Chapter 154
After all the shouting, accusations, and general chaos finally died down, everyone at last managed to piece together what had actually happened.
Lyon and the others learned why Marshall had appeared on Galuna Island so suddenly, and that the "friend" whose family had suffered because of Deliora was connected to Gray.
Gray, Natsu, Lucy, and Happy, meanwhile, discovered that Marshall had already formally accepted the Galuna Island request on Fairy Tail’s behalf.
In other words, the three of them had technically been operating as members of Marshall’s team the entire time.
Which also meant that every humiliating thing they had gone through since arriving on the island had happened under the supervision of their own S-Class teammate.
Worse, Marshall had deliberately played them like fools!
The most infuriating part was that neither Gray nor Natsu had any real grounds to complain.
They had broken guild rules first, and Marshall had been sent here by Makarov specifically to clean up their mess and teach them a lesson.
So the more they thought about it, the angrier they became, yet the less justification they had for actually getting angry.
Eventually, both of them slowly turned toward Lucy.
"I’ve been meaning to ask," Natsu said suspiciously. "Lucy, you started acting weird way before Marshall took off his mask."
Gray narrowed his eyes as well. "Yeah. How did you know the masked guy was Marshall?"
Lucy immediately began sweating.
"Ahaha... I-I didn’t know, exactly. I just thought he seemed kind of familiar, that’s all! D-Don’t worry about little details like that!"
Natsu stared harder.
"Gray."
"Yeah?"
"I think Lucy sold us out."
Gray nodded gravely. "Same. She somehow made it through this whole thing without getting beaten up even once. I’m starting to suspect we had a traitor."
Lucy’s back was practically drenched in sweat by now.
"All right, enough!"
She clapped her hands together and hurriedly changed the subject before they could interrogate her any further.
"The quest still isn’t finished! The purple moon is still there, remember? Aren’t we supposed to destroy it?"
She puffed her cheeks.
"And I still want that golden key!"
That successfully redirected everyone’s attention toward Marshall.
Now that he was here, surely there was no reason for the rest of them to keep agonizing over the problem.
Marshall answered as though it were the simplest thing in the world.
"Destroying the purple moon is easy."
Everyone stared at him.
"I already flew above the island and checked. There’s a very thin crystalline membrane covering the entire sky over Galuna Island. Moonlight passes through that layer, gets refracted, and turns purple by the time it reaches the island."
He lifted one hand casually.
"So all we need to do is break that membrane. Once it’s gone, the moonlight will return to normal."
Natsu blinked.
"That’s it?"
Then his face twisted.
"So why the hell did we even fight all those people?!"
Marshall gave him an innocent look.
"Weren’t you fighting because of Gray?"
He glanced between the two of them.
"You two really are close."
"HAAAH?!"
"WHO’S CLOSE TO THIS GUY?!"
Natsu and Gray shouted at exactly the same time.
Marshall ignored them and turned toward Lyon’s group instead.
"What about all of you?"
"Deliora is gone now. What are you planning to do next?"
Lyon looked back at the people who had followed him for years before answering.
"We’re going to disband."
"Most of them plan to settle somewhere in one of the coastal towns nearby."
He paused.
"As for me... I need to think about where I want to go from here."
Gray immediately turned his head away, as though he suddenly found something in the opposite direction extremely interesting.
Then, without looking directly at Lyon, he muttered,
"Oi."
Lyon glanced over.
Gray awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck.
"If you’ve got nowhere else to go... you could join our guild."
He still refused to look at him.
"Fairy Tail’s benefits are pretty good."
Lyon looked at Marshall.
After everything he had witnessed over the past day, a strong suspicion had begun to form in his mind that Fairy Tail might not contain a single remotely normal person.
Was joining a place like that really wise?
"...I’ll think about it."
Marshall then looked toward the rest of Lyon’s followers.
"What about you?"
Several of them blinked.
"Would you be interested in working for Fairy Tail?"
"For... Fairy Tail?"
"Your job would be producing Moon Drip here on Galuna Island. Fairy Tail would pay you regular wages for the work."
That immediately caught their attention.
Marshall smiled.
"You don’t need to decide right now. Think it over."
"Our guild pays quite well."
He left them with that offer and led Natsu’s group toward the Demon Village.
...
By the time they arrived, it was already midnight.
Under the purple moon, every resident of the village had transformed into their demonic appearance.
Horns, wings, claws, unusual skin tones, and bizarre body shapes filled the settlement, making the place look far more intimidating than it had during the day.
The village chief hurried toward them the moment he spotted the returning Mages.
"Mages!"
"Did you find a way to destroy the moon?"
At this point, Marshall had unquestionably become the person actually in charge of the request, so he stepped forward to answer.
"We found the cause."
The chief’s eyes immediately brightened, but Marshall raised a hand before he could celebrate.
"Before I fix it, though, I’d like to examine the villagers more closely."
The chief looked confused.
"Examine us?"
"Yes."
Marshall put on his most reassuring smile.
"I’m also a healing Mage. If everyone would allow me to perform a quick physical examination, I might be able to determine exactly what this ’curse’ has done to you."
"And don’t worry."
"It’s free."
The chief’s face lit up.
"Really?!"
"Thank you!"
He immediately spun around.
"Quickly! Someone gather everyone!"
Marshall added, almost as an afterthought,
"I’ll also need a very small blood sample from each person. Just enough to fill one of these little tubes."
He produced several tiny glass vials.
"I hope everyone can cooperate."
"Of course! Whatever you need!"
Gray leaned toward Lucy while Marshall began organizing the villagers.
"See that?"
Lucy glanced at him.
Gray lowered his voice.
"That brat can lie without even blinking."
"You’d better be careful or he’s going to drag you into something awful one day."
"..."
Lucy merely rolled her eyes.
As though she needed Gray to warn her about Marshall.
She had already seen through his true nature.
If Natsu was Fairy Tail’s obvious walking disaster, the sort everyone could see coming from half a mile away, then Marshall was the hidden version—the sweet-faced menace who smiled politely while quietly arranging everyone else’s suffering!
Fairy Tail’s two great calamities.
She understood them perfectly now.
Probably.
...
Marshall had specially prepared several dozen collection tubes beforehand.
As each of the supposedly "cursed" villagers came forward, he took a small blood sample while quietly examining their bodies with Information Magic.
By the time he finished gathering his "research material," he had reached a conclusion that wasn’t particularly surprising.
He didn’t explain it immediately.
First, there was still a request to finish.
Destroy the moon.
Or rather, destroy what was making it look purple.
Marshall’s solution was almost embarrassingly straightforward.
He rose high above Galuna Island until he reached the thin crystalline dome hanging over the island like an invisible shell.
The membrane had formed from years of accumulated magical residue created by the Moon Drip ritual, its structure saturated with the strange energy the islanders interpreted as something sinister.
Marshall examined it briefly.
Then he simply punched through it.
A web of cracks spread across the entire dome.
For one breathtaking moment, the night sky above Galuna Island seemed to fracture like glass.
Then the enormous crystalline layer shattered.
Countless glowing fragments drifted downward from the heavens, sparkling beneath the moonlight like a rain of falling stars.
As the last traces of the membrane disappeared, so did the purple light that had covered the island for years.
The moon returned to its ordinary pale color.
Everyone in the Demon Village stared upward in stunned silence.
Then Natsu frowned.
"Wait."
Gray noticed it at the same time.
The villagers hadn’t changed.
They were still demons.
Their horns remained.
Their wings remained.
Nothing about their bodies had returned to "normal."
"So why didn’t the curse disappear?" Lucy asked.
"Because there was never a curse turning them into demons."
Marshall’s voice came from behind them.
Everyone spun around.
He landed lightly on the ground and looked toward the villagers.
"They were demons to begin with."
Natsu blinked.
"Huh?"
"They aren’t ordinary humans who were transformed by Magic," Marshall explained. "Their blood contains stable magical traits that are inherited naturally. You can think of them as a special race, somewhat like Happy and the other Exceeds."
Happy pointed at himself.
"Aye?"
"The purple moon didn’t alter their bodies."
Marshall tapped his temple.
"It altered their memories."
"The prolonged exposure confused them so badly that they gradually became convinced they were humans who transformed into demons at night, when in reality their demonic forms are their natural state."
Before anyone could properly process that revelation, wings flapped overhead.
A familiar figure descended toward them.
"You really did it!"
Everyone looked up.
The fisherman who had brought Natsu and the others to Galuna Island was flying through the air with an enormous smile.
"Mages! Thank you!"
Natsu nearly fell over.
"BOBO?!"
"You’re alive?!"
The village chief spread his own demonic wings and rose into the air as well.
Around them, other villagers began reacting one after another as the disappearance of the strange moonlight lifted the distortion that had clouded their minds.
Memories returned.
Fragments of their childhood.
Families.
Daily life.
The truth they had forgotten.
They had never been cursed humans.
They had always been what they were now.
Gray, however, didn’t look entirely comfortable.
He moved closer to Marshall and lowered his voice.
"This village... is it really safe?"
Marshall glanced at him.
Gray looked around at the horned and winged figures celebrating throughout the village.
"A whole settlement of demons."
His expression tightened.
"I know it’s probably irrational, but after Deliora... this still makes me uneasy."
Marshall understood.
"They aren’t the same kind of demon you remember."
Gray looked at him.
"Actually, I’m not even sure they should be classified as true demons."
Marshall folded his arms.
"They can’t absorb emotional energy, which means they lack one of the defining traits of naturally occurring demons."
He glanced toward the distant mountains where the Moon Drip altar stood.
"My current guess is that their ancestors may have been artificially created for some purpose."
"Possibly as guardians of this island."
Gray frowned.
"Guardians?"
"They physically can’t approach the Moon Altar very easily. Moon Drip affects them extremely strongly."
Marshall’s expression became thoughtful.
"Long-term exposure may even erase or rewrite parts of their memories."
"So whatever their origin was, I’d say they’re victims more than anything else."
He looked back at Gray.
"They’re very different from the monster that destroyed your home."
Gray remained silent for a moment.
Then some of the tension left his shoulders.
"...I see."
Natsu stretched both arms over his head.
"So that means the job’s finished?"
Marshall corrected him immediately.
"Our job is finished."
He smiled broadly.
"Good work, everyone~"
Gray snorted.
"This village is dirt poor."
He glanced around at the simple buildings.
"You seriously planning to take their money?"
Marshall shrugged.
"I don’t need it."
Between the Moon Drip research, Deliora’s information, Ur’s memories, the demon villagers’ blood samples, and the discovery of the island’s ancient facilities, he had already gained far more than any monetary reward could offer.
"My share is already covered."
He gestured toward the villagers.
"If you want payment, negotiate whatever you think is reasonable with them. I don’t mind."
With the request effectively complete, Marshall checked the time.
There was one last matter he needed to handle.
Ultear.
After everything she had just learned about Ur, Marshall doubted his troublesome little servant was doing particularly well.
"I’ll leave the rest to you."
He raised one hand.
"I have something else to take care of."
"Wait!"
Gray suddenly remembered something far more urgent.
"Marshall!"
Marshall paused.
Gray’s expression became painfully serious.
"About those photos..."
"Could we maybe negotiate?"
Marshall immediately began floating away.
"La la la~"
"Marshall!"
"I can’t hear you~~~"
"GET BACK HERE!"
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