A few mornings later, a ghostly shriek rang out through Fairy Tail.
"Holy crap! W-what the hell is this?!!"
Max had just arrived at the guild. He was holding a newspaper he had casually bought on the way over, planning to eat breakfast while catching up on the latest news.
But the glaring headline on the front page shocked him so badly that the pizza in his hand dropped straight onto the table.
As for Max himself, he nearly launched right out of his chair. His eyes were wide as saucers as he stared at the paper in utter disbelief.
"What now? It's barely morning."
Sitting beside him and chatting with Nab, Warren got startled by the outburst. Once he came back to himself, he spoke with some annoyance.
Max was already too overwhelmed to put his feelings into words. He directly shoved the newspaper into Warren's hands and jabbed a finger frantically at the headline.
Warren was left totally confused by the sudden behavior, but the moment he focused his eyes on the page, he nearly sprang up from his seat as well.
"What the hell, is this for real?! Kabe is about to become one of the Ten Wizard Saints?!"
That single sentence stirred up a thousand waves.
The Fairy Tail members who had just been minding their own business all rushed over the moment they heard such explosive news.
"What's going on? Let me see!"
"Don't shove, don't shove, damn it, who stepped on my foot?!"
"Move it, don't block the way!"
The noisy chaos inside the guild quickly caught the attention of a green-haired girl dressed like a cowgirl.
"One of the Ten Wizard Saints? What's that supposed to be?"
Hearing her mutter that to herself, Sorano nearly choked on the soup in her mouth.
"Pfft... cough, cough, cough... no way, Bisca, you seriously don't even know what the Ten Wizard Saints are?!"
The cowgirl, Bisca, blinked her big, confused eyes and replied as though it were only natural.
"I'm an immigrant from the western continent. Isn't it perfectly normal that I don't know much about your Ishgar continent?"
"...You've got some nerve saying that. You knew nothing, and you still dared to impersonate Fairy Tail."
The whole thing actually started two days ago.
Two days earlier, Sorano, Juvia, Ultear, and Meredy, the four newcomers, had successfully completed their first mission under Erza's lead.
After the mission ended, Erza suggested they go out and celebrate with a treat.
And just so happened, there was a dessert shop nearby that was supposedly quite famous.
So the five of them made a last-minute detour and headed there to try the place's signature caramel mousse.
That was when they happened to run into this western-continent immigrant girl named Bisca, who had been swaggering around and scamming people under Fairy Tail's name.
In the end, after furiously teaching her a lesson, Erza still took pity on her for being miserable and jobless, and brought her back to the guild anyway.
...
Since they were both newcomers, Sorano elegantly dabbed the soup from the corner of her mouth with a napkin before explaining,
"The Ten Wizard Saints, full name the Ten Great Wizard Saints, is an honorary title granted by the Council, the magic authority of Ishgar, to the ten finest mages on the continent.
You can also think of it as a special title that only the ten strongest mages recognized by the continent are qualified to hold."
"The continent's strongest!!"
Bisca's eyes slowly widened.
Both in personality and in the way she dressed, she was every bit a true cowgirl, and by nature she deeply admired strength.
That word, strongest, instantly hooked her whole attention.
Sorano greatly enjoyed the way Bisca looked like a country girl seeing the world for the first time. Her tone immediately turned smug.
"Little girl, I forgot to mention, our guild master, old man Makarov, is already the fifth-ranked powerhouse among the Ten Wizard Saints.
So now you understand just how lucky you are, and just how incredible the guild you joined really is, right?"