Chapter 199

Chapter 199: Chapter 199

There really wasn’t anything seriously wrong with Marshall.

If anything, the aftermath of Etherion had actually brought him several benefits.

The Dragon Seed had absorbed such an excessive amount of Magic Power that it forcibly pushed his Dragon Power to LV2, causing his body to show a certain degree of dragonification.

Fortunately, that wasn’t a particularly serious problem.

His body had actually become considerably stronger, and the scales and other signs of transformation would gradually disappear once he finished digesting the power, so Marshall saw no reason to make his companions worry.

The real problem wasn’t something anyone else could help him with anyway.

After leaving Porlyusica’s house, the group first settled Simon somewhere safe.

To be perfectly honest, Marshall didn’t have much personal affection for Simon, and his determination to save him wasn’t really for Erza’s sake either.

He simply refused to accept that a spell he had created could possess such a glaring flaw.

Marshall hated admitting failure, and in some respects, the standards he imposed on himself were even harsher than those he imposed on other people.

Even if the only reason was to prove that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with his Magic, he was still willing to put in the effort required to wake Simon up.

For now, he needed to study exactly what had happened to this unconscious patient. Marshall simply refused to believe that there was truly no way to cure him.

At Erza and Marshall’s suggestion, Millianna, Sho, and Wally also agreed to join Fairy Tail.

Initially, the three of them had intended to refuse.

After spending so many years trapped at the Tower of Heaven, they wanted to experience genuine freedom for themselves, but Marshall rather bluntly pointed out that they barely even understood that buying things required money.

If they wandered off into society as they were now, they would probably manage to starve themselves before they figured out how normal life worked.

Besides, Marshall had no intention of looking after Simon on their behalf.

If they cared that much about Simon, then they could stay and help take care of him themselves.

After discussing it among themselves, the three reluctantly admitted that Marshall had a point.

They decided to remain with Fairy Tail for the time being, learn how to properly integrate into society, and reconsider what they wanted to do with their newfound freedom later.

As for the other survivors from the Tower of Heaven, Marshall also gave them the opportunity to work for Fairy Tail.

The guild had expanded so rapidly that it needed people almost everywhere, so there was no shortage of jobs.

Even if some of the former Tower residents preferred the island life they had become accustomed to, Fairy Tail still needed manpower for the production of Moon Drip and the management of the Tower of Heaven itself.

On top of that, Fairy Tail was preparing to enter the logistics industry.

Whether by river transport or maritime shipping, there would be plenty of suitable positions available.

Without most of its Mages even realizing it, Fairy Tail had already grown into something resembling a large enterprise capable of supporting hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of families.

In fact, even many official guild members still hadn’t realized that they were effectively part of one particular division operating beneath the enormous Fairy Tail name.

In short, the guild was thriving.

Sho and Wally were both users of relatively rare forms of Spatial Magic.

Their education might have been lacking, but with talents like those, securing a respectable second- or third-line position within Fairy Tail wouldn’t be difficult.

Millianna was even simpler.

The moment she discovered that there were three cats living in the guild, she decided she wanted to stay here for the rest of her life.

Once Erza’s old companions had been properly settled, Marshall finally had time to deal with his own situation.

His body might not have suffered any genuine damage, but that was only because the real problem had never been physical in the first place.

After returning to his room, Marshall reached inward and summoned a glowing ring from his body.

This was the culprit that had forcibly seized control of him for an entire minute when Etherion descended.

The ring carried such an extraordinarily dense aura of space and time that Marshall decided to give it a name.

[Heart of Time.]

The Heart of Time was, in essence, a Magic Item.

Most of Etherion’s Magic Power had actually been absorbed by this device.

It was now completely saturated with energy and appeared ready to activate at any moment.

The Dragon Seed inside Marshall had merely served as the container housing the Heart of Time.

The device itself had apparently remained hidden within the Seed all this time, which was why Marshall had never realized there was another object buried inside his body.

More importantly, the magical traces surrounding the Heart of Time felt extremely familiar.

If Marshall’s judgment was correct, then the Heart of Time contained the same type of Magic as Memories of Time, the magical book capable of traveling through space and time.

In other words, Marshall suspected that the Heart of Time possessed the power to travel through spacetime.

The reason he could only call it a suspicion was simple: he had absolutely no way to activate the thing himself.

Just like Memories of Time, these extraordinarily sophisticated creations involving spacetime seemed capable of activating successfully only at particular moments.

Then again, there was another possibility. Perhaps Marshall simply wasn’t strong enough yet to forcibly activate it through his own power.

Whatever the answer was, the Heart of Time probably wasn’t harmful to him.

And Marshall had a very simple reason for believing that.

There, engraved directly onto the ring, was the Fairy Tail emblem.

Marshall stared at it for a long moment before his expression became strange.

"This is almost too much. You literally carved the answer onto the damn thing. Who could possibly be bored enough to do something like this? What a mystery..."

The Heart of Time had been concealed within his Dragon Seed, programmed to awaken automatically when Marshall encountered an opportunity to absorb an enormous amount of Magic Power.

He still had no idea how such a small device had managed to seize complete control of his body for a full minute.

Theoretically, a spell capable of doing that to him shouldn’t even exist, but the Heart of Time had demonstrably done it, so Marshall could only acknowledge that the thing was impressive.

Then there was the Dragon Seed itself.

That Seed had come to Marshall through Ruby’s egg, arriving precisely when he most needed that kind of power.

A mysterious person had left him a letter asking him to take care of Ruby’s egg, while also placing the Dragon Seed inside the box that was delivered to him.

Looking back now, the implication was painfully obvious.

That "mysterious person" had apparently known long in advance that Marshall would someday stand directly beneath Etherion, which was why they had hidden the Heart of Time inside the Dragon Seed and planted it within his body.

As for who this mysterious person could possibly be, someone who had gone to such ridiculous lengths to hide their identity...

Well.

That was certainly difficult to guess.

Extremely difficult.

Marshall sighed, returned the Heart of Time to his body, and collapsed backward onto his bed.

For the first time, he had the uncomfortable sensation that his entire life might be sitting inside the palm of "another person."

It was such a boring feeling.

’Was my future already decided from the beginning?’

"Ugh! What an asshole. This is unbelievably tacky..."

Marshall raked both hands through his hair until it became a complete mess.

Sometimes, a person simply couldn’t empathize with themselves.

He had understood that principle for a long time, yet realizing it personally still left Marshall deeply irritated.

For the first time in his life, he found himself genuinely disliking an aspect of his own personality.

After brooding for a while, he finally exhaled and forced himself to let it go.

Forget it.

He would simply pretend none of this had happened.

Living in the present was more important than obsessing over something he couldn’t control.

Still, there was one question he couldn’t completely dismiss.

If this "mysterious person" had deliberately left him a switch capable of traveling through spacetime, didn’t that imply that his future self might eventually encounter a problem he couldn’t solve normally?

Was that seriously possible?

Marshall was already strong enough to stand at the level of the Ten Wizard Saints.

On this continent, that placed him among the genuinely powerful, and even against Makarov, he was confident that although he couldn’t win, he could at least escape.

Could there really be an enemy in this world so powerful that even his future self would be unable to deal with them?

’Could it be... Zeref?’

Marshall sighed again and lay there staring at the ceiling, suddenly unsure what he was supposed to make of any of this.

He had spent his entire life walking on thin ice, carefully building strength and preparing for dangers before they arrived, but now, for the first time, he couldn’t help wondering whether all that preparation would truly be enough to carry him safely to the other side.

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