Originally, Alex wanted to follow Layla when she opened the Eclipse Gate. But after knowing her for a year, he knows that she won't let him come with her and instead will ask him to accompany Lucy when she goes to open that Gate.
So he cancels his plan to follow her there and just leave after a year in Heartfilia residence as he has promised in the beginning. Besides, everything should be fine now because Layla can get all 12 Gold Keys, so she won't need to sacrifice herself.
He bids farewell to everyone in the Heartfilia residence before leaving. Even Jude comes to send him off with his usual awkward behavior because he still doesn't know how to properly talk with others if it's not about business.
But Jude has gotten much better now compared to last year. At least now he can show his affection for his family even though his acts are always awkward, especially when talking with his daughter.
"Are you really leaving, big brother Alex?" Lucy looks down with teary eyes when Alex is about to leave. She really has thought of him as her older brother now.
"Yeah, I need to do my job as a Mage in the Guild. If I don't work, I won't gain more experience to get stronger. Don't look so sad. If you have become a full-fledged Celestial Mage, then you can join my Guild. So study and train seriously or your parents won't allow you to join a Magic Guild."
"Alright."
Alex hopes that everything he did in this house can change Lucy's childhood time to be much better. She won't lose her mother, her father can show affection to her, and she can learn to be a Celestial Mage properly from Layla.
Then after he's done with his farewell, Alex leaves the Heartfilia residence. It's finally time to resume his activities as a Fairy Tail Mage. There must be some changes in the Guild after he leaves for a year, so he is excited to return.
But as usual, Alex chooses to walk all the way from the Heartfilia residence to Magnolia even though there's a train that connects both places. He just enjoys walking and seeing things when he's not in a rush like this.
Besides, it's a good chance to hunt some Magical Creatures in the wild. Hunting Magical Creatures is important for Alex because he needs to absorb their magic power to break the remaining Tailed Beasts' seals.
His own magic power also continuously weakens the seals. But the process is slow because the Tailed Beasts don't want to take all his magic power as he also needs it like for training or even fighting.
It will be very dangerous if he doesn't have enough magic power when he is in danger. So they only take a little at a time to weaken the seals. Alex still doesn't have that much magic power, so they really can't get that much from him even if they squeeze him dry.
That's why they need to hunt magical creatures and absorb their magic power. But weak ones won't help that much, so they need to hunt the strong ones. Hunting strong magical creatures also can help Alex gain more battle experience, so it's 2 birds with 1 stone.
But Alex also prioritizes hunting dangerous magical creatures that often become problems for villages or towns. Creatures like Wyverns, Werebeasts, Vulcans, etc often become the targets of subjugation because they often attack people.
Unfortunately, there aren't many Magical Creatures he can hunt on his way back. He finds quite a lot of strong ones, but most of them are mothers with cubs.
Even if they are beasts or even can be called monsters, Alex wouldn't kill mothers and children unless they are trying to harm him. He has his own standards and he has a line he doesn't want to cross.
So his haul is quite low but he finds something else, a bear cub. It's an unexpected find when he is chasing a Giant Black Serpent that attacks him when he cooks a deer for dinner.
The Giant Black Serpent is great at hiding its presence, especially during the night despite having a big size. This one that attacks Alex is an adult with a 2 meters wide and 30 meters long body.
Alex almost can't detect it until the last moment when the serpent attacks. It manages to sneak very close to him, but because of the noise it makes when it moves fast to attack, Alex notices it right before getting bitten.
"Holy crap! I almost became a dinner when preparing dinner myself. This isn't funny, man."
Alex quickly transforms into the mini Matatabi form, which looks like a blue-black tiger. Then he shoots a fireball out of his mouth at the Giant Black Serpent. It flies fast, but the serpent surprisingly can dodge it.
Its agility surprises Alex because it should be quite slow for such a creature of that size. Even more surprising, the Giant Black Serpent immediately fled without trying to attack Alex again.
It pissed off Alex who already got his dinner ruined, so he chases the serpent. Then again, it's surprisingly fast and good at hiding its presence at night. So Alex loses it even with his good tracking skill.
But he's already too pissed off, so he keeps trying to find that serpent. Luckily, it's a big fella, so it leaves a clear track whenever it goes. Although the track is only visible at day because the night is unusually dark as the sky is very cloudy, so the moon is covered by the clouds.
That's why Alex can only track the serpents the next morning and he finds it quite quickly. He finds it in a cave right when it fights a bear. It actually fights the bear, unlike when it ran away from Alex last night.
"Seems like this guy is intelligent enough to know which opponent it can handle and not."
The serpent ran away from Alex because it knew it couldn't win after Alex attacked it with a fireball. But it can handle this bear, so it stays and fights the bear. Too bad that it has pissed off Alex and he finds it already, so its fate is sealed.
Alex now transforms into his humanoid Shukaku form and wraps the serpent's whole body with sand from behind before it even realizes that he has found it.
He tightens the sand wrap until the serpent is almost passed out. Then Alex absorbs its magic power before it really dies. He now can absorb others' magic power just by touching them as long as they have been weakened.
This is like the Chakra Absorption Technique from the Naruto world. Previously, Alex needed to pull the targets' whole bodies into his body like a sealing technique for the Tailed Beasts to absorb the creatures' magic power.
But that took a lot of energy and the targets needed to be on their death doors to be pulled or they will resist too much and it might fail. He could only do that before because Shukaku couldn't use the Chakra Absorption Technique.
Shukaku is very proficient in sealing techniques though, so they chose to basically seal the defeated creatures into Alex's body. Once inside, the Tailed Beasts' seals would automatically absorb the creatures' magic power, so they didn't need to do anything.
The drawback was, Alex couldn't harvest anything else from those creatures. He couldn't get their materials that can be sold for money. So he lost quite a lot of profit because of that.
Unfortunately, Matatabi also doesn't know how to use the Chakra Absorption Technique. So he stuck with that method for a rather long time, until Isobu was unsealed. Luckily for him, Isobu can use the Chakra Absorption Technique and teach Alex how to use it.
So now he can just absorb the creatures' magic power without taking everything else. He can even do it without killing the creatures if he wants to, but he surely won't let this serpent live after what it did to him.
After killing the serpent, Alex checks it to see what he can harvest from it. Then he sees the brown bear that fought this serpent. It's already injured very badly and it's also poisoned. It won't survive with its condition.
Alex doesn't really think much of it because this is how nature works. But then he sees a small bear cub hiding behind the dying bear that must be its mother. It's still very small, so it must be very young.
The brown bear cub cries to call its dying mother that will never wake up anymore. Alex who didn't think much about the bear's death is now feeling really bad.
Even if it's an animal, it is still just a baby and it already lost its mother. The bear cub still can't take care of itself or it will die soon and Alex just doesn't have the heart to leave it like that.
"Sigh, I'm really soft, aren't I?"
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Ch. 100: 10 Years Quest