"So, which shop are we going to?"
"A new shop had opened recently. I was going to try that."
Kazu looked at Erza's cheerful expression, quite contrary to her normal stoic one.
'Guess, she really is a kid. It's just a pastry...' Kazu internally shook his head at her childishness.
---
"Hold up, this is good...?" Kazu's eyes widened as he took a spoonful of the cake.
The cold cake, creamy top with juicy bottom, the way the taste erupted in Kazu's mouth...everything was perfect.
'I could feel some Ethernano present in the cake itself? Did they use magic to create it? No wonder it's so good. Way better than the one I ate on my birthday.'
"See, I told you." Erza had an expression as if she already knew this was going to happen.
"Ahem." Kazu cleared his throat. He subtly looked around and noticed that people were looking at them—likely due to their childish antics.
He felt a bit embarrassed, but was thick-skinned enough to ignore it. "Well, it's pretty good. Though I still think ice cream is superior."
'I wonder how an ice-cream made with such magic techniques would taste.' Kazu was already salivating just thinking about it.
Erza shrugged. "Well, it's your preference. I also like ice cream, but I prefer cakes over that."
With that, they both continued eating the cake in silence.
"You would be starting as an official mage next month, no?" Kazu looked at Erza, who nodded.
"How do you know that? I didn't tell anybody other than the master?"
"I am the finance advisor of the guild. How can I not know?"
Erza narrowed her eyes. "Now that I think about it, how many official positions does the guild have?"
"Well, there's the guild master, then there's a Finance advisor like me... that's it."
Erza blinked. "So... does the master do everything and you only do the finance part?"
Kazu nodded. "I am trying to learn a bit more things to lessen his burden, like currently I am trying to learn which missions to approve from the Council. Soon, I would be learning about who is the right person for a particular job, and for that, I need to learn how to analyse people's skill set and their personality better."
'Luckily, I have quite experience in this beforehand, so it shouldn't be that hard...' Kazu paused at the thought.
'I like that confused expression on your face. People are not as simple as you make them to be'
He frowned as he remembered Anne's words. It has been nearly a year, yet Kazu still couldn't get it out of his head.
'The reason my prediction was wrong was due to a lack of information. That's it.' He shook himself out of the thoughts and looked at Erza.
"Let me know if you need any help. Also, it would be fun to discuss your missions once you go on a few."
Erza nodded, "Sure."
---
Time- June x777
"So... you want help in training, too?" Kazu deadpanned.
"Well, I had been plateauing for a while and seeing how Levy improved, I thought I should give you a chance." Cana folded her arms.
Kazu raised a brow. "What about your dad? You didn't ask him for help?" Gildarts have been coming back to the guild pretty often in the last few months. Kazu had been lucky enough to hide from him till now.
Cana shook her head. "He only knows Crush magic and fundamentals related to that. Not anything in my speciality."
Kazu nodded. "Have you checked your affinity with Crush magic?"
"It's pretty terrible. I think I can only use it if I copy it through my cards, but currently it's even more complicated than your Enhancement magic."
Kazu hummed. He stood there for a few seconds, thinking about Cana's future path.
"Okay, there are three things you could do to improve from this point." Kazu stretched out his three fingers.
"First, you could go with your affinities and try learning more about that magic, to either copy powerful magic related to that affinity, or just create spells on your own. One example would be trying to learn ice-magic, so that you could copy powerful spells from Gray."
Cana nodded at that. This was her current approach to increase her repertoire and exactly the way she would learn Crush magic if she chose to.
"Second, I have noticed this, but you still depend on others to give you their spells. I think with more mastery of that affinity, you could directly create a card with their copied spell without asking them every time to refill their cards."
Cana nodded at that. "I have considered this, but we can't really guess how much mastery it would take for their affinity, and there would likely be limits on which spells I could generate on my own."
"Exactly! So, my suggestion is to work on the copying aspect itself. This is going to be hard as there are no proper guidelines on it, but I believe if you work on that, you would be able to bypass the mastery and time requirements themselves. Though affinity would still be a constraint, it would give you much more flexibility."
'In the Canon, Cana was borderline S-rank. Maybe she reached it during the final season, though at that time S-ranks were fodder, but even so. From what I remember, this 'copying' aspect wasn't mentioned. She directly used elemental magic through her cards, so she probably took the first option route, instead of developing the copying aspect... I wonder how the Canon will change.' Kazu was excited about the future.
Cana blinked. She processed his words for a few seconds. "But... is that even possible? Won't that be too... ridiculous? It's like saying that I would maybe directly copy Gray's strongest spell without needing to spend time on learning ice-magic?"
Kazu smirked. "That's exactly true. It sounds ridiculous in theory, and it is, but you are forgetting that it would be pretty difficult to create. If you had asked me about this last year, I would have said not to invest time in something that has no definite result, but my current perspective is completely different."
"What changed?" Cana tilted her head.
Kazu smirked. "Let's say I had gotten some success in creating a new technique. I will show you in a few weeks when it's battle-ready."
Cana felt a bubble of excitement at that thought. "Really? I am now curious about what you created. Guess, I will decide if I want to do this after seeing your new technique."
"Fair. Now, let's go to the third point. You once said that you have a higher affinity for Fortune-telling?"
Cana nodded. "Yup, in fact, it's the highest after my affinity for Card magic itself."
Kazu blinked. "Hold up. Isn't that pretty big? Why didn't you develop it?"
Generally, for versatile magics like card magic, barrier magic or Solid script magic, the spells they could use depend on the caster's other affinities, which are pretty low compared to the parent magic.
Cana shrugged. "Coz it's hard. There are almost no resources on it, and what would I even do with giving other people's fortune?"
Kazu looked at her in astonishment. 'What the fuck? This is possibly one of the most broken magic.'
He took a deep breath to calm himself down. "You should have talked to Levy. She could have given you several reasons why you should have developed it." 'Well, I have read a few novels of this world, and these guys don't lose out in creativity. Heck, in some aspects, they are even better compared to my previous world.'
"She would have?" Cana raised a brow.
Kazu sighed. "Okay, imagine this. You are going on a mission, but you already know that something went wrong with it. Like, some people are planning to ambush you. If you already know that, then what would you do?"
"I will... ambush them instead." Cana nodded to herself. Ambushing the ambushers sounds cool.
Kazu nodded. "Yup. Now, imagine participating in a fight and knowing every move the other person would do and in which sequence."
'This is pretty similar to what I could do with my Instinct magic. It's also the reason my magic is overpowered.'
Cana looked at him in confusion. "That won't be called a fight. That would be a massacre."
"...Yeah. That's what I am saying. Your Fortune-telling magic has the potential to do that."
Cana's eyes widened. "Wait, what? It has that potential. How can telling somebody's fortune give me that much detail?"
"Jeez, I said potential. If you have that much affinity, then there's a chance that you could improve it. It's basically predicting the future, so one day, you might be able to do that."
Cana processed his words for a few seconds before grinning. "That's so cool!"
Kazu nodded. "Yup, so you definitely want to focus on that. Just experiment on your own for now. In the meantime, I will think about ways to quickly improve it. Anyway, those three were the main things that came to my mind. There are also other things, like maybe using multiple different magic in tandem to create a powerful magic—Combination magic, but currently your repertoire isn't that impressive, so we will keep that for the future."
"Yup, yup. Thanks for your time. This talk was pretty helpful to me."
Kazu smiled. "Well, if you are grateful, you'd better train and apply those ideas."
---
Date: 7-7-777
"Where are we going?" Levy asked, while following Cana in the forest.
"You will know in a bit."
Due to the vagueness, Levy's thoughts were running wild.
'Is she going to bury me in the forest? Where would nobody find my body? Is this because of Kazu?' Levy was internally freaking out.
***
A/n- Cana's Fortune-Telling magic was written separately from her Card magic on wiki, so I made it as a major affinity.
***
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