After Cana finished shopping and returned to the guild, Kabe introduced Bisca to her.
Cana did not hesitate for long. Very quickly, she officially formed a team together with Sorano and Bisca.
"In that case, I'll announce something too."
Ultear held Meredy's hand with her left hand and wrapped her right arm around Juvia's, then declared directly,
"From now on, the three of us will also form a team and take missions together."
"That means all the newcomers have their own teams now."
Seeing the new members gradually finding their footing, Erza felt genuinely pleased.
If even the newcomers were working this hard, then what excuse did the veterans have to slack off?
"Kabe, you also haven't gone out on a mission in quite a while, have you?
If you stay at home doing nothing every day, sooner or later you'll decline."
Kabe blankly raised a hand and pointed at himself.
"Idle? Me? I only rested for a few days recently because the guild was being rebuilt.
Before that, I hadn't slacked off even a single day."
"And yet you said it yourself, that was before. The Kabe who used to be a training maniac never took breaks."
After Erza said that, Kabe actually began to doubt himself a little.
Have I really gotten lazy? Maybe. Lately, with Erza and the other three beauties around me, I really might have gotten a bit too comfortable.
Thinking that, he cupped Cana's face in both hands and stared at his own reflection in her pupils.
"Damn it. Wine and women have ruined me. I look this haggard. Starting today, I quit drinking!"
After saying that, he let go of the thoroughly confused Cana, stood up, and declared toward the second floor of the guild,
"Decided. I'm going to take a Ten-Year Quest and loosen up my body a little."
All the girls turned to look at his figure as he quickly disappeared up the stairs, and for a moment, none of them said a word.
After a long silence, Ultear finally rested her chin on one hand and gave a disdainful snort.
"That guy didn't mention women at all."
"That's not the point, is it? He said he's going to take a Ten-Year Quest!"
Meredy emphasized that in annoyance, only to find that the others were all reacting rather calmly.
Cana: "It's only a Ten-Year Quest. If it's Kabe, it'll be fine."
Juvia: "So amazing, Lord Kabe. Juvia really wants to team up with him."
Ultear: "Hey. Our team has existed for less than three minutes and you're already trying to quit?"
...
Bisca, who still had only a vague understanding of how the guild ranked missions, had no idea what a Ten-Year Quest really meant.
She sat there by herself, secretly feeling discouraged.
Damn it. I hadn't even fully shown off my charm yet, and he's already going out?
Still, regret was regret. Bisca had genuinely learned quite a lot from Kabe today.
Especially since he had even looked after her and helped find her teammates for her.
All those thoughtful little actions made her good impression of Kabe rise sharply.
I was still too conservative. Next time, I'll go straight for the attack and take him down in one move!
...
After the guild was rebuilt, the second floor was no longer closed off only to S-Class mages.
Now, anyone could come up whenever they wanted.
It was just that everyone seemed to have grown used to gathering in the main hall on the first floor instead.
Other than occasionally coming to the library on the second floor to look up information, almost nobody came up here anymore.
The S-Class and above requests, however, were still posted on the second-floor request board, to prevent them from being mixed up with ordinary jobs and causing any accidents.
Standing in front of the board, Kabe directly ignored the S-Class and SS-Class missions, which were too easy for him, and walked over to the Ten-Year Quest section.
Compared to the first two categories, which still had around ten requests between them, the Ten-Year section held only three request sheets.
As for Hundred-Year Quests, those never appeared here at all.
A person first had to gain Makarov's approval before even being told the rough details.
Only then could they personally meet the client and accept the mission directly from them.
Since the very first mage guild was founded, only one Hundred-Year Quest had ever been accepted.
That was the one Gildarts was currently undertaking, the quest related to the Five Dragon Gods.
Kabe very much wanted to see for himself these so-called Five Dragon Gods, beings said to be no less than Acnologia, and find out whether they were really as fearsome as people claimed.
Unfortunately, putting aside the fact that Gildarts had already taken that mission, Makarov would never agree to let him go anywhere near it.
So in the end, he had no choice but to lower his sights and look at the Ten-Year Quests instead.
"Let me see what kinds of high-difficulty missions have been elevated to Ten-Year status..."
Muttering to himself, he began reading through the three requests.
He dismissed the first two after only a glance.
One was about finding a lost secret treasure from some ancient kingdom.
The other was about proving that gods truly existed in this world.
These two quests were practically old acquaintances of Kabe's.
From the very first time he stepped onto the second floor after becoming S-Class, they had already been posted here.
Kabe suspected the two of them might very well remain posted here forever, and one day perhaps become the second Hundred-Year Quest after the Five Dragon Gods mission.
Skipping over those two commissions, which he had absolutely no way of solving, Kabe turned his attention to the third one, the only quest that actually interested him.
Travel to the western continent, Alakitasia, investigate the identities of the core upper-ranking personnel of the Alvarez Empire, and determine the approximate military capability of the imperial army.
After reading that information, he lowered his gaze to the client name.
Just as expected, it read:
Magic Council
"Tch. The Council really is hopeless.
They can't even figure out the identities of an enemy power's top brass or its military strength.
They actually have to issue a mission to every guild and outsource even the most basic intelligence work to mages through a commission.
Those idiots really are rotten to the core."
Kabe mercilessly criticized the Council, taking the chance to vent hard against that useless institution that could never do anything properly.
The Alvarez Empire was the absolute ruler of the western continent, having unified the entire landmass and more than seven hundred guilds across it.
Just one year earlier, it had even shown signs of mobilizing troops to invade Ishgar, only to be forced back by the Council through Etherion and the final superweapon, Face.
And judging from the contents of this Ten-Year Quest, the Council had clearly noticed long ago that the empire next door was growing increasingly powerful, and had already wanted to investigate its intelligence in detail.
But in a full ten years, the Council had gathered almost no useful information.
That was why they had finally been reduced to resorting to this method.
For a moment, Kabe did not even know how he ought to evaluate the people in the Council.
If he said they had foresight, then they had failed to uncover anything.
If he called them worthless, then at least they had managed to deter Alvarez and force them to withdraw.
In the end, the best summary was this:
Somewhat useful, but not very useful.
This one, then. If I'm only going there to investigate, it shouldn't be much of a problem.
And just so happens, there are two people over there I'd like to meet.
With that thought, he tore the request sheet from the board in one sharp motion, then turned and walked downstairs.