"Shane, Ultear, where did you two just go?"
A clear voice cut through the noise around them.
Erza had finally managed to squeeze her way out of the crowd. Wearing a bright smile, she jogged over toward the two of them in the corner.
Ultear, who just moments ago had been completely overwhelming Gray with sheer force of presence, now looked noticeably stiff.
Maybe it was guilt over secretly kissing Shane behind the red-haired girl's back, but for once, she looked awkward.
Turning her head aside, Ultear let her gaze wander, stubbornly avoiding Erza's bright, open eyes.
"We just had something to talk about…"
"I see."
Thick-skinned as ever, Erza didn't suspect a thing. She simply moved closer in her usual warm, natural way.
"Tia, I became an S-Class Mage!"
"Mhm. I know."
"Ur-senpai is drunk. Do you want me to help bring her home later?"
"No need. I can handle it myself."
"Then Tia, why don't you just join the guild too!" Erza suggested eagerly.
"I'll… think about it later."
Faced with such utterly sincere enthusiasm, Ultear was steadily losing ground.
Watching from the side, Shane nearly laughed out loud.
So this woman did know how to feel embarrassed? Where had all that swagger gone when she was bullying Gray just now?
Seemingly noticing the schadenfreude on Shane's face, Ultear shot him a glare sharp as a knife, clearly saying with her eyes, Help me out already.
If Ultear hadn't genuinely needed to stay close to observe Ur's condition, Shane would absolutely have enjoyed watching her rare moment of embarrassment for a while longer.
He gave a small cough and pointed toward the bar.
"Erza, I think you should stop worrying about us for now. If you don't let Ultear take Ur-senpai away soon, Mira's probably going to get strangled to death."
Following the direction of his finger, Erza looked over.
Sure enough, the utterly plastered Ur was clinging to Mira like a koala, refusing to let go.
While drunkenly going wild, she had buried her face in the girl's silver hair and was rubbing against it like crazy, leaving Mira struggling with a dead-inside expression.
"You're right, we really can't let Ur-senpai keep drinking!"
Erza immediately turned serious.
With Erza's attention finally diverted, Ultear looked like she had been granted a pardon.
She hurried over, pried her embarrassing mother off Mira, and escaped the guild as fast as if fleeing a disaster.
Once Ultear was safely gone, Shane stayed behind in the hall and continued celebrating properly with Erza, the star of the evening, until late into the night.
…
…
The noise finally faded.
Cold moonlight filtered through the window lattice, casting pale, frosty light across the floor.
Freshly washed, Shane lay flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling hidden in darkness, his eyes slightly narrowed.
Thinking back to that earlier incident, a thread of doubt lingered in his mind.
Why was it that, under the gaze of the gods, only Ultear had experienced that abyss-like omen of dread, while he himself felt nothing at all?
Logically speaking, as the initiator of the whole plan, the causality tied to him should have been greater than Ultear's, not less.
Shane calmed himself and carefully sorted through all of his conditions again. It didn't take long before he understood.
"It's because I've stacked too many mental buffs on myself…"
Muramasa's Heart Flame, capable of burning away all distracting thoughts.
Lancer's Eternal Arms Mastery, a state of perfect calm forged through endless tempering.
And now, on top of that, the newly acquired Mental Pollution.
All three of them possessed extremely powerful defenses against abnormal mental influence.
"My guess is that whenever I release a class card, those abilities are automatically judging the ominous signs before a divine curse descends as some kind of negative mental interference… and then forcibly blocking it."
Shane murmured his conclusion softly.
Once he understood that much, he stopped dwelling on it.
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and let his mind sink inward. In the dark sea of his consciousness, a golden cup floated quietly, glowing faintly.
Shane thought for a moment.
Now that Zeref had laid everything bare, there was no point hesitating anymore. If this curse truly couldn't be undone by human magic, and the danger was already so close at hand…
then there was no reason to keep holding back.
With a thought, the golden cup he had agonized over for so long materialized in his hand in the real world.
Feeling the warm metallic touch of it against his palm, Shane grew solemn and made his wish with full sincerity:
"My wish is… to completely erase the divine curse and all of its effects on myself and the people around me!"
The moment the words fell, the miracle resonated.
The intricate ancient patterns on the cup's surface lit up instantly, erupting in brilliant radiance.
Then the solid body of the cup seemed to soften under some invisible heat, melting like golden glass into a mass of dazzling, viscous liquid light.
That liquid glow, carrying a strangely comforting warmth, flowed along the lines of his palm and seeped directly into his skin without resistance.
Bzzz—
A violent wave of dizziness hit his mind.
Before his eyes, the familiar furniture of the bedroom twisted and ran like watercolor paint bleeding under water.
In a blink, Shane's consciousness was dragged into a vast, endless dimension.
There was no gravity here. No boundary.
All around him floated enormous globes of light, like giant stars suspended in nothingness.
Within this place, he could sense hundreds—perhaps thousands—of completely different yet equally vast and exalted presences.
They came from every divine system and epic sung by humanity across the ages.
Some were holy. Some wild. Some violent.
But every last one of them radiated overwhelming pressure powerful enough to stop breath itself.
The sea of stars formed by these divine Heroic Spirit auras was so dazzling that it made Shane's very consciousness tremble.
"So this is… the Golden Cup's power?"
Then, as if sensing the strength of his wish, the once-still sea of stars rippled.
Dozens of light-orbs, as if drawn by some invisible force, moved toward Shane on their own, each gleaming with a quiet response.
"So it's… letting me choose for myself?"
Shane muttered in stunned wonder.
"There are actually this many Heroic Spirits capable of solving my current problem?"
If he was going to resist a curse cast down by a god, then naturally he needed a power fierce enough to crush divine authority head-on.
Taking into account how serious the problem was, Shane ignored the gentler, more peaceful lights.
Instead, he fixed his gaze decisively on the nearest—and also the most terrifyingly immense—light before him.
"You're the one."
The instant his consciousness touched it—
Crackle! Boom!!!
A deafening thunderclap exploded inside his mind.
Countless blinding streaks of violet-gold lightning, like furious dragons tearing open the void, instantly filled his entire vision.
This was no sight the mortal world could ever behold.
Every bolt of lightning seemed to carry densely packed destructive authority, weaving and colliding into a roaring ocean of thunder, turning the blackness of his consciousness into a brutal white day.
At the heart of this heavenly force, Shane felt as insignificant as a speck of dust in a storm, as though he could be obliterated and evaporated by this sea of thunder at any moment.
And yet, standing in the middle of it, Shane felt not fear, but joy.
"Such pure, terrifying lightning… could it be a thunder god?"
Across the many mythic systems known to humanity—
whether it was Thor of the Norse, Zeus of the Greeks, or the thunder deities of the East—the role of the thunder god shared a common nature:
they almost always embodied both destruction and renewal.
On one hand, lightning symbolized heavenly punishment, supreme authority, war's absolute destructive power, and merciless judgment against evil and defiance.
On the other hand, thunder brought rain, and so it also symbolized the breaking of old stagnation, bringing life and hope.
In short, there was only one way to describe it:
immense authority, and overwhelming power.
If he could borrow the power of a god on that level, then severing the curse on him and Ultear would be effortless.
Thinking that, the tension in Shane's mind eased a little.
Then the endless lightning parted left and right, creating a path.
Instinctively, Shane raised his eyes.
At the end of that path sat a being high above all else.
It was a "person" whose face was veiled in divine radiance, whose gaze looked down upon all things, and whose form could not truly be described in any human language.
Seated atop the clouds, the being rode a colossal white elephant the size of a mountain.
That elephant was flawlessly white, like a cloud unstained by dust, with four sharp tusks and seven thick trunks, like a living mythic totem.
Sensing the presence of an intruder, the god seated on that white elephant turned its head slightly.
Those eyes, full of the majesty of thunder, as if they could pierce through every sin in existence, fell indifferently upon Shane.
The instant that gaze locked onto him, Shane felt all the blood in his body freeze, as though his soul had been completely seen through.
He was still in the middle of thinking about what form the miracle might take, how exactly his wish would be granted…
But the god offered no words.
It simply raised one arm and, with calm inevitability, brought down the vajra in its hand toward Shane.
BOOM!!!
A pillar of divine thunder, enough to split the soul apart, came crashing down.
His vision turned into a field of pure white.
Shane didn't even have time to register shock. His consciousness was swallowed completely by the endless light and pain, and fell into dead blackness.
…
He didn't know how long he drifted in the darkness.
But when Shane's consciousness finally fought its way back through the haze and his heavy eyelids slowly opened—
the bright light of morning was already spilling in broad swathes across the bedsheets.
It was fully daylight.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 120 Chapters Ahead of Others!