Chapter 8
Afterward, Makarov hauled Marshall to the mayor by the back of his collar and made him apologize, then covered the cost of repairing the riverbank himself.
That only made Marshall’s already impressive mountain of debt even worse!
At the tender age of six, he now owed the guild several hundred thousand Jewels!
Truly heartbreaking.
To make matters worse, Makarov forced him to write both an apology letter and a full statement of remorse, then strictly forbade him from using Crash Magic anywhere inside Magnolia.
Marshall did not gain a single point of Inspiration that entire day.
A catastrophic loss by any measure!
Strangely enough, however, his reputation among the guild members rose dramatically.
The older men got roaring drunk while shouting things like, "At last, someone who understands us!" and "The next generation is in good hands!"
Marshall had no idea how he was supposed to react to that.
Still, the incident had not been completely without value.
That single use of Crash Magic had consumed roughly one hundred points of Magic Power and earned him two points of experience.
It also allowed him to estimate that he naturally recovered about one point of Magic Power per minute.
Until then, he had never had an opportunity to drain a large amount of magic at once. Telepathy Magic and short-range Requip barely cost him anything.
The sheer destructive power of Crash Magic also gave him a little more confidence. He was no longer a completely helpless Mage with no way to defend himself!
Even so, Marshall knew he had not truly mastered the spell.
That was probably one of the drawbacks of his system.
Magic that had been forcibly raised to Level One was difficult to control.
Requip, which he had learned properly through practice, did not have that problem at all and worked with perfect stability.
The discovery discouraged him from using Inspiration to force more spells into his head.
Most ordinary magic was not especially difficult to learn anyway, so he decided to take his time and master it naturally.
Besides, learning new magic was no longer his most urgent concern.
He needed money!
Not to repay the guild, of course. That debt could sit there for a while.
No, Marshall needed money because he had to move out, he could no longer endure living in Fairy Tail’s male dormitory.
The building itself was not bad.
The problem was the people inside it.
The dormitory was packed with a collection of lawless maniacs who spent every night shouting, fighting, and destroying things.
The brawls would have been bad enough on their own, but they insisted on using magic, which meant the building was constantly suffering either minor earthquakes or imminent fire disasters!
Marshall could have lived with that.
The guildhall was not much different, and no matter how many times everyone was yelled at, none of them ever changed.
He had almost grown used to it.
The real problem began after dark.
The moment those sexually frustrated bastards went to bed, their minds filled with every bizarre fantasy imaginable, and all of it poured straight into Marshall’s head.
He could not block any of it.
Even worse, he had no way to complain!
Marshall had never told anyone that he could not turn off his Telepathy.
No one wanted to live beside someone who was constantly listening to their thoughts after all.
He had always claimed that his magic was under perfect control, and given how talented he seemed, nobody had questioned it.
So he had no choice but to suffer in silence.
At first, Marshall had considered the dormitory a form of training.
Perhaps being placed under enough pressure would force him to learn how to shut Telepathy off.
Reality had been far less kind.
More than ten days had passed, and he still had no idea how to control the endless flood of thoughts.
Every night felt like trying to sleep while a dozen enormous men snored directly into his ears.
It was hell on earth.
A terrible living environment ruined his mood. A bad mood meant no happiness, and no happiness meant slower growth.
And if he could not become strong as quickly as possible, how was he supposed to build a harem in another world?!
This was a matter of life and death!
That was why earning enough money to move out had become Marshall’s highest priority.
"Oh, Little Gildarts! Planning to take a job?"
Macao, one of Fairy Tail’s more experienced members and a skilled Fire Mage, threw an arm around Marshall as he stood in front of the request board.
"...old man Macao, if you call me that stupid nickname again, I really am going to get angry!"
"Hey, what’s with the ’old man’ treatment? I’m only twenty-eight! I’m still young!"
Marshall slapped away the hand rubbing his hair and sighed helplessly.
Ever since the guild discovered that he had somehow learned Gildarts’s Crash Magic, one of the more troublesome members had given him the nickname "Little Gildarts."
Marshall hated it with every fiber of his being.
Unfortunately, he was still too weak to do anything about the drunken idiots responsible, so for now, he could only add their names to his private list of grudges.
"I got fined more than a hundred thousand Jewels, so I’ve been trying to figure out how to make money. But none of the jobs I’m allowed to take pay very much."
"Hahaha! You don’t need to rush to pay that back," Macao said. "With your potential, that amount will be nothing once you grow up."
"I’m not actually worried about the debt..."
Wizard guilds in this world were different from the adventurers’ guilds Marshall remembered from fantasy stories.
Although they were all supervised by the same governing body, each guild largely operated independently, and most of their work was highly regional.
The majority of Fairy Tail’s requests came from residents of Magnolia and the surrounding villages.
Only S-Class Jobs usually required long-distance travel, and very few members were even allowed to accept those.
There were plenty of dangerous requests, but there were also simple ones such as delivering letters or finding missing cats.
Even Marshall could complete those alone, and Makarov would not stop him from accepting them.
The problem was that they paid terribly.
Most offered only a few thousand Jewels, with the better ones barely reaching ten thousand.
Renting even a modest place outside the dormitory would cost at least sixty or seventy thousand Jewels a month.
Buying a house was completely out of reach.
And even if he rented somewhere else, he would probably still hear the thoughts of everyone nearby at night.
To truly escape the problem, he would need a large house with plenty of distance between himself and the neighbors.
Marshall sighed.
’What a headache.’
"Marshall~ Come on! Your big sis taking you out to play!"
Cana skipped over, grabbed his hand, and immediately started pulling him toward the door.
[I’m taking my little brother to meet a new friend~ This is going to be fun!]
"Huh? Wait, Cana, I—mmph..."
She stuffed a peeled slice of orange into his mouth and dragged him out of the guild while laughing.
This was probably another consequence of the riverbank incident.
Cana had become increasingly attached to Marshall and now treated him entirely like her own little brother.
Actually, judging from her thoughts, she had completely convinced herself that Marshall was another one of Gildarts’s illegitimate children.
He had similarly colored hair, had managed to use Gildarts’s signature Crash Magic at only six years old, and the shameless men in the guild kept making suggestive jokes about it.
At this point, Cana had no doubt whatsoever that Marshall was her younger half-brother!
Even her feelings toward Gildarts had begun to shift in subtle ways, at least according to the thoughts Marshall occasionally overheard.
It had reached the point where he no longer dared to call Cana "big sister."
He had originally done it to become closer to the other children, but their bond was now in danger of becoming far too strong.
Too much of a good thing could be dangerous.
’Another headache.’
"Cana, where are you taking me?"
"Honestly, you’re supposed to call me Big Sis!"
Cana pinched his cheek and smiled.
"I’m taking you to meet a new friend. She’s one of my closest friends, and since you want to learn more magic, you’ll need to study different kinds of magical script. She can help you with that."
Marshall’s mind was currently occupied with finding ways to make money, so he had pushed magical study slightly lower on his list of priorities.
Still, Cana was doing this for him, and he could hardly reject her kindness.
She led him through the winding streets of Magnolia until they reached an old bookstore that had clearly been there for years.
Before they had even stepped through the door, Cana called out enthusiastically.
"Levy! Levy! I brought my adorable little brother to meet you!"