Struggling just to lift his head from the floor tiles, Sho glared fiercely up at Ankh.
His face was flushed with a mix of humiliation and suffocation.
"Who do you think you are?!" Sho demanded through gritted teeth, spitting saliva. "How dare you treat me like this! Do you know who we serve?!"
Ankh remained expressionless.
He looked down at the boy with the cold indifference of a god watching an ant. Completely ignoring Sho's childish outburst, Ankh simply shifted his weight, increasing the gravity pressure concentrated under his sole.
CRACK.
"GAAAAH!"
Sho couldn't hold back another agonized, piercing scream as his ribs creaked under the strain.
"Let Sho go! Meow!"
Seeing her companion subdued and in pain, Millianna panicked.
She forgot all about Lucy, who was still tied up nearby, and frantically flung her magical ropes at Ankh.
"Binding Tube!"
The glowing tubes spiraled through the air like snakes, aiming to constrict Ankh's limbs.
But Ankh showed no mercy.
He didn't even turn his head fully. His hand shot out, snatching the magical ropes out of the air with terrifying precision.
He yanked hard, pulling the adorable cat girl off her feet.
He fixed her with a cold stare that seemed to freeze the air in the casino.
"Did I give you permission to move?" Ankh whispered.
Millianna trembled all over her body under that ruthless gaze.
She felt like a mouse caught by a tiger and she was too terrified to utter a word.
Ankh repeated his earlier tactic.
With a flick of his wrist, he whipped the ropes back around, using Millianna's own magic to bind the caster securely.
In seconds, she was trussed up like a dumpling and tossed next to Sho.
Millianna's Binding Tube had a unique property: it could seal the Magic Power of anyone bound by them, preventing them from casting spells.
This ability was impressive against standard mages.
However, it was useless against monsters like Ankh, whose magic power was so dense and vast that it far surpassed the capacity of her seal.
Besides, the magic Ankh used wasn't native to this world's so the ropes couldn't restrain him anyway.
Moreover, Millianna was rather incompetent mage, allowing Ankh to easily use her own magic against her.
It was utterly ridiculous.
"Pathetic," Ankh muttered.
Erza stood nearby, clutching her arm.
She sighed helplessly, looking at the two children—now young adults—glaring at her from the ground with hatred and confusion.
She shook her head, her heart aching.
"Brother..." Erza started, taking a step forward.
Ankh waved his hand, cutting her off without looking back. "Don't worry, Erza. I know what I'm doing. Stay back."
A look of surprise suddenly crossed Sho's dark face.
He stopped writhing for a second.
"Brother?" Sho shouted, confused. "What brother?! Aren't you Ankh Seram? One of the Ten Wizard Saints? Why does Erza-nee call you brother?!"
Ankh, baffled by the boy's stupidity, leaned down and slapped him lightly on the forehead.
"Since you know I'm one of the Ten Wizard Saints, how dare you act so arrogantly in front of me?!" Ankh scoffed.
"Do you have a death wish, kid?"
For some misguided reason, Sho's ego flared up upon hearing this.
He began writhing on the ground again, his eyes bloodshot with fanaticism.
"I don't care about titles!" Sho roared. "I've been trained in the Tower! I'm strong! I'm going to beat you up and prove it to Jellal!"
Ankh, expressionless, dug his pinky into his ear as if bored.
"Beat me up? You?"
Ankh slowly raised his fist.
Dark, purple-black energy swirled around his knuckles as he applied a concentrated burst of Gravity Magic.
"Let's test that theory."
He punched the floor, inches from Sho's ear.
BOOM!!!
A terrifying, earth-shattering explosion erupted.
The shockwave blasted Sho's hair back, making him wonder if his eardrums had been shattered by the sound alone.
Yet despite enduring the torment of the massive sound wave, Sho didn't dare make a sound now.
He was frozen.
His peripheral vision had caught the sight: Ankh's fist had landed mere centimeters beside his head. It had punched a perfectly round, pitch-black crater into the reinforced stone floor—a hole so deep and dark that Sho couldn't see the bottom.
Sho realized with horrifying clarity: 'If that punch had landed on my head... my skull would have been vaporized.'
Seeing Sho finally quiet down, Ankh smiled with satisfaction.
"Ah, that's more like it~" Ankh crooned, patting Sho's terrified face. "Kids should act like kids. Stop yelling all the time. It's annoying."
He pointed at the trembling cat girl. "Look at Millianna—so well-behaved! Be like her."
Millianna, "Meow... meow?"
Sho resentfully shut his mouth, swallowing his fear.
He finally didn't dare to spout nonsense in front of Ankh anymore.
Originally, Jellal had tasked them to capture Erza while avoiding Ankh as much as possible.
Jellal knew Ankh was dangerous.
Their orders were clear: if they couldn't avoid him and were defeated, they were to use Erza's emotions to lure him to the Tower of Heaven, leaving Jellal to handle the monster himself.
But Sho didn't take it seriously at all.
Having seen little of the world and having been abused and imprisoned by the Cult as a child, he ended up with a "frog-in-the-well" perspective.
He thought that just learning a bit of card magic made him invincible.
In reality, Sho's combat skills were pathetically weak.
Just as Ankh was toying with the kid, the atmosphere shifted.
A thick, murderous aura abruptly emerged from the shadows behind Ankh!
"Dark Instant!"
A deep voice boomed.
WOOSH.
The casino hall was once again plunged into total magical darkness.
"Ankh!" Lucy screamed from her bindings.
Yet, Ankh still wore a calm smile on his face.
Standing in the pitch black room, he tilted his head to the side as casually and confidently as if he were stretching his neck.
ZING!
The moment he tilted his head, a red infrared laser shot past where his ear had been a millisecond before.
He effortlessly evaded a sniper shot that would have blown his brains out.
"Too slow," Ankh whispered.
With such an obvious exposure of their killing intent, Ankh could easily handle these two ambushers.
Ankh suddenly reached out into the darkness with his right hand.
He grabbed something solid—a throat.
It was a burly man over six feet tall who had tried to sneak up on him under the cover of the darkness spell.
SLAM!
Ankh lifted the giant man and slammed him hard onto the ground, shattering the tiles!
"Guh!"
The burly man grunted in pain, his concentration broken. The surrounding Darkness Magic instantly dissipated, returning light to the room.
Then, adjusting his position, Ankh casually waved his left hand toward the rafters.
"Down."
A purple magic circle appeared in the air.
"What the—?!"
The other ambusher—a gentleman in a white suit with a face shaped peculiarly like building blocks—was immediately crushed from his sniper perch.
He fell to the ground, pinned by invisible weight, unable to get up.
Sho watched the scene in horror.
The two strongest comrades who had come to help him—Simon and Wally—were instantly taken down by this man in less than three seconds!
'Could this person really be on par with Jellal in strength?!' Sho thought as the panic setting in.
'No... he might be stronger!'
If Ankh knew what was going through Sho's head, he'd probably roll his eyes in disdain.
Though Erza's childhood companions all had decent talent... that was about all they had—"decent."
In Fairy Tail, at best, they'd only make it to the level of B-Class Mages.
A Wizard Saint using more than one move to deal with them would be an insult.
Erza was also staring in shock at the two who had just appeared.
She recognized them instantly.
The man with the square-shaped head, square jaw, and dressed in a flashy suit was named Wally Buchanan.
The burly man wearing a white head wrap and a metal jaw-guard protecting his face was named Simon.
"Wally... Simon..." Erza whispered, her hand covering her mouth. "I never expected you all to have learned magic..."
Erza's gaze was complex.
She felt a mix of nostalgia and heartbreak.
After all these years, her companions had survived, but they had changed considerably.
They looked at her not with love, but with hostility.
Ankh released his grip on Simon but kept the gravity pressure active.
He moved closer to Erza and whispered to her.
"They were sent by Jellal. You know this."
Erza's beautiful eyes immediately dimmed.
Looking at the companions before her, she struggled internally before asking, her voice trembling, "Did Jellal send you? To bring me to the Tower of Heaven?"
Erza had previously confided her tragic past to Ankh.
So, not long ago, Ankh had also shared some "investigative" information about Jellal with her to prepare her for this day.
That's why when Erza saw these companions now, she appeared much more composed than in the original timeline.
She had mentally prepared herself for the betrayal.
Ankh comfortingly patted Erza's shoulder and said softly, "Don't worry, Erza. Jellal will come to his senses. I promise you, he will after this matter is over."
Ankh's confidence in saying this stemmed from his knowledge of Ultear of course.
The true culprit behind Jellal's mental corruption was actually Ultear, who had been posing as the spirit of Zeref to manipulate him.
She had been experimenting with and rebuilding the R-System under Jellal's name for years.
However, Ankh was a pragmatist.
He had never met the real Jellal before and had no emotional relationship with him.
So, regarding the Tower of Heaven incident, Ankh would only pursue his own interests.
'What did others' lives matter to him?' Ankh thought coldly. 'As long as they weren't guild members, I will be ruthless. I only hold back now because Erza is watching.'
That was why he didn't destroyed the the Tower of Heaven earlier, even though he knew about it through Ultear.
He had allowed their plan to proceed to this very moment.
Because Ankh's target wasn't the R-System that Jellal and Ultear were aiming for.
He didn't care about resurrecting Zeref.
He wanted to obtain a different benefit.
A weapon of mass destruction that the Council would inevitably fire at the Tower.
The Etherion.