"Use the keys for the Faces in the order I gave them to you," Mard Geer ordered the demons, who agreed and disappeared.
Mard Geer walked near the wall which held a map of Ishgar.
"After today, the world will never be the same." A small flame lit up on his finger, and he gently touched the map with it.
The fire spread as if the entire map was made of pure fuel.
"Time for the war that will decide the end of the era."
Mard Geer turned around and began to prepare for the battle that would ensue.
By that time, Karna had managed to round up the councillors left around Fiore, and those outside Ishgar had been secured through the connections of the Three Gods of Ishgar.
"Cana, I need you to complete it as soon as possible. I feel like something bad is going to happen, and my feelings are rarely wrong about these things," Karna spoke through the tattoo on his hand. "And Ultear, stay close to them when the procedure begins. You might not have learned enough from Porlyusica to do surgeries like this, but your time magic will help a lot."
"I can't promise anything, as my magic still has only a weak effect on living bodies. But I will try my best to help out," Ultear replied, as she was connected to the tattoo as well.
"Alright, be careful. Love you," Karna said as he cut off the connection.
He then flew towards a building where three people were waiting for him.
The Three Gods of Ishgar were waiting for him to talk about what was happening right now.
The meeting did not last long. The information they had was scarce enough that any kind of speculation would be hard to prove.
They had already prepared themselves to face many problems they had learned about from Karna, who had told them what was going to happen in the future.
Transportation devices had been placed in various locations to help if the continent was rearranged, weapons that worked without magic had been prepared, and Wolfram had used his authority as the inheritor of Fenrir to command the creatures around Ishgar to lend a hand. Meanwhile, the vampire commanded the bats and creatures of the night, and Warrod had already used his magic to influence most of the forests in Ishgar.
It was then that Karna realised why these four were accepted as Gods of Ishgar in a time where the world was filled with strong wizards on their level, with some even surpassing them.
One controlled the beasts filled with magic. One had dominion over the creatures of the night as well as the cold-blooded. One had the power to control the entirety of the fauna present within the world, and one, in the original timeline, had eight attributes of the strongest magical species in the world.
I wonder what would have happened if they had not fought Serena, but instead joined the other guilds in fighting against the invasion. They would have had a far easier time in the later battle.
Plus, Serena would have been taken down by Acnologia anyway, so it was, in a way, a wasted effort.
As they were preparing, they suddenly sensed the presence of something horrifying weighing down upon them.
"What the hell?!!!"
"How?!! We have all the relevant councillors with us who hold the keys!!"
Even Karna was surprised. As he was a Vermillion, he knew about the workings of the Faces even better than what was shown in the original timeline.
The moment a Face activates, it releases a sort of wave that disrupts the soul of every individual near its location, which is almost everywhere on the entire continent. The wave is actually harmless and only causes a bit of disorientation, but it is extremely dangerous due to the next activation of the Face.
The Face does not eliminate magic from the body of a wizard. The expenditure required to do that is humongous, as every wizard has a different magical signature, and the moment they absorb Ethernano from the air, their body converts it into their own signature. Making the countless different signatures of magic leave a person's body requires enough expenditure to create and power ten Ethernano cannons.
What the Faces do is act as conduits and storage devices that absorb the Ethernano from the entirety of the atmosphere around them. It forms a sort of invisible barrier that absorbs any magic present within its borders. This denies wizards the ability to absorb and recover Ethernano from the atmosphere.
But even then, they still have a considerable amount of their own magic within their bodies, and it will stay that way until they use it up, which they can use to destroy the Faces.
This is where the earlier wave of energy comes from. It destabilises a wizard's mental faculties for a few moments, which in turn makes them waste their Ethernano reserves as they use it to steady their minds through basic enhancement. But since they are using it while disoriented, they waste more than enough magic before they regain their bearings.
But this would, without a doubt, be ineffective against experienced and strong wizards who could maintain their mental faculties even without using magic.
However, the Faces were made to defeat large army-like forces, so their current capabilities were more than enough to take care of them.
Karna calmly sensed what was happening while using his magic, while the Three Gods of Ishgar strengthened their mental defences without using magic. They knew about the Faces beforehand, so they were prepared.
Karna was not worried about it, as his two hearts would handle the magic expenditure. Those hearts had the ability to generate as well as store magic, so there was no problem for him.
"Alright," Karna said as he turned around. "We have to—"
Suddenly, he disappeared.
The Three Gods of Ishgar were shocked, as they had never sensed what had happened just now.
"Warrod, what happened?" Wolfram asked.
Suddenly, the Faces outside began cracking and falling apart, bringing even more shock to the Gods of Ishgar. They were also able to sense the return of Ethernano in the atmosphere, bringing back magic, but they were not calm at all. Warrod spoke the obvious conclusion.
"We are at war, my friends, and we lost our most valuable asset the moment it began."
A/N - Hope you liked it.