Night had fallen, stars scattered thick across the sky, casting a soft light down over the quiet town of Magnolia.
In a house of his own by the river, Chase took a long, cool shower the moment he got home.
Fairy Tail kept dedicated dormitories for its members, but Chase had never lived in one.
He’d used commission money instead to buy a place of his own in town.
Not that he actually preferred living alone.
Quiet had never really been his thing.
He’d been evicted from the communal dormitory by Makarov himself, on the grounds that constantly rebuilding whatever Chase demolished was getting expensive.
“Definitely more comfortable at home.
Guess it’s been over a year.” Chase stood shirtless, in a pair of light blue lounge pants, scars of every size scattered across a chest and back that made no secret of the muscle underneath.
The worst of them was a claw mark that ran clean through his shoulder and down across his abdomen.
Proof, if anyone needed it, that he really had gone toe to toe with the Flame God Dragon, Ignia.
He walked out of the bathroom into a living room that was, for a single man, fairly spacious, dropped onto the sofa, and reached for a can of black tea on the coffee table.
Water hissed to a boil somewhere nearby, steam curling up, the smell of tea settling into the room.
“Magic really does make life easier.” Chase picked up his tea and took a sip, glancing over at the little kettle on the table, the kind that only needed a shot of magic to run, and let out a satisfied breath.
In this world, magic did the work that machines and elbow grease did back home.
The taste of the tea bloomed across his tongue and settled warm all the way down.
Chase closed his eyes and sank back into the sofa, the air conditioning cool against his skin, soaking in a kind of comfort he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Drinking tea was one of the ways he unwound.
Property damage worked too, in a pinch.
Even if that part was never actually on purpose.
After a while, fully recovered, Chase opened his eyes and pushed himself upright.
He lifted his right palm, just a little, and light gathered above the coffee table, resolving into a small, neat magic circle.
A modest stack of cards rose out of it.
“Running into Ignia was about the worst luck I’ve had in years, but I suppose it worked out in the end…” Chase murmured it to himself, flicking a card free from the deck, one edge shimmering gold.
He turned it over to look at the monster on its face.
Slifer the Sky Dragon.
A ten-star monster, one of the three legendary Egyptian God Cards, with power enough to end the world if it ever got that far.
Summoning it meant reciting a full incantation first.
The deck Duelist’s Soul had handed him wasn’t complete, not even close.
Past the cards he’d started with, new ones dropped at random whenever he fought something strong enough to earn them, and the harder the fight, the rarer and more powerful whatever came out of it tended to be.
The size of his deck also set the ceiling on his own magic capacity, which was the real reason an ordinary person like him had made S-Class as fast as he had.
Normal training alone would have taken decades to get him anywhere close.
The simplest way for Chase to get stronger, then, was also the most direct one: pick fights with things stronger than him and walk away with better cards.
It was exactly why people called it a cheat in the first place.
A deck held three kinds of cards: monsters, traps, and spells.
Summoning a monster drew directly on Chase’s own magic, and the higher a monster’s star rating, the harder it was to bring out.
Aside from Slifer, freshly acquired, the highest card in his deck was the eight-star Magician of Black Chaos, a summon that took everything he had to pull off.
Traps needed setup time, which meant an “instant” effect actually required laying the groundwork beforehand, mid-fight or earlier.
Spellbinding Circle, the one that had locked Natsu in place, had worked because Chase saw the attack coming, finished the incantation early, and simply waited for Natsu to run straight into it.
That was the whole trick behind a trap card.
Spell cards had fewer strings attached, but cost more magic to use than traps did.
“Summoning Slifer with what I’ve got right now would be a real stretch.” Chase turned the card over in his hand, brow furrowed, weighing whether it was even worth trying.
Adding it to the deck had raised his ceiling some, sure, but it was still a two-star jump in one go, and the card carried a “god-level” label that made the actual outcome hard to predict.
Just to be safe, he drew a different card with his other hand instead, and let magic flow into it.
The wooden floor of the room lit up with the pattern of a magic circle, a soft pink glow rising out of it, the shape of a girl visible somewhere in the depths of the light, playful even in silhouette.
When the glow faded, she was standing there in full.
Light-yellow hair fell past long bangs, framing a pair of wide, bright green eyes.
She wore a blue, cone-shaped hat striped in pink, and a yellow choker set with a single red gem at her throat.
A blue off-the-shoulder top paired with a short pink cape and matching skirt, blue and pink wristbands, and boots to match, the whole outfit doing a fairly good job of showing off a figure equal parts cute and striking.
Dark Magician Girl.
A six-star monster card: a prodigy of dark magic, at least according to the label.
She seemed to run naturally clumsy and reckless.
The second she was summoned, she missed a step and stumbled, nearly sending them both sprawling to the floor.
Fortunately, some quick core work kept Chase upright and saved them both from going down.
“Ta-da!
Dark Magician Girl makes her dazzling entrance!” “Long time no see, Master!” She held a blue and pink wand in her right hand, flashed a V-sign with the left, and struck a pose she clearly thought was adorable.
Like Lucy’s Celestial Spirits, the monsters in Chase’s deck had their own personalities, their own minds, their own souls.
They weren’t just cards.
They were real, even when they weren’t summoned, lounging around somewhere in the deck doing whatever it was cards did with their downtime.
“What do you mean, ‘long time no see’?
Pretty sure we saw each other a couple days ago.” Chase looked up at her, shook his head, and sighed.
“And can we skip the whole entrance routine next time?
Did you already forget the cow-dung incident?” “What?!
That was clearly because Master set the magic circle down somewhere terrible!” Dark Magician Girl puffed her cheeks out, properly annoyed just thinking about it.
“Staying aware of your surroundings and reacting fast is a basic skill for any mage.” “If you run into an enemy like that, it’s not going to be as simple as getting cow dung on your boots.” Chase kept a perfectly straight face, doing his best impression of serious.
“Oh, please, Master would never summon us somewhere dangerous,” Dark Magician Girl said, eyes darting anywhere but at him, doing her best to move past the subject.
Truth was, tripping over her own feet on the way out had been entirely her own fault.
Worse, if her actual master, Dark Magician, ever caught wind of this whole cow-dung business, she’d never hear the end of it.
So she hurried over to the coffee table, snatched up Chase’s tea, and pushed it into his hands, changing the subject as fast as she could manage.
“Anyway, Master’s home already!
What did you summon me for?” Then she propped her chin on one hand and murmured to herself, working through it like it was a very serious calculation, before coming out with, “Guess it’s not quite bed-warming time yet.” Chase spat his tea clean across the room.
“…When exactly did I ever let you warm my bed?!” “Hm?
Does Master actually think about that?” Dark Magician Girl crossed her arms and winked.
“Well…
I guess it’s not impossible.” Chase’s lips twitched.
He didn’t dignify that with an answer, just silently drew a Dark Magician card from the deck.
“I’m sorry!
I’m so sorry!” Dark Magician Girl folded instantly, dropping to her knees and flying straight to Chase’s side to wrap both arms around his leg, the picture of pitiful remorse.
Name: Slifer the Sky Dragon Attribute: DIVINE Level: 10 Type: Divine-Beast / Effect ATK: ?
DEF: ?
Description: Requires 3 Tributes to Normal Summon (cannot be Normal Set).
This card’s Normal Summon cannot be negated.
When Normal Summoned, cards and effects cannot be activated.
Once per turn, during the End Phase, if this card was Special Summoned: Send it to the GY.
Gains 1000 ATK/DEF for each card in your hand.
If a monster(s) is Normal or Special Summoned to your opponent’s field in Attack Position: That monster(s) loses 2000 ATK, then if its ATK has been reduced to 0 as a result, destroy it.
Name: Magician of Black Chaos Attribute: DARK Level: 8 Type: Spellcaster / Ritual ATK: 2800 DEF: 2600 Description: You can Ritual Summon this card with “Black Magic Ritual”.
Name: Dark Magician Girl Attribute: DARK Level: 6 Type: Spellcaster / Effect ATK: 2000 DEF: 1700 Description: Gains 300 ATK for every “Dark Magician” or “Magician of Black Chaos” in the GYs.