“Who are you?”
The guards noticed Noah and the others approaching and immediately challenged them.
Noah stepped forward.
“We’re Mages from Fairy Tail. We came to take care of the request your village submitted.”
One guard glanced at his companion.
“Did we have people coming from a Mage Guild?”
“I think we were told someone would be arriving.”
“Show us your guild marks.”
This was standard procedure on almost every job, so none of them found the request unusual.
Each of them revealed their Fairy Tail emblem.
Noah slipped off his outer robe, exposing the black Fairy Tail guild mark on his left upper arm.
Truthfully, Noah had never been particularly fond of tattoos, but that was simply how this world worked.
A Mage Guild’s emblem served as proof of membership and identity, so he had gone along with local customs.
After so many years, he had long since grown accustomed to it.
There was another reason he had never seriously objected, though.
Noah vaguely remembered that Fairy Tail’s guild mark was more than a simple emblem.
If his memory was correct, it carried some form of magic left behind by Fairy Tail’s first master, Mavis Vermillion.
He no longer remembered the exact effect.
But broadly speaking, it was another cheat.
And Noah certainly wasn’t going to complain about receiving an extra cheat.
Who in their right mind would ever think they had too many?
Once the guards confirmed their identities, they opened the gate and led the four Mages into the village, taking them directly to the village chief.
Everyone in the settlement, including the chief, wore clothing that would not have looked out of place in some isolated primitive tribe.
The chief alone possessed anything remotely distinguished: a cloak made from the hide of some unknown beast.
He was a short, elderly man with unusually long ears, carrying a staff topped with a crescent-moon ornament.
The moment he saw the Mages who had come to lift the curse, his face brightened with unmistakable relief.
“At last, you’ve come. Honored Mages.”
The elderly chief began explaining the village’s condition.
“As you can see, every living creature on this island has been affected. Dogs, birds, humans—none have been spared. This curse has fallen upon all of us.”
Gray frowned.
“Why are you so sure it’s a curse? Have you considered that it might be some kind of disease?”
“We have already brought in dozens of doctors,” the chief replied.
“Every one of them said they had never encountered an illness like this. More importantly, the changes in our bodies are connected to the magic of the moon.”
He tightened his grip on his staff.
“Since ancient times, this island has gathered moonlight. The moon’s radiance once made the entire island beautiful, but several years ago, the moon suddenly turned purple and began casting a violet light.”
“Purple light?” Loke asked.
“Could it be some form of Light Magic?”
“Whenever the purple moon appears, our bodies change. We become hideous demons.”
Gray’s expression shifted.
“Demons?”
“Yes. During the day, everyone returns to their normal appearance. But…”
Cana leaned forward slightly.
“But what?” Get faster updates on g.com.
“Some of us can no longer change back. Worse, they eventually lose themselves completely. Their hearts become those of demons as well, and in the end… we have no choice but to kill them.”
Gray stared at him.
“Kill them? That’s pretty drastic.”
“Exactly,” Cana said.
“If you found a cure, wouldn’t they be able to return to normal?”
“We have no choice. If we leave them alone, the demons will kill everyone in the village. Even when we lock them away, they eventually tear through the prison doors.”
The chief’s voice began to tremble.
“My own son was among them.”
The mood around them immediately grew heavier.
“So I beg you, powerful Mages… please save this island. Lift the curse from us. If things continue like this, eventually the demons will steal all our souls.”
The old chief became more emotional with every word until he finally broke down crying.
Several villagers hurried forward to support and comfort him.
“There is only one way to break our curse.”
He raised his head and looked at the four of them desperately.
“Please… destroy the moon!”
Gray’s eyes widened.
“Huh?!”
Loke stared at him.
“Destroy the moon?”
Cana looked genuinely baffled.
“How are we supposed to do something like that?”
The chief and the villagers had created such a grim, unsettling atmosphere that Gray, Loke, and Cana’s reactions fit the scene perfectly.
Noah, however, felt absolutely nothing.
If anything, he was struggling not to laugh.
He already knew exactly what was happening.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t simply announce the answer.
He was supposed to maintain the dignity of an S-Class Mage in front of the others, which meant he needed to arrive at the truth through a suitably impressive process of investigation and deduction.
So Noah eventually suggested that they leave the village to search for clues, leading the other three deeper into the forest.
As they walked, Gray, Loke, and Cana began offering their own theories.
“No matter how you look at it, destroying the moon is impossible,” Gray said.
Loke, unlike Gray, had already moved past the absurdity of the villagers’ request and was thinking about the underlying cause.
“My guess is that this is some kind of magic, probably one that only affects the humans and animals living on this island.”
“Magic?” Gray asked.
“Something like Mira’s Take Over?”
“There’s no way every person and animal on the island just happens to have the talent for Take Over,” Loke replied.
“And there couldn’t possibly be enough demons here for all of them to absorb. It has to be some other kind of magic.”
Noah glanced at him.
‘That second part is a little presumptuous, isn’t it?
Who says there aren’t enough demons?’
Cana thought for a moment.
“The moon turns purple and gives off violet light. Could it be Light Magic? Loke, have you ever heard of anything like that?”
Loke shook his head.
Gray looked toward Noah.
“What do you think? What are we supposed to do?”
All three of them turned toward him.
Seeing that none of them had come close to the truth, Noah felt smug satisfaction rising inside him.
Outwardly, however, he merely sighed with weary disappointment.
“Honestly… this is exactly the difference between you and an S-Class Mage. Do you people never gather information before taking a job?”
Gray frowned.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I did some research before we left,” Noah said, immediately beginning to improvise a perfectly reasonable chain of logic.
“There are records of this island in several older libraries. Galuna Island has existed for a very long time.”
The three listened attentively.
“Because the island naturally gathers moonlight and concentrates it into an unusually powerful form of lunar energy, it was once known as the Island of the Moon.”
Noah paused.
“But it has another name as well: the Demon Island.”
“The reason is simple. The inhabitants of Galuna Island are demons.”
“They aren’t human.”
“What?!” all three shouted at once.
They stopped walking.
Gray stared at Noah in shock.
“You’re saying the villagers aren’t being transformed into demons by the moon? They were demons from the beginning?”
“That’s right.”
Cana frowned.
“Wait. But the people we just saw definitely looked human.”
“There are records stating that the demons living here possess an innate ability to transform into human form,” Noah explained.
“In other words, they actually change during the daytime and return to their natural appearance at night.”
Loke considered this carefully.
“If they really are demons, then why would they lie to us and claim the moon’s curse is turning them into demons? And judging by the villagers’ reactions, they didn’t seem like they were pretending.”
“Because something has affected them,” Noah replied.
“More specifically, their memories. Whatever is happening here has made them believe they were originally human.”
Gray’s eyes narrowed.
“Their memories are being altered? By the purple moon?”
“The fact that the villagers see the moon as purple should be connected to whatever is affecting them. There are two possibilities.”
Noah raised one finger.
“The first is some kind of biological infection. A virus or similar organism could be affecting their bodies, causing memory disorders while also interfering with their vision and making the moon appear purple.”
Then he raised a second finger.
“If we can also see a purple moon after nightfall, then the second possibility becomes much more likely: there’s a magical effect covering the entire island, altering the moonlight that reaches the ground and turning it purple. That altered lunar magic could then be affecting the villagers’ memories.”
He glanced around at the surrounding forest.
“Considering what we’ve seen so far, I’m leaning toward the second explanation.”
Internally, Noah was extremely pleased with himself.
‘Wow.
I actually managed to make all of that sound logical.’
‘Damn, I really am a genius.’
End of Chapter 9