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After infiltrating the airship, Noah had no difficulty locating Hades in the energy room. He simply followed the pull of the old man's magic.
He had initially found it strange that Hades had ordered his forces to minimize damage to Magnolia. Meeting him in person explained everything.
Who would have thought that Precht, one of Fairy Tail's founders and its Second Guild Master — long believed to be traveling the world, his whereabouts unknown — was actually Hades, the Guild Master of Grimoire Heart, one of the three great Dark Guilds of the Balam Alliance?
Hades narrowed his eyes slightly. Something old flickered in them, and then it was gone, buried beneath a century of hard living and an obsession that had long since crossed the line into madness.
"Precht..."
Hades slowly raised a hand, not toward Noah, but to rest gently against the glass of the tank that housed the Devil's Heart, his own literal heart, removed from his body and encased within this machine as the source of his power. "That name, and the innocent, beautiful era it belonged to, was buried long ago."
"I am Hades now. Master of Grimoire Heart. The pioneer who will soon bring about the Great Magic World."
"As for your claim that I'm here to cause trouble — if you hand over Zeref right now, I'll leave immediately. But do you honestly think Makarov would allow that?"
The old man turned to face Noah fully. His single eye locked onto him for the first time, and that gaze carried a tangible weight — a pressure far beyond what Bluenote had exerted, more suffocating even than Gildarts' magical aura.
Noah felt nothing.
He sat up from the lounge chair, yawning lightly. "Whether Zeref goes with you or not isn't my decision, and it's not the Guild Master's either. Old man, you've been going to the wrong person from the start."
Hades made a dismissive sound. "Slick talk."
Zeref's current guardians were his wife and son — that was simply the truth of it — but Noah couldn't be bothered to explain.
He looked at the rhythmically pulsing Devil's Heart in its tank. "That's what you built based on the Fairy Heart, isn't it? It's rather ugly."
Hades ignored the comment on his masterpiece. Something else bothered him more. "Makarov is truly losing his edge with age. He can't even keep hold of information that only a Guild Master should know." His tone sharpened. "Besides you and Makarov, who else knows about the Fairy Heart?"
Noah replied with the same indifference. "Besides me, three others know what the Fairy Heart is. As for those who have actually seen it — that would be the entire guild. All of them."
The entire guild?
Hades' gaze hardened. The entire guild had seen the Fairy Heart — could it mean that Mavis had been unearthed? At the thought of his most cherished companion being unable to rest even in death, a fury rose in him that was difficult to contain.
He spread his arms wide.
A despairingly immense surge of pitch-black magic rolled out like a physical tide, instantly filling the energy room from floor to ceiling. The Devil's Heart in its tank suddenly accelerated its beating — deep, resonant thuds, like a war drum.
In response, the entire airship groaned. Countless dark purple magical patterns lit up beneath Hades' feet and spread outward across the walls, the ceiling, and through the hull of the ship itself.
"Noah. Become a sacrifice before the advent of the Great Magic World!"
He struck without preamble. No lengthy incantation, not even a full gesture — just a single flick of his finger.
Space appeared to tear. Several colossal tentacles of pure dark magic erupted from nothing, carrying an eerie corrosive power that devoured the light around them, and coiled toward Noah from every direction at once. The heavy metal bulkheads they swept across melted like warm butter.
Noah observed this clearly. The power behind the attack surpassed even what he had witnessed from the Western Continent's top-ranked Wizard Saint. Setting other factors aside — it was more than sufficient to kill Makarov instantly.
Faced with a strike capable of annihilating a Wizard Saint-level mage, Noah's expression didn't flicker. He didn't even leave the lounge chair.
He raised his right hand, fingers spread, and lightly closed his fist toward the writhing dark tentacles closing in on him.
Magnetic Field Rotation — One Hundred Thousand Horsepower!
Magic Martial Arts — Storm Kill Fist!
There was no earth-shattering explosion. No blinding magical light.
The dark tentacles, powerful enough to tear through space, were wrenched into a knot like rope around a post by a sudden, immense invisible force — one meter from Noah's body. The aura of destruction swelled violently. Then, in less than a tenth of a second, they were completely shredded into particles, disintegrating into harmless wisps of ambient magic before him as if they had never existed.
Hades' single eye contracted sharply. He had expected Noah to be strong. He had not expected him to break a full-powered attack this effortlessly.
Extraordinary.
This was beyond his understanding of magic.
"Impossible!"
His magic surged again. The Devil's Heart pounded harder, and hairline cracks appeared on the glass of the tank.
Clasping his hands before him, Hades parted them slowly, and a dark sphere of condensed magical energy formed between his palms — carrying a crushing oppressive force. The power within this small sphere was a hundred times greater than the Gravity Ball Bluenote had unleashed.
Noah finally rose from his chair. He kicked it lightly into a safer corner of the room, and his gaze sharpened, meeting Hades' eye directly.
"I told you — I'm very fond of this airship of yours."
"So stop casually damaging my things."
He advanced into the destructive black light rather than retreating. His right fingertips were enveloped by a subtle, strange distortion that slightly bent the air around them.
The Magnetic Field began to rotate. Four magical elements converged quietly.
A violent torrent of energy and a twisting force field compressed the surrounding air. Noah spoke toward the oncoming black light.
"You abandoned your conscience in the pursuit of magic. Let me crush that absurd fantasy of yours."
One Hundred Fifty Thousand Horsepower!
Magic Martial Arts — Wind, Water, Thunder, Fire: Explosion Fist!
Extreme wind pressure, crushing ice, explosive lightning, wild flame — four magical elements, under the absolute dominion of his Magnetic Field Power, layered over each other and underwent a qualitative change, transforming into a pure and devastating torrent of force.
Wherever the fist passed, space buckled under the strain, plowing out a momentarily existing vacuum trail. With all-consuming momentum, it slammed into the destructive black sphere.
A blinding light swallowed everything.
The shockwave that followed swept outward in all directions like a physical wave, unstoppable and absolute.
Hades grunted. His body shook violently. The multi-layered magical shields he had thrown up in front of him shattered one after another like glass.
The force drove him backward — his feet gouging two deep furrows into the floor — until he slammed heavily into the glass wall of the Devil's Heart's tank.
His chest heaved. His right arm was gone. But even as he registered the absence, flesh and bone were already growing back at the severed limb, a new arm regenerating completely within moments.
"Hmph. You will never defeat me." He flexed his new hand. "As long as the Devil's Heart within this ship remains unbroken, I cannot be defeated."
And then — an unexpected sound.
A sharp crack.
Hades' expression collapsed. He turned, dread flooding his face, and saw it: the tank housing the Devil's Heart had cracked open — a gaping fracture running almost the entire length of the glass — its contents nearly ruined.
The penetrating force of the impact just now.
His face went gray as the full weight of it settled on him, because he understood at once: regenerating his severed arm had consumed the last remaining energy stored within the Devil's Heart.