"Can you run?"
"I will be fine," Kazu said, standing up. He did feel some internal injuries, but the pain wasn't severe enough to lower his combat capabilities.
'I should be fine.' His instincts told him.
"Should we continue moving?" Erza asked, pointing in the direction towards the town.
Kazu smirked. "I have a better idea." He stretched his hand, and a blue square barrier materialised in front of him, facing the ground.
Kazu jumped on it. "Come on in." Kazu increased the length of the barrier and motioned towards Erza to jump on it. She did so.
"What—" She didn't have a chance to finish her statement as the small blue platform made of Ethernano suddenly started moving vertically.
"I almost fell off," Erza muttered, sitting on the platform. Kazu mimicked her, sitting beside her.
"Since when can you do this?" Erza motioned towards the platform, which was now moving towards the town. It was at a considerable height, such that everything below looked small.
"Just now, during the battle—I improved."
Erza, dumbfounded, looked at him.
"Did you think you were the only one who could improve during mid-battle?" Kazu grinned.
"I..." Erza didn't have any retort to that. Her ability to control the acceleration of her sword this precisely was pretty sudden. The reason she didn't react during the battle was due to how close the fight was and, more importantly, experiencing intense emotions.
Looking back, it does seem absurd.
'Well, it's not a new idea completely. I just didn't have good enough control to move the barrier continuously. Even without this battle, I would have reached this level within a month or two... that also without spending any time on it.' Kazu thought, looking at the forest below them.
Though the speed of the barrier was slower than his top speed, due to travelling in the air, it was more efficient compared to going on foot. Moreover, this way, Erza won't be burning energy.
Kazu's mind drifted back to battle. Erza's new ability was completely unexpected and considerably powerful than the gain he got during the battle.
'Well, she has just started being a mage. It's pretty easy to level up initially. Moreover, if we had both been fully recovered, then the outcome would have been different.' He thought, consoling himself before his negative thoughts do it for him.
His mind raced as he analysed the battle again in his mind, and whatever he knew of Erza's abilities.
'This might be related to her ability to have so many armours. Previously, I thought she was a pay2win player, having so many relics with different abilities. It does make sense for her to have so many hours, given that her magic is requip, but I should have still heard about the artefacts people carry. It's quite rare, and they rarely have functionalities like what Erza showed. Like the ability to use lightning or fire magic directly without any affinity towards it?... Yeah, that's ridiculous.
Moreover, as far as I remember, most of her armour was still with swords. It might be connected to her sword magic.' Kazu had been always curious about what exactly was the deal with future Erza's armours.
Kazu contemplated for a few seconds.
'Actually, I think I overcomplicated it. There's another method to get the same result easily.'
"Erza... did you use your telekinesis on the tip of the sword?"
Erza nodded. "Yup. Though my control is pretty high when objects are near me, this level of speed and power was unprecedented till now. I am still confused about that—It just came instinctively to me."
Kazu made a contemplative expression. "Guess, you will have to experiment." 'Lucky that I didn't said my thoughts out or something. It would have been embarassing.'
---
After travelling for a while, they finally found their target.
"There she is!" Erza said, pointing at Anne surrounded by her unsightly minions.
Kazu put his hand on her shoulder, "We have to first find Cana and Gray for our plan to be effective."
Erza bit her lips but reluctantly nodded.
Without dropping, they moved in a different direction without alerting Anne.
"Found them." Around one hour later, they finally spotted Gray running through the forest, with Cana on her back.
The barrier-platform moved down quickly.
"Uh—Huh?" Cana tilted her head as she looked at the duo.
"What happened with Tracy?" Kazu ignored her reaction and asked Gray.
Gray frowned. "It's as we expected, she betrayed us."
Cana jumped off Gray's back before exclaiming, "Wait, what do you mean, as you expected? Did you guys predict that she would betray us?"
Erza also had a similar look as she looked at them.
"Obviously. Didn't you think the situation was too off? I knew that she was lying from the beginning. She was wrong about that village being sacrificed, right?" Gray shook his head as he looked at Kazu for confirmation.
Due to being focused on Kazu, he missed how Erza flinched.
"It—"
"Yup. Though her family is in cahoots with her, too. It was all her plan. Lucas's combat power is almost non-existent, but Anne is quite a powerful mage. She was able to fool us and escape. Luckily, none of the villagers were harmed. Now, the duo area heading towards the town, so to deal with them, we decided to regroup with you. Where is Tracy?" Kazu lied naturally as he breathed.
'Them knowing will just cause more complications. I can't let them be emotionally affected in the following battle. They are going to know anyway after all this is over.' Kazu didn't want to let them know that the entire village is no more.
Erza blinked. She did her best to hide her facial expression and faced the other side, suddenly interested in a nearby tree.
She touched it, feeling the texture of bark for a few seconds, before turning back as if absent-mindedly listening to the conversation between Gray and Kazu.
'!!!'
Erza stiffened as she met Cana's gaze.
Gone was her usual goofy attitude, now replaced by a serious expression.
'She knows!' Erza felt like a kid caught while secretly eating a chocolate. It wasn't Kazu's lie that gave it away, but rather Erza's "acting" that made Cana notice. Gray would have also noticed it if not for having his attention on Kazu.
'What should I do? Did she figure out that we failed to save them? Did Tracy say something? How much does she know? What about...' Erza's stoic face hid her panicked thoughts. She didn't even have to think about why she didn't tell the other two about her failure, let alone the fact that Kazu was the one who hid the fact first.
Cana stared at Erza for a few seconds. Suddenly—
Her serious face broke into a grin. She turned to Kazu,
"Hey, did you know? I made a special move."
"A special move?" Kazu stopped speaking and shifted his attention from Gray to Cana.
Gray rolled his eyes and put his hands on his ears while muttering, "This is the 7th time you are talking about this today, or more accurately, tonight."
Cana ignored him and nodded to Kazu. "Yup. I made it on the spot with your enhancement magic. It's strong enough to weaponise wind pressure."
Kazu blinked. "W—weaponise whattt?"
Cana smirked. "Hehe. I want to show you, but it will take too much magic. Lemme tell you about it." She started going into detail about the "4-hit KO" and exaggerating some parts shamelessly, even going so far as to use Gray as a measuring stick.
"I see. That's going to be useful in dealing with her." Kazu said before grabbing his bag.
He glanced at Erza, whose regained her internal peace.
"Well, I forgot about these, dunno how, but I still have the magical equipment from the guild," Kazu said before inverting the bag.
Klang
Multiple objects of different shapes started falling on the ground, some of them similar.
"OH, I forgot too! Wait, but how did you forget about them? I never thought you could forget something like this, given your being always super paranoid." Cana furrowed her brows as she suspiciously looked at Kazu.
Kazu paused for a second before opening his mouth, "Well, guess all that running must have got to my head. Anyway, here's a plan to deal with Anne." He clapped, changing his tone to serious.
He picked up one artefact, "This is used to boost your Ethernano reserves. On second thought, think of it as a second reservoir for your magic power. The only problem with that is that it can only be turned on and not turned off. So, you get only one chance to use all that Ethernano."
"Whoa. How much does this cost?" Cana leaned closer, poking the stone-like artefact.
"Half a million."
Cana blinked. She opened her mouth, but said nothing. Then she closed her mouth and nodded like she understood everything.
"No wonder nobody takes things from the guild's armoury. Won't this mean that we need to pay for this if we use it?"
Kazu frowned. "Unfortunately, it's for situations like these only. We can't afford to be stingy, as people's lives are at stake. Moreover, the Magic Council will refund us due to the error on their part." A vein popped on Kazu's forehead as he said the last statement while gritting his teeth.
Kazu had a calm smile on his face. "I am going to make them refurbish even if that's the last thing I do," Kazu muttered. However, the other three heard him.
Shivers crawled up their spine as they looked at his calm smile.
***
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