Chapter 425: A Disgraceful Escape
"I love Wendy... I love everyone so much... I just wanted to help," Carla murmured softly, her head bowed in deep distress. Happy watched her with anxious eyes.
"No one blames you, Carla. What happened was purely an accident. What you need to do now is pull yourself together. Before Wendy, Meredy, and Sorano gave chase, they looked back at you with immense worry. For their sake, you need to cheer up and return to your usual self."
Hearing that Wendy and the others were worrying about her, Carla raised her head, her eyes slightly bloodshot.
"It's true. Don't make Wendy and the others worry. No one is blaming you," Laxus added from the side.
"You acted out of the goodness of your heart, and everyone agreed to let you lead the way. Whether as your comrades or because it was a collective decision, no one holds this against you. Stop shouldering all the blame. Gathering your strength to help Wendy and the others is what you need to focus on right now."
"Mhm, I understand." Taking his words to heart, Carla wiped her eyes, her expression looking far more resolute. Seeing her recover, Happy finally broke into a smile.
"Alright, let's catch up to Ultear and the others. They've already pulled far ahead." Seeing Carla back on her feet, the instruction was given, and everyone nodded in unison. Happy and Carla sprouted their wings, while the others surged forward into the darkness, tracking the path taken by the vanguard.
After navigating several sharp turns, the sounds of combat grew deafeningly loud. Rounding two more corners, they spotted Wendy, Meredy, and Yukino running just behind Earth Land Lucy. Lacking the enhanced movement options of the older S-Class mages, they had naturally fallen to the rear.
"Carla!" Wendy cried out in pure delight upon seeing her partner flying toward her. Meredy and Yukino shared her relief. Dropping beside Wendy, Carla apologized softly, "I'm sorry for making you worry."
"It's okay, Carla! I'm just glad you're alright!" Wendy beamed. Meredy and Yukino nodded warmly beside her.
"Let's close the distance first. We can talk on the way." At the prompt, the group picked up their pace, and soon the backs of the frontline fighters came into view.
"Dark Spark!" Mirajane hurled a sphere of dark magic toward the retreating, bizarrely stacked trio of Edolas Captains. Hughes frantically waved his baton, conjuring loose stone blocks from the tunnel roof to intercept the projectile.
BOOM!
The mid-air detonation shattered the tunnel walls, sending a massive shower of debris raining down. Following closely behind, Erza, Sorano, and Ultear had to weave desperately through the falling rocks.
"Avoid using high-destructive spells! You'll bring the whole tunnel down on us!" Erza warned loudly.
"My apologies," Mirajane responded, reining in her power.
"Little Angel!" Sorano gestured smoothly, summoning a swarm of miniature, pocket-sized angels that darted aggressively toward Erza Knightwalker and her companions.
"Mel Force!" With a single-handed thrust of her spear, Erza Knightwalker unleashed a sweeping vacuum wave that dissolved Sorano's constructs before they could even draw near.
"Ice-Make: Ice Eagle!" Ultear manifested a flock of predatory ice birds that plummeted toward the targets. Knightwalker deflected the incoming threats with a series of blindingly fast spear strikes, supported by Hughes's stone barrages.
"The weapon mastery of my counterpart is truly exceptional," Ultear mused, watching her attacks get systematically dismantled.
"She is undeniably formidable," Erza agreed. Ultear had previously attempted to freeze the ground beneath Sugarboy, but with the aid of Knightwalker's supersonic thrusts, the sliding captains only seemed to gain momentum. Abandoning the strategy, Ultear focused entirely on maintaining her own slick ice runway to propel herself forward.
"Fire Dragon's..." Leap-frogging behind the flyers, Natsu puffed up his cheeks, preparing to unleash a devastating breath attack from behind Gray.
WHACK!
Gray drove a fist into Natsu's stomach, nearly knocking the wind out of him. "You idiot! Are you trying to bury us alive with a roar in a enclosed space like this?!"
"Cough! Damn it! Fine!" Natsu grumbled. Forced to suppress their large-scale spells, Natsu and Gray sprinted harder, keeping tight on the heels of the vanguard.
By now, the entire trailing group had caught up, forming a relentless tide of pursuers. Even with the tunnel's spatial constraints limiting the scale of the Earth Land spells, Knightwalker and Hughes were entirely trapped in a defensive bottleneck, forced to passively absorb an endless barrage of precise magical attacks.
Sugarboy's softening magic could only hinder the ground-bound mages like Ultear, Natsu, and Gray, leaving the airborne Erza, Mirajane, and Sorano entirely unaffected. After a brief lapse in concentration nearly caused Sugarboy to smash face-first into a jagged rock wall during a sharp turn, the human bobsled stopped attempting to counter-attack altogether, dedicating one hundred percent of his focus to navigating the treacherous path.
This left Knightwalker and Hughes under immense pressure, which spiked drastically when Laxus reached the front. Arcs of crackling lightning constantly forced them into desperate, hair-raising evasive maneuvers.
"How much further?!" Hughes bellowed, frantically waving his baton to construct a series of makeshift stone barricades to delay their pursuers.
"Almost there! Just a little further!" Sugarboy roared back.
SLASH!
Erza tore through Hughes's stone wall, splitting the boulders into neat fragments as she led the charge alongside Mirajane.
"Tch!" Hughes hissed, continually throwing up walls and manipulating loose rock to blunt the incoming projectiles, while Knightwalker's spear remained a blur of absolute defense.
"We're out! This is it!" Sugarboy suddenly bellowed.
Ahead, a massive stone staircase leading upward materialized in the gloom—the very exit they had used to enter the subterranean network. In a coordinated motion, Knightwalker and Hughes launched themselves off Sugarboy's back just as the latter rolled to his feet.
"Explosion!"
Vaulting into mid-air, Knightwalker swung her transformed spear downward. The resulting concussive detonation obliterated the tunnel entrance, causing a massive cave-in that brought tons of solid rock crashing down, thoroughly sealing the passage behind them.
Sugarboy immediately followed up, tapping his rapier to turn the floor leading to the collapse into a treacherous marsh, before bolting up the stairs after Knightwalker. Hughes brought up the rear, orchestrating a massive barrier of layered boulders behind them before sprinting upward to join his fellow Captains.
"To arms! Prepare for battle! Deploy all available troops to this sector immediately!" Knightwalker roared the moment she breached the surface, startling the stationed Royal Guard garrison into frantic motion.
Turning to Sugarboy, she commanded, "Go immediately and report this infiltration to His Majesty. The rest of us will hold the line here."
"Understood. Stay sharp," Sugarboy responded. Dropping to the floor, his frictionless armor propelled him away like a shot as he sped toward the throne room.
With Sugarboy gone, Knightwalker and Hughes began barking orders, desperately trying to erect a defensive perimeter with the garrison forces in the few precious moments they had left.
Before witnessing the raw majesty of Earth Land's magic, Knightwalker had remained entirely confident that three Captains and a detachment of heavily armed troops would be more than enough to handle any intrusion. They even possessed specialized anti-magic equipment specifically designed to suppress internal magic power. Yet, their carefully planned ambush had failed spectacularly, and her entire vanguard detachment had been wiped out in a single flash of lightning.
She realized with grim certainty that she had severely underestimated the enemy. These were not the desperate fugitives of Edolas's Fairy Tail; these were the top-tier powerhouses of a world where magic reigned supreme. The title of 'Fairy Hunter' she had earned through blood meant absolutely nothing here. A single counterpart had matched her blow for blow, and her fellow Captains had been thoroughly humiliated.
Looking at the panicked soldiers scrambling to place barriers, Knightwalker shook her head inwardly. With proper preparation, a fortified royal defense could potentially inflict casualties on the invaders. But this rushed, frantic setup would do nothing more than waste a bit of the enemy's stamina. After all, the invaders had been holding back their true destructive capacity within the narrow tunnels to avoid a total collapse. Once they emerged into the open...
"Hurry! Faster! Secure those lines!" Hughes screamed, his face pale with anxiety. His visible panic spread to the ranks; the soldiers, sensing their Captain's dread, faltered, their coordination breaking as their defensive preparations slowed to a crawl.
"Hughes!" Knightwalker hissed, her voice cutting through his panic.
"My apologies!" Hughes quickly reigned in his anxiety, though he found himself entirely unable to manifest his usual arrogant smile, settling for a grim, expressionless mask. The soldiers settled slightly, but a thick pall of dread hung over the garrison. The sight of their Captains emerging from the underground looking battered and disheveled spoke volumes.
BOOM!
A heavy tremor shook the stone floor, followed by a muffled, concussive thud from deep within the stairwell.
"Steady! Ready your weapons!" Knightwalker bellowed. The soldiers took their positions behind the barricades, leveling their magical staves directly at the dark stairwell.
BOOM!
A second, massive explosion ripped through the threshold. Knightwalker and Hughes gripped their weapons, their eyes locked onto the opening.
Suddenly, a silhouette burst through the smoke.
"FIRE!"
At Knightwalker's roar, a torrential barrage of magical projectiles converged on the figure, resulting in a cataclysmic explosion that completely obscured the doorway in a thick shroud of dust and flame.
"Keep firing! Don't stop!" Hughes commanded. The soldiers continuously unleashed their magic staves, maintaining a relentless wall of fire against the threshold.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Continuous detonations rocked the stairwell, turning the dust into an impenetrable wall. But amidst the chaos, a massive, distinct explosion erupted from the center of the smoke—and Knightwalker's eyes widened as she realized it didn't originate from her soldiers' attacks.
~~~
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