Chapter 150:
– Haru –
The glare the blonde elf was giving me was adorable.
Serie stood at the edge of the cliff with her arms crossed, her golden hair still slightly disheveled from the wind that had kicked up during the final moments of the first task, and those ancient elf eyes of hers were narrowed into slits that I was fairly certain were supposed to be intimidating.
Her bare foot tapped against the stone in a rapid, agitated rhythm. Her pointed ears were angled back like an irritated cat's. She looked like she wanted to set me on fire, resurrect me, and then set me on fire again.
It was genuinely one of the cutest things I had ever seen.
The first task had ended about ten minutes ago, and the dust, both literal and metaphorical, was still settling over the forest below.
Columns of smoke drifted lazily from where Natsu had enthusiastically remodeled several acres of ancient woodland. A section of the northern tree line glittered with residual frost from Gray's glacier, which had only partially melted despite the midday sun. Craters dotted the landscape in overlapping patterns where spell after spell had hammered the earth during the final confrontation with my clone.
My clone. My giant, fifty foot, ten tailed, shadow clone fox that I had sent lumbering through the exam forest as a "field hazard" without telling Serie.
In my defense, the exam had been getting boring. Contestants were settling into safe, predictable patterns. Bird catching and ambush tactics were all well and good, but I was the co-examiner. I had a responsibility to push these mages beyond their comfort zones.
The fact that it also happened to be hilarious was just a bonus.
The mages in the forest had actually managed to destroy it, which impressed me more than I let on.
That clone had carried less than one percent of my actual power, a sliver of a fraction, barely a whisper of what I could really do. But one percent of a True Demon Lord who had eaten a god's soul and evolved past the boundaries of what most beings considered possible was still a hell of a lot of power.
The fact that they had coordinated well enough to bring it down, even with the Fairy Tail mages spearheading the assault, spoke volumes about the quality of candidates Serie had attracted.
Not that I was going to tell her that right now. She looked like she might actually try to curse me, and while it wouldn't work, the attempt would probably scare Daenerys.
Speaking of Daenerys.
My future wife was still sitting beside me on the cliff's edge, and her mouth had not fully closed in roughly six minutes. Her violet eyes were wide, darting between the devastated forest below and me, then back to the forest, then back to me, as if she were trying to reconcile the man who cooked her breakfast and rubbed her feet with the entity whose shadow clone had just shaken a mountain range.
"That was you," she whispered for the third time since the clone had popped. "That giant golden thing was you?"
I opened my mouth to respond, but Irene beat me to it.
"A fraction of him, darling," Irene corrected from her perch a few feet away. She shot Serie a look so smug it could have curdled milk at thirty paces. "And yet your examinees still needed help from my daughter and her friends to bring it down. Fascinating, wouldn't you say?"
Serie's ears twitched. The left one first, then the right, a rapid flutter of cartilage that she clearly could not control and equally clearly wished she could.
What really seemed to bother Serie, though, and this was the part I found genuinely interesting, was who had delivered the killing blow.
It was Frieren. Frieren, who had raised her staff, formed a single massive spell circle, and blasted my clone directly in the face with a beam of condensed purple light that punched clean through its skull and popped the shadow construct like a soap bubble.
The clone's last memory before dissolving was the sight of Frieren's completely blank, emotionless expression as she casually annihilated it.
And Serie was furious about it. Which confused me.
"Why are you mad she was the one to deliver the final blow?" I asked, looking between Serie's rigid posture and the dissipating smoke below where Frieren was probably already wandering off to find something shiny. "Aren't you two friends? She literally asked me to make you those cookies. She went out of her way to do something nice for you, and you're mad that she did well?"
Serie's entire body went stiff. "We are not friends," she said, her voice clipped and precise and about two octaves higher than her normal register. Her ears were practically vibrating now. "She is a former student," Serie continued, lifting her chin with regal disdain that was thoroughly undermined by the pink creeping up the tips of those traitorous ears. "A mediocre one, at that. Her choice to bring me baked goods is entirely her own decision and reflects a sentimental attachment that I have never encouraged or reciprocated..."
I let the silence stretch for a beat, watching Serie's ears flutter and her jaw clench and her bare toes curl against the stone.
She was lying through her teeth and we both knew it.
I didn't buy the tsundere act for a second.
But I also knew when to stop pushing. Serie had the emotional availability of a particularly guarded cactus, and pressing harder would only make her pricklier.
I let it go with a grin that I knew she found infuriating, and turned back to Daenerys.
She was still staring at the forest in shock over everything she had witnessed.
"Hey," I said softly, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. My tails curled around her instinctively, two of them draping over her shoulders like a warm golden shawl, another resting across her lap where the smallest curve of her stomach was just barely visible beneath the pale fabric of her dress. "Talk to me. What did you think about learning magic now?"
Daenerys was quiet for a long moment, and I could practically hear the thoughts turning behind those eyes.
"It's amazing," she said finally, her voice soft but steady. "And terrifying. Both of those things at the same time, and I don't think one cancels out the other." She paused, and her free hand drifted to her stomach. "Will I be able to do that?" she asked, and the question carried more weight than the words suggested. "Will I be able to learn enough to stand beside all of you and not just be the woman watching from the cliff?" Her fingers pressed a little more firmly against her stomach. "Will our child be that powerful?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but Serie got there first.
"Yes," Serie said, and her voice had shifted completely. The irritation, the tsundere posturing, the bruised ego over Frieren, all of it had evaporated like morning frost. What remained was the voice of a teacher. "I told you before. Your fire affinity is the cleanest I have seen in centuries. Your magical potential is not merely promising, it is extraordinary. I have trained hundreds of mages across the span of my life, and the vast majority of them started with a fraction of what you carry inside you without even knowing it." Serie's golden eyes burned with something fierce and protective and almost possessive. "I will make you my greatest student."
The conviction in her words was so absolute that even Irene paused for a moment.
Only one moment.
Here we go, I thought to myself.
"Or," Irene said, uncrossing her legs and rising from her seat, "you could study under me instead and accomplish all of that in a tenth of the time," she offered Daenerys.
Daenerys blinked in surprise at that. "You want to teach me magic as well?"
Serie's head snapped toward her. "Excuse me!? Don't you dare try to steal MY apprentice, you big titted dragon slut."
Irene turned slowly. Very slowly. Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "What," Irene said, "did you just call me, you arrogant little elf?"
"You heard me perfectly well, you overgrown fire breathing harlot."
"Harlot?" Irene's hand went to her chest in mock offense, which only served to emphasize exactly the assets Serie had just insulted. "Bold words from a flat chested shut in."
"I am not flat chested! I am proportionally elegant!"
"You are proportionally a cutting board, and your tower smells like old books and desperation."
I sighed. The sigh of a man who had been dating over a dozen women from across the multiverse long enough to recognize the exact moment when a disagreement between two powerful females crossed the invisible line from "argument" into "territory that no sane man should involve himself in under any circumstances."
I had learned this lesson the hard way. Multiple times.
There were forces in the universe that even a True Demon Lord did not challenge.
"...cock hungry serpent who probably sheds her skin like the snake she is..."
"...frigid little bookworm who wouldn't know what to do with a man if one landed in her lap with an instruction manual..."
Yeah. Time to go… This is gonna last a while I think.
I scooped Daenerys up in a princess carry, my tails adjusting around her to keep her comfortable and secure against my chest.
She let out a small surprised sound, her hands finding my shoulders, her violet eyes blinking up at me.
I kissed her cheek and felt her smile against my jaw. "Let's go congratulate everyone who passed the first stage of the exam," I said, already walking toward the path down the cliffside while behind us the two most powerful female mages their respective worlds had ever produced continued to call each other things that would have made a sailor blush.
"I BET THE REASON YOU HAVE YOUR HEAD SO HIGH UP IN THE CLOUDS IS BECAUSE YOU CAN'T LOOK DOWN WITH THOSE HUGE TITS BLOCKING HALF YOUR VIEW!"
"AT LEAST WHEN I GO ON A DATE WITH A MAN, HE WON'T GET ARRESTED BY THE MAGIC POLICE THINKING HE'S A PREDATOR!"
Daenerys tucked her face into my neck, her shoulders shaking with barely contained laughter. "Are they going to be okay?" she asked, her voice muffled and trembling with the effort of not cackling.
"They'll be best friends within a week," I said with the absolute confidence of a man who had watched this exact pattern play out at least four times before. "Trust me…"
– Land (Frieren) –
That was certainly an interesting first stage…
Land sat in his bedroom, three hundred kilometers away from the exam forest, his physical body cross legged on his bed with a cup of cold tea on the nightstand and the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun.
His breathing was steady. His heartbeat was calm.
His projection, the perfect illusory copy of himself that walked and talked and cast magic with flawless skill, stood among the other successful examinees at the forest's edge and gave absolutely no indication that the real Land was anywhere other than right there.
Nobody had noticed. Nobody ever noticed.
That was the entire point.
The first task itself had been simple enough in concept. Find a Stille. Capture it alive. Keep possession of it until sunset. The kind of exam that tested resourcefulness, teamwork, and the ability to adapt under pressure.
Land's projection had handled it cleanly, efficiently, and without drawing unnecessary attention to itself. His team had located their bird within the first hour, secured it in a simple but effective containment barrier, and spent the remainder of the task avoiding confrontation with other teams while maintaining a low profile.
The giant fifty foot tall golden fox monster had complicated things somewhat.
His projection had done what any sensible mage would do when confronted with an entity of that magnitude. It ran. It found defensible ground. It maintained its barrier around the Stille and waited for the situation to develop.
Others had not been so prudent.
The mages from that foreign guild he had never heard of until today, Fairy Tail, had attacked it immediately.
And then the silver haired elf had ended it.
The fox monster was dead. Or rather, it had never been alive. Land had watched carefully as it vanished in a giant puff of nothing but smoke.
It was not real. Like a projection.
That detail had caught his attention more than anything else in the exam so far.
Now he stood, or rather his projection stood, in the wide clearing at the forest's edge where all the teams that had successfully maintained possession of their Stille had been directed to gather. Some sat in clusters, comparing bruises and stories. Others stood alone, nursing injuries or staring at nothing with the hollow eyed look of people who had just survived something they hadn't been prepared for.
Then a man walked onto the stage in front of all of them.
Land's projection studied him with the focused, detached attention that was his greatest strength.
He had handsome features framed by golden hair that caught the light in ways that seemed almost deliberate. His eyes were unusual gold with vertical slit pupils like an animal's.
But the most striking features were the ones that shouldn't have existed on a human body. Fox ears sat atop his head, the same golden shade as his hair, swiveling independently with subtle movements that tracked sounds Land's own ears couldn't detect. And behind him, fanning out in a wide arc that demanded attention simply by existing, were ten golden tails. They moved with independent purpose, some swaying lazily, others curling and uncurling in slow rhythmic patterns, the tips occasionally flickering with wisps of blue flame that appeared and vanished like breathing.
Ten tails? Land's mind made the connection instantly.
The giant fox monster in the forest had possessed ten tails.
This man possessed ten tails.
The simplest explanation was usually the correct one. This fox man had created the giant monster. Was this fox man also skilled in projection magic?
The construct had been extraordinary. Physically massive, radiating tremendous magical pressure, capable of independent action and tactical decision making. It had chased candidates, cornered teams, forced mages to choose between protecting their Stille and protecting themselves. It had behaved with a degree of autonomy and intelligence that most conjured constructs simply could not achieve.
If this fox man operated on a similar principle, even if the mechanics were different, then Land was looking at perhaps the most advanced practitioner of remote combat he had ever encountered. Someone who could project a version of himself powerful enough to shake a mountain range while presumably sitting somewhere comfortable eating lunch.
Land respected that. Deeply.
The pretty girl standing beside the fox man was a different matter. She was striking in a delicate, almost fragile way, with silver hair that fell past her shoulders like liquid moonlight and wide violet eyes that took in the crowd with a mixture of curiosity and quiet wonder. She was young, or at least young in the way that mattered. Not in years necessarily, but in experience. Land could sense magic in her, a genuine and surprisingly strong reservoir of it sitting deep in her core like an ember waiting for kindling.
Fire affinity, if he had to guess, based on the way her ambient energy pulsed with warmth.
But she didn't feel like a mage. Not yet. She was an apprentice. Early stages. Probably just learning her first spells.
Interesting company for a man who could project mountain sized fox constructs.
The fox man stepped to the center of the stage, his tails settling into a relaxed fan behind him, and cleared his throat.
The murmuring died instantly.
"Alright, congratulations to everyone still standing. My name is Haru. I'm the co-examiner of the First Class Mage Exam, recruited by Serie herself." He paused, and a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he gestured to the silver haired girl beside him. "And this is my future wife and Serie's newest apprentice, Daenerys Targaryen."
The silver haired girl, Daenerys, smiled at the fox man with a fondness that was almost luminous. Then she turned toward the crowd, seemed to realize that several dozen battle hardened mages were all staring at her at once, and gave an awkward little wave that was so endearingly out of place among all this power and destruction that a few candidates actually smiled back.
Land filed both pieces of information away with quiet efficiency. Future wife. Serie's newest apprentice. The first detail was personal and largely irrelevant. The second was fascinating. Serie, the legendary mage who had lived for close to a millennium, who was widely regarded as the most powerful practitioner of magic in the entire world, who had not taken a new apprentice in decades because no one met her impossible standards, had personally recruited this fox man as her co-examiner and had simultaneously accepted a new student. A student who, from what Land could sense, had only just begun touching her own magical potential.
The moment of professional contemplation was shattered by a voice that could generously be described as enthusiastic and accurately described as deafening.
"HAHAHA! WE FINALLY KICKED YOUR ASS IN THE FOREST, HARU!"
The pink haired fire mage from the foreign guild, the one who had charged the giant fox head on while laughing like a maniac, was standing near the front of the crowd with his fists raised above his head and a grin so wide it looked physically uncomfortable. Small tongues of flame licked from the corners of his mouth as he spoke, as if his excitement was literally too hot for his body to contain.
"HOW DID YOU LIKE MY FLAMES, HUH?! BET YOU DIDN'T EXPECT THAT! NATSU DRAGNEEL, ONE! GIANT FOX, ZERO!"
The sheer volume of the outburst made several nearby candidates flinch.
Land watched the display with detached curiosity. The pink haired mage, Natsu, was powerful. That much was undeniable. His fire magic operated on principles that Land had never encountered before, generating flames from internal energy rather than manipulating external mana, and the raw destructive output he had demonstrated in the forest placed him comfortably above the vast majority of candidates present.
His tactical intelligence, however, appeared to be inversely proportional to his volume.
A gauntleted fist connected with the back of Natsu's skull with a sharp crack that echoed across the clearing.
His head snapped forward, his victory speech dying mid syllable, and he stumbled two steps before catching himself and whipping around with an indignant yelp. "OW! ERZA, WHAT THE HELL!"
The redheaded woman in the armor, Erza, stood behind him with her arms crossed and an expression that could have frozen lava.
"Haru was obviously holding back, Natsu," she said, her voice firm and clipped with the tone of someone who had delivered this particular lecture many, many times before. "That was a mere shadow clone. You didn't come close to besting him at his full power. Show some respect!"
Land's attention sharpened.
Shadow clone? The term was unfamiliar in his existing magical vocabulary, but the concept it described was immediately recognizable. A clone. A duplicate. The giant fox had not merely been a construct or a conjured beast. It had been a clone of Haru himself. Did that mean that Haru could also use some kind of magic to transform into a giant monster and not just create one through a projection?
And Erza, who clearly knew this man personally and had fought alongside or against him before, was stating with absolute conviction that what they had fought in the forest was not even close to the real thing.
Land wasn't the only one processing this information. Around him, mutters rippled through the assembled candidates like stones dropped into still water.
"That's impossible," a broad shouldered man to Land's left said, shaking his head. His robes were singed and his left arm hung in a makeshift sling from the forest battle. "That giant fox was one of the strongest things I've ever fought. There's no way this guy was holding back!"
His companion whispered back with wide, haunted eyes. "If that was him holding back, what does full power even look like?"
"Maybe the armor girl is exaggerating."
The speculation might have continued indefinitely if not for who spoke up next. The silver haired elf girl spoke up. "That clone was using less than one percent of Haru's full power."
The clearing went silent.
Less than one percent? Land watched the reactions cascade through the crowd. Three hundred kilometers away, Land set his teacup down very carefully on the nightstand. A mage who could project a version of himself powerful enough to terrorize an entire exam forest while operating at less than one percent output?
"Bullshit." The word left Land's projection before he could stop it.
Several nearby candidates turned to stare at him. Land's projection didn't flinch, didn't blink, didn't show a single outward sign that the outburst had been anything other than deliberate.
Three hundred kilometers away, the real Land winced.
That had been a mistake. He never drew attention to himself. The entire foundation of his approach to combat, to magic, to life in general, was built on the principle of not being noticed. Of being somewhere else while everyone focused on the version of him that didn't matter.
Letting emotion crack that discipline, even for a single word, was sloppy.
But the claim was absurd. Less than one percent? The giant fox had tanked a combined assault from dozens of mages. It had required the coordinated efforts of everyone present, including the elf girl who Land was growing increasingly sure was the legendary mage "Frieren" herself, to bring down…
And that was less than one percent of this man's capability?
No. Land didn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. There were limits to what was possible, boundaries that even the most exceptional mages could not cross, and this claim flew past those boundaries.
The silver haired elf simply shrugged.
Land's projection opened its mouth to press the issue, to demand proof or at least an explanation that didn't defy the fundamental laws of magical theory, when Haru's eyes found him.
When those gold eyes landed on Land, they stopped. Those vertical slit pupils dilated fractionally, and for one terrible, crystalline instant, Land felt as though every layer of concealment he had ever built, every barrier, every misdirection, every carefully maintained illusion of presence, had become transparent.
"It's rude," Haru said, and his voice was still casual, still friendly, "to not be here in person when taking a test."
Land's projection blinked.
Three hundred kilometers away, the real Land's blood went cold. He knows.
Haru snapped his fingers.
Something seized Land's real body with a force that was absolute and irresistible and utterly beyond his comprehension.
One moment he was sitting cross legged on his bed in his locked bedroom three hundred kilometers away.
The next moment he was standing in the clearing.
His real body. His actual, physical, flesh and blood body, standing on trampled grass in the afternoon sun, right next to his own projection.
Land stared at himself. His projection stared back at him. The two identical versions of Land regarded each other for one surreal, frozen heartbeat before the projection flickered and dissolved, its purpose rendered moot by the sudden and violent arrival of the original.
Around him, other examinees blinked in confusion. A few looked between the spot where Land's projection had been and where Land now stood with the befuddled expressions of people trying to solve a visual puzzle they hadn't been given all the pieces for.
"Wait, were there two of him just now?"
"I thought he was standing over there a second ago."
"Did he just... appear?"
Land's heart was hammering. He had been forcibly teleported. Over three hundred kilometers. In an instant. With a snap of fingers.
Land forced his heartbeat to slow. He commanded his hands to stop trembling. It took him four seconds. Four seconds where his carefully constructed worldview of what was and wasn't possible rearranged itself around a new and deeply uncomfortable truth.
Less than one percent…? He still didn't want to believe it. But the gap between what he wanted to believe and what the evidence was telling him had just narrowed considerably.
"Alright then," Haru said, completely ignoring the fact that he had just ripped a man's physical body across three hundred kilometers of space as casually. "Time for the second stage of the exam." His grin widened. "I hope nobody has a fear of enclosed spaces, because you're all going dungeon diving next!"
– Haru –
Daenerys leaned in close. "I'm fairly certain you just terrified that man in the glasses…"
I glanced toward where the projection mage was standing.
I laughed and pressed my lips against her temple. "I was just pranking him a bit," I said. "He was trying to be lazy and pass the exam with just a clone. Sitting at home in his bedroom while his projection did all the work." I shook my head with mock disappointment. "I respect the technique, I really do. His projection magic is incredible. But come on. If you're going to take a test, at least have the decency to show up!" My tails swayed behind me.
Daenerys gave me that look. The "I see right through you" look. She was getting terrifyingly good at it.
"You wanted to show off," she said. She got me there.
"I thought it was cool and wanted to show off," I confirmed without an ounce of shame.
She shook her head, but her smile betrayed her.
I turned back to the crowd and clapped my hands together, the sound cutting through the lingering murmurs about dungeons and enclosed spaces and the ongoing existential crisis several candidates were quietly having about the "one percent" revelation.
"Before you all head into the dungeons," I announced, raising my voice to carry across the clearing, "I made you all bentos. Eat up and regain your strength first."
I snapped my fingers, this time with considerably less reality bending intent, and a long table materialized at the edge of the stage. Rows upon rows of neatly wrapped bento boxes covered its surface.
I had prepared them earlier that morning in the Fox Hole's kitchen, using my Ultimate Skill to ensure every grain of rice was perfect, every cut of meat was seasoned to draw out maximum flavor, every arrangement of vegetables balanced nutrition with visual appeal. There were grilled teriyaki chicken thighs glazed to a deep amber shine, fluffy tamagoyaki rolled with practiced hands, pickled vegetables in colors that ranged from pale pink to vibrant orange, sesame broccoli, crispy tonkatsu, and rice balls.
Serie would have just thrown them into the dungeon immediately. I knew that with absolute certainty and I hadn't even known her for that long.
I was not going to be that kind of examiner. And that went against my mindset as a chef as well. People weren't allowed to go hungry during any test I was administering.
They were tired. They were hungry. They deserved to eat.
"Line up, grab one each, and find somewhere to sit," I called out. "You've got thirty minutes."
The initial response was cautious. Tentative hands reached for the boxes with the wariness of people who half expected the food to be another exam challenge.
A girl near the front opened hers, peeked inside, and went very still. Then she took a bite of the teriyaki chicken. A sound escaped her throat that was somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, and then tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks in two clean lines. "This is the best thing I've ever eaten," she whispered to no one in particular.
It spread from there.
Candidate after candidate opened their bento, took that first bite, and experienced what I had long ago accepted was the inevitable result of combining a lifetime of professional culinary training with an Ultimate Skill that elevated cooking from craft to conceptual art form.
A burly man with a scarred jaw bit into a piece of tonkatsu and made a sound like he'd been punched in the soul.
A pair of women sharing a bench held each other and sobbed openly over their tamagoyaki.
A stoic looking mage with sharp eyes and thin lips took one bite of rice, set his chopsticks down, pressed both palms flat on his knees, and stared at the sky for fifteen seconds without blinking.
Half the clearing was in tears within three minutes.
I leaned against the stage and watched the chaos of emotional eating unfold with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had caused this exact reaction hundreds of times before and never once gotten tired of it.
Daenerys stood beside me, nibbling at her own bento with the careful pace of a pregnant woman who had learned the hard way that eating too fast triggered nausea, and she kept glancing between the weeping mages and me with an expression that said she was simultaneously impressed and mildly concerned. "Is this normal?" she asked.
"Every time," I said. My attention drifted across the clearing until I found the person I was looking for.
Erza was sitting on a fallen log near the forest's edge with Natsu on her left and Gray on her right. Natsu was already on his second bento, having inhaled the first one so fast I wasn't entirely sure he had chewed. Gray was eating shirtless, as was apparently his default state of being, and seemed to be savoring every bite with quiet intensity.
Erza sat between them with her bento balanced on her armored knees, and I watched her carefully as her fingers unclasped the wrapping and lifted the lid.
She froze.
Inside her bento, every single rice ball was shaped into a heart. Her eyes went wide. Her lips parted. Her gauntleted fingers tightened on the edges of the box. Her face was so red. She was going to combust.
Natsu, because Natsu possessed the self preservation instincts of a lemming with a death wish, leaned over and peeked into her bento. His grin stretched so wide it looked like it might split his face in half.
"OOOOH!" He threw his head back, cupping his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. "ERZA'S GOT LITTLE HEARTS IN HER RICE! HARU MADE HER LOVE RICE! ERZA AND HARU, SITTING IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-I-"
Erza's fist connected with the side of his head with a sound like a thunderclap.
Natsu left the ground at an angle of approximately forty five degrees, his body spinning in a tight horizontal rotation, flames trailing from his scarf as he sailed over the heads of at least a dozen startled candidates and disappeared into the tree line with a distant crash of splintering wood and a fading "WORTH IIIIIIIT..."
Gray didn't even look up from his bento. "Idiot," he muttered around a mouthful of tonkatsu.
Erza sat perfectly still on the log, her fist still extended from the punch, her face blazing crimson, her eyes fixed on her heart shaped rice balls with an intensity that suggested she was trying to decide whether to eat them or bury them where no one would ever find them.
Then, very slowly, with careful deliberation, she picked up one of the hearts with her chopsticks. She stared at it. Her blush somehow deepened further, achieving a shade of red that I hadn't previously believed was possible on human skin.
She put it in her mouth.
Her eyes closed. Her shoulders softened. And through the crimson embarrassment and the lingering mortification, the smallest, most helplessly genuine smile curved across her lips.
Daenerys tugged on my sleeve and leaned in close. "So that's Irene's daughter," she murmured, tilting her head slightly as she watched Erza very carefully eat another heart shaped rice ball while pretending she wasn't savoring every single bite. "She's quite pretty, isn't she." It wasn't really a question.
Daenerys had a way of stating observations that sounded like questions but were actually invitations for me to incriminate myself. She had gotten very good at it in a remarkably short time.
Her eyes slid back to me with a glint of mischief that I recognized as dangerous. "Have you slept with her and her mother? Just like Catelyn and Sansa Stark?"
There was no point in being anything less than honest with Daenerys. I was honest with all of my girls. "I tried to," I admitted. "But Erza is shyer than she looks. She came to my room with Irene one night, and Irene was doing her whole seductive dragon mother routine, guiding things along, being confident enough for both of them. Erza was trying so hard to be brave about it. She got undressed. She straddled me. She looked down." I paused for effect. "And then she fainted."
Daenerys blinked. "She fainted?"
"Out cold. Like someone blew out a candle. Just..." I mimed the motion of someone going limp and toppling sideways. "Gone."
"How does a woman who can summon hundreds of swords and face down a giant fox monster get nervous at the sight of a simple cock?" she wondered aloud with genuine bewilderment.
I gasped. Actually gasped. My hand went to my chest in exaggerated offense, my tails puffing up behind me. "THERE IS NOTHING SIMPLE ABOUT MY COCK!" I muttered with wounded dignity.
Daenerys gave me a teasing wink. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, my love."
I opened my mouth to defend my honor in greater detail when a voice cut in from behind us. "What is going on here, and is this filthy talk really necessary during my exam?"
Serie stood behind us with her arms crossed and her bare foot tapping against the stage.
Her ears were still slightly pink at the tips, though whether that was residual anger from her argument with Irene or a reaction to overhearing the word "cock" in proximity to her exam, I couldn't tell.
I gave her a pointed look.
"You were saying way more shameless stuff to Irene not even twenty minutes ago," I said flatly. "I distinctly remember the phrase 'big titted dragon slut' coming out of your mouth. And I'm fairly sure you called her a cock hungry serpent at one point."
Serie's ears went from pink to red. "That was a private conversation!"
"You were screaming it on a cliff overlooking the exam forest." I decided to press my luck because apparently I had a death wish that expressed itself exclusively through teasing ancient elven mages. "Were you two arguing this entire time?" I asked. "Did you actually forget about the test?"
Her eye twitched.
She chose not to answer that question.
The answer was yes, though. We both knew it.
She changed the subject. "Why," she said, her voice dangerously controlled, "are all the examinees eating lunch instead of heading into the dungeon?"
"Because they were tired and hungry," I said simply. "And I'm a chef. Nobody goes hungry in front of me. Not if I can help it."
Serie stared at me. Then she stared at the crying candidates. Then she stared at the bento boxes. Then she stared back at me. "I am beginning to regret making you my co-examiner," she said. "The psychological pressure of consecutive stages without rest is completely undermined because half of them are weeping tears of gratitude over rice balls."
I arranged my face into the most pitifully wounded expression I could manage. I let my ears droop. I let my tails sag. I widened my eyes and let them go just slightly glassy, channeling every ounce of the kicked puppy energy that Kunou had perfected and I had spent years studying.
"Am I fired?" I asked, my voice small and quivering.
Serie looked at me.
She looked at my drooping ears.
She looked at my sagging tails.
She thought about it.
For a genuinely uncomfortable amount of time, she actually thought about it.
"Yes," she said finally.
Daenerys glared at Serie in my defense.
"Drat," I said, keeping my voice light and easy, snapping my fingers in a "shucks" gesture that I was fairly proud of.
But on the inside, it stung more than I wanted to admit.
I was genuinely enjoying myself.
The exam, the candidates, the cooking, the chaos of it all. Getting fired from something I was actually having fun with, even from a position I had technically been bullied into, left a sour taste at the back of my throat that no amount of casual deflection could fully mask.
Serie must have seen something shift in my expression, because her eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second before she rolled them so hard I was surprised they didn't complete a full rotation.
"I was joking," she said.
I blinked.
"Seriously," she continued, and there was a note in her voice that I hadn't heard from her before. "You are the most impressive man I have met in over a thousand years of living."
Wow, she just said that out loud…
She held up a finger before I could respond. "But you are also somehow chaos incarnate." She paused, and her brow furrowed slightly as if the next words were being dragged out of her against their will, kicking and screaming and clawing at the walls of her pride. "But I don't hate your presence," she said slowly, turning her head to the side. "Or the fact that you are changing my exam. As much as I would expect to…"
Daenerys' glare turned into a knowing smirk.
There it was. The tsundere energy rolling off this woman was so thick I could have bottled it and sold it at the Fox Hole as a specialty cocktail.
I almost looked over my shoulder for Irene to appear and start teasing this blonde elf again. But when I glanced toward the clearing, Irene wasn't watching us at all. She was sitting on the fallen log next to Erza. The two of them were side by side, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, with matching bento boxes open on their laps. Just a mother and daughter eating lunch together and laughing. It was beautiful. I wanted to freeze this moment and keep it somewhere safe.
I snapped my attention back to Serie before the lump in my throat could become something embarrassing. "Alright," I said, straightening up and putting my hands behind my back sagely. "I promise I won't interfere with the second stage at all. I'll just watch."
Serie's eyes narrowed with suspicion, clearly evaluating whether my promise had hidden loopholes.
I gave her my most innocent smile.
Her long ears twitched once again. "Hmph."
– Natsu –
Natsu walked out of the forest brushing leaves and splinters from his hair, a few stubborn twigs still clinging to his scarf.
He rolled his neck and cracked it with a sharp pop, grinning at nothing in particular. "That woman is still scary strong," he muttered to himself, flicking a chunk of bark off his shoulder.
The grin didn't fade though. Erza could have punched him through a mountain and he would have gotten up laughing. Probably. He'd gotten up from worse.
He was halfway through pulling a particularly stubborn leaf out from behind his ear when two people stepped into his path.
The first one he recognized immediately. Green hair, pale skin, and that smile. That strange, unsettling, ever present smile that curved her lips upward in a way that looked friendly from a distance and deeply concerning from up close. Like a cat that had cornered a mouse and was trying to decide whether to play with it or just eat it.
"Hey there, Ubel!" Natsu said, brightening. "How's it going?"
He liked Ubel. She was weird and she had that look in her eyes sometimes, the one that said she was thinking about cutting things that probably shouldn't be cut. But she'd fought well during the first task, she'd listened when he told her not to kill anyone, and she hadn't complained once about any of it. In Natsu's world, that made her good people. Weird people, but good people.
Fairy Tail was full of weird people. She would have fit right in.
He turned his head to the second person. A guy around his height, maybe a bit shorter, with blonde hair and glasses and a posture so carefully controlled it looked like he was trying to pass a sobriety test at all times. His expression was neutral in the practiced way of someone who worked very hard at having no expression, which Natsu had always found vaguely suspicious. People who didn't show what they were feeling were either hiding something or constipated, and this guy didn't look like the constipated type.
"And who are you supposed to be?" Natsu asked with the blunt directness that his friends called tactless.
"My name is Land," the guy said.
Natsu stared at him for a beat. Then the grin spread across his face. "Land?" he repeated. "That's a weird name." He snickered, unable to help himself. "You got a sister named Sea?"
"I've heard that one a hundred times in my life," Land said flatly.
"Really? Then maybe you should change your name to something cooler!" Natsu offered helpfully. "Like Blaze. Or Inferno. Or Dragon Fist!"
"I will not be changing my name to Dragon Fist."
"Your loss..."
Ubel spoke up before Natsu could continue, and something in her tone made his attention snap back to her with a sharpness that most people wouldn't have expected from him.
She still had that smile on her face. But her eyes were different now. There was a seriousness in them that hadn't been there before, or rather, that had been there all along and was now being allowed to surface just enough for him to catch it.
"You're stronger than I was expecting," she said, and the compliment was genuine even if her delivery made it sound like she was evaluating livestock. "You and all the mages from your guild. A guild I've never heard of, from a world I've never seen, fighting with magic that doesn't follow any principles I've studied..."
A lot of people thought Natsu was dumb. He knew this. His guildmates teased him about it constantly. Lucy called him an idiot at least three times a day. Gray said he had the strategic thinking of a concussed badger. Even Happy, his own partner, occasionally questioned his intelligence, which was rich coming from a cat who once ate a fish that was clearly a decoy in a trap and then blamed Natsu for not warning him even though Natsu had been warning him the entire time he was eating it.
But Natsu wasn't dumb. He was simple, and those were very different things.
And people. People were something Natsu understood with an instinct that bypassed his brain entirely and went straight to his gut.
"Thanks! You're pretty strong too, but you clearly want something, so spit it out already. We're friends aren't we? Stop being so cryptic and vague!"
"Friends? How quant. But—I don't hate it…" She tilted her head. "I want to know more about Fairy Tail," she said. "And its connection to that being. Haru."
"I would like to know as well," Land added. His eyes behind those glasses were calm, analytical, and far more interested than his neutral expression let on. "Specifically, the nature of the relationship between your guild. A guild we have never heard of."
Natsu crossed his arms and tilted his head back, staring up at the sky for a moment as he considered the question. A bird flew overhead. The clouds were nice today. He was still kind of hungry even after the bento.
"Haru's our friend," Natsu said. "That's pretty much it!"
Ubel let out a sigh that was quiet enough to be private but not quiet enough to escape a Dragon Slayer's hearing.
"I don't know why I expected a different kind of answer from him..."
Natsu caught it and gave her a cheeky grin, the kind that showed too many teeth and communicated with absolute clarity that he had heard every word and was choosing to take it as a compliment.
Ubel's smile twitched at the corners, and for the briefest instant something almost genuine flickered behind it. Amusement, maybe. Or resignation. With her it was hard to tell.
Then she said something that actually surprised him. "Can I join Fairy Tail?" she asked. "After this exam is over?"
"Sure," he said without hesitation.
Ubel blinked.
"But," Natsu added, holding up one finger, "we don't allow our mages to kill. Except in dire circumstances. Like, your life or someone else's life is in actual real danger and there's no other option. That's it. No killing because it's convenient, no killing because someone pissed you off, no killing because you thought it would be faster than knocking them out!" He said it cheerfully, casually, like he was explaining the guild's policy on drink tabs rather than the single non-negotiable rule that separated Fairy Tail from a dark guild. But his eyes were steady on hers, and the fire behind them wasn't the playful kind.
Ubel held his gaze for a long moment. "I figured as much," she said finally. "I didn't expect joining to be that easy, though."
"That's the same reaction Lucy had months ago!" He slapped his knee. "She showed up all nervous and stammering, like she thought she'd have to fill out paperwork or pass a test or something. I just grabbed her and brought her to the guild and Mira stamped her hand and that was it. Lucy looked like someone had hit her with a fish." He wiped his eye. "It was funny."
Ubel stared at him with an expression that suggested she was reevaluating several of her assumptions about Fairy Tail.
But it's too late for her to back out now!
"I would like to join as well," Land spoke up next to them.
Natsu had actually forgotten the guy was there for a second. Natsu looked at him. Natsu smiled. It was a warm smile. A friendly smile.
"No," Natsu said. "You're kind of creepy…"
His eyes went wide behind his glasses. "I... excuse me?" Land managed, and his voice actually cracked on the second word. "Creepy? I'm creepy?" he finally had a real expression on his face.
"Yeah," Natsu said with a casual nod, as if confirming the weather. "You sat in your bedroom and sent a fake version of yourself to take an exam instead of showing up. That's creepy. Who does that?"
"It's projection magic! It's an advanced and highly respected magical discipline that requires years of..."
"Creepy years."
"That doesn't even make sense!"
"Look, man, I don't make the rules." Natsu spread his hands in a gesture of helpless innocence. "Well, actually, I guess I kind of do right now since I'm the one you asked. And the rule is you're creepy."
Land's face had gone through more expressions in the last ten seconds than it probably had in the last ten years. Shock, indignation, outrage, disbelief. "You accepted her!" Land pointed at Ubel with a finger that trembled with righteous offense. "And she reeks of blood from all the people she's probably killed. But I'm the creepy one?"
Ubel's smile widened. Not the fake decorative one. A real one. "He makes a fair point," she offered, not helping at all.
"Tell you what," Natsu said with a final sigh. "Get through this exam. Show up for real. And then come find me and ask again." He turned and walked away, one hand raised in a lazy wave over his shoulder, flames flickering playfully between his fingers.
Behind him, Ubel leaned slightly toward Land. "For what it's worth," she said quietly, "I also think you're a little creepy."
Land's left eye twitched.
XXX
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