Chapter 67
Marshall had planned to play everyone for fools when school began.
Instead, the entire scheme backfired spectacularly!
His classmates unanimously decided that he was an eccentric, handsome girl who simply preferred dressing and behaving like a boy.
The whole situation left him depressed for quite a while.
Before enrolling, Marshall had imagined countless ways his magical academy life might unfold.
Somehow, he had never considered this one.
Apparently, once someone was attractive enough, even their roughest behavior looked graceful through other people’s eyes.
Whenever his classmates looked at Marshall, it was as though they were seeing him through a beautifying filter.
No matter how often he explained that he was male, introduced himself as a boy, or deliberately behaved in the most masculine way possible, no one believed him.
Instead, a bizarre rumor spread through the academy:
"Among this year’s three new prodigies, one is a handsome boy, one is a beautiful girl, and one is a beautiful girl who insists on calling herself a handsome boy."
Marshall had tried to fool everyone, only to become the joke himself.
Truly impressive.
If that had been the end of it, he wouldn’t have cared much. He could have enjoyed watching those idiots continue misunderstanding everything.
Unfortunately, matters became even more ridiculous.
A strange group of admirers began gathering around him!
Several younger girls—especially the flatter-chested ones—thought that this handsome "girl" who stubbornly identified as male and refused to conform was unbelievably cool.
There were even signs that they intended to establish an unofficial Hanna Support Club.
Marshall had no idea how to deal with them.
Normally, receiving piles of love letters from girls should have been a wonderful experience.
Yet he couldn’t enjoy it at all.
Forget using them to gather Inspiration.
Their behavior was beginning to make him genuinely miserable!
He had absolutely no interest in a group of girls who liked him specifically because they believed he was also a girl.
Worse, Marshall’s cold attitude toward them only increased his popularity.
’So cool!’
’She’s a perfect role model for the new generation of female Mages!’
The more distant he acted, the more the girls admired him.
And the more popular his false identity became, the less Marshall could enjoy any of it.
It was a vicious cycle.
His imagined wonderful school life had ended before it ever truly began.
Marshall decided to stop paying attention to those foolish humans.
He couldn’t endure this wretched academy for another day.
The sooner he learned Archive Magic, the sooner he could escape!
As for Makarov’s dream of dominating the Magic Council?
Ha!
Marshall didn’t give a shit about it.
Unfortunately, once he discovered the requirements for studying Archive Magic, it felt as though the sky had fallen on him all over again.
Academy regulations stated that only students who placed within the top ten of their year-end examinations for two consecutive years could receive authorization to study Archive Magic.
That damned old man had clearly known and deliberately failed to mention it!
There was some good news, however.
Any student who achieved first place for three consecutive years would have an opportunity to study the even more restricted Super Archive Magic.
Marshall learned that Super Archive Magic was the ultimate version of ordinary Archive Magic, granting higher operational authority and access to a much broader knowledge base.
If Archive Magic was a personal terminal for an individual Mage, then Super Archive Magic was the central control system with full administrator privileges.
Marshall wanted that even more.
Unfortunately, that meant his Thought Projection would need to remain at the academy for three full years.
He had considered finding another path.
For example, he could locate someone who already knew Archive Magic and learn directly from them.
One student named Hibiki Lates had selected Archive Magic as his specialization this year.
But Hibiki had only just chosen it and hadn’t learned anything yet.
Worse, he constantly approached "Hanna" with transparent attempts to impress her.
Marshall found him exhausting and had no desire to spend time with him.
The academy was quite cunning.
It merely granted students an opportunity to study rare magic without guaranteeing that they would actually master it.
Through this system, the Council could bind its most talented graduates to its institutions.
Unfortunately for them, that strategy was destined to fail against Marshall.
As long as he gained even brief access to Super Archive Magic, he was confident he could learn it.
But there was no way around the problem of gaining that access.
Marshall had originally intended to spend his time among the others as an ordinary student.
Now, he had no choice but to abandon that pretense.
He would simply take first place for all three years.
For Marshall, the task couldn’t have been easier.
He might not feel equally confident competing in every possible field, but when it came to studying harder than everyone else?
Who could possibly outwork someone with a System?
His Thought Projection needed somewhere to practice magic anyway, so he might as well leave it at the academy.
And thus...
A legend of the Magic Council Academy was born.
Hanna Marshall!
In the examinations that followed, Marshall achieved nearly perfect scores in almost every subject, leaving the rest of his year so far behind that several classmates nearly cried.
That overwhelming academic performance was also one of the main reasons for his popularity.
Even the other two students with S-Class potential were nowhere near his level.
After all, very few people could learn and master nearly anything as quickly as Marshall.
Speaking of those other two S-Class students, Marshall had discovered several interesting things about them.
Siegrain remained the academy’s eternal second place.
Ultear occupied the third.
His roommate, Ultear, appeared to have known the blue-haired Siegrain before they enrolled, and their relationship was extremely strange.
On the surface, Ultear seemed to be Siegrain’s follower.
In reality, she was clearly the dominant one.
It was almost as though she held a leash and took Siegrain for walks like an obedient dog.
For a while, Marshall suspected that Ultear had hypnotized him.
Otherwise, there was no reasonable explanation for the bizarre difference between their thoughts.
Siegrain’s mind was constantly occupied with advancement, networking, and finding a path into the Magic Council as a Councilor.
Ultear, meanwhile, dumped every troublesome responsibility onto Siegrain and spent nearly every day reading in the library.
Today, Marshall happened to encounter her there again.
And not merely any ordinary encounter.
They reached for the exact same book at the exact same moment—the most classic library coincidence imaginable.
"Well, Ultear. Still interested in Time Magic?"
Marshall raised an eyebrow.
The previous time he had seen her in the library, she had also been reading a book related to temporal magic.
Could she share the same magical interest as him?
"Hanna. It’s you."
Ultear glanced at the book beneath their hands.
"Are you interested in this one too? You can take it first."
Ultear wasn’t especially fond of her roommate.
Not because she found Marshall’s behavior strange, but because he had introduced himself as an Ice-Make Mage.
For some inexplicable reason, whenever she watched Marshall use Ice-Make, she saw faint traces of someone from her past.
The two should have had absolutely nothing to do with one another, so Ultear couldn’t understand where that unsettling familiarity came from.
"You can read it," Marshall said. "There are plenty of other magical books here. I’m not in any hurry to finish this particular one."
The academy library was far larger than Fairy Tail’s and held an enormous collection.
It had quickly become Marshall’s favorite place to gather experience.
"You really are diligent, Hanna."
"I have no choice."
Marshall sighed modestly.
"Hard work is the only way to compensate for a lack of talent. I’m not especially intelligent, so I have to read more than everyone else."
"..."
Ultear gave him a polite, thoroughly false smile... but her thoughts immediately betrayed her.
[This woman’s magical talent is terrifying. I hope she doesn’t interfere with our plans.]
[Still, I should occasionally handle something myself. I’ll test her.]
"Do you have some time now, Hanna?"
Ultear closed the book.
"Why don’t we sit somewhere outside and exchange a few thoughts about magic?"
Ultear had never believed Marshall was male.
No matter how often he explained it, she trusted only what she saw and stubbornly refused to reconsider.
What could someone this difficult possibly want from him?
Marshall’s curiosity was immediately aroused.
"Sure. Let’s go."
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This academy arc wont be showed much since the one attending it is his thought projection.