After little Annie, Makarov, Erza, Mirajane, Natsu, Gray, Wendy, Lucy, and the other high-ranking members and elite fighters of Fairy Tail had been gone for seven whole years for some reason, the once top-tier wizard guild in the Kingdom of Fiore had naturally gone downhill under the leadership of its fifth Guild Master, Macao Conbolt. Now, seven years later, it was on the verge of closing down.
By now, they had lost all their businesses, branch offices, and recruitment centers in other parts of the continent that had once belonged to Fairy Tail. Most of the guild's members had left, too. They had even sunk so low that, with no good jobs coming in and money running short, they had to move to the mountains outside Magnolia, where they farmed and raised chickens just to get by.
In short, when little Annie and the others landed outside the city early in the day, took care not to be seen with their dragon, and walked into Magnolia, they had someone show their large group the way to Fairy Tail's supposed guildhall, tucked away deep in the mountains. What they saw was this pitiful sight:
There were only a few dilapidated wooden houses, clearly old and badly in need of repairs. A ramshackle watchtower stood in the yard, surrounded by a crude wooden fence. A few pigs and a flock of chickens milled about, and a large patch of farmland had been cleared for crops. Nearby, a heap of manure was composting, mosquitoes and flies buzzed everywhere, and laundry hung without a care from the branches of a dead tree...
Seeing all this, Annie suddenly thought that this place looked even more miserable than that other Fairy Tail in the world of Edolas, which the whole country had hunted down and tried