Chapter 566 - 566: Can You Give Me a Chance to Shoulder the Responsibilities of a Mother?

Once Noah stepped through the barrier and out of earshot, Mavis and August were left staring at each other in absolute silence.

"You..."

"You..."

They spoke simultaneously, only to immediately stop, both waiting for the other to continue.

"Let me speak first," Mavis said softly, taking a trembling breath to steady herself. "My name is Mavis Vermillion. I am your mother."

Saying the words aloud brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes. "However... I have been an incredibly incompetent mother. Up until a few months ago, I had absolutely no idea you even existed."

Mavis sighed deeply, her expression filled with profound guilt and sorrow.

If Noah hadn't deciphered Precht's encrypted journals, she would have never known she had a child. Her experience was entirely alien to a normal human life. She hadn't experienced a normal pregnancy, the pain of childbirth, or the joy of watching her baby grow up. She had simply woken up from an eighty-year coma to discover she possessed an eighty-year-old son.

When Noah first told her, it hadn't felt real. But the moment she accepted the reality of his existence, her heart had instantly latched onto this unseen child. She had spent months traveling the continent, desperately scanning every face, hoping to find him.

But now that she was finally standing in front of him, looking at the deep wrinkles lining his weathered face, she felt an overwhelming wave of trepidation.

"No! Please, you must not blame yourself!"

Hearing the profound guilt in her voice, August reacted immediately, his stoic demeanor shattering completely.

"The man who abandoned me was Precht! You were trapped in a crystal, completely unaware of the circumstances! You bear absolutely zero responsibility for my abandonment!" August insisted desperately.

He knew perfectly well that his mother had lived her entire life in Ishgar. He was standing on the Western Continent. The fact that she had crossed an ocean to find him proved exactly how much she cared. How could he possibly blame her?

"Can you... can you give me a chance?" Mavis asked, gently squeezing the hand he was using to support her arm. She looked up at him, her spectral eyes filled with nervous hope. "Can you give me a chance to finally shoulder the responsibilities of a mother?"

Her child was already an elderly man. He had lived an entire lifetime without her. She was terrified he wouldn't want, or need, her in his life.

Hearing her request, August's brilliant mind essentially short-circuited.

He stared down at the petite, teenage girl looking up at him with tear-filled eyes. His hand trembled slightly. For the first time in decades, the Magic King was entirely speechless.

"Is it... is it too late?" Mavis whispered, her eyes dimming as his silence stretched on. Her shoulders slumped in defeat.

"No! No, that's not it at all! I would be honored! I would love nothing more!" August panicked, his voice cracking as he scrambled to correct her. "I was just... I was so shocked to hear you say it, I couldn't process the words!"

"So... you're willing to accept me as your mother?" Mavis's eyes instantly brightened, a brilliant, tearful smile spreading across her face.

The profound joy of his acceptance completely washed away her anxiety.

"Of course," August smiled, a genuine, deeply emotional warmth flooding his usually stoic expression. "You have always been my mother. I know the tragic circumstances of your curse. I know you never meant to leave me.

"To be able to stand here and speak with you like this... it is a scenario I have only ever dared to imagine in my dreams."

Because he possessed a terrifyingly advanced intellect from birth, he retained explicit memories of his infancy. He remembered the agonizing state his mother had been in. He knew Precht had abandoned him because his innate magical density was so terrifyingly vast.

He didn't hate Precht; the man had ultimately delivered him into the world.

He didn't hate his mother; she had been effectively dead at the time.

His childhood had been agonizingly brutal, a desperate struggle for survival, until he had been found by his father, Zeref. Under Zeref's care, his life had finally stabilized.

When he had grown strong enough, he had secretly traveled across the ocean to Ishgar to investigate his mother's fate. He had infiltrated Magnolia, only to discover that Mavis Vermillion was officially dead, and Precht had succeeded her as the Second Master of Fairy Tail.

Assuming she was truly gone, August hadn't lingered in Ishgar. He had returned to Alvarez, dedicating his life to serving his father and building the Empire.

Meeting his mother was a fantasy he had buried deep within his heart.

But now, she was standing right in front of him. It felt like a beautifully vivid hallucination.

Yet, he knew it wasn't. The overlapping genetic verification spells he had personally cast proved the absolute biological truth. This girl was his mother.

"You must have suffered so much," Mavis cried softly, reaching up to gently trace the deep wrinkles on the back of his hand. "All those years alone... it's all my fault."

"I didn't suffer. I have lived a very good life," August quickly lied, desperate to wipe the tears from her face.

"Don't lie to me," Mavis shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. "If Precht abandoned you in the wilderness, your childhood must have been incredibly difficult. You had no one to take care of you."

August fell silent. He couldn't lie to her, but he absolutely refused to recount the agonizing horrors of his childhood and cause her further pain. He decided to smoothly change the subject.

"Mother... since you are standing here before me, does that mean Precht successfully found a way to revive you from the crystal?"

"There's no need to use such formal language with me," Mavis sniffled, gently wiping her eyes. "And no... Precht didn't revive me."

She looked up at him curiously. "Did Precht leave some sort of record for you? Is that how you knew about me?"

"No. Precht left me nothing," August shook his head. "Because my inherent magical density was so astronomically high, my cognitive functions developed instantaneously. I remember everything from the moment of my birth. I know exactly who I am, and I know exactly why Precht abandoned me."

"You remember your own birth?" Mavis gasped, her eyes widening in horror, completely ignoring his incredible magical aptitude and instantly focusing on the psychological trauma. "That means... you remember being abandoned. You remember every single moment of suffering you endured as an infant."

Her heart shattered. The idea of an infant possessing the cognitive awareness of an adult while starving in the wilderness was horrifying.

Seeing the profound, heartbreaking agony in her eyes, a strange, overwhelming warmth blossomed in August's chest.

Throughout his entire life, every single person he had ever met—including his father—had only ever focused on his monstrous magical talent. They saw his power, his intellect, and his utility.

His mother was the first person to ever look past his power and focus entirely on his pain.

This was the unconditional parental love he had spent eighty years starving for. It was more beautiful than he could have ever imagined.

"Since you remember your birth, you must know I was trapped in the Lacrima," Mavis continued softly, gently stroking his hand.

August nodded.

"Precht spent over thirty years stabilizing my physical state, but it took decades for me to finally project a spectral avatar," Mavis explained. "A few months ago, thanks to Noah's incredible magical engineering, I was finally freed from the crystal and my physical body was restored.

"Noah was the one who recovered Precht's encrypted research logs. He deciphered the biological data and realized I had been pregnant. He hypothesized that Precht had hidden or abandoned the child.

"We spent months sweeping the entire Eastern Continent, but we couldn't find you. Noah recently infiltrated the Western Continent and tracked you down. He brought me here specifically to confirm your identity."

Hearing the full story, August slowly turned his head to look at Noah, who was currently standing outside the barrier, casually observing the distant landscape.

August realized exactly how critical Noah was to this miracle. If Noah hadn't deciphered the logs, built the tracking spell, and risked his life infiltrating a hostile empire, August would have died never knowing his mother was alive.

"I owe Noah a debt I can never repay," August stated with absolute, unwavering solemnity. "Without him, this reunion would have never happened."

"If you ever want to thank him, just give him a few rare magical grimoires," Mavis giggled softly, her tears finally drying. "He's absolutely obsessed with discovering new magical theories. That's the greatest gift you could possibly give him."

August nodded, mentally cataloging the rarest texts in the imperial vaults.

"Now... tell me about your life," Mavis requested, her expression turning serious. "The Emperor of Alvarez is Zeref, isn't it? You've been helping him build this nation all these years?"

August flinched slightly, his hand twitching in her grasp.

"Zeref told me decades ago that he was planning to build an empire on the Western Continent," Mavis explained gently. "Based on your reaction, I assume you haven't told him the truth about your parentage?"

August slowly shook his head, looking down at the ground.

"That might be for the best," Mavis sighed softly. "Given his fragile mental state back then, and the psychological trauma of believing he accidentally killed me, suddenly revealing that you are his son could trigger a catastrophic emotional breakdown. We will tell him the truth when the time is right, but only when we are fully prepared to handle the consequences."

August nodded in profound relief. His mother's tactical assessment perfectly mirrored his own fears regarding Zeref's fragile sanity. He had hidden the truth for eighty years; he could wait a little longer.

But hearing his mother speak of the future—of a time when their family could finally be whole—sparked a brilliant, beautiful hope in his chest.

"Come on, let's sit down," Mavis smiled, pulling on his hand. She looked around, spotting a relatively flat patch of dirt, and prepared to sit directly on the ground.

August, horrified at the thought of his mother sitting in the dirt, instantly tapped his staff against the earth.

RUMBLE.

Two smooth, perfectly sculpted stone chairs and a polished stone table seamlessly grew from the bedrock.

"Oh! How convenient!" Mavis beamed, happily pulling him toward the chairs. She sat down, propping her chin on her hands, and stared at him with wide, expectant eyes. "Now, tell me everything! I want to know everything you've experienced!"

Looking at his mother's eager expression, August felt his heart swell.

This was exactly the scenario he had dreamed of. Sharing his life stories with his mother.

He took a breath, carefully editing out the most brutal traumas, and began to recount his eighty years of life.

Mavis listened with absolute, undivided attention. Her eyes never left his face. She had missed his entire childhood and his adulthood; she refused to miss a single second of the time they had left.

The mother and son sat in the soundproof barrier, completely absorbed in each other's presence, oblivious to the passage of time.

Several hours passed.

Eventually, Noah stepped back through the barrier, walking up to the stone table.

"I hate to interrupt, but you two have been talking for quite a while," Noah noted, looking at August. "Don't you need to get back to the capital? If the highest-ranking general of the Empire vanishes for hours, won't people start asking questions?"

August blinked, suddenly pulled from the conversation. He checked the position of the sun and realized Noah was right. He had been gone for hours.

"Indeed. I must return and handle a few pressing administrative matters," August nodded.

He closed his eyes. A perfect, identical Thought Projection seamlessly stepped out of his physical body. The projection offered Mavis a respectful bow before instantly teleporting away toward the capital.

"Your Thought Projection is incredibly similar to mine," Noah noted, raising an eyebrow. He recognized the subtle runic structure anchoring the clone to reality. It was a near-perfect replica of the spell he had used earlier.

"I just copied the structural formula from the clone you used earlier," August explained calmly. He then bowed his head deeply toward Noah. "Thank you for reuniting me with my mother. You have my eternal gratitude."

"Don't mention it. Your mother is our founding Guild Master. We're all family here," Noah waved him off casually.

He paused, looking at August with genuine curiosity. "Wait... you copied my Thought Projection formula just by looking at it once? How is that possible?"

"It is my inherent magical affinity," August replied without hesitation. "I can instantly copy, master, and neutralize any form of magic I witness."

Since Noah had essentially given him his mother back, and Mavis had explicitly stated Noah loved magical theory, August had zero qualms about revealing the true nature of his power.

"That is an absolutely terrifying ability," Noah muttered, genuinely awestruck.

Even though he knew August possessed "Copy Magic" from the canonical lore, hearing the man explicitly confirm it was still mind-bending. The ability to instantly master any spell simply by seeing it bypassed decades of grueling study. Combined with August's oceanic Ethernano reserves, it was easy to see why he was the undisputed Magic King.

"Your own power is equally terrifying. Given your youth, I have no doubt you will eventually surpass me," August replied warmly.

"I appreciate the blessing," Noah smiled.

He glanced up at the sun, which was currently hovering at its peak.

"It's nearly noon. We should grab some lunch," Noah suggested, turning to August. "Since you're the local, do you have any restaurant recommendations?"

~~~

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