A magic merchant infiltrating Fairy Tail

"Hmm... I'll think about it some more..."

"What are you still thinking about?! Don't say a word, just go over and hug her tightly, let her feel your deep maternal love!! It's such a simple thing, why hesitate for so long..."

The afternoon wind carried Kira's cursing throughout the town.

Chapter 538 Mechanical Town

As magic flourished, it inevitably led to technological backwardness.

Since arriving in the Alvarez Empire, Kira has seen almost no excellent magical items or weapons, which is quite different from Ishgar.

It's important to know that even within the Kingdom of Fiore, there are many adventurer guilds, treasure hunters, mercenaries, assassins... These people may not all use magic, but most of them can use magical items and weapons, and they are also the most loyal customers of some merchants.

These merchants joined together to form a guild that specialized in buying and selling weapons. This guild was not controlled by the council, but was under the administration of multiple kingdoms, and continuously supplied these kingdoms with specially made magical weapons.

Of course, this is done covertly; on the surface, they are just ordinary magic shops.

Kira was one of the more famous merchants in this group of merchants. His "Hope House" was very active for a time, but Kira later shifted his focus to magical toys and gradually reduced his manufacturing of weapons.

In the past year, Silver has emerged like a supernova, surpassing many business owners in the guild with his extraordinary magical weapons, becoming a leader in the guild. His weapons are highly favored by royal families from various countries, and the purchase volume increases month by month.

Unfortunately, even such a weapons merchant guild, which spans almost the entirety of Ishgar, finds it difficult to extend its reach into Aragitasia, simply because there is an alchemist there who possesses the skill of mechanical transmutation.

The Twelve Shields of the Holy Land, 'The Judge' Val' Icht.

……

On the main street of a small town, several teenagers and young women, who looked to be in their late teens or early twenties, stared in disbelief at the mechanical toys moving back and forth on the street, as if their worldview had been violently impacted by a hundred giant dragons.

"This... am I seeing things... Happy, did you see that?"

"I saw it, Natsu! That's amazing!"

"Quick! Punch me! Let's see if I'm dreaming..."

"Let me do it!"

Bang! ! !

"Ouch!! It really hurts!"

"These mechanical toys have self-awareness? How interesting!"

A boy with cherry-blossom hair, accompanied by a blue cat with white wings flying in the air, ran around excitedly, grabbing any mechanical creature he could find and eagerly asking questions, his face filled with the curiosity of discovering a new world.

"Do you need to eat? Do you need to use the toilet? Can you use magic? How cool!!"

"Hey you two, stop running around!!"

The pretty girl with long blonde hair complained skillfully and strode after them with her shapely legs. This place was different; she had to keep a close eye on these two troublemakers. If they were allowed to cause trouble as usual, they might soon attract formidable enemies.

This isn't the Kingdom of Fiore; Fairy Tail doesn't have that much prestige here!

Gray looked around, scratching his short black hair with his right hand in bewilderment: "I feel like there's something strange about this place... How can there be robots in this world that can move and talk like humans?"

The little girl Wendy, who was standing nearby, thought of Eileen, whom she had just parted ways with not long ago, and Eileen's exquisite personality enhancement magic, which was so exquisite that it could be called unparalleled in the world. She said in a sweet voice, "If I could master personality enhancement magic at the same level as Eileen, I should be able to do it."

"But wouldn't personality implantation turn someone into a human like her two maids? These people still retain their mechanical features!"

Ultear then gave the group a brief explanation: "They are the Machine Race, a distinct race just like humans, Beyonders, dragons, and demons! However, the Machine Race is very small; perhaps the citizens of this town make up more than 90% of all Machine Race members, with some scattered elsewhere."

"Are the mechanical race outside like Harpy and me?"

As someone who broke away from her race and followed humanity, Xia Lulu is more understandable in this regard.

"Of course, it's also possible that the mechanical race here is actually a branch that is distributed outside, and the real race is in a more unknown and hidden place."

"So that's how it is..."

Despite the noisy surroundings, which resembled a normal town, Erza remained vigilant. After carefully looking around several times, she finally asked, "Is the person you're looking for in this town? Finding a human among the machine race shouldn't be too difficult, right?"

Kira shrugged helplessly upon hearing this: "I'm really sorry, the guy we're looking for is also a cyborg! — Although he looks no different from a normal person."

"Also, not all the machine race here are short, toy-like figures! Look over there..."

Following the red-haired boy's gaze, the group saw several teenagers who looked no different from normal humans, but got along well with the other short robots.

The faces of these mechanical beings were full of smiles, and at first glance, it looked like an older brother playing with his younger siblings. Clearly, even though they were of different races, they had emotions and feelings just like humans!

Thinking of this, the group couldn't help but smile knowingly.

This is a mechanical town, within the Alvarez Empire, under the jurisdiction of the 12 Shields of the Holy See, specifically the town of 'Judgment' Valhalla, just like the town where Kira spent a month before.

However, although this is a town directly managed by Val, it is not well-known, seemingly for the safety of its people. Even the natives of the Alvarez Empire may not know that there is a 'mechanical town' here.

The group of teenagers standing on the street making a fuss were none other than Kira and Ultear, members of the "peace-ending negotiation team," and Erza and her group from the "support travel team."

As for Selene, she acted as a guide, leading Irene to Giltina in search of the alchemist who could use 'body transmutation'.

A few days ago, after Kira and Erin successfully negotiated, the two had a conversation that seemed to be unknown to anyone, but was actually intentionally overheard by others.

That night, Kira happened to get up to get a drink of water and unexpectedly saw Erin and Erza having a quiet mother-daughter conversation on the balcony. Not wanting to disrupt their atmosphere, Kira did not go over to disturb them.

To Kira's bewilderment, the two acted as usual the next day, as if nothing had happened. Kira tried to subtly probe them several times, but couldn't find out what they had talked about, how much their relationship had improved, or if they had been intimate...

"I'm so envious! I'm so envious of both of them!"

Seemingly noticing Kira's gaze, Erza felt uneasy and frowned, asking, "What's wrong with you these past few days? You're always talking to yourself like this. Is something wrong?"

"No...nothing..."

Kira waved his hand dismissively and turned his gaze back to the bustling street in front of him.

"Let's split up and move faster that way. Once we find them, we'll signal to regroup."

"can."

"Great!"

"Off on an adventure!!"

Kira and the others came here because they found out from Irene the location of Val, who was also one of the Twelve Shields. Of course, it was only a general location, not much different from the place that Silver had found out at the beginning.

But when they were halfway there, Kira suddenly received a message from Silver.

Previously, Kira and Silver had collaborated multiple times, and the two had jointly created a communication device similar to a mobile phone to facilitate remote communication. The reason they were able to find this place was because Silver sent Kira their location.

The location is this mechanical town.

To Kira's surprise, this town, which looked about the same size as Magnolia, was almost self-sufficient. Although it maintained open access to the outside world, almost no one went out or came in. All the stations were basically just for show, and the number of people entering and leaving in a year probably didn't even reach a hundred.

This is mainly because the machine race does not need to eat like humans—they do not have stomachs for digestion and absorption—so they do not need to engage in food-related business with the outside world.

As these people curiously observed the town, the town's inhabitants, those bizarre mechanical beings, were also observing Kira and his companions.

Normally, only mechanical people live here. Now, a few humans have unexpectedly wandered in, as conspicuous as a few huskies mixed in with a wolf pack—they are mechanical people, they can sense each other, and they can't tell the difference between wolves and dogs.

Hehe and chatter... pointing and gesturing...

The strange looks made Kira, who was under a lot of attention, feel a little uneasy.

Chapter 539 Mechanical Race

Ah, the mechanical town...

Seeing this scene, Kira couldn't help but think of Majima's new work, Eden Starfield, in which the male protagonist, Shiki, was born in such a mechanical town.

Of course, in Kira's eyes, the mechanical town and such are not important at all. What is important is the robots that appear in the work "Eden Star Origin", such as the four beautiful girls with different styles on EDENSZERO: the witch, the nun, the hermit and the Valkyrie who died long ago. Kira's heart was filled with excitement just thinking about them.

Perhaps because they are worlds created by the same person, despite their different worldviews, the mechanical races in Fairy Tail and the robots in Eden are strikingly similar in appearance, and even their surrounding architectural styles and living atmosphere are virtually identical.

Speaking of which, the Ether Gear of the Eden world seems to be the magic of the Fairy Tail world. I wonder if these machine races can use magic.

With this question in mind, Kira looked around with his sky-blue eyes, taking in all the different aspects of life of the machine race.

Despite their different races, the Fairy Tail world is a world full of love and beauty. Whether it's the terrifying dragons and demons or the adorable Beyonders who win hearts with their white wings and cute appearance, they all have the opportunity to live peacefully with humans.

The machine race before him was the same; from their eyes, Kira could tell that these people did not reject outsiders, but were actually quite happy to interact with humans.

They can smile knowingly at Natsu and Happy who are making a ruckus in the street, ask Gray and Wendy to sell the specialties of the mechanical town, and even try to sell Erza specially made magical weapons.

Throughout the entire process, there was no visible racial divide between humans and machines, which is undoubtedly a good thing.

The only thing that made Kira slightly uncomfortable was that these machine races were paying too much attention to them.

Fortunately, as a mage of Fairy Tail, Kira has no shortage of experience in being pointed at and criticized by the crowd, especially when Natsu and the other noisy guys are around. Being stared at with strange looks is the norm. At the moment, the mechanical people around him did not express any obvious dissatisfaction with Natsu and the others, so Kira felt that they were already quite restrained.

Kira was extremely experienced in dealing with such gossip; he simply ignored it.

"Perhaps this could be a great adventure..." Kira thought to himself.

Just then, a robot girl who looked even smaller than Wendy walked over and asked Kira, "Um... if I'm not mistaken, you should be human, right?"

Yes! Is there anything I can help you with?

Kira never turned down new map guides who came knocking on his door.

The girl smiled shyly: "No... actually, because very few humans come to this place, everyone is curious about the outside world! If you could, could you tell us what it's like outside?"

It's normal to be surprised by something you don't know.

Kira nodded, returning a harmless smile: "I see... We are members of the Merchant Guild 'Lucky Key.' We recently heard about a mechanical town nearby inhabited by a unique mechanical race, and we couldn't resist our curiosity, so we came to check it out and see if we could develop a business here..."

In just three minutes, Kira had created a completely new image for himself and his companions—a group of energetic and confident young men and women who dreamed of expanding their business empire to the whole world.

"Back then, I went to a town on the westernmost edge of the Western Continent to do business, and that's where I met..."

By cleverly using several adventurous stories full of youth and passion, more and more machine race members were attracted by Kira's melodious voice, and they gathered around him, giving him admiring and longing looks. They listened with great interest to the thrilling adventure stories, and at the same time, they were curious about the merchant guild that Kira mentioned.

"A chamber of commerce? Sounds like an organization founded by a group of businessmen! Apparently, there are quite a few organizations like that outside..."

"Is it the same as the 'Twelve Shields' that Lord Val joined?"

"I guess so……"

"So who's stronger?"

"Of course it's Lord Val! He's one of the twelve strongest men in the empire!"

The child-like cyborgs chattered excitedly about what the outside world was like, while Kira gathered the information he needed.