“….”
Inside the giant library, an ineffable silence filled the air.
Noah had a very thick book in his hands but his attention isn’t on it at all. Instead he glanced in front of him and he had slight emotional turbulence within his eyes.
Sitting opposite to him is the two sisters, Mira and Lisanna. However, there’s no ruckus like in the past. If one were to look closer the two girls are acting very weird. Firstly, Mira, unlike her delinquent girl image she used to have, she is now sitting there looking very awkward while blushing pink. Although this is very cute, she’s not the Mira he used to know.
Meanwhile, Lisanna looked completely different. Her age might be the smallest among them but she’s the most precocious of them all. Yet, today she looked like a kid her age, what with her pouting and she seemed to be angry at something.
This scene persisted since he got woken up by a steaming Lisanna a while back.
He’s very anxious about the abnormal behaviour of the two ridiculously cute sisters. The result of this being his inability to focus on his book at hand. Thus, Noah decided to avert his attention away from the book and looked towards Lisanna.
“Hmph!”
Lisanna turned the other way after that snort, looks like she’s still pretty angry. Opening and closing his eyes rapidly for a few times, he then turned to Mira.
“—-!”
Mira jolted with an exaggerated motion. Her pink cheeks turned into a deeper tone of red. She glared at him and yelled with bashful intonation.
“What? Wanna fight?!”
“….”
Noah became bewildered.
Mira picking a fight isn’t anything new. What’s odd is that her usual dominating and sassy tone when she said ‘wanna fight?’ in the past is in stark contrast to today’s shy attempt at ‘wanna fight?’, that and her red face. What is going on here?
Noah didn’t know what happened with the sisters so he decided to stop thinking about it and just ask straight away.
“I say, are you girls hiding something from me?”
When the sisters heard this, they each had different reaction altogether.
Mira flinched and then looked away like a guilty criminal.
Lisanna seemed to be even more furious, she even howled.
“Noah Onii-san is a big idiot!”
“???”
Noah’s bewilderment grew towards the sky.
Could this perhaps be the legendary thing about how men cannot understand a maiden’s heart?
“I-If you have so much time to chat, why don’t you hurry up and settle on a magic you like!”
Mira awkwardly tried to divert the subject.
“Are you giving up on learning magic?”
“Of course I want to…”
Noah felt that even if he kept pursuing the matter, no answers will come to him so he sighed and waved the magic tome in his hand.
“Don’t you see me trying to do it here?”
Seeing as the topic got back on the right track, Lisanna gradually returned to her normal appearance and asked with a tilted head.
“You were at it the whole night and you still can’t find a suitable one?”
“Basically all the magic tomes stored in the guild’s library are already here!”
Noah patted the small mountain of books beside him and at the same time, he seemed to be at wit’s end.
“But even if I spent a night at it, I still don’t feel like I found the right one.”
“Is it that hard?”
Mira mumbled and grabbed a book before turning its pages.
“It’s just choosing a magic, you’re not choosing a cloth to wear. Just pick the strongest, most awesome and practical magic will do is it not?”
“It’s not a matter of awesomeness of magic, take for example your [Takeover] magic, it’s completely normal in comparison to Natsu’s [Dragon Slayer Magic]. His magic is a precious and ancient magic but you’re still stronger than Natsu by a lot of margin yes?”
Noah continued with a finger to his cheek and a slightly tedious tone.
“That’s why, I chose to vet with prudence. Otherwise, I would have just gone to gramps, surely he knows a lot of rare, precious and strong magic.”
Noah had considered natural awakening as a method of learning magic.
Naturally awaking one’s own magic won’t necessarily make it the greatest but it would be the magic that can bring out the awakened’s strength and the most compatible magic for said subject of natural awakening.
But, to do this is no easy task for there is another crucial problem to consider.
That is, Noah doesn’t even know what is the condition to awakening the magic lying dormant within him. The condition to do so differs depending on individual. For instance, Mira got her [Takeover] magic after making contact with a demon.
Erza also learnt her magic through natural awakening. According to her, her awakening happened when she was at a point between life and death where she made up her mind and [Requip] manifested.
Noah didn’t know how to awaken his magic. 99% of the magicians on this world chose their magic precisely because of that reason, Noah is not an exception to this. Moreover, there’s also the issue of what if, after awakening, the magic he has is not one for combat?
Unknown conditions of awakening, uncertain magic type after awakening, these are the reasons 99% of the magicians in this world chose to learn their own magic themselves.
Noah delayed his learning by 2 years due to his magic control problems, now that he finally can learn magic. He didn’t want to place hope on the off chance that he might somehow or the other awaken to his own magic.
“If that’s the case, Noah Onii-san, why don’t you learn [Takeover] magic?”
Lisanna suggested while beaming.
“That way, we will all be using the same magic!”
Noah looked at Mira and saw her having an expression that said she’s looking forward to that happening. Noah scratched his cheek in response.
“It’s not that I haven’t thought about [Takeover] magic, it’s just that I am not a sepcial case like Mira who can takeover demonic powers, that’s why I am still pondering about it.”
When they heard Noah, Mira and Lisanna both opened their mouths at the same time, they wanted to say something but a loud series of sound disrupted them.
Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong~
it’s the clear sound that of a church’s bell chime.
As if some kind of ritual is about to begin the loud bell chime rang inside Fairy Tail and maybe even the whole of Magnolia. It’s at the scale where everyone at Magnolia can hear it.
Before Noah, Mira and Lisanna could react, a loud stir happened outside the library within the guild.
“!”
“It’s Gildarts!”
“Gildarts is back!”
Amidst the commotion, Noah, Mira and Lisanna could hear siren in thes ky.
“Magnolia will be changing into Gildarts Shift! All citizens please evacuate to designated areas!”
When the alarm fell, Noah, Mira and Lisanna could feel the earth beneath them starting to tremble.
“What’s.. going on?”
Looking at the earthquake like tremor around them and the resulting shaking of the various bookshelves, Noah stood up while Mira reflexively grabbed Lisanna and shielded her from the front with Lisanna behind her back.
“GILDARTS—-!”
The racket inside the guild didn’t stop.
“Gildarts?”
Mira and Lisanna exchanged looks.
“Who’s Gildarts?”
Noah also frowned, he didn’t reply and went straight for the door with Mira and Lisanna hurrying to follow him as they made their way out of the library.
♦ ♦ ♦
When the three of them got out and descended down to the bar on the ground floor they saw such a scene.
As cene where every magician in the guild silenced themselves, the racket uproar before disappeared like an illusion. They all had their eyes concentrated at the main door of the guild.
At the main door, a figure could be seen slowly approaching.