Clouded in Mystery

On a distant mountaintop beyond the dark clouds, a man and woman stood close together, both wearing cloaks. The woman gripped the man's arm tightly, looking furious.

They gazed silently at the great hole blasted through the black clouds and the supremely holy-looking beam of sunlight shining into them. A mountain breeze swept past, blowing back their hoods. They were Teng and Amanda.

Amanda tightened her grip on Teng's arm and said with murderous intent, "They actually hurt our precious child. They deserve to die!"

Teng rubbed his chin with his free hand and murmured to himself, "Was the hypnosis still too shallow?"

Amanda looked up at Teng. "Darling, they failed. What do we do now?"

Teng pulled his hood back up and took Amanda's hand, leading her slowly down the mountain. "Let's go back for now. If we continue, we'll draw the Magic Council's attention. Besides, we still have a lot of preparations to make to welcome Eleven."

Amanda was visibly reluctant. "But what about our precious child's safety? I'm afraid..."

Teng patted the back of Amanda's hand and smiled faintly. "It's all right. You saw for yourself that he's strong enough to protect himself now. And if anything happens, that lord will protect him too. After all, he's the 'eleventh-generation Holy Son' chosen by that lord!"

After enjoying the sunlight for a moment, Eleven forced himself to open his eyes. Even though his head was splitting, his body was exhausted, and he had lost a serious amount of blood, it still wasn't time to pass out.

He still had to check on Laxus and Erza. He hadn't forgotten that there were two other people. To be honest, Eleven was even a little desperate now. He had no strength left to fight at all.

Eleven found a stick to support himself and limped slowly toward the place where the lightning had struck.

When Eleven found Laxus, he discovered that Laxus was struggling to pull the clothes off Erza, who lay unconscious on the ground...

Eleven: (ㅍ_ㅍ)

I misjudged you! I never thought you were this kind of person, Laxus!!

Hearing a sound behind him, Laxus looked back warily. He breathed a slight sigh of relief when he saw Eleven, but his expression immediately grew grave again. "Eleven, hurry and help! This girl's hurt too badly. Help me put pressure on her wounds!"

Eleven froze for a moment at his words before noticing Erza in Laxus's hands. The front of her body was a bloody mess, and blood continued to flow, staining a large patch of mud beneath her red.

Without another moment's hesitation, Eleven threw away his stick and staggered into a quick run toward Erza. He didn't even stop to consider whether his hands were dirty. He reached out and took over from Laxus, pressing hard on the wounds that were still bleeding.

Laxus let go, breathed a slight sigh of relief, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Then he got shakily to his feet.

Only then did Eleven realize that Laxus was also seriously injured. There was scarcely a spot on his body that was unharmed, and his left leg in particular was twisted out of shape.

By comparison, Eleven was actually the most intact of the three, which filled him with self-reproach.

Dragging his crippled leg, Laxus slowly shuffled over to the tall, thin man lying motionless nearby. He tore off the man's clothes and ripped them haphazardly into long strips. Then he returned and, with Eleven's help, began wrapping them around Erza.

Eleven stared at Erza, who had been wrapped up like a mummy, at a loss for words. There were even plenty of haphazardly tied, tight knots all over her. This was way too careless.

"Um, Laxus, is this okay?" Eleven pointed at Erza and stared blankly at Laxus.

"Yeah. As long as the bleeding's stopped." Laxus didn't seem to care at all. He sat down to rest.

"But this is a little too..."

"It's fine. This girl's in great physical shape. As long as she doesn't die now, she'll recover."

Eleven looked at how certain Laxus seemed and had no idea where he got his confidence.

A day later, the doors of the Fairy Tail guild slowly swung open. Three battered figures floated inside. Eleven had used the little telekinetic power he had just recovered to carry Laxus and Erza back.

"Hey, we're back..."

With that, Eleven, Laxus, and Erza all fell to the ground and passed out.

When Eleven opened his eyes again, he saw a familiar little cabin. Because their injuries were so severe, the three of them had been sent straight to Ms. Porlyusica's cabin.

Eleven turned his head and looked around. Laxus had already woken up and was reporting the details of the mission to Makarov. Ms. Porlyusica stood with her arms folded, listening in with an expression of indifference.

The three of them felt Eleven's gaze and all looked over. Ms. Porlyusica stopped pretending to be aloof and hurried over to examine him. Makarov also walked to Eleven's bedside and looked at him with concern.

Laxus looked quite energetic. Most of his injuries were external, and injuries like fractures and cracked bones hardly counted as injuries to Ms. Porlyusica.

Erza, however, was still unconscious. Although her breathing was steady and she seemed to have just undergone surgery, Eleven remained very worried. Only after Ms. Porlyusica solemnly assured him did he finally feel relieved.

"I'm sorry. It's all because of me..." Eleven lowered his head, full of self-reproach. He believed that if it hadn't been for him, Laxus and Erza would never have been hurt.

"Huh?" Laxus, who had been about to put on his headphones and listen to music, couldn't help frowning when he heard Eleven. "What's that got to do with you? We just got injured on a mission. Nothing could be more normal. Do you really think you're the team leader and have to take responsibility for our safety?"

Laxus's words seemed harsh, but he was also trying in his own way to ease Eleven's guilt. Watching from the side, Makarov was deeply moved. He hadn't expected the day to come when his grandson would show concern for others.

Makarov treated the attack on Eleven and the others with two hundred percent seriousness, launching an investigation using almost all of Fairy Tail's information channels.

But when they found the person who had commissioned the mission, they discovered that he was already dead. He had gouged out his own eyes and then hanged himself from a ceiling beam.

With no other choice, they had to start with the identities of the three people who had attacked Eleven.

Only then did Eleven realize that he still didn't know their names.

But it didn't matter whether he knew their names. With their appearances and magic, Fairy Tail's powerful intelligence network made it easy to find their guild, identifying it as an obscure dark guild.

But when Makarov personally led a group into the dark guild, they found an even more shocking sight.

Every member of the guild had gouged out their own eyes and then drowned together in the pool in the backyard. The scene was like hell on earth.

Whether it was the client or the members of the dark guild, none of them bore any other injuries. It was as though their deaths had been entirely voluntary. They had all killed themselves.

The incident even alarmed the Magic Council. Although the guild that had been wiped out was a dark guild, the use of such deranged methods was still chilling. The culprit had even made the dead gouge out their own eyes to prevent the Magic Council from using magic to obtain images from their eyeballs.

After thinking it over for a long time, Eleven decided to tell Makarov about the fleeting glimpse he had caught of his parents. Though it pained him, Eleven had a vague feeling that this might really have something to do with them.

Eleven found it very suspicious that the man in the suit had refused to kill him even when he was out of his mind.

Makarov also took the lead Eleven had provided seriously, but he found nothing.

The descriptions Eleven gave of his parents' appearances led nowhere, as though the two had never existed at all. The orphanage's records of taking Eleven in were also extremely vague.

For a time, there was no way to investigate Eleven's identity. It was as if he had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, shrouded in layers of mystery.

Later, even Gildarts deliberately gave up his mission and joined the investigation. But even after spending a full six months on it, they still found nothing.