. What was originally a passage to the next world turned into a violent spatial turbulence like a tornado under the impact of the white light, Shirou was swept into it.

"The mutated individuals must be protected!" The white god spread out his large hand, creating an infinitely long white arm, trying to grab Shirou trying to escape.

However, at that moment, Scheherazade pushed Shirou into the portal of light, then turned around and rushed towards the white god.

"Hey! Come back! Scheherazade! You're no match for him!" Shirou shouted.

"Go, Shirou! Pursue the value that only you can realize! If you ever meet me again, then I'll be counting on you." Scheherazade didn't turn around, but shouted loudly to the boy behind her.

As Shirou spun around, he transformed into a shooting star and departed from this world.

"Hmph!" The white god ignored Scheherazade, emitting an incomparably dazzling white light, and tried to catch up with Shirou.

However, at that moment, the Magecraft Beam Cannon the white god, causing him to stagger.

"If it were you! If it were you! If I were killed, would I really disappear?!" The brown-skinned woman trembled, shouting with a mixture of tension and madness.

She unleashed her final Magecraft, centered on the palace of the Arabian Empire, surrounding the white deity within, and directly detonating the world within the dream, intending to collapse everything.

Scheherazade has vanished from this world.

When Shirou regained consciousness, he found himself alone in a deserted forest, surrounded by unfamiliar plants and strange insects. He had no idea where he was or what era the world was in.

The surrounding trees and plants were very tall, and the air was fresher than ever before, filled with oxygen.

Shirou glanced over there discreetly and was surprised to see a mammoth there, leisurely drinking water by the river.

At that moment, an Emperor Crocodile with eyes the size of tennis balls, emerald blue and vertical pupils, silently swam towards the mammoth. Its massive body gradually emerged from the water, but the mammoth was completely unaware.

Suddenly, the Emperor Crocodile opened its massive jaws, like an open pair of pliers clamping a nut, and bit down on the mammoth's enormous head.

The panicked mammoth roared and twisted its body desperately. The giant mammoth, which was more than three or four meters tall, was no match for the king of the water.

The Emperor Crocodile then raised its long, massive tail and plunged downwards, spinning its body. Using its weight and momentum, it forcefully dragged the mammoth into the water, creating towering waves on the wide river. When the waves subsided, the mammoth had completely disappeared, and a large patch of the river surface could be seen stained crimson with blood rising from the water.

Chapter 329 Shirou's Wilderness Survival

The survival of the fittest among enormous creatures, the law of the jungle in nature, is several times more real and brutal than what's shown in documentaries, and it's incredibly shocking. At the last moment, the Emperor Crocodile revealed its entire body, Shirou estimated that it was at least thirteen meters long.

"Where exactly is this? First there were mammoths from the Ice Age, then Deinosuchus from the Cretaceous period, could there be dinosaurs or something?" Shirou asked in surprise.

In that final moment, Scheherazade shielded the divine clone from him. Otherwise, Shirou, now under the witch's curse, wouldn't have been able to resist him for long.

Scheherazade has probably been defeated by the divine avatar and returned to the Throne of Heroes. In her final moments, Scheherazade entrusted him with a message, but the desire to disappear forever and never again suffer the fear of death is far too pessimistic and negative.

If they have a chance to meet again, Shirou hopes to be her friend and give her some hope for the world.

Perhaps it was because she was too lonely. In the legend, she stood up for the women of her country and summoned her sister every night to tell stories to the tyrannical King together.

If she could meet someone like that younger sister in this world, someone who could offer her support and encouragement, someone who would make her feel less lonely, perhaps many things wouldn't have turned out this way.

"But... for now... let's think about how to survive." Shirou looked at the place surrounded by ferocious ancient giant creatures and said with a wry smile.

To survive, Shirou had to hunt, ideally targeting dangerous prey like pheasants and rabbits. However, the pheasants here were twice the size of the largest ostriches seen in zoos later on. Their crimson combs stood tall, their thick, hard wing feathers resembled iron fans, their sharp beaks exuded a chilling aura, and their claws were long, single-hooked like eagle claws, making them exude aggression.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" The two-meter-tall Giant Rooster let out a piercing squawk when it saw Shirou. Instead of leaving, it flapped its two large wings to help it run and charged over.

"Could it be a man-eating chicken?" Shirou muttered, Projection a crimson spear into his hand and pointing it at the Giant Rooster.

After that, on the rocky ground by the stream, Shirou gathered wood, made a circle with stones, then cut down trees and large leaves to make a windbreak, and then piled up stones from the bank to build a stove.

Place the collected dry firewood in the fire, light it with flammable dry pine cones and resin, and then arrange it in circles with enough space to form a tall fire pile with Mars flying around and crackling sounds from time to time.

Large chunks of chicken are skewered with shaved bamboo sticks and placed on a stone slab on the stove, the bottom of which is glowing red from the flames. As a primitive version of teppanyaki, the chicken is grilled after being brushed with oil.

While dealing with the Giant Rooster by the river, its heart pierced by the Gae Bolg and strung together...

Because of the previous grueling battles and the lack of energy from the Holy Grail, Shirou had been relying entirely on his body's magical power, which had been extremely taxing on his stamina. As a result, he was quite exhausted and needed to rest and recuperate to recover his energy. Otherwise, he would run into serious trouble in places with various unknown dangers.

So Shirou didn't dawdle any longer and decided to make this giant pheasant, which had come to him by chance, his first meal in this world. He found a small stream near the river, boiled water, bled the pheasant, scalded it, plucked its feathers, and after processing it, he added some ingredients he found nearby. This would be his source of energy for the day.

Surprisingly, the stream also contained Ancient Loach with sharp teeth, attracted by the blood. Thus, not only meat was available, but also soup ingredients.

When Ancient Loach is boiled with bracken, it has a unique fragrance, while the mustard greens that have been picked are blanched in boiling water and then served as a cold dish.

Chicken fat extracted from Giant Rooster was stir-fried, making the gizzards, livers, and intestines very fragrant.

The only downside was the lack of salt.

Other meats would be even better if they could be rubbed with a layer of salt, placed on a rack at a distance, and slowly smoked.

If humans encounter difficulties in the wild when resources are plentiful, they can survive indefinitely if they have certain survival skills, provided they have iodized salt.

Although obtaining salt is not difficult, most living organisms actually contain salt to some extent, such as animal blood, plant secretions or body fluids, and human sweat and urine.

Salt is also found on some of the land and rocks in the mountains.

If you want to store food, you can use salt to make dried meat, salted fish, and other dried goods that can be stored for several months without any problems. If the method is correct, they can even be stored for several years.

Famous Nordic dishes like Surströmming use large amounts of salt. However, there are also dried, rotten shark meat and Kiviak, where a hundred swallows are stuffed into a seal's body and buried in a natural ice cellar.

However, Shirou has to give up for now, because if it's just Projection, that's fine. But if he uses his creation ability, he might be discovered by the white god immediately.

The worst part is that he doesn't even know if he's come to the right place.

Just then, they suddenly heard the dense grass a few meters behind them swaying, as if some dangerous beast was approaching.

"Roar!" It was a little lion, and a little lion with Saber's face, roaring with its mouth wide open, looking super fierce!

Judging from her expressive face, she is very intelligent, but all she can do is howl. The way she roars with her mouth wide open reminds Shirou of a classic opening scene from a famous movie production company. However, no matter how you look at it, this little lion seems more like the cute creature on the side of cat and mouse after the lion roars.

"Want some?" Shirou simply picked up a whole roasted chicken thigh, bone and all, put it on a plate, and placed it on the stone ground in front of the little lion.

"Awoo! Awoo!" Lion Saber looked at Shirou warily, but when she smelled the aroma of roasted dinosaur thigh meat, she couldn't help but hug it, the thigh meat as big as her head.

After taking a bite of meat, she looked up in surprise, her eyes Gil. She tore into the meat and swallowed large chunks, no longer caring about anything else.

After a hearty meal, the little lion patted its not-so-bulging belly, then walked over to Shirou and licked Shirou's lips with its tongue as a sign of affection.

"Wait, it tickles, hahaha." Shirou quickly hugged the little lion to avoid being kissed, but his face was still covered in saliva from being licked.

Shirou gently squeezed the little lion's paw, and after studying Lion Saber for a while, he remarked with a sigh, "You really are more of a lion than a human."

"Huh?" Lion Saber tilted her head in confusion, giving me an expression that seemed to say, "I am a lion, what are you talking about?"

Lion Saber looks like a chibi-style baby wearing an animal onesie, only even more miniature, standing only about 60 centimeters tall. She's more like a doll than a human, but surprisingly, she fits perfectly with Shirou, without any sense of incongruity.

Through contact, Shirou discovered that the onesie pajamas were not made of cloth, but of real lion fur and the fleshy paws, which were connected to blood vessels and circulated blood, living, warm beings.

However, since he was already there, he decided to make the best of it. That evening, Shirou sprinkled ashes from burnt wood around the circle of stones.

Not a single feather was wasted; Shirou stuffed it into the Projection sheet, sprinkled a layer of insect-repellent and poison-repellent ash on the ground, and laid clean leaves on top, creating a warm down blanket.

Living in the wilderness means many things are impossible. There are no hot showers, you can't eat whatever you want, and there aren't clean toilets. But precisely because of this, the only thing you can't neglect is having enough to eat and wear.

There was no house to shelter them from the wind and rain, and even the leaf tent Shirou suggested wasn't enough. The temperature outside changed drastically, especially after dawn; in less than an hour, the moisture and fog in the air were enough to completely soak the clothes of a person lying on the ground.

Now that he has this down blanket, he can finally get a good night's sleep tonight.

The little lion seemed to really like the feather blanket, rolling around on it.

After Shirou had finished preparing everything, he lay down on the bed he had made with the little lion.

The firewood gathered on the spot, some of which still contained moisture, crackled and popped from time to time. It was already night, and the deserted mountains and fields seemed very eerie. From time to time, the howls of wolves or the mournful cries of monkeys could be heard from the woods.

It's not hard to understand why people who used to live in the mountains passed down stories of various demons causing trouble and villagers mysteriously disappearing.

Because this world is still in the season of growth, insects would occasionally fly over following the firelight and throw themselves into the firewood.

Looking across the stream, you can occasionally catch a glimpse of green eyes; I wonder what kind of wild animal is passing by.

However, what truly captured Shirou's attention was the stream on the ground. And further away, on the Taiga, the water rippled, and within it, not only swimming fish floated in the breeze, but also the urging stars and the vast ocean.

Although he didn't know what era this was, the starry sky was incredibly clear without air pollution or city lights. Shirou already had excellent eyesight, took in hundreds of millions of stars.

Gold, red, blue, purple, and many more colors of stars converge, forming rivers in the sky. With their rich imaginations, humans have given these stars even more colors, creating constellations in the east and celestial bodies in the west.

Under the night sky, a strange point of light suddenly appeared. Shirou looked towards the opposite bank of the river and saw golden starlight shooting into the sky, then transforming into a shooting star, flashing a few times, and falling back down. Even without using his Magic Eye to analyze it, Shirou sensed that there was something special about that place. Perhaps the key to everything lay there.

"Woo woo." The sleeping little lion rolled on the ground and rolled to Shirou's side.

"Heh." Shirou saw this child, who resembled Artoria in her childhood, and showed him his sleeping face without any guard up. His loneliness seemed to dissipate quite a bit.

The boy lay down on the down blanket, gazed at the starry sky, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 330 The King with Golden Hair and Red Eyes

The black mountain peaks, shrouded in a gray haze, suddenly emitted a faint glow, and the sky began to change at intervals of one or two minutes.

As the golden sun rises, it dyes the river a crimson gold. This is the mother river of a people, which has nourished countless creatures for millions of years. In the last five or six thousand years, it has also witnessed the rise and fall of one human race after another.

A golden veil draped the dense forest tops, the snow-white mist quietly dissipated, and dewdrops from the leaves dripped onto the slender, pointed blades of grass on the ground.

When the sun had risen above halfway up the sky, around six o'clock in the present day, Shirou woke up on his own. The stream was still flowing gurglingly in the early morning, emitting a wisp of cool air, and a gust of wind hit his face, making him feel quite refreshed. He then became fully awake.

The little lion lying on the down mattress felt the cold wind without Shirou as his shield. He curled up and snuggled closer to Shirou, clinging to him tightly.

"Alright, I need to get up and prepare breakfast," Shirou said to the little lion as he sat up.

"Awooo!" The Lion Saber opened her eyes immediately upon hearing "time!", made way for the boy, and raised her curved tail to slide back and forth on his back, as if urging Shirou to get up quickly.

'What's with this attitude... This isn't a lion at all, it's exactly like the behavior of cat owners in later generations.' Shirou thought to himself, but still crawled out from under the down blanket.

However, yesterday's chicken was a rooster, so there was nothing there. But the chicken bone soup with wild vegetables was still very fragrant.

Considering the whole world, chickens are arguably the most successfully domesticated animal by humans. In the United States, it's beef; in China, it's pork; and on the grasslands, it's sheep. However, there are certain groups of people who don't eat any of these animals.

For example, in Hinduism, the white cow is Divine Beast, and the totem of the Miao ethnic group is the cow, so they don't eat beef. In Muslims, pigs are considered unclean, and not everyone likes the strong smell of mutton, but chicken is equally popular among these ethnic groups.

Chicken is a versatile meat; it can be steamed, stewed, grilled, or fried—it suits any cooking method. What's even more remarkable is that it's delicious no matter how it's prepared.

In Guangdong alone, there are hundreds of soups and medicinal dishes that use chicken as an ingredient. Because it is so common, some people use "chicken soup for the soul" to describe those written words that serve as a form of spiritual comfort and encouragement.

Besides its health benefits, chickens are inherently delicious, and every part of the chicken is edible; even the chicken tongue can be made into a delicious soup. The later-developed concentrated soup cubes and chicken essence prove this point.

Then came the chicken patties made from minced, skinless chicken.

Because the giant pheasant was quite substantial, Shirou specially saved the meat from one wing last night to make smoked jerky. Although it lacked the air-drying process, it would at least guarantee enough rations for two or three days.

The little lion, lying on the down blanket, curiously watched this strange yet somewhat kind human, wanting to know what delicious food he had never seen before. However, the little lion soon realized that he couldn't understand it at all, so after getting tired of watching, he rolled around on the down blanket, opened his mouth wide, yawned widely, tears welled up in the corners of his eyes, squinted his eyes with his head facing the sky, and continued to sleep.

Seeing that Lion Saber confidently exposed her belly to him, Shirou chuckled, somewhat annoyed:

"It's really... It was just a meal, should I be happy or worried?"

After breakfast was prepared, Shirou ate breakfast with Lion Saber.

Although there's no rice or bread, everything is all-natural. As long as we put our hearts into making it the best it can be, we can use the beautiful natural scenery here as a substitute for salt.

However, these problems were no problem for the little lion, who was a pure carnivore and used to bland food. He ate very well yesterday.

After breakfast, Shirou found a long, straight branch, trimmed off the thorns, and made it into a walking stick for assistance and exploration. He then wrapped a down blanket in it, leaving an opening when folding it, and compressed it as much as possible. It could also be used as a bag to store Takehira. He then used vines cut from the tree as ropes to tightly bind it, and carried it on his back like a backpacker's 60L mountaineering backpack.

"Ouch?" The little lion cried out in confusion upon seeing Shirou's actions.

"I'm going that way, so let's part ways here. Thank you for your company, little lion." Shirou said to the little lion with a gentle smile, though he was saddened to have to lose his companion.

However, Shirou understands that the little lion is still a little lion, and she is not Artoria. He cannot treat her as a substitute.

Moreover, the lion cub has its own suitable ecological environment, and it will leave this world one day. If you take the lion cub to a strange environment that is not suitable for its survival, it will only harm it in the end.