These Tragic Souls and a Sword Reborn
in an Intergalactic Space Opera
Story Intro: "Welcome! I'm an evil god, though not that evil of a god!" is what they woke up to. Join our heroes and heroines, having just met their demise, displaced by an extradimensional event."
Story Starts
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Book 1 - The Empty Twin
Ch 1.4 Gaining Trust in the Thirteen
(Gabrielle Delacour)
[Part 4 of 9]
Location
Grakkan Empire
System: Leafil | Planet: Unnamed Pair of Theta
Date:
Grakkan Standard (GknS)| System | Local | Galactic Standard (GS)
'Revolution' / 'Prime Satellite' / 'Rotation' / 'Time'
GknS 34k6.rev-70% / 10.rev-40% / 255.rot-55% / 15:07:46
GS 13k9.rev-47% / 8.rev-46% / 255.rot-82% / 29:31:03
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Gabrielle Delacour surveyed their hastily formed group. After introductions had been made—with the sun already sinking and the surreal backdrop of a planet dipping below the opposite horizon whilst a moon rose from a different direction—Shirou Emiya, the sole male amongst this randomly assembled, perhaps preordained group, had suggested they start building a shelter.
Naturally, Rose Potter immediately showed off. With a wave of her hand, her wand appeared—courtesy of 'soulbind', one of the purchases they'd made before the 'evil god' had silenced them. The ability allowed you to bind any item to your soul so it could never be misplaced; if broken, it would repair itself within you. With practised ease, Rose retrieved their luxurious travel tents, something she'd volunteered to pay for when they were recruited for Project Noah.
The modular tents could be attached to add more interior space. One tent alone had the equivalent space of Hogwarts' Great Hall, matching both its horizontal expanse and its soaring verticality. Best of all, as long as the total space remained the same, they could reformat the interior to any orientation and shape—corridors could become chambers, partitions could shift at will.
Rose had barely begun anchoring the first tent when Hermione stopped mid-step, frowning.
"Something's wrong," Hermione murmured, tilting her head.
Gabrielle felt it too—a subtle wrongness she couldn't immediately place. The tent stood where it should, fabric taut and properly erected, enchantments humming their familiar low thrum. Yet something about the proportions felt... off.
It was only when the trio of witches approached the tent entrance that realisation struck.
Typically, Gabrielle would still need to duck to enter the tent—as she was quite a tall woman, having experienced quite the growth spurt to reach a hundred seventy-seven centimetres in height. Not as tall as Rose Potter, certainly, but taller than even her older sister.
At that reminder, Gabrielle's mood dipped sharply. Fleur. Her brilliant, beautiful older sister—one of the many cursed by the demons who'd begun hunting their team during Project Noah's final days. She remained in stasis with the others, frozen in magical suspension until they found a solution to that particular debilitating curse.
Gabrielle forcibly shook her head, banishing worries that served no purpose. There was nothing she could currently do about that predicament—not here, not now, not stranded on an alien world light-years from Earth.
'Focus on what you can control,' she reminded herself firmly.
In any case, she usually stood a head taller than the tent entrance. This time, however, the peaked tip only reached her chest.
The change in their height became even more apparent when Illyasviel stomped past, complaining loudly about still being the smallest amongst everyone despite her modifications.
Apparently, the very first thing Illyasviel had done in the reincarnation store was edit her appearance.
Gabrielle had overheard the explanation during introductions—before their previous death, Illya had been a twenty-six-year-old woman trapped in a prepubescent body due to her family's extensive experimentation and modification. The von Einzberns had twisted her physiology so thoroughly that natural growth became impossible. Originally, she and her companions had planned to commission a new body from a magus named Touko Aozaki, intending to transfer Illya's soul into an adult form.
The reincarnation store had simply... provided a more direct solution.
Now Illya possessed the mature body she'd been denied for over a decade. Yet despite finally achieving her adult form, she remained noticeably the shortest member of their group—a fact she clearly resented, if her storming about and muttered complaints were any indication.
After some quick measurements, they discovered the cause of that jarring wrongness: everyone had grown approximately twenty-two per cent in height, maintaining their previous proportions. Everything designed for their old dimensions now sat awkwardly misaligned.
"Well, that explains it," Hermione muttered, jotting down figures. "We've all been proportionally scaled up."
"Except me," Illya grumbled from nearby, arms crossed.
That's when the mechanic became clear—because Illya had specified exact adult dimensions in the reincarnation store, locking in her form before the transfer, she hadn't received the automatic proportional adjustment everyone else experienced. Haruka, for instance, had changed her race from human to elf but left height unspecified, so she'd still received the increase alongside her transformation. Illya, having meticulously defined every parameter of her new body, had been locked into those exact specifications.
Rose, ever practical, immediately set to work. She'd retrieved their travel tent from her inherited assets—a massive modular structure with interior space equivalent to Hogwarts' Great Hall. It had been Project Noah's mobile base during their preservation missions, designed to house their entire multinational team, all their equipment, research materials, and the magical infrastructure needed for long-term field operations.
Now Rose worked alongside several house-elves—those who hadn't been placed in stasis—adjusting fixtures throughout the vast interior. They moved methodically from chamber to chamber, resizing furniture, raising doorframes, and recalibrating the modular partitions to accommodate everyone's new dimensions.
They were also reconfiguring the layout entirely. What had been organised for Project Noah's operational needs now had to house thirteen disparate souls with completely different requirements, plus the house-elves themselves.
Of course, Rose was careful to leave some fixtures at their original size—Illya might have her adult body, but at her specified dimensions, she'd still need access to reasonably proportioned furniture. No point making her feel even more frustrated by forcing her to clamber onto oversized chairs.
Right now, the group had divided into four working teams.
The first group—Shirou, Haruhime, and Sakura—were presently preparing dinner for everyone. Delicious aromas already drifted from the cooking area, the scent of simmering broth mingled with something sweeter, perhaps caramelising vegetables. Gabrielle's stomach rumbled appreciatively; they hadn't eaten since... well, since before they'd died, technically.
The second group consisted of Rose and the house-elves, busily addressing the dimensional crisis and resizing everything to accommodate their new heights. Rose's wand movements had become almost rhythmic—flick, adjust, resize, move on. The house-elves scurried efficiently around her, their magic supplementing hers as they reconfigured the modular spaces.
The third and fourth groups had originally been meant as one large team, but the sheer volume of work forced a natural split. They were conducting an initial inventory of items from those who'd purchased 'Inherit Previous Life's Assets' and 'Inherit Claimable, Unclaimed Inheritance' in the reincarnation store.
The work was more complex than it initially seemed. Each person's inherited possessions had arrived in some form of dimensional storage—pouches, trunks, entire vaults' worth of contents compressed into manageable containers. Someone needed to catalogue everything, identify what they had available as a group, and determine what would be most useful for immediate survival on an alien frontier world.
Interestingly, only Sakura and Syr hadn't purchased those particular perks. Everyone else had brought their material possessions along for this new life—which, given the diversity of their origins, meant they were sorting through everything from wizard gold and magical artefacts to Japanese family business assets and whatever Shirou's Magus inheritance entailed.
Which brought them to the reason for the split into two groups.
Before they'd been 'silenced' by the self-proclaimed 'evil god,' Rose's team had already discussed a troubling realisation: the people who'd been placed in stasis during Project Noah—Luna, Tonks, the Greengrass sisters, Fleur, and all the others—hadn't been around them when they'd awakened in that void-space with Zelretch.
They'd gambled on a possibility. If they purchased 'Inherit Previous Life's Assets' and 'Inherit Claimable, Unclaimed Inheritance,' perhaps they'd receive the multiple expansion-charmed chests they'd stored everyone in—the stasis chambers containing their cursed friends, along with everything Project Noah had gathered during their preservation missions.
The gamble had worked. Sort of.
The problem was that because all three of them—Rose, Hermione, and Gabrielle—had purchased those perks, each of them had inherited everything. Three separate copies of everything. Three sets of stasis chambers. Three complete archives of Project Noah's collected knowledge. Three inventories of magical supplies and Muggle equipment.
Gabrielle's chest tightened at the implications. Did that mean three copies of Fleur, suspended in magical stasis? Three versions of Luna, Tonks, the Greengrass sisters? The metaphysical implications made her head spin, so she'd pushed the question aside for later. Right now, they needed to focus on cataloguing what they had.
The duplication phenomenon wasn't unique to Rose's group, either. Both Shirou and Illya shared the same father—technically speaking, since Shirou had been adopted whilst Illya was the biological daughter. Both had purchased 'Inherit Previous Life's Assets' and 'Inherit Claimable, Unclaimed Inheritance,' and both had apparently inherited their father's family's complete magic crest, already integrated into their bodies.
It wasn't divided between them. Two separate, complete copies.
Rin had gone pale when she'd confirmed it, checking both Shirou and Illya's bodies with diagnostic spells. "That shouldn't be possible," she'd muttered, fingers tracing the glowing pathways beneath Shirou's skin.
Yet there it was. The reincarnation store apparently operated on different rules than the metaphysics they'd known.
Whatever the intricacies of magic crests, the immediate priority was practical: separating supplies into useful categories. Food, drinks, equipment, medical supplies, tools, weapons, anything that would help thirteen souls survive on an alien frontier world.
That's what Teams Three and Four were doing—Hermione, Rin, and Haruka formed one group, whilst Gabrielle had ended up with Marin, Illya, Lefiya, and Ryuu in the other.
A sudden squeal shattered Gabrielle's contemplative silence.
Gabrielle turned to find Marin practically vibrating with excitement, having finally reached her personal inheritance amongst the sorted piles. Illya knelt beside her, grey eyes bright with curiosity.
"Oh my god, oh my god, they actually came through!" Marin was already pulling out stack after stack of—books? No, not quite. The items were too uniform, too plasticky.
Marin began removing pile after pile, stacking them somewhat irreverently into groups beside each other. At first glance, they resembled novels, but as Gabrielle moved closer, she noticed the materials were wrong. Too shiny. Too rigid.
Curious, Gabrielle reached for one of the 'books.'
Not a book. A plastic case.
She flipped it over to examine the cover—and immediately shrieked, face flooding with heat as she dropped it like it had burnt her.
"Hey! That's my only copy of Shironeko!" Marin's usually bubbly voice carried an edge of genuine chastisement as she tenderly retrieved the fallen case, dusting it off with exaggerated care before placing it reverently back into its pile. "Be careful with that—it's a collector's edition!"
Gabrielle's face burned hotter. Now that she was paying attention—unwillingly—she could see more of the same scattered around Marin's inheritance pile. Lurid images adorned every case: drawn women in various states of undress, bound in intricate rope work, their faces twisted in expressions somewhere between ecstasy and anguish. Some featured writhing tentacles in configurations that made Gabrielle's imagination recoil. Others depicted scenarios she couldn't even begin to categorise, all rendered in vivid, explicit artistic detail.
"What are these?" Gabrielle managed, voice strangled.
"Erogames!" Marin announced cheerfully, apparently utterly shameless. "Visual novels where you make choices to progress the story. Multiple routes, different endings, branching narratives—it's brilliant storytelling, really, just with, you know, explicit content."
Illya, Gabrielle noted with mounting disbelief, hadn't moved away. If anything, she'd shifted closer, face flushed but eyes eager as she examined various covers, firing questions at Marin with genuine enthusiasm.
"So you can choose different girls?" Illya was asking, tilting one case to catch the light. "And the story changes based on your decisions?"
"Exactly!" Marin beamed. "Some have dozens of endings. The replayability is insane. And the art—I mean, just look at the detail work on this one—"
The commotion had attracted attention. Both Ryuu and Syr, who'd been organising their own inherited possessions several metres away, moved closer to investigate the fuss.
Gabrielle caught Ryuu's eye and shook her head frantically in warning.
Too late.
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Location
Grakkan Empire
System: Leafil | Planet: Unnamed Pair of Theta
Date:
Grakkan Standard (GknS)| System | Local | Galactic Standard (GS)
'Revolution' / 'Prime Satellite' / 'Rotation' / 'Time'
GknS 34k6.rev-70% / 10.rev-40% / 255.rot-55% / 15:07:46
GS 13k9.rev-47% / 8.rev-46% / 255.rot-82% / 29:31:03
-=&
A low, persistent hum from the bedside table—the vibration of her wand, a tangible thrum against the wood—nudged Gabrielle from the deep comfort of sleep.
She blinked slowly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she pushed herself upright. The bed, adjusted by Rose about an hour ago, felt impossibly perfect—soft yet supportive, conforming to every curve of her body as though it had been crafted specifically for her new proportions.
Her senses, still foggy with the remnants of dreams, jolted to sudden, sharp attention as the most wonderful perfume of mouthwatering food wafted into the room. Her stomach responded immediately with an undignified growl.
Her gaze drifted across the modest chamber to Illya, who sat on the edge of her own bed opposite Gabrielle's. Her long, silvery-white hair was wrapped snugly in a towel, and she methodically applied lotion to her arms and legs, the clean, floral scent of it providing a subtle counterpoint to the feast being prepared elsewhere in the tent.
Gabrielle felt a flush of second-hand embarrassment warm her cheeks as memory surfaced unbidden: a red-faced Ryuu standing stiff as a board, whilst a gleeful Syr and an enthusiastic Illya had excitedly quizzed Marin about her extensive collection of... questionable materials. The elven waitress's normally composed expression had fractured into mortified disbelief, whilst Syr had looked positively delighted by the entire situation.
Before that particular spectacle, they'd managed to sort through most of Ryuu, Illya, and Marin's inherited possessions. Illya, in particular, had gained quite a few items from the 'Inherit Claimable, Unclaimed Inheritance' option—far more than she'd apparently expected.
The most startling discovery had been a woman sealed in stasis within a glass and metallic chamber.
The second significant find had been an intricately shaped object that resembled a circle and a large cross merged into one, wrought in what appeared to be ancient, weathered metal. Illya had gone very still when she'd unwrapped it, fingers hovering above its surface without quite touching.
Shirou had been busily tending to the vegetables he was cutting at the time, but he'd stopped mid-motion when Illya had called him over. Their expressions had turned grave as they'd examined the object together, speaking in low, serious tones.
"That's a Noble Phantasm," Shirou had finally said, loud enough for the group to hear.
"A crystallised mystery—the legends and deeds of a hero, heroine, or villain from a bygone age, given physical form," Illya then explained to everyone.
Gabrielle hadn't pushed for more information at that moment. Their impromptu show-and-tell could wait for dinner, when everyone could discuss such discoveries properly. With care, they'd transferred both the woman in her crystalline vessel and the Noble Phantasm into one of their magically expanded trunks, placing the stasis chamber beside the others who still slept in their suspended states.
Another life. Another mystery. Another responsibility laid at their feet.
The thought of Fleur, suspended somewhere in one of those trunks—possibly in triplicate, if the duplication held true for the stasis chambers—made Gabrielle's chest tighten. She forcibly redirected her thoughts before that spiral could take hold.
Watching Illya now, Gabrielle found herself cataloguing the other girl's unique beauty with an artist's appreciation. Ignoring her own deviation from everyone's new average height, she studied the subtle details. Illya possessed a truly stunning figure—delicate yet perfectly proportioned, like a masterful blend of a high-fashion model and an exquisite porcelain doll. Her skin and hair were so ethereally white they seemed to absorb and soften the room's ambient light, and her crimson eyes, when you truly looked at them, were both stunning and deeply alluring—like polished rubies holding secret fire within their depths.
There was a perfection to her that felt almost inhuman, as though she'd been crafted rather than born. Which, Gabrielle supposed with a pang of sympathy, wasn't far from the truth given what Illya had shared about her family's modifications.
"Hey, Gabrielle," Illya suddenly interjected, her smile crooked, one eye twitching slightly in what Gabrielle was beginning to recognise as suppressed irritation. "Did you know I'm apparently no taller than a half-dwarf in this reality?"
Gabrielle blinked at the non-sequitur.
"Stupid Illya," the white-haired girl continued, apparently addressing herself now, "stupid Zelretch with his dumb purchasing store and his dumb default settings—"
Gabrielle couldn't help the small, sympathetic smile that tugged at her lips. Even having known Illya for just a few hours, she'd come to genuinely like the straightforward spitfire that she was. Something about her reminded Gabrielle of a combination of her sister Fleur and Rose—that same fierce independence and refusal to be pitied. Though Illya possessed something extra, a 'don't mess with me' air she can't seem to place.
"And where did you get this information?" Gabrielle asked, stretching languorously as she extracted herself from the bed covers. The 'n' of 'information' stretched into a yawn she couldn't quite suppress.
"'General Knowledge,'" Illya replied, fingers still working lotion into her calves with methodical precision. "Your group's theory about the default height increase is probably correct—it seems to be based on the average height of humans in this reality. Which means everyone except me got taller to match local standards, whilst I'm stuck at whatever exact specifications I entered like an idiot."
A sigh escaped Illya as she slumped forward dejectedly, shoulders sagging with defeat, her body still wrapped in that fluffy white towel.
"At least, you no longer have a prepubescent body," Gabrielle offered gently, as she smiled at the sulking Illya.
Apparently, Illya was the second eldest amongst everyone at twenty-six. Only Ryuu, the naturally born elf, was older at twenty-seven—or twenty-seven relative to however long a year had been in their original reality.
The absurdity of it struck Gabrielle as almost comical. When you conjured images of elves in your mind, you'd naturally assume they'd be hundreds of years old, perhaps even millennium-old beings with vast stores of accumulated knowledge and experience. Ancient creatures who'd witnessed the rise and fall of civilisations, who spoke in riddles earned through centuries of observation. But the two naturally born elves in their motley group were essentially young adults by any reasonable measure. However, Lefiya had mentioned in passing that her mentor from her familia was a few years older than a century, which still seemed remarkably young for an elf.
Curiosity prickling at her consciousness, Gabrielle prompted 'General Knowledge,' feeling the familiar tingle as information flooded her mind like warm honey poured over her thoughts. The sensation remained weird—having information revealed to you as if it had always been there, memory without the experience of learning.
She absorbed details about the various aspects of this reality's denizens with growing amazement—sentient tentacle-headed aliens, earth-like animals given anthropomorphic forms and sophisticated cultures, elves and dwarves that seemed more grounded and realistic than any fairy tale, and even other sentient beings with no real equivalent to anything Gabrielle could compare them to from her own experiences.
But when she focused on the humans of this reality, her breath caught in genuine surprise. Enhanced nobles boasted heights ranging from a staggering 200 centimetres to an almost incomprehensible 400 centimetres, depending on their genetic lineage, species classification, and the specific type of enhancements they'd undergone. Even non-enhanced base-human derived species stood at a minimum of around 183 centimetres—what would have been considered quite tall back in her original reality.
She herself, after being carefully measured earlier that afternoon they woke up in this reality, now stood at a whopping two hundred and sixteen centimetres—nearly seventeen centimetres shy of two hundred seventeen. The number still felt absurd every time she contemplated it, as though she'd borrowed someone else's body entirely. The transformation still felt surreal when she truly contemplated it; her previous height of a respectable hundred and seventy-seven centimetres had been perfectly adequate, even enviable by most standards. Now she possessed a stature that even the most accomplished male athletes from her world would regard with open envy.
"Yeah! You're right! Thank you!" Illya's voice suddenly brightened, her crimson eyes sparkling with renewed mischief as her sullen mood evaporated like morning mist. The towel shifted slightly as she straightened, revealing the elegant line of her neck and collarbones. "At least Shirou now no longer has the excuse to turn down any of my advances—Rin can't have all the fu—"
Knock, knock.
The sound cut through Illya's declaration like a blade, crisp and purposeful against the wooden door.
"Ahem—dinner is ready." Shirou's deep voice carried through the slight gap in the doorway, though Gabrielle could detect the faint note of exhaustion that seemed to colour his words. The man had already nudged the door ajar, presumably to announce the meal.
His face morphed into something between horror and resignation as his jaw tightened. The scent of whatever delicious meal he'd prepared wafted through the crack in the door, making Gabrielle's stomach rumble appreciatively even as she suppressed a laugh at his obvious discomfort.
"Hey, you heard me right!" Illya called out boldly, apparently unperturbed by her state of undress or the impropriety of the situation. Her voice carried a teasing lilt that made Gabrielle's skin tingle with secondhand embarrassment. "No more excuses—I'm letting Sakura have first blood, then you—hey!"
But Shirou had already vanished from the doorway with impressive speed, his footsteps echoing rapidly down the hallway as he fled the scene.
Gabrielle shook her head slowly, a warm chuckle bubbling up from her chest. The sound was rich and melodious, carrying just a hint of her Veela heritage in its musical quality. She was gradually beginning to understand the unique dynamics of this randomly assembled group from different realities.
'Hopefully it works out in the end,' she optimistically hoped.
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END