Above the clouds.
Shane hovered in midair and glanced back at the endless snowy wilderness behind him, unable to keep a trace of worry from rising in his heart.
"They should be able to keep up… right?"
Of course, he hadn't been flying anywhere near full speed just now.
If he had really let Lancer's absurdly unreasonable mobility loose, then in a single instant he would have vanished completely from everyone's sight.
And the exam would have been impossible to continue.
"Whatever, this should do."
Shane looked down at the towering snow-covered mountain below.
There wasn't a soul in sight here. This was the very place where he had first summoned Assassin.
As the "foundation" for the exam, it couldn't have been more suitable.
"Haa…"
He folded in his wings and landed steadily on a jutting boulder, then sat down cross-legged.
Figuring it would still take the others some time to arrive, Shane rested his chin on one hand in boredom, his thoughts beginning to circle around the newly acquired "golden cup."
How to maximize the value of this miracle was something he had been thinking about constantly lately.
Staring into the white distance, Shane sank into thought.
"Should I just make a straightforward wish to kill the Black Dragon? Or wish to become invincible?"
Those kinds of wishes sounded tempting, but the cup's power was, after all, "limited."
Rather than making some grand, vague wish that would most likely be fulfilled only in a discounted, compromised way, it made more sense to set a clear and practical goal.
For example… use the cup to call forth a god willing to bestow a specific blessing?
A being like all-powerful Athena, or the generous King of Heaven, Indra…
There were countless legends where those figures cast their shadow by granting blessings and shaping epics.
"But…"
Shane frowned again, feeling that using something this precious on nothing more than a straightforward increase in strength would be a waste.
After all, strength itself was something he could continue building up by steadily deciphering the true names of Heroic Spirits on his own.
"Wait. I could also just use the cup to directly force out a Heroic Spirit's true name."
He slapped his thigh, feeling like he'd just found a new angle.
The altered Heroic Spirits in the Book of Heroes were far too abstract.
The stronger the existence, the more bizarre their settings became, to the point that they barely respected history or legend at all.
If he ever truly ran out of options, then this might actually be a solution.
The only flaw was that… it would be far too wasteful.
After all, this miracle was the reward from completing a long, tedious Long Chain Trial.
"I should keep it for now."
After thinking it through again and again, Shane ultimately decided to preserve the wish for the time being, just in case he needed it at a truly critical moment.
Just then, at last, something stirred in the distant sky.
Whoosh—
Two streaks of light cut through the air and crashed down onto the snow one after the other, kicking up clouds of powder.
As expected, the first to arrive were Mira and Erza.
"Shane?"
The moment they landed, both of them looked around at the endless white wasteland with puzzled expressions.
"Didn't you say… the exam location was in a city?"
Mira frowned, her tone carrying a trace of annoyance at being toyed with.
"Why drag us out to this dead snow mountain? Don't tell me the exam is to build a snowman."
Still, looking at Shane sitting calmly on the boulder, clearly waiting for the rest to arrive before speaking, the two girls could only suppress their questions for the moment.
A little later—
Rumble…
Accompanied by low thunder, Laxus arrived with a black look on his face.
Not long after that, Ur came gliding in elegantly atop an ice path.
"Haa… young people really do move fast these days."
Ur lightly brushed the snow from her shoulder. Unlike the others, who had fallen silent, Ur's straightforward nature made her ask directly:
"So, Shane, this is the exam site you picked?"
"It doesn't really look like the 'big city' you described. Or is there some ancient ruin buried under all this snow?"
"Mm…"
Shane swept his gaze over the four S-Class candidates who had arrived. Natsu and Gray were still nowhere to be seen, but that didn't matter.
"It doesn't look different?"
He rose slowly to his feet, not answering Ur directly as he spoke.
"Senpai, why not take a closer look around?"
Before the words had even settled, Shane brought his hands together in a light clap.
Clap.
The clear sound rang across the empty snowfield.
At the same time, deep in his consciousness, he tore away the prepared golden bookmark in one sharp motion!
Dong—
A dull, distant bell tolled without warning in everyone's ears.
And then, the world… changed.
The clear, bright daytime sky above was swallowed instantly by a heavy, oppressive black night.
The snowflakes drifting through the air froze, twisted, and then transformed into a rolling sea of gray fog thick with the choking stink of coal smoke.
Rumble—
The earth trembled.
Victorian red-brick buildings erupted from the ground one after another like a madly growing forest of steel, instantly covering the once-barren snow mountain.
In the span of a single breath, the world of icy winds and desolate snow vanished completely.
In its place stood a blurred, gloomy, yet dazzlingly prosperous industrial metropolis.
The group found themselves standing dumbly in the middle of a broad street.
All around them flowed a tide of people—gentlemen in heavy coats, women carrying wicker baskets, paperboys waving newspapers along the roadside…
Dim gas lamps flickered in the fog, stretching the shadows of passersby long and thin.
The air reeked of a foul mixture of coal smoke, damp mist, and some underlying scent of rot.
"W-where… is this?"
Looking at the architecture they had never seen before, everyone was utterly stunned.
Those enormous smokestacks belching black smoke, those dense rows of buildings, that overwhelming sense of an entirely different age compared to the Kingdom of Fiore…
Even the royal capital, Crocus, would have looked thin and pale next to this.
"This is still Fiore? Not just the location—even the time and temperature changed?"
Mira's eyes widened. She even started wondering whether she had fallen into some kind of illusion.
"Teleportation magic? Or some massive-scale illusion?"
Ur wore the same shocked expression Ivan once had, voicing the same question.
"It's that thing from before…"
Erza's heart stirred as she remembered the eerie black lake from earlier.
Was this that same power of Shane's—the ability to manifest real places?!
Crack!
Just then, the sharp snap of a whip shattered everyone's stunned silence.
"Damn it, move! Are you trying to die?!"
A two-wheeled carriage came to a screeching halt right behind them, its driver leaping to his feet and cursing furiously as he brandished the whip.
That raw, vivid anger only deepened the realism of the scene.
And yet, no one paid any attention to his shouting.
They were all too busy staring at everything around them.
"This isn't an illusion… it's physical."
Laxus frowned and pressed lightly with one foot.
Crack.
The hard paving stones beneath him shattered instantly, spiderweb cracks racing outward as dirt scattered away.
That sensation, that feedback… there was no way an ordinary illusion could reproduce this.
His father, Ivan, had used illusion magic. Laxus knew enough about it to understand.
A true illusion, no matter how realistic, could never perfectly reproduce the structure of matter itself to this degree.
"A monster!!"
The coachman, who had just been shouting abuse, saw that and nearly had his eyes pop out. He frantically whipped the horses, swerving in panic as he fled around the group of strange people.
"What exactly did Shane do…?"
Faced with everyone's uncertain, suspicious stares, Shane didn't bother explaining much.
He lightly tapped the ground with the tip of his foot, and his body shot upward like a swallow, several steps carrying him onto the top of a nearby clocktower.
"Everyone."
Looking down from above at this city wrapped in fog and sin, Shane lifted one hand and pointed toward the densest shadow in the east.
"Over there, there should be a 'murderer' preparing to begin its hunt."
"Your exam task is simple—"
"Find it."
"And then… defeat it, or kill it."
"A murderer?"
Mira blinked, sounding doubtful.
"That's it? Catching some ordinary criminal?"
For an S-Class mage exam, wasn't that far too easy?
No matter how skilled the murderer was, it was still just a criminal. Could it really be harder than hunting demons?
"Any clues?"
Unlike Mira's dismissive tone, Erza was clearly much more cautious.
She raised her head and asked, "A name? Appearance? Distinguishing features? Or a pattern in the crimes?"
"Unfortunately."
Shane shrugged and spread his hands.
"I don't know its height, its face, whether it's male or female, or even whether it's human or not."
"If I had to give you a clue…"
He thought for a moment, then smiled in a way that made everyone uneasy.
"I'd say… most of its targets are women struggling to survive through this cruel night."
"..."
The moment they heard that, whatever ease had remained on their faces vanished.
No face, no features, not even a confirmed gender.
To drag a hidden killer out from the shadows in a vast, complex, densely populated unfamiliar city—
it was like searching for a needle in the sea.
~~~
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