Fairy Tail: Swallow the Fire

A/N: This is largely an exposition chapter

.

.

.

If someone told me that someone could be a wizard without having any intelligence then I would instantly label them a lobotomite. 

Even spells as simple as the cantrips that are sold in convenience stores as pamphlets or the various types of holder-type magics require some degree of understanding of magic. Most cities even have magic shops entirely dedicated to certain types of magic, with Celestial Spirit Keys being a common commodity even in non-wizard households with various types of Celestial Spirits being treated as pets.

Am I saying that wizards can’t be idiots? No. 

In fact, I would label most wizards as idiots due to the eccentric behaviour commonly attributed to us. Wizards often lack the common sense needed to live in a non-magic-based society, especially the more studious of them. The longer they spend growing their beards inside their arcane towers, the longer they go without human interaction. Guild Halls could be considered the opposite situation, as instead of lacking human interaction there is an overabundance of it.

This “mutation” in social behaviour removes the wisdom you can find in the common citizen. But while a wizard can lack wisdom, they must have intelligence in at least their field of magic.

The difference between wisdom and intelligence? Intelligence is knowledge that allows a wizard to cast spells such as the common fireball. Wisdom is the knowledge that you shouldn’t cast a fireball in your own home. It's books smarts against street smarts.

This is all to say that knowledge of the arcane is one of the key powers that separates strong wizards from the common rabble, with the other being magic power. Both of these attributes are extremely important. Knowledge of how to cast a fireball is one thing, but the amount of magic power put into the spell is the difference between lighting a candle and levelling a kingdom. 

Magic power is something that can only increase with patience and, if you’re rich, surgery. Implanting hollow lacrima isn’t an unheard-of process to allow for a quick boost in magic power, but the short-term boost is often not worth the risk. These hollow lacrima, unlike the likes of elemental or dragon lacrima, don’t get absorbed by the body and become weak points that could instantly kill a wizard if it cracks.

Knowledge on the other hand is something that can allow a wizard to perform more powerful spells regardless of their magic power. A more intelligent wizard can play their cards right and beat a wizard with the same or weaker magic power, but a wizard of equal intelligence and higher magic power can easily defeat someone with weaker magic power even if they use the same spells.

It is because of these rules that can be broadly applied to magic duals that many would often prefer to focus on magic power over intelligence. But these people are wasting their potential. Not a single one of the Ten Wizard Saints would be in their position if they didn’t have the knowledge to back their magic power. They know spells that give them power, and they have taken advantage of the broad categories of magic with many of them taking advantage of rare or unknown types of magic that not many people would widely know about.

A single spell can mean victory or defeat.

There are even scenarios where a mage was able to defeat their opponent by deciphering the inscriptions of their magic glyphs before the spell could be completely cast. Think of glyphs as instruments for caster-type magics. A person can use a tool to whistle, but someone with the proper talent and knowledge can whistle without an instrument. Mages are the same way, with glyphless spell-casting being a sign of talent.

Still, it's an undeniable reality that words also give magic power, so removing glyphs for standard spellcasting is sometimes viewed as a waste of time since announcing the spell is still often required.

That’s why in the magic world knowledge is power, and it's almost customary for wizard guilds to compete for having extremely large libraries filled with magic books and theory. Phantom Lord, using its broad-reaching network, is the largest in terms of library size among the wizard guilds. Its size was reportedly equal to the National Grand Library.

This was all mostly knowledge you could get from pamphlets and brochures at any train station or general goods store. It was under this knowledge that I negotiated the terms of my reward for fighting against the Satan Soul mage. And I wasn’t disappointed.

The study hall which contained the library was enormous, with the walls being made of three separate floors of bookshelves with balconies to walk on and the corners of the room having spiralled staircases. The study hall was situated underneath the Phantom Lord main guild hall, which itself was in the mountains behind Oak Town. Not to be confused with the regional guild hall that was actually inside of Oak Town proper. In terms of size, it was over 80,000 meters square.

For sorting purposes, visitors would go to a search terminal where they would place their hand on a lacrima and think of a concept they wanted study materials on. It could be as simple as the word “fish” and every book in the library with the noun fish would fly over to you. 

For the past few weeks, my study has been on demons and their connection to the element of darkness. 

This research proved to be quite fruitful, with it highlighting how integral the element is to our existence. It's this connection that causes my Fire Devil Magic to be naturally purple, as even though fire is separate from the dark, there are still traces of darkness inside of it. 

For clarification, dark magic is separate from black magic. 

Dark magic or darkness magic is the utilization of the natural darkness of the world as an element. In its simplest form, it is Shadow Magic. But true Darkness is simply a tremendous innate source of power that any can possess, unrelated to the concepts of good or evil. Ironic considering there are Darkness Spells that start with the word “Evil”...

Black Magic can be considered an offshoot or the child of Darkness Magic. It is the concept of Darkness that is the origin of Black Magic, as while Darkness users weaponise the element of Darkness, Black Magic takes its roots as a source of power. Black Magic is a type of Magic that typically grants its users sinister abilities, such as the manipulation of other people's bodies and souls.

Demons are creatures of Darkness, meaning that although I am a fire demon, I also have a strong connection to Darkness. 

The reason this is something I draw attention to is one specific spell Grandpa Rob told me about, Fairy Law. While I cannot conclude for certain, the name is heavily reminiscent of the Black Magic spell Law, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it and the other Legendary Fairy Spells are all Black Magic in one way or another. Fairy Law specifically could be considered a modified variant of Law, one designed for easier use meant to reduce the drawbacks.

Black Magic has its notoriety as being evil because it utilizes the manipulation of souls as weapons. Popular versions of this type of magic are Human Possession and Animal Possession, both being subsets of Seith Magic. But something that often goes overlooked is that Black Magic has the strictest and most demanding taboos that can not under any circumstances be broken. 

All magic has a set of taboos that can’t be broken lest the natural laws of the universe punish the one who broke them. If someone were to break the taboos of Black Magic, a magic that allows someone to play with life itself, then they would anger the God of Life and Death Ankhseram directly. 

Even demons must abide by the taboos. If someone were to trespass over these taboos, then they may pay a penance. Generally speaking, if a God wouldn’t do it, then you shouldn’t.  

An example of these penances is that Time Magic users can’t reverse time for living organisms, especially on a mass scale. Even Chronos, the God of Time refuses to reverse its flow. If a time mage was to reverse it then they would have to sacrifice time off of their own life as penance for breaking this taboo.

With such heavy taboos on Black Magic, I wouldn’t be surprised if the one who created Fairy Law did so to remove the restrictions of Law yet retain its effectiveness. 

If a non-demon could learn to alter Black Magic as powerful as Law, then surely a demon, who has an affinity for Darkness, can do something similar? Or at the very least, I should be able to learn Black Magic faster than a human.

Another important distinction to be drawn is that Black Magic isn’t outlawed because of these taboos. Nor should they be compared to the machinations of the Black Wizard Zeref who willingly broke the taboos of Black Magic, and in the wake of his rebellion against the natural order created his infamous Black Arts.

However, I wasn’t planning on learning something as powerful as Law anytime soon. For the average person, it would take ten long years to fully study Law to use it without breaking its taboos.

I was more interested in the seals I could potentially use to create a series of gates I would need to unlock more demonic transformations. The reason is that the state of my Transformation Magic is reliant largely on the stability of my mind. If my image of myself becomes unstable, then the transformation will end early.

The incident in the bathroom a few weeks ago is the perfect example…

Placing seals on myself with the concept of the Satan Soul magic as a base I could control them much easier. It's why I let myself get Take Over used on myself during my fight with that Mirajane girl, on top of getting personal experience of what Darkness Magic felt like.

I doubted I could use Take Over on myself to the extent that I could use myself as a transformation, but I recond I could take the principles of Take Over, Enchanting, and Black Magic to create a way for me to control my transformations and nature much more easily.

I wasn’t the only one studying either.

Totomaru decided to take the opportunity to train to defeat the Fire member of the Elemental Four. His main problem is that the guy uses Mirage Magic, which uses heat to bend light and create illusions. Totomaru can’t control heat with his pyrokinesis, so he’s trying to prepare using a different strategy.

Heat Sense.

It was a tactic the Captain taught to me and might help in the fight. Heat Sense is only useful when trying to track down either Ice or Fire wizards, or wizards who practise magic that raises the natural temperature of their magic. The reason is that it uses the ethernano as a guide to detect heat fluctuations and differences, but doesn’t differentiate people to the same degree a powerful magic sense ability can.

Assuming that the mirages this Momonji guy uses have even a slightly different temperature than he does, then Totomaru would be able to sense it. I had no luck learning it, but Totomaru’s proficiency with Pyrokinesis gives him an edge I lacked.

The reason why we’re studying is pretty simple.

Money and boredom. 

The standard guild requests were enough for us to sustain ourselves on, but as interesting as they were they rarely gave us a challenge and ultimately ended up in fetch quests a majority of the time. Even in our brief time working in Himura’s guard we were used to dealing with dangerous beasts that were encroaching on the city borders, crazed wizards, drug trafficking, smuggling, and even petty crime. 

While stopping and being able to smell the roses was alright, the two of us began to crave the excitement we were more used to. With Totomaru entering the Elemental Four he could take on higher risk and higher paying jobs. The reason I wasn’t doing it myself was that I was ineligible to do so. 

To become a member of Phantom’s elite and take the more dangerous S-Class quests you need to either be a member of the Elemental Four, which requires you to focus on one type of the four elementals or their offshoot that comprises the ranks and defeat the prior member, or to be sponsored by them. 

Since I was studying Darkness Magic that meant I wasn’t focusing on Fire entirely, removing the opportunity to challenge the position holder. That and…well Totomaru was the one who wanted to become a member of the Elemental Four, and I wanted him to have it.

Afterwards, he would be in a position to sponsor my personal rise which would require me to go on S-Class quests, something we were already planning to do. 

Afterwards, we would start saving up money in preparation for future plans. 

Totomaru was planning on buying his double townhouse which we would spend almost twice as much money renovating. It was something that would take years and reduce our savings by a large margin, not to mention we would be renovating it ourselves so our time would be restricted, meaning it would be harder for us to go on jobs in the future.

That alone would probably take at least five years for us. Not to mention the time it would take for him to get approval to turn two properties into one and earn a license to teach magic for monetary gain. 

Then there is my goal. 

When Totomaru told me to think of the future, I took it to heart.

I didn’t just want to be someone who could punch away any threats towards my loved ones. I wanted to be able to support them, emotionally, socially, and most importantly, financially. I didn’t want them to ever have to worry about being able to afford a meal or a place to rest their head. 

I wanted to be in a position to support them, no matter what.

And to do that I needed to work smarter, not just harder. And I had the perfect plan to do so.

.

.

.