Hearing Shane's completely tactless teasing, Ultear rolled her eyes in irritation.
She felt a little helpless.
It seemed the fixed impression she had in his heart was far too deeply rooted. There was no way to overturn it in a short time.
Ultear immediately lost interest. She wrapped the coat tighter around herself, left Shane behind, and wandered straight down the street.
"What made her change her mood so suddenly?"
Shane looked at the woman's abrupt temper and spread his hands in confusion. He had no choice but to quicken his pace and follow.
The first day of inspection passed quietly amid the city's noisy, lived-in warmth. Nothing unusual appeared anywhere in the city.
But that did not make the two of them lower their guard.
Night fell. Even with the inn's old wooden window latched tight, strands of cold wind still crept through the cracks and burrowed toward their bones.
Neither of them said much. In tacit understanding, they each took half the night, leaning behind the window facing the street and watching the empty road outside.
During the day, they blended back into the crowd, continuing to pretend they were ordinary tourists while inspecting different parts of the city.
But two or three days passed in succession, and the little city remained peaceful. There was no sign of Grimoire Heart, not even a trace of suspicious magic.
During those few days of surveillance, however, they ran into Meredy on the street several more times.
The pink-haired girl was cheerful and incredibly friendly.
After a few encounters, and with Shane always casually buying skewers and sweets from roadside stalls to feed her, the three of them somehow became familiar faces to one another.
"Big brother! Big sister!"
Every time she spotted them from afar, Meredy would wave her small hand and call out sweetly.
That warm, easy street scene almost made it feel as though they truly were here on vacation together.
Aside from the enemy who stubbornly refused to appear, there was one other thing that puzzled Shane.
At an outdoor café, he glanced suspiciously from the corner of his eye at the black-haired woman beside him.
Ultear had her eyes closed, as if she really was tired from keeping watch the night before. Taking advantage of the lazy winter air, she lightly rested her head on his shoulder.
Her warm, even breathing brushed strand by strand against the side of Shane's neck with the rise and fall of her chest.
It was too abnormal.
For some reason, over the past few days, Ultear had been so docile in front of him that she seemed like a different person.
The usual thorny aggression was completely gone, and even that forceful need to control everything had been restrained cleanly.
This defenseless intimacy made Shane, who was used to butting heads with her, feel extremely uncomfortable.
"Uh, I'm saying…"
Shane finally couldn't hold it in anymore. He tentatively shifted his shoulder a little.
"It's been several days. Could the intelligence be wrong? Maybe Grimoire Heart's target isn't this place at all?"
"It isn't wrong."
Ultear did not open her eyes.
Sensing that the support at the side of her neck had moved, she only let out a lazy nasal sound and nuzzled a little deeper into the hollow of his shoulder, finding a more comfortable angle.
"The intelligence from that source is absolutely reliable. Be patient. Even if something really changes, they'll notify me immediately."
"Fine…"
Shane's heart was full of strangeness. His gaze fell on her delicate profile, so close he could almost touch it, and he really wanted to shake her head and ask: What exactly have you been taking these past few days?
But before he could speak—
Screech, screech, screech!
A sharp, grating sound, like a blade scraping across glass, suddenly came from the end of the long street.
Immediately after came a loud bang, as a heavy external force violently shredded a distant wooden signboard.
The lively main street instantly exploded into chaos.
Terrified screams rose from the crowd. Panicked townspeople fled in all directions, knocking over carts along the road. Colorful fruits and vegetables rolled all over the bluestone pavement, and the scene plunged into disorder.
They're here!
Shane's gaze sharpened. He reached back, grabbed Ultear by the arm, and pulled her up, then turned toward the source of the sound.
Cold.
A biting cold was rushing backward through the cracks in the street like a charging beast.
This was absolutely not the temperature winter should have. The bluestone road was being sealed under a pale, hard layer of ice at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"This magic…"
Ultear stared at the frost on the ground, her beautiful brows drawing together. This reckless, freezing presence in the air felt somewhat familiar to her.
No more words were needed. The two quickly exchanged a glance and immediately rushed against the fleeing crowd toward the main road that had been completely frozen over.
On the long street, shards of ice already filled the air.
At the center of the icy mist, Gray, bare from the waist up, snapped his hands together and assumed the standard starting stance for Ice-Make magic.
Ten steps directly opposite him stood a young man with short silver-white hair, also bare-chested.
The young man's eyes were cold and sharp as knives. The ice beneath his feet continued spreading outward with the release of his magic.
Two ice magics from the same source, yet clearly different, collided violently in the middle of the street.
"Ice-Make: Lancer!"
"Ice-Make: Great Ape!"
Dozens of sharp ice lances shot through the air and slammed into a roaring ice giant ape rising from the ground.
Boom—
Amid the deafening crash, ice crystals exploded apart. Rings of pale cold mist surged outward, freezing the wooden support pillars of the houses on both sides until they creaked, as though they might snap at any moment.
Gray?
Shane raised his hand to block the ice shards rushing toward his face, utterly confused.
How did he end up here?
Then the silver-haired young man across from him must be his senior disciple, Lyon?
Before Shane could sort out the questions in his mind, a familiar, energetic shout suddenly rang out from the air above.
"Try this! Fire Dragon's—Roar!"
Shane looked up sharply.
In the sky, Happy, the blue cat with wings, was holding onto the shoulders of the cherry-haired boy and hovering in midair.
Natsu puffed out his cheeks, his chest swelling high. The next second, a raging pillar of flame surged from his mouth and blasted straight down toward the middle of the street.
Boom!
Scorching tongues of fire licked at the pale ice covering the street, stirring up great clouds of steaming white vapor in the air.
Standing at a distant corner with a broad view, Shane looked at the chaotic battle below, and the corners of his eyes twitched twice uncontrollably.
"Even Natsu came along…"
"Look over there."
Ultear beside him ignored his headache and lifted her chin toward the very center of the spot Natsu's Fire Dragon Roar had just struck.
Under the ravaging heat of the flames, not only had all the frost melted away, but even the surrounding bluestone slabs had been burned black and cracked, giving off a sharp, burnt smell.
However, at the exact center of the blast, a short man with deep blue hair stood there with his hands behind his back, completely unharmed.
Forget being burned by the intense heat—there wasn't even a scorch mark on the hem of his clothes.
Looking carefully, the air around his body was twisting and vibrating unnaturally like rippling water, isolating all the flames outside.
"That's Yuka, a mage from Lamia Scale."
With the intelligence network she had accumulated over years at the Council, Ultear recognized him at a glance.
"His magic produces special waves, specifically used to neutralize and nullify other people's magical attacks."
"Then Natsu's straightforward fire is basically hitting a steel wall against him, isn't it?" Shane replied.
At the same time, he noticed two other figures standing behind Yuka.
One was a man with eye-catching beast ears, waving his arms and shouting loudly.
The other was a pretty red-haired woman with a proud expression.
"They're also from Lamia Scale, but they're not very famous. I don't really remember their abilities," Ultear said casually.
"Did Gray's senpai drag the whole Lamia Scale guild out here as bodyguards?" Shane couldn't help complaining, then kept looking up into the sky.
Since everyone else had followed, there was no reason the white-haired girl he had finally managed to send away wouldn't be here too.
Just as he expected.
When both sides were deadlocked, and Natsu was howling in anger because his attack had been nullified and was about to keep breathing fire—
the sky suddenly darkened.
A terrifying magic power, one that seemed as though it could freeze blood solid, pressed down from high above without warning.
In the sky, Mira, having fully taken over Satan Soul, wore a wild, demonic sneer on her stunning face.
There was no flashy chant, nor a single unnecessary word.
She swung her right arm. Enormous demon wings spread behind her, and like a meteor crashing to earth, she slammed down into the center of the Lamia Scale group's formation.
Boom!!!
The earth let out a pained groan in that instant.
Terrifying cracks like a spiderweb spread madly in every direction. Amid violent tremors, the entire street caved in directly, forming a horrifying crater several meters deep.
Chunks of stone and ice shot into the sky, forcing the nearby fighters to retreat one after another.
"After coming back to Earth Land, this girl really has completely unleashed her nature…"
Looking at the destruction that was practically a natural disaster, the corner of Shane's mouth twitched hard.
"And she's using her right hand so recklessly… did Wendy heal it?"
Following that guess, Shane looked toward the back.
Sure enough, behind a wall at the end of the street that had been sliced halfway down, he saw a tiny figure with long blue hair.
"So they really all came, not a single one missing…"
Withdrawing his gaze, Shane propped his chin on one hand, but his brows gradually furrowed.
This situation was truly strange.
Gray and Lyon, whose senpai and kouhai fallout should have happened somewhere else, had somehow run precisely to this small city that was about to be sacrificed and started fighting here.
Add in the coincidence of Deliora suddenly dying right before departure…
All these signs together made it look very much like someone had been guiding things from the shadows.
At that thought, Shane half-closed his eyes. When he opened them again, a blazing flame had lit deep within his pupils.
The Eye of Karma opened.
His crimson gaze pierced through walls and buildings, taking in the entire city at a glance.
Inside the city, aside from the dense magic erupting from the chaotic battle before him, there were indeed no other abnormal fluctuations.
However, when he pulled his view outward and crossed beyond the city walls—
in a forest not far outside the city, an immense, low magic power was lying dormant, held in reserve and not yet released.
"So there really is someone else interfering from the dark…"
Having found the fox's tail, Shane instead sighed inwardly with relief.
Unknown schemes were the most worrying. Now that he had found the mastermind, things would be easier.
"Let me see who you are."
With a turn of his hand, under Ultear's curious gaze, Shane took out that ancient obsidian mirror.
Since it was an enemy hiding their head and tail, this was naturally a good opportunity to test Tezcatlipoca's Noble Phantasm.
"Reverse the state of him observing the city from outside…"
Shane rubbed the mirror surface with the pad of his finger and murmured softly.
"Change it into him observing outside from within the city!"
As Shane voiced the request, a flash of light passed over the deep obsidian mirror.
The winter sun in the sky seemed to dim for an instant, and a dizzying sense of displacement rippled through the air.
Then, in the open space less than three steps away from them, space twisted like rippling water.
A well-dressed man with black-rimmed glasses appeared before them without warning.
He was still standing on tiptoe, neck craned, as if earnestly watching some scenery outside the city.
"Hm?"
At first, the man clearly had not realized his situation.
Only when the sound of frost freezing nearby, mixed with the violent aftershock of Mira smashing the ground, tore through his eardrums did he return to himself in a daze.
"This is… the battle near Lyon? Wait, why did I suddenly appear inside the city?"
"Because I transferred you here, Rustyrose."
Shane looked at that somewhat familiar face and called out his name at once.
This was no nameless nobody. He was one of the Seven Kin of Purgatory under Hades, someone Shane had briefly met four years ago in the Nirvana forest.
Hearing that familiar voice, Rustyrose's pupils shrank sharply. He turned and saw Shane standing before him.
"Azure… Azure Fall? You're actually still alive?"
He subconsciously took half a step back, his face full of horror. "You did this? How is that possible…"
Unlike the Fairy Tail members who knew the inside story behind Shane's sleep—
in the outside world's understanding, the rising star known as Azure Fall had either hidden his name and withdrawn from the world of mages, or, as Grimoire Heart had firmly believed, had died long ago under Ankhseram's curse.
What made Rustyrose's blood run cold even more was that Shane had moved him without alerting him at all. A method that couldn't even be detected through magic fluctuations was even more incomprehensible than four years ago.
"Is there any need to be that surprised? Or were you sewer rats who can't stand the light hoping that badly for me to be dead?"
Shane casually put away the obsidian mirror.
Rustyrose's appearance undoubtedly fully confirmed the accuracy of Ultear's intelligence.
Grimoire Heart had indeed set its sights on this border city, intending to use the lives of everyone in the city to forge the key to unseal Zeref.
That was something Shane absolutely would not allow.
Not to mention, the Zeref they worshiped like a god and searched for across the world had never, from beginning to end, been trapped by any so-called seal at all.