The children, writhing with resentment, were cut apart by flashes of steel. The wailing, pleading ones were frozen solid by ice. The miserable, despairing ones were torn to pieces by lightning.
Once no one's heart wavered anymore, once no one's blade hesitated—
the hellscape before them, enough to shatter an ordinary person's mind, dimmed rapidly like a fire that had run out of fuel.
One after another, those tangible forms born from pain and hatred dissolved into black light.
The killer gradually realized the truth.
There was no fighting it.
The roiling fog stopped spreading, and the shrill crying receded into the darkness like a retreating tide.
Bzz—
With one final low hum in the air, the remaining children drew inward like phantoms converging toward a single point.
In the middle of the street, only that lone, tiny white-haired girl remained once more.
"She… changed back?"
Natsu blurted out, the flames dancing in his hand dimming a little on instinct.
This exam had only lasted a few hours so far, but he had already seen more than he had in the entire past year.
"There's nothing to be happy about."
Laxus stayed on full alert, the lightning around him not weakening in the slightest.
"All of you, stay sharp!"
Being forced to go all-out against an enemy that looked like a child, even knowing it was only a projection, left him in an extremely foul mood.
Deep down, he cursed: That bastard Shane. He really came up with this disgusting exam.
At this point, the killer was almost completely out of magic.
Under everyone's watchful gaze, she staggered forward.
One step. Then another.
Inside that utterly broken mind of hers, everything was strangely calm now.
The urge to kill was gone. So was the hatred for the world.
At the very end, the only thing left inside that battered shell was one pure, primal thought—
to find her mother.
To return… to that warm womb.
So her hollow blue eyes slowly moved, passed over Ur—the one who had rejected her so firmly—
then drifted between Erza and Mira.
And in the end, perhaps because of a kind of inferiority—because some inhuman thing like herself didn't deserve the love of a normal person—
her gaze stopped on the silver-haired girl whose body radiated a similar kind of madness.
"Mommy…"
"Mommy…"
With a childish wail that made the skin crawl, the killer's frail body tipped backward and sank into the remaining thin fog once again.
Flash!
When she reappeared, she was already behind Mira, both bloodstained daggers raised high, glinting with a sinister cold light.
"Idiot."
Mira sneered.
The instant the other one vanished, every muscle in her body had already gone taut.
"You think a cheap sneak attack like that would work on me?!"
With one powerful beat of her demon wings, Mira shot sideways like a bolt of lightning, instantly opening more than ten meters of distance.
But when the killer emerged from the fog, she didn't even look at the distance Mira had created.
She simply raised her daggers high and slashed down across the empty air between them.
"Maria the Ripper!!"
The moment she cried out the Noble Phantasm's name,
a bizarre wave of magic ignored the distance between them and instantly locked onto Mira.
"Mira! Watch out!!"
Ur's expression changed immediately. Her battle instincts told her exactly how dangerous this was, and she shouted at once:
"Don't be fooled by the daggers! It's probably a long-range attack that ignores distance!"
But it was too late.
Mira was still confused by the attack on empty space when an invisible force locked her in place, and a ripping pain exploded through her organs.
At the very last second—
"Flowing Water: Flash Step!"
A razor-sharp crimson line cut into the battlefield.
Erza's eyes held no hesitation at all. Acting entirely on battle instinct honed through endless repetition, she pushed off the ground and became a stream of flowing water, sword and body moving as one.
One strike. Faster than the attack itself.
Clang—!
A sharp metallic scrape and the roar of a magical detonation exploded at the same time.
The fog around them, thick enough to feel solid, was split wide open by that single unstoppable slash, leaving a huge gash in the mist as it gradually began to thin.
"Yes! She interrupted it!"
Gray wiped cold sweat off his forehead and shouted in relief.
"No…"
But at the center of the collision, Erza silently shook her head.
The wrist holding Flowing Water was trembling slightly, and the blade was slowly moving away from the killer's thin, fragile neck.
This time, unlike the merciless decisiveness she had shown against those phantom children before—
in the very last moment, after shattering the attack, Erza had forcibly twisted her wrist and pulled the strike at the instant before the blade would have cut through the girl's throat.
No one understood better than Erza how foolish that choice had been.
If the killer had ignored everything and forced the attack through in retaliation, Erza would have taken the backlash head-on. If it didn't kill her, it would have badly wounded her.
She knew the consequences perfectly well, and still made that choice with full awareness.
But the agonizing pain she had expected never came.
That was what confused Erza more than anything.
"Why… did you stop?"
She lowered her sword and looked at the child standing right in front of her, the one who had completely abandoned even the posture of resistance.
Her voice was quiet.
"Because…"
At some point, the daggers in the killer's hands had already dissolved into motes of light.
For the first time, something called tears ran down that dirt-streaked little face.
"Because… you're very gentle."
"Just like… Mommy…"
With a soft sob like a wind chime breaking apart, the killer's body began dissolving into the air like shattered foam.
Through that collapsing shell, they could just barely make out countless phantom children curled up inside.
As if, at last, they had found the warmth and peace they had always longed for. It was false, perhaps—but at least in the final instant before vanishing, they looked utterly calm.
"…" Erza stood there in a daze, no longer sure what expression she was wearing.
"You're the first… person who's ever called me gentle."
"Even though I… I'm not… at all…"
These hands of hers, covered in sword calluses, had only ever swung weapons. Only ever brought destruction.
What was it that child had seen through the cold steel, when she called her gentle?
Erza couldn't stop wondering.
Just as she stood there staring at the hand holding her sword, Ur walked over and lightly patted her on the shoulder.
"At least in the end… I think she really did feel warmth."
"Even if it was only for a moment… she was still saved, just a little, from that endless pain."
"Really?" Erza asked blankly. She honestly didn't know whether what she had done just now in battle had been right or wrong.
"Of course it's true."
Looking at the lost expression on the girl's face, Ur couldn't help smiling.
"And honestly… you might end up being even more suited to being a mother than I am someday."
"M-m-m-mother?!"
Whatever kind of image that serious-minded girl had just imagined, it hit her hard.
The sadness vanished instantly, and Erza's face went bright red. Steam practically rose from the top of her head, and even her words got tangled up:
"T-that kind of thing is way too early!!"
"Tch…"
Not far away, Mira dismissed her Take Over and turned her head aside awkwardly, biting down hard on her lower lip.
"So I got saved by that violent woman…"
Her feelings were complicated.
Not only had she failed to settle things with Erza in this exam, she now owed her a favor this huge.
How was she supposed to fight her properly after this?
And in the distance, Laxus stood there with a cold face, not saying a word, no one knew what he was thinking.
Meanwhile, on the other side—
as the magical fog completely dispersed, the Department of Law squad observing from afar also witnessed the final scene.
"I see…"
The gentleman in front adjusted his monocle, a note of realization in his voice.
"So it was a collection of resentment from countless children in London who were either abandoned after being born or aborted before they could be born."
"That explains how it managed to develop a proto–Noble Phantasm of that level."
"But…"
"That's all it was."
"Overuse of magic. Collapse of self-awareness. In the end, it still vanished."
Looking at that expressionless face, Shane made a quiet judgment in his heart.
"The mages of this world really are different from the ones in Fiore… they're cold."
He didn't know whether it was just the Clock Tower, or if the entire supernatural side of this world shared that same set of values.
Then, as if sensing Shane's stare, the gentleman turned to him and said flatly:
"The spirit entity that just vanished should have been the one London has recently come to fear—the one called Jack the Ripper."
"To witness this farce before being sealed away, I suppose you can count yourse—"
"Idiot!!"
Before he could finish, Shane's face changed drastically, and he barked out a furious shout that cut him off:
"Don't say that name!!"
"What do you mean?"
The gentleman frowned, not understanding why Shane had suddenly lost it.
But it was too late.
Boom—!
The instant the core true name sustaining the illusion—Jack the Ripper—was known to Shane,
everything around them began to blur and run like ink dropped into water.
The solid red-brick walls softened. The stars in the sky began to fall. The entire city of London started collapsing and vanishing at visible speed.
"What did you do?!"
The gentleman's expression changed in shock as he looked around at the crumbling world.
He could already sense the magical signatures of the Sealing Designation Enforcement Department only a few streets away.
They had only been one step away!
He had never expected that this boy, who had seemed so cooperative the whole time, would suddenly make his move at a moment like this!
"Idiot! I'm the one who should be irritated here!!"
Shane's face darkened. He practically wanted to grind this loudmouthed magus into the pavement.
He had honestly been planning to go along with them, take the chance to see the so-called Clock Tower from the inside, investigate the deeper workings of this world, and gather as much information as possible.
But now that the true name had been exposed, the rules holding the illusion together had reached their endpoint. It was too late for any of that.
There was no telling whether he'd ever get this lucky again and run into an illusion where he could directly interact with people and objects like this.
"Damn it… what a loss."
He couldn't be bothered with these self-important magi anymore. He launched himself toward Erza and the others, intending to regroup and leave.
"You're not escaping!!"
Seeing Shane move, the gentleman completely lost his composure.
He thrust out his gloved hand and began chanting toward Shane's back:
"I am the order…"
"In my presence, you will be destroyed."
"You will be defeated securely!"
With less than two seconds of rapid chanting, the atmosphere around them began to violently distort.
The air around Shane ignited instantly.
Then, like a mirage rising from shaking ground, a blinding sea of blue flames appeared out of nowhere and swallowed him whole.
It was fire generated purely from magical energy, with a core temperature exceeding one thousand degrees Celsius.
Any carbon-based lifeform that touched it, even briefly, would melt like butter and sublimate straight into vapor.
In the gentleman's mind, no matter how high the silver-haired boy's magical resistance was, there was no way he could walk away unharmed from such pure thermal destruction.
"You're using fire on me?"
Looking at the blue flames surrounding him, Shane blinked, then almost laughed.
He was just about to do something—
"Slurp!!"
"That smells amazing!!"
A voice full of frantic excitement rang out from not far away.
Having just finished fighting, Natsu had caught sight of the blue flames, his eyes going wide as he rushed over, sniffing eagerly.
Whoosh—!
Like a whale sucking in the sea, he inhaled the violent blue fire whole.
All of it vanished into his stomach in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, the sea of flames was gone without a trace.
All that remained was Natsu, patting his swollen belly with a deeply satisfied expression.
"Idiot!!"
Shane's eyelid twitched violently, and he shouted at once:
"That was fire made of magecraft! It's not that easy to digest!"
"BUUURP—"
Natsu's only reply was an enormous belch, followed by a puff of blue smoke from his mouth.
"…" Shane rubbed his brow hard.
"Forget it. The illusion's about to end anyway, and everything here is going to disappear. Hopefully it won't kill him."
Meanwhile, the squad leader who had cast the spell had gone completely still, like a wooden post.
It wasn't even because Natsu had casually nullified his magecraft.
It was because Natsu's ridiculous action had finally shifted his focus away from Shane, and he had realized something so impossible it bordered on terrifying.
Why… did these people have no visible magical crest or formal lineage of magecraft, and yet use magic so freely and so naturally, without even chanting?
Why could even that pink-haired boy, who looked like a complete idiot, cast something with that much power?
And what was with the utterly ridiculous amount of magical energy all of them possessed?
The moment the first question appeared, countless more followed, each one violating every basic principle of magecraft.
"No. We absolutely cannot let them leave!"
"Something this unknown… we have to secure all of them!!"
"No one is leaving!!"
He stepped forward and shouted, and his subordinates moved with him, attempting to forcibly stop them.
However—
"Ah… what a shame."
Shane glanced back at him and shrugged, a trace of pity in his eyes.
"I just hope we get to meet again… at the right time."
The boy's figure began to grow distant and blur, along with the surrounding streets.
"Stop playing games and check the barrier, find—"
The leader frowned and clenched his raised hand.
But no solid sensation came back from his fingers.
His vision passed cleanly through the palm of his own hand.
Through that hand—which should still have been covered by a white glove—he could clearly see the mottled red-brick wall beyond, and the distant back of the retreating boy.
What… was that?
Then came a strange feeling of weightlessness.
He looked down.
His polished shoes, his sharp trousers, his elegant cane…
all of it was coming apart like dust caught in the wind, breaking into countless specks of light and floating upward.
In his final moments of sight, the pink-haired boy seemed to still be waving at him, while the black-haired one turned away in silence.
It wasn't the world that was becoming unreal.
The only thing turning transparent… was his own hand, the hand that had tried to grasp reality.
And the questions in his heart would likely never be answered.
Darkness swallowed everything.
~~~
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