2.0 The Past

"Oi, oi! Kali! Are you sure this is okay?" Gildarts asked.

"Of course. Moreover, you don't seem the type to be worried about something like this." Kali replied.

"What do you mean something like this? We just entered a few clothing stores around five in the morning and took some clothes without paying. This is robbery and they're going to notice!"

"Don't worry about it so much, I calculated how much we would need to take in order for them to notice. We're below the estimated amount."

"How do you even calculate those things?"

"Well, I was once a poor kid after all. I had to get the things I wanted one way or another."

When Kali was in her younger days where she had no money. She had to figure out how to get the things she wanted without using money. Naturally, she got them by taking them without consent.

But that was how things were back then, no parents, no house, she needed to do those things to survive. Sometimes, she does wonder if she had taken a different path if she had parents. Would she have strived to become stronger? Would she have joined the guild? There was no telling.

All Kali had was the timeline of the anime and she had changed it severely. But the fact that she didn't have parents remained a mystery, or she could have just popped up into this world randomly.

"Oi! What are you thinking so hard about?" Gildarts asked which snapped Kali out of her trance. "We're going on a mission."

"I wasn't thinking of anything particularly interesting, it was just about my childhood." Kali replied.

"I see." Gildarts muttered. "Considering the way you are, you must've had a rough childhood."

Kali thought about it for a while before replying.

"I wouldn't say it was rough, but things were definitely not normal. Maybe that's why Erza and I get along so well. We both had terrible childhoods."

"Haha! I never would've imagined hearing that from you. But seriously, the two of you would look good together."

"I'm surprised you're the one saying that, but currently, love and relationships aren't on my mind. I still have a lot to do."

"You're still young, there's no need to think about it so hard. You still have plenty of time in your life." Gildarts said with a chuckle.

"Enough about me." Kali said as she turned to Gildarts. "You've had a pretty rough childhood too, correct?"

"Has anyone ever told you that your intuition is scary?"

Kali laughed. "Yes, multiple people have. I know you also had a bad childhood since we also get along well despite our age differences."

"Tsk, enough about childhoods. I want to know something." Gildarts said.

"Hmm? What do you want to know?"

"What exactly is your magic?"

Kali put a finger to her chin and started thinking about it.

"That's a pretty hard question to answer since my magic isn't exactly one magic. It's a variety of different types of magic put into one." Kali answered.

"How does that even work?" Gildarts asked before groaning.

"It's not supposed to work since you can bring different types of magic and put it into one. But because I am Kali, one of the strongest wizards alive, I'm able to do this."

"Give me a realistic answer." Gildarts said. "I'm actually curious. We have a long way to go before we get there anyway, let's just talk to kill some time."

"Alright." Kali said with a smile. "It's most likely because of my body or something about it."

"Your body?" Gildarts questioned.

"Don't ask me, I don't even understand it. I never thought about it too deeply since I didn't care as much. As long as I was able to learn and wield magic. I didn't care."

"Ah, so you had an obsession with magic, eh?"

"I guess you can say that."

A genuine smile grew on Kali's face, the memories of her constantly looking for books about magic entered her mind.

Kali started to reminisce about the past. Now that she was older, she realized that her obsession with magic made her waste a lot of time. But it brought joy to her. Reading book after book, always testing it out, she would even go days without any sleep at all.

But despite reading about them and testing them, it was failure after failure. Kali couldn't even use proper water magic and one of those reasons was her growth.

Although she's exceptionally strong right now, she was incredibly weak back then. She was able to use magic but she was far from bringing out it's full potential. It was hard to believe, but some people have teased her about being too "small" to become a wizard.

From that point on, Kali set aside her knowledge of magic and started working on her body. From what she knew at the time, wizards had different pathways in their body that mana flowed through.

Using that knowledge, she tried opening her pathways. Due to her unsuccessful attempts, she began to grow frustrated. At that point, she resolved to one thing, and that was to open up her pathways forcefully. It was one of the most dangerous things a wizard can do since it can explode your pathways. If that happened, mana wouldn't flow properly, and could permanently damage your internal system and even kill you.

Kali decided to do it out of frustration and things didn't go as planned. When she opened up one of her pathways by force, she instantly spat out blood. Her chest area was starting to hurt and it felt like knives were stabbing her repeatedly.

As Kali's vision was getting blurrier, she thought that things were going to end for her. However, there were strands of white hair that entered her peripheral vision. Suddenly, the pain was starting to disappear and she was feeling more relieved.

When Kali tried to get up, she felt a sharp pain before she immediately laid back down.

"Don't get up, you're severely injured right now." a soft voice said to Kali.

"Okay." Kali manages to say, even speaking was hurting her.

"You just attempted something extremely dangerous, something a wizard should never attempt. It'll take some time to recover."

Kali nodded her head as her eyesight was becoming more clear. When it finally cleared, she was able to see the person who saved her.

It was a small girl with black pupils and white hair.

"Thank you." Kali said.

"Hmph, you better me. And once you've recovered, you have to fight me." the girl said with a grin.

"Huh..?"

And that was the first time she met Mira.

"It seems you were having a good time in that head if yours." Gildarts said.

"It wasn't bad." Kali replied as she looked around. "It seems I was lit for a while, where are we?"

"We're almost there. In fact, we're already here."

"Well then, let the S-Rank job commence."