When the Magic Council received the news and learned that Fairy Tail and Phantom Lord had gone to war, the councilors led by Crawford were all badly shaken.
Neither of those guilds was remotely simple.
Fairy Tail had a long legacy, and in recent years talented monsters had appeared there one after another as if erupting from the ground.
Kabe, Gildarts, Laxus, Erza, Mirajane.
Every one of them was a famous powerhouse whose name echoed across the land.
Phantom Lord was no weaker.
Before Fairy Tail's rise, they had been Fiore's number one guild.
They lacked neither money, nor manpower, nor influence.
Their branches were spread all across Fiore.
And most importantly, both guilds had a Wizard Saint level mage sitting at the top.
The councilors did not even want to imagine what might happen if those two guilds truly fought.
So, after an emergency discussion, the Council immediately dispatched people to both guilds to investigate the cause of the conflict.
At the same time, they also sent people to calm Makarov, who was still out working for them, in order to prevent him from directly clashing with Jose.
But by the time the Council's people hurried to Oak Town, they discovered the battle had already ended.
Not only had Phantom Lord lost, even Jose, one of the Ten Wizard Saints, was gone.
The defeat could not have been more complete.
When that news was sent back to the Council, Crawford, Org, and the other members all went blank.
None of them had imagined that two of the strongest guilds on the continent would settle the outcome so quickly and so brutally.
What was even harder for them to accept was that Jose Porla, a Wizard Saint recognized by the Council itself, had actually been defeated by Kabe, a young man not even half his age.
The moment they thought about Fairy Tail now having two Wizard Saint level mages sitting in the guild, the councilors all felt their scalps go numb.
And not just two.
If they counted that old Fairy Tail senior ranked fourth among the Ten Wizard Saints, and Gildarts, who clearly had Wizard Saint level strength but had not been admitted into the Ten purely because of personal conduct, then the truth was even more terrifying.
It suddenly dawned on them that a single small guild like Fairy Tail had gathered four Wizard Saint level powerhouses.
Crawford almost wanted to curse out loud.
At that point, why not just hand the Council's seats over to Fairy Tail and be done with it?
Even the more forceful councilors, like Org, no longer dared to casually talk about what should be done to Fairy Tail.
Only Yajima, staring at the report that had come back, slowly let the wrinkles on his old face deepen into a broad smile.
"Maybe Makarov should stop being a guild master."
"He should go full time into picking up children."
"Keeping him as master is wasting his gift."
...
In a temporary camp built outside Magnolia, the Fairy Tail members who had caused havoc in Oak Town a week earlier were currently being held under watch by the Council's enforcement troops.
"Name?"
"Kabe."
"Age?"
"Eighteen."
"Any criminal record?"
"None."
The Council clerk handling the questioning, a frog like little man, asked only those three symbolic questions before directly stamping APPROVED onto Kabe's interrogation file.
Once that was done, he turned the document around and slid it respectfully toward Kabe, who sat across from him, smiling obsequiously as he said,
"Lord Kabe, this is the transcript of our conversation these past few days."
"Please take a look and see whether there is anything that should be changed."
"If there is, I will rewrite it right away."
Kabe took the file and gave it a quick scan.
The contents did indeed match what he had said.
Not only that, the wording had already been polished in advance, and there were even a few intentional marks and corrections left behind to make it look like a properly reviewed official record.
Kabe pushed the file back without comment.
Then he glanced at the nameplate standing on the table and said with a faint smile,
"Very detailed."
"Sir Pipe, at one glance I can tell you are a diligent and responsible official."
Pipe's heart leaped.
He quickly put on an even humbler expression.
"You flatter me."
"I am just a small man at the grassroots level."
"I only understand how to obey my superiors' arrangements."
Kabe smiled but said nothing more.
He simply stood up.
Pipe immediately rose as well and enthusiastically escorted him all the way out of the tent.
Only after Kabe had returned to his own tent did Pipe finally clench his frog hands in excitement.
"Excellent."
"I successfully built a connection with the man who personally defeated a Wizard Saint."
"And I heard Fairy Tail has close ties with Councilor Yajima."
"With that kind of connection, I too will definitely rise through the ranks just like the others of my kind."
He hurried happily back to his own tent, already dreaming of his brilliant future in high office.
As for Kabe, he had indeed remembered this frog who knew very well how to handle things.
If the chance came, he did not mind mentioning the man once in front of old Yajima.
But that was all.
Whether Yajima promoted him or not had nothing more to do with Kabe.
Inside the tent, the impatient Mira immediately asked the moment he came back,
"Well?"
"What did those Council people say?"
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