Chapter 260
Marshall and Erza’s fight had the audience completely hooked.
After all, when Erza and Mira had fought the day before, the battlefield had been full of dust and flying debris, so the crowd had missed quite a few of the best moments.
This time, though, the two of them were battling high in the air, where every exchange was clearly visible—especially with the host enthusiastically breaking things down in slow motion.
"Amazing! Those two aren’t ordinary mages anymore—they’re true warriors!"
"They’re still so young, and yet they already fight like veterans who’ve survived countless battles. Is this what real genius looks like?!"
"They’re ridiculously strong! From now on, I refuse to acknowledge those mages who just stand at range and spam spells. Fairy Tail is the future of mages!"
"Combat! Hell yeah!"
Then, when Erza asked Marshall to show off his new magic, the whole arena erupted.
Marshall clapped his hands together, and a pure white sphere roughly two and a half meters across appeared in the air around him, swallowing both him and Erza inside.
The outside world instantly lost sight of them.
"What the hell is that? What kind of magic is this?! Where’d they go?!"
"Why are they hiding?! We came here to watch a fight! Damn it, we can’t see anything! Refund us!"
Over at the judges’ table, the host hurried over to Makarov.
"Master Makarov, forgive my ignorance, but I can’t tell what kind of magic that is. Could you explain it to the audience?"
"..."
Makarov’s smile froze solid.
’You said you don’t know? I don’t know either! That brat Marshall has too many tricks up his sleeve—how am I supposed to know how many kinds of magic he’s learned?’
He cleared his throat and began bluffing anyway.
"Well... as we all know, magic can be classified in many ways depending on how it functions. There are projectile types, contact types, aura types, and so on. This particular spell is obviously some kind of domain-type magic, which is more commonly seen in formula traps... but as for the specifics, I can’t make a firm judgment without seeing it up close. For example, we’d still need to determine whether the sphere can be broken from the outside..."
Makarov rambled on, patching together whatever half-reasonable explanation he could.
There was no way he was going to let people know that the great Fairy Tail master had just been stumped by his own guild member’s magic!
Unfortunately, the host showed him no mercy at all.
"So, in other words, Mr. Makarov, you don’t actually know what kind of magic it is either?"
"...Well..."
Just as sweat began to bead on Makarov’s forehead, Mira finally smiled and stepped in to rescue him.
"That’s a new magic Marshall invented himself. He calls it Domain Magic. It seems to be a type that’s never appeared before."
"What?! Did you hear that, everyone? This may be an entirely new category of magic! The academic mages are going to be stunned when they hear about this! As for what the spell actually does, that remains unclear—but for now, let’s shift our attention to the other teams, where another quieter group battle has already come to an end..."
Laxus frowned as he stared at the white sphere in the arena.
Even he couldn’t tell what kind of magic it was.
The strangest part was that ever since Marshall and Erza had been sealed inside, there had been no movement at all.
If it were some ordinary trap-type spell, one of them should have broken out immediately.
Yet the sphere remained utterly still, and that stillness itself felt unsettling.
Or was it just a smokescreen?
Had Erza and Marshall actually hidden themselves away to take a break?
The idea of pulling down a curtain in the middle of a match and taking an intermission sounded absurd—but coming from Marshall and Erza, it somehow didn’t feel entirely impossible.
Even so, Laxus couldn’t shake the feeling that this move had been made with him in mind.
𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
And that feeling made him deeply uneasy.
He still hadn’t figured out the spell’s activation conditions.
If he ever had to defend against it, how was he supposed to do that?
Marshall really was...
...
Meanwhile, inside the white sphere’s domain space, the scene was completely different.
It was a dreamlike expanse resembling a sea of stars.
Countless mathematical symbols, magical runes, and spell models drifted through the air, forming a strange and surreal world that felt almost unreal in its beauty.
At the center of that seemingly boundless space stood two figures.
Marshall withdrew his mischievous hand from Erza and grinned with his usual shameless lack of seriousness.
Behind him, Erza stood completely motionless, her eyes wide.
She looked as though she had been frozen in place by some immobilization spell, but the unmistakable alarm in her eyes made it obvious that she was fully aware of what was happening to her.
Marshall pinched her cheek lightly and, in a thoroughly pleased tone, began to explain.
"Welcome to your very own spell-space, [Setsuna Shinra], Erza-nee~ I’m sure you’re very confused right now. Why can’t your body move? You can still sense everything happening around you—you can see, hear, and feel it all... so why is it that the moment your brain gives your body an order, nothing happens?"
He spread his arms and turned in a satisfied little circle in front of her, proudly showing off the space he had created, looking so pleased with himself that he seemed on the verge of getting high off his own success.
"See all those symbols floating in the air? That’s all the knowledge I’ve mastered. I stored every bit of knowledge I possess in this spell-space. Yes—this is a specialized spell-space."
"As everyone knows, the laws of a spell-space affect everyone inside it equally. So isn’t it strange? Why can I move freely, while you can’t move at all?"
Marshall rose onto his toes and stole a quick kiss from her.
Erza could do nothing but endure it, completely unable to resist.
Smiling like a triumphant little fox, he continued.
"Because the rule I established in this space is this: the brain must fully comprehend all knowledge within the domain before it can issue instructions to the body."
"This domain contains an enormous amount of knowledge, and your brain is being forced to continuously receive it. But until you’ve fully understood every last bit of that knowledge, you can’t send any command to your body at all."
"So the effect looks like this: you can understand everything happening to you, and you can even understand why you can’t move. But as long as there remains even a single piece of knowledge in this space that you haven’t completely comprehended, your body stays frozen."
"And since all the knowledge here is knowledge I’ve already mastered, I’m free to move around inside this space without restriction. That’s how a perfectly symmetrical domain is formed."
He leaned in, grinning wickedly.
"So, Erza-nee~ that means I can do whatever I want to you in here. Scary, right? Hahahaha~"
Marshall laughed with obvious delight, but Erza still couldn’t respond at all.
She looked as though someone had slammed a time-stop button on her.
She could hear every word he said with perfect clarity, but her body couldn’t answer him.
Or rather, the signals her mind tried to send were vanishing into an endless sea of information before they could ever reach their destination.
Her mind was being flooded with an immeasurable quantity of knowledge.
Her brain was passively absorbing it all, yet as the torrent rushed through her, nothing remained behind.
She couldn’t truly take any of it in.
And if she couldn’t even retain it, how could she possibly understand it?
All she could do was clearly feel Marshall’s small hands moving over her, the lingering touch of his kiss, and the chaotic responses rising helplessly from her body...
She felt like she was going to lose her mind!
This magic was absolutely terrifying!