Boom!
Brain, transformed into Zero, the true Guild Master of the Oración Seis, took Laxus's ultimate judgment spell, Fairy Law, head-on. In a single instant, all the Magic Power inside his body was blasted apart.
"Ugh..."
The moment Fairy Law struck him, Zero's personality was completely erased. Brain regained control, but his body had become incredibly old and frail. He trembled uncontrollably, and the eyes staring at Laxus were filled with terror.
"The hunt for the Oración Seis is over..." Laxus declared, sounding slightly exhausted.
The last time he had attempted to cast Fairy Law, everyone assumed he had failed because he was incapable of using it properly.
Today, Laxus had proven them wrong. As long as he wanted to use Fairy Law, he could cast it whenever he pleased.
Admittedly, the spell placed an enormous strain on him.
"Hmph."
Nearby, Ultear casually raised one hand, creating a blade of ice in her grip. She intended to kill Brain with a single strike and avenge herself for being treated as an experimental subject all those years ago.
Clang!
Unfortunately, Gray intercepted her blade at the last moment.
"Stop. There's no reason to keep attacking him. The Magic Council will send people to arrest them," Gray urged.
"How boring."
"What a waste of all the power Ur gave you," Ultear replied disdainfully.
Nevertheless, she made no further attempt to attack. She appeared to have made peace with Brain, who probably did not have much longer to live anyway.
Or rather, she had finally made peace with herself.
"It's over..."
Erza canceled her Requip and collapsed onto the ground. She was utterly exhausted. With her current strength, she still could not fully control the Nakagami Armor. She had only managed to use it by throwing practically all her Magic Power into that final attack.
"Let's rest here for a while," Laxus said softly after noticing everyone's exhaustion.
He sat down as well. Fairy Law had drained him almost as badly as the others.
Among all the Fairy Tail Mages, only Natsu still had enough energy to complain. He kept muttering that it was unfair, that he had not personally defeated a single opponent, and that he wanted to take down the Oración Seis himself.
Everyone ignored him and let him continue rambling to himself.
By the time the group had recovered somewhat, the members of the other guilds finally arrived. Jura stared at the defeated Oración Seis with eyes filled with disbelief.
"I-I'm terribly sorry!"
"Even though I am one of the Ten Wizard Saints, I failed to provide any assistance. I fell for the enemy's trap and was defeated in the opening exchange, making the situation even more difficult for all of you."
Jura lowered his head and repeatedly apologized.
"Forget about it, old man."
"The enemy wasn't strong enough to require the involvement of a Wizard Saint," Laxus replied indifferently while lying on the ground and staring at the sky.
His words spared Jura any further embarrassment and preserved the friendly relationship between Fairy Tail and the Ten Wizard Saints.
"Once I return, I must train even harder, improve my command of magic, and become far more vigilant," Jura whispered repeatedly to himself.
He had already decided to begin a brutal new training regimen as soon as he returned to his guild.
"Um, everyone..."
"Provided you don't mind, would you like to come to my guild and rest? It isn't far from here," Wendy offered in her soft, gentle voice.
"We really do need somewhere to recover."
"In that case, we'll gladly accept your hospitality."
After a brief discussion, everyone nodded to Wendy.
"It's no trouble at all. Everyone in my guild is very warm and welcoming."
Once the Allied Forces arrived at Cait Shelter, Jura and Laxus exchanged a glance. Ultear also seemed to notice something strange.
All three of them possessed Magic Power that had reached an extraordinary level, allowing them to faintly sense the inexplicable feeling of wrongness throughout the entire guild.
"Hahaha..."
"So Wendy has finally made friends outside the guild?"
Roubaul, Cait Shelter's elderly Guild Master, smiled warmly as he watched Lucy and the others chatting with Wendy.
The old Guild Master issued one final mission, the destruction of Nirvana.
After the Allied Forces entered Nirvana and destroyed each of its support points, bringing the ancient weapon down for good, Roubaul and the Mages of Cait Shelter transformed into countless motes of light.
They disappeared into the sky as Wendy cried out for them.
At the very end, Roubaul entrusted the adorable Wendy to the members of Fairy Tail.
Once everything was truly over, Laxus led the group back to Fairy Tail. After defeating the Oración Seis, Laxus once again earned the recognition of the guild's members and was allowed to remain in Fairy Tail instead of being expelled.
Several more days passed.
Then, the sound of bells echoed throughout Magnolia.
The entire town activated the Gildarts Shift.
"Gildarts is back?!" Gray exclaimed in astonishment.
Gildarts had been away from the guild for a very long time. His absence was the only reason outsiders asked pointless questions such as whether Laxus or Mystogan was Fairy Tail's true strongest Mage.
As long as Gildarts remained a member of Fairy Tail, there could only be one strongest Mage in the guild.
"Gildarts..."
"You mean Fairy Tail's strongest Mage?!" Lucy asked with wide eyes.
She had heard his name countless times but had never met him.
As Lucy waited with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness, a broad-shouldered, red-haired man with his hair slicked back walked into the guild.
"Huh?"
"Where am I?"
Gildarts hesitantly stared around the building. According to his memories, the Fairy Tail guild hall had looked nothing like this.
"Hey, young lady, do you know where I can find a wizard guild called Fairy Tail around here?" Gildarts asked the unfamiliar Lucy.
"This is Fairy Tail..." Lucy replied.
Looking at the careless man standing before her, she found it difficult to believe that he was the strongest Mage in the entire guild.
"What?!"
"This is Fairy Tail?"
Gildarts stared at her in disbelief, completely unable to accept that this was his guild.
"That's right. This is the Fairy Tail guild hall. Here, Gildarts, have some water. You must be exhausted after spending so many years away."
As Gildarts struggled with his confusion, a beautiful woman dressed in white approached and offered him a glass of water.
"Oh, thanks..."
Gildarts accepted the water from Mirajane and instinctively took a drink. The moment he got a clear look at her face, however, he spat all the water back out.
"You're Mira, right?!" Gildarts asked in disbelief.
"You recognized me," Mirajane replied, nodding shyly.
"You look completely different..."
Gildarts could hardly believe his eyes. The Mirajane he remembered had been a rebellious delinquent with her hair tied in a high ponytail.
"Hey. You're finally back, Gildarts."
Laxus sat at the first-floor bar with a mug of beer in his hand and raised it slightly in greeting.
"A real man!"
Elfman flexed his muscles for no apparent reason.
Jovian silently raised his glass toward Gildarts.
"Everything's different. Completely different..."
Gildarts looked around the guild and shook his head repeatedly. He had truly been gone for far too long. The entire guild had changed, and none of its members looked the way he remembered them.
"Gildarts, fight me!"
Just as Gildarts began questioning everything he knew, Natsu charged toward him with flames blazing around his body.
"Oh! Natsu!"
Gildarts grabbed him with one hand and casually hurled him into the ceiling.
"Now that's familiar..."
Seeing that Natsu had not changed at all, Gildarts finally breathed a sigh of relief.
After dealing with him, Gildarts walked toward the bar and stopped in front of Guild Master Makarov.
"He's so strong! That scruffy old man is unbelievably strong!" Lucy exclaimed, staring wide-eyed at Natsu, who had been defeated in an instant.
"Of course he is."
"Gildarts exists on a completely different level from the rest of us. Even if Erza and I fought him together, we would have absolutely no chance of winning," Mirajane explained with a gentle smile.
Even before leaving the guild, Gildarts had possessed Magic Power comparable to that of the fifth-ranked Wizard Saint, a level often considered the absolute limit a human could reach.
Gildarts had already surpassed Makarov at that time, so calling him the strongest Mage in Fairy Tail was entirely justified.
"What?!"
Lucy knew exactly how terrifyingly powerful both Mirajane and Erza were.
"So, what was the final result?" Makarov asked as Gildarts sat down across from him.
"Hm?"
"Ahahahaha!"
Gildarts thought for a moment before bursting into laughter.
"I failed completely!" he finally answered.
"I see. So even you couldn't do it," Makarov said with a helpless sigh.
"What?!"
Gildarts's answer shocked every Mage in the guild.
"A job that even Fairy Tail's strongest Mage couldn't complete? Just what kind of job was it?" Lucy murmured.
"Lucy, you know about S-Class jobs, right? Only S-Class Mages are permitted to undertake them. Above S-Class jobs are SS-Class jobs, which are vastly more difficult."
"Beyond those are 10-Year Quests, jobs that no one has been able to complete for at least ten years."
"The mission Gildarts accepted was even more difficult than a 10-Year Quest. It was a 100-Year Quest, an ultimate mission that no one had managed to complete in an entire century," Mirajane explained.
"A mission no one could complete in a hundred years..."
"Not even Fairy Tail's strongest Mage could finish it?!"
Lucy's eyes widened. The idea of a mission remaining incomplete for an entire century was almost too ridiculous to believe.
"What happened?" Makarov asked Gildarts.
"I ran into a minor problem during the mission..." Gildarts replied after a long silence.
He did not know how to explain it to Makarov.
While attempting to complete the quest, Gildarts had encountered an enormous black dragon whose wings seemed vast enough to blot out the sky.
Acnologia.
The crushing pressure released by the Black Dragon still made Gildarts's body tremble whenever he remembered it.
Acnologia had inflicted catastrophic injuries on him in their first exchange. Had the dragon's true objective not been something else, Gildarts would almost certainly have died on the spot.
"Natsu, come with me."
Gildarts called Natsu outside and brought him into a small cabin. There, he revealed the full extent of his injuries and told Natsu everything that had happened during his encounter with the Black Dragon.
"Natsu, I don't know where Igneel is, but I can tell you one thing. That Black Dragon is unquestionably an enemy of all humanity," Gildarts warned him.
"I'll defeat him with my own hands!"
Natsu nodded as searing flames wrapped around his body.
His objective was clear. He would defeat the Black Dragon and force it to tell him where Igneel was.
Natsu never imagined that his meeting with Acnologia would come so soon.
He also had no idea just how terrifyingly powerful the Black Dragon truly was.
Boom!
While the members of Fairy Tail laughed and celebrated inside the guild, the sky above them suddenly seemed to tear apart.
A colossal rift opened overhead and instantly swallowed everything that possessed Magic Power.
Once the rift in the sky closed, Jovian was left sitting alone in the empty space where the guild had once stood. His lips parted slightly in surprise.
The rift had not absorbed him at all.
After all, Jovian barely possessed any Magic Power.
"What a pain..."
Jovian stretched his body and stepped into the air, staring at the rapidly shrinking dimensional passage before him.
He swept one hand aside, pulled back his arm, and threw a punch at the sky.
Boom!
Jovian's absolute power, capable of destroying virtually anything, struck the dimensional barrier. Space itself collapsed, and the passage connecting the two worlds was forcibly torn open by a single punch.
Boom!
Another deafening explosion followed as Jovian passed through the opening.
On the other side was another world.
Edolas, a world suffering from an extreme shortage of Magic Power.
Inside the royal palace, a deafening crash shook the entire building.
Boom!
The palace ceiling was instantly smashed apart.
"Enemy attack!"
"We're under attack!"
Warriors rushed into the throne room and surrounded the rubble with their weapons raised, ready to confront whatever had broken into the palace.
Szzzt!
Just as the soldiers prepared to investigate, a crimson beam of Heat Vision sliced across the room.
Every warrior in its path was cut in half, and blood sprayed across the floor.
When the smoke and dust finally cleared, a figure was revealed lounging upon the throne with one leg crossed over the other.
"Listen carefully."
"If you want your king to remain alive, you're going to do exactly as I say."
Jovian rested one foot upon the king of Edolas. His eyes glowed with an eerie crimson light as he coldly warned the remaining soldiers.
The soldiers wanted to protest, but the sight of their helpless king rendered every word meaningless. One after another, they dropped their weapons and obediently submitted to Jovian's demands.
"Now then, the first thing you're going to do is activate Reverse Anima."
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