Chapter 261
Marshall’s Domain Magic was actually still an unfinished product, nowhere near the form he ultimately wanted it to reach.
For all its seemingly overwhelming power, the spell still had several serious weaknesses.
The first was its activation time and range.
From the moment Marshall began releasing the spell until the formula fully expanded around him, the process took time.
At its current development speed, expanding the Domain by roughly one meter required about half a second.
The Domain he had just used had a radius of only two meters, yet even that had taken an entire second to deploy.
In other words, it worked best as a close-range technique.
Unless Marshall activated it almost right on top of his opponent, there was always a risk that they would simply notice what was happening and escape before the Domain finished expanding.
The second weakness was that the Domain could be broken from the outside.
As long as someone struck it with a magical output greater than the amount of Magic Power Marshall was using to maintain the barrier, they could forcibly shatter it.
And maintaining the Domain was extraordinarily expensive.
At its current level, it burned through roughly 10,000 Magic Power every minute.
With Marshall’s present reserves, he could sustain it for little more than ten minutes.
Of course, once an enemy was successfully trapped inside, they were basically a lamb waiting to be slaughtered. Marshall only needed a few seconds to decide most battles.
But a weakness was still a weakness.
In Marshall’s original conception, the finished spell was never supposed to suffer from such obvious limitations.
The true [Setsuna Shinra] should possess an effect approaching genuine time suspension.
Marshall hoped to achieve that by adapting the principle behind the reversed super spell Fairy Sphere.
Time outside the Domain would effectively stop, while time inside continued to flow normally.
No matter how long someone remained within the Domain, only a single second would pass in the outside world.
That was the [Setsuna Shinra] Marshall envisioned.
The current version still kept the flow of time inside and outside synchronized, so at best it could only be called—
[Setsuna Shikan].
’Yeah. Might as well make them two separate spells.’
Unfortunately, evolving the spell into its completed form would probably require raising his Time Magic to LV4 first.
And Marshall was still frustratingly short on inspiration.
After teasing Erza for a little while longer, Marshall maintained the surrounding Domain but individually released the formula affecting her.
Although the Domain had originally unfolded in midair, it generated its own internal surface, so Erza immediately dropped onto her knees.
She drew in huge breaths, sweat streaming from her body.
Her muscles were still jerking uncontrollably as the commands that had been delayed inside the Domain finally began reaching her all at once.
The twitching was so violent that she almost looked as though she were having some kind of fit.
Marshall suddenly felt a little guilty and hurried over to support her.
"Erza-nee, are you okay?"
"..."
Erza couldn’t answer.
Her entire body continued to tremble, and she looked as though she had just been pulled out of a pool.
That was apparently one of the spell’s side effects.
Although both this Domain and ordinary Immobilization Magic resulted in the same basic outcome—’the mind wants to move, but the body doesn’t’—the underlying mechanisms were completely different.
An immobilization spell simply restrained the body.
The brain’s instructions still arrived normally, but the body was forcibly prevented from carrying them out.
Inside Marshall’s Domain, the body could only receive an instruction after the mind had finished processing the required knowledge.
The problem was that the brain continued issuing commands the entire time; they merely became trapped in transit.
The instant the Domain’s restriction was removed, all those delayed instructions reached the body in rapid succession.
That sudden flood of accumulated signals produced an extremely intense physical reaction.
It took Erza quite a while before she finally recovered enough to speak, and even then her voice was slightly hoarse.
"Marshall... that Magic of yours is terrifying..."
"Hm? It’s not that bad." Marshall waved dismissively. "It’s only a half-finished spell right now. Nothing worth making a fuss over~"
"..."
Erza rested for another moment before looking toward the strange, star-filled space around them.
"Marshall, against someone who possesses a truly enormous amount of knowledge, wouldn’t this spell become much less effective?"
Marshall glanced at her approvingly and nodded.
"Exactly. As expected of Erza-nee—you spotted the key issue immediately."
The Domain only contained knowledge and Magic that Marshall himself had already mastered.
Someone who already understood a large portion of that information would naturally have far less to process than Erza had.
"A genuinely learned scholar might be able to adapt to the Domain after spending some time inside it," Marshall admitted. "Though people like that should be pretty rare. Most people haven’t learned anywhere near as many kinds of Magic as I have, and even I’ve lost track of exactly how much knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years."
Erza thought about that, then sighed.
"But even if you met someone like that, your first activation would still leave them frozen for several minutes, wouldn’t it? During that time, you could have killed them hundreds of times over. So you’re probably worrying too much."
Marshall blinked.
"...You know.... you’re right."
Erza had personally experienced how horrifying the Domain felt.
As far as she was concerned, almost anyone caught by it for the first time would be finished.
This conclusion had absolutely nothing to do with Erza herself supposedly not being scholarly enough.
Absolutely nothing.
By now, she had finally regained full control of her body.
Erza clenched and unclenched her fists a few times, still deeply uncomfortable with the memory of that helpless sensation.
"Fine. I surrender."
She looked around the Domain.
"What do we do now? Are we leaving?"
"No rush." Marshall sat down casually. "Our teammates are still fighting outside. We can rest here for a bit and watch them. I can use Telescope Magic to see how everyone’s doing."
In a strange way, Laxus’s earlier suspicion had actually been correct.
Marshall and Erza really were sitting inside the mysterious white sphere and taking a break.
Since they were sealed inside a self-contained space anyway, Marshall saw no reason not to make himself comfortable.
He projected the other battles for them to watch.
"Looks like your teammates are losing too," Marshall commented. "Sho’s Card Magic is being completely suppressed by Cana, Millianna’s binding ropes can’t catch Juvia at all, and Laki isn’t a match for Levy."
His gaze shifted to the final fight.
"And Lucy..."
Marshall paused.
"Mm. Lucy looks pretty miserable."
Still, she was doing surprisingly well considering Wally’s strength.
Once the others finished their own opponents and went to help her, the result shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Erza watched quietly for a while before Marshall glanced back at her.
"It’s about time we wrapped things up. Though..."
His eyes traveled over her current condition.
"Erza-nee, I don’t think you’d want the audience seeing you like this."
Erza looked down at herself.
Her hair was disheveled, her clothes and armor were damp with sweat, and she still looked thoroughly exhausted after recovering from the Domain’s effects.
She silently agreed.
Marshall exchanged a few words with her, then used Spatial Magic to take Erza away so she could recover somewhere private before returning to finish the match.
When the mysterious white sphere finally vanished, the spectators—who had spent ages waiting to see what was happening inside—discovered that neither Marshall nor Erza was standing there anymore.
The stadium immediately erupted in outrage.
"WHAT?!"
"Where are they?!"
"We waited all that time for nothing?!"
"FIXED MATCH!"
"THIS IS A SCAM!"
The crowd booed loudly, convinced they had been cheated out of the conclusion to the most anticipated fight of the round.
Marshall, naturally, paid them no attention.
Not long afterward, he regrouped with the girls on his team.
Together, they finished off the remaining members of Erza’s team, captured their flag, and officially secured victory in the semifinal.
With that, the finalists of the first World’s Number One Magic Tournament were decided.
[Thunder God Team] VS [Marshall Team]!
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