“Look who’s back,” Georg said, raising his scarred face from his dinner plate. He had a great hunk of meat on a bone, rare, almost raw, and had been tearing it from the bone with his teeth. He dined like a beast. “Still serving our enemy?”
“My job for her is done for the time being,” Arthur said. “Would you have preferred I had left her with no reason not to destroy the guild?”
Georg spat. “Let her try. If she shows her scaled hide here I’ll eat her like I’ve eaten so many others.”
Arthur wasn’t certain Georg wouldn’t if Selene came right now. In 9… 8 years now he’d have lost in an utterly one sided fight, but he was getting weaker with each passing year, training, feasting, everything he was doing merely to offset the effects of aging. He was 8 years stronger now than he would be then. And at the moment Selene was still weak. Arthur didn’t know who he’d side with if it came to that.
“She could have killed me if she had continued to fight,” Arthur said.
“What of it? And who are you bringing back here this time? Another unauthorized job?”Georg asked.
“This is Minerva, she’s my apprentice,” Arthur said. “And if she could kill me she could kill you, and I doubt anyone else in the guild could stop her.”
Georg roared with laughter. “Our little cringing librarian is convinced he’s become hot stuff it sounds like. You’ve never seen my real power.”
He was rising to his feet, but it was Kirin who bolted to his feet first. “Let me remind him of the true power of the guild he claimed as his.”
“Claims,” Arthur said. “I didn’t come back here to fight, I came with good news.”
Georg raised a hand. “And what sort of good news is it?” He asked.
Arthur smiled, a wide, toothy grin and he pulled down his sleeve raising a bare arm.
“Are we supposed to notice something about your arm?” Kirin asked.
“Wait, his teeth,” Skullion said.
Arthur groaned inside a little. He’d not had scales on his arm last time he was here, that had come with Grimoire Heart not from bRAIN’s assault. Arthur decided to go a bit further, he let his arm change, red scales forming across it, claw tips taking shape. It was a dragon’s arm.
“The dragon force,” Georg hissed out. “What damn fool thing are you doing?”
And then Arthur’s arm changed back to human. “I’ve beaten it,” He said with a grin that dripped with smarmy, smug superiority. He hadn’t simply bought this victory. He had worked. Months of effort. And he had done something that even Irene, a mage who ranked in the all time greats of history had failed at.
“You’ve what?” Georg said.
“I’ve beaten this curse. Or at least I’ve armed myself with the tools necessary to keep it under control.” And then the guild hall broke out in an outcry.
The exuberance was somewhat dampened when they learned what it was. Most of them didn’t know enough about takeover magic to really understand on that deep, total level that Heinlein’s martians had dubbed grokking what it being takeover meant. Georg, though, summarized it:
“Takeover is a high end form of transformation magic. You’re considered a skilled, professional if you can do it at all. That’s if you have the natural affinity for it to even get that far. And we’re talking a single limb. And if Arthur is right that it’s harder than full body demon takeover. I don’t know how demon takeover compares to other forms. I know animal soul is supposed to be the easy form, and even it is something that full body use is considered dangerous and a sign of skill.”
It killed much of the exuberance. The odds of this method helping anyone but Arthur was slim to none. Arthur could see hearts breaking at the hopes he had raised and then dashed.
“There is good news, though. My first experiments only allowed controlled transformation, and didn’t reverse the change.”
“How does that help us?” Misaki snapped.
“I’m getting there,” Arthur shot back. “I made a serum that made it more manageable and controllable. The dragon seed I mean. That was the real good news. I have at least some level of proof of concept that the dragon seed can be stopped and I have the means to start gathering information on how that’s done.”
The cheer was rather less than he had hoped for. Hopes had been raised once already.
There was some discussing this for a time, and then Kirin finally rose to his feet and pointed at Arthur. “I still think you’re underestimating this guild. I know you beat Suzaku and Misaki last time you were here. But I figure it’s time to show you how an adult fights.”
Arthur found himself grinning. He needed to fight Kirin for a bounty sooner or later. His hand moved to the straps that held his prosthesis in place, removing it and throwing it to the ground in front of Kirin. “I guess the gauntlet has been thrown,” Arthur said with a smug, arrogant grin. “I think with one hand it’ll be a little bit of a more fair fight.”
“You insult me,” Kirin said. “I don’t need to fight a pathetic cripple.”
“Kirin, if I went all out you’d not stand a chance. This is the least I can do. I’ll even refrain from using my non-dragon magic. My Territory Magic would make it too easy.”
As electricity surged through Arthur, he was beginning to regret his decisions. He had thought he had several options that would make this fight easy. Serena’s Dragon God’s fang gave him an attack from below the ground. His moon dragon slayer magic gave him means to redirect attacks. He could still cast darkness over another’s eyes.
Except that he was so accustomed to Overclocking during battle his timing on everything was off. Kirin lacked the power to directly block his dragon’s roar. But he’d managed to dodge it. He’d taken part of the dragon god’s fang, but he’d managed to shut it down part way by hitting Arthur himself with a crushing wave of air pressure. The guy’s reflexes were just a bit better than Arthur’s. And it wasn’t that he hadn’t faced life or death situations before, not any more. It was that he’d gotten used to having an external brain. And without it he was at below what he’d otherwise have been without it.
Kirin on the other hand had gotten one hit after another on him, coming in too fast for his lagging reflexes to handle.
His mouth opened. “Another roar, it won’t work! Atmos Distortion!” Kirin said, and Arthur felt crushing atmospheric pressure force the air from his lungs. But it didn’t matter, the light still erupted from Arthur’s mouth. It was a brilliant, blinding flash. When he’d first used his shine dragon’s magic it hadn’t fully integrated. He’d blinded himself with his own spell. Now, though, the light was his friend, his eyes automatically adapting to the flash bomb he’d set off.
Even blinded Kirin hadn’t stopped his assault, though. He breathed in and released his own dragon’s roar, but Arthur was ready. He spat an argent globe of energy, the silver ‘moon’ blocking the dragon’s roar and transporting it to another dimension.
“You can’t escape. I still consume the atmosphere itself,” Kirin snapped. His nose was flaring, his head casting side to side. “Smelled you!” He stated, and fired another dragon’s roar. Arthur managed to dodge, throwing himself forward and rolling. He launched a half dozen crescent blades formed of pale yellow energy, formed from dragon slayer magic and shooting towards Kirin.
He managed, through only his seeming sixth sense for atmospheric distortions, to deflect almost all of them. But Arthur was rushing. A sword of darkness dragon slayer magic cutting the air in front of him as Kirin hardened it. And then he lunged, one hand palm forward, fingers spread around it like a talon or like he was grabbing Kirin’s face. It was what Arthur liked to call his shining finger.
Hardened air deflected it as Kirin’s own palm hit his chest and a crack of thunder could be heard as Arthur was launched away. “My vision is already clearing and you completely failed to capitalize on your advantage,” Kirin said in a smugly superior tone.
“Erupting burning finger!” Arthur howled, his right arm transforming into that of the wildfire dragon once again. As red covered it, the fire lashed out. Kirin hardened the air in a shield around him, only for the flames to flow around it and then close in from behind. The wildfire dragon’s flames were, relatively speaking, weak, but she had been able to produce massive quantities and to control them. Arthur hadn’t reached the point of turning them into autonomous drones, but he could control their flow.
He was already moving though, shifting to the next spell, a dragon of moonlight erupting from beneath Kirin’s feet.
Georg watched. Kirin had stood a chance as long as he had retained the initiative. Arthur was… sloppy. But his magical power was significantly beyond Kirin’s own. Kirin was still growing. In a few years maybe he’d be Arthur’s equal there. But in a few years Arthur might be as powerful as a dragon god. Making things worse Arthur’s magic was a lot more concentrated than Kirin’s; he could get twice the attack for half the energy, and that was actually a low estimate. Put together and Kirin couldn’t take more than one or two direct hits, and Arthur could afford to weather blows straight on to get the chance to land one.
The fight was horribly uneven. Georg was confident he could have won it. His four beast dragon slayer magic gave him the speed that’d have been needed. But he was fairly certain Arthur was holding a fair bit back by not using his other magic.
The idea that Arthur could be stronger than him was a serpent coiling in Georg’s heart, filling him with a rage he couldn’t put into words as Kirin fell to the ground as he finally failed to dodge one of Arthur’s moon fire conflagrations.
“That doesn’t prove you’re strong enough that if you would lose the guild as a whole would as well,” Georg said, swaggering towards Arthur. “You won, but you looked downright sloppy during it.”
“Sorry, I’m used to running my mind through my Archive magic. It improves my reflexes, but I had forgotten how much slower I think without it,” Arthur said.
The words made that serpent coil tighter around Georg’s heart. “Let me see you with it. Misaki, Suzaku, put him through his paces. And Arthur, hold nothing back this time.”
“Nothing?” Arthur asked.
“Don’t kill them,” Georg said.
The battle began once Arthur had activated his archive, and requipped a suit of proper armor. Well if you could call his Mifune Robe armor. It was a kimono, but it served as both a weapon and defense.
The battle ended almost immediately. Half a year ago he had been a match for either alone. Half a year ago he’d still been ultimately reeling from the loss of his hand. And he’d spent the last 6 months training. He also had tricks they hadn’t seen. He’d selected his armors for example. The Mifune Robe’s multi-image trick didn’t do much to fool Suzaku. But the fact that its sword could pass through his proved a surprise. Suzaku managed to eat it, but it had thrown off his block and a dragon’s roar channeled through two fingers of Arthur’s moonsilver hand removed him from the battle.
Misaki’s magic was even more easily conquered. Arthur made her space his, and left her unconscious from a blow from the illusory sword of the Mifune Robe. The sword that came in the armor set wasn’t a physical thing at all, merely a projection of the idea of a sword. It was all an illusion magic, where to be struck by it was to have your own mind make the blow real. A strong enough mind could resist. Misaki might have laid there till she died from the illusion that he’d killed her if Arthur hadn’t dismissed its magic.
Georg looked on, his jaw half slack. “As you are now, could you kill the moon dragon god?”
“No,” Arthur said. It was true from a certain point of view. He couldn’t kill her while she was weak from helping him. As he was now he had too much of a sense of honor for that.
“What about Silver Demon?”
It’d been half a year. Honami, Ike, and Roy had been dead longer than he had known them. He wasn’t truly burning with rage over it. But… Silver Demon had killed them. Had tried to turn them into tools.
Everything that made him feel disgusted about using takeover on Seilah and Jackal was there. Everything that made him realize he couldn’t use takeover that way on a human. They had taken people and twisted them into nothing more than tools of destruction, squashing thought, burying freedom, and forcing them to exist in a tortured state of pure rage. And these were people he had known and sort of liked.
“Are we legally allowed to?”
“They’re a dark guild,” Georg said. He’d given up on crushing them. They were the greatest dark guild on Guiltina. An Alchemist Guild that was said to be second only to Golden Owl. But Arthur held power. Georg didn’t like to admit it, but he doubted he’d win in a fight. His sword exchange with Suzaku had been quick, but it had been quick because it had been good. He manipulated Suzaku’s swordplay and changed the rules of the game. He hadn’t had to use his Territory Magic. He hadn’t summoned anything. He hadn’t used Takeover either for the dragon arm or some sort of demon soul. The sheer fact that Arthur apparently had known that magic when coming here and not revealed it galled him, but Georg had to admit the man beside him seemed to be an era defining genius of magic. Georg Reizen was a legend in his own day. He was the strongest mage in Guiltina, talked about as an equal to any of the Four Gods of Ishgar, or August’s Spriggans from Alvarez. Talked about as potentially the second strongest mage in the world. But Georg knew how reputations could be overblown. In another 400 years he’d be a footnote. Arthur might be more than that.
And as much as that pissed Georg off. He was going to use him. Diabolos wouldn’t have been able to beat Silver Demon on its own. With some help from other guilds maybe. Silver Demon was growing more brazen. Soon it’d start a full scale war against an alliance of countries. And Diabolos would get its vengeance then against them.
But with Arthur he’d not have to wait.
“No,” Arthur said. “Their alchemy might hold the final piece of the puzzle to cure dragonification. I can’t kill them. But I can destroy the guild.”
Georg smiled. Still there was the lass that Arthur had brought back with him, and called his apprentice.
“And about your little tagalong. You know this is a dragon slayers guild. We don’t accept non-dragon slayers.”
“I’m a dragon slayer,” Minerva said, glaring at Georg with furious indignation. “Or well… I have dragon slayer magic.” She backed away somewhat weakly, her head lowering.
“You fed her a dragon?” Georg said.
“She had the white tiger dragon’s lacrima implanted in her,” Arthur said.
“What?” Georg bellowed. “Byaku was one of us. You can’t just give that away to an outsider. What were you thinking?”
“That I’d bought it. And that she is my apprentice, not an outsider,” Arthur said, glaring at Georg.
Georg was close to fighting him. He wanted to fight him. But he didn’t want to lose. “Let her prove herself. Kiria, want to give her a chance to show if she has what it takes to slay a dragon?”
The fight was almost as quick as Arthur’s with Suzaku and Misaki, but far more furious. Kiria expected a fight like Byaku might have given but worse. What Minerva showed was a very different skill set. Unlike Arthur she wasn’t holding back from using her Territory Magic. The ability to teleport made a magic whose weakness was that it had trouble turning from straight line charges a fair bit better.
It was her territory explosion that finished the match, leaving Minerva bloodied, a cut to her stomach, but victorious.
Arthur, Georg, and the trio of Dark Dragon Knights, returned to the guildhall after an attempt to track down a cell of Silver Demon. The mission had been a bust. Even though Arthur had managed to teleport them there and back again - Moon Dragon Slayer magic was far more convenient for long distance teleportation than Territory - the information had been months old and the group had long since moved on.
They reappeared in the grand hall to find Kiria, squatting on a table, poking an exceed with a fork. The small cat person had been tied up and suspended over a fire upside down.
“Foul witch, when I am free I will show you the terrors of a knight’s blade. I need but get my hands once more upon my sword and your vile sorcery will not avail a craven such as you!”
“What is that?” Georg asked.
“Not sure. It appeared and said Selene sent it so we thought it was best to keep it contained and show it to you when you returned,” Skullion said, stepping out from the shadows.
“Unhand me! Sir Arthur! I came with tidings and news for you!” The exceed was shouting.
“You know this cat?” Georg growled.
“I don’t think so?” Arthur said, looking at them. They were mostly gray furred, portions darker or lighter leaving tabby-like stripes, white on the exceed’s stomach and around its hands and feet forming kitten mittens. He didn’t recognize them at least.
“Sir Arthur! I have come to pledge my sword to thee, but these vile creatures called the great moon queen to be their enemy and the blonde witch ate my sword!”
“It tried to stab me,” Kiria defended herself.
“Thou deserved it harlot-witch!” The cat snapped out, and things descended into Kiria and the exceed screaming at each other.
“Alright, tell me what’s up?” Arthur said. They’d finally managed to separate Kiria and her hostage, and let Arthur take the cat to talk to him alone.
“I am not mostly harmless,” the exceed complained, rubbing at his own limbs trying to restore circulation to his limbs. He wore clothes which made Arthur think French fop from the… he wasn’t good with historical outfits. Revolutionary period? He had a broad brimmed hat which was narrow in front and widened in the back, not quite a form of tricorn, and it had a large brightly colored feather that stuck out from it flowing backwards. He was a fancy cat.
“I had to say that to get them to let you down,” Arthur said with a sigh.
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“But a knight should not lie. What of your honor?” The exceed glared up towards Arthur with eyes that were bright and shining with optimism.
Arthur hated it. “Can you turn into battle mode?”
“No. Only the great Pantherlily can do such, and maybe some of the fabled knights of old,” the cat said.
“There were legendary exceed knights?” Arthur said a bit more of his surprise audible than he meant to have come through into his voice.
“Of course. I love the books and stories of the ancient King Remus’s peers. In that day there were monsters and mages in Edolas and the knights rode on legions of their own and they fought with skill and bravery. The books don’t mention battle forms but I imagine they might have had such. Still you must have heard of the knights. Sir Ronald, Astolfa, Ogre the Dame, Oliver, Ferrari the Human who became an honorary exceed, Ganonlen whose betrayal led to Ronald’s death, and the others. How could a knight not have heard of them? Are human knights so ill-educated? This ignorance must be corrected, henceforth. But alas I lack my tomes of knowledge and history for the great moon goddess did not transport them with me. Let us go forth and collect them to ameliorate your lack of enlightenment. Transport us back to Extalia and I will begin to educate you on the proper foundations of chivalry and honor, and we can begin to make you a right and proper knight.”
Only then did the exceed pause for a breath, looking demandingly up towards Arthur.
“So you are incapable of actually threatening a dragon slayer, and thus mostly harmless,” Arthur summed it up.
“I shall show you mostly harmless!” The gray cat said. “EXCEED POWER!” He launched himself, swatting and swinging blows towards Arthur’s chest while leaping at him. Even without Arthur’s Territory Armor it would have been like a small child slapping at your chest; ineffectual.
Arthur waited until the exceed was panting. “How was that? A most vicious beating was it not? Can you still call me mostly harmless, you craven cur? Is not my honor avenged?”
“Um… you didn’t even mess up my clothes,” Arthur said looking down towards the cat smugly.
“What foul magic is this!?” the cat exclaimed.
“Territory. I wear an armor of space, creating a barrier of realities between us.”
“But that is cheating. I thought you were supposed to be a knight, not some dastardly serpent of sin. How can you use such trickery in your righteous endeavors?”
“How is wearing armor cheating for a knight?”
“Because it’s a magic spell and not your own might and hard won skill.”
“It’s my magic power, and my skill in magic.”
The cat paused there and seemed pensive.
Arthur sighed. “Why are you even here?”
“Selene sent me here to be your squire as you teach me how to be a proper knight-errant, doer of deeds, and righter of wrongs.”
“So I would be the authority on how to knight, wouldn’t I? You can’t right wrongs if you’re dead to a dagger in the back.”
“But a knight doesn’t merely have to right wrongs, they must right wrongs with honor. They must do so in a way to inspire others, and to stir the flame of hope in the heart of children.” The exceed’s wings fluttered, raising them up, passion on their face and in their voice.
“Should they teach those children to get themselves killed?”
The exceed practically crashed physically as well as emotionally. “Well… no. But…”
“There’s nothing any more cheating about using magic than the muscles of my arm. My magic is my skill, just as much as my sword arm. Now why did Selene send you here?”
“To learn to be a proper knight from you.”
“No, I mean… Why did she send you here for that purpose? Why me? Why you? Who are you even?”
“You are her knight, THE Fairy Knight Lancelot.” Arthur winced. How did some exceed from Edolas, or was it Elentear, know about that? “You overthrew the wicked king Faust who had stolen magic from the world, and planned the destruction of Extalia itself, and with your bravery you made magic flow free across the world once more. And I am Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus, or the house of Clawdius. We have long served as loyal guards to her highness the goddess Shagotte, but I wish to be more than merely another bodyguard. I want to be a knight like my ancestors once more. A knight-errant traveling the land, smiting evil, destroying the heathen, and serpents of sin, and…”
“Ok, you want to become a knight and you think I can teach you because I fought Faust’s forces.”
“Interrupting people is rude,” the exceed said in an annoyed tone. “How can a knight, a knight of a goddess at that, not understand the basics of polite etiquette? Have you no understanding of the courtly virtues? The honor and glory expected of a knight of the realm? It would seem that there is much that you must -”
“Rambling at someone in one great unbroken mass of language, while going off on tangents is rude as well. If you’re going to berate someone on their etiquette, make certain that yours is proper first, or as a wise sage once said: take first the beam from your own eye before removing the speck in another’s.” He had mangled that Bible quote. He could remember the chapter and roughly verse, it was the start of Matthew 7, maybe verse 8?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the exceed asked.
“Don’t complain about others’ faults while showcasing them yourself,” Arthur explained.
The cat’s cheeks puffed out, a look of indignation and fury on his face. “I see you are rather like Sir Purrceval.”
“A fine knight who came close to the sacred goal,” Arthur guessed. He knew who Percival was. De Troyes’s Percival had introduced the concept of the Holy Grail.
“You do know of the knights? Have you… have you just been testing me?” Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus asked in shocked amazement.
“All of life is a test. You just won’t know the score for certain till it ends,” Arthur shot back in an attempt at wit.
“Oh… Did I pass?”
“Are you dead?”
Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus began to pad his body. “I… don’t think so?”
“Then you can’t know,” Arthur said. “Still, Tabby…” He paused. He didn’t want a pompous cat following him. But… 50 points. Even after all the reductions, if he befriended the cat it’d be 50 points. It’d get him a third of the way to Edomagic. If he could master Dragon Takeover magic to cure his own dragon seed then Edomagic would allow him to cure the guild.
It was worth it to befriend the cat, but he had to play into their pomp a bit. He couldn’t resist the urge to deflate them a bit. Besides, a knight had to be ready to prove themselves if they wanted to be accepted as a knight. It was one of the tropes of knightly romance. “... I’ve already got one apprentice, I am not looking for another.”
“Selene said you might say that. She told me to tell you that he who teaches learns twice, and that your assignment of study was to teach me to use Moon Dragon Slayer Magic.”
Arthur swore internally. Was it even possible to teach this exceed, or an exceed in general, that magic? It was too within the realm of study for him to complain and demand Selene use one of her three orders to do it; as much as he’d like to find a way to get those three commands out from over his head. He was about to speak when Taberius began to speak again. “And I am not Tabby. I am Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus. You would do well to remember it.”
“That’s too long, you’re Tabby now,” Arthur said.
“I come from a long and storied family. For generations we have served as officers of the Queen’s guard, we have stood watch and defended the very goddess of Edolas. As a scion of the house of Clawdius I will not be talked to so rudely.”
“You defended the goddess. Did she ever send you family out to deal with those threats she could not?”
“N-no. Of course not. What threat could a goddess not deal with?”
“Well, Tabby, as a knight of Selene, my job is to deal with just those threats. Bodyguard to someone who has no meaningful threats sounds like a low honor. If you want to be a real knight you’ve got to aspire higher than that.”
Taberius clenched his fists. “You are testing my patience, Sir Lancelot,” He said.
“Arthur, not Lancelot,” Arthur said. “And yes, I am, Tabby. See to it that you pass it. But in all seriousness, in a fight by the time someone shouts out Tiberius Claudius Kaiser Germanicus watch out you’ll already be dead. So you’re Tabby.”
“Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus,” Taberius said, “And at least Taberius, Tabby sounds like…”
“The sort of thing a friend would call you instead of a social inferior?” Arthur suggested and Taberius stopped. The cat looked down with a touch of shame as if Arthur had scored some verbal critical hit. He was coming to Arthur as a petitioner for a favor, and then demanding Arthur treat him as a social superior. It was against all etiquette really.
“Sorry,” Taberius said after a bit. “I am used to considering humans…” He trailed off, mumbling awkwardly.
“As an inferior species?”
The gray furred anthropomorphic cat nodded.
“Treat my guildmates like inferiors and they might eat you alive. You’re not an angel of a goddess here. You’re not a knight in a royal court. You’re among the barbarians now, and when in Gaul do as the gauls,” Arthur instructed.
“We’re in Gaul? I thought we were in Earthland?” Taberius said.
“Metaphor,” Arthur said. “When in a strange land do one must abandon the expectations of their own society and emulate those of the land around them. Now come on, I’ve got to tell my Guild Master what’s up and give Minerva her lesson.”
“Minerva would be your existing apprentice?”
“Yeah. Now come along.”
Georg was understandably less than pleased at the idea of having “Selene’s little spy” in the guild. But he accepted Arthur’s opinion that it wasn’t worth prompting conflict, and that a known spy was a source of information and a means of delivering misinformation.
When he got to Minerva she was still training with Wraith, the guild’s resident ghost and user of Spirit Dragon Slayer Magic. Since Arthur had returned to the guild he’d had duels with 8 members; only Wraith had beat him. Sadly only one of them, the Sticky Dragon Slayer, had given him full points from the bounty to defeat his guild mates; maybe it was because the rest never showed in the manga, or maybe it was because they weren’t at the level to be relevant. Either way the guild had accepted him as the strongest in it save possibly for Georg.
Arthur had thought better of pressing Georg to fight. That would be a challenge of dominance. Though possibly a challenge he should make. Not just for the choice points he’d get for demonstrating that he was on a level beyond Georg, but to learn, to grow, and to get it over with. Georg already saw him as a threat, that was obvious. Georg looked at him with hate in his eyes too often to be ignored. This would restrict Georg’s options, corner him, and if he tried to bite back it’d put him clearly and visibly in the wrong; Arthur had just challenged him to spar so that he could grow, as was the guild’s way that Georg himself had instituted, if Georg tried to punish him for being strong then that put Georg clearly in the wrong and would improve Arthur’s own standing instead of destroy it.
He needed to act before Georg did. But for the moment it was time to try and teach Minerva some more. Wraith was watching over her, helping her work with the evil shades, what in English might be called wraiths, which had lingered in her. She was learning… Well it wasn’t what his Archive had called Evil Dead Resurrection. It was, however, still a magic that had been lost when the Cult of Ankhseram had outlawed it as unforgivable and taboo. He worried that it could result in the curse of contradiction. He had even warned her that it could result in the same sort of curse that had made Zeref. She had chosen to push forward.
Minerva stood, her eyes closed, and her hands moving. They were directing two shadows, shaped into mostly humanoid forms. They were onryo, wraiths, evil spirits, living curses, lingering balls of human hatred… Not quite etherious, but not wholly unlike them either. Like many of the keys of Zeref they radiated curse power; his archive could detect it. It worried him. It was why he didn’t read the Book of Zeref, which presumably had taught Hades what he knew of Living Magic. Arthur wanted to master that magic. He was tempted to pay choice points for it; though that would net him Tartaros as a whole as well and that was a mass of power. And he could have afforded it too, at least since he’d gotten 80 yesterday when it had finally ticked off that he had destroyed Grimoire Heart. He had no idea what had happened in Ishgar to change that.
But Edomagic would cure his friends. Living Magic would not. He didn’t want Kiria to turn into a dragon in 10 or 15 years. He didn’t want that fate hanging over Skullion and Madmole either. Or Orin, who was spying on Minerva’s training, for that matter. Whatever else could be said about them, the guild had helped him get his first steps of power. He owed them. He owed them a lot more than 400 points.
Which meant reading Hades’s book, the original Book of Zeref, would possibly be the only way to learn Living Magic. But he didn’t trust the curse power of it, just like he didn’t trust the curse power of these shades. But Wraith had assured Arthur that he could handle it, and the ghost seemed rather more dependable than most in the guild.
The two shades were chanting and two of the 18 Battle Gods of the Yakuma clan appeared.
One was a blue skinned humanoid with six arms, and swords for hands. They had fierce eyes, and moved with a terrible speed. Six drums formed a ring floating behind him. The thunder god drums associated with Raiden.
The other was green skin, with plates of hardened scales which resembled the armor of a terracotta warrior and were a color like tarnished bronze. It held a spear in its hands. Arthur hadn’t seen this one before. Seilah had however. His Archive was already bringing up the information taken from her memories when he had ripped a copy of her mind into his Archive. The Spear God; its power was that of self-replication. It was a one man army, able to split from the impact of attacks.
Minerva’s face had been serene at first, but there was strain forming. She was manifesting two of the shades. He wasn’t certain how many were in her. Wraith would know that better than he did. But he was fairly certain that this couldn’t be easy magic by any standard even if they had been friendly ghosts. As it was she was fighting a battle of wills just to maintain control over them, sweat starting to bead on her forehead.
Arthur had intended to give her a spar when he got back. When it came to unarmed combat she was still better than him, and the White Tiger Dragon’s speed was exactly what he needed to get accustomed to when not Overclocking. But she would need rest after this even if she denied it.
“What’s she doing?” Taberius asked.
“It’s a long explanation. Let’s just say it’s harder than it looks, and she’ll be too tired for the lesson I had planned.”
Minerva was already attempting to banish the spirits she had allowed to wander outside of her body. Arthur could see Wraith preparing to act, and Arthur was moving forward. He wrapped his arms around his apprentice, as he whispered, “With the power of friendship.” He was sharing with her his magical skill and talent, letting it be her own. It was enough to make the difference, the spirits disappearing and fading.
He didn’t let go immediately, but continued to hold her close. He wanted to warn her about the dangers. But he had before. She was determined on this path. She would master the power to channel the spirits, and she would lay their souls to rest, because they didn’t truly deserve to be tortured with this existence as balls of lingering hatred.
So instead he just held her. “What can you learn from this?” He asked.
“I should only invoke one shade at a time, unless you and Wraith are both here,” She said.
“True, but not what I meant. I meant what can you learn about the magic you were trying to perform?”
Arthur listened to her insights, just getting her to think through them, and in telling him to think through them a second time. He offered Seilah’s insights back. And they talked for a while about the experience. All the while he shared his talent in magic with her. It wasn’t the first time. They had been incorporating that power to share into her training for months now. She’d progressed in leaps and bounds with Territory magic through it, and had learned a fair bit of Dragon Slayer Magic and a touch of the spiritual manipulation involved as a facet of Takeover Magic.
Arthur almost reached Georg’s door to challenge him. He’d been held up for a time by Suzaku. The young man was excitedly interested in the exceed and its nature as a world traveler. Arthur had managed to hand the cat off to him for the time being. He didn’t need the cat beside him here.
He was two steps from it. And then he decided better. He wasn’t ready. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he couldn’t beat Georg, even without his Celestial Spirits or his black sword, but merely magic to magic. He was fairly certain he could trounce him. But if Georg went berserk he couldn’t beat him without killing him. And Arthur didn’t want to kill him. He wasn’t certain he had the stomach for it, and he knew if he did it would haunt him worse than Brain, or Edo Georg, or any of the other blood on his hands. The fact that the guild would hate him for it was secondary to the fact that he’d hate himself for it.
If he could master Dragon Takeover he should be able to remove the Dragon Seed from another Dragon Slayer. If he could do that he could shut Georg down without killing him.
He just needed to master a new form of magic that didn’t exist yet first. At least it was just an extension of two forms of magic he already knew. He turned and walked away from the door. He probably would just give the exceed a lesson instead.
As he was beginning to turn around, Georg stepped out of the door. “Why are you here?”
“I was gonna ask if any important new jobs were available,” Arthur fibbed. He’d meant pertinent, not important, but the word just wasn’t coming to him at the moment.
“Lucky for you there is one. Get a team. You could handle it on your own, but if they’re gonna grow they need to learn with experience. And not Skullion’s. They could handle this job with their eyes closed. Still one of the guilds related to Silver Demon has an extermination bounty on its head and we’re going to be the ones who collect.”
When he heard Arthur making a request for a team to assist him in dealing with a dark guild, Cullen was on his feet as fast as he was able. He spilled his bowl of soup in his haste, accidentally stepping on his own shoe laces and half stumbling. He was always prone to bits of clumsiness. “Take us,” he gasped out.
He saw the blue-highlighted, white haired mage give him a hard, terrifying look, those odd, crimson eyes bright as they glared towards him. He could feel himself melting away, pulling in against him.
“Yeah, take us,” Orin added, a grin forming on his face. It shocked Cullen for a second, Orin wasn’t eager for the dangerous missions like many in the guild. Cullen normally considered him a bit of a coward to be honest. They were good friends, they’d joined the guild at the same time and they had spent the rest of their life as partners. Then Cullen noticed where Orin’s eyes were and it clicked; it was the same reason Orin had taken an interest in spatial magic of late.
Cullen guessed he could see where it came from. She was beautiful. If you liked the bitchy princess type. Cullen found her haughty and unlikable. She was strong. She’d beaten Kiria, after all, and Cullen had realized that Kiria counted as a bad matchup for her. But she knew she was strong, and the way she looked at the weak was off putting.
“They’ll just be deadweight,” Arthur’s little princess said. The contempt in her gaze made Cullen’s hands clench. He was going to speak. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he was going to say something. Except Arthur beat him to it.
“They’ll be coming for the same reason as you, Minerva. I don’t need support in this fight. I need to ready strong allies for the battle where I do need it.”
“They’re not strong,” Minerva said. “I could handle all three at once with only my Territory magic.”
Cullen didn’t doubt that. He’d watched her and Arthur spar. Arthur hadn’t used his magic offensively against her, but the way she’d fought to try and overcome his defenses had been impressive.
“And that’s why I’ll take them. To teach them to be strong,” Arthur said.
Cullen could feel his lips turning up at the corners. He was going to learn. Telling Pax that he’d been volunteered for a HIGH DANGER mission went over a bit better than expected, and once they were ready to go, they were there. Arthur had summoned his robot horse and let it fly out, stretching his territory behind it. Well they weren’t there, but they were in the town, ready to go meet with the person who had authorized the quest. Teleportation was an excellent cheat.
Cullen felt a little bad that he and his team had been grouped with the feline spy that the Moon Dragon God had assigned to them. But he reminded himself he was getting a chance to learn from someone whose mastery of dragon slayer magic had been enough to beat Kirin even without any of the other forms of magic he used. Even if he was being told to stay back, stay out of the way, and focus purely on keeping himself safe while observing.
It took 3 hours to find the guild’s headquarters. Again it was Arthur’s summons, the mechanical horse and the yellow bird. Still that was 3 hours where Cullen got to experience Arthur’s teaching methods. They were strangely touchy, but when he whispered something about the power of friendship, Cullen found his mind seeming to expand and explode with magical knowledge. He could see through the Archive link, could understand the magic involved. He didn’t retain it. It was too far beyond his baseline, but while Arthur’s arms were around him, he had understood magic at a level he normally could not fathom.
Orin was happy to try and flirt with Minerva, not that she did anything but give him the cold shoulder. Cullen, though, he wanted to capitalize on this. He knew his dragon slayer magic was weak. The whole team’s was. They didn’t have elements like purgatory and its flames that burned hot, Kiria’s unstoppable cutting edges, or Kirin’s mastery of atmospheric phenomenon. He had sand. And not at some particularly impressive quantity. It was one reason he had never stopped working on the sand make magic his mom had taught him as a child.
Arthur took the group outside of town where they could practice. An old rock quarry where there was nothing to harm. And there he loaned them his magic power. HIs hand was on Cullen’s shoulder, and he muttered that thing about the power of friendship once more, and then… there was power.
Cullen roared, and his sand carved a path through the stone of the old quarry. Still there wasn’t an emergent property like with Orin. “Make it into a weapon. A sword, a spear, a bow. What weapon do you usually make with your make magic?”
“I… don’t?” Cullen said. “I usually rely on slayer magic for offense. It holds the power of destruction.”
“But you should use them together. Make a weapon with your make magic,” Arthur instructed.
Cullen did his best, shaping the sand into a spear. “Like this?”
“Now coat the head with your slayer magic. It’s harder to shape, but let it run across the spear. It’s a lot less energy than the roar, but if you can master it… Well throw the spear.”
Cullen had never felt his magic shaped so easily; while sand make was a bit easier than usual, his dragon slayer magic was day and night. Instead of raw power wrapping his hands, or erupting from his mouth, he was able to focus it, shape it, concentrate it into a point, and when he threw the spear… Well the throw as a lame one, he’d never thrown a spear before. A cloud of sand and dust erupted in front of him, even as he felt magic wrap around his body. It was Arthur’s space, holding him in place as the explosive release of his sand dragon slayer magic blasted them with a wave of sand.
“Next time throw it further,” Arthur said as they slid down into the crater Cullen had made.
Cullen nodded, shaken by the explosion and somewhat stirred by the fall. “Get where you can make your own dragon slayer’s spear,” Arthur said, “Without my help.” From there things continued until the eagle had found the guild hall of Skeleton’s Hand.
The battle against the dark guild was short. Arthur took them to the guild hall and then he demonstrated how a Dark Dragon Knight fought. His space surrounded the front of their fortress, built into the side of a mountain. And he tore away the entire facade, teleporting the cliff’s face and littering the region behind them. Dark mages began to scurry like bugs when you lift a rock, and Cullen began to shape a wall of sand from his magic only to find it was unnecessary. A wall of darkness had risen up, and all their magic assaults fell harmlessly upon it before it fired back their magic as pure blasts of energy.
Cullen had lost sight of Arthur, though. As the dark mage’s magical power rebounded at them, he had clapped his hands and then he and Minerva had taken off. Minerva was using the white tiger dragon’s super speed magic; she was expected to move too fast for the eye to follow. He hadn’t realized Arthur could do so. It wasn’t just his teleportation, his sword blows were faster than Suzaku’s as he stepped from foe to foe. Minerva took out 2 of the mages, Arthur handled the rest of the guild, all faster than Cullen could roar. The young sand dragon slayer found himself shaking. This was the power of a top tier mage.
He wasn’t the only one in stunned awe. The tiny cat-person was slack jawed, staring at the battle. They had charged forward, against orders, even before the wall of darkness had formed, being barely held within by it. They had hit against it and begun to draw their sword. By the time they had gotten it from its scabbard the battle was over.