The shattered boards flew toward the office.
Without looking back, Makarov shrank himself. Two boards collided just above his head and bounced off the doorframe.
"Attack the guild master, and the compensation doubles."
"That counts as an attack?" Mira said angrily.
"Even if you missed."
Makarov closed the office door at the back of the first floor, shutting out all the protests.
Lin Yuan picked up a board and handed it to Mira. "Half each."
"Who said we're splitting it? I smashed the floor, so I'll fix it myself."
"You flipped the tables."
"I shattered the windows too!"
"So most of it's yours."
Mira froze for a moment, then immediately clenched her demonic right hand into a fist. Lin Yuan had already taken a casual half step back, suddenly putting another three meters between them.
Her fist hit empty air.
"Try using that cheating magic one more time!"
"Fix the floor first."
Before long, the guild rang with the clatter of repairs in the middle of the night.
Erza stayed behind too. She had originally been supervising the two of them, but when she saw Mira bend a nail while pressing it in, she couldn't resist reaching out to correct her. "You should apply force straight down."
Mira sneered and shoved the hammer into her hand. "Then you do it."
Erza brought the hammer down. The nail didn't bend, but the board split in two.
Lin Yuan looked at the new damage. "Now three people have to pay."
"Don't count me!" the two girls shouted at the same time.
Mira's demonic arm was astonishingly strong, and a nail sank into the board with a single push. But every time she drove one in, five claw marks appeared around it.
Lin Yuan was in charge of putting the boards back where they belonged. He used his magic to shorten the distance between the two ends, and a long table that normally took three people to move glided lightly across the hall, landing precisely beside its broken leg.
The first table went smoothly, but the second came up a section short when they tried to join it back together.
Mira crouched beside it and studied it for a long time. "Where's the piece of wood from the middle?"
"It was here just now."
They both looked at Lin Yuan's hand.
He was silent for a moment. "I might have eaten it."
"You even eat tables?"
"My magic eats space."
"Then where did the wood go?"
"I'm still looking into that question."
Mira took a deep breath, swung the hammer, and chased after him.
Early the next morning, everyone pushed open the door to find the room full of crooked furniture. Lin Yuan and Mira each gripped one end of the compensation list, neither willing to let go.
"Looks like bandits raided the place," Wakaba remarked.
"Who are you calling a bandit?" Mira shouted, and everyone stepped back in unison.
Mira was just about to press him further when the scales suddenly receded from the little finger of her right hand, returning it to normal. She looked down, immediately hid her entire arm behind her back, and pretended nothing had happened.
But Lin Yuan had seen it.
"You held it three breaths longer than yesterday."
"You saw wrong."
"It's five breaths now."
"Shut up!"
Lisanna and Elfman ran in through the door. Lisanna noticed the change in her sister at once and happily hugged her left arm.
"You really can control it, sis!"
Mira turned her face away. "It wasn't hard to begin with."
No sooner had she spoken than scales covered her little finger again.
Lin Yuan calmly added, "Seven breaths in total."
The hammer immediately flew at him.
Lin Yuan tilted his head to dodge, and the hammer continued past him, striking Makarov, who had just come out of the office. The old man rolled twice across the floor, and the hall erupted in laughter.
Makarov climbed to his feet and silently added another line to the compensation list.
"The guild master should pay too!" Mira pointed at the office. "You deliberately dodged the boards last night!"
"That's called self-defense."
The argument continued until noon, when two slices of strawberry cake finally brought it to a temporary halt.
Only after inspecting the cream, strawberries, and filling did Mira admit that Lin Yuan had kept his word. She pushed one slice toward Lisanna and guarded the other, watching everyone who passed by.
Lin Yuan had barely passed her when she fixed her eyes on him.
"This is mine."
"I'm not that hungry."
"Someone who even eats tables has no right to say that."
Erza walked past carrying strawberry cake. "Attacking a companion while paying compensation should be noted down too."
Mira guarded her cake. "Armor girl, is keeping accounts all you know how to do?"
"My name is Erza. And I know Requip Magic."
"Then change into something and fight me!"
Erza put down her cake. "I was thinking the same thing."
Their foreheads nearly collided. Instead of trying to stop them, everyone quickly moved the tables and chairs aside, as if they were looking at their future daily routine.
Lisanna covered her mouth and giggled, then cut a small corner from her own slice and offered it to Elfman.
"Lin Yuan, do you want some?"
"No. Otherwise someone will go berserk again."
Mira picked up her fork and seriously considered which direction to throw it from.
Just then, the guild doors opened. A man in a postman's uniform walked in carrying a leather document tube. He made his way around the boards on the floor and the crooked tables and chairs, finally reaching the counter with some difficulty.
"An urgent request from Sunken Bell Town. Fairy Tail, please review it as soon as possible."
Makarov took the leather tube. A church surrounded by a ring of thorns was stamped into the red wax seal.
He opened the request, and the expression on his face, which had still been calculating compensation, gradually turned serious.
"Guild master, what's the job?" Macao asked.
"There's a church outside the town that's been abandoned for years." Makarov spread the paper across the counter. "Seven days ago, its bells began ringing again in the middle of the night. Ever since then, someone in town has gone missing every day."
Wakaba puffed out a mouthful of smoke. "Does it need investigating, or do we need to subjugate something?"
"The client doesn't know what's there either."
Makarov picked up the list attached at the back, glanced at it once, and placed it facedown on the table again.
Lin Yuan sensed a trace of an unusual aura lingering at the edge of the page.
It was faint, but it instinctively reminded him of the pair of serpentine eyes hidden behind the divine throne in his dream.
Mira put down her fork too.
"What's that church called?"
The postman swallowed.
"People in town all call it-the Sleeping Church."