After several probes with his clones, Blanc finally figured out the pattern-as soon as he came within a certain distance of the Magic Grimoire, it would unconditionally trigger a spacetime reset, returning everything to square one.
And thanks to Mahoraga's game-breaking adaptability, its resistance had been forcibly maxed out over those repeated rewinds.
Once he confirmed that the magic resetting spacetime could no longer affect him, Blanc stopped testing with clones and approached the Magic Grimoire himself.
The instant he took the Magic Grimoire floating in midair into his hands, something changed!
An enormous surge of magic filled with malice, resentment, despair, and other negative emotions erupted from the book.
Pitch-black mist writhed and swelled wildly in midair amid shrill screams, finally coalescing into a colossal dragon of black fog that blotted out the sky.
Yet its body was covered not in ordinary dragon scales, but in densely packed, blurry, distorted human faces!
Some screamed silently, while others muttered neurotically to themselves. Countless venomous gazes focused on him at once. A single glance was enough to make someone's scalp crawl and their sanity plummet.
Faced with this madness-inducing monster, Blanc merely studied it with his usual expression. Rather than feeling nervous, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Apart from the bizarre resets, he had not seen a single enemy along the way, which had kept him on edge. He had been afraid some lurking ambusher would suddenly pop out of a blind spot, but now one had finally appeared. And with all that seething resentment, it certainly looked like the culprit.
"Give it back... intruder... give it back!"
The blurry faces on the dragon writhed violently. Some twisted with agitation, while others took on almost pleading expressions, but every one of them stared fixedly at the Magic Grimoire in Blanc's hands.
Without another word, the dragon roared and swooped down. Its enormous black claws tore through the air and slammed into the ground where Blanc stood, smashing out a bottomless crater!
Dust billowed. Yet when the dragon lifted its claws, the crater was empty.
Rumble-
An instant later, countless enormous trees overturned the ground and shot upward like raging pythons, coiling around the immense black-fog dragon and pinning it in place. No matter how it struggled and roared, it could not move.
At some point, Blanc had teleported onto an intact stone pillar in the nearby ruins. He leisurely opened the Magic Grimoire and began reading, paying no attention to anything else, as though the monster below was beneath his notice.
In fact, Blanc truly did not consider it a threat. Judging by the magic he sensed, the monster below was clearly weakened.
At present, it was at most on the level of an ordinary S-Class magical beast, not a true dragon at all.
It was merely an empty shell cobbled together into the shape of a dragon. Blanc did not believe it was responsible for the barrier covering the entire town or the power to reset time, especially considering how much importance it placed on this book.
The key really was the Magic Grimoire.
After a quick read, Blanc understood the book's nature. The magic within was called "Record of Time," and presumably shared an origin with "Time of Memories," the book that had transported Erza and the others from the future.
Its basic function was to record a slice of history the user had experienced, then use that to create a spacetime barrier over a certain area, allowing the user to relive that period endlessly within it.
If that were all, it would amount to nothing more than a high-end historical projector.
But it had another outrageously powerful function-overwriting history. It could directly overwrite the original timeline with the period the user relived, thereby changing history.
Reviewing recorded time required only the Magic Grimoire itself, but overwriting history demanded an immense amount of magic. Blanc could not imagine anything other than Infinite Magic successfully activating that function.
At that point, Blanc had a rough idea of what had caused this "Divine Disappearance" incident.
In other words, the monster composed of countless faces before him had obtained this Magic Grimoire by chance and manifested a fragment of its own history. These ruins were presumably part of that history.
So it kept expanding the barrier to drag more people in and use their magic? All to change its past?
Watching the sanity-eroding monster struggle wildly while its countless faces babbled all manner of nonsense, Blanc rubbed his temples. He did not know whether meaningful communication was possible, but he might as well try.
"Hey, what exactly are you trying to do with all this? Why drag an innocent town into it?"
The countless faces on the dragon began babbling simultaneously, a torrent of disjointed voices spilling out:
"Give it back... Chronos's Magic Grimoire..."
"I'm sorry..."
"I want revenge..."
"It was all her fault. We did nothing wrong..."
"For the greater good... sacrifices are... necessary..."
"I don't want to die..."
"Go back to the past... kill her!"
"Why did you destroy us... sob..."
"If not for her... we wouldn't have died... wouldn't have been trapped here for four hundred years..."
Amid the chaotic wailing, one word caught Blanc's attention.
"Who is she?" Blanc asked directly.
"That hateful dragon..."
"Monster..."
"Queen..."
"I'm sorry... Lady Irene." Finally, a sobbing female voice revealed the crucial information.
Irene? The Mother of Dragon Slayers, Erza's mother?
Suddenly, the Magic Grimoire in Blanc's hands shone again. This time, however, it did not reset spacetime. Instead, it transmitted a historical record into his mind.
Slices of history from the same place flashed through Blanc's mind like a revolving lantern.
The scarlet-haired queen who protected her kingdom; the Mother of Dragon Slayers who created Dragon Slayer Magic;
The devastation of the Dragon King Festival, and Acnologia slaughtering dragons with unstoppable might;
The queen who began turning into a dragon after the war; her subsequent imprisonment and humiliation; and finally, the queen transforming into a dragon amid boundless rage and despair and wiping the entire kingdom from existence.
Blanc understood. This was the past the monster before him-or rather, the beings that composed it-had experienced.
They were the vengeful spirits of the people of the Kingdom of Dragnof, destroyed four hundred years ago. Countless spirits had merged to create this monster of resentment.
In life, these spirits had cowardly betrayed the queen who protected them out of fear, ultimately bringing about their own annihilation.
Yet even after death, they stubbornly refused to acknowledge their mistakes. Nothing remained in their minds but overwhelming hatred for Irene.
For four hundred years, they had wandered the world in a daze, until they discovered this Magic Grimoire and vainly hoped to use it to return to the past for "revenge."
However, the monster had long since lost the ability to think like a normal person. It could not understand that its meager remaining magic was insufficient to power the Magic Grimoire and return to the past.
Instead, they possessed the Magic Grimoire, erected a barrier on the spot, and repeatedly attempted to overwrite history. The earlier resets had occurred because Blanc's approach startled them, prompting them to forcibly activate a reset.
Although their repeated attempts had failed to overwrite history, they had continued expanding the barrier's range. Their current weakness was probably also due to exhausting too much of their magic on the Magic Grimoire.
Judging by its current state, even if he left it alone, they would probably destroy themselves before long. But there was no telling what would happen to Olt Town, which had been caught in the process.
Since this barrier depended on the amalgamation of resentment to exist, the answer was simple-kill it, and everything would end.
With that thought, Blanc stopped hesitating and closed the Magic Grimoire.
"Not one of you repented, even after death. Then stop wasting air. Let me send you on your way."
Clap!
Blanc brought his palms together, his eyes blazing!
"Wood Release: Obelisk the Tormentor!"
The earth split apart. Countless enormous trees surged from the ground, intertwining and merging as their volume grew exponentially!
Finally, a green wooden giant hundreds of meters tall rose from the earth, its form defined by exaggerated, brutally powerful contours.
Sharp, blade-like armor adorned its shoulders, and a pair of massive armored wings spread behind it, blotting out the sky as though they could tear the atmosphere apart. An ancient, sacred crown rose from its forehead, and its slightly open maw revealed rows of interlocking, saber-like fangs!
This was no wooden golem-it was a god!
Without the slightest hesitation, the Giant Soldier raised its hand and unleashed its monstrous, destructive strength, driving a vicious punch into the black-fog dragon below!
That punch shattered heaven and earth. A savage shock wave swept across the area like a hurricane. When the Giant Soldier slowly raised its fist, nothing remained below but an empty crater.
With the monster's destruction, the faintly illusory ancient ruins around them began melting away like snow and ice. The restless spacetime fluctuations on the Magic Grimoire subsided completely. The immense spacetime barrier covering the ruins and the town vanished.
Blanc looked at the Giant Soldier before him and nodded in satisfaction, then noticed a slight flaw.
"I got the shape pretty close, but the color's wrong. I'll ask Reedus later if he has any magic for quick coloring."
Then Blanc tucked the Magic Grimoire into his clothes and dusted off his hands.
"Job done. Time to go back and explain things to the client."
"So that was what happened. I was wondering why the missing soldiers suddenly returned, and who the mage was who, according to them, had ordered them back in my name. No one had even accepted the request."
"To think the entire town had already been caught in the Divine Disappearance, and we'd actually lost our memories of it..."
After hearing Blanc's account, Garrot's face alternated between pale and ashen, his back already soaked in cold sweat. He had never imagined that he and everyone in town had unknowingly brushed so close to death.
"But you certainly live up to your reputation as Fairy Tail's renowned 'Blanc of the Forest'! You resolved our crisis perfectly. Without you, the consequences would have been unimaginable."
Garrot took a deep breath and bowed deeply to Blanc, his expression solemn. "You have my deepest gratitude!"
"Yes, exactly! Thanks to you, Mr. Blanc, Olt Town has been saved!" The mayor beside him had also been wiping away cold sweat after hearing the story, shaken by how narrowly they had escaped. When Garrot thanked Blanc, he came to his senses and hurried to follow suit.
"You're welcome. It was my responsibility under the commission."
After exchanging a few pleasantries and completing the mission handover, Blanc said goodbye to the two men.
On his way back, Blanc took out the "Record of Time" Magic Grimoire and studied it with a complicated look. What should I do with this book?
Without question, it was both incredibly precious and extremely dangerous.
But it was of little use to Blanc at present. Changing the past would have far too great an impact. Everything that existed now might cease to exist. Unless he reached a point of absolute desperation, there was no need to go to such extremes and drag the entire world down with him.
As for its ability to revisit the past, that was not particularly useful right now either. Was he supposed to keep rewinding time to beat up Natsu for fun? Why not just beat up the present-day Natsu?
Just as Blanc wondered whether this thing was only good for propping up a table leg, his long-dormant cheat came online again.
A piece of information arrived.
High-quality spacetime energy detected. Absorb?
Oh? Blanc raised an eyebrow.
The last time the system had stirred, it had absorbed the energy emitted by the Eclipse Gate, allowing him to connect with versions of himself in other worlds.
So absorbing this book would give me another cheat from a version of myself in another world?
Should I absorb it? The book itself contained an outrageously powerful magic, whereas a cheat from another world was as uncertain as a mystery box.
Trading a precious, tangible Magic Grimoire for a cheat with unknown functions... isn't that a little too much of a gambling addict's move?
Blanc agonized over it for several seconds, then decisively answered the system, "Absorb!"
Come on, the draw button's already lit up! Could anyone resist pulling and still call themselves human?