Fairy Tail: The Uncrowned King of Magic

"WHAT?! What the hell is this?!"

Marshall shot upright in his chair, so shocked that he nearly forgot to breathe.

The Curse of Ankhseram?

Was this seriously the same Curse of Ankhseram he knew about?!

Wait, hold on!

𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Why the hell had it suddenly appeared on him?

Was he still asleep?

Was this some kind of nightmare?

Marshall checked his System panel several times, desperately hoping he had misread something. Unfortunately, the result remained unchanged.

A curse had genuinely appeared beside his Life Magic, and it was apparently LV5.

LV5?!

LV5?!

The System’s descriptions changed according to Marshall’s own understanding of his abilities.

If even the System explicitly identified this thing as the Curse of Ankhseram, then there was a very good chance that it really was the genuine article.

And unless Marshall remembered incorrectly, the Curse of Ankhseram was the infamous Curse of Immortality.

The legendary Black Mage Zeref was feared throughout the world precisely because he possessed this curse.

But why had it suddenly appeared on Marshall?

He had merely stayed up all night conducting experiments!

He hadn’t done anything particularly outrageous, so what had he done to deserve being cursed by some goddamn deity?

Marshall struggled to make sense of the situation.

The more he thought about it, however, the more he realized that something was missing.

Wait a minute.

He didn’t actually feel anything wrong with himself.

What exactly made this curse so terrifying?

Just as countless thoughts were racing through his mind, something suddenly changed.

His heartbeat faltered, and an invisible force seemed to tighten violently around his heart.

At the same instant, an unprecedented feeling of dread swept through him.

Marshall’s expression changed drastically.

Drawing upon the fastest reflexes he had developed across more than twenty years of bachelorhood spanning two lifetimes, he activated Teleportation Magic without the slightest hesitation.

The next instant, he appeared above the sea, not far from the Tower of Heaven.

He had barely completed the teleportation when a visible wave of gray energy erupted from his body and spread outward in every direction.

In the blink of an eye, everything within a radius of one kilometer seemed to lose its color, transforming the surrounding world into a lifeless expanse of black and white.

Then the gray ring contracted.

Marshall’s face turned deathly pale before suddenly regaining its color.

Unfortunately, he lost control of his Flight Magic almost immediately afterward and plunged straight into the sea.

He wasn’t the only thing falling.

Geese tumbled out of the sky, while fish beneath the surface began sinking helplessly into the depths.

’D-Damn it... My Magic Power...’

’It’s completely gone...’

That was Marshall’s final thought before he lost consciousness.

...

When Marshall eventually woke up, he discovered that he was still submerged in the ocean.

Worse, an assortment of strange little crustaceans had gathered around him and were crawling all over his body.

Apparently, the creatures had decided he was a convenient meal and were attempting to eat him.

Unfortunately for them, Marshall’s body had undergone so many years of magical conditioning that their tiny jaws couldn’t even break his skin.

He shook his head as his consciousness gradually returned.

’Let’s see... I was suddenly afflicted with the Curse of Ankhseram, then teleported to an uninhabited location above the sea just before it activated...’

’And then I fell into the ocean?’

Marshall finally realized something rather important.

’HOLY SHIT! I’M UNDERWATER!’

’Wait, why am I not dead? How am I still breathing down—’

’Oh. Right. I’m not breathing.’

He quickly examined his physical condition and discovered that he seemed to have died at some point, except he hadn’t quite managed to stay dead.

Now that he was fully conscious, he could feel excruciating pain throughout his body, particularly inside his head.

The pain was so severe that he could barely think.

Was this what severe oxygen deprivation felt like?

Even powerful Mages couldn’t remain underwater indefinitely without oxygen unless they used Magic to sustain themselves.

Marshall had no idea how long he had been unconscious, and given the condition of his body, it clearly hadn’t been a pleasant experience.

Fortunately, his Magic Power had recovered to somewhat less than half of its normal capacity.

Whatever else was happening, he needed to get out of the water first.

Marshall immediately activated Teleportation Magic and returned to the coordinates above the sea where he had originally lost consciousness.

As fresh air finally entered his lungs, the agonizing pain throughout his body gradually began to subside.

Now that he could think clearly again, Marshall had to confront a rather serious question.

Had he genuinely become immortal?

Was the Curse of Ankhseram actually real?

His expression grew complicated as he recalled everything he knew about the curse.

According to the legends, Ankhseram’s curse had existed since ancient times and was considered one of the most malicious curses imaginable.

The more someone valued life, the more likely they were to take the lives of others, eventually condemning themselves to an eternity of suffering after unintentionally killing everyone they loved.

Marshall had never particularly believed those stories.

And frankly, he still wasn’t convinced.

What concerned him was something much more practical.

’Am I actually incapable of dying now?’

He had somehow survived prolonged oxygen deprivation, but what would happen if someone cut off his head?

Could he recover from being blown to pieces?

And what exactly was that gray ring that had expanded from his body when the curse activated? What triggered it? Could he control it?

Come to think of it, he hadn’t exactly been overflowing with respect for life during his experiments on Brain.

So why had the curse suddenly activated in the first place?

Marshall had an enormous number of questions, and practically none of them had answers.

Strangely enough, however, he wasn’t particularly frightened.

Sure, he had apparently acquired one of the most terrifying curses in existence, but it wasn’t as though he had been sentenced to die tomorrow.

Quite the opposite.

He might never be able to die again.

What was there to panic about?

If anyone should be panicking, it was probably everyone else!

As far as Marshall was concerned, someone who could already fly and use Magic had considerably more to gain from immortality than to lose.

Besides, he had the System!

Now that he possessed immortality alongside his existing advantages, was he seriously supposed to believe he would never discover a way to control this ridiculous curse?

If he couldn’t solve the problem quickly, he would simply take his time.

If one year wasn’t enough, he would spend ten.

If ten years weren’t enough, he would spend a hundred.

And if he still couldn’t figure it out after an entire century, he might as well find a block of tofu and bash his head against it until he died from embarrassment.

Oh, wait.

He couldn’t die.

Well, that settled that.

Having successfully talked himself out of panicking, Marshall began carefully reviewing everything that had happened when the curse activated.

He remembered his Magic Power pouring out of his body almost instantaneously.

Immediately afterward, countless tiny points of light seemed to have drifted toward him from every direction before disappearing into his body.

What exactly had those lights been?

Marshall directed his magical perception inward and examined his Origin space.

Normally, the space contained an assortment of strange and mysterious seeds that he had collected or developed over the years.

Now, however, something else had appeared among them.

Countless tiny points of light were floating throughout the space.

Marshall stared at them.

’Are these... lives?’

He slowly raised his head and looked toward the sky before lowering his gaze to the ocean beneath him.

Then he pressed his palms together in an extremely insincere gesture of apology.

"Looks like I accidentally killed quite a few fish, shrimp, and birds. I’m terribly sorry about that. I’ll be sure to come back here next time."

After all, those little creatures should consider themselves honored to have offered their lives to the magnificent immortal Marshall!

He certainly wasn’t losing any sleep over it.

More importantly, the curse appeared to have a brief activation delay.

Marshall had sensed it coming just before the gray wave erupted, and that warning had given him enough time to teleport somewhere uninhabited.

As long as he remained careful, he should be able to avoid accidentally killing people.

Probably.

Unfortunately, another possibility immediately occurred to him.

What if the curse activated while he was unconscious?

For example... while he was sleeping?

Marshall’s expression became serious again.

Apparently, returning to the guild wasn’t an option for the time being.

He would need to remain somewhere isolated while conducting experiments to determine exactly how the curse worked.

There was no point risking the lives of his friends until he understood what he was dealing with.

Then another thought struck him.

’Wait a minute.’

’A curse?’

Marshall frowned.

’No. I don’t like that description at all.’

’Change it!’

The moment he made that decision, the information displayed on his System panel suddenly changed.

[Life Magic LV5: 0.1%]

Marshall stared at the updated description before bursting into laughter.

"HAHAHA! See?! I knew it! What curse? What are you talking about? I just accidentally awakened another kind of Magic!"

Wasn’t it perfectly normal to struggle with controlling an incredibly powerful ability immediately after acquiring it?

There was absolutely no need to frighten himself by calling it a curse!

Marshall desperately attempted to convince himself that everything was fine.

Whether this new way of thinking would actually help him remained uncertain, but at least it gave him a possible direction for his research.

Unfortunately, there was still one rather unpleasant problem.

It had taken him seven or eight years just to learn how to properly control his LV4 Information Magic.

How long would it take him to master a mysterious LV5 ability that had practically fallen out of the sky?

Marshall was still considering that question when he suddenly froze.

"WAIT A MINUTE!"

His expression changed drastically as an even more horrifying realization struck him.

"IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY, THE CURSE OF ANKHSERAM STOPS PEOPLE FROM AGING!"

Marshall looked down at his own body.

A terrible possibility gradually dawned on him.

"DOESN’T THAT MEAN..."

"I’M GOING TO BE STUCK AT THIS HEIGHT FOREVER?!"

A furious scream echoed across the empty ocean.

"ANKHSERAM! FUCK YOU!!!"