Spring, X679. Tenrou Island.
High in the Tenrou Tree, a boy sat cross-legged on a thick limb, back against the trunk.
Pale-gold sunlight filtered through the branches and spilled across the boy's youthful Face.
He wore short black hair, a set of thin cotton clothes washed nearly white, and old cloth shoes splattered with mud—his whole outfit spoke of hard times.
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Clearly, his family wasn't well-off.
But his eyes were bright; every glance betrayed the fresh vitality only a newly minted life could hold.
"Just a little more…"
Weston unconsciously licked his lips, eyes sparkling as he stared unblinkingly at the object before him.
It was a sphere constructed entirely of magic, a 3-D model of mana.
The orb itself was no larger than a basketball, yet the information packed inside dwarfed ten thousand books.
"A few more tries and my Super Ancient Text will connect to the Ancient Scripts of every Mage who ever lived."
"Then every spell in the world will be mine for the taking!"
However… beep-beep-beep—
A shrill alarm blared out of nowhere.
At the same instant, the sphere's surface erupted with crimson [DANGER] sigils.
"Huh? Not good!"
The warning turned Weston's Face ashen.
He flicked his wrist; a virtual keyboard popped up, and his ten fingers danced across it, severing his spell's link to the grand Ancient Scripts in seconds.
Half a minute later, the orb flashed [CONNECTION TERMINATED].
Weston exhaled, mopped the cold sweat from his brow, and flopped backward.
"Ugh… another failure!"
"Looks like hacking that Ancient Scripts is going to take a while longer."
Weston stared blankly at the sky.
The island lay hushed and peaceful, and the quiet dragged him into memories of his bizarre journey.
Web-novel author, died at the keyboard from overwork, transmigrated to another world—the classic opener.
After years of observation, Weston was certain he'd landed in the world of Fairy Tail, and this very place was the guild's sacred ground: Tenrou Island.
Only… he'd arrived far too early.
Compared with other protagonists, he'd jumped back almost a full century!
At this point, the concept of Magic Guilds had only just begun to spread across Ishgar, and the future governing body—the Magic Council ERA—was still a makeshift outfit.
Most guilds were run crudely: weak cohesion, no protection for jobs, and downright thuggish behavior on missions.
Guilds even fought open turf wars over clients and territory.
Being a Mage was hardly a disciplined, principled profession; deaths from job disputes and guild clashes were common.
Put bluntly, today's Mages were hoodlums and the guilds were little better than gangs.
Right now, Tenrou Island hosted a single guild: "Red Lizard."
Weston's parents had belonged to Red Lizard, but they'd died on a monster-extermination quest six months earlier.
Since then, Weston had been an orphan.
After their deaths, he awoke to his own magic—Super Ancient Text—his only lifeline.
Yet while Super Ancient Text boasted peerless data-crunching power, it offered little in raw combat might.
Add his young age, and the guild saw him as dead weight.
Fortunately, the master remembered his parents' long service and, seeing the boy had awakened magic, gave him a job as an "assistant."
Not the master's assistant, but the master's daughter—Zera's.
In short, Weston became the little lady's errand boy.
Of course, Weston preferred to call himself "the guild princess's knight-protector."
Zera was only six, the perfect age for Schoolhouse.
Weston's main duty: escort the young miss to and from class each day and carry her bag along the way.
While Zera sat in Schoolhouse, Weston had oceans of free time.
Like right now.
But he wasn't slacking off.
A transmigrator armed with the rare Super Ancient Text, he refused to live as a kept man forever.
He'd read the original story: soon Red Lizard would be wiped out by the rival guild Blue Skull, leaving only Mavis alive.
To save his own skin and learn some real offensive spells, he tried using Super Ancient Text to tap into the grand magical Ancient Scripts.
Super Ancient Text was an ultra-grade spell, a so-called "Superior Magic."
It was the superior form of the Ancient Scripts magic used by the Blue Pegasus Mage Hibiki and by Brain of Oración Seis.
It stood on the same tier as Irene's Enchant magic and Gildarts' Crush magic.
In canon, only one other person wielded it—the former Chairman of the Council.
After defecting to the Nine Demon Gates, that Chairman used it to control the entire continent's Face triggers.
Yet Weston discovered Super Ancient Text could do far more.
After months of research, he realized it differed sharply from other magics.
Whether ability-type or holder-type, other Mages built a stable growth system from their own mana.
Within that system, they simply trained body and spirit to grow stronger.
Ancient Scripts magic, however, worked differently.
Behind it lay a colossal Ancient Scripts created by every past user of Ancient Scripts and Super Ancient Scripts.
Think of it like a network.
Every Ancient Scripts or Super Ancient Scripts user was a terminal.
The only difference: Super Ancient Scripts offered greater computing speed, more functions.
These Mages linked to an invisible server, uploading and downloading data to process information.
The sole variables affecting "computing power" and "access rights" were the Mage's own mana reserves.
Through this invisible web, Weston could access every scrap of magic data ever uploaded by past Ancient Scripts users across the continent!