Chapter 272

Chapter 272: Chapter 272

While Marshall was enjoying an extraordinarily long nap at the bottom of the ocean, Fairy Tail was in complete chaos over his disappearance.

Naturally, Marshall knew absolutely nothing about it.

After waking up, his first priority had been investigating the Curse of Ankhseram.

Since he had no idea he’d been unconscious for two entire days, contacting the guild hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Had he known what was happening back home, he probably would have been more anxious than anyone else.

Unfortunately, he had rather more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.

With this mysterious curse now residing inside his body, Marshall obviously couldn’t return to Magnolia.

He was confident that he could teleport away the instant he sensed another outbreak approaching, but if there was one thing Marshall hated, it was leaving things to chance.

Even if the possibility of an accident was extremely small, he refused to risk harming the people he wanted to protect.

However, Marshall had no intention of finding some deserted island and settling there either.

If he could avoid it, he didn’t particularly want to kill innocent fish and shrimp every time his curse activated.

After all, he was a kindhearted person.

And so Marshall decided to construct an entirely new island for himself.

With his current Magic Power, creating an artificial island wasn’t particularly difficult.

Incidentally, Marshall’s Magic Power had already reached 180,000.

That was one of the unexpected benefits he’d discovered after awakening the Curse of Ankhseram.

He had apparently gained another forty to fifty thousand Magic Power simply by falling asleep and waking up again.

The speed of his improvement was almost unbelievable.

And his increased magical reserves weren’t the only change.

Marshall could clearly sense that his body was different.

His five senses had become considerably sharper, his physical constitution had grown even more resilient, and he’d acquired an entirely new ability.

He could now perceive a special point inside living creatures.

It was the very thing he’d spent so much time searching for during his previous experiments: the intersection between the soul, the body, and the world, which also represented the First Origin.

For convenience, Marshall decided to call it the Life Origin Point, or simply the Life Point.

Whenever the curse erupted, his body automatically extracted every Life Point within a certain radius and absorbed them into his own First Origin.

Every Life Point represented an individual life and contained an extraordinarily concentrated amount of life force.

It was precisely the energy stored within these points that continuously restored Marshall’s body.

His earlier experiments had already established that a Life Point represented the connection between the soul, the body, and the world.

When someone died, that connection would break.

Brian, for example, still possessed the damaged remains of a Life Point within his soul.

Simon’s situation was somewhat different: his Life Point had split into two separate parts.

In theory, as long as a person’s Life Point continued to exist and remained whole and unified, that person couldn’t die.

Even if they lost an arm or a leg, their body should eventually regenerate the missing parts according to the information stored within their Life Point.

Of course, Marshall hadn’t actually tested that hypothesis yet.

It was merely a conclusion he’d reached after analyzing the information currently available to him.

His own situation, meanwhile, was rather unusual.

Marshall’s Life Point now contained hundreds, possibly thousands, of smaller Life Points, generously contributed by all those unfortunate fish and birds he’d accidentally killed.

Those smaller Life Points continuously supplied his own with life force.

In other words, until he exhausted that stockpile of absorbed Life Points, Marshall was effectively immortal.

At least, that was the most convincing explanation he’d managed to develop after thoroughly examining his condition.

Ultimately, the Curse of Ankhseram appeared to function by forcibly extracting other creatures’ Life Points and storing them inside the afflicted person’s body.

By consuming the lives of others, it allowed the user to prolong their own existence.

When he put it that way, the whole thing didn’t seem particularly different from vampirism.

But that raised another interesting question.

If the underlying principle was really so straightforward, wouldn’t someone afflicted with the curse eventually die once they exhausted all their stored Life Points?

Theoretically, yes.

Energy was conserved. If someone completely exhausted every available source of energy, they naturally shouldn’t be able to resurrect themselves again.

Unfortunately, there was one rather significant obstacle to that approach.

The curse wouldn’t allow its victim to exhaust their stored Life Points.

Every so often, it would automatically replenish their reserves, regardless of whether they wanted it to happen.

Marshall discovered this firsthand while constructing his artificial island.

During the process, his curse erupted for a second time.

Having learned from his previous experience, Marshall didn’t immediately teleport away. Instead, he remained where he was and carefully observed the entire activation process.

He could clearly perceive countless Life Points converging upon his body, flowing into his First Origin and replenishing the energy stored within it.

An unimaginable number of lives were flowing through his body.

It sounded rather disturbing when he described it that way, but that was precisely what was happening.

The Curse of Ankhseram was an ability that benefited its user entirely at the expense of other living creatures.

Calling it Black Magic wouldn’t be the slightest exaggeration.

And yes, Marshall remained firmly convinced that it was a form of Magic.

He wasn’t interested in hearing any nonsense about divine curses.

For one thing, activating this ability consumed an enormous amount of Magic Power.

It also possessed an identifiable activation delay, produced observable magical effects, and ultimately caused an extraordinary phenomenon.

Those were all characteristics of Magic!

Regardless of how anyone tried to describe it, the fundamental mechanism was still magical.

The only difference was that this particular Magic existed at such an extraordinarily high level that Marshall’s current abilities were insufficient to control it.

That was all!

Besides, Marshall had never personally witnessed anyone placing a curse on him.

Ankhseram?

Who was that supposed to be?

Marshall had never met this alleged god, so why should he automatically accept the claim that some invisible deity had personally cursed him?

Was he supposed to believe something simply because everyone else said it was true?

Absolutely not.

His System had even obediently changed the ability’s classification from a curse to Life Magic when he demanded it.

That was proof enough for Marshall to believe that, sooner or later, he would find a way to bring the ability completely under his control.

Having once again convinced himself that everything was perfectly manageable, Marshall continued his work with renewed enthusiasm.

He still had an island to build.

...

After discovering that he no longer needed to breathe to survive, Marshall had become considerably more adventurous underwater.

In fact, he decided to conduct a rather extreme experiment.

He dove straight into the ocean, descending to a depth of more than ten thousand meters.

Under ordinary circumstances, the water pressure at that depth should have flattened him into a pancake.

Instead, Marshall discovered that although the pressure was extremely painful, he showed absolutely no signs of dying.

Even more interestingly, his Body-Conditioning Magic was gaining experience at an astonishing rate, several times faster than during his usual training.

Marshall was delighted.

The body was the vessel that housed the soul.

Now that his body possessed the characteristics of immortality, he seemingly no longer needed to worry about permanently damaging that vessel.

In that case, what was stopping him from pushing it to its limits?

An assortment of increasingly outrageous training methods immediately occurred to him.

There were so many ridiculous ideas he’d entertained over the years but had never dared attempt because the risks were simply too great.

Now, however, things were different.

And it wasn’t just physical conditioning!

Since he no longer had to worry quite so much about dying, there were numerous dangerous magical experiments he’d previously considered too risky that he could finally attempt.

This was an enormous opportunity!

The more Marshall considered the possibilities, the more excited he became.

Rather than feeling even the slightest sorrow over his supposed curse, he was completely immersed in the joy of acquiring an extraordinary new ability.

Immortality had opened up an entirely new world of research opportunities.

Marshall could hardly wait to explore them.

With that thought in mind, he continued constructing his island while simultaneously testing his body’s new capabilities.

He remained so engrossed in his work that he completely lost track of time.

...

By evening, Marshall was finally satisfied with his progress.

He floated in the air, admiring the artificial island he’d created from the seabed, and regarded the flourishing little patch of land with considerable pride.

Not bad!

Considering he’d started with nothing, the results were quite impressive.

Then, as he admired his handiwork, an entirely unrelated thought suddenly occurred to him.

’Wait a minute...’

’Haven’t I forgotten something?’

Marshall thought about it for a moment.

’Oh, right!’

’I haven’t told anyone back home that I’m safe!’

His expression stiffened.

Oh, crap!

He’d been missing for an entire day!

The girls were probably worried sick by now.

Marshall hurriedly reached into his personal storage space and retrieved his terminal.

The moment he activated the device, it practically vibrated hard enough to turn itself into an electric toy.

Marshall stared at the screen.

999+ unread messages.

"..."

He fell silent.

Then he happened to glance at the date.

His eyes widened.

’WHAT THE HELL?!’

’IT’S BEEN THREE DAYS?!’

Marshall stared in disbelief at the countless messages from his friends and family, all desperately trying to find out where he was and whether he was safe.

For the first time since acquiring the Curse of Ankhseram, he felt genuine fear.

Cold sweat slowly soaked his back.

He’d spent all this time worrying about the possibility of accidentally hurting his family.

And now he’d managed to accomplish something almost as terrifying.

He’d disappeared without a word for three entire days.

Marshall swallowed nervously.

’Oh, I’m so screwed...’

’How the hell am I supposed to explain this to everyone?!’

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