Chapter 274

Chapter 274: Chapter 274

"Thought Projections are out, and apparently even my soul can trigger the curse. Then... what if I try summoning my Apostles?"

Marshall had spent an enormous amount of time dealing with the trouble caused by his disappearance.

Although several of the girls had insisted on seeing him in person, he’d eventually managed to talk them out of it.

Unfortunately, some of them were still furious.

Marshall could already imagine the reception awaiting him when he finally returned home.

There wasn’t much he could do about that, though. Meeting anyone in person was simply too dangerous right now.

Over the past three days, Marshall had experimented with various methods of triggering the Curse of Ankhseram.

For convenience, he’d decided that the word curse would specifically refer to the expanding black wave that occasionally erupted from his body.

And after all that experimentation, he’d reached one thoroughly disappointing conclusion.

There was practically no discernible pattern to its activation.

Over those three days, Marshall had triggered the curse thirteen times, sometimes intentionally putting himself in situations where he suspected it might activate.

Not once, however, had he managed to activate it deliberately.

Every single eruption had occurred beyond his control.

It was quite possibly the most infuriating ability he’d ever acquired.

Worse, the special magical formula responsible for the curse seemed to have become permanently engraved upon his soul.

When Marshall separated a Thought Projection from his body, the curse would erupt from both his original body and the projection simultaneously, effectively doubling the area affected.

Every eruption was an indiscriminate area attack.

Every living creature caught within the expanding wave would have its Life Point forcibly extracted and absorbed by Marshall.

There were no exceptions among ordinary living creatures, and he had absolutely no idea how to prevent it.

No wonder people called this thing a curse. It certainly wasn’t going to be an easy problem to solve.

Fortunately, Marshall had discovered that certain forms of life weren’t permanently affected by it.

Celestial Spirits.

Initially, he hadn’t even dared summon Virgo.

He’d always known that Celestial Spirits were effectively immortal, but the Curse of Ankhseram had such a terrifying reputation that he was reluctant to gamble with her existence.

Instead, he summoned a small Canis Minor Celestial Spirit and kept it beside him while continuing his experiments.

Eventually, the curse erupted again.

The little Celestial Spirit promptly vanished.

Marshall nearly had a heart attack.

He immediately summoned it again, and only then did he discover what had happened.

The curse had indeed "killed" the Celestial Spirit once, but rather than destroying its actual existence, the attack had simply forced it back into the Celestial Spirit World.

In other words, although the curse could instantly eliminate a Celestial Spirit’s manifested form, it couldn’t permanently harm the spirit itself.

That meant Celestial Spirits could safely remain by his side.

Once Marshall confirmed this, he finally felt comfortable summoning Virgo again.

Frankly, if he’d been forced to spend any more time without her, he wasn’t sure how he would’ve survived.

He’d become so accustomed to having someone take care of him that he was now utterly hopeless at living independently.

His ability to look after himself had deteriorated to the point where Virgo had practically become an indispensable part of his life.

If it weren’t for his newly acquired immortality, three days alone on this island might genuinely have been enough for him to starve to death.

Anyway, discovering that Celestial Spirits couldn’t be permanently killed by the curse had significantly improved his mood.

And if Celestial Spirits were safe, perhaps the same principle would apply to his Apostles.

In that case, he could bring them all to his isolated island and have them look after him.

Excellent.

Except Sloth.

Marshall had absolutely no intention of bringing Sloth along.

Come to think of it, perhaps this was why Zeref had been so fond of creating demons.

Maybe he’d discovered that the demons he manufactured couldn’t be killed by the Curse of Ankhseram either.

That was certainly a possibility worth investigating.

...

Another discovery Marshall made during his experiments was that the Curse of Ankhseram and Fairy Law were surprisingly similar.

It was only after acquiring the curse that he finally understood Fairy Law’s true underlying mechanism.

The Super Magic acted directly upon a person’s Life Point.

When Fairy Law was sufficiently powerful, it could completely erase an enemy’s Life Point, effectively killing the target at the most fundamental level.

That realization led Marshall to another possibility.

Perhaps he’d awakened the Curse of Ankhseram precisely because he’d investigated Fairy Law too deeply.

Apparently, he and Laxus had something in common after all.

Neither of them had truly understood the spell.

The reason Fairy Law had provided the inspiration necessary to locate Older Wendy’s First Origin was now obvious. The spell already acted directly upon the Life Point contained within it.

Marshall had simply failed to recognize what he was observing at the time.

Even more interestingly, he discovered that casting Fairy Law had suddenly become extraordinarily easy.

Previously, using the Super Magic had felt like solving a complicated differential equation. Now, it was practically as simple as basic addition and subtraction.

Evidently, the Curse of Ankhseram hadn’t brought him nothing but trouble.

Whatever else it might be, it was unquestionably a genuine LV5 ability.

Just as Marshall had previously theorized, skills at LV5 had already begun touching upon something resembling the fundamental rules of the world.

They could accomplish things that would seem utterly fantastical even to experienced Mages.

It was Magic operating on an entirely different level.

And his newly acquired LV5 Life Magic had completely surpassed the limits of Marshall’s current ability to control it.

However, his inability to control the curse didn’t mean the ability was useless.

This was his first-ever LV5 skill, after all.

Even though Marshall couldn’t properly command it, the knowledge and experience he gained simply from possessing it offered an enormous advantage when studying other forms of related Magic.

In fact, the difference was almost unfair.

Marshall had apparently acquired the ability to manipulate life itself.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he’d gained access to some form of authority over life.

Whatever the appropriate terminology, the power displayed whenever the curse erupted was clearly beyond anything ordinary Magic could achieve. Its effects surpassed what most Mages would even consider possible.

Take Life Points, for example.

They weren’t something that could ordinarily be extracted from a living creature with ease.

Otherwise, Fairy Law wouldn’t be classified as Super Magic in the first place.

A Life Point was practically equivalent to the First Origin. It was hidden deep within a person’s body, forming the fundamental connection that sustained their existence.

Ordinary people couldn’t simply reach inside someone and take it.

Even Fairy Law could only destroy a Life Point rather than extract and absorb it.

Those were two entirely different levels of power.

Yet the Curse of Ankhseram could forcibly draw countless Life Points into Marshall’s own body in an instant.

The only reasonable explanation Marshall could think of was that he’d acquired a degree of authority within the domain of life.

And possessing even a fraction of that authority allowed him to accomplish things that would’ve been completely unimaginable before.

For example, his progress in both Wood Element Magic and Body-Conditioning Magic had become astonishingly rapid.

Extracting life force from trees was now as effortless as breathing. And when he used that life force to cultivate his Body-Conditioning Magic, his training became considerably more effective.

The improvement was so dramatic that his previous training methods now seemed almost inefficient by comparison.

And that was only the beginning.

Marshall’s understanding of life had also deepened tremendously.

In fact, he had a strong feeling that he might soon be able to cure Simon.

Ultimately, Simon’s condition wasn’t particularly complicated now that Marshall understood its underlying cause.

His Life Point had split into two separate parts, and those two fragments could no longer reconnect.

An ordinary person would’ve died long ago.

But now, Marshall believed he might actually possess the power necessary to join those two fragments together again.

It was an ability granted to him by his newly acquired LV5 Life Magic.

The only thing he needed to worry about was accidentally triggering the curse while attempting the procedure.

After all, it would be rather embarrassing if he finally discovered how to save Simon, only to accidentally absorb the man’s Life Point and kill him for good.

At present, Marshall could only passively draw upon the Life Points stored inside his body.

If he accidentally absorbed Simon’s, he had absolutely no idea how to extract it again.

His First Origin was essentially a gigantic fuel tank now, filled with enough concentrated life force to prevent his body from ever shutting down.

Worse—or perhaps better, depending on how he looked at it—the tank automatically replenished itself.

As long as the world still contained living creatures that could provide him with fuel, Marshall suspected that he genuinely wouldn’t be able to die.

In short, if he ignored the curse’s tendency to erupt unexpectedly and indiscriminately harvest the lives of everything around him, the Curse of Ankhseram was practically a divine blessing.

It offered an extraordinary collection of benefits with seemingly no disadvantages.

Unfortunately, that one disadvantage was impossible to ignore.

Until Marshall could activate and deactivate this power entirely at will, it would remain a curse rather than Magic he could truly call his own.

And after thirteen uncontrolled eruptions, even Marshall was beginning to have doubts.

’Is there really no way to control this thing?’