The reason Kabe had gone out of his way to remind Lucy to have Jude keep his distance from the nobility was twofold. For one, the kingdom was bound to carry out a thorough purge of the noble class sooner or later, and if Jude got too entangled with them, he'd end up caught in the fallout as well. For another, Kabe knew that Jude was fated to go through the collapse of his business empire at some point in the future, and he suspected the nobility's hand was likely behind it, possibly another carefully orchestrated scheme of theirs to seize what wasn't rightfully theirs. Either way, keeping Jude cautious around the nobility could only be a good thing.
Once dinner wrapped up and she'd retreated to her own room next door, Lucy did exactly that. She sat down right away and wrote a letter, relaying Kabe's warning to Jude, and also asked him about the relationship between her mother Layla and Queen Hisui, hoping to get confirmation straight from her father. Once the letter was finished, she sealed it away safely in an envelope, then washed up and got ready to finally get some proper sleep and recover her energy.
But the moment her head hit the pillow, a sharp knock sounded at her door.
"No sleeping yet, Lucy. Get up here and warm my bed."
"...Okay, Sis Sorano. I, I'm coming."
She answered reluctantly, let out a long sigh, and threw off the covers to begin her nightly ritual of chipping away at her debt.
Meanwhile, back at Kabe's estate, though dinner had ended, Irene, Ultear, and Selene hadn't left yet. The group had settled in scattered around the living room. After a small sip of hot tea, Irene set her cup down and dropped a bombshell without warning.
"I'm going to be away for a while. I'm going to finally solve the dragonization problem, once and for all. Selene's coming with me. While we're gone, Brandish and Heine will handle the shop and the hot springs street."
Her announcement drew every eye in the room. Erza's surprise quickly gave way to genuine happiness for her.
"Really, Irene? You've actually figured out a way to break free of the dragonization?"
Irene nodded, her expression giving little away, as if she were simply mentioning something trivial. But the slight upward curl at the corner of her eyes and the faint smile tugging at her lips gave away that she wasn't nearly as composed as she appeared.
"Mm. It's about the safest, most viable method I've been able to come up with. Though it does require the help of a Dragon Slaying magic crystal. This trip is mainly about tracking one down. Once we find it, Selene will guard me through the ritual and make sure nothing interferes with the process from start to finish."
None of them fully understood the mechanics behind reversing dragonization, but they trusted that Irene and Selene traveling together would keep her safe enough. Kabe simply told her not to rush things and to be certain the method would actually work before attempting the ritual. Beyond that, he had no real say in the specifics of how they'd go about it, since it wasn't something he understood either.
After finishing her announcement to the group, Irene suddenly turned to Ultear, whose lips had curved into a smile, clearly happy for her as well.
"Ultear, once I'm back, let's go take a look at where Deliora was sealed. If Ur really does still have some fragment of consciousness left, the way you've described, I might be able to try bringing her back."
Not having seen Ur's actual condition for herself, Irene chose her words carefully, unwilling to let Ultear's hopes run too high. But she still underestimated just how deeply Ultear missed her mother. In an instant, Ultear's hand jerked and shattered the teacup she'd been holding, and she shot up from her seat, eyes rimmed red, only to catch herself and sit back down just as quickly. Her lips pressed together over and over, and before long, a stinging heat rose behind her nose and tears spilled freely down her cheeks.
"R, really? You could really do that? No, you don't have to force yourself, fixing your dragonization matters far more than this. But, thank you, Irene. You're the only hope I've ever had for this."
Listening to her stumble over her words with gratitude, Erza pulled her gently into an embrace, holding her close.
"How much of a chance is there, really? Bringing someone back from the dead, even for you, that seems like an awful stretch."
Irene made no promises. She simply laid out a hypothesis.
"You all know Heine and Juliet are essentially products of personality fragments I attached to objects. They aren't truly human, originally they were nothing more than ordinary weapons. By the same principle, if Ur really does still have some fragment of consciousness lingering, I could theoretically extract that consciousness and attach it to the Absolute Zero ice she created herself, ice that shares her own origin. Of course, this is only a theory. How likely it is to actually succeed depends entirely on how much of Ur's consciousness remains."
Hearing this, the women all fell quiet, heads lowered. None of them knew the details of Ur's current condition, but by their own reasoning, after well over a decade sealed away, whatever remained of her consciousness had likely worn down to almost nothing by now.
Even Kabe, who knew how the story was supposed to unfold, didn't dare say anything either. Though in the original timeline, during the battle on Tenrou Island, Ultear had briefly glimpsed fragments of Ur's memories after falling into the sea.
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