Unlike the other battlefields, which had already reached a fever pitch—or even ended outright—this more remote patch of forest carried a strange, eerie stillness.
Hoteye and Jellal stood facing each other a few steps apart, both of them unnaturally calm.
"I heard your Heavenly Body Magic was originally taught to you by the Master himself?"
Hoteye pressed his hands together, a trace of curiosity in his voice.
"If you once received that kind of favor from him, then why would you choose to stand against us? That's not exactly a profitable deal."
"A favor?"
Jellal let out a cold laugh.
"A favor? I was kidnapped by Brain's people and dragged to the Tower of Paradise as forced labor, tortured half to death… and you expect me to be grateful to that bastard?"
As he spoke, magic quietly gathered in his palm, while his eyes sized up the man across from him.
For some reason, looking at Hoteye's oddly distinctive square face, he felt a strange sense of familiarity.
"So what?"
Hoteye shook his head dismissively.
"It wasn't just you who came from the Tower of Paradise. Every one of us in the Oración Seis was handpicked by the Master from other towers as well. We were all 'seeds.'"
"You too?" Jellal's pupils contracted.
He did know that after Shane had exposed the R-System, the Council had moved quickly to destroy the other hidden towers across the continent.
So these exceptionally talented people in front of him were all tower survivors too?
But instead of creating any sense of kinship, that realization only made the fire in his chest burn hotter.
"If you were victims too…" Jellal gritted his teeth, memories flashing through his mind—friends worked to death, families torn apart beyond repair.
"If you knew what kind of crimes Brain committed, and you still chose to follow him…"
"Then you really are evil."
The instant the words fell, Jellal thrust his right hand into the air.
In the daylight forest, seven radiant stars tore across the sky, tracing the cold pattern of the Big Dipper overhead.
"Grand Chariot!"
Faced with someone from the same hell he came from who had willingly sunk into darkness, Jellal held nothing back.
The falling starlight crashed down like real meteors, carrying devastating force.
"What do you know?!"
Faced with the world-ending brilliance overhead, Hoteye's eyes flew wide.
That unique "Heaven's Eye" of his flared with strange light, instantly seeing through the structure and impact points of the spell.
"Precisely because I went through that hell… I have to follow the Master!"
He dropped into a crouch and slammed both hands against the ground.
The earth beneath him instantly softened like a swamp, swallowing his whole body into the dirt like a giant cocoon and dragging him underground.
Boom boom boom boom boom—!!!
The starlight smashed into the ground, sending shattered stone and slush exploding into the air.
When the dust cleared, only a deep, charred crater remained. Hoteye was nowhere to be seen.
Jellal's eyes turned cold. Magic gathered at his fingertips again.
"Hexagram."
Gold beams shot out like swords, blasting the surrounding ground over and over in an attempt to force his opponent out.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
At that exact moment, the earth around him came alive, rising in violent jagged spikes from all directions.
From deep below the ground came Hoteye's muffled, heavy voice:
"To find my little brother, every sacrifice I made and every evil I committed was necessary!"
"Fiore is too big. If I wanted to find one person in that endless sea of people, I needed mountains of money and a huge network. And the only way to get that… was to follow the Master. To become one of the Oración Seis."
His brother?
Jellal's movements stopped for the briefest instant.
A spark went off in his mind, and at last that square face matched up with someone from memory.
"An opening!"
Sensing Jellal's hesitation, Hoteye seized the chance without mercy. A giant stone slab came crashing down like a mountain.
"Meteor!"
Jellal snapped back to himself instantly. Gold magic exploded around him, and his body blurred into a streak of light, slipping through the narrowing gap between the falling boulders.
"So that's it…"
Hovering in the air, he steadied himself and shouted down, "Your lost little brother… his name wouldn't happen to be Wally Buchanan, would it?"
The violent movement of the earth stopped dead.
The next moment, all the soil and stone that had been moving under Hoteye's control lost their force and collapsed uselessly to the ground.
"..."
Hoteye slowly rose out of the loosened earth, his face frozen with disbelief.
"That's my brother's name…" His voice trembled. "How… how do you know that?!"
"Wally is one of my important comrades."
Jellal looked at him, his voice dropping.
"I lived beside him day after day. We escaped that tower together. How could I not know about him?"
"Y-you mean… Wally was taken to the Tower of Paradise too?!"
Hoteye staggered back two steps like his strength had been ripped out of him.
He had never imagined that the brother he had spent all these years desperately searching for had suffered in another man-made hell, just like he had.
"Then… what about him now? Is he alive?"
He lunged forward, staring at Jellal with naked desperation.
"He's free now. And he's living far better than you are."
Jellal answered coldly.
"So that's how it is… that's how it is…"
Hearing that his brother was alive and safe, Hoteye's hands—still locked in his spellcasting posture—fell limply to his sides.
Jellal thought, for just a moment, that the man might finally give up now that he knew his family had survived.
Instead, a far more violent surge of magic exploded off him.
Jellal frowned and barked, "Don't you understand yet? From the beginning, you were one of Brain's victims!"
"You and your brother were separated because of Brain's ambitions. Even after learning the truth, you still choose to follow him?"
"No."
Hoteye shook his head. For once, those little eyes that usually only cared about money were filled with confusion.
"I don't know how much of what you just said is true and how much is false."
"But I absolutely won't let anyone use my brother against me!"
"So I'll ask the Master myself! I'll make him tell me the truth with his own mouth!"
With that, he suddenly turned.
"Come with me! The Master should be almost done breaking Nirvana's seal by now!"
Not far away, Angel—who was still directing her spirits against Erza—went pale.
"Hoteye! Are you betraying us?!"
But her cry was immediately drowned out by a terrifying rumble from deep underground.
RUMBLE—!!!
The entire forest floor began to shake violently.
Then—
an impossibly thick, blinding white pillar of light exploded out of the earth in the distance, tearing straight through the sky with suffocating force.
Around that holy white light, countless ribbons of solid black magic coiled and lashed like giant serpents.
Black and white. Sacred and evil. Two utterly opposite forms of power clashed and twisted together in the air.
"Nirvana… that's Nirvana! The Master did it!"
The shock and fury on Angel's face instantly turned into ecstatic joy.
"The ancient super magic Nirvana has finally been unsealed!"
She threw her head up toward the carpet hovering overhead.
"Midnight! What are you waiting for? The Master's succeeded, so move already!"
On the other side, Shane lowered his eyes and looked at Cobra writhing in agony on the ground.
Since Cobra was still a rare Dragon Slayer, and might be useful later, Shane ultimately didn't drive the dagger down into him.
He lifted his gaze past the treetops toward the massive black-and-white beam in the distance, then glanced at Midnight, who still hadn't moved.
"If you love sleeping that much, then I won't disturb your sweet dreams."
Shane's voice rang out across the battlefield.
"It looks like the real main course is getting impatient over there."
He turned his head and shouted toward Ultear, who had just finished off her opponent, and Jellal, who was now pursuing Hoteye.
"Ultear! Jellal! Leave this sleeping god to you two and pin him down. I'm heading over there first!"
With that, the tattered black cloak vanished from his body, and those black dragon wings burst out from his back once more.
"Ahh… you're going to interfere with Father, then?"
At that moment, a lazy, hoarse voice drifted down from above, carrying a dangerous edge.
Midnight had opened his eyes at some point.
Still lying there without changing position, he lifted one hand lazily and made a twisting motion at the empty air in Shane's direction.
"I only wanted to sleep in peace. Why can't anyone just leave me alone for a little while?"
"Hm?"
Shane's pupils shrank.
His instincts screamed. From that offhand little twist, he actually sensed real danger.
Just as Shane was about to force his wings wide and veer away—
"Just fly straight ahead!"
Jellal's voice cut through the air, calm and completely certain.
"Meteor!"
With a roar, a streak of brilliant gold shot up from below at impossible speed, slamming directly toward Midnight's carpet!
"Tch."
Faced with a charge that looked almost suicidal, even someone as arrogant as Midnight had to frown.
He was forced to pull his hand back and send the carpet gliding away to avoid the impact.
"Haa…"
The weird distortion around Shane vanished instantly.
He steadied himself in the air and beat his broad black wings once.
"Reliable as ever."
He laughed lightly, then waved down at Midnight from above with open mockery.
"Try not to complain about being outnumbered. After all… you were the one who chose to sit there and let your comrades hang."
Then, giving him no chance to respond, Shane let the smile vanish from his face, pushed his speed to the limit, and shot straight toward the strange black-and-white pillar of light.
~~~
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