The next week and a half passed surprisingly peacefully for being part of a group of ‘villains’. Arthur was beginning to miss modernity, though. The guildhouse had running water, indoor plumbing, and even toilet paper, thankfully. Still there was no internet with its countless diversions. No tv. No books even. And he’d been spending half of every day cleaning the guildhall because he was squatting here and if he was going to be a deadbeat he could at least help clean up.
He had to wonder if this was at all entertaining to his sponsors. He had, though, met some of the guild members. They were distressingly child-soldier like. The guild itself seemed almost like an orphanage. Almost none of them had parents, and most of them had been taken in by Georg as kids or teenagers to be raised as dragon slayers to help him in his goal of eradicating all dragons. There were a few who had been adults when the guild was founded, a pair of older men who had known Georg since then, but who didn’t take many jobs anymore due to being well past their prime.
After a sparring session where Suzaku tested his skill - murder sword not included - he’d been assigned to them for training. Between cleaning the guild hall, and the training he didn’t think he’d worked so hard in his life. Thankfully he had the alchemical ingredients for some stimulants. It’d taken him 5 days to find the time, and mostly the energy, to make them instead of collapsing in an exhausted heap. They were helping. Significantly. He had even managed to make some other alchemical goodies, from medicinal potions to aid his natural recovery - his cracked ribs still ached despite the healer’s work - to some potions to reinforce his vitality and strength in a combat situation.
And he was learning to use his magic more fluidly, especially in a fight, but it really wasn’t enough. If only little by little. A ‘gift’ notification had hit the other day in his mental ui. The fact that he had a mental heads up display and user interface was still somewhat disconcerting. Still it seemed someone had approved of his surviving the fight, and rewarded him with 100 CP. It was enough to buy something to push him to be better. He’d procrastinated about spending it though. It was an important decision, and he had options. There was a perk he could obtain that would make it easier for him to befriend Celestial Spirits - and any other form of summons he happened to acquire - and it was cheap, cheap enough that befriending 1 strong spirit or 2 plue level ones; it should pay for itself. But he kept thinking maybe he should have bought magical skill up instead of learning stronger base magic? He still couldn’t use a fraction of what could be done with Territory Magic. Of course even if he could, he didn’t have the raw power to fuel it. The one hundred points sat in the corner of his mind, literally, beckoning him to use them.
A new bounty had appeared, as well. But he wasn’t sure he trusted it. It was only 50 CP. It wasn’t much. But it was for not performing another bounty for a year. One that was about eating a compass. He wasn’t sure why they wanted him to eat a compass. Or why they didn’t want him to eat one. But he needed to decide whether he was going to eat one, or not eat one for a year soon.
He clicked the bounty, deciding that it was better to decide anything than just keep procrastinating. Especially given his nature to procrastinate. He’d already put it off over a week. It’d be done quicker than he could decide on his own. Still that 100 CP was just sitting there tempting him to use it. Maybe he should go ahead and get better at befriending celestial spirits.
“Oi, weakling,” Kiria said. The teenager was obnoxious. But she was a strong, full member of the guild, and he was a pathetic hanger on, little better than the servants who brought dinner.
“Yes?” At least he didn’t have to call her sir or ma’am or something.
“Stop spacing out like a weirdo,” She said. “And today’s your lucky day. You get your first chance to tag along on a quest. We’ve got a monster slaying job, and I thought your little lizard thing would be faster than hiking into the mountains. You can watch how someone actually strong does things.”
“Suzaku is coming?” Arthur said with a grin. The little bi-tty brat annoyed him, and he was more than happy to see her scowl at the reminder that Suzaku blew her out of the water.
“Don’t make me cut you down to size,” The blonde touched her palm with her other hand’s fingers pulling her hands apart slowly letting a nearly invisible blade of energy form between them. “I bet I could cut straight through that oversized shield of yours.”
She might very well could, and while he doubted she’d kill him, she might do that if he pushed the little psycho’s buttons too much.
“I’d rather you show me how to cut down… what sort of monsters are we hunting?”
“A pride of werelions attacked a merchant’s caravan. We’re going to slay them.”
Werelions? There were werelions in this world. “Alright, let me get my gear,” Arthur said.
He did his best to ignore Kiria’s disgusted sigh and grumbled words. “Holder mages.”
Arthur had lost one of his silver keys in the fight with Georg. He hadn’t even known it was possible for that to happen. Still he had a silver key of the gate of the chisel to summon a caelum, a silver key of the gate of the clock to summon a horologium, and a silver key of the gate of the eagle with which he could summon an aquila. That gave him a ranged combat option, a defense option, and a fast attacker.
His territory magic should give him unbridled mobility. He could swap positions, teleport things to him, teleport himself, but he couldn’t manipulate its higher level functions. At least not yet. He couldn’t transport entire angry mobs, or golden key spirits, or trap people in his personal spatial bubbles to drain their magic.
He had a small supply of potions. Invigorating, revitalizing, and strength bolstering. He wouldn’t be stingy with them. He also had his sword, and his mount. After it was discovered that with both of them on its back, the shield was too large for the lizardhawk to fly with on its back, and he was hopeless at getting it to carry the shield for long distances, Kiria had made him leave it behind. He’d have felt a lot safer with a shield though.
“You’re spacing out again,” Kiria said behind him. She was pressed close, riding on the back of the flying reptile. It was an odd feeling. He’d never really thought how much sensation you’d miss wearing armor. It was just a feeling of pressure dully against his back.
“I’m just trying to think about what I have to help fight the werelions with.”
“Not to help. To fight the werelions. You’re proving your worth here, you know, probational boy,” Kiria said, flashing her oversharp teeth just a little at him.
“And what will you be doing?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“Watching. I mean if they tear you limb from limb it ought to be a good show.”
Guiding the lizardhawk down to the ground was less easy than Arthur liked. He wasn’t actually good at riding it. Something Kiria had most certainly noticed behind him. He wasn’t going in for a landing. That’d be foolish. The werelions seemed to live a nomadic lifestyle, living in tents in the fields.
Arthur told himself they were nothing more than the equivalent of video game enemies. These were monsters and he had been hired, legally, to exterminate them. These were monsters like the sort that Elfman would takeover. Possibly literally among them, Arthur couldn’t remember his forms. The good guys in shonen didn’t regularly kill beings with human-equivalent minds to wear their bodies for power.
Thus these were just monsters. Like orcs or goblins. He could kill them without any worries. He didn’t have to worry about the morality of what he was about to do. Just the means.
He couldn’t teleport the whole tribe, but flying low he could grab two with his territory magic and transport them to the very top of his personal ‘space’ in which he could work the magic. And then he let them fall.
The sound of their impact was sickening. A pair of roars of pain and furry. But when Arthur looked back the worst part was that his victims, wounded but intact, were rising to their feet and calling to their allies.
“Is that how you intend to fight werelions?” Kiria asked. “You’d have to drop them a lot further than that.”
A spear was flying towards him and the lizardhawk, one of his teleportation portals catching it and launching it back at the werelion with the same force. “Look I don’t know how much it takes to kill a lion monster!” He shouted at Kiria, as the lions were coming out of their yurt-like dwellings.
“And you want to be part of Diabolos?” Even as the blonde dragon slayer mocked his aspirations he was working his territory magic. It was draining. Each time he teleported one of them he could feel the drain on his magical strength. Each spear he caught he could feel. And worse than the magical strength was the concentration and focus required.
“You do, don’t you?” Kiria continued behind him. And then the lizardhawk began to squawk loudly and spiral downward. It was, in its wounded panic fleeing the werelions, but the lions were chasing, and Arthur was increasingly convinced he wasn’t up to the task of catching their weapons as they did.
He was mostly succeeding, or he thought he was. Kiria was actually covering for him, cutting a portion of the hurled projectiles from the air, something that would have been rather obvious if he hadn’t been pushed so close to his limit. Still he was only mostly succeeding, and it would only take one spear to kill him. He couldn’t catch it and eat the spear’s head like Kiria.
The 100 CP burned bright in the back of his mind. At that moment he grabbed whatever purchase offered him the best chance of survival in the there and now. Magical Skill Lv 2. It promised to make him an expert combatant when using his magic, equal to Erza in skill if not power. It was theoretically something he could learn with years - though it also promised an increase in learning speed - but he didn’t have years at this point.
And suddenly it became a whole lot easier to do things like slow them by teleporting some of them into the air and dropping them, even while catching their weapons and redirecting them. Even if they could survive the fall, they were obviously wounded by it, and having another werelion dropped on you was unlikely to be pleasant.
“Wow, you really suck at this,” Kiria commented, with a calmness that pissed Arthur off.
She was hopping off of the lizardhawk when it was still a good several meters in the air. “Gonna just sit there? They’ll be here soon,” she said with a cocky look on her face, her tongue hanging out of her mouth when she wasn’t speaking.
The middle school brat was better in a dangerous situation than he was. That was painful.
He dismounted the lizardhawk, grateful it had at least brought him safely to the ground. And that the miles of land it covered in the process had forced the werelions to form a line based on speed. He wasn’t fighting the whole pride of them.
As he drew his sword and turned to face them, Kiria was rushing behind him and the lizardhawk.
“I’d help. But really such weaklings aren’t worth my time.” At the moment Arthur hated her. But he didn’t have time to hate her. The lizardhawk was squawking out in pain, spears and axes having peppered its underside. He had fucked up and now he was facing down an angry horde of lionmen, on foot, with his magical energy already severely drained.
“Open gate of the eagle, I summon you Altair!” It was another drain on his magical energy, and he was already starting to run low, but he needed something to run interference and with Kochab gone, it was time to try the eagle. It appeared, a man-sized yellow bird, with red dots on its cheek, black-tipped tail feathers, and brown stripes on its back and wings. An incongruous Zeus beard adorned its face beneath its beak.
“Kii! Those look dangerous. Kii!” The eagle said, proceeding to fly up and kick at the air before starting to move to cringe behind - the now laughing - Kiria.
“That’s why I summoned you!” Arthur’s fear lent anger to his voice. The first werelions were almost upon him already. He should have summoned the laser cannon.
Instead he had to hastily teleport his shield in front of him, sliding his arm through its loops and brace the best he could with his shield only half on as the first one hit his shield with a force to make his arm scream in pain as he was driven back several feet. Even with his strength being more than doubled, his reflexes sharpened to a razor’s edge, and his alertness re-invigorate by his alchemical arts, he wasn’t certain about his odds against one werelion much less two.
“Kii! I don’t know why that’d be why you summoned me. Kii!” The eagle said as the werelion leapt forward, hammering its ax down onto Arthur’s oversized shield.
“To help me fight them!” He said, focusing more on defending against the werelion than anything, hoping that his black sword would guide his blows.
“Kii!?” The eagle screeched. The werelion merely roared. Two of the others were nearing, rushing towards them.
Was this really going to be it?
Altair dashed forward, moving as a bolt of lightning through and into one of the werelions tangling with it. Arthur lost track of the other, as the one that was facing him already managed to knock his shield to the side and off of his arm.
And like a striking serpent his sword plunged into its shoulder and he felt the pleasant flow of energy from it. It was hard to say which was better. The feeling of completing a bounty, or the feeling right now. The sword was singing, and as it sang he felt pure vitality flowing into him. His magical energy was refilling, and with it his strength. He pulled the blade back from the beast allowing it to slump to the ground.
Altair was wrestling with one of the werelions, a second charging to strike the bird. He breathed deep and focused, letting his magic extend over the bird and the lion it was fighting and swapping their positions so that the new combatant’s ax struck deep into its friend.
The werelion he’d lost track of was rising to its feet, but he was ready, moving to it to cleave its head with his sword, and feel that wonderful sensation that came with his magical energy being restored. He reached out, warping his territory to pull a werelion into his blade, his strength beginning to increase, the blows that had taken all the force in his arm, beginning to grow easier with each foe killed, as slaughter rang out and he moved forward.
Kiria had to admit Arthur was doing better than she had expected. She’d tripped one of the werelions with her blade dragon slayer magic, slashing its calf from afar, when they were first coming. And she’d continued to cover his back thus at first, just little cuts that kept one from approaching while he was handling another, and helped keep them from using their numbers to surround him. But they’d started running soon after that and it had become less of a fight and more of a brutal slaughter. She didn’t know how he kept it up. She could feel his magical strength. He was using almost the entirety each time he caught the fleeing werelions and returned them to his position, and yet each time he was able to repeat the action. It was certainly interesting.
“Shouldn’t you be helping him?” She asked, looking at the yellow eagle which had just flown back to land behind her.
“Kii! It’s scary out there. Why aren’t you helping? Kii!” The bird screeched back. Blood had splattered its feathers, and while Arthur hadn’t mistaken friend for foe yet, the celestial spirit saw no need to stay now that there were only 3, wounded lions trying their utmost to flee from the reaver behind them.
“They’re too weak for it to be fun,” She said, still watching. It felt like the little wannabe was getting faster with each one killed, and his magic flowing more easily. One of the lions disappeared into the sky, and suddenly he had swapped positions with one of the other two. It raised its spear to block his blow, but the black sword clove through the spear and werelion both. It was a brutal blow, far stronger than Kiria would have expected from his magical strength.
The battle was truly over at this point, the airborne lion having fallen on its limping comrade, and leaving them both open to a blade that would cleave through them both. And Kiria had gotten an idea for his capabilities which she could report back. He couldn’t handle a whole group of werelions on his own. But he’d handled more than some full members of the guild would have been expected to. A werelion’s strength was dangerous. And he was cutting straight through them.
“Kii! Far too scary out there. Kii!” Altair said, raising a wing and sheltering its eyes from the bloody carnage.
Kiria watched with a growing smile, her small fangs showing. Maybe it’d not be too long before the little wannabe was strong enough to give her a fun fight. She’d been more interested in his sword than him before. Georg had denied her the chance to eat it because its weird magic had drawn too much of his interest. But it might be more fun to fight it, and its chosen wielder, than to eat it anyway.
Arthur looked around, blood dripping from his sword. He felt invigorated. More alive than he’d ever felt in his life. Even when he used to play soccer he’d never felt alive like this. He was brimming with energy, every muscle in his body singing a happy, pleasant song in keeping with the demonic chorus that rose into his mind from the sword in his hand.
He stabbed one of the werelions on the ground. Had to make sure it was actually dead. Definitely not just wanting his next jolt of that power flowing through him, and the sheer pleasure that came with it. He just would double check a few more of the werelions.
They were all, unfortunately, not pretending. He wondered if he’d missed any initially. He’d never really been in a real fight before coming to this world. A real, all out, drag out, trying to hurt you no matter what fight.
Georg had beat him so hard that it was terrifying. But this… This battle had been almost fun; once he no longer felt like he was going to die.
“Oi! Stop wasting time stabbing corpses! I think your lizard bird needs some medicine!” His head swerved towards Kiria, and she flinched even from this distance. He wasn’t actually going to stab her. It just was a thought that crossed his mind. Nothing more.
It felt almost painful to make himself sheathe his sword, knowing that when he did its red song would silence. Still it had fed him well with strength, and he strode forward with a confidence he’d never felt before in his life.
“It’s dead,” He said as he looked at the lizardhawk. It wasn’t moving. It wasn’t breathing. It was completely limp.
“You don’t seem very upset,” Kiria said.
His character sheet informed him it would be replaced in a week, but did he want to tell Kiria that. “I can replace it with a bit of time,” He said.
“We’re 20 miles from the guild,” She was looking up at him, tapping her foot as she did so. “And 10 miles in the other direction from our pay. You were supposed to be our ride there and back.”
“I guess we walk,” Arthur said with a shrug, he was feeling invincible at the moment.
“I’m not walking there! If I wanted to walk I’d have brought Madmole and Skullion, not you!”
Arthur turned to look at Altair, and Kiria’s gaze followed after his.
“Kii!? I can’t carry you! I’m a noble spirit, not a pack mule! Kii!” The bird squawked.
“Can you carry her at least?” Arthur pointed towards Kiria.
“Him? The job was a little distant and I needed a pony,” Kiria dug her feet into his sides then. Arthur wasn’t actually a licensed guild mage, or mage at all. He couldn’t legally complete jobs, or pick up payment for them. The workaround was that he was not performing the quest; Kiria was using him as a tool.
And given he’d just had to give her a ten mile piggy back ride, he was really feeling like a tool right now.
The overflowing strength and confidence he had felt in the midst of the carnage of battle was all gone. In its place was sore muscles and exhaustion. Altair had carried his shield for him at least. But his body ached and his limbs were sore. And he wasn’t even going to get paid. This was just going to go to cover his rent and fees for the month.
At least Kiria was finally hopping off of his back to deliver the bag of werelion tails taken as proof of the deed, and get the payment.
He reached towards Altair, to scratch the eagle’s head. “You did good out there. I don’t think I’d have survived without you keeping them off of my back. Thank you.”
“Kii! Think nothing of it. It’s a spirit’s contract. Kii!” The bird replied.
“Still, you were there for me. Thank you,” He repeated obstinately.
“Kii! You could thank me better with some fresh meat. Kii!”
“I’ll try.” They passed the time in silence then for a few minutes before Kiria returned.
“Alright, Horsey, time to carry me back to the guild hall,” She said, slapping him on the shoulder. He sort of hated her right then. “But we’ll get your bird some meat first.” Even if she wasn’t all bad.
It was more than a day later when he, dragging his Chaos Shield behind him, and with Kiria still riding on his shoulders and occasionally pretending he was in fact a horse, arrived back to the guildhall. 30 miles. He had carried her thirty miles. He was definitely stronger than he’d been in his previous life. If nothing else magical energy was good for the body.
Still the guildhall was strangely hushed when he and Kiria entered. It had nothing to do with him and Kiria’s return, though. The fourth Dark Dragon Knight had returned. Byaku, the White Tiger Dragon Slayer. Arthur had been fairly certain there wasn’t one, or else it was an eternal child. He’d have sworn the one in the manga was like 15, and Diabolos didn’t even show up till 9 years from now. Kiria was an adult by the time she was shown in the manga.
Byaku though was very clearly not a child. He was taller than Georg, and just as heavily built, with arms that were thicker than Arthur’s legs. He dwarfed anyone else in the guild, a long mane of white hair falling down his back, and a body covered in scars and Arthur thought he saw scales.
Kiria was excited, starting to run towards Byaku, but she stopped when she entered the main room. It was obvious that there was something wrong from how everyone else was acting. And the fact that Georg had just moved forward with a speed that Arthur could barely follow - a speed which would have killed him if he’d used it during their so-called fight - and slammed an open palm strike towards Byaku’s stomach.
“You were forbidden to use the Dragon Force again,” Georg growled out. Arthur couldn’t make out well what exactly was happening, still being in the other room, but Byaku hadn’t budged from the blow an inch. As he entered he could see that Byaku was holding Georg’s wrist, keeping his hand an inch from his gut.
“It was necessary. People would have died if I hadn’t.” Arthur flinched a little as he saw Byaku’s face. His eyes weren’t human, and his fangs were more prominent even than Georg’s, and made Kiria’s monstrous chompers look like the cute little fangs a monster girl might have. They didn’t fit fully into his mouth, but two had developed into full saber-teeth hanging out to the sides of her jaw like a walrus’s tusks. His face was distended, and black and white scales were just barely visible on it.
“I expressly forbade it,” Georg resumed in a harsh tone. “You know what you risk each time you use it.”
“People would have died,” Byaku repeated.
“And if you turn? If you become a berserk beast which we have to put down?” Georg was staring into his eyes now. Arthur was starting to remember something about this. One of the Diabolos mages had used the dragon force. It had started a very accelerated bout of dragonification, turning him into an increasingly berserk dragon. In the end Irene’s ghost had had to fix it, by enchanting his magic away from him.
Byaku didn’t answer, but merely turned his head with a low growling sound.
“Never, never use the dragon force again. Or there’s no going back for you,” Georg commanded. And Arthur found he had the sinking feeling that Byaku would. After all… a new dragon slayer had inherited the White Tiger Dragon’s power by eating it.
Byaku merely gnashed his teeth a bit and pulled away, turning and walking with an almost sarcastic, “Yes, master. And who will slay you when you finally turn?”
Byaku stamped out of the doorway, and Georg began to bellow like a raging beast that everyone should stop gawking and get out of there. Arthur felt Kiria grab his wrist and pull him back towards the entrance.
“Let’s get something to eat, my treat,” She said as she led the way out into the town. “What kind of meat do you like?”
“I don’t know what’s good around here,” Arthur said indecisively. “Kiria, your fangs, are they because…”
She hit him - hard - in the ribs. “Don’t ask a girl something like that. And yeah, I used the dragon force once. We’re not supposed to but I was weak. I won’t be weak again. Now, I’m hungry, let’s get some meat.”
Arthur nodded. It was obviously a touchy subject, and Byaku probably had just made it worse. But he had to wonder if that was why Georg, and Kiria were so prone to violent urges? Had dragonification changed their brains? That was a terrifyingly sombering idea. After all he was on the route to becoming a dragon eater himself. Would his shield prevent that corruption if he wore it? Was dragonification an effect like unto those of Chaos? Hopefully he’d not find cause to find out.
It’d been one month since Arthur had arrived at Diabolos. In that time he’d started to be allowed to help some of the teams with jobs ever since the werelion one. Never the Dark Dragon Knights. They rarely did jobs as a group anyway; they usually worked alone, reliant on their overwhelming power which easily dwarfed that of the guild’s second strongest team.
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But he did do a job with Skullion’s team, even if it was primarily as a scout with his - newly reborn - lizardhawk, or as Kiria’s ‘Horsey’. The other 3 jobs he got dragged on were with lower level teams, ones he’d never even heard of in the manga because they just weren’t powerful enough to even be sent against the Five Dragon Gods or Fairy Tail.
He wished he was getting paid. He’d found a silver key of the gate of the little horse, but it’d been almost 40,000 jewels which was not as much as it sounded to him used to thinking in dollars, and jewels being closer to pennies, but given he was ‘lucky to be getting room and board’ it had been far beyond his price range.
Still he had free access to the common area of the guild pantry, and it had been a month since he had arrived making it a special day. Kochab’s key had replaced itself today. He could summon the spirit again and thank it for saving him. He couldn’t complete the bounty for befriending a spirit with him, he was disqualified as a ‘purchased’ spirit. But he still had taken a death blow for him.
He got a jar of honey from the guild pantry, the largest he could find, and went out of the guild to the mountainside which surrounded it. The town was situated below, its lights visible in the night. And he lifted up the newly reforged key and summoned Kochab forth.
The big, blue, robotic bear appeared, and Arthur lifted the jaw with an awkward smile. “I thought you might like some honey,” He said.
The bear took it and let out a low, pleased rumble before it began to eat. “I just wanted to say thanks. You really saved me back there. Without you, I’d have been, well, toast,” He stated. The bear rumbled something else. “I hope it didn’t hurt as bad as it looked.” Another rumble, something about being immortal and better for the spirit to take the blow than its contract holder. “Still I shouldn’t have thrown you into that situation,” He said, and simply began to talk to the bear. Oh he knew he should be visiting the guild library to research potential lost magic, or working on his alchemy to see if he could find a way to reverse Irene’s dragonification or the curse of Ankhseram, or just out trying to make friends with people who counted for bounties even, or pursuing the one about getting Loke pardoned by the king, but… Kochab had saved his life. And he hadn’t even thanked him for more than a month.
The big, blue bear deserved some thanks, gratitude, and a chance to eat a jar of honey. Just chill and hang with the gigantic blue bear for a while, looking out at the town below and enjoying the fresh mountain air, so much cleaner than he had been used to on his world.
“Oi! Horsey! That’s where you got to, I’ve been looking all over for you!” Kiria was emerging from the guild hall, golden hair damp from the bath and dressed in a yukata.
Arthur repressed a groan. He hated that she called him that. It was starting to catch on. “What is it?” He asked.
“Oi! Madmole, Skullion, I found him! He’s outside,” She said, coming closer and holding up a bottle of what looked like wine - much looser alcohol laws in this fantasy world. Not that he suspected that Kiria would have been the sort to obey them if they weren’t.
“You’ve made it a month without breaking down or running away,” Kiria said with a smile, slapping him on the back. “You’re not as weak or pathetic as we all thought.”
“Thank you very much,” Arthur said in a sarcastic tone.
“Don’t make me cut you, Horsey,” Kiria warned. He was afraid she really probably meant it. “Me and some of the others just thought it was due for a little celebration. I mean all that’s left is for you to learn dragon slayer magic and you’ll be part of the guild.”
Skullion and Madmole had approached from behind by now. Both youths were armor every bit as fancy as the armor that Arthur didn’t bother to wear around the guild.
“Sir Arthur, we thought it would be a suitable occasion to have hot pot-cha,” Madmole said, his buddha ears slightly wobbling in the night breeze.
“Or to say Georg has said it’s alright to stop trying to make you want to leave,” Skullion added.
“So when Kiria made me carry her like a horse for twenty miles?” Arthur glanced at her.
“Sir Arthur, please do not misunderstand Kiria. She is just like that-cha,” Madmole said with an easy, friendly smile as Kiria gave an angry growl.
“I thought you lost the bear,” Skullion said.
“I got him back today, I was thanking him for saving my life,” Arthur didn’t want to specify right here that it was from Georg.
“A fine bear he is-cha,” Madmole said, pouring a glass of fizzy drink from the bottle Kiria had brought out. “A toast to this honorable sir bear, both noble and brave.”
“What he’s saying is, let’s party,” Kiria added with a fang-filled grin.
Arthur’s head was pounding in the morning. He’d never been prone to drinking, but he’d always been able to hold his liquor before without a hangover when he had. Maybe it was because he ran out of magical energy from sustaining Kochab’s gate too long early into the evening.
“Where’s that little poser!?” Georg bellowed out. “Why isn’t he here?”
Arthur wanted to stay laying in bed. But he hastily dressed himself and emerged to where Georg was howling. “There you are,” The guild master said with a wild look in his eyes. “Time to become a real dragon eater if you can,” He said, his wide grin making Arthur feel like Georg was the dragon about to eat him.
“I can,” Arthur said, trying to present more bravery than he really felt. Georg was terrifying. Georg was worse, though, didn’t approve of weakness or fear, so showing that was not exactly an advised action.
“Really now?” Georg said. “You’re trembling in your boots.”
“I can,” Arthur repeated.
“Fine, we’ve found a darkness dragon. You get to go slay it. Survive and you’re in the guild,” Georg released him, letting him settle onto the ground.
“Who am I working with?”
Georg laughed in his face. “You’re going alone. You are ready to become a dragon eater, aren’t you?”
Arthur looked at him dumbfounded. “I… I’m ready to help slay a dragon. I’m not ready to do it on my own. I assumed I’d be with you, or one of the Dark Dragon Knights, or at least Skullion’s team.”
Georg glared at him, and Arthur flinched back. “Are you talking back to me?”
“No, sir. Just stating my surprise.”
“So are you going to go kill the dragon?”
“No, sir.”
Georg slammed the wall behind him. “What do you mean ‘no’?”
“The best I could do is go to find the tools and support needed to slay a dragon. There’s no way my magic would succeed all on its own,” Arthur was trembling now, and he knew it.
“Of course not if you’re terrified of me.” Scorn dripped from the words, Georg’s eyes looking down on Arthur like he was a bug.
“Sir, I don’t think that’s relevant. You’re far more terrifying than a dragon, sir.”
“That sounds like backtalk.”
Arthur saw energy crackling around Georg’s hand and focused his magic as much as his hangover allowed, disappearing to appear a few feet away, as Georg slammed his hand against the wall.
“Not backtalk, just a note that you’ve killed dragon kings alone. You’re stronger than an average dragon.” Even as he spoke Arthur was warping his sword directly into his hand. He was sure that he couldn’t take Georg on one on one, but maybe he could get out of here before Georg killed him.
Georg began to laugh again at that. “Put that demon sword away! You can go. I couldn’t send you out there as a weight around their ankles without knowing you could at least stand up for yourself. A dragon isn’t an easy fight. Even for Skullion’s team it’ll be dangerous. I can’t make them baby sit you, you’ve got to be a full fledged member of the team in the fight.”
“If I’m going to be a full-fledged member, does that mean I get a cut of the job’s reward?” He was sheathing the black sword, but hey he wanted to know about his cut.
“Cheeky. Aren’t you getting the meat and a dragon’s power as your reward?” Arthur must have made a face, because Georg bellowed out a belt of laughter. “You forgot about that, didn’t you?”
“Could I get the heart instead?” Arthur asked. Fifth Generation Dragon Slaying. Not that it was called that yet, there hadn’t been 3rd or 4th generations in this world yet, was dangerous.
Georg roared with laughter. “What do you think the client is paying us for? Some ‘Wizard Saint’ from the south is willing to give us good money for another lacrima. Besides you’ll be lucky to survive eating a dragon, the lacrima would probably kill a weakling like you.” Arthur’s shoulders sagged. He was still simply too weak, wasn’t he? Georg slapped his shoulder. “But you come back alive and you’ll be a member of the guild, and we’ll make someone strong enough out of you.”
“Can I become part before we go?” Arthur said, raising his head. 50 CP for joining a guild. 100 more if it was a top guild. This was the top wizard guild in the continent, standing above - at this point - any guild in Ishgar. It should qualify. 100 CP could mean the difference between life and death against a dragon. At the very least he could increase his power; Gray at the start of the series might not be able to match a dragon, but he’d not be a liability either. Georg had reminded him that he was going with other people and if he fucked up they could pay the price. Skullion was a bit aloof, but he wasn’t a bad person. Madmole was a good guy, with a troubling tendency to walk little old ladies across the street before Arthur could. Kiria was a pain but she was maybe his friend too. Probably his friend. He didn’t want them to get hurt because of him.
“You really are cheeky, aren’t you?”
“You already said if I live I’m in. If I’m going to die, I’d rather die as part of Diabolos than not.” Or at least that’s what Arthur thought he said. The words caught in his throat. He stammered. He choked. He was talking about his own death after all, and trying to give a reason that wasn’t ‘I will get mysterious new powers from an otherworldly source if you do’. He wasn’t sure how Georg would react to learning that bit, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to find out.
Georg looked at him, and then swung a hand at him. Arthur, terrified that would happen, teleported as quickly as he could, avoiding the shoulder slap and leaving the room entirely. “Get back here you little cretin! You almost had my respect and you go and run away?”
Arthur’s return was meek and shame faced. The party would wait till he returned, but the 150 CP was gained, and with it he was able to purchase his next power. Or the higher level of Magic Power. A baseline equal to Gray’s instead of Lucy’s. He wouldn’t be a top combatant with just this. Any member of Skullion’s team had noticeably higher magical power than he did at this point. But the gap had just gotten a whole lot smaller.
Skullion had come up with the plan. He was the one with experience in the matter. He was the one who was fully briefed. He was the one who was the leader of the squad. And therefore he was the one who had gotten Arthur to go in first and alone into a dragon’s den.
This was a darkness dragon. It lived in a deep, dark cave. You did not fight a darkness dragon, which could heal by consuming darkness, in a dark cave. But it wouldn’t follow a dragon slayer out at night.
Arthur, however, wasn’t a dragon slayer.
So he rode inside of Horologium, a celestial spirit of the constellation of the clock. It was pretty much an animated grandfather clock. It was also one of the toughest celestial spirits, even into the gold class, able to walk through lava unharmed with less magical power than Arthur now had.
Hopefully it would keep him safe from the Darkness Dragon long enough to get out of there with his Territory Magic. If he didn’t think it would he’d not be riding towards his potential death in it.
Suddenly darkness shot out towards him from the shadows, just a black beam that seemed to erase the light of his torch until it hit the case of Horologium, leaving a small black spot on the ‘glass’ of the spirit’s form from which smoke was rising.
“Are you alright?” Arthur shot out in response.
“He asks if I am alright,” Horologium answered, and Arthur was reminded that this was a world heavy on the comedic side.
Still black scaled creatures were surging forward towards him. Skullion had mentioned that they seemed to come with the darkness dragon. They looked almost like lizardmen, or lizard-apes, maybe even young darkness dragons, but Skullion had said they weren’t truly living creatures but manifestations of the dragon’s magical power. One of them slammed into Horologium, as Arthur began to shout.
“Turn around! Retreat! Retreat!” Even the fake dragons could leave burn marks on the clock. He didn’t want to see what would happen with the big momma who made them all.
Horologium began to try, while repeating Arthur’s words. A little of Arthur’s magic skipped it ahead to the very edge of the torchlight, the swirling gate opening and transporting it a good dozen feet allowing it to escape from the faux-dragons. They were running back towards the entrance, able to make it out in the distance by the sunlight shining in, when suddenly something tossed him and his celestial ‘mount’ up off the ground and then there were teeth slamming shut, a tongue teasing along Horologium’s form.
They were in the dragon’s mouth about to be swallowed whole. Arthur felt the edges of his space the furthest he could warp himself, and hoped it wasn’t in another solid object as he created the swirling portal which would take him and Horologium away. Hopefully denying the dragon its ‘midnight snack’ would be enough to get it to come out and play.
Of course he and Horologium were now falling, hitting the ground fairly hard. “Are you alright?” Arthur said. He hadn’t felt much, but he’d felt it through Horologium.
“He asks if I am alright,” Horologium parroted and Arthur groaned. At least the clock was probably alright.
And then he felt something rock the clock he was in, he felt a spike in his magical energy expenditure for a moment before Horologium’s gate closed. At least the key hadn’t broken this time, but something had hit Horologium too hard even for that sturdy spirit.
He fell down onto the ground, pressing himself up again as quickly as he could. He turned his head to see the dragon. It was a great, black creature emerging from the cavern, wings spreading from its body as it did so. It was long, and serpentine rising into the air like a black cloud of smoke. Two pairs of wings, too thin to carry such a massive body extended from it, and its claws stretched from its limbs. He couldn’t make out Kiria on his lizardhawk from here, but he knew this was a dragon. Even from here he could feel the awesome force of its magical strength. It didn’t make him think of Georg though. It brought to mind Suzaku when Kiria had pressed him to spar to the point that he’d beat her down.
It was strong.
But it wasn’t outside of the realm that humans could reach. Even without dragon slayer magic, Arthur felt it could be slain. Not by him. But someone like Gildarts. And with dragon slayer magic, he was confident Kiria and Madmole could handle it. If he could do his job alongside Skullion and deal with the lesser drakes. Which meant he needed to get over to where they were.
He didn’t immediately warp in. He needed to let Skullion clear the entrances. Until Kiria and Madmole were in position it wasn’t his duty anyway.
The darkness dragon was turning its head upwards, roaring towards the lizardhawk above it. This was on Madmole, he was the shield meant to block its roar as he and Kiria dropped on it. Ash was sweeping beneath the black dragon as Arthur strapped on his chaos shield. Things were going how Skullion said they would. The man knew dragon fighting tactics it seemed.
Of course this is where his predictions ended. After this it was a matter of who was faster, who was stronger, and who could control the battlefield. Kiria had a lot more offense than defense. Madmole was the reverse. As long as he could keep the dragon choking on him, Kiria could maybe cut it down. But Arthur’s job was to have faith they could handle that, and to handle the enemies on the ground with Skullion.
He pulled one away from the main fight in his own arrival to it, already raising a pair of silver keys. “Open gate of the eagle, open gate of the chisel!” Altair was a thunderbird, and Caellum shot lasers. While he’d have loved the physical support that could have been given by Kochab, he needed light to cut through the darkness.
Teleporting the keys to his pouch in a time saving effort, he drew his black blade, and let his magic flow. He was burning through it fast. Too fast even for his increased magical power, but he just needed to kill to replenish it.
His potions had invigorated his strength, but he found his plan was flawed when he struck one of the dragon-minions in the back and found that its black scales still stopped his sword. Its head turned and its mouth opened, and its shot went wildly wide as he emergency teleported it. Another was rushing at him, slamming into his shield and he found himself being almost overwhelmed in the melee. If hitting its back didn’t work it was time for the head, the belly, or somewhere it was already wounded.
Skullion didn’t seem to be having issues. His ash washed across one, and he flowed with it to punch another and send it flying back. He was a dragon slayer, like the two who had jumped on the dragon.
Arthur was a guy with a sword and weaponized teleportation magic. He lunged for one’s belly and he felt the sliver of life essence from it running up the blade before its claw swept across his arm. The pain was muted, his alchemical potions doing their work, and then Caellum blasted it from him.
“Watch your back,” Skullion barked from somewhere behind him. “These things don’t have to get close to you to be deadly.”
Arthur could feel the drain from the two gates still eating at him. He needed to kill to recharge his magic. He’d underestimated the enemies though. Still he struck, blade sweeping down onto the drake where Caellum’s blast had scarred its chest. He felt it bite deep, and the soul and life essence of the creature flowed into him. It was a physical manifestation of dragon magic. Nothing more and nothing less. No soul to consume. But it did have vital essence, and its life flowed into him as a pure rush of ethernado.
There was a loud thudding noise like a tree limb falling. “I fucked up-cha!” Arthur looked to the side towards the voice.
“Damn it!” Skullion shouted, launching himself towards the air. “Kiria get down from there, now!”
“Altair, get to the dragon!” Arthur screamed.
“Kii! That’s too scary! Kii!” Altair screeched.
“We all might die,” Arthur said. Causing your contract holder to die was the greatest crime a celestial spirit could commit. He hated to play that card that way, but it was true.
“Kii!” The eagle screeched and took off flying past Skullion’s own ascent in moments.
“Get on the dragon!” Arthur shouted, barely staying comprehensible as one of the drakes bit his shoulder. He felt the arm holding the shield go mostly limp as he half spun to stab the creature. If it wasn’t for his potions the pain would be killing him. But the sword recharged his life energy with the creature’s as it died, and he grew stronger and faster. He swapped its corpse with one about to blast him, even as he felt Madmole standing behind him covering his back.
The confused drake’s head was struck, leaving it staggering dazed as he thrust full strength into its chest. One of the drakes shot him then, the lance of darkness puncturing his armor and still having enough force to burn the skin of his shoulder and knock him staggering down. They were rushing him, clambering over Madmole, even as they surged towards him. Caellum gave a last sweeping ray of light, cutting into their ranks, before they swarmed over it and Arthur felt the gate forced shut.
He swept his sword at the first of the creatures, hitting the side of its head. It wasn’t enough to kill it, just a tingle of energy as he made it bleed. It wasn’t even truly blood, but black energy, leaking from the magical construct.
He pulled up his HUD. 250 CP. When he’d increased his magical power he’d completed another bounty. It had been a simple one. A freebie. ½ the CP he had spent when he cashed it in, to a maximum of 200 CP. He spent 200 CP now. He’d hoped to save it. To use it for something more useful than raw magical power. But right here and now he needed the power.
He managed to stab the drake that was leaping directly onto him and his shield, even as another slashed his back with its claw. His armor took most of the force, but he could feel the metal distending.
He was useless. He couldn’t teleport Madmole to Kiria; the dragon had ascended too high. It was outside of his Territory. He couldn’t hurt it. He couldn’t fight it. He couldn’t even survive the drakes. In raw physical strength they were each stronger than him. And his armor was ending up full of holes, their blasts burning his flesh through it. Soon they’d kill him. He didn’t have a choice.
He selected the Magic Power Rank 4. The second highest option, below only monsters like Irene and August. It was power on the level of Gildarts.
He felt his magic surge in potency. He’d been a small time character before. He’d been Minerva but without her martial arts, without her second magic style, and with less raw power. But now he felt the sheer, raw, magical strength. A bolt of darkness hit him again, penetrating his armor, but the burn when it hit was less now, his own magical strength seeming to hold his flesh together better.
He no longer was running out of magical strength. He teleported the drakes, a mass of portals appearing, all exiting from one common point, space bunching up behind it to launch them downwards like missiles straight into the back of the dragon. Kiria landed beside him, two swords formed from her own magic in hand, and a look of confusion on her face. In the euphoric rush of pure power flowing through him, Arthur barely noticed.
Hitting the dragon with living embodiments of its own magic was not wholly ineffective. It was consuming some of the drakes to regain its energy and heal its wounds, but a dragon’s magic could hurt a dragon, and each of those drakes was a living wean made from dragon magic.
“Oi! Horsey! What?!” Kiria shouted. In an instant he’d gone from having a fraction of her magical power to completely dwarfing it; from obviously far weaker, to an overwhelming superiority that she might struggle her entire life to equal. The sudden difference was inexplicable.
“We’re dragon slayers aren’t we?” Arthur said with a cheeky grin, the sheer ethernado coursing through him leaving him with a feeling of omnipotence. High above the dragon’s head reared back, its mouth opening, as magical energy coalesced inside. And it roared, a blast of darkness to tear a deep trench through the ground, carving a crater where Arthur, Madmole, and Kiria had stood.
Had. Moving them to the dragon was now an easy task. The sheer power he possessed allowed him to extend the range of his territory substantially. Madmole, braced for the blow, almost stumbled as they landed on the dragon. Kiria tripped in the middle of a lunge, ready to match the dragon’s roar with her own only to find it wasn’t necessary. And Arthur found himself standing ankle deep in the torn and cut flesh of a dragon. A dragon whose mighty scales had been cut bare.
Kiria and Madmole were obviously confused, but quick to react. As the dragon began to turn and twist in the air, fighting to cast them off so that it could take full advantage of its maneuverability, they dropped and caught onto it. Arthur wasn’t as quick, falling from its back, leading them to scream his name.
But he had magic of his own. He caught himself, and fell onto the dragon’s - equally slashed by Kiria’s magic - body, his black sword plunging taking the full weight of his fall, and plunging into the dragon’s flesh.
Arthur could feel the dragon’s life essence flowing back into him. But it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t going to kill it this way, and as it continued to twist he lost his grip of his sword and he and it both began to fall once more.
Kiria was raging, striking against its back and neck, cutting it deep, as the dragon came gliding down to the ground. Arthur had caught himself, teleporting down to avoid obtaining full velocity, but the landing had still hurt.
He could see Madmole and Kiria fighting it on the ground now, Skullion arriving as well. They were starting to corner the beast, and it was having trouble fighting back against their unity front.
Arthur grasped his black sword, teleporting it to his hand, before warping himself back to the battle. The dragon could barely rise now, its roars growing weaker as its body was covered in wounds. But Arthur had appeared on its back, where Kiria’s deep cuts had cracked bone. He wrapped his territory magic around his sword and slammed it down onto the exposed skull. He was expanding the space around his sword, forcing bones to the side as the fabric of reality between the cracks expanded. And then his blade sank deep. Even wounded as the dragon was, it was a near thing, his magic, and his demon-sword, barely strong enough to force in deep. He’d never have managed to penetrate the scales alone. But now, his blade sank deep and he felt his sword sing.
And then the dragon was falling limp, and Arthur was riding it down, hanging on by his sword buried in its skull. He was far too absorbed in the feeling of absorbing its soul to even notice anything else. It was pure ecstasy, enough to push his soul to its limits. He didn’t know if it would tear him apart or not. He was burning through magical energy at his maximum output, the sky behind him erupting with heat as he compressed space above him in a pyrotechnic display, but it was still filling him faster than he could empty his own container for ethernado. Eventually the ecstasy crossed a line, the sensation pushing beyond all measures of pleasure into pure agonizing pain, and Arthur blacked out.
Once Arthur had awakened. It was time for the ritual. A very specialized variation of enchantment magic. One to enchant the magic of the dragon onto the consumer. Diabolos ate various dragons. They didn’t however get dragon magic from each one they consumed. Arthur was getting to learn how.
Kiria cut the meat. Skullion and Madmole worked the enchantment. Madmole and Skullion had not actually performed the ritual personally before. But they still knew that there was something wrong here. He didn’t need to eat the meat. The dragon’s magical energy was already in him, all that remained in the flesh was leftover dregs. They had even begun the ritual before he had awoken, not that they told Arthur that; the dragon power had already been tearing him apart. The meat was just to help anchor it at this point.
Still Arthur ate the rancid, slimy, disgusting meat, and he ate it raw, until he wanted to throw up and still had to keep swallowing it down. And then it was no longer biting and chewing, but like when a dragon slayer consumed their element he just seemed to be breathing it in to restore himself. He consumed more than two thirds of the dragon, and by that time the magic should have taken root in his origin. He’d have to train it. He’d have nowhere the skill that had been granted him with territory magic. But he checked the bounty to learn a Lost Magic and it was ready to cash in, with one of the six Siegfried bounties also lighting up indicating he had become a 5th gen dragon slayer, the bounty for completing his first guild job as well as his first S ranked one, and the bounty for surviving a life or death fight… at its lower completion level.
He’d become a dragon slayer. And he had gained 500 CP for the effort; he’d rather give up the chance of more CP than be striving to face August or Irene or a monster at their level in direct life or death combat, he’d need every drop of power available to him before that. The mid strength options weren’t the limit any longer. He could really begin to look at the top rank ones at last. And consider things like the bounty to free Irene, kill Zeref, or even kill Acnologia. The whole world had just changed around him.
“Sir Arthur, you’re really one of us now-cha. How does it feel to be a dragon slayer?” Madmole’s question pulled him away from his review of his character sheet.
“What was with your magical power at the end? Did you hide your real magical energy from us? If we’d known we could have planned around it,” Skullion asked, giving him a suspicious glower.
“I didn’t. It increased during the fight,” Arthur said in explanation. It came off rather weak as a response.
“I’ve heard about growing under pressure, but that’s just absurd,” Kiria said as she held up the darkness dragon’s heart. “Hopefully you didn’t ruin the heart like you did the meat.”
Skullion continued to glare at him, making Arthur flinch a bit. How did he say ‘I wanted to go down another growth path for long term goals but I thought you were in danger so I chose pure power now instead’ without getting into a mess about not explaining his abilities as a “Jumper” previously?
“The plan was collapsing, Kiria was falling, Madmole had fallen, and I got worried we all were going to die, it just sort of erupted from deep inside,” He said lamely, his eyes drifting down to the ground.
“Sir Arthur, you are mistaken. Once Kiria was on the ground, the only one likely to be in danger was you,” Madmole said. “The dragon had been wounded. Skullion could have engaged it in the air and brought it to the ground for Kiria to have finished at that point. Everything was going according to plan.”
“I wasn’t falling,” Kiria said. “I was diving, because you obviously needed someone to save you from becoming a snack for the sideshow.”
Arthur’s jaw dropped a bit, and he looked between Kiria and Skullion.
“My blade would have cut them down, and then I’d have cut its roar. We weren’t going to let you die there,” Kiria said in an almost sulking tone. “But seriously what did you do to the meat?”
“I don’t know. I killed it with my sword and absorbed its life essence and soul as magical energy.”
They all three stared at him then, and then looked at the sword.
The trip back was restful. It was an enforced rest, since he did have a nasty wound to his shoulder, mild burns across his body, and a nasty set of gouges down his back. There was an enforced detour to a doctor to treat Arthur’s wounds. And a lecture from Kiria of all people to be more cautious. Wounds inflicted by dragons didn’t heal well. Thankfully these were just automatons made from a dragon’s magic, that quality of a dragon’s magic grew with its magical power, and these were mere fractions of it. A dragon god would leave wounds that even another dragon god couldn’t heal; Arthur knew that better even than Diabolos.
Kiria rode his lizardhawk, seeming to love the thrill of flight. Skullion and Madmole allowed it. Arthur exhausted his magical energy summoning Kochab to carry him using his shield as a litter, his feet dangling. It was a peaceful couple of days, even if Kochab had to be sent back to the spirit realm to rest periodically.
And then they reached Diabolos again. His shoulder still hadn’t healed, but it was healing. The guild hall was far from raucous or full, but that was just an ordinary day at the mountaintop hold.
Georg sat preceding over the guild hall, and smiled at the return. “Brought back some good meat and a good heart?”
There was an awkward shuffling. “We brought back dragon meat, and a dragon’s heart, there’s a bit of a problem with the meat, and we’re not sure of the heart’s quality,” Skullion said, as Madmole moved forward to place the massive sack of the small portion of the dragon that Arthur himself hadn’t consumed.
Georg’s nose started to twitch, but his attention was drawn from the meat towards Arthur instead. “Where’s the little wanna be, and what do you have in his place?”
“That’s Arthur,” Skullion started, only for Georg to move.
It was blindingly fast, too fast even now for Arthur to react. He barely raised his good arm before Georg had crossed the room and struck, sending him flying back into the guild’s main doors and out the other side.
“That thing might smell like Arthur, and might look like Arthur, but there’s no way a person’s magical energy increased that much in such a short time,” Georg growled, already charging forward again, landing atop Arthur, a hand crackling with a four color aurora of power. Blue, vermillion, black, and white energy shifted and surged around his finger tips forming a claw of pure dragon slaying force.
“I don’t know what you are, or why you did it. But if you hurt my guild member you will find a new definition of suffering.” Arthur was always scared of Georg. But before even when Georg had gone for he’d never bothered to let his magic really flow.
Arthur teleported away. But Georg was after him, moving fast. Skullion and his team were pursuing, shouting, even as Arthur was desperately working his own magic. He warped space in a wall of energy that held back Georg’s relentless assault for only a moment, summoned Kochab to - unsuccessfully - wrestle the dragon slayer once more, and continued to teleport and run.
Arthur wasn’t sure exactly who calmed Georg. He was too focused on not being killed, and screaming that he really was Arthur. Eventually Skullion explained the sudden surge of power in the battle with the dragon, and that Arthur had killed it with the black sword and in that moment the dragon power had transferred from it to him without actually consuming the flesh first.
Georg slapped his - unwounded - shoulder hard. “Next time, don’t kill it with the sword. You owe the guild some meat. Now, we still need to finish the job. Who wants to go to Ishgar to deliver the heart to their so-called dragon slayer God? The quality isn’t great, but it should still make lacrima, and… some dragons just have poor hearts.”
“I’ll go, I’d love to see how they make lacrima from it,” Arthur volunteered, preemptively explaining his motive to try and deflect the potential suspicion he intended to steal the lacrima he had wanted. He didn’t. He wouldn’t do that to the guild. It’d betray their trust and there would be other dragons. But he did want to go to Ishgar. There was a whole line of Bounties that he could only pursue there, and he didn’t know how much longer he had to fight with Oracion Seis.
Kiria, however, had another idea delivered through a kick to his head. “Let your damn shoulder heal, Horsey.”
“Besides the meat was your pay this time, you couldn’t afford the expenses,” Georg said. “Best stay here, Arthur.” It struck him that it was the first time Georg had called him by name.