Chapter 52
"Cana! Summon the Wind Weasel! It’s about to release its mist!"
In a clearing deep within the forest, Marshall and Cana had surrounded an adorable little deer from opposite sides.
It was a Mist Deer, a Magical Beast capable of producing a special fog that ordinary wind could barely disperse.
"Light-Make: Swords of Radiant Confinement!"
Marshall swept one hand through the air.
Dozens of glowing swords descended from above and stabbed into the ground in a circle, trapping the young Mist Deer in place.
Terrified, the creature curled into a trembling ball before releasing an enormous cloud of thick fog from its skin.
"Wind Weasel! Use Divine Gale!"
At Cana’s command, the small weasel beside her activated its natural Wind Magic.
Ordinary gusts couldn’t disperse a Mist Deer’s fog, but the Wind Weasel’s magic was equally unusual and happened to counter it perfectly.
Once the mist was blown away, the little deer completely lost its nerve.
It lowered its head, trembling as it tried to hide like an ostrich, all desire to resist gone.
That left only the final step.
"Yes! The contract worked!"
Cana stared at the newly formed card, her face lighting up.
"It’s a five-star card! This is amazing!"
"We did it, nya! Congratulations, Boss Cana, nya! Hello, little deer! I’m Ruby, nya!"
Ruby, who had appointed herself the team’s official cheerleader, flew over and landed on the dejected Mist Deer’s head, hoping to make friends.
Unfortunately, the deer had no interest in speaking to her.
Contracted Magical Beasts only obeyed Cana while their summoned forms were active.
Their real bodies remained mostly unchanged from before the contract.
If it hadn’t known it couldn’t win, the Mist Deer would have fled long ago.
Magical Beasts still had their own lives to live, and to extend the "shelf life" of her cards, Cana needed to prioritize creatures with strong survival abilities.
If the original Magical Beast died, its card became useless.
With Marshall’s help, Cana’s Card Magic had already developed into a complete system of its own.
A card’s star rating represented the amount of magic power possessed by the summoned creature.
One star equaled five hundred units of magic power.
This wasn’t the Magic Council’s official measurement system, but the standard used by Marshall’s System.
For example, Marshall currently possessed more than three thousand magic power, which would make him only a seven-star card.
Once summoned, this Mist Deer would possess a little over two thousand magic power, making it a five-star card.
Of course, the young deer clearly possessed little direct combat ability.
In battle, it would mainly serve as a specialized tactical card used to create a field of dense fog.
That didn’t mean the card was useless.
Whenever Cana summoned a contracted Magical Beast, the ratio between the magic power she supplied and the creature itself supplied was one to four.
Cana paid twenty percent of the total cost to activate the summoning and teleportation, while the original creature contributed the remaining eighty percent to create a pseudo-Thought Projection.
For example, if Cana wanted to summon this Mist Deer, whose real body possessed roughly 2,500 magic power, she would need to spend 500 magic power at once.
The completed summon would then take the form of a Mist Deer projection carrying around 2,000 magic power.
At first glance, that appeared inefficient.
The summoning cost was high enough to make the entire spell seem almost useless.
But that wasn’t really the case.
For one thing, this Mist Deer was clearly a Magical Beast specialized in magic power.
Its greatest strength was simply possessing a great deal of it.
Most combat-oriented Magical Beasts actually had much smaller reserves, meaning low-star cards were far more common.
More importantly...
Those five hundred points were only necessary when directly summoning a five-star card.
That was the traditional method.
True Summoning Card Magic wasn’t supposed to be played that way!
Under Marshall’s guidance, Cana had successfully developed the Sacrifice Summoning Method.
Using the properties of Link Magic, she could drain magic power from low-star cards and use it to summon stronger ones.
If Cana wanted to summon the five-star Mist Deer, she needed to provide five hundred magic power—but that energy didn’t need to come from her.
She could instead sacrifice a two-star card.
After summoning a Magical Beast with slightly more than five hundred magic power, Cana could immediately drain its entire reserve and use that energy to activate the five-star card.
That reduced her personal cost to roughly one hundred magic power.
The only price was that the sacrificed creature might face a tiny risk to its life for a while after being completely drained.
It also couldn’t be summoned again until it recovered.
Using this method, Cana could summon extremely powerful Magical Beasts while consuming very little of her own magic power.
Both her raw combat ability and endurance improved enormously.
With that, Cana’s Card Magic system had officially taken shape.
From now on, all she needed to do was collect as many cards as possible.
High-star or low-star, every card had value.
The five-star Mist Deer might not be especially useful in direct combat, but it made an excellent sacrifice.
Cana couldn’t completely drain the same sacrificial creature every time, so Magical Beasts with enormous reserves were actually the most valuable fuel.
A sacrifice carrying more than two thousand magic power could theoretically be used to summon a Sun-tier card possessing over ten thousand!
In Cana’s completed ranking system, cards were divided into three major classes:
Star, Moon, and Sun.
Cards below five thousand magic power were Star-tier.
Those between five thousand and ten thousand were Moon-tier.
Anything above ten thousand was classified as Sun-tier.
Unfortunately, the strongest Magical Beast Cana and Marshall had captured so far was only eight-star.
Creating a higher-ranked card remained a distant goal.
...
Today marked the seventh day since Marshall’s Hunter Team began its expedition.
They had already traveled deep into the southwestern forest, where rare Magical Beasts could be found everywhere.
It was the perfect hunting ground.
They spent each day searching for prey, then returned to Magnolia with a single teleport every evening.
Marshall had been having an excellent time.
Especially after discovering that combat could produce Inspiration.
He seemed to have awakened a new hobby.
Relying on his enormous magic reserves and exceptional mobility, he had begun searching specifically for large, slow Magical Beasts he could bully.
As a result, the forest often witnessed the harmonious sight of a nine-year-old child beating the hell out of a nine-meter monster.
Close-range fighting consumed only Stamina, while injuries reduced Energy.
Marshall’s Heal Script Enchantment could restore Energy while also recovering a portion of his Stamina.
Whenever his Stamina was completely exhausted and then recovered, its maximum value increased slightly as well.
Body-Conditioning Magic was especially effective at raising Energy.
Close-quarters combat improved Stamina more efficiently.
And Meditation remained the best way to increase Magic Power.
At this point, Marshall lacked nothing.
The future of a perfectly balanced build was calling to him!
Once again, he had entered another glorious upward spiral:
Fight and feel great.
Recover and feel great.
Grow stronger and feel great.
Then fight again.
Marshall now firmly believed that, given enough time, he could raise all three of his basic attributes to completely absurd levels.
Becoming a Super Saiyan no longer seemed impossible!
Worse, he felt as though he was beginning to pick up the guild’s habit of enjoying fights.
Could it be that those idiots had discovered long ago that fighting made them stronger, and that was why they did it every day?
Wait.
Wasn’t that obvious?
Why would they constantly fight if there were no benefits?
Surely it couldn’t be because they simply enjoyed it!
’Damn it! i had failed to discover this secret sooner.’
What an enormous loss!
"All right, the contract is complete. Let the deer go, and let’s find another Magical Beast that can actually fight!"
Marshall impatiently punched the air.
Cana watched her little brother behaving more and more like a proper Fairy Tail member and smiled with equal parts helplessness and affection.
"All right, all right. Whatever you say. Let’s keep moving~"
The two children and Ruby climbed back onto the flying card and continued onward.
After traveling for a while, Cana seemed to spot something below.
"Marshall, look. Is that a small village over there? Or maybe a fortified settlement?"
She leaned forward in surprise.
"They built it in the middle of a primeval forest? That’s impressive."
Marshall was equally startled.
"You’re right. And I think I can see the flag of a wizard guild..."
He narrowed his eyes.
"There’s a guild all the way out here?"
"I’ve never heard of one in this forest," Cana said. "That emblem... Is it shaped like a cat?"
She tilted her head.
"I don’t recognize it. Should we go take a look?"
"Wait, Cana..."
Marshall’s expression slowly changed.
"Can you feel that?"
"Feel what?"
"An incredibly powerful source of magic."
He stared at the distant settlement.
"It’s been divided into countless separate pieces, but they all come from the same source."
"I can only hear one voice..."
Marshall suddenly paused.
Then a faint smile appeared on his face.
"Let’s go."
"The master of this place is inviting me inside."