Keh Keh Keh

"Exhale—inhale—" Riyao closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the first rays of morning sunlight on his face.

When it came to looking after your health, you absolutely had to start young.

In this high-risk world of magic, where people destroyed heaven and earth or blasted mountains apart at the drop of a hat, a healthy, long-lived body was the foundation of revolution.

He slowly breathed out the last of his stale air, lowered both hands to his dantian, and finished the exercise perfectly.

After his morning exercise, Riyao turned and headed back to his dorm room on the guild's second floor.

He walked into the modest bathroom and turned on the tap. Icy groundwater instantly gushed out, pouring over him.

Riyao casually dried his hair and changed into a clean white shirt and black trousers. Over them, he wore his signature white lab coat as always. He looked fresh and neat, with an air of a refined scoundrel.

He pulled out a chair and sat down at his desk. Several hefty medical texts lay scattered across it, but in their midst was an open black-covered notebook he had bound by hand.

Riyao picked up a quill and stared intently at the densely packed writing in the notebook.

What it recorded was not ordinary herbal formulas or techniques for stitching wounds, but one crazy, revolutionary idea after another.

His fingertips brushed lightly over one page, where his prized creation, which he had painstakingly developed earlier, was recorded in detail.

[Healing Magic: Hundred Battles]

He had once tried with great hope to learn magic of other attributes. Fire, ice, lightning... Each held the temptation of destruction.

But reality had given him a resounding slap in the face. Leaving aside the complexity and depth of magic's mysteries, the most fatal obstacle was each person's "aptitude" for different kinds of magic.

That was also why, despite the sizable population, only a minority became mages.

Because of this strict aptitude requirement, some mages had no choice but to settle for the next best thing and rely on holder-type magic, such as jingling Celestial Spirit Keys or intricately constructed magic firearms and standard-issue magic weapons.

And our protagonist Riyao had an exceptional aptitude for life magic—top-tier exceptional.

It wasn't that he couldn't learn other kinds of magic, but their power was relatively weak when he used them. They were fine against ordinary mages, but no good against the powerful ones.

It had made him so angry that he rolled around on the floor and crawled gloomily through the guild library.

Other kinds of life magic didn't have much offensive power either, so he could only keep developing his own.

If he was pushed too far, he would follow the example of a certain hero with a bald head who fought for fun: a hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run every day, until he trained his hair away. Then he could take out a little black dragon with one punch.

He chuckled as he imagined himself trampling a black dragon underfoot and punching Zeref.

He wiped away his drool, tidied his desk, and headed to the guild hall to see if there were any healing requests.

He kicked the guild's front door open. Sure enough, this was the proper way to open it.

Makarov shouted at Riyao, "You little brat, we just replaced that door last week! If you break it, I'll take the cost straight out of your request rewards!"

"Come on, old man, it'll be fine. It's Fairy Tail's front door, after all. It's tough. You have to believe in it."

Trading barbs with Makarov, Riyao walked over to the request board and deftly plucked a request from among the assorted parchments covering it. He studied it for a moment and was just about to head out and begin another day of "raking in money" and "practicing medicine."

Gray, who had only recently joined the guild, had an intense yearning for adventure shining in his eyes. He wanted to step up and take a request to test his skills too.

But the moment he reached out, guild master Makarov appeared from some unknown corner and ruthlessly punished him. Makarov's short arm struck Gray squarely on the head with a sharp thunk.

"Ow! What was that for, old man?" Gray clutched his head, his face full of indignation. "Why can't I? That bastard Riyao gets to take requests!"

"Yeah, yeah, why does that handsome devil Riyao get to take requests?"

Riyao had doubled back at some point and smoothly inserted himself into their conversation, wearing a smile that begged to be punched.

Makarov shot Riyao a disdainful sideways glance, then turned to explain to the indignant Gray, "Don't compare yourself to him. He takes special healing requests. Those requests were made for his healing magic in the first place. What could a brat who only knows how to play with ice do? Freeze the patients into ice sculptures?"

"You've only just joined the guild. There's no rush to take requests."

"But I need to get stronger! How am I supposed to do that without real combat?" Gray clenched his fists, a stubborn defiance in his eyes.

"That's not up for discussion. If you're so bored, find someone to fight."

Makarov shook his head helplessly.

Beside them, Riyao picked his nose without a care for appearances and taunted him casually, "What could a bag of bones like you, with barely any meat on you, do? Charge in screaming and give the forest's magical beasts an extra meal? Though now that you mention it, if you froze yourself into a block of ice first and then sent yourself straight into a magical beast's mouth, that crunchy texture might actually satisfy it. It might even give you a five-star review."

"You scheming, sharp-tongued quack! Who are you calling a bag of bones?"

Gray's face flushed red with anger at those words, and the veins on his forehead throbbed.

"Tch, you can't even beat me, a kind doctor who's too frail and weak to truss a chicken, and you want to go hunt magical beasts?"

Riyao spread his hands and struck an extremely innocent and frail pose.

"Bullshit! Yesterday I clearly... beat you in an instant!" Gray argued furiously.

"Oh↗↘↗↘, really? Then... how about we try again?"

Riyao raised an eyebrow and deliberately drew out his words, even adding an arrogant trill of his tongue, brimming with provocation.

"You said it! Don't regret this!"

Gray roared and yanked off his shirt, revealing his lean upper body.

He clenched one hand into a fist and slammed it into his other palm. An icy blue magic circle instantly spread out before him, and the surrounding temperature plummeted.

"Ice Make: Lancer!"

As Gray bellowed, a dazzling icy blue magic circle instantly spread out before him, intricate geometric patterns spinning rapidly through the air.

The surrounding temperature plummeted, and the moisture in the air rapidly condensed into ice crystals. They formed dozens of incomparably sharp ice spears, which whistled toward Riyao like a torrential downpour, carrying a bone-piercing chill.

Seeing this, Riyao put on a villainous smile and let out a strange "keh keh keh" laugh.