Afterward, Makarov grabbed Aibo by the neck and made him apologize to the town mayor, while the guild master covered the cost of repairing the riverbank.
This only made things worse for Aibo, who was already drowning in debt. At the tender age of six, he now owed several hundred thousand Jewels—a heartbreaking situation.
In the end, the guild master also ordered him to write an apology letter and a letter of self-reflection, strictly forbidding Aibo from using Crush Magic within town limits.
As a result, Aibo failed to gain even a single Inspiration Point for the entire day. He had really taken a huge loss.
Oddly enough, though, Aibo's reputation among the guild members rose dramatically.
A bunch of grown men drunkenly shouted things like, "I am not alone in my path!" and "There is hope for the next generation!" leaving Aibo completely baffled.
Still, it was not as though he had gained nothing.
That Crush Magic blast by the river had consumed around 100 magic power and earned him 2 experience points, allowing Aibo to determine that his mana recovery rate was roughly 1 point per minute.
Well, he had never had a chance to expend large amounts of magic power before. Telepathy Magic and short-range Requip Magic consumed very little.
At the same time, the tremendous power of Crush Magic gave Aibo a little confidence. He was no longer a wizard incapable of tying up a chicken.
However, Aibo also knew that he had not truly mastered Crush Magic. Was this perhaps a flaw of the system?
Magic whose level had been forcibly raised was difficult to control. The Requip Magic Aibo had learned himself did not have this problem and was extremely stable.
This discovery made Aibo abandon the idea of continuing to force-feed himself Inspiration Points. Ordinary magic was not all that difficult to learn anyway, so he might as well study it slowly on his own.
Besides, Aibo's most pressing problem right now was no longer learning magic. He needed to make money!
Not to repay his debt. It did not matter if he owed the guild money for now. What mattered was that he needed to move out!
Aibo could no longer stand living in the guild's boys' dormitory.
It was not that the dormitory itself was poor quality. The environment here was simply terrible.
The guild's boys' dormitory was packed with a group of lawless little devils. Not only were they unbearably noisy at night, but they fought every day. Fighting would have been one thing, but they even used magic, turning the dormitory into either a miniature earthquake zone or a fire hazard.
Fine, he could overlook that. The guild was the same way during the day anyway. No matter how often they were scolded, they never changed, and Aibo had more or less gotten used to it.
The most important thing was that these sexually frustrated idiots went into heat every night. All sorts of bizarre thoughts flooded into Aibo's head at once, and he could not block them out no matter what.
Even worse, Aibo had to swallow his suffering in silence. He was in agony, yet he could not even blame them.
Aibo would never tell anyone that he could not turn off his Telepathy Magic. No one would want someone beside them constantly eavesdropping on their inner thoughts.
So Aibo had always claimed that he could control his magic perfectly. Given his genius-level performance, no one had ever doubted it.
He could only endure this pain alone.
At first, Aibo had thought living in the dormitory counted as a form of training. Under enough pressure, perhaps he would quickly learn how to shut off Telepathy Magic. But reality had been far from satisfactory.
More than ten days had passed, yet he remained helpless against his out-of-control Telepathy Magic. Every night, he was tortured as though more than a dozen burly men were snoring beside his ears. It was practically hell on earth.
A terrible living environment affected his mood. A bad mood meant he could not be happy. If he could not be happy, his progress would slow down. And if he could not grow stronger quickly, how was he supposed to build a harem in another world!?
This was a matter of life and death!
Therefore, earning money and moving out had become Aibo's top priority.
"Oh, Little Gildarts~ Are you taking a job too?"
Macao, one of the guild's core members and a master of Fire Magic, hooked an arm around Aibo's shoulders as he stood before the request board and grinned.
"...Uncle Macao, if you call me that stupid nickname again, I am really going to get mad!"
"Hey, hey, hey, what do you mean, uncle!? I'm only twenty-eight! I'm still young!"
Aibo slapped away the big hand ruffling his hair and sighed helplessly.
Ever since the guild learned that Aibo had actually mastered Gildarts's Crush Magic, someone with too much time on their hands had given him the nickname "Little Gildarts." It disgusted him to no end.
Sadly, he was not strong enough to do anything about those drunken uncles for now. All he could do was write their names down in his little notebook.
"Because I was fined over a hundred thousand Jewels, I've been thinking about how to make money lately. But after looking around, none of the jobs I can take pay much..."
"Haha, there's no need to rush about paying that money back. With your potential, paying it off later will be easy!"
"It's not that I'm in a hurry to pay it back..."
The wizard guilds in this world were somewhat different from the otherworldly adventurer guilds Aibo had imagined.
Although wizard guilds had a unified governing body, they basically operated independently, and the jobs they handled were highly regional.
Most of the requests in this guild came from residents within Magnolia and the surrounding villages.
Generally, only S-class jobs required traveling far away, and there were very few people in the guild qualified to take them.
There were plenty of dangerous requests, but there were also many simple ones with little difficulty, such as delivering letters or finding cats. Even Aibo could complete such jobs alone, and the guild master would not stop him from taking them.
But... they did not pay much.
Even after completing those jobs, the reward was only a few thousand Jewels, at most a little over ten thousand. Renting a place outside the dormitory would cost at least sixty or seventy thousand Jewels a month, while buying a house was an even more distant dream.
And even if he moved somewhere else and rented a room, it seemed that would not solve the problem of being harassed by other people's thoughts at night. At the very least, he needed to buy a large house.
Sigh, this is troubling.
"Little Aibo~ Come on, big sis will take you out to play!"
Cana skipped over, grabbed Aibo's hand, and started dragging him outside.
[I'm taking little brother to meet new friends~ So exciting~]
"Huh? Wait, Cana, mmph..."
A peeled orange segment was stuffed into his mouth, and amid Cana's laughter, he was dragged out of the guild.
This was probably another consequence of the river explosion incident. Cana had grown increasingly close to Aibo and treated him entirely like a little brother.
No, judging from Cana's thoughts, she completely regarded Aibo as another one of Gildarts's illegitimate children.
Aibo had similarly pink hair, had used Gildarts's signature Crush Magic at only six years old, and the guild's shameless old men kept making baseless jokes.
Cana now firmly believed that Aibo was her younger half-brother from the same father.
Even... from the bits of Cana's thoughts Aibo occasionally overheard by accident, her feelings toward Gildarts had also changed in subtle ways.
It had gotten to the point where Aibo no longer dared call Cana "big sister." He had originally meant to get closer to the other children, but now their closeness seemed in danger of going off the charts. Too much was as bad as too little.
Sigh, this is troubling.
"Cana, where are you taking me?"
"Honestly, you should call me big sister!"
Cana pinched Aibo's cheek and smiled.
"Big sister is taking you to meet a new friend. She's one of my best friends. Doesn't Aibo want to learn more magic? Learning all sorts of magical writing is essential, and that big sister can help you."
Although Aibo was currently consumed with thoughts of how to make money, and learning magic had already been pushed down his list of priorities, he could not exactly reject Cana's good intentions...
Cana led Aibo through the town's winding streets until they arrived at an old bookstore with some years behind it. Before even entering, she began calling out enthusiastically.
"Levy~ Levy~ I brought my adorable little brother over to play!"
Before you continue