He was still broke. He didn’t have access to entertainment. And he was stuck in the guild hall for the most part while his shoulder healed. So he threw himself into those bounties he could pursue while resting. He introduced chess to a few of his guildmates. He wasn’t good, but he was confident he could beat Kiria and get the Chuuni Thinking Pose once she returned. It didn’t offer CP but it offered him a power for completion. Similarly he just had to make 3 friends to get another one, but the idea of using his guildmates like tools for that left him uneasy; you didn’t manipulate the people who watched your back in a fight and who you lived with, so he’d find less important people to befriend. The guild had a hot spring and a shower, meaning it wasn’t hard to complete about half of the chuuni bathing technique bounty; though he lacked a private bath tub or a large supply of ice for certain portions. He didn’t have access to pets at the moment, and wasn’t sure he knew what sort of animal he’d want as his ‘magical girl mascot’ so that was tabled for now. Similarly while he was stuck in the guildhall recuperating he couldn’t exactly go out and find old ladies to help cross streets, cats to save from trees, or lost children to help; which was infuriating as his previous attempts at such things had been stymied by Madmole’s tendency to find and help them first. This was a particularly painful bounty not to be able to complete as not only was the reward awesome, it was actually a bounty that completing would feel good; help a few people.
Those were all things that could be completed in any world. He didn’t need to head out and do them now anyway. They could wait. There was no clock or timer, and he could relax on them. But that left the ones that could be completed only in this world.
Kill Zeref, kill Spriggans and possibly replace them, Acnologia, the 5(6) Dragon Gods, all (named) dragons that showed up in the series that weren’t already dead. The last one wasn’t liable to happen. The other three. They were way beyond what he was even now. With the black sword killing Zeref might just be possible. If Zeref toyed with him. Still the rewards were the biggest, even after he seemed to have ‘leveled up’ to the point where additional rewards were smaller than previously.
Though there were two alternatives to outright murdering Zeref now. Redemption, and getting Natsu to do it. Neither was as rewarding straight out, but both offered additional rewards for additional tasks; such as killing Anksheram himself. Still he wasn’t going close to Zeref if he could help it anytime soon. But Zeref wasn’t the only redemption quest on offer. Irene, any villain with a bonus if they weren’t redeemed in canon, and another bonus for born evil ones. He liked that bounty. A reward for doing good. He’d really rather help people than kill them all things equal. Of course it came with an alternative reward for corrupting someone instead; and breaking a main character as your slave was worth more than redeeming even a being born of evil, though less than redeeming a Dragon God that was outright evil as opposed to the water and moon ones.
Still there were a fair number for making friends. Which Arthur found oddly reassuring about this whole situation. Befriend Natsu, find an Exceed Partner and befriend them, and even befriend the Celestial Spirits. The last was the one most directly on his mind. He should have chances at it if he waited due to his cheat power to be a celestial spirit summoner.
There were others too. A whole suite about collecting lacrima and implanting it into himself, up to and including specifically becoming the next God Serena. He’d have loved to meet God Serena to have a better idea how to do that. Actually given how many bounties he could complete by killing him and sticking his lacrima into his body Arthur was more than a little tempted to figure out how to assassinate him any reluctance to straight up murder someone in cold blood aside. He was convinced that given how many different ones pointed him to killing Serena, that he was not popular with the sponsors.
Becoming a dragon slayer of each possible variety with a bonus for avoiding their motion sickness issues. A bonus for somehow learning 1st Gen Dragon Slayer Magic from one of the Dragon Gods, and a bonus that he’d already failed at for learning his first dragon slayer magic that way; it had apparently come in a few days before his job to kill the Darkness Dragon, but he hadn’t checked bounty updates as regularly as he should. Not that he’d have stopped the guild job for that. He didn’t want to try and match up against a Dragon God without at least some variety of Dragon Slayer Magic in his back pocket.
There were other bounties revolving around learning non-dragon slayer magic as well. Or becoming clearly the most powerful member of Diabolos, clearly and confidently more powerful than Georg. And it was possible he might could do it just with the CP he had gained. His raw magical power capacity was close to Georg’s own, though Georg’s actual power with magic definitely eclipsed his, but for 600 CP he could get both Irene/August level skill and power with his territory magic. At that point he doubted he couldn’t crush Georg decisively.
It had a high pay out too. Some serious power. But he wasn’t ready to do that. There was already talk and worry in the guild of what would happen if Byaku and Georg clashed. Georg’s four beasts dragon slayer magic directly included Byaku’s white tiger dragon slayer magic, but Byaku’s magical power had eclipsed Georg’s. Georg was old, and to hear some of the guild members talk about it, the only thing that really kept him alive was his position in the guild. If he didn’t dragonify to protect himself, and become a rampaging monster like those who had taken away his original children, he’d probably die of heartbreak.
Georg had beat him down hard, and was an abrasive beast of a man who had left him in terror for most of the last month. But he’d also given him a place to stay for mostly free, was making sure he got medical attention, and had been willing to fight an unknown threat with more magical power than his own to avenge Arthur being possibly killed and replaced by it. He hated himself for even considering the sort of crushing it’d take to be recognized as above him like Laxus to Natsu. Still he earmarked it for later. The points were sorely tempting.
Saving Loke from the Celestial Spirit King’s judgment, and getting Aries’s key had bounties. And there was even one for getting a copy of every key, though he wasn’t sure what Bronze Keys were, he didn’t remember hearing about them. Another bounty addressed the Eclipse versions of the Celestial Spirits and that one scared him.
On the surface it was fairly benign. Get their allegiance and you got reward, doubly so if you did so in a way that somehow allowed them to coexist with their originals. The payout was excellent, and if he could do it without killing the originals not only was the payout better, but he’d have no moral qualms about it, and with his new power he felt safe in believing that he could. The only thing was while he’d heard of the eclipse versions of the spirits, they were anime filler, and he’d never actually watched the anime. He’d been operating under the belief that he had read the manga so knew what the world would throw at him. That bounty’s mere existence made him realize that the filler, the movies, and who knew what else was still out there waiting for him.
It was a sobering thought, even as bounties for teaching Erza dragon slayer magic, eradicating dark guilds, and changing the plot rounded out the bounty board.
He wished he could have gone to Fiore. Defeating the Oración Seis would have covered at least 2 bounties, he could have probably gotten paid for it, and he felt confident that Kiria could have convinced Skullion and Madmole to help crush this top level dark guild of that third rate continent, and that even if he couldn’t take them alone, with those 3 beside him they could have done it. He could have gotten the Golden Key of Aries, crushed a dark guild, upset the plot line, and gotten three bounties for the price of one, while also getting to learn about making dragon lacrima and God Serena for those bounties.
But he was wounded. And broke. He didn’t have the choice to go to Ishgar if he wanted to. At least his team had promised to bring him back a souvenir. But that left him with what to do during his recovery period. Georg had mandated he didn’t do anything strenuous until the wound had time to close so as not to make it worse, and was very strictly given orders to avoid strenuous activities like combat for the next 4 weeks. So what was he going to do for 4 weeks?
And should he spend his points now? Befriending celestial spirits would be cheap 100 CP, though after the reduction that had happened when he reached the new power level it’d take befriending a few to pay off. Still he thought it’d pay for itself before too long. There were the ones for rediscovery/inventing new magic, to be a magical prodigy, and just general magical skill which would help him learn new magic. Each was tempting, but since he could only get 2 at that price tier for half off, well it also had one about tapping the natural magic of weapons - such as his black sword - and one for summon fusion, or magic item creation which might make making his own lacrima be within his reach, or ones for turning defeat into friendship. He was torn about what to buy there, as it seemed to hold the lion’s share of the best options. Of course he could go for general magical skill, it didn’t have a discount at all, but if it was talking about this world’s magic it was probably better than both, especially at its highest levels. And then there were the top tier ‘cheat’ powers. Things like the Power of Friendship, the curse of Ankhseram, a body of Magic Barrier Particles, curse magic which pierced anti-magic effects, and just general narrative warping; these were powers that would be a massive help in future worlds. And then there was Enchantment magic and Takeover magic. There was a bounty for making his own new style of magic, and one for becoming a 4th Generation Dragon Slayer through a variation on Takeover magic. He should be able to complete both by creating Takeover Dragon Soul magic, but mastery of takeover magic was likely key there. Enchantment magic was similarly useful. If there was any magic that could separate the Eclipse Spirits from their hosts, or give Irene a human body again it was the very High Enchantment Irene used. Of course if he could help Irene she might very well teach him it, and Enchantment magic was expensive. A second magic cost 50 CP, and a 3rd 100 CP; Enchantment cost an additional 200 CP on top of that.
While agonizing over it, he’d made the mistake of noting where Georg could hear that it might be possible to research methods for reversing dragonification. That had been a mistake, as now Georg was riding his ass to do just that. It did get Georg to be less upset about the wasted dragon meat, since the very fact of how it was wasted would make it theoretically useful for this task.
On the one hand it was nice to have Georg not mad at him. On the other hand instead of getting to rest in bed, he was now expected to be studying and researching how to reverse dragonification until he recovered. The good news was Diabolos did actually have the best dragon focused library in the continent, at least it claimed it did. The bad news was that it wasn’t exactly organized. Still it was time to get researching.
Arthur sighed. He hated research. Was there an option he could buy to make himself more studious? Or make it easier to ignore distractions? There wasn’t much to do at the guild - they didn’t exactly have a tv, or the internet (oh how he missed the internet), and he’d only found one novel in their entire library thus far and it was bad - but there were people to talk to, and even swallowing down his anxiety about dealing with people and being extroverted was more enjoyable than research.
And it wasn’t like he actually was alone in the library. Wraith, the ghost dragon slayer who was both a ghost only visible to dragon slayers and a practitioner of ghost dragon slaying magic, apparently liked to haunt the library when waiting for leads on how to find his killer. His very existence did a number on Arthur’s feelings of invulnerability in the aftermath of his obtaining dragon slaying magic and increased magical power. He had no weapon or defense against this ghost. Similarly he had no weapon or defense against Kiria’s hypnotism based strength cutting. Even if he could win in a direct match of power on power he was still very vulnerable to so many things. It was sobering, even if Wraith hadn’t shown him any hostility.
Then there was Misaki. She was the Azure Dragon, one of the four Dark Dragon Slayers, and the strongest woman in the guild. Arthur knew his magical power was enough to edge hers out, but not by a great extent. He’d need to train to stay ahead of her. And her dragon slayer magic was apparently a form of spatial magic, and her desire to spar with him and see what his Territory magic tasted like was a reminder that his magic wasn’t unbeatable in a direct fight.
And then there was Hinami. She was the closest thing to Diabolos’s resident librarian, though that came in the form of being a mousy introvert who liked to hide in the corners of the shelves, more than any actual job. Arthur was convinced that no one had organized this so-called library since the building was built. Hinami herself wasn’t that bad. She was something of the Sting to his Rogue, in that she had obtained the flesh of the prior dragon Serena had hired someone else to slay for him to acquire lacrima from it, specifically a light dragon, but she was quiet, stayed to herself, and mostly just made him feel like he was being watched.
Ike and Roy, the two mages who both wanted her to ‘team’ up with them, in a rather intimate way, were the real distraction. Besides the fact that they both seemed to hang around him as an excuse to be near her - and watch for the other - without obviously stalking her. It was transparent. It was annoying. And Arthur wasn’t actually sure how he could make them stop. And the problem was that they’d get him talking and he enjoyed it. It made his research hard, when he found himself geeking out about the way Territory worked. And only at the end of the spiel realizing that it was all memories he’d purchased with CP when he selected to upgrade his magical skill.
Then there was Haku. The kid was only 5 or so. But his magical power was already greater than Arthur’s own until he’d increased it while fighting the dragon, and despite being a preschooler had already learned a style of magic from his parents. It wasn’t enough to save them from the monsters that had killed them, though. Byaku had saved the kid and brought him back to the guild. They were taking him in. He had a gift for magic, and no one else to take care of him. Byaku especially seemed intent on making sure the kid had a good life here. He was a rambunctious and curious child, who had a tendency to come and distract Arthur, or come begging for someone to play with. Of course he was also the White Tiger Dragon Slayer in the manga, making his appearance feel like a major death flag for Byaku.
Still, Arthur was settling quickly into a routine. A training session to get him used to his Darkness Dragon Slayer Magic in the morning, before a meal, then setting up what he could alchemically set up where it wouldn’t need direct oversight, and then he’d make his way to research till lunch, and back again, usually slacking off for a while before having to go check his alchemy. Before supper was a second training session and then he did what alchemy required more direct oversight before bed. It took a while to get it right, especially the timing of checking on alchemical results. And he accidentally created a draconic reptile from the dragon meat once, but by the end of the first week he’d fallen into a routine.
By the end of the second he was actually rather enjoying the routine. It was a stormy day, one where a heavy rainstorm had caused him to be rather soaked at the end of his morning training, and had seen his whole schedule thrown off just a little by it, when luck would have it that he found the book he didn’t even know he was looking for. A tome written by a dragon slayer from the time of Irene and Acnologia, researching the effects and nature of dragonification in their wake. He’d started deciphering more than reading the dense, difficult book written in an archaic tongue that he was having to reverse engineer, and time seemed to crawl, but he kept his nose to the paper and read until there was the sound of an explosion, and then of Georg roaring out his name.
It wasn’t too hard to extinguish the fire of his alchemical failure. Fire needed oxygen to burn, and when you could separate space it wasn’t hard to keep it out, letting it smother itself. But it took time. And when he returned to the library what he found filled him with an utter rage at the heavens themselves.
The stone ceiling had sprung a leak. Not just a leak. A large chunk of rock had fallen, directly onto the book he was reading, and water had spent the last 15 minutes pouring down onto the old tome. It was irreparable, the information once contained in its pages lost. And perhaps it was irreplaceable.
May his life be eventful indeed.
He pulled up his mental HUD. He scrolled to Archive magic. He selected to purchase it. It’d cost him 50 CP, and in the end 100 CP if he decided to do the same with Enchantment, but if it could turn magical information into data maybe it could convert these blasted books into information faster than reading them. Besides it did seem to have some communal unconsciousness access from the full description.
He turned his attention to the Magical Skill option. He’d purchased level 2, but now he upgraded his purchase 2 categories to Lv 4. It was another 200 CP. But he had CP to burn and it would be useful. New ways to use his magic were flooding his mind. Problems he was having with his Darkness Dragon Slayer Magic started to become so bloody simple. The nature of ethernado seemed to bare itself to his mind. It was a - repetition - of that feeling of omnipotence, as the means to work magic blossomed across his consciousness. And in an act of hubris he extended out his magic, feeling through his spatial warps, getting a feeling for the limits of his territory, and then he created thousands of tiny portals and moved the storm cloud a few miles further on.
That ought to show the weather.
Still the act hadn’t been easy even with his new found magical efficiency. He felt a little tired.
“Hey, Arthur, it’s the weirdest thing, that huge storm cloud just disappeared,” Ike said walking up to him. “What’s got you looking so tired? You don’t look particularly good. Oh man, what happened in the library?”
When Arthur managed to work up the heart to resume his research 3 days later, he was rather disappointed to learn that while Archive was excellent for storing the information from the books in what amounted to his personal magical computer mainframe, he was not capable of directly extracting the information from the books simply by touching them, though as it became more developed it could fill in more and more information from the communal magical unconscious; the more information he fed into his archive the more it would know. It wasn’t useless there, but he had to scan each page with his magic. It was still faster than reading them, except it drained his magical energy which meant he either had to train less with the Darkness Dragon Slayer Magic which he was still mastering, or he had to copy less book pages into his archive.
And he had to program the magical search himself. Figure out how to OCR the pages properly. And build the archive’s computer with his magic the hard way. The magic that was supposed to remove the need for him to actually work to do his magical research actually required him to perform additional work.
It made him want to find an excuse just to quit. But then another bounty appeared on his mental bounty board. Ars Goetia. It wasn’t, like he expected from the name, about making Etherious on his own. It was about converting himself into one. Did they convert Minerva and her dad into Etherious? He had thought they’d just injected them with demon-stuff, but they were ultimately just demonically infused humans. It’d been too long since he read this manga all the way through.
Another bounty had gone red though. Saving Loke was no longer an option. Either he’d died, which who knows if May Your Life be Eventful could cause that, or else Lucy had saved him like in canon. Still it was a kick in the gut. He had even more to research, and time was flowing. He couldn’t sit and do nothing.
If nothing else, Georg would be pissed if he didn’t have something to show for it before the month was done. He sighed, and started constructing his mind computer, building a mental archive of magical knowledge, and starting to construct a search function. It was boring, mind numbing, soul crushing work to be honest. It didn’t actually exhaust his ethernado nearly as much as he feared, it barely utilized it at all, but it was mentally exhausting.
His routine had changed. He was for the time being ceasing his potion making - much to Ike and Roy’s dismay having finally tested some of those he’d sold them (only to use it to pay his guild dues) and eager for more - and focusing purely on his construction of his mental machine, with some fairly regular walks and training sessions to blow off the mental strain with some physical exertion and stretching of his magical muscles.
Georg stepped in to stop him from sparring with Misaki or Suzaku during this period, threatening to give him the beating he deserved if he wanted to aggravate his shoulder wound. Still he was learning to use his magic at a speed which seemed to trouble Georg, and excite the Dark Dragon Knights. He had a whole queue of people who wanted to fight him. Of course his response was he wasn’t sparring anyone until he’d done a few jobs.
And then he returned to the library, and began his proper uploading of information. It wasn’t fun. But it was faster than his previous work, and it was doing its best to bring up any relevant information on dragonification, dragon slayer magic, enchantment, and a few other topics.
“So what kind of magic is that?” It was Hinami. It was his second day archiving things into his Archives, and it was the first time in his weeks of research that Hinami had actually said more than a simple greeting without being pressed into the conversation.
“Archive magic. It’s a means of transforming magical knowledge into data inside of a database constructed from my magic,” He explained.
“How does it work?” Hinami’s eyes had a bit of a sparkle in them, a touch of excitement about her person, as she started actually talking to him. It was a nice conversation - if one that took him away from his research for hours - before finally supper broke it up.
“Would you be willing to teach me some more about it sometime?” She gave him a smile, her black hair dark as ebony, her skin white as snow, her cheeks flush with blood. She was physically about the same age as he was. Though he wasn’t as old as he used to be. Still it’d been a while since he’d talked to a woman who didn’t look at him like she wanted to eat him.
“Sure,” He grinned back.
It was the next day that Skullion’s team returned. He still had about a week of his mandated recovery period, and he’d ultimately learned far less than he’d like about preventing dragonification. It simply wasn’t in the library. At least not anymore if it ever had been.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
He was wanting an excuse to quit when Kiria, and Madmole walked into the library. Hinami was playing assistant, bringing him books, occasionally asking more on what he was looking for, suggesting possible search terms, and the like. Ike and Roy had taken to ‘assisting’ as well, as if afraid to leave him alone with Hinami now.
“See, Miss Kiria, we do have a library-cha,” Madmole’s distinctively formal tone and his verbal tic announced their presence.
“Why?” Kiria’s voice sounded out. “Oi, Horsey, get your nose out of the book and give me a ride on the lizardhawk.”
Arthur turned towards them. It was actually nice to see them again. He hadn’t really known them long, but despite Kiria’s personality, they were nice to have around.
“I refuse,” He answered before resuming his work of scanning a book on the battle tactics typically shown by dragons.
“Oi! Maybe we shouldn’t have got him a souvenir after all,” Kiria said.
Arthur sighed. “Let me finish scanning this book and I’ll see about helping you to get the lizardhawk to let you ride it alone.”
“Told you he was weak to bribes,” Kiria stated. “Of course he’s weak in general, aren’t you, Horsey?”
“If you want to go first on the sparring list take it up with the Dark Dragon Knights and Georg,” Arthur said with a half sigh, as Madmole began chatting with Roy and Ike and Hinami faded as far as she could into the background.
“Georg is still saying you can’t fight?” Kiria said with a sigh in her voice.
“Yep.”
“That sucks,” Kiria sighed. Arthur rolled his eyes at the little battle maniac. “I wanted to see if you’d become strong with your new magic.”
“How was the trip?”
“Boring. There aren’t any really strong mages in Ishgar.” She said with a sigh.
“What about Fairy Tail?”
“Their number one guild? Eh. It wasn’t on the way, and besides given the quality of their other guilds, being number one doesn’t mean much. Besides even their #1 mage doesn’t hold a candle to Georg.”
“Wish I could eat him.”
“Eat? You really are one of us now.”
“Meet!”
“So gonna stay in this back room, or come and welcome us back properly?”
“Can I finish uploading this book first? It’ll be a hassle if I lose my place.”
“Fine, but I get a ride on the lizardhawk when you’re done.”
One lizardhawk ride later, and Arthur found himself surrounded by the Skullion team. “Sir Arthur, I know you wanted to visit the southern continent yourself, but since you couldn’t, hopefully this will help make up for things-cha,” Madmole gave Kiria an odd look as he spoke.
Skullion looked bored if anything. Kiria gave a little scowl. “Madmole was rather insistent that we should.”
Arthur didn’t miss the looks that showed on both Madmole and Skullion’s faces there, nor the obvious embarrassment on Kiria’s own.
“So it was all Madmole’s idea?” Arthur asked.
“Yep,” Kiria’s answer caused a sigh from Skullion.
“I can’t watch this,” He said, starting to turn and walk away.
“Sir Arthur, it’s a welcoming gift from all of us. You were of aid against the darkness dragon, without you our team would have been likely unable to get it out of its cave and beat it. I know you received your magic, but we all wanted to show our appreciation-cha,” Madmole said.
“You did a good job,” Skullion said, stopping to turn and face them again. “Even if you’ve given me another back to chase.”
“I don’t mind another strong swordsman to fight,” Kiria said.
It was Madmole’s turn to sigh. “We thought this would be an appropriate token of our esteem.” He extended a hand holding a small, silver-gray box.
Arthur took it, opening it, and seeing the silver key within. “You shouldn’t have. I can’t repay you for it. Not yet at least.”
“No repayment, it’s a gift,” Madmole said.
“Besides,” Skullion added, looking meaningfully towards Kiria. “It was all actually Kiria.”
“Oi!” Kiria shouted, a sword forming from her dragon slayer magic in her hand. “You said you’d not tell him that!”
Skullion smiled, and faded into ash, sliding through the wall and into the guildhall, leaving Kiria to fume on her own.
“It’s not like you’re thinking,” She said. “It was just what should have been your cut for the werelion jump. You were a good horse. You deserved a reward even if we did have to test if you were really serious with a bit of hazing.”
“Thank you,” Arthur said. Not wanting to press the issue. She was a kid. Anything she felt for him would pass. He hoped. She was a scary little psycho in the making. Maybe she was even being honest. Hopefully she was being honest.
“So I’m first in the sparring list, right?” She said, suddenly grinning at him like an excited puppy.
“Is that what it really is?”
“Just a little bribe. Come on, let’s fight.”
“Take it up with Georg.” Arthur was quite willing to use that shield for 2 more days.
It was not long before he was in his room, the silver key being pressed into a not-so-imaginary doorway. “Open a gate to the little horse, Equulus!”
The horse appeared. It was, as the name said, a little horse, though it was almost proportioned more like a wiener dog. Only about the size of a cat. It whinnied and neighed at his ankle, its eyes turning up towards him. It was time to make the contract, agreeing on when he could summon it. “Monday?” It shook its head. “Tuesdays?” It shook its head. “Wednesdays?” Another shake of its head. “Thursdays?” A fourth. “Fridays?” A fifth. “Saturdays?” A sixth. “Ok, then just sundays?” A seventh.
Arthur looked at the horse, trying to hold back the irritation he felt from showing in his voice. “Not at all?” An eighth.
“When then?” He exclaimed in exasperation. The horse neighed, stomping its hoof a few times.
“So only Friday and Saturday evenings?” It was weird he understood what that meant.
There came two stomps of its hoof and the horse nodded its head whinnying more. He wasn’t sure when this small horse would prove useful, especially with that limitation, but it was a celestial spirit, and he would befriend it. “Since it’s not a Friday or Saturday should I go ahead and close the gate, or would you like to stay a bit?”
It stomped its foot twice and disappeared. Arthur moved to his bed and lay there, feeling a sense of disappointment, and failure. He needed to befriend some of these spirits. There was CP in it. And it really ought to be easy. Everybody loved Lucy after all, and even other summoners they seemed to like. But this was a sort of crushing blow.
Maybe he’d buy the cheat that made them like him more. He had the feeling he might need it now.
Arthur rode his lizardhawk towards the job site. His month-long rest was over, and Georg had inspected his wound and said it’d likely healed as much as it would. The shoulder still ached with a dull pain, and he didn’t quite have the range of motion he used to with that arm. But with his newfound strength he was still stronger than any human had a right to be, and he could still use the arm even if it wasn’t 100%. He’d archived the library and had managed to start setting up his Archive to actually filter the information and give him something useful. He wasn’t doing it right now. He had a job to do, he didn’t want to burn out his magical strength first.
The duel with Kiria had got him thinking. The aftermath was better off forgotten. He never wanted to be forced to kneel and grovel like that again, and really he’d definitely never live down being Horsey now. Still until she’d pulled out her hypnosis he’d been winning. Next time he’d find a way to beat it. Besides it had him thinking about how dragon slaying magic could be used almost conceptually. She could cut someone’s mental strength. What might he figure out how to do with darkness?
Still, he’d chosen a fairly simple job: helping to dig in a mine. Apparently a local mining guild had ended up undermanned, and they were willing to pay a wizard to help clear a tunnel in time. It was nice. It should be easy.
It should be easy.
Well it started out easy enough. His darkness dragon roar could shatter the stone, and then territory could teleport it out. He was a one man excavation team. Things were going fine, until the mountain began to shake wildly and the tunnel began to collapse. It hadn’t had time to be shorn up properly yet, and he found himself trying to hold a mountain up with his territory magic as darkness surrounded them.
There was screaming as he sucked in, inhaling deeply. He was the darkness dragon slayer. He might as well eat the darkness. It left the collapsed tunnel faintly illuminated with no visible source. He was still holding up tons of rubble with his territory magic, though, and his easy recharge method had been denied him. Still it was easy enough to teleport the people out of the tunnel with one hand while supporting it with the other. Except the tunnel kept shaking, as something burst through the wall. It looked like a strange, metal scorpion, dotted with yellow-green transparent crystals. It was huge, large enough to fill the tunnel. One of its scorpion claws rose, a blob of slime seeming to launch out and wrap around one of the miners before pulling him into the claw to disappear into a hollow inside.
“Meteor scorpion!” Someone yelled. And then the people he’d not teleported yet begun to run and panic.
Another blob of slime shot out, but this time Arthur was able to teleport its victims from it. The weight above was getting more and more annoying, and there were still too many people to teleport one by one while dealing with it. Besides, it had taken people inside.
So Arthur solved the problem the easy way. He just teleported everything in the whole half-formed tunnel out of the collapse. Having magic to burn was so much easier.
Of course everything included the scorpion, which was now free to use its tail. It raised it up behind itself, pointing it towards Arthur and a swirling black sphere of gravity fired out towards him. He felt it lifting him up, and he opened his mouth. A pseudo-black hole might have worked to tear through his territory but you didn’t use darkness against a darkness dragon slayer.
The scorpion seemed to have realized that. The big dipper appeared on its stinger, which proceeded to glow for a few moments, before a series of beams of light began to fire out. Arthur couldn’t eat this, but he didn’t need to.
The battle ended soon enough. On a whim he picked up a piece of the scorpion’s body. Just to look at it really.
“Put that down, and get back to clearing the tunnel!” The foreman shouted. Not a word of thanks for having saved his captured men, or stopped the tunnel from collapsing onto him. It annoyed Arthur, quite a bit.
“I was just looking at it. Besides, I need a bit of rest after that fight.”
Arthur sighed. He was cursing the scorpion. And the fact that he had come so close to completing a job without combat. “Just give me a minute, I could have left you in the tunnel with it.”
That earned him a stink eye. But it wasn’t like he saw anyone else working to clear the tunnel. In fact they all seemed to be looking through the scorpion’s remains with a sort of excited expectation. “What’s everyone looking for anyway?”
“Nothing. It’s just a shock that they were attacked,” The foreman said, not looking Arthur in the face, as his face twitched away from him.
“Nothing?” Arthur asked.
“Everyone, get back to work, now! Clear that tunnel, it won't clear itself, especially with our wizard sitting on his laurels!” The foreman said, stomping away.
Arthur sighed, and moved towards the center of the corpse. On his way he stopped. There was a particularly smooth and beautiful piece of the scorpion’s remains. Something that had blasted apart when he’d torn it open by using his territory magic from the inside of its massive mouth out. It looked less iron-colored and more silver than the rest of the scorpion. It was a bit big to pocket, but he decided to teleport it behind a rock for later. If he wasn’t going to get paid for killing the scorpion he’d at least get a souvenir.
And then sighing he went back to work on the tunnel.
“It’s been almost 3 weeks, have you taken a single combat job?” Skullion asked him a few weeks later when he was sitting in the guild mess.
“I’ve been doing jobs,” Arthur said defensively. “And they’ve all ended up with combat.”
Skullion rolled his eyes. “Did losing to Kiria scare you that much? You did just fine against Suzaku and Misaki.” Both of them were reminders that if he sat on his haunches he’d not stay ahead of them. “Or was it what happened with Byaku last week?”
His character sheet had already warned him about further head trauma before the white tiger dragon slayer had speed blitzed him into unconsciousness. “You’re stronger than at least 2 of the 4 Dark Dragon Knights. You’re probably one of the top 5 mages in the continent. Seriously, what are you doing, doing piddly low ranked jobs?” Skullion asked, planting his mug of ale on the table.
“Would you believe me if I said that I was trying to do one job that didn’t involve fighting to please extra dimensional entities?”
Skullion looked at him. “If you don’t want to be serious.”
“Before arriving at the guild I’d never been in a fight. The werelions almost killed me. The darkness dragon almost killed me. There’s a part of me that is afraid of combat jobs,” Arthur confessed. “I have no idea if I could survive taking a subjugation job.” Arthur hadn’t realized how much he honestly was scared till he started talking.
“You wanted to be a Diabolos mage,” Skullion said. “I guess the little PR jobs at least help the guild’s image.” Still Arthur could feel the scorn and contempt at his cowardice. Or maybe it was just his wasted potential.
He’d wasted all his potential in his life before too. And now he was doing nothing. Barely had his Archive running searches, and was spending his time doing low ranked jobs for weaklings. Skullion was right to have contempt for him. He sighed and walked towards the job board. It was time to go for something big.
He was looking them over, reading over the higher ranked and dangerous jobs, when Hinami approached.
“Erm. I was wondering.” She pointed to one. The bounty was small, only a few thousand jewels, so he had skipped over it. “If you might. Well. I thought since you’re a celestial spirit mage. And maybe we could go together and I could…” She was starting to stammer a bit.
He looked at the job. It was about a yearly meteor scorpion hunt in the mountains. It was still a few days away, on the 15th of October, but they could make it there in time on foot, much less if they took the train or his lizardhawk. The bounty was small, just 5,000 Jewels… per core of average quality.
That was still just 50 bucks per giant scorpion you killed. “Are you sure you want to do this? Those things get sort of big.”
“I’m not scared of some big bugs.”
“Like a-hundred-feet-long big,” He continued.
“You think we’d be lucky enough to find an ancient?” She asked, her face lighting up. “Those are really rare, and valuable.” She pointed to the fine print at the bottom of the job. There was an asterisk by the reward. A little text detailing how the value may vary core to core, only acceptable cores are valued, and so forth. An ancient’s core was mentioned at 500,000 jewels.
“How big are they usually?”
“Like the size of a dog. You didn’t know that?” She tilted her head looking at him. “You seem to know and not know the weirdest things.”
“I… why would I be interested in this as a celestial spirit mage?”
She looked at him, confusion spreading across her graceful features. “They use their cores to make holder magic related to the stars, like silver keys. The hunt should be a good place to buy some.”
Arthur nodded. “Well, if you’d like to accompany me, I’d love to have someone there with me who actually knows what she’s doing.” He said, taking an overly elaborate bow and then extending his arm outward. He was rewarded with a little laugh.
“You’ll see my Purgatory Dragon Slayer Magic will roast those bugs like it’s nothing,” Roy boasted as they rode the train towards the mountain. The lizardhawk was in a stable-car, and rather restrained, while Hinami, Arthur, Ike, and Roy rode sitting together with a small table between them.
Somehow Arthur had found himself directly across from Ike and adjacent to Roy. He suspected coordinated efforts on their behalf. The two idiots might hate each other, but now that they had a common enemy they were surprisingly adept at teamwork.
“Well my Rose Dragon Slayer Magic will wrap them up and drain the life right out of them. I bet you’ll just end up toasting their cores anyway,” Ike retorted, glaring at Roy.
Hinami sat looking awkwardly, wishing she had had a window seat so she could lose herself in watching the outside go by. Arthur tried to ignore the two fools, while working on his Archive, coordinating a search of its database. He’s actually managed to upload Hinami’s knowledge of Light Dragon Slayer Magic into it. It wasn’t enough to just teach someone it, and downloading it directly into a mind was problematic - it caused short term memory loss afterwards - but he could review it at his leisure while he was letting the search run in earnest. Of course, the search kept throwing up false positives which distracted him.
“All your weeds are good for is fuel for my fires,” Roy countered, leaning across Arthur to ram his finger into Ike’s face.
“There’s no beauty in your fire, where my roses are the height of elegance,” Ike countered.
“I’d like to see them dance half as beautifully as my flames!” Roy’s elbow rammed into Arthur’s face.
“And the disgusting reek of the smoke you produce. What about that?” Ike said, grabbing Roy by his collar and pulling him half onto Arthur.
Suddenly they found the space between them pushing against them and pulling them apart, pressing them back into their seats. Teardrop shapes of energy spun slowly in Arthur’s hands. “Enough, I’m trying to think!” He said sharply.
“Got some big ideas on how to hunt, eh brainiac?” Roy and Ike said in disturbing unison, and Arthur pushed them harder against their seats.
“I’m working on stopping us all from becoming the very creatures we hunt and eat,” Arthur growled. His Archive search had come up with another few hits. One of them was talking about a dragon vaccination theory, via transferring a dragon’s soul into an individual to allow them to develop antibodies.
“Pffft like you could work on that here,” Ike said.
“Stop trying to make yourself look good,” Roy added.
Arthur twitched his fingers and started downloading the information he was reading into their brains directly. “Can, and am. Now shut up I think I’m onto something.”
And finally he had a few minutes of quiet.
“Hinami, if you’re scared of going alone, you should come with me,” Roy stated. “I’ll reduce all those monsters to cinders, don’t worry.”
“And you along with them, probably,” Ike said, “Join me, and we’ll have a far more elegant time together.”
“Erm… I don’t… really I mean…”
“Hinami, would you prefer to join me on the lizardhawk? I could use a second pair of eyes, and from above we ought to have the advantage over other hunters,” Arthur said with his own smile.
“My nose will do better than any wyvern,” Roy butted in.
“Can’t we just stick together?” Hinami cried out at last. “I mean… isn’t there more safety in numbers?”
“I can keep you safe alone!” Arthur cringed when he realized he had spoken in unison with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. He was becoming one of them.
“My fire would be burning them all away if it hadn’t started raining!” Roy complained. The downpour was unusually intense, the clouds heavy enough to leave it darker than a clear night, and the rain obscuring vision further. It’d grounded the lizardhawk completely as well.
If it wasn’t for Hinami’s light magic creating what amounted to a spot light from her palm they’d be barely able to see 10 ft in front of themselves. Arthur considered trying to teleport the cloud, but not only was it taller than the last one he’d done it to, his toying with Archive and the need to fight the scorpions meant he couldn’t spend that much of his magical power just to clean up the weather a bit. Moving entire storms was not easy.
“Got another one,” Ike said with a bragging tone.
“Shut up!” Roy and Arthur shouted in unison. And then the ground began to slip beneath them.
“Is it an ancient?” Arthur asked in surprise, as the ground shook, and crumbled, rocks starting to bounce down the mountainside towards them, followed by a heavy wall of mud.
“Mudslide!” Roy shouted.
“Hinami!” Ike shouted, tackling to her side and roaring, flowering vines exploding from his mouth, creating a shielding bulwark around them, even as the mud hit Roy and Arthur.
Arthur’s hand twisted, magic swirling around Roy and teleporting him up and out of the mud, and then he felt himself being carried away by the flow of mud and rocks. When it stopped, he managed to force himself up and out of the mudslide. The raw physical capabilities which came with magical energy was useful.
It was dark, but he could eat that. It’d not help that the pouring water limited visibility with the light glow that it left behind. Arthur summoned Altair instead, allowing the electric eagle to illuminate things with its electrical energy.
“Kii! Scary bugs! Kii!” Altair screeched as its flashing and surging light showcased that they were in fact in an entire nest of the scorpions.
Arthur carried the sack of scorpion parts and cores through the waist deep mud, slowly making his way through the flooded region and out towards the relatively dry area where the alchemists who had put up the job were waiting.
He dumped out the bag, cores - and assorted other bits - from over a dozen of the scorpions falling down onto the ground.
“Hah, even Roy got almost that many and he’s useless in the rain,” Ike said. He’d done well, he’d got a haul of over 3 dozen himself, a good 230,000 jewels, enough to live for over a month on the job alone which wasn’t bad for a day and a half’s work.
“It’s alright, I’m sure you’ll do better next year,” Hinami said with a gentle smile. She’d got a bit less than Roy, but it was still a decent number.
Arthur breathed out. “Territory magic.” Suddenly a massive pile appeared falling from a swirling gate a few feet in the air. Altair perched on the pile proudly. “Should be another hundred there. And an ancient.”
More than 1,000,000 jewels. Not enough to live on for a year. But enough to fund a trip to Ishgar.
“Why do we have to go to Ishgar anyway?” Complained loudly in line to get tickets onto the ship to the southern continent.
“You invited yourself,” Arthur said in a sigh. “All three of you.”
“Yeah, but you said you were going to go fight Ishgar’s dragon slayers,” Kiria said.
“Not ‘fight’! Get blood from. The goal is very specifically not to fight them!” Arthur explained once again.
“How else are you supposed to get their blood? Huh?” Kiria turned towards him.
“Politely. By asking nicely.”
“That’s boring. I want to fight them.”
“And that’s why I told you not to come. What about you two, why did you both come along?” He looked at Madmole and Skullion.
“The rest of my team was coming-cha,” Madmole replied.
“She has no sense of caution, and you have no head for battle,” Skullion answered. “Somebody has to be there to make sure you don’t get yourselves killed.”
“Just promise me to help make sure Kiria doesn’t attack the people we’re asking a favor of, please,” Arthur sagged a bit.
“I can’t make any promises not to be distracted by keeping you from getting yourself killed,” Skullion said as Arthur pulled out his ticket to get on the ship.
“Fine, fine, fine,” Arthur said with a tired tone, and teleported his three guild mates a few miles away. “They were just accompanying me to the ship,” He said to the ticket checker as he made his way on. There was a bounty for completely turning canon on its head, but he wasn’t about to risk what those three idiots meeting Fairy Tail 9 years early might cause. He could mess things up after Acnologia was defeated, or he’d figured out his own way to stop him and Zeref. Besides, if Kiria killed Natsu, he wouldn’t be able to befriend him.
Besides, he didn’t like his guild mates thinking he was a liability. He’d show Skullion he could survive on his own. Arthur tried not to think about how such an attempt probably just proved he was a liability.