Fairy Tail - Twilight Empire

Chapter 145 - Eternal Adventure

Yet another long, but fulfilling, day came to a close in Magnolia. Lanterns flickered on all about town, doors open and shut as families came and went for dinner, and other workers found their ways to the taverns. The daylight hadn't vanished yet, giving some folk still some time to hurry along to their next destination without fear of getting lost in the dark.

Not that anyone feared the corners of Magnolia; there were hardly any. The only major buildings that had been completed were the mayoral office, a few administrative buildings, and mostly residential apartments for those who had to live in town, such as the builders or wizards helping with the rebuilding.

A perimeter had been set up, with the support of the Fiore Kingdom itself, to help guide the townsfolk while they built Magnolia out once more. The little stream and stone pathway was one of the first things put back together; it hadn't taken so much sustained damage as one would've thought, and served as the lifeline from which everything else could spring.

In the place of several old buildings that had been abandoned even before the era of the Empire, there were gardens placed that many children had taken to claiming as their own. With the town being hospitable again, and the kids needing something to do or a place to go, there was a small, boxy schoolhouse not far from the mayoral office.

But the town wasn't so centralized. There were still long gaps in space between something like the market square and, say, that curious building perched off-center from the heart of town, one that was slow to rise and yet instantly recognizable from its logo that was haphazardly welded in place by one particularly Dragon Slayer.

It was less a guild hall and more a guild ramshackle; Levy, taking some days off to help Jura with some things for the Magic Council, let the architectural plans for the guild hall fall into more dubious hands. It'd been about a fortnight of rework to get the thing back on track.

Proper construction of the guild hall hadn't even started up until there was a strong sense that the Magic Council of Ishgar would, indeed, be on its way back, and once all of the wizards who wanted to reform Fairy Tail could actually afford to spend most of their days in the building process. For some, that was easy—tiny odd jobs around town were their specialty. For others? Well, they were adventurers, and that meant long stretches of time away, and longer stretches without getting compensated.

However, everyone in what was about to officially be Fairy Tail again was back in Magnolia. The Magic Council had convened and officially opened the invitation, or had sent out letters of recognition, for formal guilds. Fairy Tail, as Erza understood, was top of the list. More importantly, though, they had all been cordially invited to celebrate their newest member's birthday: little baby Macao was getting ready to turn one.

Erza passed through the iron gate that Gajeel had finished setting up a few days prior with a ginormous box in both of her arms. She walked on instinct, having moved in and out of the hall's campus so much over the last four months that she knew where everything was down to the disparate tools thrown by Nastu, Gray, or Gajeel.

The door to the guild hall was open, but the party was mostly outside; little Macao had found his feet at around eleven months and wasn't going to let anything stop him. Max and Laki were having heart palpitations about it, but wanted to encourage his mobility, so they asked to have the party at the guild hall, where there was both tons of space and even more helping hands.

Some residents had been invited, as Max and Laki were close with quite a few folk who'd come in to help fill out Magnolia's population, but few came. They were, understandably, exhausted.

Erza had gotten to know a few of the new townsfolk, too. Plenty of carpenters and low-level wizards who were excellent craftsmen, a few businessmen who were focused on finding the right way to capitalize on the natural resources that still sprang about Magnolia, a few teachers for the schoolhouse, farmers, of course, and generally well-to-do who had no particular trade but were looking to settle somewhere in Fiore.