Chapter 156
After receiving Ur’s memories, Ultear finally let go of the obsession that had ruled her life for so many years and placed her trust in Marshall without reservation.
The first time she had acknowledged him as her master, there had still been an element of desperation behind it.
She had been cornered, uncertain of where else to turn, and had effectively gambled everything on Marshall because he seemed like the one person capable of offering her another path.
This time was different.
Now that the truth about Ur had shattered the foundation of her hatred, Ultear had made a conscious decision to entrust her future to him.
For the first time in years, she felt as though she had found somewhere she genuinely belonged.
If Sherry were here, she would probably have called it love.
Ultear herself wasn’t sure what name she wanted to give the feeling yet, only that Marshall had become increasingly difficult to push out of her thoughts.
His confidence, his intelligence, his refusal to soothe her with lies, even the infuriating way he openly admitted when he liked someone—everything about him seemed capable of pulling her attention back sooner or later.
Still, she knew Marshall well enough to understand that he had his own boundaries, and she was older than him besides.
However tangled her feelings had become, she had enough self-control not to let an emotional night decide everything for her.
There was another problem too.
Marshall was greedy.
Not with money—he had more of that than he knew what to do with—but with people.
He made almost no effort to hide the fact that he cared deeply about several girls around him, sometimes to an almost shameless degree.
Ultear had explicitly told him she wanted honesty, so she could hardly complain that he refused to deceive her.
Even so...
Did he really have to be that open about it?
Her entire attitude toward Marshall had changed.
She was no longer merely a follower who had attached herself to someone powerful enough to help her.
What she wanted now was far simpler and far more personal.
She wanted to remain beside him.
Unfortunately, Ultear had already sunk too deeply into the shadows to simply walk away.
She had spent years moving between the Magic Council, Grimoire Heart, and other dangerous factions.
Even if she wanted to quit immediately, doing so would throw away an enormous strategic advantage.
So instead of abandoning that identity, she decided to squeeze every bit of value out of it.
She wanted to become more useful to Marshall.
She wanted to become someone important enough that he would never consider leaving her behind.
That meant continuing her infiltration work, feeding him information from every side she could access...
And settling an old debt.
Brain.
In the past, Ultear’s hatred toward the former director of the Bureau of Magical Development had been little more than the sort of grudge that made her willing to kick him while he was down if the opportunity arose.
Now that she knew the truth, that resentment had transformed into something far colder.
Brain had been responsible for the lie that destroyed her relationship with Ur.
He had turned a frightened child against her own mother, dragged her into a nightmare of experiments and manipulation, and planted the seed from which nearly every tragedy in Ultear’s life had grown.
She wanted revenge.
So after only a little more time with Marshall, Ultear unexpectedly announced that she was leaving.
She intended to return to her old position and quietly collect every scrap of intelligence she could find on the Oración Seis.
When the day eventually came for her to abandon the Magic Council and the other forces she had infiltrated, she wanted to be able to drive a knife into Brain’s plans with absolute precision.
Ultear had apparently decided that romance—or whatever this strange thing between her and Marshall was—could wait until her work was finished.
Marshall found this development deeply irritating.
He had thought he had handled the entire conversation rather well.
Judging from Ultear’s thoughts by the end of the night, her trust in him had unquestionably risen to a completely different level.
For once, Marshall had even mentally prepared himself for the possibility that she might refuse to let him leave without some dramatic declaration of affection.
Instead, Ultear suddenly became responsible.
Career-focused.
Disciplined.
She suppressed all of her more impulsive thoughts and left to gather intelligence.
Marshall felt cheated.
’The atmosphere was perfect ffs!’
’You had the opportunity and didn’t use it!’
Naturally, he wasn’t about to stop her and demand affection himself. He was nowhere near desperate enough for that.
So there was nothing he could do.
...
Afterward, Marshall teleported Lucy and the others—now carrying their reward from Galuna Island—back to Magnolia.
Then he returned home, found Virgo, and promptly went to sleep.
With that, the Galuna Island incident came to a fairly satisfying end.
Yet the greatest thing Marshall had gained from the entire journey wasn’t money, Moon Drip, or even the villagers’ unusual blood samples.
It was the complete body of knowledge concerning Deliora.
That information was precisely why Marshall had dared to tell Ultear that his future self might someday return to the past and save Ur.
The black information package contained Deliora’s complete construction process, including the core principles behind the demon’s creation.
Once Marshall absorbed it, even the portions of Lullaby’s data that had previously appeared as incomprehensible garbage suddenly began to make sense.
The last major piece missing from his research into genuine artificial life had finally fallen into place.
And the timing was almost too convenient.
Marshall found it difficult not to suspect that someone—or something—had deliberately arranged for this knowledge to reach him at exactly the moment he needed it.
The simplest explanation was also the one he liked best.
Perhaps he had arranged it himself.
The Remembrance of Time had already proven that information could be transmitted between different points in history.
Even Natsu’s scar had become evidence that events involving future and past versions of people could overlap in ways that normally seemed impossible.
If future Marshall eventually mastered true time travel, then leaving useful information for his younger self was entirely plausible.
And naturally, future Marshall would be clever enough to think of that.
Marshall nodded to himself.
’Believe in me.’
Or more accurately—
’Believe in future me.’
...
The next morning, Marshall was shaken awake by a panicking Lucy.
"Marshall! Wake up!"
She grabbed his shoulders and kept shaking.
"Something terrible happened!"
"Someone attacked our guild!"
"...Huh?"
Marshall managed to force one eye open.
"Did anyone get hurt?"
"No."
Lucy paused.
"But the guildhall was destroyed!"
"Oh."
Marshall closed his eye again and went straight back to sleep.
Lucy stared at him.
"...?"
Then her face twitched.
"WAKE UP!"
She shook him even harder.
"This is serious!"
"Our guildhall got skewered by a whole bunch of enormous iron pillars! They went straight through the building!"
"Hmm?"
Marshall yawned and finally opened his eyes again.
"Who’s stupid enough to attack Fairy Tail?"
His voice was still heavy with sleep.
"Do they have a death wish?"
Lucy’s expression became serious.
"Phantom Lord."
That woke him up a little more.
...
By the time Lucy finished dragging Marshall out of bed, washing him up, fixing his hair, helping him get dressed, and generally performing the morning duties she had somehow been sentenced to once again, the two of them finally made their way to the guild.
A huge crowd had already gathered outside.
Word of the attack had spread early in the morning, and nearly every member who heard about it had rushed over.
The atmosphere was furious, with people shouting over one another as they stared at what had been done to their home.
The guildhall looked as though someone had turned it into a grotesque piece of metal sculpture.
Huge iron pillars had punched through walls, windows, floors, and support beams from multiple directions, leaving the entire building skewered from one side to the other.
"There’s no mistake!"
One of the guild members pointed toward the damage.
"That’s Iron Dragon Slayer Magic!"
"This was the work of Phantom Lord’s Iron Dragon!"
Another Mage slammed his fist into his palm.
"Those bastards attacked us in the middle of the night!"
"They didn’t even have the guts to come while we were here!"
"This is an open provocation!"
"Master, we can’t just leave it like this!"
"If we let them get away with it, everyone in Fiore will think Fairy Tail can be pushed around!"
Someone near the edge of the crowd noticed Marshall approaching.
"Marshall’s here!"
"Master! Marshall’s here!"
Makarov turned around.
To everyone’s surprise, the old man was smiling rather calmly.
"Marshall!"
He waved him over.
"Perfect timing."
"Fix the guildhall for us, would you? We’ve been waiting for you."
Marshall stopped beside him and looked over the devastated building.
For the briefest instant, something dark flickered through his eyes.
Then it disappeared behind a bright, cheerful smile.
"Morning, Master."
He tilted his head toward the forest of iron impaling their guildhall.
"So what happened here?"
"Someone really had the nerve to attack Fairy Tail?"
His smile widened.
"If I were Guild Master, I definitely wouldn’t be able to let an insult like this go~"
Makarov’s eyebrow twitched.
"Oh, stop being sarcastic."
He waved impatiently toward the building.
"Just repair it first. Nobody can even get inside."
Marshall didn’t move.
"Did we take pictures?"
Makarov blinked.
"Pictures?"
"Of the damage."
Marshall’s expression became more serious.
"This is evidence. Very useful evidence."
"Of course we did."
Makarov nodded.
"Now fix the building."
"Good."
Marshall stepped forward.
"Then hold on."
Rather than immediately using Reparo, he raised one hand toward the iron pillars.
Metal groaned throughout the courtyard.
One after another, the enormous rods slid backward out of the guildhall as though pulled by invisible hands.
Marshall carefully extracted every piece and drove them upright into the ground outside, arranging them in a neat row.
Only when all the foreign material had been removed did he turn back toward the damaged building.
"Reparo."
Time seemed to flow backward across the guildhall.
Splintered timber pulled itself together. Broken stone crawled back into shattered walls.
Holes closed, cracks vanished, window frames repaired themselves, and every damaged section steadily returned to the state it had been in before the attack.
Within moments, the entire Fairy Tail guildhall stood exactly as it had before.
The crowd erupted.
"That’s amazing!"
"Marshall is the best!"
"OOOOH! That’s our Marshall!"
"Seriously, having Time Magic around is way too convenient!"
One guild member stared at the restored building with faint disappointment.
"Aww..."
"I thought this meant we’d get to expand the guild again."
"What a waste."
With Marshall’s Time Magic available, physical destruction on this scale was almost meaningless.
But the insult behind it certainly wasn’t.
Repairing the guildhall did nothing to cool the anger of the people gathered outside.
Natsu was already shouting at Makarov.
"Master!"
"Let’s hit them back!"
"I can’t take this anymore!"
Makarov, however, merely scratched his head.
"Oh, look at you getting worked up again."
He waved dismissively.
"Phantom Lord waited until everyone was gone and attacked an empty building. It’s a cheap little provocation."
"There’s no reason to get angry over something this childish."
Natsu’s face turned red.
"How can we just ignore it?!"
"They attacked our guild!"
"I’m gonna beat every last one of them into the ground!"
Standing nearby, Marshall nodded enthusiastically.
"Exactly, exactly."
Makarov slowly turned toward him.
Marshall smiled.
"I’m with Natsu this time, Master."
His tone remained light, but the cheerfulness no longer quite reached his eyes.
"We really can’t just pretend this never happened."
"If we do..."
He glanced at the row of iron pillars still standing in the courtyard.
"People might start thinking Fairy Tail is easy to bully."
That was all it took.
The surrounding members erupted again.
"Marshall’s right!"
"We can’t let them get away with this!"
"Phantom Lord has gone too far!"
"LET’S CRUSH THEM!"