“Aibo! The update! I want to read the latest installment!”
The moment Aibo appeared in the guild, calls demanding updates rang out from every direction.
He had long since grown used to it.
“Yaaawn~ You should go pester Big Bro Lidas. He’s the one who’s always missing deadlines.”
“Heh heh heh, we’ve already locked Lidas in the dark room. He won’t be let out until he finishes this week’s update!”
“…Are you guys devils?”
Aibo’s otherworldly plagiarism business had been going on for more than a year now, with remarkable results.
Naruto had become the most popular novel in the Fiore Kingdom.
The manga serialization was also in full swing, people had even begun selling merchandise based on the work, and its influence continued to grow.
The work’s success had brought Aibo enormous sums of money.
His savings now amounted to several tens of millions of J, and he and the guild’s paupers belonged to entirely different social classes.
Although he had been in the guild for a year, he had not taken a single job and was living especially comfortably.
These days, when he came to the guild, he did nothing but practice Telepathy Magic (by listening to gossip) and play around.
Oh, he also had a job as a waiter, but Aibo had not the slightest intention of quitting.
On the contrary, he planned to make waiting tables his main profession.
Aibo planned that when Sosara Weekly came to interview him someday, he would say he was “an amateur mage of Fairy Tail, with a side job writing novels and a main job as a restaurant waiter.”
The reporter’s expression at that moment would definitely be spectacular, and would surely put him in a good mood.
Aibo actually did not have much ambition.
In this life, he only wanted to live happily.
As a Happy Superman, happiness made him stronger, so naturally he did whatever he found enjoyable.
“Brothers, when I was passing outside town just now, I saw the Master bringing along a kid who can breathe fire. We might have another new member!”
A big kid whose feet never seemed to stop running darted all over the guild.
This was Jude Troy, who had joined the guild not long ago, and who used [God Speed] Magic.
Aibo had learned that magic too, and it had ultimately turned into 3,000 points of experience that were added to [Enhancement Magic].
That ‘experience’ was quite useful.
At present, he was still a little over two thousand experience short of raising Enhancement Magic to LV2.
“New members again? Our guild is really thriving lately!”
“We’re the number-one mage guild in Fiore!”
“Cheers!”
Amid the clamor, Master Makarov entered the guild with a large, pink-haired boy who looked somewhat boisterous.
“Everyone, quiet down! I have an announcement to make! This is Natsu, the new member joining our guild! Everyone, take good care of him, all right!”
Before the Master had even finished speaking, Natsu took one big leap onto a table, spat a mouthful of flames toward the ceiling, and shouted:
“Roar! Have any of you seen a dragon!? I’m looking for a dragon! A fire-breathing fire dragon!”
“—”
Everyone in the guild was drawn to the brat’s antics, then suddenly burst out laughing.
“How could there still be dragons in this world? Dragons went extinct long ago!”
“Kid, that fire you just spat wasn’t bad. Do it again!”
Natsu flushed with anger and shouted furiously:
“I’m not joking with you! I’m looking for Igneel! The strongest fire dragon! He’s my father! I was raised by a dragon, so how could dragons not exist!”
The guild fell silent again for a moment.
Everyone looked at one another.
After all, this kid who looked a little simple-minded did not seem like the sort who would lie.
Could what he said really be true?
Did dragons really exist in this world?
“Oi! You fireball-breathing bastard, get down from the table. Nobody here has seen any damn dragon.”
“Hah!? Are you a pervert? Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
“Ah! Since when!?”
“And don’t you dare badmouth Igneel!”
Natsu launched himself from the table and punched Gray, who was pulling on his pants.
The two of them tumbled to the floor and quickly began brawling.
When the shameless older guys saw that there was a spectacle to watch, they immediately crowded around, and someone even started a betting pool nearby.
Gray’s odds were 1.3 to 1.
“Go, Gray! Beat him up!”
“Come on, newbie! Don’t lose!”
“Get him! Get him! Get him!”
“…”
Aibo looked at Makarov beside him, who was about his height and smiling kindly, and asked:
“Master, aren’t you going to stop them?”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. They’re children. It’s good for them to be lively~”
“You look pretty happy. Is it because you’ve picked up another talented genius?”
“Oh? Aibo, you can tell that Natsu is special?”
“There wasn’t a single pointless thought in his head just now. He’s a guileless straight arrow, so everything he says is probably true. The fire element in him is so dense it’s about to overflow… So this world really does have dragons…”
“Mm-hm, that’s right. Natsu is an inheritor of a lost magic—Dragon Slayer Magic. It’s an extremely rare kind of magic. If a dragon really did teach it to this child, then his future will be limitless~”
Just as Makarov was smiling smugly, Natsu suddenly shouted:
“Is there any fire!? Give me some fire!”
Macao, never one to let a spectacle pass, tossed over a ball of flame, and Natsu tipped his head back and swallowed it in one gulp.
“Haha! Power is surging through me! Fire Dragon’s—Roar!”
Natsu suddenly opened his mouth and spat a huge fireball at Gray.
Aibo flickered and vanished, while the fireball landed in front of the Master and exploded on the spot.
Makarov’s face literally turned black.
The crowd scattered like a swarm, leaving only Natsu standing there, staring blankly.
Then Makarov transformed into a ten-foot giant and lifted Natsu up:
“You bastard! Don’t use magic inside the guild! Are you trying to get yourself killed!? You little brat!!!”
“S-sorry…”
He had actually scared the child to tears.
Aibo, who had teleported to the side, shook his head.
When it came to the guild members, the Master was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Still, Aibo had not expected this boy to be able to devour flames.
Interesting.
He would have to find some time to learn this “Dragon Slayer Magic” and see what it was all about.
While Aibo was enjoying the spectacle, the spectacle came looking for him.
“Aibo, Aibo, what magic are you going to teach me?”
Aibo was already used to suddenly finding himself enveloped in a young girl’s soft embrace.
All the girls in the guild liked hugging him, and he was happy to be coddled like a child.
“Big Sis Cana, I think your Card Magic would pair best with two other kinds of magic.”
“What, what?”
“The spell formulas of Letter Magic, and Contract Summoning Magic.”
“Ehh~~ You mean Levy’s magic and Celestial Spirit Magic?”
“Levy studies Solid Script… As for Contract Summoning Magic, it isn’t necessarily Celestial Spirit Magic…”
“Eh? What do you mean? I don’t get it.”
“Once I’ve researched Contract Summoning Magic, I’ll explain it to you in detail. For now, Big Sis Cana can start by learning the spell formulas. Letter Magic is the foundation of almost all magic. There’s no harm in learning it.”
“All right~ I’ll listen to Aibo!”
Aibo now understood most of the magic in this world.
Whenever summoners were mentioned, people here always brought up Celestial Spirit mages.
Aibo had also spoken with Celestial Spirit mages, though the spirits they had contracted with were not particularly powerful.
The information currently known was as follows: the summons of Celestial Spirit Magic were not in this world and could not die, while the strength of the Celestial Spirits depended entirely on the magic power of the mage who summoned them.
Cana’s greatest talent was her enormous supply of magic power.
She was someone who could match Erza simply by casually training her magic power, so theoretically, Celestial Spirit Magic should be the magic best suited to her.
But Aibo felt that summoning magic did not necessarily have to be accomplished through Celestial Spirits…
He had an idea, but he still was not sure whether it could be made to work.
He would have to study Celestial Spirit Magic in greater depth first.
Before that, he needed to acquire a Celestial Spirit of his own.