Chapter 5
Marshall quickly settled into life in Magnolia.
The town was fairly prosperous, and the streets were much safer than he had expected.
It even had magic-powered trains, which came as a genuine surprise.
Combined with all the strange and convenient magical devices people used in their daily lives, the average standard of living was far beyond the medieval "swords and sorcery" setting Marshall had imagined.
If anything, Magnolia felt closer to the Victorian era.
Magic had also caused civilization to develop unevenly, however, leaving enormous gaps between different regions.
Fiore was a large but sparsely populated country with only a handful of major cities. Once someone traveled far enough from civilization, the land quickly turned wild.
Tribal settlements and powerful Magical Beasts could still be found scattered throughout the forests and wilderness, while ordinary villagers in remote areas might spend their entire lives without ever leaving their hometowns.
That was why Marshall considered Gildarts bringing him out of the village and taking him to Fairy Tail a kindness almost equal to saving his life.
Fairy Tail might have been loud, but the guild was full of colorful, talented people who were surprisingly pleasant once he got to know them.
Marshall had grown quite fond of the place.
With his innocent appearance, harmless little-boy act, unusually high emotional intelligence, and a tiny bit of assistance from Telepathy Magic, he quickly earned the affection of almost everyone in the guild.
At the very least, none of them would refuse if he sweetly asked for a little guidance with magic.
Unfortunately, before Marshall could seriously begin studying magic, he first had to learn how to read and write!
This world used many different writing systems.
He had never properly learned the common written language, however, so he still needed to start from the basics.
Cana enthusiastically volunteered to become his teacher.
At the same time, Marshall found his first job in this new world—working as a server in the guildhall.
The pay was one thousand Jewels a day, with food and lodging included.
It was blatant child labor, but unfortunately, this was another world and child-protection laws did not seem to exist.
And so Marshall worked and studied in the guild during the day, continued studying late into the night, and probably studied in his dreams as well.
His days had become extremely full.
Once Gildarts saw that Marshall had adjusted to guild life, he accepted a job and left Magnolia again.
Not long after Makarov returned, the newspapers reported that the Magic Council had raided and destroyed several dark magic cults.
Apparently, those cultists had not even survived long enough for Marshall to become strong enough to take revenge himself.
As Marshall sat reading the article without difficulty, Cana proudly turned to Gray.
"Gray, I think I might be a genius teacher!"
"Have you considered the possibility that Marshall is the genius?"
"Hmph! My little brother is obviously a genius too!"
Standing behind Marshall, Cana happily squished and stretched his cheeks.
"Marshall, I don’t think there’s anything left for me to teach you. If you still want to learn another language, though, I can introduce you to a friend."
It had taken Marshall only a few days to master the common script.
He already knew how to read from his previous life, and his young brain seemed unusually good at memorizing things, so learning a different set of symbols had not been particularly difficult.
"I think I know enough for now, but I wouldn’t mind making another friend."
"Hehe. She’s a girl from town who loves books. She said she’ll join Fairy Tail once she learns magic, so I’ll introduce you next time."
Cana had become noticeably more cheerful lately.
She had not even been too upset when Gildarts left again.
Now that she had gained an entertaining little brother, she had finally discovered that not every boy was as annoying as Gray.
"Tch. Marshall, stop hanging around these irritating girls!" Gray came over and slapped a hand onto Marshall’s shoulder. "How about I keep teaching you a real man’s magic? I bet you’ll learn it in no time."
He had grown quite fond of his eager and respectful new little brother.
"Gray! Don’t corrupt my Marshall, you perverted exhibitionist!"
"Huh?! When did that happen?!"
"Sorry, Gray. I want to start with some simpler magic first," Marshall said with an apologetic smile.
"Your magic is too advanced, and I can’t keep wasting your time by making you teach me. But..."
His gaze shifted toward the invisible panel only he could see.
His greatest accomplishment over the past few days had actually been figuring out how his cheat worked.
The information displayed on it had changed considerably.
[Energy: 21/21]
[Stamina: 18/18]
[Magic Power: 365/366]
[Telepathy Magic LV4: 4,550/10,000,000]
[Meditation LV1: 555/10,000]
[Crash Magic LV0: 24/1,000]
[Smoke Magic LV0: 404/1,000]
[Fire Magic LV0: 200/1,000]
[Ice Magic LV0: 211/1,000]
[Molding Magic LV0: 333/1,000]
[Card Magic LV0: 110/1,000]
[Requip Magic LV0: 666/1,000]
[Inspiration: 533] (※)
His Stamina had increased by another point, while learning Meditation had raised his maximum Magic Power by more than ten.
He had also added several Level Zero forms of magic to his panel.
Marshall had learned each of them from a different Mage in the guild, spending only one day on each type.
Despite investing the same amount of time, however, the amount of experience he gained varied greatly.
That meant different forms of magic had different levels of difficulty, and their experience accumulated at different speeds.
According to the numbers, Requip Magic was the easiest one for him to learn.
Crash Magic was naturally the hardest, since its progress had barely moved at all.
After spending a day learning Ice-Make Magic from Gray, two separate skills had appeared on his panel: Ice Magic and Molding Magic.
Even those two components advanced at different speeds.
Apparently, his system divided combination magic into its individual elements and calculated them separately.
More importantly, Meditation should not have leveled as quickly as it had based on Marshall’s previous rate of progress.
That was where his cheat had finally shown its true value.
Inspiration.
A small star-shaped symbol had appeared beside the Inspiration value, indicating that those points could be spent.
When the symbol first appeared, Meditation had accumulated a little over three hundred experience, while Marshall had more than seven hundred Inspiration.
He had pressed it without thinking.
Meditation had immediately risen from Level Zero to Level One.
His cheat could consume Inspiration to fill whatever experience remained before a skill leveled up.
In other words, if Marshall wished, he could spend 334 Inspiration right now and instantly learn Requip Magic.
The discovery had left him thrilled.
His plain little status panel had suddenly become far more valuable than he had ever imagined.
Still, he had no intention of spending those points yet.
Requip Magic was not particularly difficult to learn.
Even without using his cheat, he estimated that another day or two of practice would be enough, so wasting valuable Inspiration on it made little sense.
Airo had been the one to teach him Requip Magic. According to her, it was extremely popular among female Mages because it allowed them to change clothes at any time.
The basic principle involved placing a mannequin shaped like the user’s body inside another room or storage space, then using a magic circle to exchange the clothing worn by the mannequin and the Mage.
It was essentially a simple application of Spatial Magic.
The beginner version was not hard to learn as long as someone memorized the magic circle, though the distance from which the clothes could be changed was limited.
Airo had claimed that it took her more than a month to master the spell, however, so Marshall was not entirely sure whether he was unusually talented or had misunderstood what the experience bar represented.
That was why he wanted to learn at least one form of magic entirely on his own before drawing any conclusions.
As for Inspiration, he planned to save as much of it as possible. It felt like the kind of resource he could never have too much of.
Telepathy Magic required ten million experience to advance from Level Four to Level Five.
At that rate, the next level might require a hundred million.
The potential demand for Inspiration was enormous, yet Marshall still had no reliable idea how to earn large amounts of it.
The value seemed to increase on its own even when he did nothing, but the rate was painfully slow—only around a hundred points per day.
That was nowhere near enough.
As for actively gaining more Inspiration...
Marshall had one theory.
He had no idea whether it was correct, but he intended to test it today.
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All mc magic is canon based magic and there will be no other element add to it, think of him as mini august.