Epitaph World

Epitaph World, also known as Shortcut to the Gallows, is a low-class Sacred Gear wielded by Kurenai Sumeragi, the leader of he the H² Squad from the story Black Blade, Black God of Misfortune. A support-type Sacred Gear, it allows the user to break down abstract concepts into numbers to create "Certain Death" scenarios and locations.

Basically, it allows the user to understand fate.

Profile
The Sacred Gear of Kurenai Sumeragi, the leader of the H² Squad, an independent group of Sacred Gear users. At first thought to be a simple yet stylized watch, Epitaph World presented himself as a simple yet deadly Sacred Gear at Kurenai's hands, as shown that she could easily break down things such as luck, karma and star-reading into combat in order to create certain-death situations in her favour.

Due to his own Sacred Gear, however, Epitaph World has shown to be useless against the likes of Kokuto, making Kurenai consider recruiting him into the H² Squad.

Appearance
Epitaph World takes the shape of a stylized, crimson wristwatch attached to the user's left hand with several smaller clocks inside its core and a single pointer sticking out the main circle and a golden rope above the main attacher. When activated, a sun-like mark appears on the back of the user's hand.

Abilities
Epitaph World has the primary ability to break down abstract concepts such as luck, destiny and karma and use them for either divination or combat. By knowing one's names, date of birth and other trivial informations such as favorite colour or movie, Epitaph World allows the user to break down such into numbers for the user to calculate one's amount of luck for the day, month, year; better compactibility with one person or another or even discover's one date of death. Kurenai explains that her Sacred Gear does not make her a prophet or a clairvoyant, but helps her understand concept such as 'fate', 'luck' and 'karma' and calculate their numerations and predict their outcomes, she comparing to Pythagorean theorem.

Epitaph World can also be used for combat: By calculating the day, hour and other aspects such as position of the Sun, the geographic coordinates and direction of the wind, the user is able to pinpoint and predict 'certain death' locations, i.e. places where under special circunstances can trigger a domino effect-like chain of events that can kill or at least fatally wound its opponents. If a certain person, in a certain moment under a certain time lands on one of those places, the chances of death or at least fatal damage to occur are 99%. And since fate and death are mostly attached to life's nature, Epitaph World's abilities can be used on almost all forms of living beings.

As shown on an omake, Kurenai can also use Epitaph World to see the time and weather report.

Drawbacks
According to Kurenai, the Sacred Gear by itself is harmless and passive, a if it ended up in someone even a bit less intelligent than her it would be completely useless or at least not being able to even reach 1% of it's true potential. Even under Kurenai's hands, Epitaph World has no direct offensive skills, making the user rely on their own abilities to use the Sacred Gear to it's full potential, be in combat or prediction.

While the Sacred Gear's combat-oriented skills are most of the time certainly to cause the death of its victims, it requires several secondaries factors in order to work such as time of the day, the day itself or geographic coordinates, as well as other information such as the victims' heights and weights, plus their names and dates of birth in order for the predictions to be 100% Accurate. Said predictions are also not unlimited, meaning if Kurenai is unable to use a certain death location under a time limit, she won't be able to use it a second time so soon, if at all. The predictions also only work for the victim and victim alone, meaning that even if it's stepped on a zone of certain death, Kurenai is still suspected of harm and death by her victim's hands.

While fate itself is part of life's own nature, certain beings with already stabilished fates and deaths cannot be affected by Epitaph World, such as the Norse Gods since they are expected to die at Ragnarök, some greek gods or Heroes will already estabilished fates and so on. People who can somehow manipulate the flow of their own luck and fate are also shown to be immune to Epitaph World's effects, meaning Fortuna Ataraxia is its biggest opposing Sacred Gear.

Balance Breaker: Axis Mundi
Axis Mundi, also known as Ascending Future, is Epitaph World's Balance Breaker. Unlike other balance Breakers, however, Axis Mundi can only be used during periods of solar Eclipse. The true power of that Balance Breaker is unknown, but Shigasumi predicts that it allows Epitaph World to become a candidate for a Longinus to the future.

Behind the Scenes

 * Images based on False Berserker's watch form from the novel Fate/Strange Fake.
 * According to Kurenai, she could predict Shuri Himejima's death by her own relatives and tried to warn her nonethless. But Shuri decided to face her fate for her beloved Baraqiel.
 * Kurenai claims that Kokuto is so far the only human she knows who's immune to Epitaph World's abilities.
 * Like any other sacred gears in Black Blade, Epitaph World is named after a major arcana in the tarot deck. In it's case, it's named after the Arcana XXI - The World.
 * Moreover, it's first name is a reference to Epitaph, a song by the band King Crimson, which it's user is named after.