Chapter 221

Chapter 221: Chapter 221

Gildarts suddenly returning after disappearing for three years caused a sensation throughout Fairy Tail.

Then everyone discovered that Cana was actually his biological daughter, and the guild practically experienced an earthquake.

Almost nobody could believe it.

With the Thunder God Tribe returning as well, the guild hall had become exceptionally lively lately.

Gildarts spent only one day lying around in Marshall’s medical facility before declaring himself discharged.

He fitted his missing limbs with hollow armored prosthetics, filled them with Magic Power, and hobbled straight to the guild on the two crude substitutes so he could drink.

More importantly, he wanted to show off his daughter.

Unfortunately, after being away for more than two years, he nearly failed to recognize where the guild hall was.

Once Gildarts and Cana acknowledged each other as father and daughter, he transformed almost instantly into an obsessive doting father.

He followed Cana everywhere, fussing over whether she was hungry, cold, tired, or otherwise uncomfortable.

At first, Cana was happy about it and even a little embarrassed.

One day later, she was already fed up!

It had taken exactly twenty-four hours for her to regret acknowledging this father, and she began actively avoiding him.

Gildarts didn’t mind.

He granted practically every request Cana made and somehow seemed delighted even when she found him annoying.

He did, however, have one major complaint.

Cana was much closer to Marshall than she was to him!

Not only did Cana live at Marshall’s place, but the two behaved like genuinely close siblings, and it was painfully obvious that Cana listened to Marshall far more readily than she listened to her own father.

Gildarts once tried dragging Cana out for a proper father-daughter drinking session.

She stopped after only two glasses because she was worried Marshall would lecture her for drinking too much.

Gildarts had been left speechless.

If their relationship had truly been nothing more than an innocent sibling-like bond, he probably wouldn’t have cared so much.

Unfortunately, Gildarts was far too experienced with women not to notice the obvious.

Cana’s heart had been wrapped around Marshall for a long time.

And the worst part was... Marshall was no innocent little angel!!!

Gildarts was horrified to discover that in the two-plus years he had been gone, Marshall had somehow stolen the hearts of nearly every young woman in the guild.

The brat wandered through crowds of girls with someone on either side of him, effortlessly keeping everyone happy and somehow thriving in the middle of it all.

Marshall was a damn womanizer!

And the little bastard wasn’t even trying to hide it!

The moment Gildarts realized Cana had probably fallen hopelessly for this miniature scoundrel, his vision nearly went black.

Worse still, there was absolutely nothing he could do about Marshall.

Naturally, Gildarts had immediately warned Cana that Marshall was a born womanizer and told her to keep her distance.

The result?

Cana looked at him with disgust instead.

"I’ve known Marshall is a flirt for years. So what? I’m his big sister! I don’t mind having a few more sisters-in-law."

Then she gave Gildarts a pointed look.

"Besides, didn’t he learn that from you? So apparently even you understand that womanizers are bad."

Gildarts peacefully closed his eyes.

Every boomerang he had thrown throughout his entire life had apparently spent years circling the planet before returning all at once and burying itself directly in his chest.

Since Cana was hopeless, Gildarts decided to try talking some sense into Marshall instead.

He went looking for the boy with every intention of telling him to stay away from his daughter.

Unfortunately, the moment he arrived, Marshall dragged him into the workshop and fitted him with two advanced magical prosthetics.

They were remarkably sophisticated Magic Items.

Once attached to his missing arm and leg, they could shape light into artificial limbs almost indistinguishable from the originals, which Gildarts could control as naturally as his own body.

Marshall had even installed two extremely useful magic arrays inside them.

After charging, each prosthetic could activate a short-range Blink spell twice.

The arm and leg used different fixed teleportation distances, giving Gildarts several new options in combat.

Gildarts stared at the equipment and remembered that Marshall was also a kid he had personally watched grow up.

Back then, he had practically treated Marshall like half a son.

Now Marshall had saved his life and then stayed up working to give him a new arm and leg.

Somehow, the speech about staying away from Cana refused to come out.

When Gildarts thought about it seriously... having Marshall as his son-in-law didn’t actually sound that bad.

As for the possibility that Marshall might secretly be his biological son?

Absolutely impossible!

Gildarts might have spent years fooling around, but whenever he had casual relationships, he had always taken precautions.

For someone with his level of Magic Power control, preventing an accidental pregnancy wasn’t particularly difficult.

Aside from Cornelia, the woman he had actually married, Gildarts had always made absolutely certain there would be no consequences afterward.

So he was confident that Marshall shared no blood relationship with him.

Eventually, Gildarts gave up interfering with whatever might happen between Cana and Marshall.

The two of them were still young anyway.

Who could possibly know what their relationship would become years from now?

As for Marshall’s opinion...

Marshall had no particular opinion at all.

Back when he had treated Gildarts as his hypothetical final boss, he had never exactly been planning anything innocent.

Whether Gildarts approved of him or tried to stop him wouldn’t have changed Marshall’s plans in the slightest.

Marshall’s original ambition had never changed.

Once he became truly invincible, nobody in this world would be able to tell him what he could or couldn’t do.

And Gildarts?

Please.

The man wasn’t even Marshall’s ultimate goal anymore.

He was just some roadside nobody who had nearly gotten himself kicked to death by the Black Dragon.

Nothing special!

Once the "nothing special" Gildarts recovered sufficiently, Marshall naturally pointed his combat-power detector at him to measure his Magic Power.

Unsurprisingly, the device immediately exceeded its limit.

Marshall’s current detector could only accurately measure targets below 1,000,000 Magic Power.

Gildarts appeared to possess roughly 1.11 million.

That was an absurd amount.

Marshall got over it surprisingly quickly.

Sure, Gildarts had approximately ten times as much Magic Power as Marshall.

But somewhere above Gildarts was a Black Dragon with at least ten times more Magic Power than Gildarts.

What a ridiculous world.

As long as that utterly despair-inducing ceiling still existed above everyone, even Gildarts’s monstrous reserves somehow stopped looking that impressive.

’Just wait until I collect enough Inspiration Points.’

Marshall silently encouraged himself.

’I’ll crush every last one of you!’

Then he buried himself in work.

Recently, Marshall had changed his overall strategic philosophy.

From now on, everything would serve one objective: earning Inspiration Points.

Or, in simpler terms... he needed to spend more time ’cultivating’ closeness with girls.

Marshall currently had three people with whom he had unlocked the "intimacy CG" kissing route: Levy, Juvia, and Ultear.

He kissed Levy while working.

Juvia when he visited the guild.

Ultear when he returned home.

Rotating between the three kept his daily Inspiration Point income at a fairly stable level.

Unfortunately, stable wasn’t enough.

Kissing was extremely exciting the first few times, but after repeating the same experience too often, familiarity inevitably set in and the number of Inspiration Points it generated dropped sharply.

Marshall needed fresh stimulation.

He had actually approached Mira very directly and asked her for a kiss.

To his surprise, Mira had immediately turned bright red and run away.

Apparently, for all her usual confidence, she was unexpectedly innocent when things became genuinely romantic.

If even Mira reacted like that, Erza would probably be worse.

It wasn’t time to reveal everything to Cana yet, Lucy refused to cooperate, and Marshall suddenly found himself stuck.

He certainly wasn’t going to ask Wendy for a kiss.

That would be... questionable.

As for the other girls around him, their relationships simply weren’t close enough yet.

For the first time in quite a while, Marshall actually found himself missing Lisanna.

That was also why he had invested so much effort into his Tower of Heaven Project over the past several days.

All he could do now was wait for the Harvest Festival... and hope he would reap a worthwhile harvest.

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