"It's decided!" Elfman suddenly yelled.
He grabbed Evergreen by the waist and forcefully threw her high into the air.
"Fly for me!"
"What are you doing?!" Evergreen shrieked, flailing her arms wildly in the air, completely bewildered by the sudden launch.
Not only was Evergreen confused, but the massive Guardian Beast, Belfast, also had no idea what Elfman was up to.
The metallic monster paused, its glowing eyes looking up at the airborne fairy.
"Hey, you big oaf!" Elfman roared.
Taking full advantage of the distraction, Elfman rapidly closed the distance, moving directly behind Belfast.
"I'm right over here, you metal fool! A fair fight between men! Come at me head-on!" Elfman challenged, pounding his chest.
Belfast turn around, clenching its massive right fist and swung it heavily toward Elfman with bone-crushing force.
"Take Over: Beast Soul!" Elfman stood his ground.
He crossed his thick, scaled arms in front of his face and took the devastating blow head-on.
BOOM!
The sheer kinetic force of the impact caused the very edge of the cliff they stood on to crack and violently crumble beneath them.
"Graaah!" Belfast let out a pained cry as the ground gave way, plunging the heavy monster into the dense forest canopy far below.
Given Belfast's sheer dense metallic weight, a fall from that height would likely shatter it into pieces.
Meanwhile, Elfman desperately clung to the jagged edge of the cliff with one hand, his muscles straining as he managed not to fall.
"I say, you...!" Evergreen yelled, floating down using her fairy wings.
"How about that! It actually worked after all!" Elfman grinned, pulling himself up over the ledge.
"Even if I can fly, so what?! How dare you use me as live bait!" Evergreen snapped, snapping her fan open.
She grew angrier the more she thought about the sheer indignity of it.
"Ah, sometimes, two people in love communicate through intense, physical means..." Rustyrose's smooth, arrogant voice suddenly halted their argument.
"Stop making things up!" Elfman and Evergreen yelled in unison.
"Excellent!" Rustyrose clapped slowly, walking toward them. "I never expected you to actually defeat my Guardian Beast. I carefully observed your miserable, primitive struggles from the sidelines."
In truth, Rustyrose had completely seen through Elfman's reckless battle plan from the very start, but it didn't matter to him.
His overwhelming confidence in his own Arc of Embodiment magic made him disdainful of intervening to save a mere summon.
"However, your brutish fighting style severely lacks the elegance and composure a true Mage should possess. It is downright nauseating to watch," Rustyrose sneered, adjusting his glasses.
"Trash like you has absolutely no place in the coming Ultimate Magic World!"
"Eliminate those without magic power? Only mages can survive? The Ultimate Magic World? Are you done rambling yet?!" Elfman growled, pulling himself to his feet.
"Only one in ten people in this entire world possess magical power!"
Thick veins bulged on Elfman's forehead.
Rustyrose was truly stepping on every single one of his nerves.
"Exactly. So, those nine out of ten people simply cannot survive," Rustyrose stated with chilling indifference.
"I will never let that happen!" Elfman roared.
"Do you honestly think their survival is necessary? Those who cannot use magic are like broken candles that cannot be lit! They have absolutely no reason to exist!"
"This world is built on people helping each other! Don't you understand that?!" Elfman yelled.
He was so enraged that a sharp pain shot through his bruised arm, momentarily rendering him breathless.
"Helping each other? You mean your precious guild?" Rustyrose mocked. "That is nothing but pathetic self-expression! A guild is just a convenient means for you to take wealth from those without power!"
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Elfman stood tall, his shadow stretching across the dirt.
"No! We simply need each other's existence! We provide the strength, and ordinary people pay us rewards to protect them. It is this exact relationship of mutual trust that structures this entire world and allows guilds to proudly exist!"
Elfman vividly recalled the warm, daily interactions between Magnolia's ordinary residents and the Fairy Tail members—the cheerful morning greetings, the warm bread from the bakers, the holiday well-wishes exchanged during the Harvest Festival.
Though they weren't always intimately close, such mundane, human exchanges were absolutely essential to their lives.
"Hmph!" Rustyrose sneered coldly, completely dismissing Elfman's impassioned words.
"You have no right to mock guilds! I won't allow you to insult mages who struggle desperately to survive, nor will I ever permit you to insult ordinary people fighting with all their might just to live! Do you hear me?!" Elfman roared, clenching his fists tightly and glaring fiercely at the dark mage.
Evergreen stared at him in complete astonishment.
She was entirely unable to imagine such heartfelt words coming from Elfman, a man who usually only ever talked about muscles and being a "real man."
"Anyway, mundane trash like you could never possibly understand," Rustyrose sighed, looking bored.
"Those who can neither approach the dark abyss of magic nor comprehend Zeref's true terror will never understand our vision."
"When Lord Zeref finally reveals his true, apocalyptic power, all you fairies will be able to do is prostrate yourselves completely in the dirt, never able to raise your heads again!"
"We of Fairy Tail will never yield!" Elfman bellowed. "Because we represent the giant candle that can illuminate all that darkness!"
Elfman had almost no magical power left in his container for a full Take Over, but driven by sheer, unyielding willpower, he aggressively charged at Rustyrose and swung his heavy fist.
"Fairy Tail, is it? You don't match your delicate guild name at all—completely inelegant!" Rustyrose mocked.
Rustyrose's right hand instantly transformed into a massive demonic claw—the Sword of the Underworld—sending Elfman flying backward with a brutal slash.
"Just as I thought. Scum like you have no place in the great world of magic."
"Call me trash all you want!" Elfman grunted, rolling to his feet. "But I will never forgive you for casually insulting my comrades! As a real man, I will never forgive you!"
"Is that so?" Rustyrose's dark arm elongated, slicing through the air to attack Elfman once more.
But this time, Elfman didn't dodge.
He completely endured the tearing damage and stubbornly used both of his bare hands to fiercely grab Rustyrose's dark, elongated claw.
"I've got you now," Elfman grinned through the blood. "The fundamental principle of Take Over magic is to thoroughly understand your opponent's power. Right, sister?!"
"This arm! I'm taking it!" Elfman's right arm flashed with blinding silver light, rapidly transforming until it appeared completely identical to Rustyrose's demonic, clawed right arm.
The current Elfman was purely squeezing out the very last, agonizing drop of his magical power to hijack the dark spell.
"You actually managed to Take Over my Sword of the Underworld?!" Rustyrose gasped, his composure finally breaking.
"Die!" Elfman roared, swinging the copied dark claw directly at Rustyrose's face.
"Dwelling in my left hand is the golden shield that can block anything!" Rustyrose frantically chanted.
He materialized the Golden Shield with his left hand, the brilliant metal violently clashing and barely blocking Elfman's massive dark claw.
"You're too naive, fairy," Rustyrose sneered from behind the shield.
"My real target was these stupid glasses of yours!" Elfman roared.
During that last, heavy exchange of blows, Elfman had purposely closed the physical distance between them.
With a lightning-fast reach of his normal left hand, he aggressively snatched Rustyrose's glasses right off his face and crushed the frames in his powerful grip.
"Now! Ever!" Elfman yelled.
Evergreen had already whipped off her own glasses, flipping her brown hair confidently.
"Normally, only the Thunder Legion and Laxus are qualified to call me 'Ever' so familiarly... but this time, I will make an exception for you, Elfman!"
Evergreen activated her Stone Eyes, releasing a petrifying wave of magical power as she stared intently directly into Rustyrose's unprotected eyes.
"Because you gave me the perfect chance to turn this arrogant scum who insulted Fairy Tail into solid stone, making him forever unable to speak again!"
"Ahhh!!!" Rustyrose screamed, dramatically covering his eyes as if in agonizing pain.
Then, he dropped his hands, shamelessly grinning with his teeth exposed, perfectly unharmed.
"I was lying to you."
With another forceful, blinding swing of his dark sword, Rustyrose struck Elfman brutally to the ground. In a flash, he reappeared directly beside Evergreen, sending the fairy mage flying into the dirt with a single, devastating claw strike.
"Why... why is my petrifying gaze ineffective...?" Evergreen groaned, her vision blurring as she looked up at the dark mage.
"Ah! Even if two star-crossed lovers meet such a tragic end right before my eyes, it still fails to bring the slightest tremor of pity to my heart," Rustyrose sighed theatrically.
"My glasses were merely for aesthetic elegance, little fairy. My eyes are protected by the very fabric of my imagination."
"Nevertheless, I have had a very enjoyable experience." Rustyrose casually materialized a brand-new pair of glasses from thin air and adjusted them on the bridge of his nose.