Dogramag met a miserable end.
He had believed the removal of Elefseria's heart meant he was finally about to return, but what awaited him was true death—the complete destruction of both his body and soul, with no possibility of ever coming back.
"That should finally put an end to the dragon problem in northern Guiltina."
Marco nodded in satisfaction.
If he was going to help, he might as well finish the job properly instead of leaving Dogramag behind as another disaster waiting to happen.
"This is wonderful..." Elefseria's voice trembled with emotion. "The people of Guiltina can finally live freely. They won't have to bow to evil dragons anymore or spend every day wondering whether they'll suddenly be killed or eaten."
All six Dragon Gods had now been dealt with, and Elefseria had recovered a portion of his lost power.
As far as he was concerned, northern Guiltina's future had never looked brighter.
Marco found his optimism a little premature.
"Getting rid of the evil dragons doesn't mean there won't be other oppressors," he pointed out.
"Northern Guiltina is even more divided than Ishgar, and its Magic Council is practically useless."
Marco had never believed that killing the Five—or technically Six—Dragon Gods would magically solve every problem faced by the people of Guiltina.
Nothing was ever that simple.
The dragons had merely been the strongest tyrants around.
Once the real dragons were gone, there was nothing stopping false dragons from taking their place—human monsters wearing respectable faces.
Even Ishgar still had selfish kings who abused their people or started wars whenever it suited them.
The Magic Council rarely interfered in such matters.
At most, it might attempt to negotiate. It had no real authority over ordinary governments.
The Council dealt with the magical world.
As long as a tyrant was not a mage and did not openly conspire with mages, he could rule however he pleased without the Council paying much attention.
Marco's involvement in Magnolia's everyday administration was actually highly unusual.
He simply could not stand by when people were suffering in front of him. Somewhere inside him, that old revolutionary instinct was still alive and well.
Within Marco's territory, public institutions were expected to follow his principles.
Anyone who needed help should receive it.
Administrators were supposed to take responsibility for the people under their care.
When disaster struck, they could not simply tell civilians to fend for themselves and pretend that counted as leadership.
In truth, Marco preferred the political structure of the Western Continent.
He believed a strong, unified government was far more effective than a loose alliance that could barely make decisions and spent most of its time fighting with itself.
A single administration governing the entire continent, with both ordinary citizens and mages living beneath the same laws, made far more sense than the arrangement Ishgar currently used.
That was not an exaggeration. Ishgar's political system was an absolute mess.
Every kingdom had its own laws, yet those laws often did not properly apply to mages.
Mages answered to the Magic Council instead, while wizard guilds effectively operated as independent states within the countries that hosted them.
The relationship was somehow even less sensible than the one between nations and hidden villages in the shinobi world.
By Marco's standards, the entire structure was deeply irrational and should never have been allowed to continue for so long.
Still, as much as he disliked it, the system had somehow managed to keep functioning.
Marco had no intention of tearing it down by force simply because he thought it was inefficient.
The Magic Council, for example, had avoided any major disasters since its most recent reorganization.
Marco could hardly march into headquarters and abolish it without a legitimate reason.
That did not mean he was willing to let it rule over him.
Thanks to his close relationship with Fiore's royal family, Marco had reclaimed authority over all magical affairs within the kingdom.
Fiore's people would manage Fiore's mages themselves.
Once Hisui officially became queen and gained enough experience to handle the position, Marco planned to transfer that authority to her as well.
She would inherit leadership of the Fiore Mage Alliance and become the first ruler in Ishgar to hold both political and magical authority under one crown.
And should Queen Hisui eventually decide to follow the example set on the Western Continent and unite all of Ishgar, Marco would not mind lending her a hand.
The emperor who had created the Alvarez Empire and united the Western Continent was none other than Zeref, the legendary founder of Black Magic.
For someone who supposedly spent his life hiding from humanity in isolation, Zeref had somehow quietly conquered an entire continent and crowned himself emperor.
He had even prepared to invade Ishgar once, only to retreat after being threatened by the Magic Council's numerous weapons of mass destruction.
There was no question that Zeref's mind had deteriorated.
Centuries of loneliness and the influence of his curse had slowly worn away at his sanity until he became the unstable man he was now, constantly swinging between completely opposite thoughts and impulses.
That brought Marco back to the Curse of Ankhseram.
He had recently begun to suspect that he might be able to remove it.
The solution could be surprisingly simple, and Mavis had already provided him with most of the evidence he needed.
When Mavis's soul left her body, the curse stopped affecting her physical form.
At the same time, her disembodied soul was also free from its effects.
Marco only needed to test one final possibility before reaching a conclusion.
If Mavis returned to her body, came back to life, and the Curse of Ankhseram still failed to reactivate, then Marco could use the same method on Zeref.
He would simply separate Zeref's soul from his body and allow him to remain truly dead for a short period before resurrecting him.
It made a certain amount of sense that a curse granting immortality would end once its victim genuinely died.
Zeref had spent centuries searching for someone capable of killing him, so perhaps he had already understood that much.
His problem was that once he died, he had no way to return.
Marco could solve that part.
...
After dealing with Dogramag, Marco saw no reason to remain in northern Guiltina.
He took Gray, Natsu, Igneel, and Mercphobia with him and left the continent behind.
Elefseria could worry about governing Guiltina on his own.
Marco barely wanted to involve himself in every problem across Ishgar, let alone take responsibility for another continent.
Unless Elefseria genuinely found himself overwhelmed and asked for help, Marco intended to stay out of it.
If that happened, he would return—not as Guiltina's ruler, but as a friend.