"If you keep doing quests at the rate you're going at Vali, you'll be S-Class before you know it" The group of 6 at the bar burst into chuckles, Vali included. It'd been a couple of months or so since he'd joined the guild and he had already completed a couple dozen missions, the fight with the Chupacabra's being the most noteworthy of the lot but each quest gave him just a bit more experience and established many more connections, already people had started taking notice of him, as small as that notice is it's still people knowing he's there
'Since when did I get so obsessed with leaving behind proof of my existence? Is this… something to do with my demigod nature? I was never like this on Thallassia, back on Earth or even with Iva for the most part so what the hells brought this on?' Casting those thoughts away, Vali raised the mug to his lips, sipping on the water inside as the older members he's sitting with start talking about one thing or another
"I think you've spent more time travelling than you have in the guild" The group chuckled again and Vali had to give them that, it's probably true to be fair, he doesn't really spend more time than necessary around the guild, preferring to be doing some quest or another even if it did means that he isn't interacting as much with his guild mates as possible
"Yeah well, I've probably taken more quests in the past month than some of you lot have in years" The group of the chuckled again, if there was one thing he enjoyed about Fairy Tail is that they know how to take jokes, oh sure if you say the wrong thing it can offend people but everybody knows people are - for the most part - joking and messing around, which is why even when the small group of 5 adults and one just-about-a-teenager made rude and could-be hurtful jokes about one another they all laughed it off knowing it's mainly just jokes
'Maybe I'll slow down on the quests and spend some time in the guild, get to know people or something. I'm sure Erza won't mind the extra practice working against Gungnir, the rest of them are pretty laid back, well with the exception of Natsu and Gray that is.' Chuckling at his thoughts, he finished off his drink, placing the mug back on the bar top, jumping off of his chair
"Well It's been a pleasure like always guys but I'm gonna go" The older men laughed and said their goodbyes, returning to their conversation as he walked away, scanning around the guild for Erza, not being able to spot the - rather standoffish - redhead girl, he figured he'd ask around, scanning the guild again his eyes found Levy, a bluenette that he got along with swimmingly - ha - due to their shared love of books
"Levy!" Calling out, said bluenette lifted her head, a small smile crossing her face as Vali approached her even if curiosity swum in her eyes, once he was a few feet away from the girl he asked his question "Have you seen Erza today? I was gonna ask her to spar but I can't see her"
"Oh, Erza left on a quest while you were out the other day Vali, she said she'll be back before the weekend though." Sighing he took a seat next to the blue haired girl, accepting the information for what it is
"Damn." Sighing he glanced at the book the girl was reading "Still trying to figure out what Magic I use, Levy?" The girl looked sheepish for a moment before a glare that wouldn't frighten a puppy crossed her face, eyes lighting on fire as he failed to hold down a chuckle
"Well, since you're not telling me I decided to look it up on my own'' The younger girl seemed proud for a moment… before instantly deflating, giving him a look beseeching him to not be mad. Laughing slightly he lightly dropped his hand on the girl head, patting her blue hair, ignoring the indignant noise she made
"I don't mind you trying to figure out what Magic I use Levy but you're looking in the wrong place, you won't find my type of magic in a normal book about Water Magic, you'll have a much better time going through history books than a spell book like that" The girl gave him a confused look, baffled by the idea that him - who uses Water magic - won't have his magic in a normal book about water magic
Standing up slowly he took enough look around the guild, the only people he could see who'd be even slightly interested in taking on a quest with him being Cana, Levy, Max or Laki and that's without counting any of the older members, dropping his head into his hands he made his way over to the request board, scanning it for any potential quests before picking one off of the wall, eyes narrowing at the page
Bandits!
Lately our people from our village have been targeted by Bandits as they walk the roads, we know at least 1 of them uses magic but we don't know what kind and how many more mages there are as none of the travellers can recall being robbed!
Please come and subjugate the bandits
Reward: 180,000 Jewels
Location: Daffodil Village
Grabbing the request he paused before making his way over to master Makarov, a thought going through his head that made him shrug as he walked through the guild, responding to some of the greetings of other mages and declining invitations to sit and drink before he inevitable found himself standing next to a young brown haired girl in a yellow sundress, said young girl was messing round with a bunch of cards on the table in front of her
"Hey Cana" The young brunette looked up from her cards, chocolate brown eyes locking onto Vali's sea green ones as she did, curiosity laced in them "You wanna go on a quest with me?"
Vali didn't really notice it but the people around him went silent as they heard his request, he had - unknowingly - gained a reputation of being one of the guilds more antisocial mages because of his lack of interaction and constant taking of jobs, to most of the guild it seemed like the only person he really talked to very Erza and Levy, the former only because he could practise his spear - 'It's a Glaive!' - with and the latter because she read just as many books as he does
"Uhhh, sure what quest is it?" Despite being taken off guard, the brown haired age recovered quickly accepting the offer from the most elusive mage of their generation
"Bandit subrogation quest near Daffodil Village, report says that travellers are being robbed and lose their memories so there's probably a memory mage of some kind in the group, the rewards 180,000 Jewels so 90,000 Jewels each" Vali didn't bother sitting down as he explained, giving a brief explanation of the job request so she could make up her mind before he signed the quest off
"Oh uh, sure I'll go get my stuff alright?"
"I'll meet you at the Train Station, I have to get Master to sign it off first, I'll see you in a bit"
"So how do you usually do these things Vali?" The black haired mage snapped out of his daydream, turning to face his companion for the quest with blank eyes, silently asking her to repeat the question, which she easily did
"Well… Typically I'll ask the village head for any more information and then look around and ask the villagers a bit before heading out, we probably won't have that luxury since the bandits are dropping in on people travelling, so when we get close to Lupinus Town we'll have to formulate a proper plan, either that or we can do it now, up to you I guess."
The duo sat in silence for a few minutes, Vali returning to gaze out of the window watching the flowers move past them as the train sped by, dozens of colours merging together as the train moved. Cana on the other hand, turned to stare at the God Slayer, her thoughts occupied as she thought about what he said
"We can plan now, I doubt we'll find more information in Lupinus anyways" Vali gave a single nod to her statement, turning back from the window to look at the younger mage, a smile on his face as he did
"Before that can you tell me what kind of magic I use, you already know I use a form of water magic" He didn't expand on it and she didn't ask about it, another good thing about Fairy Tail is that, after he said he didn't want to talk about his magic, nobody asked, well Natsu did but after promising to fight the dragon slayer the kid forgot all about it and hadn't asked since
'He probably forgot, he doesn't exactly have the best memory does he? I'm surprised he even remembers his way back to the guild with how little of an attention span he has… wait does Natsu have ADHD? No, thoughts for later, ignore the ADHD Dragon Slayer for now'
"Oh, I use Card Magic. It's a type of Holder Magic that allows me to create effects by channelling my magic into a card" Now that gained Vali's attention. At first glance people would more than likely wave Cana's magic away believing it to be a weak magic and choose something else like Crush Magic which is much stronger ubt more difficult to master
However they'd all be wrong, what Cana's Magic lacks in natural power it makes up for in terms of possibility. Honestly, the capabilities for Cana's magic is endless, an infinite number of spells are at her fingertips and even without training her magic to be stronger Cana could easily become a strong mage through sheer imagination
All she'd really 'need' would be to have the cards of the basic elements and train them to Kingdom Come and back and she'd be capable of Natsu level destruction by simply combining her spells. Mix a 'Summon Lightning' Card with a 'Summon Water' Card and you can fry people, shoot off a 'Summon Fire' Card and a 'Summon Air' Card and you have a raging inferno, use a 'Summon Earth' card and a 'Summon Water' card and you could make mud as a trap and so many more
And that's with just the basic elements
'God Magic can be scary sometimes…'
Shaking those thoughts away, Vali closed his eyes, ignoring the curious look on the younger girls face at his sudden action
"Do you mind me asking what cards you have now?"
"Hmm, I have a [Summon Water] Card, a [Sleep] Card, a [Summon Lightning] Card, a [Summon Breeze] Card, a [Summon Fire] Card, an [Icicle Card and an [Explosion] Card"
Vali nodded his head with each card she said, memorizing them with ease as he began to think
"When we get to Lupinus Town we'll walk to Daffodil Village alright, can you attach a [Summon Water] to your shoe and still use it or does it have to be touching your skin when you summon it?"
"I have to be touching it for now but I've been learning to use them without touch" Clicking his tongue he continued
"Alright, not the best but It's alright. Instead of you using your [Summon Water Card] I'll create a puddle of water when we get 'trapped' by the bandits, keep your [Summon Lightning] Card on you at all times and use it as soon as I've made the puddle, I'll keep the water from electrocuting us, alright so far?"
Seeing the Brunette nod her head he continued
"Since we know there's at least one mage there, they might be able to sense our magic so try keep it suppressed so that they'll think we haven't unlocked our magic yet, we also know that the mage in their group has a memory magic of some kind so try keep your eyes off of theirs, we won't know if there's any other mages there but we'll just have to improvise against the ones who don't get caught in our opening attack, not the best plan I've made but it'll have to do for now."
The duo descended into silence once more before a certain thought entered Vali's head, a small smirk working on his face as he reached into his bag, pulling out a familiar set of cards
"So Cana, what do you think about a game of Uno?"
"I still think you cheated Vali, no way did you get that many plus fours from the first draw." Vali chuckled at the girls irritated tone, after teaching her the rules and telling her about the game the created, the duo spent the rest of their train ride playing Uno
The girl actually had him on the ropes after she got the hang of it, nearly beating him multiple times if not for his luck coming to save his ass, it's actually pretty scary how fast she picked it up but he gave credit to her magic coming through with that
Magic has this strange effect on giving their users weird proficiencies, his water magic suddenly made swimming and sailing and stuff like that much easier to learn so he wouldn't put it past Cana's Card Magic to influence her ability to pick up card games and stuff
"Nah, I just have amazing luck, we can play some more when we're finished so you still have time to kick my ass in it, it'll definitely be better with more players though so when we get back to the guild we can get some of the others to play as well, it'll be fun." Cana laughed lightly at him but accepted his words nevertheless, silently admitting that he's right
"I'm surprised we haven't heard of it before though, a game like that should be really popular" Vali forced himself not to chuckle, simply nodding his heads at her words with a smile that quickly became melancholic
"It was a game from my home so I'm not surprised you never heard of it before." His words weren't a complete lie, Uno was a game from his 'Home' meaning Earth but he hadn't actually introduced the game to anyone but Iva so of course nobody would have heard of it with the exception of them two
Cana remained silent for a moment, either reading his body language far to well for a 12 year old or she had picked up on the more melancholic tone he had spoke with but she didn't ask him about his home or his past, instead just allowing a brief moment of silence to pass by them before starting a conversation again
-/-
""Oh I will" Said Harry, and they were surprised at the grin that was spreading over his face. 'They don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home, I'll be having a lot of fun with Dudley this summer'…
… and that's it, for now anyways. So, what do you think?"
Vali opened his eyes as he finished speaking, letting the girl take in the final words of his story. He decided to tell her about the first Harry Potter book, reciting the words of the book from memory he read it out word for word. Honestly he's just testing how people would think about books like this from his old world, after all the Harry Potter world is set in a different world with a different set of Magic so he wants to see how somebody would feel about the books
'Will they read them and think about them like people on Earth read Sci-Fi? Will they actually like the books?'
Turning his head to the starry eyed Cana, he got his answer very quickly, a small chuckle escaping him as she started peppering him with questions much like Levy would probably do
'Well that answers my question on if I should write books from my old world here, I'll have to ask Master if he knows any places that'll publish it for me'
-/-
Vali doesn't know how long they strolled along the beaten path, waiting for the bandits to jump out at them and try rob them, they had walked for so long that Vali was honestly getting bored and boom1 That's when it happened, just as the two of them got about half way through the woods a trio of men appeared in front of them and at least 7 more behind them
'I can sense Magic in about half of these guys, they're all pretty touch too'
"Cana." He whispered it quietly so that none of the bandits could hear them, his eyes focused on the one monologuing to them about something or another
"Yeah Vali"
"If you die, I'll kill you."
Vali ignored the confused look she sent him, instead pushing the tiniest amount of magic through his body, a tiny magic circle appearing beneath his shoe as pitch black water started slowly forming beneath them, a puddle forming and slowly growing larger and larger until eventually Vali felt all of the bandits feet submerged
"Cana, now." The brown haired mage reacted instantly, a card snapping between her fingers like a magician doing a magic trick which she quickly threw into the black water, a crackle of electricity sparking form the card that quickly spread throughout the entire puddle, electrocuting all of the bandits
Blinking slightly, Vali turned to look at Cana, an incredulous look on both of their faces before they burst into laughter
"T-That was e-easy, pft-" Vali had to agree with Cana, something he did by laughing harder at the twitching bandits around them
'H-honestly, I kind of expected more, this was a boring quest damnit, at least the pay was good.'
-/-
"Everything said and done, I kind of expected this quest to be more exciting, I mean they all went down waaay to soon for the quest to be enjoyable, not even any good fighting experience" Vali complained, sighing as they sat back on the train
The Village head had been extremely grateful to the two of them and had gave them a small carriage ride back to Lupinus Town for their trouble, with the bandits all collected by the Rune Knights their job was done, honestly it took like an hours worth of walking just for a 10 second fight
'I even wasted a perfectly good Zoro line damnit! Fuck you you shitty bandits, making me use cool quotes and then just up and passing out from a little bit of water empowered lightning'
"Yeah but at least we got paid, now get your Uno cards out Vali I'm winning at least one round before we get back to Magnolia!"
Laughing lightly, Vali obliged, grabbing the cards from his bag he set them up on the small table between them.
Vali didn't know it at the time, but by introducing Cana to the wondrous world of Uno he would unleash hell upon the guild for years to come as men and women alike argued back and forth, pissed off at losing in the small card game from Earth
Okay so this wasn't the chapter y'all were hoping for but it's the one y'all are getting. I figured it'd be kinda funny for Vali to go on a quest and be completely disappointed with how easy it was, coupled with the fact that people said to have somebody accompany him on the quest I figured to kill two birds with one stone
Don't worry though, I'll hopefully have Vali going on more exciting quests soon, if y'all haven't guessed yet I'm terrible at writing engaging fighting scenes and well, I'm just a shitty author in general so yeah, sorry for that aha
Next Chapter might have a time skip or something, idk but I am hoping to have Vali publish his first book next year and/or start his singing career but again Idk. I already know what his first published book will be but I'm still deciding on songs right now, I really don't know what I want his first song to be
Oh yeah! Flexity16! You have no idea how happy this review left me, I have a weird amount of knowledge about different mythologies and stuff, I won't pretend to know everything about every mythology but I do know some weird ones, the Sasabonsam just kinda popped up when I was thinking about different blood sucking mythological/folklore creatures
Skip all of this f y'all don't want to know about Greek Mythological Vampires, i cba to delete everything I wrote so here y'all go.
Like did y'all know that the stories of Vampires also existed in Greek Mythology?! So some dude named Ambrogio was a Italian traveller who went to Greece to visit the Oracle at Delphi, at the temple he would visit the oracle and get his prophecy told 'The Curse. The Moon. The Blood will run' - something like that - anyways, he would be petrified by this prophecy and stay up at night when he would eventually see a beautiful woman named Selene whose sister was a priestess at the temple, anyways they fell in love and Ambrogio asked her to marry him and go back to Italy
Apollo was watching and got pissed because he had taken a liking to Selene, so at night he visited Ambrogio and cursed him so that his skin would burn when touched by Apollo's sunlight. Distraught Ambrogio ran away and went into a Cave that led to Hades, who made him a deal saying that if he could steal Artemis's silver bow and bring it to him he'd protect Ambrogio and Selene however Ambrogio would have to leave his soul with Hades
Anyways, Hades gave Ambrogio a bow and some arrows so he could gain Artemis's favour, Ambrogio would take the bow, shoot a swan and leave notes for Selene on paper with notes written with the Swans blood, he would also sacrifice the swans carcass to Artemis, anyways 44 days later Ambrogio had one arrow left, shot and missed the Swan. Artemis was impressed by Ambrogio so she came down and the dude begged to borrow her bow and an arrow so he could send one final note, Artemis agreed and he pissed off, stealing her bow
Artemis was pissed - Obviously - and cursed him, making it so silver would burn his skin, burned by her bow he fell to the ground and begged her for forgiveness and explained everything, Artemis once again pitied him and offered to give him a blessing instead, making him a great hunter - almost as good as she is - making him as strong as fast as gods and giving him fangs to drink the blood of the beats he wrote his notes with, however the catch was that he would have to forever remain chaste, never touching Selene again. He agreed, wrote to Selene and they fled from Apollo.
Anyways, years go by and they live in a cave somewhere during the day and worship Artemis at night. However eventually Selene started getting older while he remained young, Selene also got ill and started dying so Ambrogio killed a swan and offered it to Artemis, who said she'd allow him to touch silence once. To drink her blood. Doing so would kill her mortal body but she'd be with him forever, for once Ambrogio refused but Selene said 'No, Honey No' and made him do it, afterwards Selene became a Goddess of Moonlight or something and Vampires were born from their shared blood
So uh, yeah enjoy that useless information
Y'all I finished explaining Greek Vampires!
Gonna be honest, forgot what I was talking about
Uhhhhh, yeah so I apologise for how shitty this chapter is, should be better next time, finally started writing Vali like how he should be, aka a actually social and laid back dude and not a cold ass bitch like Law was
Also can I just say that If I make any references I probably don't actually realise I have, like Nagato's/Pain's sensory rain, like it's complete blasphemy on my part buuuut, I've never watched Naruto so i didn't know that was a thing… yeah, feel free to shoot me now
I mean, I've watched like, until Tsunade become Hokage but then I just… never continued the series
Oh yeah, I've also ever watched One Piece either but I found out that quote was by Zoro so I had to do it
Oh yeah1 I also made a completely accidental plot point about the Magic Council suppressing quests, didn't mean to do it but it's a thing now so enjoy that
Uhhh, If any of y'all have some quest ideas let me know, because I actually need some good quests because I'm a uncreative fuck
Uhhhhh, Peace Out!
Neo!
P.S. Also, can we just take a minute to appreciate that I started this on January 7th and It's now the 23rd of January and I've posted 8 chapters already! Like, I'm proud of myself
Uhhh, think that's officially it so… bye.