My appetite for the knowledge housed in that library finally began to be satisfied with a full read-through of the Teleportation spell. For this purpose, I'd acquired a pair of Hurricane Reading Glasses, the kind with enchanted inscriptions on the frames that accelerate reading speed sixty-four times over, purchased for no small sum. The moment I found the right book, my reading looked from the outside like I was just rapidly flipping pages, glancing at each for barely a second.
Knowledge rushed through me in a stream as my dual mind, which was my body's brain combined with my soul's intellect, absorbed it all.
The tome on full-scale teleportation, meaning the teleportation of people included, was shelved in the semi-restricted section, to which Erza and I had been granted access. The spell itself, as it turned out, was semi-prohibited.
In this world, spells that directly affect bodies are frequently banned, given how dangerous they tend to be. At least, that's the Council's justification for the prohibition, an argument that struck me as somewhat contrived. You could just as easily cause a disaster with plain old permitted Fire Magic, and it wouldn't exactly take much effort. But as it stood, body teleportation bore a passing resemblance to the dark arts, at least in the author's own words. The similarity lay in the method of bypassing a mage's baseline magical defense, say, to teleport someone against their will. Naturally, that counted as dark sorcery; doing something to someone without their consent is considered unethical and inhumane in this society. Still, magic that affects others wasn't banned across the board. The list of prohibited magic wasn't exactly extensive, costly exceeding a dozen broad categories.
Still, understanding how to bypass magical defenses gave me insight into applying the same principle to other spells. That blue-haired bastard, as I'd come to realize, had considerable innate talent in his magical affinity for exactly this kind of bypass. That was precisely why he'd been able to use Telekinesis on Erza.
Unfortunately, even though this knowledge gave me a significant advantage, teleporting myself and now other people too was well within my capabilities, but like everything else, this magic came with its limitations.
Teleporting to a point I can see is far easier; keeping my eyes on the destination makes it much simpler to lock in the exit point by focusing my magic through my gaze. The upside is my Sphere Vision, which lets me teleport quickly even in directions my physical eyes aren't facing.
There was also the problem of Teleportation's rapidly escalating cost: a spatial mage capable of teleporting between continents wouldn't be able to carry even a couple of other mages much farther than the next town over. By my rough calculations based on what I'd read, teleporting someone like Erza even within line of sight would already be a strain. And if she actively resisted, even without any specific skill for it, her magical defense would spike enough that I simply couldn't pull it off.
Obviously, all these limitations expanded noticeably, very noticeably, with experience and the spatial mage's raw power. But that was still a ways off. Right now, despite my background in spatial magic, I'd need at least some practice before I could call myself a confident user. And the book itself still needed to be properly digested and mulled over. Time I simply didn't have at the moment.
Surfacing from my thoughts, I moved on to the next stack of books and tore through those too. There were quite a few, all vastly different: several treatises on Ether theory from authors I didn't recognize, many dating back to deep antiquity, along with material in areas I was specifically interested in, like artifacting and medicine.
Time flew while I absorbed it all. I only snapped back to reality after finishing something about Dragon Slayers and finding myself actively chewing on the legends surrounding a certain god named Ankhseram. Gods in this world were energetic beings, even more powerful than dragons, mythical and extremely rarely encountered, if at all. This particular god wasn't exactly popular these days. What made him interesting was his influence on the world.
Beyond the magic the Council officially banned, there were things in this world that genuinely just weren't worth doing. According to the lore, and as had been documented more than once, Ankhseram governs life and death and curses those who disrupt the balance between the two. Honestly, if you stripped away all the mystical fog, I was inclined to write it off as just the strange properties of Ether, the magic of this world. Beyond the curse itself, this god didn't interfere in mages' lives, and nobody even knew whether he had a body, a mind, or anything of the sort.
As for the curse itself, it wasn't particularly strict. Killing was considered a natural part of the balance. Healing magic within certain limits was too. Even taking one creature and transforming it into another, something akin to chimerism, essentially the transformation of life, was considered perfectly fine. None of that fell under the curse.
Things got worse, meaning the chances of becoming cursed skyrocketed, when a mage created life, much like a certain dark mage named Zeref had done with his demons. One of those demons, I'd heard, was exactly what had wiped out the city Gray had grown up in.
The absolute taboo was resurrection. In this world, bringing someone back from the dead could earn you Ankhseram's Contradictory Curse. It uncontrollably releases Ankhseram Black Magic around the cursed mage, killing every living thing in the vicinity except the cursed themselves, who as a neat little side effect become immortal. According to the book in my hands, the only way to control this magic is to completely lose any sense of the value of life. But even then, the curse lashes out whenever the cursed mage's thoughts become contradictory, steadily destroying their psyche.
I grumbled internally at the weirdness of this world, set down the book authored by Mavis Vermillion, and noticed it was already evening outside.
My gaze caught on Erza. She was reading an advanced tome on Sword Magic with a look of studied indifference, the kind of book that detailed how to release slashes and similar energy attacks from a weapon to deal mid-range damage. That look was there because, under the flimsy pretext of being a mage and therefore an adult, she had quietly swiped a few restricted books to read while I was occupied in my corner. Special magic books weren't allowed to leave the premises, like the full Teleportation one, for example, but the library was vast, and most of its wide selection wasn't guarded quite so jealously.
"How's it going?" I asked, walking over to my little sister and pulling off my glasses.
"Good, I'm almost done with this one..." she replied. "And I grabbed a few more to take home. Basics of artifacting, how to use magical armor, what types exist. Here."
She tilted her face up toward me and put on a completely blank expression.
I found absolutely nothing to say to that and simply nodded my approval. Then, noticing a suspiciously opaque-wrapped stack of books sitting on the table beside her, I quietly teleported the whole pile straight into my spatial inventory.
After that, I wandered through the stacks looking for anything else worth my time. Finding nothing particularly unique or promising, Erza and I soon left the library and made our way toward the exit, where Yajima was just finishing his shift.
"Carry them carefully, children. I put my heart into those," Yajima said with a modest smile, handing us yet another box. Pickles, this time.
"Just filled up completely," I noted as the latest haul settled into my spatial pocket.
"Thank you for the library pass," Erza said politely. I nodded to second that; the place really had been educational.
"Think nothing of it. Take care of yourselves." Without further ceremony, he said his goodbyes and drifted off, folding himself back into a leaf and riding away on the breeze.
The two of us walked to the magic carriage and headed back toward the hotel.
"Lian!.." Erza hissed, glancing around frantically after I clipped a road sign and just drove on.
The streets were empty at this hour; nobody had witnessed the offense.
Looking into my perfectly innocent eyes, she couldn't find a single word of actual reproach.
"I'm driving tomorrow."
"Okay."
After a good night's sleep, our first stop the next morning was the municipal office to pay the fine for the damaged sign. We did this entirely at Erza's initiative, her knightly conscience having flared up yet again. I personally didn't care either way since the fine was pocket change.
On the way out, I casually pointed out that we could have skipped the whole thing. Nobody would have pinned it on us specifically; most likely, the city would have just noted the damage and replaced the sign whenever they got around to it. But my sister staunchly declared that one must be honest and that damaging public property was simply unacceptable. I countered that on missions we aren't exactly careful either, routinely damaging not only other people's property but also their appearances, their health, and their continued existence in general. Debating the finer points of our double standards, we made our way to a couple of notable workshops to commission Erza's magical armor, just as we'd planned. One of these was Heart Kreuz, hugely popular among young women, which as it turned out had a highly skilled artifactor on staff who crafted armor under the brand name.
With the important business out of the way, we shifted to leisure: a stroll through a trio of the city's notable sights, followed by a guided tour. Suitably cultured, Erza and I then restored the cosmic balance, over her grumbling, by descending somewhere completely devoid of culture and spiritual enrichment. Namely: a casino.
"People your age aren't permitted in here," one of the two doormen said, trying to turn us away. The pair looked straight out of a mob movie casting call, two massive bruisers crammed into three-piece suits.
"We're from a mage guild," I said, holding out my hand and letting a stream of multicolored sparks play across my fingers.
"What, the clown guild?" the second bouncer cracked. His smirk died the second he noticed our guild marks. "Oh. Fairy Tail..."
"Well, this is grim..." the first one sighed. He cast a mournful look down at his uniform, then back at the pristine building behind him. "But we're obligated to let you in. Enjoy your time."
I rolled my eyes at their routine and walked inside. Erza followed, looking uncharacteristically thoughtful.
"I got the impression they were mourning having to find new jobs," she murmured. "But why? Surely they won't get fired just for a little rudeness?"
"I think it has more to do with us specifically," I offered as we stepped up to the reception desk, staffed by a young woman in a crisp business uniform.
"Welcome," she said smoothly. "I understand you're mages. Our establishment does have special rules for you." She tapped a placard that stated any mage wishing to enter was required to wear a detection bracelet that would signal the use of magic, and that any mage caught using it would be immediately escorted out. "If you agree to the terms, how much would you like to exchange?"
"Hm... Could I test the bracelet?" I asked.
"No. If you use magic while wearing the bracelet, even right here at the desk, we would be obligated to escort you out. Strict policy."
"Fair enough," I agreed. Erza and I each snapped on a rune-covered bracelet with a visible blue gemstone on top. Naturally, before putting mine on, I'd already quietly checked that the artifact did exactly what it claimed to do. "Two sets of chips, a hundred thousand each."
A smile just a shade too polite spread across my face as I handed over the cash, a detail only Erza caught, watching me with a narrow, suspicious look. Chips in hand, we headed into a grand hall easily several thousand square feet across.
Bright magically-crafted signs flashed everywhere. The constant chime of spinning slots, the noise of the crowd, casino staff weaving through the throngs with trays of snacks.
As if she'd completely forgotten her misgivings, Erza's eyes lit up at the sheer flash and spectacle of it all.
"This is just like in those books!" she said, half-dazed. "And now we're the main characters, so we're going to clean out the house for billions, fight our way past the bouncers on the way out, and get declared international fugitives!"
I stared at her. "In that case, maybe we shouldn't win too much?"
"You're right, brother. We'll pull no more than three million," she agreed with a completely dead-serious nod, then marched deeper into the hall and parked herself at a slot machine.
I just stared after her.
She does know the odds in a casino are absolutely not in the customer's favor, right?
The drums spun to their cheery little jingle and snapped into place one by one. A moment later, to the machine's own triumphant fanfare, a flood of chips came pouring into the payout slot.
Well, damn.
Erza caught my look and flashed me a bright thumbs up. I nodded back.
So beginner's luck is actually real.
I turned my attention to the money wheel and strolled over. It looked remarkably similar to one from a video game back in my first world, the kind of game that left players struggling with insomnia and a distinct urge to camp outside their neighbor's door with a shotgun.
I tossed a five-thousand chip on the one-spot and fixed my eyes on the host, who was prepping to spin.
Erza's suspicious look had been entirely justified: I absolutely intended to walk out of this place with a solid stack of that dirty paper they called money. After our recent spending, we were down to five hundred thousand Jewels. I intended to fix that, using Soul Energy.
The host gave the wheel a hard spin. My bet doubled, and my polite smile didn't shift a millimeter. The bracelet didn't even flinch at my quiet invisible interference with the casino's equipment. Just a tiny nudge of force, and the needle ticked into exactly the slot I needed.
Working that way, carefully, unhurriedly, incrementally, I hopped between tables and steadily grew my stack. While I was flying under the radar, though, things were anything but calm over on Erza's end.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" a shout echoed from somewhere behind me.
"Can you believe that luck?" several patrons whispered as a crowd formed.
"Valued guest, this is a respectable establishment..." a security guard pleaded, materializing beside the screaming man.
Here's what happened: a grown man was being escorted out because Erza, casually stepping up to a European roulette table, had dropped a single chip on zero and won. She'd hit a roughly three percent chance on a whim. The girl in question was now sighing loudly, complaining she really should have bet more.
And so our casino raid continued. I methodically accumulated chips while Erza played completely scattershot. A little while later, another loud outburst erupted from her section of the floor.
"What the fucking hell?! A straight flush?!" some heavyset mage bellowed as the cards hit the felt. He himself, incidentally, was holding three aces. "You clearly bribed these lowlifes! How could you possibly beat me, the great—"
"Time to go, sir," a security guard interrupted, dropping a heavy hand on the man's shoulder with a bone-deep weary sigh.
"How dare you?! Do you know who I am?!" The mage shook with rage, his jowls rippling in a rather entertaining fashion.
"Just another idiot," the guard muttered. The bouncer, himself a mage, hit the man with a quick spell. The troublemaker crumpled and was asleep before he hit the floor. The guard hoisted the dead weight over his shoulder and trudged toward the exit. "They don't pay me enough for this. My mom always said study hard or you'll end up hauling freight. Why didn't I listen..."
The pair departed to a running commentary of the guard's life regrets. I noted with a quiet smirk that the security here actually wasn't bad, probably contracted mercs. That would explain the attitude. A quality the casino clearly tolerated purely because competent muscle was so hard to find.
The dealer, acting like nothing had happened, smoothly slid Erza her two-hundred-thousand-chip pot. We hung around for roughly another half hour before finally heading to the cage to cash out.
"Grand total: three million, one hundred and twenty-five thousand," I announced as we stepped outside. "You did great."
The girl beamed with pride, and she'd earned it. She'd walked out with half a million more than me. And that was with me cheating the entire time, while my little sister had just ridden an insane wave of pure luck. Genuinely remarkable.
"Yeah," she mused. "Turns out I didn't need to agonize over which armor to order after all..."
Trading satisfied remarks, we climbed into the carriage and set off back toward the artifactors to commission a few more custom sets for her.
The day was going beautifully. We'd made a solid sum. Three million was hardly all the money in the world, and while the casino staff had definitely been watching us, I'd spotted it early on, they hadn't tried to stop us from leaving, chalking the whole run up to bizarre luck. During her winning streaks, Erza's genuinely ecstatic face made it perfectly clear she wasn't using some exotic magical workaround to get past the bracelet's sensors. Meanwhile, I'd kept my own expressions deadpan enough that nobody suspected a thing.
That said, we had zero plans to make a habit of hitting places like this. Consistent impossible winning streaks meant people would eventually start connecting the dots. Suspicion would follow, and problems right behind it.
Driving out of the city, Erza was grinning with barely contained manic energy as our carriage bounced hard over the ruts in the dirt road, throwing us and her newly acquired luggage from side to side. I watched her with quiet amusement. She was still just a teenager. Despite being excessively, almost violently principled in certain respects, she just wanted to have fun like anyone else her age.
Then something odd happened. A man we'd seen earlier that very day stepped out directly into the middle of the road.
Brakes screamed on the packed dirt as Erza threw us to a stop, barely avoiding running him flat. We lurched to a halt about fifteen feet away.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Erza snapped. "You could see we were moving!"
"Agreed," I said, propping my chin on my fist. "Which ditch did you crawl out of, scarecrow?"
"How dare you?! Do you know who I am?!"
Erza and I exchanged a look, both of us instantly placing exactly where we'd seen this particular idiot before.
"So who are you?" I asked.
The man wobbled his excess weight indignantly, drew himself up to his full height with the bearing of an elephant enormously impressed with itself, and launched in.
"Hear me! Before you stands a B-rank mage! And more importantly, a nobleman of the Kingdom of Fiore. I am Baron Aluminyx von Terra-Cotta the Ninth, 'The Unyielding Stalactite' de la Gravier!"
"Unimpressive," Erza said flatly. "A long lineage is not an excuse to throw yourself under a moving carriage."
"This is all your fault, you little swindlers! I heard you both cleaned out people who actually deserved to win! And another thing, I'm a first-generation aristocrat! I'm simply the ninth child in my family!"
The Baron leveled his accusations while somehow maintaining full pomposity, even when correcting us.
"Let me get this straight. You're having a meltdown because a teenager beat you out of a measly two hundred thousand?" I said.
"Brother, you saw that too?" Erza asked. It was entirely rhetorical.
"Yes! And it is an absolute outrage! Return my money at once, you cheating little swindlers, or you'll bitterly regret it!"
"Slander doesn't become you, 'aristocrat,'" Erza shot back, her expression darkening. She knew perfectly well she'd played fair. "You owe us an apology, and then you need to leave."
"Is two hundred grand really that significant a sum for a mighty Baron?" I added with a mocking smile, happily twisting the knife. "Honestly, it sounds like you went into debt just paying off those guys to tail us. Pathetic."
The Baron physically shook with fury, his whole body quivering, the fat rippling beneath his clothes from head to toe.
"Wretched little rabble! I'll lock you in my dungeon and you'll know my true wrath!" he shrieked, dramatically raising both arms. Then he froze as the air around him abruptly went cold.
"You're done," Erza said. She threw open the door and was already halfway out, clearly intending to permanently relieve the man of several limbs, when she felt my hand clamp down on her shoulder.
"My turn this time."
I stepped out of the carriage and let my Bloodlust spike. In my eye's glow of bloody crimson, my figure must have started blurring behind a red haze to the aristocrat's eyes.
He swallowed hard but didn't retreat. He just looked like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water down his collar.
"Threatening me to my face? Bold," I said. "But unbelievably stupid. Looks like tonight, in a ditch somewhere..."
"Lian, wait," Erza cut in. I turned to look at her, confused. "He claims to be an aristocrat. You have to formally challenge him to a duel. The way a true knight would."
"Him? An aristocrat? Erza, this guy is just a jumped-up lowlife with a fancy piece of paper in a safe somewhere. He's the same kind of garbage as..." I cut myself off when the man's glove came sailing at my face. I caught it mid-air with Telekinesis.
"A duel, boy!" the Baron bellowed.
"Does this count?" I checked with Erza. She gave a curt nod. She had zero doubts about how it was going to end.
Neither did I.
"Earth Magic: Spike!" de la Gravier roared. He stomped the ground, and a lethal six-foot stone pike erupted from the dirt exactly where I'd been standing.
Pointless. In that split second I engaged Teleportation and blinked out, appearing right behind him. Drawing on my Requip, I materialized two long metal spikes in thin air, grabbed them, and drove them straight through both his palms, pinning him to the hard dirt. A follow-up kick square in the spine brought the aristocrat crashing to his knees, and with a scream of pure agony his momentum forced his impaled hands to slide down the length of the metal stakes.
"You know, it's technically illegal to use magic to kill a citizen," I said into his ear. "But then again, who's really going to find out out here..." I raised a broadsword that had appeared in my grip and lined up a clean decapitation. Then I paused and glanced back at Erza. "You might want to look away for this part."
There was genuine care in my voice. Honest concern for my little sister's worldview.
"Hold on, Lian. Maybe we shouldn't actually kill him," she said. She'd stepped fully out of the carriage and was watching me and the violently whimpering Baron with something close to real worry.
"Why not? It's a sanctioned duel. This is your whole rigid knightly code, isn't it? Didn't knights routinely cut down their opponents over slights?"
"Knights... they find it in themselves to show mercy," she insisted. "That's what it truly means to be a knight. Understanding that the sword isn't the answer to everything."
"I don't follow. This piece of garbage literally just threatened to lock us in a dungeon and torture us over two hundred grand."
"But those were only words," she said quietly. "We can't actually know for sure what kind of person he really is. Maybe it was just his emotions getting the better of him, and deep down he hasn't actually done anything unforgivable."
At that exact moment, while high morality and cold pragmatism were duking it out between us, the whole philosophical debate was thoroughly ruined by a third party. Rather than crying quietly and accepting his fate like a reasonable person, de la Gravier pissed himself.
"Christ, that's disgusting," I muttered, stepping back with a grimace. "Fine. Let's not ruin a good day over this."
My sword vanished. I reached down, grabbed both spikes, and yanked them straight out of de la Gravier's hands. He screamed again.
"Alright, listen up closely, Number Ten."
"I'm... I'm the Ninth," the bleeding mage corrected pitifully through his sobs.
"Consider yourself reborn today, which makes you the Tenth. Right after this little meeting, I'm personally reporting every detail of this encounter to Wizard Saint Makarov, to Magic Councilor Yajima, and to the God of Ishgar himself, Warrod Sequen. And may whatever god you pray to help you if you so much as think about hiring dark mages or cheap street mercs against us or our guild. You will be watched. Even a single suspicious financial transaction on your ledgers could put you in the ground permanently. So here's my advice, Baron: go crawl into a hole so incredibly deep that we never hear your name again. And dig yourself a spare one while you're at it, just in case."
He nodded frantically, pathetically. Made absolutely no attempt to use magic or resist.
"Lovely."
I dispensed a parting dose of psychological trauma and walked back to the carriage. Erza and I climbed in and drove off toward Era, leaving the bleeding Baron in the dirt.
On the drive back, I found myself thinking about what had just happened. In my past life, living among spies and killers, taking a life had come much more easily; it simply wasn't judged by the same standards. Now, living day-to-day alongside Erza... had I actually softened?
Then again, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The pathetic creature crying in a puddle of his own making was unlikely to cause us any real trouble going forward.
"You handled the loose ends well," my sister said, taking her turn at the wheel. "But who exactly is Warrod Sequen? I feel like I've heard that name somewhere."
"One of the original founders of Fairy Tail, and currently the fourth-ranked Wizard Saint."
"Really? I had no idea you two were personally acquainted."
"Hm? Oh, I've literally never laid eyes on the man. I just name-dropped him to make the threat sound more credible."
She slowly turned her head to stare at me.
"You know... somehow I'm not surprised at all."
"Well, yeah," I said, rolling my shoulders. "Obviously."
And so we drove on, eventually getting Makarov on a remote communication lacrima.
A quick note on the Ten Wizard Saints: they're an elite group of exceptionally powerful and influential mages appointed directly by the Chairman of the Magic Council. The rankings from tenth through fifth don't reflect raw strength alone; they factor in a mage's influence and historical contributions as well. The top four, however, are ranked strictly in ascending order of pure power, with some legendary figure called God Serena sitting at the top, universally considered the strongest mage on the entire continent of Ishgar. That said, Wizard Saints are a political appointment by the Council, meaning not every insanely powerful mage holds the title. This world is crawling with monsters, the kind whose clashes can effortlessly produce catastrophes.
Before long, we arrived back in the city, paid the rental fine for the scratched-up carriage, and immediately set out on the train for Magnolia. We made it back to the guildhall just before dawn and successfully delivered pickles to Makarov, who was currently nursing a colossal hangover. Word around the guild was that the old man had spent all of yesterday celebrating some new product launch with Yajima, drinking together over a live lacrima call. The things technology made possible these days.
After that, the days fell back into their normal rhythm. We took on various jobs, and the only thing that genuinely grated on me was the toxic dynamic rapidly developing between Erza and Mirajane.
It had all started from a specific inciting incident. Life had arranged things such that a certain white-haired girl, after my modest help settling her in, had unfortunately started taking romantic notice of humble, unassuming me. I didn't particularly care one way or another, it's not really my style to get involved with literal twelve-year-olds, but one intensely possessive red-haired girl named Erza cared very much.
As the person who had been by my side practically her entire life, my little sister had started to get jealous. It showed in a barely concealed wariness and a constant low-grade irritation toward Mirajane that Erza hopelessly tried to hide. Mirajane, for her part, however generous one wanted to be about Erza's complete lack of acting ability, could clearly sense the hostility. That did nothing to warm the air between the two of them.
So the daily interactions between the two girls in the guildhall, compounded by Mirajane's power growing at an alarming rate and both of them unfortunately sinking deeper into puberty, were rapidly escalating into... let's call it a fierce rivalry. One that was moving steadily from verbal sparring toward the physical kind.
But that was all just kid stuff. Now the end of the year was coming up fast. A heavy sense of anticipation had settled over me and honestly most of the veteran guild members too, about a major event that had been postponed for several years running.
Makarov had officially announced that the S-Class promotion exam would finally be held soon.