"What the------?"
The leg that I had out forward froze.
I can't move.
No matter how much force I puet into it, it won't budge, at this rate----

"......."
My field of vision is being warped.
No, this isn't on the level of warped eyesight.
My visual perception was broken.
My eyeballs sunk inside the cranium, making it impossible for me to make out the distance between me and my surroundings.

"T......,a......"
That, was without a doubt, the symbol of the worst possible situation.
It's as if the insides of my body became stone.
My nerves were cut off, and even my vision was being severed from the "world".
The feeling of looking at the world through a camera gave me the sickenning sensation that I had become a controller operated protagonist of a game protagonist.

"sa...ber........"
I'm going to die.
It was stupid of me to go outside by myself.

And, without being able to do anything, without even being able to see the face of the one who did this, I'm going to end-

"Just kidding! Were you surprised? Shirou, dear, you're just so wide-open. I just had to fool around with you."

-up the plaything of this prankster?

"Ah, it went back to normal. Figures it'd be bounced off just with eye contact."
"Il-"

She popped up from behind with a mischevious smile that seemed to say "I was actually here a few minutes earlier and snuck up behind you because it looked like it would be fun".

"Not being able to break free from that spell on your own (the internal world), tsk tsk, you're still too inexperienced. If you're not able to return to yourself without the effects of the external world, you won't have much of a near-future."
She haughtily lectured me.
But I didn't listen to that gibberish.

"Ilya! WHat the hell was that! We might be enemy Masters, but it's not fair to go for a sneak attack from behind!"

"Gr. That wasn't a sneak attack. I was right next to you the whole time, but you still didn't notice me and to top things off, you were about to leave. It's Shirou's own fault."
"!? Ilya, you were next to me?"

"Yes, I was hiding. Even still, Shirou, you're too careless. You didn't notice me, and, you'd be incapacitated by bindings of just clashed Prana. You're a Master after all. Pay more attention around you.
Ilya rolled here eyes as she warned me.

"Ah.....ok. That's, I see."
It seemed something like what a teacher would say so I ended up nodding my head like a good student.

........skip.......skip....

"Hm? Do you want to know where I live?"
"Uh...yeah, I'm interested. Ilya seems to pop up out of nowhere. I should know at least where you are, just in case."

If Ilya ever gets hurt and needs my help, I won't be able to make it to her if I don't know where she is.
If I at least get her address, I can relax....

"----Ok. Shirou's a special case. I'll tell you if you really want to know that much."
And.
She stood up from the bench and placed her hand on my forehead.

"He....wai-, Ilya"
"Just be quiet. If you resist too much, you'll enter something else. If that happens, it's difficult to put you back in the right place."
She gave me a glare as I was becoming confused.
"O....yes, yes maam."
I ended up nodding in the face of that pressure.

"Good boy. Now, close your eyes. Also, don't look around too much. Even if I am moving you, it's still someone else's point of view. As long as Shirou's here, you'll probably get motion discomfort."

"...!"
Ilya's forehead bumped into my own.
Out of surprise, I opened my eyes.
-and at that instant.

At an incredible pace, my vision accelerated and expanded.
No, more like my conscious expanded.
Anyway, I was seeing an unfamiliar landscape with an overhead view from up afar as if it was normal.

"Can you see? Right now, I connected just Shirou's sight to my forest."

Ilya's voice rang in my ears.
I can't say anything and I can't nod either.
The only thing I have now is this "sight".
I became a tree, gazing upon this huge forest.
I shouldn't be able to move.
That was because for one moment, I became a silent tree.

"Did you remember how to get there? In that case, I'll move you to the castle walls next."

The footage changed to a different scene.
Just my vision was alive while the sensations of the vessel of myself were still frozen.
Even though I'm still the same old me, I can't feel myself.

What came after the trees were the walls.
Even though the feelings in my legs and arms were still there, I didn't have the arms or legs to move. Even though I have a body that can move freely, I didn't get the actual feeling that it would move freely.

"Leysritt. I do not see Mistress Illyasviel around. Do you have an idea as to where she is?"

".....I don't know. If it's Ilya, she's, probably off somewhere."

"Leysritt. I must ask you to stop calling the mistress by that name. Mistress Illyasviel is different from the likes of us. Have you forgotten the duty entrusted to us by the Lord?"

"...Sella is in charge of Ilya's education. I am, in charge of, dressing Ilya, in the dress of the third (Heaven's Feel)."
"Yes. As forgetful as you may be, even you can't seem to forget that."
"......I...did not forget it. But.....Ilya, she,...hates having...to wear that. I don't...want to have to...make her wear it."

".....I understand that as well. However, when the time comes, she will have to wear that, even against her wishes. We were made for that purpose. The Mistress herself should have already accepted that."

"....Sella."
"What is it, Leysritt."
"....Aren't you,...exhausted?"
"I am not exhausted one bit!"

...I can hear the conversation of two maids with the same faces and appearance.
When I realized that they were the the two caretakers that Ilya had told me about,

My body, finally was back in its original state.

"You hung in there nicely. How was it? It was just a bit of transformation thaumaturgy."
"Ah...u."

...I held back my mouth, somehow managing to stop myself from vomitting.
Sudddenly having an image after returning to "myself" felt uncomfortably real and nauseating.

"Il,ya...what was that?"
"The transference of the conscious. The moving of only Shirou's vision to something else."

"There are nerves connecting the pupils to the brain right? What I did, was conenect not the pupils but "something else" to the brain. Just for that moment, Shirou's vision wasn't obtained from Emiya Shirou's pupils, but from the information obtained from what the trees in the forest saw."

"....Muh. So basically, I didn't become a tree, but the vision of a tree was transmitted to my brain and I ended up confusing that with the idea that I was a tree?"

"Oh my, how seemingly dull but sharp.
Yes, that was what happened. A type of spell that keeps the base material, the human himself, the same way, but changing only the inputter.
Changing a person into a key is a pretty big deal, but linking just a human's conscious into a tree is still within the realm of thaumaturgy isn't it? Farsite and possession are applications of this kind of thaumaturgy."

"....I see. But, that's still pretty big by itself. Just by having my eyesight moved into a tree was enough to make be unable to do anything. Couldn't transference be used as an attack to neutralize the other guy?"

"Yes, after all, our special characteristics is the flow and transfer of power. For example, the Tohsaka magi move their own Od into jewels and are still able to keep it at that purity for that long. As an application of that, we can also force the consciousness of others somewhere else.
If there was an enemy we wanted to seal away, we'd move the consciousness input into a jewel or a puppet that can't move and render him helpless."

"But, the success rate of "transfer on the consciousness of others" is low and it probably has no use in attacks even by experts at transfer like me or the Tohsaka magi."
"The one I used on Shirou was different though. Shirou didn't resist it and the forest is mine after all. It's really supposed to be much harder."

"And, if you add any stimulation to the "main conscious body" while the consciousness is being transferred, it'll be forceably returned.
Even if the transferred "consciousness" doesn't perceive a threat to the "main body", the body itself will feel any threat and call back the "separated" consciouss.

"That's what happened to Shirou.
You couldn't do anything yourself while you're conscious was covering a tree, but just by moving your body, it called you (the soul) back."

"...Muh, so that's kind of like a dream?"

While a person is seeing a dream, he can't wake himself up no matter what he does.
What makes a person wake up is usually the coming of morning...in other words, the accustomed processes from the body.

"Mmm....that's a little off. It is possible to wake up from dreams on your own will.
That's why transfer isn't suited for attacks. It's the type of thaumaturgy you put on yourself as self-protection."

If you put your "consciousness" into a "familiar" or a "moveable puppet", you can move that body and explore the mystical safely.

"....You mean that even if your remote control robot, the familiar, is destroyed, your conscious would still return to the main body?"

"Yes, that's it. Those magi that transfer their consciousness hide their main body in absolutely safe places.
What has to be noted about transfering into "familiars", are those "familiars with souls".

"The transference of one's conscious into something possesesing a developed chain of command, something with reason, is going to result in the right to control the body being completely gripped by the "conscious off the familiar".

"That's why even if we move our conscious into people or animals, we're stuck in the periphery of that brain and will only be able to see the same image they're seeing. Not a remote controlled robot but just a camera."

"Moving your "own conscious" into an already established, living, organism, that is a "familiar with a soul", and taking it over isn't in the field of transfer but in the realm of reincarnation.
In that way, it's a type of high thaumaturgy and not something that the regular magi can imitate."

....Reincarnation.
A type of thaumaturgy producing a child that received your own soul after you yourself has died.
Some practitioners have apparently succeeded in that, but even for them, the recreation of the soul is still difficult.
Even if they're able to start from scratch from infantry, if their powers from their liftime aren't 100% retained, that's not "reincarnation" but nothing more than copying.
Copies become inferior, that's why they're considered copies.
A magus reborn as an infant will become weaker than his past self.

"If someone is particularly attached to changing their transfer source into a living being, there's also the possibility of making a mindless, a souless familiar and controlling that shell.
The problem is that the "souless familiars" made by modern magi aren't that strong. It'd just be like controlling something like a straw doll from afar with Od.
That kind of thing doesn't have any uses except as being a messenger of the practitioner."

"And, even if your conscious is moved into a "familiar" or a "moveable doll", if the main body dies from old age, the transferred consciouss will also fade away.
It's not as if the practitioner has obtained immortality."

"The one and only thing forever eternal in the physical world is the soul.
But nobody's able to keep a soul in this plane on its own. Without the physical body, the soul can't be held down, and once it obtains a physical body, it'll be grafted with the time limit of "physical (limited) death".
So, basically for the Einzbern and the Tohsaka, that kind of spell I just used is the limit."