Chapter 295
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 295
Chapter Title: Lesson 57. Dowry Legion - 5
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“Yu-won, weren't you going to do the changelings? What are you doing right now?”
“You think Prominence won't notice if I just go ahead and do it now?”
“Ah.”
As he chatted away with As Light, who still came off as adorably dim-witted and reassuring as ever, Irecto narrowed her eyes suspiciously from beside them and grilled him.
“Then what are you doing right now?”
“Laying the groundwork.”
Ban Yu-won was conducting a thorough oral examination on each of the three thousand fairies led here by the Fairy Queen.
In other words, he was poking into the throat of every single one of them—him or her—with fingers still slimy from all the saliva, unwashed.
Viewed in isolation, the situation was so lewd that no one would bat an eye at calling it obscene. But Ban Yu-won's utterly businesslike demeanor gave the whole thing a bizarre vibe.
“Eek— Ahh...”
Those whose throats he prodded with his fingers recoiled in horror and tried to resist at first, but soon they lost all their strength, letting out feeble moans as they collapsed right there on the spot.
Irecto, who couldn't help but feel baffled watching the fairies crumple every time he jabbed in a finger and pulled it out, suddenly latched onto what he'd said about “laying the groundwork.”
“If this is prep for using changelings... you're drawing on the fairies' power?”
“Bingo. I only figured it out today myself, but as long as they're fully subdued, just making contact like this lets me...”
Mid-sentence, Ban Yu-won grabbed the jaw of the next fairy in line. Ignoring how much the target trembled in fear, he mercilessly shoved his finger down its throat and unleashed his authority.
The authority of Babylonia—to conceptualize all things as language, then warp and wield them at will!
Anything definable in linguistic terms that Ban Yu-won could conceive became his plunder.
Every concept fixed within the target's body—[Body], [Magical Power], [Life], [Soul], [Charm], [Marksmanship], and so on... and most crucially, [Conceptual Conversion]—put up a fierce fight at first but ultimately broke free of their host's flesh and flowed into Ban Yu-won's finger.
“...steal their power. Of course, there are downsides: the target has to be weaker than me, I can't drain every last drop, and I need to grasp their concepts first.”
“Fulfilling preconditions to trigger transference is the essence of sorcery. Maybe the sorcery power you picked up amplified your authority.”
“Huh, now that you mention it, that does kinda make sense.”
This way, he could avoid killing them and tipping off Prominence, while sparing himself the mess of getting blood on his hands.
Plus, even if they somehow broke free later, they'd be too stripped of concepts to wield any real power. What could be a more perfect punishment and neutralization?
Over a hundred fairies had already been depowered, and the sheer volume of concepts he'd robbed from them was massive.
Ban Yu-won had absorbed as much as he personally could handle. The excess—stuff too shallow in depth to help him anymore—he'd evenly distributed to his retainers, boosting their combat power in real time.
Traitors through and through, every last one a top-tier fairy from Dimension A-1. Ah, these concepts taste sweet.
His own [Life] had cleanly surged to 1,300, bolstered by his prior grand exploration (the kind that warranted a “great” prefix) and the fairies' [Life]. [Primal Spirit], evolved from the superior concept of [Body], and [Primal Energy], the pinnacle of [Magical Power], had both hit 999.
It seemed like hitting 1,000 on these would require not blind absorption but some form of training or enlightenment... but our Yeon would probably handle that for him.
That said, [Soul] ought to be even harder to raise than these, yet it's matching [Life] at 1,300...
Ban Yu-won had once defined the [Soul] as a vessel for authorities and skills.
The higher its tier rose, the more his authorities and skills strengthened in tandem—so he was probably spot on.
The issue was that, aside from himself, he'd never seen anyone else's [Soul] pulled up to match their [Life].
Which, flipped around, just proved how extraordinary his innate authority was.
“Anyway, I can check my internal concepts later. Right now, the priority is...”
Thanks to extracting and condensing from so many fairies, he'd already amassed [Conceptual Conversion]—the core of changelings—to a depth of 1,500.
Ban Yu-won had prior experience pulling Ketra's concept and using it, so he sealed this one into a massive Code Core forged from multiple cores.
“Alright, groundwork's done.”
The orb, a fusion of the fairies' mystical essence, glowed with an indescribably brilliant yet eerie light.
Only someone like Ban Yu-won, who wielded concepts themselves, could touch it without his body and magic twisting apart. It was as cursed an object as they came.
“A core distilled purely from fairy authorities... Even standalone, it's top-tier artifact level.”
“Bring me any fairy criminals later. I'll make you one from them.”
“Could you not say such terrifying things in front of the Fairy Queen, son-in-law?”
Ban Yu-won chuckled at the fairies' eyes lighting up as they recognized the changeling essence for what it was.
This alone was impressive enough, but harmonizing it with the magic circle etched across the planet would yield something even greater.
The only annoyance was that he wouldn't be the one reaping those benefits...
“My big sis really could serve me for life and it still wouldn't be enough.”
[Serve you? No, but she does seem like the type to keep her master by her side forever.]
“Please stop, Lilith. My bad.”
Ban Yu-won ignored the traitors' terrified stares, the fairies' awed, friendly, desirous gazes as they watched this non-execution execution, and his comrades' suspicious looks as they speculated on his next move. In exactly two hours, he'd stripped every last concept from all the culprits.
“Now we just need to confiscate their external comms and lock them somewhere.”
He handed the collapsed, drained prisoners back to the fairies with that explanation.
“They're still key to powering the magic circle, so no killing. Irecto, you're with me tweaking the circle. Probably take a few days.”
“Can't leave a centuries-old expert in contract magic exploration out of a magic circle job.”
“If it's the circle on our planet, count me in too.”
The group had nothing better to do than trail after Ban Yu-won anyway.
Plenty of fairies, stunned by the miracle he'd shown up with via Fairy Tail, were scheming ways to get at him—so the others' main role was blocking unauthorized access.
The problem: the circle spanned such a vast area that they had to keep constantly on the move, making it impossible to fully screen his approaches...
“Hubby, come have lunch with me!”
“He's my boyfriend—why would he be your hubby?!”
“How can a human wield such dense magic...? Don't you want to mix it with mine?”
“We're mid-magic circle repairs—stay back!”
“Repairs? Work? How about with me?”
“Have you ever seen such lunatics?”
Ban Yu-won was utterly fed up with the fairy race after half a day.
How could a species be this promiscuous and lascivious?
Before arriving at Fairy Tail, he'd only braced for disdain as an inferior race. This completely unanticipated tack made his head spin.
“They truly are something. They know how dangerous that planet-spanning magic circle is, yet they flirt with you like it's none of their concern.”
Dokgo Yeon spoke in an exhausted voice, her precisely honed killing intent keeping most fairies at bay. Mira, cheeks burning with shame on behalf of all fairykind, covered her face with both hands and made excuses.
“They're not usually this clingy. It's just that Yu-won stands out so much... And bonus points for being my boyfriend.”
“Why's that a plus?”
“Stealing the next Fairy Queen's man would be a lifelong bragging right.”
“Is this place just full of crazies?”
Dokgo Yeon shot back in revulsion, then turned to Ban Yu-won with a grim tone.
“Yu-won, let's hurry and finish up so we can leave. I don't want to stay here long.”
“Yeon, hate it all you want, but the showdown with Prominence has to happen here...”
Two days passed as they roamed vast Fairy Tail, tweaking the magic circle.
In the process, he positioned the Dragon Child Soldiers at key points and exchanged greetings with the demon Black Horse Cavalry legion already waiting in the wings.
Just as the repairs were nearing completion— a request came in to access the Fairy Tail dimension.
“Oh my, what cute little beasts! Even cuter than the stories!”
As pre-arranged, Fairy Queen Yura cheerfully permitted their spaceship to enter...
It carried the beastkin elites!
“It's been a while, son-in-law!”
“You've grown even more in the meantime. No grandkids yet?”
Lucelle's parents—Canid, heir to the divine beast Fenrir's bloodline, and Lucia, descendant of the kumiho—stepped off the ship, each tossing Ban Yu-won a comment. He reflexively shot Lucelle a narrowed glare.
But Lucelle merely wagged her tail sprouting from behind her hips, beaming contentedly.
“You brought a lot of troops, right?”
“Wasn't everyone twiddling their thumbs with no fights left? Picked only the ones over level 70 by that system metric of yours. Came out to exactly a hundred.”
Canid thumped his chest with a hearty thwack and grinned at Lucelle's words.
He lacked the ability to check stats himself, but with his daughter—who had a status window—helping, he could roughly gauge levels as a benchmark of strength.
“Ufufu, to think there were beastkin this strong... Oh my.”
Surprisingly, Yura—who'd come out to greet the guests—saw Canid's sturdy, dashing figure and let her eyes sparkle for a moment. But before Lucia could glare daggers, she shook her head and looked away.
“Still, our son-in-law's the handsomest.”
“I'm gonna lose it, seriously.”
No, not because of Yura's nonstop attention—though that was plenty bothersome too.
The real issue was the beastkin heavyweights showing up at Fairy Tail.
“Lucelle, are you insane? We're up against an S-rank dimension. What if you drag your entire base here?”
“But if we lose here, there's no future anyway, right?”
True enough—and with her mom and sister on the line, retreat really wasn't an option!
As if reading his turmoil, Lucelle's eyes crinkled softly.
“I staked everything on my master. My parents handed it all over to me like that, so please accept it without holding back.”
“No, it's heavy...”
“Baaaaan Yuuuuu-wwooooooon—!”
As he floundered, unsure how to respond to Lucelle's full-throated affection and devotion, something barreled in with a grotesquely drawn-out wail and latched onto his neck with both arms.
Not a sloth, but what the hell is this? He turned, thinking that—and yep, it was a sloth.
“Ah, sticking to you really does activate it right away.”
He didn't want to know what “it” was.
The woman tickling his back with her wild golden mane and lazy smile—Sloth Queen Slothy—looked up at him and continued.
“You weren't coming, so I came myself.”
“Oh my.”
Yura let out an odd little sigh of admiration at yet another woman glomping onto her son-in-law.
Ban Yu-won sighed, realizing it was beyond control, and struggled to pry Slothy off. His comrades rushed over to help.
“Ugh, my kids need to move faster! Yu-won, come with me—we'll grab our troops too!”
“Sorry, but adding some frail humans won't make much difference?”
“We're not frail! We get strong when I lead!”
“The Black Horse Cavalry are the strongest. No yielding here.”
“Dragon Child Soldiers... getting dissed? You're dissing dragonkin right now...?”
Even with Lucelle bringing her full force, the mood was heating up.
Dokgo Yeon, standing a step apart from the group, bit her lip and muttered.
It was just too unfair.
“Compared to the Divine Church's forces, and they're bragging about these puny handfuls...”