Arashi returned to the rented room at his Hargeon inn.
He swung the wooden door shut. The dull thud sealed the port's night clamor and the briny wind outside.
The room was pitch-dark. No lacrima lamp was lit.
Only cold moonlight pierced the wooden lattice, scattering broken silver shapes across the old floorboards.
He opened his hand.
The ancient compass he had bought at an incomprehensible price lay quietly on his palm.
Its metal was buried under verdigris and rust, a dead dark green under the moon, no different from scrap iron.
But in Arashi's senses, a faint yet razor-precise whirl of magic was coiled inside it, like a sleeping heart keeping a steady, almost imperceptible rhythm.
"It's been five years since I came to this world…"
His voice was soft. In the silence it was less a murmur than a strand of thought finally given an outlet.
The moment the words fell, his consciousness sank like a stone into the far end of his inner world.
No waves. No storm. Only a boundless, changeless firmament of stars.
At its center, an ancient, indescribably grand furnace turned with a motion almost too slight for sight.
It was made of no known substance.
Its base was a collapsing nebula; its walls, a congealed river of stars. With each infinitesimal rotation, countless stars within it were born and died. It was a magnitude beyond time and space, breathing the mystery of a newborn cosmos.
This was his only reliance as a traveler in the magic world called Earthland.
The Magic Imprint Furnace.
Bound to his soul, his cheat-like boon could be summed in two words—analysis and forging.
Simple, yet absolute.
It could analyze and absorb the essence of anything that carried magic. Intricate magical devices. Rare materials imbued with the laws of the world. Even… the magic cores within top-tier mages who stood at the peak.
Once locked by the furnace, anything "magical" had nowhere to hide.
Its output: purified essences recast by the furnace into "magic imprints" that granted specific magics to the bearer.
Complementing the stellar furnace was the innate talent he had possessed since transmigrating—
Kyōmei Mahō (Resonance Magic).
It had no direct offense or defense. Its sole function was to let Arashi perceive the flow of magic in all things with uncanny precision.
In his sight the world was not matter, but a living tapestry woven of countless "streams of magic," each with its own color, thickness, and speed.
He could pierce any magical facade to its energy structure and pinpoint the most central, most fragile node.
Like the compass.
To the auction crowd it was worthless junk.
But in his resonance sight, the tracking array inside—layered with encryption and cleverly hidden by its previous owner—was a stubborn silver filament, woven into a tiny magical knot that kept pinging a call signal.
Against the black backdrop, its glow was blinding.
By pairing the furnace's analysis and forging with the needlepoint insight of Resonance Magic, the two meshed seamlessly.
For the past five years Arashi had not rushed to Ishgar, the most prosperous seat of magic civilization.
Instead he wandered the older, harsher eastern continent like a solitary scavenger, exploring ancient ruins forgotten by the world.
On a sand-choked battlefield he analyzed the remnants of archaic magic weapons.
Ten thousand meters under the sea he absorbed the crystal core of a sea-king beast that had slept for a millennium.
In a dragon's abandoned nest he even found what legends called a crystallized power formed over ages from a fallen dragon's vast life and magic—a dragon lacrima.
Now, around the slowly turning stellar furnace, several fully forged magic imprints hovered in silence.
Each had a distinct form and aura.
One was a deep, abyssal violet, with invisible vortices slow-turning on its surface and warping the light around it—the Imprint of the Colossus, parsed from a meteorite that fell upon the far northern icefield, carrying power to bend space and command gravity.
Another blazed with brilliant gold; within the imprint a miniature star-river flowed—majestic and vast. It had taken him three full years to refine from the faintest lingering breath of dragonkind on that ancient battlefield—the Imprint of the Heavenly Dragon.
It granted Arashi a legendary force—Ten no Metsuryū Mahō (Heavenly Dragon Slayer Magic).
There were other imprints as well, each with its own color and gift, together forming a power system strong enough to overawe most mages.
Once he understood Earthland clearly enough and amassed power sufficient for self-preservation—
Arashi finally set out for the most prosperous continent of magic—Ishgar.
His goal was simple.
Find a guild strong enough, and interesting enough, to call home.
The name in his memory, Fairy Tail, was the ideal choice.
"Well then…"
Arashi's mind rose from the star sea back to the room. Cold moonlight returned to his black eyes.
"Let's start by swatting the flies outside."
He sensed them clearly. Outside this ordinary inn, several greedy, malign signatures had already spun a predator's web, sealing every exit.
Arashi's lips ticked by a hair.
He picked up the cold compass and opened the door.
(End of Chapter)
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