Right now, Gildarts was in a state of absolute euphoria.
He was rubbing his scruffy, stubble-covered face aggressively against Cana’s soft, delicate cheek.
At first, swept up in the intense emotion of finally acknowledging her father, Cana didn’t mind.
But as the seconds dragged on, she couldn’t take it anymore.
She forcefully jammed her small hands against his face to shove him away.
“Dad!
You seriously need to shave!
Your beard is scratching my face off!” “Ah!
Even Cana’s look of pure disgust is so incredibly adorable!” Gildarts cooed, a goofy grin on his face.
Watching this display, the rest of the guild members collectively shuddered.
Gray couldn’t help but whisper under his breath, “Man, he looks like a total creep right now.” The surrounding veterans nodded in solemn agreement.
Gildarts didn’t care about their judgments at all.
Even after Cana managed to squirm out of his crushing embrace, he kept giddily skipping around the hall, grabbing anyone within arm’s reach and boasting, “Cana is my daughter!
Look at her!
Isn’t she the cutest?!” Watching the legendary S-Class wizard act like an over-excited toddler, Cain walked over and patted Cana on the shoulder.
“You’ve got your work cut out for you.
Stay strong.” “Sigh…” Cana let out a long, exhausted sigh, but then she turned to look at Cain with deep sincerity.
“Cain, thank you.” Cain knew exactly why she was thanking him.
In the entire guild, he was the only one who knew her secret identity.
If he hadn’t stepped up and told Gildarts the truth face-to-face, relying on her own timid courage, there was no telling how many years it would have taken her to finally speak up.
Cain simply waved his hand dismissively.
“It’s no big deal.
When I first joined the guild, didn’t you help me out a ton too?” “Oh?
Gildarts, you’re back?” “Yo, Ivan!
Little Laxus!
Hey, did you guys hear?
Cana is my daughter!
Look at how cute she is, gahahaha!” Ivan and Laxus, who had just walked through the hole in the wall after completing a request, stared blankly at each other.
Did we know Cana was his daughter?
No.
Ivan let out a cold, dismissive grunt, completely ignoring Gildarts’ hyperactive babbling, and immediately made his way up to the second floor.
Cain walked over to Laxus and asked curiously, “How did it feel to tackle your very first S-Class request?” That’s right.
The reason Laxus had been away for so long was that he had traveled with Ivan to participate in an official S-Class mission.
Of course, Ivan, being a full S-Class wizard, had handled the heavy lifting, while Laxus mostly acted as support.
But even so, participating in a mission of that caliber provided a massive, invaluable boost to Laxus’s combat experience and personal growth.
Laxus smiled, a look of genuine pride on his face.
“It felt amazing.
But it also made me realize how weak I still am.
I barely could help my dad out with the real threats.” After a brief moment of reflection, he quickly bounced back and excitedly began sharing some of the crazy things he had seen during the S-Class mission with Cain and the others.
Listening quietly, Cain felt a wave of sentimentality.
Right now, Laxus was still a bright, open-minded, and kind-hearted kid.
But in the original timeline, after Ivan was caught running illicit schemes and forcefully exiled from Fairy Tail by Master Makarov, things began to spiral.
No matter how hard Laxus trained, or what incredible achievements he brought home, people always casually brushed it off with a dismissive, “Well, expected nothing less from Makarov’s grandson.” Utterly starved for genuine validation, he eventually began down a dark, rebellious path, plotting to violently seize control of the guild to prove he was superior to Makarov.
That rebellion ultimately triggered the Battle of Fairy Tail, resulting in Makarov tearfully exiling his own grandson.
Recalling this, Cain couldn’t help but complain internally.
Honestly, it’s just pure drama.
Having a Wizard Saint for a grandfather should be something you brag about, not resent!
If this were my old world, he could have just written an essay titled ‘My Grandpa is a Wizard Saint’ and scored a perfect 100 on his exams.
Come to think of it, when Cain first learned that Ivan Dreyar was officially an S-Class wizard, he had been slightly surprised.
But reflecting on it, it made sense.
After being exiled from Fairy Tail, Ivan went on to found Raven Tail, a powerful Dark Guild that managed to operate in the shadows for years until a grown-up Laxus single-handedly demolished their entire elite roster during the Grand Magic Games.
(To be completely honest, the fact that a known Dark Guild was allowed to legally register and compete in a national tournament was a total joke.
Wouldn’t the Magic Council or the other guilds instantly jump them?) The fact that Raven Tail managed to survive and thrive for so long proved that Ivan’s personal combat prowess was undeniably elite.
If he were a weakling, the moment the other vicious Dark Guilds found out he was an exile from a legal Light Guild, they would have slaughtered him and seized his assets immediately.
“Hey, Cain,” Laxus suddenly said, snapping out of his storytelling.
“Wanna have that long-overdue rematch?” “Let’s do it!” Cain replied instantly.
Having just completed the engineering for his three original enhancement spells, his hands were practically itching for a proper combat test.
The main issue was that there weren’t many people his age in the guild capable of pushing him.
Even if Laxus hadn’t brought it up, Cain would have proposed a sparring match himself.
With the challenge accepted, Cain, Laxus, and Gray headed toward the training grounds behind the mountain.
Cana didn’t tag along this time, but Gray, desperately curious to gauge the true peak of his peers’ strength, eagerly followed behind.
At the edge of the clearing, Cain unbuckled his heavy gravity vest and unstrapped his wrist and ankle weights.
He stretched his limbs, feeling completely weightless, and stared across the dirt with eyes burning with battle intent.
Seeing that both were in position, Gray took a safe distance and shouted, “Start!” signaling the beginning of the match.
The exact second Gray’s voice dropped, three separate magic circles flashed brilliantly around Cain’s body in rapid succession: “Holy Light: Aegis!
Holy Light: Haste!
Holy Light: Might!” While Cain was rapidly cycling through his self-buffs, Laxus didn’t sit idly by.
Violent arcs of golden electricity began crackling furiously across his skin.
He was clearly channeling his own magical reinforcement.
With their respective augmentations complete, the two locked eyes.
A split second later, the dirt beneath their boots exploded into clouds of dust as both launched themselves forward like bullets.
“Lightning Dragon’s Breakdown Fist!” Laxus drove a right punch coated in roaring, tempestuous lightning straight toward Cain.
Cain didn’t back down, gathering his Holy Light magic and throwing a punch right back.
However, Cain still severely miscalculated the sheer, explosive progression of Laxus’s power.
Even with the raw strength amplification of Holy Light: Might, he was instantly overwhelmed by the devastating impact of the Breakdown Fist and sent flying across the clearing.
Fortunately, thanks to the heavily reinforced physical defense provided by Holy Light: Aegis, Cain didn’t sustain any actual internal damage.
Furthermore, his Holy Light magic successfully neutralized the paralyzing current before it could freeze his muscles.
Before he could even steady his footing upon landing, a massive thunderbolt ripped straight out of the sky above him.
BOOM!
A localized explosion rocked the dirt, completely engulfing Cain’s position in a thick shroud of smoke.
Standing on the sidelines, Gray stared in utter disbelief.
He hadn’t expected Cain—who could easily counter his Ice-Make magic—to fall into such a crushing disadvantage from the very first exchange.
Laxus, however, didn’t relax his posture for a single second.
He lowered his stance, his eyes narrowing as he stared intensely at the rising smoke cloud.
Suddenly, six piercing arrows of light tore through the dust.
Laxus swiftly ducked and sidestepped the projectiles, letting out a booming laugh.
“I knew it wouldn’t be that easy to take you down!” “Warm-up’s over, Laxus,” Cain’s voice echoed from the thinning smoke as he casually rolled his neck.
Gray, watching from afar, couldn’t comprehend how Cain had managed to survive that lightning strike untouched.
In reality, by the time Cain realized the thunderbolt was descending, it was already too late to dodge.
Laxus had perfectly calculated his landing trajectory.
The second his Breakdown Fist sent Cain flying, Laxus had pre-cast the lightning strike at the exact coordinates of Cain’s fall.
In that fraction of a second before impact, Cain had summoned his Radiant Shield directly above his head, raw-tanking the thunderbolt’s destructive payload so he could escape the blast radius uninjured.
“Lightning Dragon’s Roar!” “Radiant Plume Detonation!” A torrent of violent lightning wind clashed head-on with a swarm of countless, razor-sharp feathers composed of pure light.
Just as Laxus assumed his roar would effortlessly shred through the projectiles like he had done to the light arrows in their last fight…
Cain whispered a single command: “Detonate.” Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!!!
The countless light feathers simultaneously exploded into a chain reaction of blinding, concussive blasts.
The sheer force of the combined explosions forcefully tore Laxus’s lightning roar into shredded currents.
“What?!” Before Laxus could recover from his surprise, a golden blur tore straight through the residual smoke.
A fist shimmering with intense Holy Light slammed heavily against Laxus’s cheek.
However, Laxus’s combat reflexes were elite.
Instead of fighting the kinetic force of the punch, he used the momentum to pivot his entire body, swinging his left leg around in a vicious, lightning-coated tail-whip kick.
Cain’s eyes lit up at the counter.
He hadn’t expected Laxus to launch an attack while taking a direct hit to the face.
With no time to back off, Cain threw up both arms to block the brutal horizontal kick.
The impact forced both boys backward, creating a wide gap between them.
They locked eyes, both seeing the absolute, raging fire of battle intent burning within the other.
Without a word, they charged again.
They collided in the center of the clearing, exchanging a frantic, brutal blur of punches, elbow strikes, and knees.
For several minutes, the clearing became an absolute warzone.
Stray lightning bolts gouged deep, charred craters into the earth, while brilliant golden shockwaves flared like an impregnable wall, forcefully deflecting Laxus’s wild electrical currents.
Laxus’s offense was like a tempestuous, endless ocean wave, crashing down with overwhelming fury, one strike after another.
But Cain stood his ground like an ancient, immovable cliffside, refusing to yield an inch.
His high-speed counterattacks were so precise and heavy that they gave Laxus a massive headache.
Eventually, both boys completely ran out of stamina and magic power.
They collapsed onto the dirt side-by-side, entirely immobile, gasping heavily for air as the match officially concluded in a hard-fought draw.