Chapter 301

Chapter 301: Chapter 301

At the former headquarters of Red Lizard, which now served as Mavis and Zera’s home, Mavis was looking around with a puzzled expression.

"Zera? Where did you go just now? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!"

"Huh? Oh! Um... I was over at Marshall’s place." Zera’s eyes darted away as she hurriedly came up with an explanation.

"I-I wanted to learn some Magic too."

Having just returned from helping Marshall with his household chores, Zera couldn’t quite bring herself to meet her best friend’s eyes.

She knew she was keeping something important from Mavis, and the guilt made her unusually nervous.

"Oh? So you’ve finally decided you want to learn Magic too?" Mavis’s face brightened immediately.

"Hehe! You know, I can teach you some simple spells myself. It feels a little rude if both of us keep going over and bothering Marshall all the time."

"I-It’s fine! Marshall already agreed to teach me." Zera quickly shook her head. "And once I learn Magic, I’ll be the one protecting you, Mavis!"

"Really? But I’m already pretty amazing myself, you know! Look!"

Mavis spread her arms and slowly floated off the ground.

Her little body wobbled slightly as she adjusted her balance, but she soon managed to turn a complete circle in midair.

"Flying Magic! I’ve already learned it!"

Zera stared at her in astonishment.

"Already?! But it’s only been a few days!"

Mavis puffed out her cheeks.

"That’s because Marshall keeps complaining that my feet are dirty... Even though they’re not dirty at all!"

"Huh?"

"He said that if I learned to fly sooner, I wouldn’t have to keep walking around barefoot. So he used Solid Script to transfer the spell directly to me."

Mavis demonstrated by floating a little higher.

"Once you’ve received a spell through Solid Script, you can use it as soon as you understand how it works. Unfortunately, that method has limitations. Otherwise, I’d make him teach me every spell in the world! Hahaha!"

"..."

Zera looked at her floating friend, unsure whether to laugh or sigh.

She knew that Mavis loved fairies, which was one reason she’d grown so fond of going barefoot.

Now that the little girl was drifting around in the air with her golden hair swaying behind her, she really did resemble the fairies she was always talking about.

Mavis, meanwhile, was already thinking about what she wanted to accomplish next.

"Once I’ve learned a few more spells, I’ll be able to take you outside and explore the world, Zera!"

Her green eyes sparkled with anticipation.

"The outside world must be so exciting! I want to see whether all those places I’ve read about in books are really as wonderful as they sound!"

Zera’s expression changed slightly.

"Huh? Mavis... you want to leave Tenrou Island?"

"Of course! I want to see what the world in those books actually looks like. If we ever get the chance, we should travel around and visit all sorts of beautiful places!"

"I-I see..."

Zera understood her friend’s feelings perfectly well.

If Mavis had suggested leaving the island a few weeks earlier, Zera probably wouldn’t have objected.

After all, there wasn’t much left for either of them here, and she’d spent years dreaming about a life beyond their isolated home.

But things were different now.

Marshall was the one supplying the Magic Power that allowed her to maintain a tangible body. If she left Tenrou Island, what would happen to her?

Marshall certainly wasn’t going to abandon his own plans just to follow them around the world.

Zera couldn’t help worrying that leaving might mean losing the body she’d only just regained.

Mavis noticed her troubled expression almost immediately.

The little tuft of hair on top of her head perked up as she tilted her head.

"Zera? Don’t you want to leave Tenrou Island?"

"Huh? Well..."

Zera hesitated.

"I mean, Tenrou Island is our home, isn’t it? I... I don’t really want to leave."

"That’s strange."

Mavis drifted around Zera, studying her from several different angles.

"You’re acting suspiciously! Just a little while ago, you were complaining that you didn’t want to stay on this boring island forever. Why have you suddenly changed your mind?"

She narrowed her eyes.

"There’s definitely something going on!"

Zera stiffened.

"N-No, there isn’t! People can change their minds, can’t they? I just... suddenly decided I don’t want to leave anymore."

"Is it because of Marshall?"

Mavis reached the conclusion almost instantly.

"Think about it! The only thing that’s changed in our lives recently is Marshall showing up. Zera, don’t tell me you don’t want to leave because you’d miss him!"

"?!"

Zera immediately panicked.

"N-No! That’s not it! I didn’t say that! Stop making things up!"

"Aha! So that’s it!"

Mavis grinned triumphantly, looking very pleased with her deduction.

"I knew it! You can’t fool me!"

Then her expression grew even more mischievous.

"Zera... don’t tell me you’ve fallen for Marshall? I suppose it wouldn’t be that strange. He is really handsome, after all..."

"THAT’S NOT IT!"

Zera’s face flushed with indignation.

"What are you even thinking about, Mavis?! You’re being ridiculous!"

She lunged toward her friend.

"Ahahaha! No, Zera! Stop! I surrender! I surrender!"

Mavis dissolved into laughter as Zera tackled her onto the bed, and the two girls began playfully wrestling with each other.

For some reason, Mavis felt that Zera was particularly energetic today. Her friend seemed much stronger than usual, and Mavis briefly wondered whether she’d genuinely made her angry.

Fortunately, the laughter soon made it clear that neither girl was particularly upset.

Whatever else had changed, their friendship remained as lively as ever.

...

Marshall’s arrival had brought enormous changes to the daily lives of the two girls.

Mavis and Zera now visited his little house almost every day, although they usually came at different times.

Mavis liked talking to Marshall about the outside world, asking him about unfamiliar places and discussing whatever interesting Magic happened to catch her attention.

Since Marshall possessed a vast amount of knowledge she couldn’t find in the books on Tenrou Island, practically every conversation gave her something new to think about.

Zera’s visits were somewhat different.

She came to help Marshall with his household chores while also allowing him to examine her unusual condition and replenish the Magic Power sustaining her physical form.

In that sense, she was repaying his assistance through her own labor, doing whatever cleaning and laundry she could manage.

Because Zera didn’t want Mavis discovering the truth about her existence, she deliberately arranged her visits around the times when Mavis was elsewhere.

The two girls therefore rarely arrived at Marshall’s house together.

Marshall didn’t particularly mind.

In fact, their frequent visits had become one of the few things keeping his isolated life from becoming thoroughly depressing.

He had plenty of experiments to occupy his attention, but spending every day alone on an island with no familiar companions was a very different experience from working in his laboratory surrounded by Apostles, friends, and servants.

Without the occasional conversations and amusing reactions he could coax out of Mavis and Zera, he suspected he’d have become miserable before long.

At least the two little troublemakers gave him something to look forward to between experiments.

For their part, Mavis gained a knowledgeable friend who was willing to teach her Magic, while Zera received the magical support she needed to maintain her existence.

Everyone benefited from the arrangement, and the three gradually grew more comfortable around one another.

Another two weeks passed in this fashion.

Then, one day, Marshall invited both girls to his house for a special event.

He was finally ready to unveil the result of his recent engineering project.

"Behold!"

Marshall gestured grandly toward the tall figure standing behind him.

"My personally handcrafted Type 2B Mechanical Maid! You can just call her 2B!"

The two girls looked toward the machine.

Standing before them was a tall, elegant female android with white hair and a black visor covering her eyes. Her proportions and appearance were remarkably lifelike, and at first glance, she could almost have passed for an unusually beautiful human woman.

Marshall folded his arms proudly.

Despite the severe limitations of his current circumstances, he’d managed to build an entire robotic maid from scratch.

And he really did mean from scratch.

Every screw, joint, plate, and mechanical component had been painstakingly produced through his own Alchemy and magical engineering.

Without access to his usual supplies or specialized manufacturing equipment, he’d been forced to fabricate practically everything by hand.

Of course, for someone who could manipulate matter through Magic, that wasn’t quite as unreasonable as it sounded.

The power of Magic was wonderful indeed.

"Whoa! That’s amazing!"

Mavis immediately floated into the air and approached 2B for a closer look.

"She looks just like a real person!"

She reached out and touched the android’s arm.

The surface felt cold and hard beneath her fingers, with the unmistakable texture of metal rather than living skin.

Only then did Mavis fully believe that the woman standing before her was an artificial creation.

"So what can she do?"

Marshall grinned.

"Excellent question!"

He placed a hand proudly against 2B’s shoulder.

"Anything an ordinary maid can do, she can do too! Laundry, cooking, cleaning, and keeping the house in order are all covered. But that’s hardly the limit of her abilities."

He began counting them off.

"Reconnaissance, combat, swordsmanship, and swinging around a greatsword? She can handle all of that!"

His grin widened.

"There’s only one thing she can’t do."

Mavis blinked.

"What?"

"Magic."

That limitation was the result of Marshall’s design choices rather than a lack of technical ambition.

For 2B’s construction, he’d adapted much of the engineering technology he had developed while creating the Gundam.

He hadn’t spent two weeks working on the android merely because he wanted a machine that could wash clothes and prepare meals.

If ordinary household chores had been his only concern, he could have finished a much simpler golem far more quickly.

Marshall had a distinct perfectionist streak.

Then again, that probably came with being a researcher.

People who devoted themselves to magical engineering tended to develop the attitude that if something was worth making, it was worth making as well as possible.

Since he’d already decided to build an intelligent mechanical maid, Marshall naturally wanted to use the project to investigate something more interesting.

Specifically, he had been attempting to reproduce the magic-resistant metal he’d encountered in another world.

Unfortunately, the conditions available to him on Tenrou Island were far from ideal.

He lacked most of his specialized equipment and many of the rare materials he’d ordinarily use for advanced magical engineering.

Even with all the knowledge accumulated during his previous research, he could only accomplish so much when working almost entirely with materials obtained from the island.

After numerous experiments, Marshall had finally succeeded in refining a type of metal capable of neutralizing approximately 50% of the power of incoming Magic.

That was a considerable achievement.

But it was still nowhere near the extraordinary magic immunity possessed by the Black Dragon Armor he’d studied in the past.

Reproducing material capable of almost completely negating magical attacks remained beyond his current manufacturing capabilities.

Nevertheless, a fifty-percent reduction in magical effectiveness was already extremely useful.

Even without the ability to cast spells herself, 2B possessed strong magical resistance, excellent mobility, and a body designed specifically for combat.

Against opponents who depended heavily on Magic, that combination could be devastating.

With her speed, durability, and close-combat capabilities, she would make an excellent Mage killer.

Naturally, she was also perfectly capable of handling Marshall’s laundry.

Marshall enthusiastically explained all these details to the two girls, barely stopping to consider whether either of them understood the technical principles involved.

In truth, he didn’t particularly care.

He simply wanted someone to appreciate his latest masterpiece.

Under ordinary circumstances, he’d have plenty of people to show off his inventions to.

His Apostles alone would have provided an enthusiastic audience, and his guildmates were always eager to see what ridiculous new thing he’d created.

But now, stranded a century in the past, Marshall had nobody except Mavis and Zera.

If he wanted admiration, he’d have to get it from the two of them.

Fortunately, Mavis was already staring at the android with shining eyes, asking questions faster than he could answer them.

Zera, however, was thinking about something entirely different.

’Finally...’

She looked at 2B with unmistakable relief.

’I won’t have to wash Marshall’s clothes anymore!’

After two weeks of cleaning up after that lazy Mage, Zera felt as though she’d finally escaped a terrible fate.

Marshall’s Telepathy hadn’t been able to pick up Zera’s thoughts before he’d given her a physical form.

Now, however, he could hear them perfectly well.

He simply pretended he hadn’t noticed.

Admittedly, making a child handle his household chores was hardly something to be proud of.

But Marshall already knew he wasn’t exactly a model of moral perfection.

Rather than spend too much time feeling guilty about it, he had graciously decided to forgive himself.

Besides, it wasn’t as though he’d made Zera do absolutely everything.

He still possessed some shame, and he wasn’t quite heartless enough to force every unpleasant task onto a little girl.

More importantly, now that 2B was complete, none of that mattered anymore.

Marshall finally had a proper maid again.

He could leave the laundry, cleaning, cooking, and other daily necessities to his new mechanical assistant while devoting his attention entirely to the work that actually mattered.

At long last, his daily routine could return to something resembling normal.

And the first major project he intended to tackle was, naturally, the Curse of Ankhseram.

His recent observations had led him to several new ideas about how the curse might operate.

Now he needed to put those theories to the test.