The six Saints went around to the back of the hotel to investigate. Though it was December, spring had already arrived in southern Bosco, and the mountain slopes ahead were covered in lush greenery.
Makarov glanced at the terrain and muttered, "Hmm… not the best place for a fight."
"Leave it to me. Step forward a bit," Warrod said, tapping his staff on the ground. "And this time, I'm not joking."
The group obeyed, moving forward. A tiny sprout broke through the soil where they had been standing. In an instant, it grew into a massive tree, branches lifting all six of them high into the air. The trunk stretched higher and higher until they were level with the mountaintop opposite.
Jura's eyes widened. "As expected of Master Warrod."
Warrod let the silence hang a beat before chuckling, "You'll fall in three seconds."
"What?!" Jura blurted.
Warrod burst into laughter. "Wahahaha! Just kidding!"
Jura: "..."
So this was what the great founders of Fairy Tail were like. Completely different from the image he had pictured.
Rhodes wasn't surprised. He could achieve a similar effect with his Earth Magic, and he was certain Jura could too. Perhaps Jura's humility kept him from boasting.
Ulfheim scowled. "You, at least try to be serious when we're doing something important."
Warrod ignored him, happily watering a potted plant he had pulled from his robes, while his eyes focused on the magicians moving quickly through the forest below.
Rhodes raised his hand. "It's not just the mountain. Look above, there are people in the sky too."
The others looked up. Five single-person flying machines, shaped like birds, cut across the sky. To an outsider, it might have looked like someone was flying kites.
Jura's expression darkened. "So it's them. The Dark Guilds: Broken-tailed Kite, Black-billed Crane, Gray-winged Swallow, White-headed Magpie, and Three-legged Crow."
Rhodes bit his tongue. He wanted to say the names sounded like someone had stirred up a bird's nest, but for Jura, it seemed entirely fitting.
"You know them?" Ulfheim asked.
Jura nodded. "I came across their names while working. They're all new-school Dark Guilds."
Hyberion swirled the milk in his glass. "New-school?"
"Yes," Jura explained. "They were originally legal guilds, but two years ago the Council passed stricter regulations after several malicious incidents. The idea was to protect lives and client interests, but the side effect was fewer jobs. Some guilds went bankrupt. Others… turned to the shadows.
"These five chose the Dark Guild path. At first they took odd requests, but over time they slid deeper into crime. They've been drifting between Fiore and Bosco ever since."
The five bird-shaped flying machines must have noticed the giant tree rising higher than the mountain, because they swerved immediately, circling toward it.
"Hmph. A bunch of self-degrading fools. Let's just take them down first." Ulfheim's muscles bulged, his skin tinting green again as though he meant to leap into the air and swat them from the sky.
"Wait!" Jura threw up a hand, panicked. "If you attack, they'll die! I've heard you don't exactly know how to hold back!"
"There's no need for the great seniors to dirty their hands so soon." Rhodes raised his arm calmly. His Void Crab–enhanced vision flared, outlining every bolt and gear inside the flying machines. He muttered to himself, Go easy. Go easy…
Electricity crackled. Five thin lances of lightning shot from his fingertips, swelling into arm-thick bolts as they arced into the sky.
The pilots, clearly prepared, raised Magic shields the instant Rhodes lifted his hand. The glare of the lightning lit the sky white, but the five sneered inwardly, 'So this is the power of a Wizard Saint? If so, the reconnaissance mission is already a success. Maybe we can even strike back..'
Then their sneers froze.
Weightlessness. Controls dead. Their Magic Power cores shattered.
They tried to shout, but their voices and limbs refused to obey.
Because each bolt had split into three chains mid-air, weaving into a glowing net. Fifteen streaks of electricity danced across the sky, paralyzing everything they touched. The five pilots slumped unconscious in their cockpits.
From the ground, it looked like Rhodes had casually raised a hand, tossed five bolts upward, and stitched the heavens with a brilliant cage of lightning, plucking "birds" straight from the sky.
The spell was one he had adapted from the Hextech Dragon Soul's chain lightning, perfect for disabling groups, with paralysis at light force and outright stunning if pushed further.
The Saints watching blinked in surprise. Intelligence reports had described Rhodes as a summoner-type wizard, not a lightning user. While they were still processing the contradiction, five crimson birds swooped into the sky. With powerful wingbeats, they caught the unconscious pilots and carried them away before the bodies could crash to the ground.
Another five specter-like summons floated up from Rhode's shadow, gliding through the air to neatly catch the five falling flying machines before they could crash.
The fluid coordination of the entire sequence, disable, capture, and recover, was so precise that even the Ten Wizard Saints turned their heads in surprise. When they inspected the captured machines and their pilots, they found that the energy cores were the only parts destroyed. The pilots themselves were merely unconscious, their lives completely out of danger.
"Such exquisite lightning magic," Hyberion praised, raising his glass of milk. "And, such a clean finish."
In fact, the seamless combination of stunning opponents and securing spoils made Hyberion briefly suspect Rhodes might have some questionable side job experience, something like a thief or bandit. But on second thought, it was too absurd to be true… wasn't it?
Rhodes scratched the back of his neck with an awkward laugh, though inwardly he sighed.
That kind of precision didn't come from genius. It came from training in the valleys, playing a ridiculous "fruit-snatching" game with the magical beasts. Go too easy and they'd counterattack, leaving him with nothing to eat. Go too hard and the fruit would be destroyed, also leaving him hungry. After many hungry nights, his control had been tempered into habit.
Thankfully, those days were behind him.
Rhodes crouched and chose one of the unconscious men who looked slightly less hostile than the others. With a faint green glow at his fingertip, he tapped the man's forehead. The captive stirred and slowly opened his eyes… only to be met with the terrifying glare of Ulfheim towering over him.
The old beastman seized him by the collar with one massive hand, his aura flaring like a storm. "Speak! What are you doing here?"
The man struggled uselessly against the grip crushing his collarbone, then realized who held him. His blood drained. He had fallen into the hands of one of the Ten Wizard Saints.
His heart sank like stone. With nothing left to lose, he bared his teeth and spat, "Stinking old man, you're all dead!"