"A demon killed my family. Or was it a devil? I don't know how they are different, but its name was Deliora. I was lucky to survive, and Ur took me in. She became my master." A nostalgic smile appeared on his face.
"She sounds like a nice lady." 'Right, I am starting to remember. Ur and her daughter's name was Ultear, I believe.'
"She really was..." Gray then frowned. "I was a bit reckless back then."
"More reckless than now?"
"Hey! I am less reckless than you." Gray retorted.
"Sure~ Whatever you say." Kazu didn't believe a word of it.
Gray shook his head before getting back to the story. "Anyway, after she guided me for a long time, one day, like an idiot, I went to challenge Deliora."
A dumbfounded expression appeared on Kazu's face.
"Don't give me that look! I just thought I was now ready to face it. Wouldn't you have done the same in my shoes?"
"If I were in your shoes..." Kazu stopped walking. He imagined the scenario in his head.
"I would have probably committed suicide if it were past me, or I would have directly gone for revenge without waiting for months." Kazu's eyes darkened as Black Ethernano started leaking from his body.
"The fuck! Stop that." Gray suddenly felt intense pressure on his body.
Kazu blinked. The Ethernano around him disappeared in the next instant as if it didn't exist.
"My bad. I got a bit too immersed." Kazu said with a sheepish smile.
"Just what... was that? This is the third time I am seeing it." Gray couldn't put his finger on whatever that was.
"Well, my Ethernano seems to be a bit too much attuned with my emotions. So, it reacts like this if I feel too many emotions. Though the pressure and all that feeling you felt is probably 'coz of my killing intent amplified by my Ethernano."
"That... makes so much sense now. Is this unique to you only?" Gray found the phenomenon pretty interesting.
"I thought it was unique to me only before, but after consulting with the master, I found out that only the colour-changing aspect is unique to me. Anything other than that is common to any mage."
"Wait, but I have never noticed feeling this myself." Gray had a confused look on his face.
Kazu nodded. "Generally, magic gets amplified when an individual feels more emotions than usual. The amplification depends on the intensity of emotions. That might be the reason."
Gray bit his lips. He thought back to the times when he had fought a life-and-death battle. 'Maybe it got amplified? It's pretty hard to notice when you are almost dying.'
"Hold up. This means that the effect could be minute too. Yet, in your case, the effect is very noticeable even if we ignore the colour. Does this mean..."
"Yup. It seems that I feel emotions more intensely than others." 'That's saying it lightly. Master said that in his entire life, he had rarely met a person more emotional than me. This is kind of counterintuitive, given that this is my second life. I thought I would be more emotionally numb.'
"I see... Anyway, we got sidetracked. Back to the story, Ur had to save my ass again. But, this cost her...She sealed Deliora with her through a forbidden spell." Gray's expression saddened as he remembered Ur's farewell.
"Is there a way to..."
"No. That was the first thing I asked the master when I joined the guild. It's impossible as she's the ice itself."
"I am sorry to hear that."
'Didn't Ultear have time magic? I wonder whether that worked or not.'
"It's fine." Gray shook his head. "Maybe it might be possible in future. But even if it doesn't, it's fine. I just need to live like I want to. She would have wanted that."
Kazu hummed as he looked at Gray. "Well, the more you say about her, the more she sounds like a wonderful person. It's really a shame that I couldn't meet her."
Gray smiled. "Yeah. Really a shame... This reminds me, my strip— losing my clothes tendency is due to her only."
Kazu raised an eyebrow. "It's... due to her?"
"Yeah. We used to train in a cold environment. To train resilience, we trained in bare clothes." Gray clarified.
"What do you mean by 'we'?"
"Me, one more guy and her."
Kazu blinked. Then a blush appeared on his face. "Hold up. She, too?" 'Was this in Canon? I would have definitely remembered this if it were.'
A fist shot through towards Kazu's face, as the latter barely ducked.
"I look at her like a mother," Gray said with a deadpan.
"My bad." Kazu shook his head, getting rid of whatever he was thinking.
He then turned back to Gray. "So, by revenge you mean..."
"Yeah, I want to eradicate all those demons of Zeref and him, too, given that he's alive."
Kazu nodded. "Makes sense."
"Now, it's your turn. Tell me about you... If you are comfortable, that is."
"Right... I would try to be brief like you, 'coz I don't want to ruminate too much. It's just bad memories at this point."
Gray nodded.
"So, basically, I was born to a poor family? Actually, I never looked at it like that, but how much I earn with part-time now in a month is way more than the annual income of my family back then." Kazu found this fact quite funny. Throughout his entire life, be it past one or this one, he never needed to worry about money.
In his past life, his parents were his financial support in this life. Initially, his family was doing good to feed themselves.
After his parents' death, he was forced to adapt and become a hunter and was able to make ends meet within a month. After that, the situation just improved. He became a professional hunter who could catch even rare animals, fetching him a high sum.
Even without that, at one point, he had learned to steal and had pretty quickly become a professional in that, like hunting.
"That's crazy. Then again, you do earn more than half a million with, like I don't know 3-4 hours work per month? I don't think there's anymore higher-paying job than yours in the entire country." Gray still found it hard to believe that Kazu could get this much money by working for so little.
"You would be surprised, then, as there are definitely higher-paying jobs than mine. Anyway, soon a famine spread in my village and the nearby area. My parents were gone in that. Luckily, my sister and I survived. I took care of her for few months by being a hunter and all."
"A famine?... I can't imagine how horrible it is to die due to hunger." Gray involuntarily shivered.
Kazu paused. He did live in hunger for a few days, but luckily, rain soon came. He had never gotten a chance to experience the limits of his body like that.
"Looking back, it really must have been unbearable." Kazu clenched his fist. They had chosen to let him and Yui not suffer like that at the expense of their life.
Gray patted his back. He had some guess of why Kazu reacted like that, but didn't ask to confirm it.
"Right. Then, 3 years later. When I went one morning to train and came back, the entire village was gone. Sacrificed. So was my sister. I was quite shaken by that." Kazu looked at his hands, which still trembled despite not recalling the memory in his mind.
Gray found himself unable to say anything. He didn't have siblings, but he could see that Kazu's relationship with his sister was quite close.
"What happened then was a blur. The guy, who was responsible for killing the village, tried to kill me, but Gildarts arrived and took care of the guy. To be honest, I paid half attention to that. I was still trying to process what happened... and I tried to kill myself. Gildarts stopped me and presumably brought me to the guild. Rest is history."
"You did what!?"
Kazu shrugged. "Well, I didn't really have anything to live for at that time. Master convinced me to live. Well, my fear of losing everything comes from that, and you know... what happened with the mission involving Anne."
"Right..." Gray replayed the entire story in his head.
The two walked in silence. They have been walking for a while now and have reached quite a large distance away from the guild.
"Hey..." Gray broke the silence.
"Yeah?"
"I would be sad if I came to know that you died."
Kazu turned towards him. "Okay? I mean, isn't that given?"
"I was just saying. Just wanted to let you know." Gray turned away.
Kazu smiled. "Right."
"Anyway, I guess I am the first one to know your story other than Master, right?" Gray changed the topic before the atmosphere could get weird.
"Nope. I had this talk with Cana a few months ago."
"..." Gray shot Kazu a betrayed look.
"Don't look at me like that. She was the one who approached me first."
"Hmph. Whatever. I don't care."
---
The next few weeks went in a flash. Kazu finally was able to recreate "One Shot KO" and even improvise it to create some variants.
'This year's S-rank exams are scheduled for a few days.'
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Suddenly, a city-wide alarm beeped, making Kazu flinch.
'The fuck is happening?'
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