Chapter 160

Chapter 160: Chapter 160

Whenever Marshall’s research obsession took hold, moderation tended to disappear entirely.

He spent the whole night awake in his laboratory, engrossed in the newly acquired Life Magic and repeatedly testing its principles from different angles.

At this point, his stamina had long since surpassed that of an ordinary human, so missing a single night of sleep barely affected him.

Having his research interrupted, on the other hand, affected him considerably.

"Marshall!"

The urgency in the message was enough to pull him away from the laboratory.

By the time he reached the guild, Makarov had arrived as well—and the moment the old man saw what had been left outside Fairy Tail’s doors, the atmosphere around him changed completely.

Four guild members had been dumped there like garbage.

They were unconscious and covered in injuries, and someone had deliberately marked their bodies with Phantom Lord’s crest.

This wasn’t merely an attack.

It was a message!

A deliberate humiliation aimed directly at Fairy Tail.

For one brief instant, Marshall’s magic power surged uncontrollably.

The pressure that erupted from him forced everyone nearby several steps backward before he caught himself.

His magic had always remained unusually stable even under stress, but this time his emotions had genuinely shaken it.

Marshall had been angry before.

He had never been this angry.

Without saying a word, he flew toward the injured members.

Metal groaned as the nails and restraints holding them were ripped free under his control, allowing him to lower each person carefully to the ground before immediately beginning treatment.

More Fairy Tail members arrived one after another.

The moment they saw their companions lying battered and unconscious at the guild entrance, the shouting stopped.

No one needed to ask how everyone felt.

Clenched fists, trembling shoulders, and veins standing out across foreheads said more than any furious roar could have.

One of the older members spoke through gritted teeth.

"Jet and the others drank quite a bit last night. They left together so nobody would have to walk home alone."

Another Mage crouched beside the injured group and stared at their wounds.

"This wasn’t a fight."

His voice turned cold.

"They were beaten down completely. Whoever did this never gave them a chance."

Someone behind him laughed without humor.

"A chance?"

"They don’t get to talk about mercy anymore."

Then the crowd parted.

"Master’s here."

Makarov walked forward.

The old man wasn’t shouting.

That somehow made him more frightening.

His face had gone utterly still, and the magic gathering around him felt like the crushing silence before a storm.

He looked at the four injured children of his guild, then slowly turned toward everyone else.

"As you can see..."

His voice was quiet, but it carried through the entire courtyard.

"This is their answer to us."

A challenge.

An attack on the guildhall could be dismissed as property damage.

This could not.

Someone immediately shouted, "Master, are we allowed to fight now?!"

"Master!"

"Give the order!"

"We’re ready!"

Makarov tightened his grip on the staff in his hand.

Crack.

The wood snapped cleanly in two.

Then every bit of restrained fury erupted from him at once.

"WE’RE GOING TO WAR WITH THEM!"

The roar shook the courtyard.

Fairy Tail answered as one.

Before anyone could charge off, however, one of the injured members stirred beneath Marshall’s healing light.

Jet forced his eyes open first.

"Master...!"

His voice was weak, but urgency drove him to keep speaking.

"It wasn’t only the Iron Dragon."

Makarov immediately crouched beside him.

"What?"

"Ivan..."

Jet struggled for breath.

"I recognized the Magic."

"It was Ivan’s Magic. He was there too."

His fingers curled weakly against the ground.

"Raven Tail... joined forces with Phantom Lord."

Makarov froze.

Then his expression twisted.

"What?!"

One hand shot to his chest as rage surged through him so violently that even Marshall glanced over.

"Ivan...!"

Makarov’s voice shook.

"You broke the oath!"

Every Mage who joined Fairy Tail swore the same fundamental promise.

Even if they left.

Even if they were expelled.

They were never to use what they had learned inside the guild to harm Fairy Tail or endanger its members!

That obligation did not disappear with the guild mark.

Ivan had knowingly violated it.

Before anyone could fully process the revelation, Marshall suddenly turned his head toward the north.

Makarov did the same.

So did Erza, Mira, and several of Fairy Tail’s stronger members.

A tremendous magical presence had appeared in that direction.

Dark, heavy and unmistakably hostile.

Marshall narrowed his eyes.

"That magic..."

Makarov’s expression hardened.

"Jose?"

A guild member came sprinting around the building.

"Master!"

He was practically out of breath.

"Phantom Lord’s main guildhall just appeared in the river north of town!"

By then Wendy had arrived, and Marshall immediately handed the wounded over to her.

"Wendy, take over the healing."

"Leave it to me!"

Once he was certain the injured members were stable, Marshall opened a spatial passage and transported the assembled Fairy Tail members back toward the guildhall.

They poured out along the northern riverbank.

What waited for them there looked less like a building and more like a war machine.

Phantom Lord’s enormous headquarters had sprouted multiple mechanical legs and marched directly into Magnolia’s river channel.

Its massive frame now stood astride the water like a mobile fortress, dwarfing the surrounding buildings.

And at its center stood a winged, sharp-eared man staring toward Fairy Tail.

Jose Porla.

Marshall’s Information Magic swept across him immediately.

[Magic Power: approximately 530,000.]

’A genuine Wizard Saint.’

Marshall’s eyes narrowed.

"They actually brought their headquarters straight to Magnolia."

There was something almost impressive about the sheer arrogance of it.

What Marshall couldn’t understand was why Jose had chosen to be this bold.

Makarov had already beaten him once in the past.

Jose knew exactly how powerful the old man was.

So what possessed him to appear directly in front of Fairy Tail and openly declare war?

Marshall had barely finished that thought when Makarov stepped forward.

His body expanded.

And expanded.

And expanded again.

Within moments, the old Guild Master had transformed into a colossal giant towering over the river, his furious voice rolling across Magnolia like thunder.

"JOSE!"

The air itself trembled.

"You dared lay your hands on my children!"

Makarov’s eyes burned with rage.

"Have you already prepared yourself to die?!"

Jose rose into the air from Phantom Lord’s fortress and spread both arms wide.

Instead of showing fear, he laughed.

"HAHAHAHA!"

"Makarov!"

His dark magic churned around him.

"When you humiliated me back then, you should have known this day would come eventually!"

Jose turned and began flying away from Magnolia.

"Follow me!"

"You don’t want a battle between two Wizard Saints tearing apart the city and your precious guild, do you?"

His laughter carried back across the river.

"Come on!"

"Today is the day you die, Makarov!"

Marshall’s expression immediately changed.

Because Jose’s mouth was saying one thing—

but his thoughts were saying something else entirely.

There was a plan here.

"Master!"

Marshall raised his voice.

"Be careful! He’s setting something up!"

Makarov didn’t even hesitate.

"You expect me to hide from him because of that?!"

The gigantic old man looked down toward Marshall.

"Take everyone else and attack Phantom Lord!"

"I’ll deal with Jose myself!"

"Master, wait—"

But Makarov was already moving.

He launched himself after Jose without the slightest trace of fear.

Marshall watched him disappear into the distance and clicked his tongue.

He wanted to organize the rest of the guild properly before they attacked.

Unfortunately, he was working with Fairy Tail.

"PHANTOM LORD!"

Natsu was already charging toward the river.

"GET OUT HERE!"

Gray followed almost immediately.

"Wait for me, flame idiot!"

Then half the guild started screaming and rushing forward with them.

Marshall stared after the mob.

"..."

So much for command structure.

These battle-crazed idiots had all the discipline of a stampede.

There was no stopping them now, and perhaps there was no real need.

On paper, Fairy Tail held the advantage.

Jose was dangerous, but Makarov was stronger.

As for Phantom Lord’s S-Class fighters, the strongest among them only carried fifty or sixty thousand units of magic power.

Some of them might not even be able to beat Erza individually.

The numbers simply didn’t make sense.

Why had Jose started this war?

Before Marshall could find an answer, Phantom Lord’s front gates opened and hundreds of Mages poured from the mobile fortress.

Earth Magic surged through the river.

Huge walls of packed soil and stone thrust upward from beneath the water, creating temporary platforms and bridges between the two guilds.

Fairy Tail hit them head-on.

"GAJEEL!"

Natsu was already at the front of the charge, flames rolling off his body.

"GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE!"

He inhaled so deeply that his chest expanded.

Then a roaring torrent of Dragon Slayer flames tore across the newly formed battlefield, engulfing the first cluster of Phantom Lord Mages and blasting them off their feet before they could even properly form a defensive line.

Gray attacked from another angle.

Ice raced beneath his boots as he slid across the battlefield, both hands snapping together before a barrage of frozen lances formed around him.

"Ice-Make: Lance!"

The projectiles streaked outward in a dense volley. Phantom Lord Mages tried to raise defenses, only for the first wave of ice to punch through their formations and scatter them across the earthen platforms.

Elfman was even less subtle.

"Beast Soul!"

His body transformed completely as he plunged into the enemy ranks, each enormous fist sending another opponent flying.

Every step cracked the earth beneath him, and the Mages unfortunate enough to meet him head-on were swept aside almost as quickly as they could approach.

Then Erza entered the battlefield.

There was no wasted motion.

Armor flashed across her body as she Requipped in the middle of her advance, blades already moving before Phantom Lord’s front line realized she had reached them.

One enemy fell, then another, then three more as she carved a path through the formation without slowing down.

Wherever Erza passed, the enemy line simply collapsed.

A shadow dropped from above.

Several Phantom Lord members instinctively looked up.

Mira descended through the night like something out of a nightmare.

Her Take Over had already transformed her.

Wings spread behind her, demonic power boiling around her body as she plunged straight into their formation.

The sheer pressure of her presence made several weaker Mages stumble before she even attacked.

Then she landed.

The shockwave hurled them away.

Fear followed her through the battlefield like a second shadow.

Fairy Tail’s strength wasn’t limited to its officially recognized S-Class members either.

Cana scattered cards into the air, and magical circles ignited across the battlefield. One after another, summoned beasts emerged until the riverbank was swarming with more than a hundred magical creatures.

"Go!"

She swept one hand forward.

The beasts charged.

On the opposite flank, Juvia raised both arms.

The river answered her.

A wall of water rose dozens of meters into the air, towering over Phantom Lord’s defensive positions before crashing forward like a moving cliff.

Enemy Mages scrambled to reinforce the earthen barriers, but the impact tore through their formation and scattered entire groups at once.

The difference in strength became obvious almost immediately.

On paper, Fairy Tail only possessed six official S-Class Mages.

But if ten thousand units of magic power were used as the rough threshold for S-Class combat capability, the guild had well over a dozen members operating somewhere around that level.

And that was without Laxus or the Thunder God Tribe.

Phantom Lord had numbers.

Fairy Tail had monsters.

Their thousand-man membership meant very little when the front line was being smashed apart faster than it could reform.

Marshall floated above the battlefield and watched the fighting unfold.

He barely needed to intervene.

Natsu and Gray were tearing through ordinary members.

Elfman was bulldozing anything in front of him.

Erza and Mira were dismantling entire sections of the enemy formation by themselves.

Cana’s summons had multiplied Fairy Tail’s effective numbers, while Juvia controlled the terrain so completely that Phantom Lord could barely establish a stable position.

This wasn’t a balanced guild war.

It was becoming a rout.

Marshall genuinely couldn’t see how Fairy Tail was supposed to lose.

And yet—the uneasy feeling in his chest refused to disappear.

He turned away from the battle below.

His gaze traveled toward the distant clash between Makarov and Jose.

That was the fight that actually mattered.

Everything happening here was secondary.

If Makarov defeated Jose, Phantom Lord’s resistance would collapse.

If something happened to Makarov...

Marshall’s eyes narrowed.

Far beyond Magnolia, enormous pulses of magic were shaking the ground.

Even from this distance, each collision between the two Wizard Saints sent tremors rolling through the landscape.

Hundreds of thousands of units of magic power concentrated into human bodies made people like Jose and Makarov living natural disasters.

Marshall himself couldn’t confidently say that he could defeat Jose yet.

The difference in raw reserves was simply too large.

And that was precisely why the situation bothered him.

A Mage’s battle wasn’t decided by magic power alone—but magic power remained the foundation beneath everything else.

Jose knew that better than almost anyone.

He knew Makarov possessed nearly twice his reserves.

He knew Makarov had already beaten him before.

So why challenge him openly?

Marshall focused more closely on the distant battle.

Makarov was winning.

Not narrowly but overwhelmingly.

The old man had closed the distance and was hammering Jose with enormous fists, each impact tearing through layers of dark magic and driving the Phantom Lord Master farther backward.

One punch.

Then another.

Jose barely managed to defend before the next blow came crashing down.

Marshall frowned.

Something was wrong.

’Why is Master staying in close combat?’

Makarov knew Light Magic.

Against Jose’s Darkness Magic, he even possessed a favorable elemental matchup.

There was no reason to spend the entire fight trading blows at point-blank range when he could bombard Jose from a distance and force him to defend against an attribute that naturally countered his own.

’Use Light Magic.’

Marshall’s unease sharpened.

’Why aren’t you using it?’

Then—

Makarov’s magical presence vanished.

Marshall’s face changed completely.

His pupils contracted.

"Master...?"

He reached outward with Information Magic again.

Nothing.

The enormous magical presence that had been blazing in the distance only a heartbeat earlier had disappeared as though someone had extinguished it.

Marshall went pale.

"MASTER’S MAGIC POWER IS GONE!"