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Chapter 2:
The trip to the dig site was longer than expected, especially since Gajeel refused to ride in a magic mobile. The dig site looked like a small abandoned village just outside ancient ruins hidden in the cliffside. The 3 mages split up, searching the site for the tablets and monster. They came up empty, now with absolute certainty that what they feared had been true. The tablets and basilisk are inside the ruins, making their job much more challenging.
Gajeel made a plan to lure the basilisk out of the ruins, him and Lily would fight it outside and keep it from returning to the ruins. While the Gajeel and Lily are fighting, Levy will sneak into the ruins to find the tablets and get them to a safe distance, once the basilisk has been slain the mages will meet back at the hotel.
It wasn't hard for them to lure the basilisk out, the plan seemed to work perfectly. Until they noticed the tablets were actually basilisk scales, and that they were still attached to the beast. "When we get back that old man is dead" Gajeel tells, the basilisk is much stronger than they had anticipated, at least the tablets won't be broken easily.
Lily flies above the basilisk's head, dodging the venom it spits at him, with the beast distracted Gajeel and Levy run up to attack from the bottom where its scales are softer. Gajeel strikes the basilisk's stomach with an iron dragon's sword and Levy follows up with solid script freeze. The basilisk thrashes around in pain, spitting venom blindly, hoping to kill its attackers. Lily flies down at a high speed slicing the basilisk with his magic sword.
The basilisk swings its tail, it connects with Lily and sends him falling to the ground. "Lily are you okay" levy says running to him, the basilisk slams its tail in front of Levy blocking her path. The basilisk stares down at her before spitting venom at her. Levy covers her head with her arms cowering from the venom flying at her. Levy couldn't do anything but wait for the venom to make contact with her body, but it never did, Levy looks up to see Gajeel had turned his skin to iron and shielded from the venom. Gajeel looked pissed off, shadows started to swirl around him. He turned around and with all his strength roared at the basilisk, the roar of iron and shadows was enough to finish off the basilisk.
The mages managed to defeat the basilisk, but not without some injuries. They got to work at collecting the scales that the ancients for some reason used for inscriptions from the basilisk, now for the dreaded walk back to town. They get back to town and after some protesting from Gajeel, Levy goes to meet with the client alone, while Gajeel and Lily go to the hotel to take care of their injuries. Levy goes to the library where they planned on meeting so they could translate the tablets, luckily Levy had plenty of time on the way back to town to translate it so she could get back to the others sooner.
Levy tossed a bag with the tablets on the table in front of the client, "you never told us the tablets were the basilisk's scales" Levy says angrily. After an intense argument and quite a lot of apologies Levy finally gave the client the translation. They told a story of a man with an overwhelming amount of pure dark magic, this man saved the people of the ancient city and gave them the basilisk as a sacred protector. Both Levy and the client were left with questions that would likely go unanswered, Levy received payment for the job and returned to the hotel to see how Gajeel and Lily are doing.
When Levy returns to the room Lily is sitting on the table eating a kiwi and Gajeel is in his room asleep, Levy goes to check on Gajeel hoping his burns aren't too severe. Gajeel wakes up when Levy walks in and sits next to him on the bed. "How bad are the burns"
"don't worry about it shrimp, I've had worse burns from salamander"
"If you say so. Hey Gajeel, who do you think the man from the tablets could be?"
"Maybe it was Zeref, Mavis said he wasn't always so cruel."
"No, it couldn't be him. The city was in ruins long before his time."
"Maybe gramps will know, we can ask him tomorrow when we get back to Magnolia."
"Yea, maybe he does" Levy smiles, "Goodnight Gajeel". Levy gets up and runs out of the room before Gajeel can respond.
"Gihi, night shrimp" he says to himself before going back to sleep.
The next morning they catch an early train ride back to Magnolia, Gajeel as usual was having a horrible time because of the motion sickness. Levy however was entranced in the book they received as a reward. It was a tale of a king who was cursed by a demon. His curse was to live forever and watch as his realm would rise and fall. Unable to do anything the king watched as his realm was consumed by darkness and forgotten. The king felt as though he failed his people and dedicated his eternal life to helping people in need as atonement for his failure and dishonor. Before Levy knew it the train arrived at Magnolia, the mages decided to go straight to the guild hall, all of them hungry from the traveling and Levy hoping the master may know something about the man. Levy didn't know why but she felt the need to find out who he was.
They arrive at the guild and head for the bar and order food, glad to finally be back from that job. "Hey Mira is master here, I have some questions for him about something from our last job"
"He just left for a meeting, it may be a couple days before he returns"
"I guess I will just have to do some research then. Maybe I can get Lu to help me, I'm sure she'd be excited to find out the answers too. Although she's currently out on a job, I could probably get Gajeel to help in the meantime." Levy joins Gajeel and Lily at a table and waits for their food.