“Hey Gildarts, word on the street is that your latest request cost the client five mountains, a water dam, and three major bridges.
Is that true?” “Ah, gahahaha!
Was it really that many?
I honestly don’t remember.” Faced with Macao’s questioning, Gildarts scratched the back of his head, looking completely unbothered.
To be fair, he didn’t really need to worry about it.
The property damages would just be automatically deducted from his final payout anyway.
As long as he had enough left over to buy booze and his favorite magazines, he was perfectly content.
Listening from the sidelines, Gray couldn’t help but complain under his breath, “Are we sure this is actually a legal wizard guild and not some undercover Dark Guild?” Cain, who had paused his search on the request board to walk over to Gray and Cana, heard the complaint and couldn’t resist chiming in.
“Gray, to be perfectly honest, your daily behavior isn’t all that different from the degenerates in a Dark Guild either.” “Huh?!
Cain, what the hell is that supposed to mean?
You wanna go right now?!” Extremely offended by Cain’s performance review, Gray immediately started rolling up his sleeves, fully prepared to brawl.
However, Cain delivered a single, casual line that instantly deflated Gray’s battle intent and sent him scrambling in a panic.
“Gray.
Your clothes.” “Ah?!
Since when?!” Finding himself mysteriously down to his boxers yet again, Gray frantically began hunting for his discarded shirt, leaving Cain snickering at the display.
Their playful bickering caught the attention of Gildarts, who was currently chugging a mug of ale.
He turned to Makarov and asked, “Are those two the new rookies?” “Mhm.
The blond one is Cain; he joined last year.
The black-haired boy is Gray; he just joined us this year.” “They’re good seeds,” Gildarts praised, nodding in approval.
Makarov fully agreed with the assessment.
Although both boys were still very young, a veteran of his caliber could easily see their immense latent potential.
This was especially true for Cain—the boy was barely nine years old, yet he was already capable of engineering and innovating his own custom magic formulas.
After laughing at Gray’s expense, Cain subtly leaned over and whispered to Cana, “Hey, Cana.
Are you really not going to go talk to him?” Cana understood exactly what Cain was getting at.
Her entire purpose for journeying to Magnolia and joining Fairy Tail was to finally reveal her identity to Gildarts.
Before today, she had mentally rehearsed this exact meeting a thousand times.
In her happiest fantasies, the moment Gildarts laid eyes on her, he would instantly recognize her features, burst into tears, and sweep her up into a warm, fatherly embrace.
Or, at the very least, she would confidently walk up to him, explain her lineage, and the two of them would share a deeply emotional cry together.
But there was one specific scenario that terrified Cana to her very core: what if she told him the truth, and Gildarts looked down at her and decided she was too weak and pathetic to be his daughter?
Because of this deeply rooted insecurity, Cana was currently a nervous, trembling wreck.
Faced with Cain’s gentle probing, she looked like a helpless, abandoned little animal.
She stole a fleeting, anxious glance across the room at Gildarts, who was currently laughing loudly while trading stories with the other veterans.
“Let’s…
let’s just wait a bit longer…” she mumbled.
With that, she scooped up Shiro from the floor, turned on her heel, and hurriedly walked out of the guild hall.
Watching her retreat, Cain let out a heavy sigh.
“I guess if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” Cain could generally understand Cana’s hesitation.
Gildarts was simply too powerful.
As the undisputed strongest wizard in Fairy Tail right beneath the Master, his sheer presence placed an astronomical amount of psychological pressure on a young girl.
But possessing accurate knowledge of the future plot, Cain knew her anxiety was entirely baseless.
Once Gildarts found out he had a daughter, he would instantly transform into the ultimate, overprotective girl-dad.
The final embers of the evening sun slowly dipped below the horizon, and a blanket of dark night began to envelope the town of Magnolia.
Gildarts was casually strolling down the dirt path toward his personal wooden cabin on the outskirts of town.
As he reached his front door, he finally couldn’t resist turning around and calling out into the darkness, “You know, you’ve been tailing me the entire way from the guild.
What’s the deal?
Are you dying to get my autograph or something?” “Wow, Uncle.
You are incredibly conceited,” Cain’s voice echoed dryly as he stepped out from the shadows.
“What would I even do with your autograph?” Cain wasn’t the least bit surprised that Gildarts had noticed him.
After all, the man standing before him was an absolute monster whose raw power outclassed several of the Ten Wizard Saints combined.
Realizing the kid wasn’t stalking him for a signature, Gildarts looked slightly puzzled.
“No?
Then are you looking for a souvenir from my travels?
Alright, alright, Uncle Gildarts will be generous and gift you one of my absolute, most deeply prized treasures!” Cain’s ears immediately perked up.
A deeply prized treasure?
Did Gildarts actually possess some sort of rare, high-tier magical artifact?
The anime had never mentioned anything like that.
Then again, this was a living, breathing world; it made sense for there to be details that never made it onto a manga page.
“Ta-da!” With a flourish, Gildarts reached into his traveling pack and whipped out a thick magazine.
The cover featured a woman wearing an incredibly skimpy, borderline-nonexistent outfit.
Cain, who had been genuinely holding his breath in anticipation, froze completely solid.
A second later, realizing he had been completely played by the dense adult in front of him, his veins popped.
“YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT!!!” “Hahahahaha!” Seeing the rookie completely explode in frustration made Gildarts intensely proud of his prank, and he roared with booming laughter.
“Listen to me, Uncle Gildarts!” Cain snapped, cutting right through the laughter.
“I came here to tell you something serious.
Cana is your daughter.
The girl with the black ponytail who was sitting right next to me in the guild hall today.” Cain didn’t want to waste another second beating around the bush and dropped the truth bomb raw.
“Huh?
Wait…
WHAT?!” The booming laughter died instantly in Gildarts’ throat.
He stood paralyzed, his brain temporarily short-circuiting before his memory rapidly flashed back to the young girl sitting at Cain’s table earlier that afternoon.
When he was passively observing Cain and Gray, he had indeed noticed that specific little girl staring at him with an incredibly complex, emotional gaze.
With Cain’s words anchoring the memory, the more Gildarts pictured the girl’s face, the more a striking sense of familiarity washed over him.
Suddenly, the little girl’s facial structure seamlessly overlapped with the memory of Cornelia.
The realization struck him like a thunderbolt.
Cain wasn’t lying.
Cana was his child.
His and Cornelia’s daughter.
The absolute certainty of this fact sent a massive surge of pure, ecstatic adrenaline through Gildarts’ veins.
He charged forward like a bullet, scooped Cain off the ground into a crushing bear hug, and bellowed at the sky, “HAHAAHAHA!
A DAUGHTER!
I HAVE A DAUGHTER!!!” “Hey…
let go…
you idiot…
how long has it been…
since you took a bath?!” Cain channeled every ounce of his magical and physical strength into his arms, desperately trying to pry himself away from the veteran, but the hyperactive Gildarts was far too ecstatic to notice the boy’s muffled struggles.
It took several minutes for the towering man to finally calm down enough to set Cain back on his feet.
The moment his boots touched the dirt, Gildarts grabbed him by the shoulders eagerly.
“Cain!
Where is Cana right now?!
Take me to her!
I need to see my daughter!” Cain, who was finally able to draw oxygen back into his lungs, shot him a deeply annoyed glare.
“Forget about it.
She’s in the girls’ dormitory.
Boys aren’t allowed past the front doors, let alone a giant gorilla like you.
Look, I only came out here to deliver the news.
My job is done, I’m heading back to bed.” Gildarts didn’t even process Cain’s departure, his mind completely hyper-focused on plotting exactly how he was going to approach Cana the next morning.
He opened his mouth to ask Cain what kind of food or gifts Cana liked, only to realize the blond kid had already vanished down the dark path.
“Ah, whatever.
I’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Gildarts muttered happily to himself.
He turned to walk into his cabin, pausing suddenly.
“Wait…
where the heck did my model magazine go?” Meanwhile, back in the boys’ dorms, Cain was currently comfortably propped up against his pillows, slowly flipping through Gildarts’ deeply prized ‘treasure.’ He nodded slowly, critiquing each page like a true scholar.
“Hmm, spectacular leg-to-body ratio on this one.
Wow, okay, excellent proportions here.
Oh damn, this page is definitely the masterpiece…
slender waist, massive plot development…” The next morning, Gildarts arrived at the Fairy Tail guild hall incredibly early.
He sat rigidly in a chair right by the entrance, staring unblinkingly at the double doors.
He looked so intense that when Macao and Wakaba walked over to invite him for an early morning drink, he flatly shut them down without looking away.
The refusal left the two veterans deeply disturbed, genuinely wondering if Gildarts had suffered severe brain damage on his latest mission.
Suddenly, the double doors swung open.
Cana walked into the guild hall, casually letting Shiro trot along beside her on a leash.
The sight instantly shattered whatever remaining self-control Gildarts had left.
His body blurred as he launched himself across the room.
Before Cana could even process what was happening, she was scooped high up into the air.
Gildarts held her tightly against his chest, his voice trembling with pure, unadulterated emotion.
“Cana…
my daughter!” “Huh?!
Wait…
ah…” Cana had initially been terrified by the legendary S-Class wizard suddenly charging her like a wild beast.
But the moment the words “my daughter” echoed in her ears, her entire world stood still.
The dam broke instantly, and a flood of hot tears erupted from her eyes.
She wrapped her small arms tightly around Gildarts’ massive neck, burying her face deeply into his shoulder.
Letting out a choked, tearful sob, she finally cried out the single word she had been waiting her entire life to say: “Daddy!”