Chapter 162

Chapter 162: Chapter 162

By the time Marshall teleported back to Fairy Tail, the mood inside the guildhall had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

Everyone had heard Jose’s announcement.

Makarov had been defeated, Phantom Lord’s mobile fortress was sitting practically on their doorstep, and a magical convergence cannon was being prepared while the enemy Guild Master calmly counted down the minutes until Fairy Tail either surrendered or was blown apart.

The moment Marshall appeared, Erza hurried over.

"Marshall! How’s Master?"

"I took him to Granny Porlyusica."

Marshall’s answer immediately drew everyone’s attention.

"He’s not in any immediate danger, but his magic power was completely emptied. For the time being, he can’t fight."

"What?!"

Erza’s expression changed.

"His magic power was completely emptied? How is that even possible?"

Marshall thought for a moment before explaining.

"It was a very specialized spell. Whoever developed it had an extremely high-level understanding of Wind Magic, and there was another magical principle mixed into it that I’ve never encountered before."

He frowned.

"But as far as I can tell, the spell itself isn’t impossible to avoid. Master only got hit because he was caught off guard."

Marshall sighed and rubbed his forehead.

"Honestly, this one’s partly on me."

Everyone stared at him.

"I saw Master’s magic power and assumed he could steamroll Jose without any trouble, so I didn’t pay enough attention to his fight."

His expression became increasingly annoyed with himself.

"I think I’ve been putting too much faith in raw magic power."

That realization bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

For years, Marshall had worked under a simple assumption: in a world where magic power formed the foundation of nearly every battle, a sufficiently large difference in reserves would make most unusual tricks irrelevant.

Clever mechanics were useful when opponents were comparable, but surely they couldn’t bridge a gulf of hundreds of thousands of units.

Apparently that assumption had been wrong.

There really were disgusting spells capable of simply emptying someone’s entire magic reserve if they landed properly.

Marshall had underestimated the possibilities.

He hadn’t dodged the metaphorical sucker punch.

This one was on him.

The rest of Fairy Tail had more immediate concerns.

"Then what do we do?!"

"If Master can’t fight, how are we supposed to beat Jose? He’s one of the Ten Wizard Saints!"

"Can we find Gildarts?! If Marshall teleports out and brings him back right now, there might still be time!"

"If anyone knew where Gildarts was, we would’ve contacted him already!"

"Then call Laxus!"

Someone near the back was already beginning to lose hope.

"Damn it... are we seriously going to have to surrender?"

Then he scratched his head.

"Actually, who the hell is the Heartfilia heiress anyway? Do we even have someone like that in the guild?"

"Idiot!"

Another member rounded on him.

"Who cares what Jose wants? He said he’ll make Fairy Tail disband!"

He slammed a fist into his palm.

"I’d rather die than agree to that!"

"Exactly!"

Natsu was among the angriest of all.

He hadn’t even gotten remotely close to satisfying his urge to fight before everyone dragged him into retreat, and now Jose was standing outside threatening to destroy their guild.

Natsu slammed both hands onto a table and turned toward Marshall.

"Marshall!"

Everyone quieted.

"What are we doing?"

Natsu pointed at him.

"You’ve always got a stomach full of dirty tricks. There’s no way you’re planning to surrender, right?!"

"Hey."

Marshall’s eye twitched.

"Could you phrase that more respectfully?"

But by then, everyone was already looking toward him.

With Makarov out of action, Marshall was currently the strongest Mage physically present in Fairy Tail.

More importantly, he possessed such an absurd variety of Magic that if anyone could somehow pull the guild out of this disaster, he was the obvious candidate.

Marshall looked around at the worried faces and waved one hand.

"First, stop panicking."

Everyone fell silent.

"Master has no magic power right now. He isn’t dead."

Marshall folded his arms.

"If everything goes wrong, I can use Link Magic to connect all of us and feed our magic power directly into him."

Several people blinked.

Marshall continued casually.

"Once he has enough power to fight again, Master can handle the entire enemy side himself. Jose is just a clown who got lucky with a cheap trick."

The tension broke almost instantly.

"OH!"

"That’s right!"

"Marshall can do that?!"

"I knew the brat would have something!"

"That’s our Marshall!"

People visibly relaxed.

As long as Makarov could return, Fairy Tail still had its pillar.

Someone immediately stepped forward.

"Then let’s do it now!"

"Yeah! We still have plenty of magic left!"

"If everyone contributes, we should be able to get Master back to full strength!"

Marshall raised a hand.

"Hold on."

The excitement stopped.

"I said it was possible. I didn’t say it was a good first option."

He glanced around the room.

"To be completely honest, even if we pooled the magic power of every person here, we still wouldn’t be able to refill Master’s entire reserve."

That dampened the mood slightly.

Makarov’s more than eight hundred thousand units of magic power were simply absurd.

Even Fairy Tail’s strongest members combined couldn’t casually replace that much energy.

"So we keep that method as our last resort."

Marshall raised an eyebrow.

"And besides..."

His gaze swept across the guild.

"Are we really going to depend on Master for everything?"

"If Makarov loses his magic power, does Fairy Tail immediately become helpless?"

Several expressions hardened.

Marshall crossed his arms and grinned.

"So, ladies and gentlemen."

"How do you feel about helping me beat the hell out of a Wizard Saint?"

The guild went silent.

Someone blinked.

"...Us?"

Another pointed outside.

"You mean Jose?"

"A Wizard Saint?"

"You’re serious?"

Natsu was the first to recover.

His face immediately lit up.

"OHO!"

He punched one fist into the other.

"That’s more like it!"

"I’ve hated that Jose guy since the second he opened his mouth. Count me in!"

Erza remained more cautious.

She frowned slightly as she considered the difference between Jose and everyone in the room.

"Marshall, there’s still a substantial gap between us and Jose."

She looked directly at him.

"Are you genuinely confident we can win?"

Marshall bared his teeth in a grin.

"We’re Fairy Tail."

He gestured toward the crowd.

"If more than ten of us gang up on one Wizard Saint and still can’t bring him down, that would be pretty embarrassing, wouldn’t it?"

The words landed exactly where he intended.

"THAT’S RIGHT!"

"We’re Fairy Tail!"

"To hell with a Wizard Saint!"

"LET’S TAKE HIM DOWN!"

The guildhall erupted again.

Mira, however, quietly surveyed everyone who was currently present and mentally counted the people whose have large magic reserves.

There were about ten of them.

In descending order of magic power:

Marshall

Erza

Mirajane

Cana

Gray

Natsu

Juvia

Elfman

Levy

Macao

Ten Mages with roughly S-Class reserves against a single Wizard Saint.

Calling their chances good would be ridiculous.

Calling them nonexistent would also be wrong.

And Mira knew better than most that Marshall couldn’t be evaluated like an ordinary Mage.

Most people spent their lives specializing in one kind of Magic.

Marshall collected magical disciplines as though someone had forgotten to tell him there was supposed to be a limit.

He possessed several different systems at an expert level, and the sheer range of tools available to him meant that his combat ability had always exceeded what his raw magic power suggested.

Whatever his official status might be, Mira had no doubt that Marshall already possessed something approaching Wizard Saint-level combat strength.

If he believed the fight was possible, then there was a path to victory.

Still, one major problem remained.

"Marshall."

Mira gestured toward Phantom Lord’s fortress outside.

"If all of us concentrate on Jose, what happens to the Element 4 and the Iron Dragon?"

"And they still have that magical convergence cannon."

Her smile faded.

"We can’t ignore any of those."

Marshall waved dismissively.

"Did everyone forget I have the Seven Sins Apostles?"

Several faces brightened.

"Among the Element 4, Aria is the only one I’d actually call dangerous. The Iron Dragon is basically around Natsu’s level, and the rest are small fry."

Natsu immediately snapped around.

"HEY!"

He pointed accusingly at Marshall.

"What’s that supposed to mean?! Don’t use me as your measurement for small fry!"

Marshall ignored him completely.

"More importantly..."

His smile became mysterious.

"I have a secret weapon."

That got everyone’s attention.

"A secret weapon?"

"What kind?"

Marshall raised one finger.

"Give me ten minutes."

"I need to make some emergency upgrades to my big baby!"

His grin widened.

"Once I’m finished, I’d put our chances of winning at around eighty percent."

"Eighty?!"

Even Erza looked surprised.

Before anyone could press him for details, a familiar masked figure suddenly entered the guildhall.

Everyone turned.

"Mystogan?"

Mystogan walked directly toward Marshall and gave him a small nod.

"Marshall."

"I can recover the magic power Master Makarov lost."

Marshall blinked.

Mystogan continued in his usual calm voice.

"His magic hasn’t disappeared. It was expelled from his body and scattered into the surrounding area."

"If I collect it and return it to him, he should recover."

He considered the distance and amount involved.

"Give me approximately half an hour."

That announcement immediately sent another wave of relief through the guild.

Marshall’s eyes lit up.

"Mystogan!"

He gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

"Now that’s what a reliable man would said!"

"Great!"

"Then we don’t even need to worry about beating Jose outright!"

"If we can hold him for half an hour, Master will come back!"

"Hahaha! That’s Fairy Tail for you!"

"We always find a way!"

The atmosphere that had been on the verge of despair only minutes earlier became dramatically lighter.

Now they had multiple plans.

Marshall’s Link Magic could restore Makarov in an emergency.

Mystogan could recover the old man’s scattered magic if given enough time.

And Marshall apparently had some mysterious weapon that could raise their odds against Jose to eighty percent.

For Fairy Tail, that was more than enough reason to start feeling invincible again.

Then, amid all the renewed confidence, somebody suddenly remembered something.

"Wait."

The room quieted.

"So... who exactly is the Heartfilia heiress?"

"..."

A strange silence followed.

In the middle of the crowd, Lucy’s face steadily turned crimson.

She slowly raised her hand.

"Um..."

Everyone looked at her.

Lucy shrank.

"Th-That would be me."

"EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!"

Half the guild shouted at once.

Lucy immediately wished she had never spoken.

Everyone stared at her as though she had just revealed she was secretly royalty.

Then came the comments.

"What?! Lucy’s actually some rich young lady?!"

"No way!"

"She doesn’t look like one at all!"

"Exactly! I thought her family owned a circus or something!"

"Yeah! Lucy’s way too naturally talented at comedy to be an heiress!"

"Huh? If you’re rich, why are you working as a Mage?"

Someone scratched his head.

"Are you stupid?"

A vein bulged on Lucy’s forehead.

Her embarrassment disappeared beneath rapidly rising fury.

"HEY!"

She stamped one foot.

"You guys are awful!"

The good news was that discovering Lucy came from Fiore’s wealthiest family had apparently changed absolutely nothing about the way Fairy Tail viewed her.

The bad news was that this was largely because nobody had treated Lucy with the dignity of a refined young lady in the first place!

Or, for that matter, with the dignity of a normal person.

Once everyone became convinced they weren’t about to lose the guild war, their attention naturally shifted toward a much more interesting question.

Marshall’s secret weapon.

"What is it?"

"Come on, show us!"

"You said it gives us an eighty-percent chance!"

"Is it some giant magical cannon?"

"A super weapon?"

Marshall allowed their curiosity to build for several seconds.

Then he smiled mysteriously.

"All right."

He reached into his clothes and pulled out a book.

Not an ordinary book.

Its entire cover shone with brilliant golden light.

Everyone leaned closer.

Marshall held it in one hand, then reached his other hand directly into a pocket of subspace.

His arm disappeared up to the elbow as he grabbed something.

Then pulled.

Out came a tiny golden-haired creature wearing a little top hat.

It was so small that Marshall could easily hold it up with one hand.

Everyone stared.

Marshall proudly presented the tiny creature to the guild.

"This—"

He paused dramatically.

"—is my secret weapon!"

The little golden-haired thing raised its arms.

"Phoebe Chibi!"

Marshall grinned.

"Phoebe Chibi!"

"..."

The entire guild stared at them.

"???"