Chapter 69
"My dear Hanna~ Are you really not going to tell me the secret of that time-travel spell? This is incredibly important to me~"
"Ultear, Marshall appreciates that you helped tidy the apartment, but Marshall does not appreciate you using favors as leverage."
Inside the apartment they shared at the academy, Marshall and Ultear were locked in a standoff in the living room.
Marshall sat comfortably on the sofa, leisurely eating a cup of pudding.
Ultear knelt beside him with her hands clasped together, wearing the most sincere expression she could manage.
Thought Projections were made entirely of magic power, so they normally had no need to eat, drink, or use the bathroom.
They couldn’t even taste food properly.
But Ultear had bought the pudding especially for him.
Wouldn’t refusing to eat it hurt her feelings?
The kindhearted Marshall would never do anything so cruel.
Ever since their afternoon tea together, Ultear’s attitude toward him had undergone a complete reversal.
She had become so attentive that it bordered on shameless flattery.
A beautiful girl with long black hair constantly worried about his daily life, bought him snacks and milk tea, and checked on him from morning until night.
Under normal circumstances, it should have been wonderful.
Marshall, however, felt nothing.
His heart remained perfectly calm as he accepted every bit of her service without the slightest trace of guilt.
Why?
One only needed to listen to her thoughts.
[This damned tomboy! I’ve gone this far to please her, so what else does she want from me?! If we weren’t inside the academy, I’d drag her back to headquarters and interrogate her until she talked!]
What a wicked woman.
She said one thing aloud while thinking something entirely different. Her acting was impressive, though.
If Marshall hadn’t been one step ahead, she might genuinely have fooled him.
"Honestly, I’m already beginning to regret teaching you that spell."
Marshall scooped up another spoonful of pudding.
"That really was the complete spell structure for returning to the past. Why won’t you believe me?"
He had never intended to withhold it from her.
Marshall had never been possessive about magical knowledge, so when Ultear asked, he handed over the entire model without hesitation.
Unfortunately, she refused to believe that was all there was.
"No. You must still be hiding some crucial piece of information."
Ultear leaned forward.
"The magic circle appears theoretically sound, but there’s no possible way to activate it."
"Unless you let me examine the time-space artifact that actually transported those people, I won’t stop asking!"
That was the reason for their current stalemate.
Marshall certainly wasn’t going to hand Remembrance of Time over to a mysterious, untrustworthy woman.
Especially not when every thought in her head was suspicious.
If her constant attention hadn’t become somewhat comfortable, Marshall would have stopped dealing with her days ago.
Ultear, meanwhile, felt as though her lifelong wish was only one step away.
The problem was that she couldn’t find the door leading to it.
She was desperate enough to cry!
Marshall had become her only lifeline, and she intended to cling to him without ever letting go.
"You really only think about yourself, don’t you?"
Marshall sighed.
"Instead of pestering me here, why don’t you focus on improving your Time Magic?"
"The only reason the spell won’t activate is that both of us are far too weak."
"But you already met people from the future!"
Ultear immediately objected.
"From the way you described them, they weren’t overwhelmingly powerful either!"
"I already told you. They crossed time by borrowing the power of a magical artifact."
"Then let me examine that artifact!"
"You really are impossible!"
Ultear bit her lip.
Then she suddenly bent forward into a deep bow and swore with complete sincerity,
"Please!"
"If you let me borrow the artifact’s power and return to the past just once, then my life belongs to you."
"Afterward, I’ll do anything you ask!"
Marshall sprang away from the sofa and looked at her with open disgust.
"Get lost! Who said I wanted your life?"
"You’ve trapped yourself in a dead end, do you understand?"
"It’s only one spell. It isn’t worth throwing away your entire life."
"I don’t care!"
Ultear looked up at him.
"The entire purpose of my life is to return to the past—"
"Bullshit!"
Marshall cut her off.
"People live to create a better future."
"Anyone obsessed with the past eventually becomes a prisoner of their own memories."
His expression hardened.
"In the end, you’re simply drowning in regret, aren’t you? You want to change what happened?"
"Then I’ll tell you the truth."
"According to my research, events that have already occurred cannot truly be changed. Even magic that sends someone into the past won’t alter that."
"So stop clinging to an impossible fantasy!"
Marshall’s words struck directly at Ultear’s deepest wound.
This time, her panic was genuine.
"That’s not true! I don’t—I never wanted to change the past!"
"I only... I only wanted..."
[I only wanted to ask her why she abandoned me!]
[I only wanted to know what truly happened back then!]
[I only wanted to ask my mother whether she had ever loved me...]
Marshall heard the echo rising from the deepest part of Ultear’s heart.
Her conscious thoughts and buried desires were fighting one another.
She was another fool who had locked herself inside a prison of her own making.
Marshall sighed.
"I don’t even know what to say to you anymore."
"Fine. I’ll make it perfectly clear."
"According to my research, the spell for returning to the past is missing several essential requirements."
Ultear immediately raised her head.
"What requirements?!"
"An enormous amount of magic power, genuine space-time energy, and an ultimate understanding of time itself."
Marshall counted them off on his fingers.
"Those are things neither of us can possibly possess right now."
"So stop dreaming about shortcuts."
"Unless you can somehow obtain all three, don’t bother me about this again."
Ultear froze.
Weren’t those exactly the kinds of things Zeref possessed?
The world’s greatest Black Mage would undoubtedly have immense magic power, mastery over time, and access to strange space-time forces.
Had everything simply come full circle?
Was her only path still the one Hades had shown her?
Even so, she couldn’t completely let go.
"Is there truly no other method?"
She moved closer again.
"Couldn’t you at least let me see the artifact? Just once..."
"Hehehe."
Marshall narrowed his eyes.
"Then why don’t you tell me your story first?"
"Perhaps I could help you."
"...I can’t."
"See?"
Marshall pointed at her.
"You have no sincerity at all."
"You only know how to make unreasonable demands of other people, but the moment someone asks something of you, you refuse."
"There’s nothing more for us to discuss."
"You should leave."
Marshall swallowed the last bite of pudding, dusted off his hands, and turned away.
Ultear reached toward him.
Her mouth opened, but in the end, she said nothing.
[I really am a despicable woman.]
[She’s right. I already knew she wasn’t lying. I was simply forcing her to give me more.]
[If she could truly use magic that returned her to the past, she probably would never have allowed anyone to discover the secret.]
[She has already helped me more than enough. At the very least, she proved that my wish is not completely impossible.]
"I’m sorry for making things difficult for you..."
Ultear lowered her eyes.
"And thank you, Hanna."
Marshall ignored her.
At the moment, he had very little affection left for this woman.
"Um... Can we still be good friends?"
"Why haven’t you left yet?"
Marshall snapped.
"I don’t want to speak to you."
"Uh... This is our shared apartment."
"...I forgot!"
"Then I’ll leave!"
Marshall marched into his bedroom and slammed the door, leaving Ultear standing helplessly in the living room.
[What should I do? She seems genuinely angry.]
[It must be because I refused to be honest with her.]
[Come to think of it, Hanna is the only friend I’ve made in years without any schemes involved.]
[And with her talent, she might make a breakthrough in Time Magic within a few years.]
[She may become another path available to me in the future. I have to repair our relationship.]
Later, Ultear took the spell model for returning to the past and secretly consulted her Guild Master, Hades.
He reached almost exactly the same conclusion as Marshall.
From that point onward, Ultear finally believed everything Marshall had told her.
She also began an aggressive campaign to win back his friendship, following Marshall everywhere and attending to him with the devotion of an embarrassingly loyal puppy.
One day, Siegrain—who cared about nothing except advancing his position—finally remembered that he hadn’t seen his supposedly faithful follower in quite some time.
With no other choice, he came looking for her himself.
"Ultear, contact Brain for me. I need to purchase a batch of living supplies for the Tower of Heaven."
"Huh?"
Ultear handed him a communication address without looking away from the gift she was preparing for Marshall.
"Here’s his contact information. Speak to him yourself."
"And stop coming to me over trivial matters like this."
She frowned.
"I don’t want Hanna to misunderstand."
Siegrain stared at her.
"???"
---------
Read 40 Chapters ahead and support me on patreon.
patreon (.)com/Newbietranslator