"And the victor of the first match is Flare from Heavenly Blue!"
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
The stadium erupted into a frenzy, the crowd practically vibrating with excitement after witnessing such an overwhelming clash between the two female mages.
"Dammit, Heavenly Blue is an absolute monster!"
"We've only seen two of their women fight! I want to see the rest of them!"
"If the women are this strong, their male leader has to be a complete nightmare, right?"
As the spectators buzzed over Heavenly Blue's sheer dominance, the conversation inevitably shifted toward Fairy Tail.
"That blonde from Fairy Tail wasn't half bad, honestly."
"Yeah, her celestial magic was incredible."
"Unfortunately for her, she had to go up against Heavenly Blue."
The crowd wasn't blind. Everyone could see just how powerful Lucy's Urano Metria was supposed to be. Yet, in the end, it meant absolutely nothing against Flare. It left the audience wondering a question: was there anyone in Fiore actually capable of standing toe-to-toe with this new guild?
"Do you think Sabertooth can actually beat them?"
"H-Hey, watch your mouth! Sabertooth is the strongest! They're the undefeated champions!"
"B-But... look at what Heavenly Blue just did..."
For the first time in seven years, absolute faith in Sabertooth was cracking. The audience felt it was perfectly understandable for Fairy Tail to lose against Flare's outrageous, drill-weaving Obi Magic, but now they were genuinely questioning if even Sabertooth could survive it.
Up in the Sabertooth balcony, Sting gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white.
"Dammit! I'm going to show everyone that Sabertooth is still the best!" Sting cursed, his pride stinging from the crowd's wavering faith.
Meanwhile, back in the Fairy Tail dugout, the atmosphere was surprisingly gentle.
"Are you okay, Lucy?"
"You did your absolute best out there."
"Don't worry about it."
Unlike the original timeline, Fairy Tail didn't have to endure the vicious, humiliating mockery of the entire continent. Because Heavenly Blue was universally recognized as an unstoppable force, losing to them was considered perfectly normal.
"T-Thank you..." Lucy sniffled, wiping her eyes. Even with her guild's support, her heart ached. She had poured her entire soul into that fight, and she still couldn't bring home a victory.
"Come on. Let's get you patched up so you can rest. We still have a long week ahead of us," Erza said gently, placing a comforting hand on Lucy's shoulder.
As she consoled her friend, Erza's gaze drifted across the arena toward the Heavenly Blue dugout. If Lucy had lost to some underhanded trick, Erza would be furious. But Lucy had lost in a straightforward, brutal clash of power. She had simply been outmatched. That was the harsh reality of the magic world. Still, staring at the masked mages, Erza felt a burning desire to face them herself.
While the majority of the arena was focused on the victorious Heavenly Blue, a small group of heavily armored men observed from the shadows of a VIP corridor. Leading them was Arcadios, the Squadron Chief of the Fiore Royal Army, and his eyes were locked entirely on Lucy Heartfilia with a dark, calculating greed.
Soon, the time will come. And when it does, nothing will be able to stop us.
Arcadios had a singular, desperate mission: to save the Kingdom of Fiore from a catastrophic future. To do that, he needed to kill the immortal dark mage Zeref and the Black Dragon, Acnologia, before they could reduce the world to ash.
But Fiore's military was vastly underpowered for such a godly task. The only solution—authorized in absolute secrecy by Princess Hisui—was the Eclipse Gate. By utilizing the massive temporal artifact, they planned to travel back in time four hundred years to assassinate Zeref before he attained immortality.
To open that gate, however, they required the magical resonance of all twelve Golden Zodiac Keys, powered by the life force of a world-class Celestial Spirit Mage.
"The pieces are finally falling into place. We cannot afford to wait any longer," Arcadios muttered, clenching his armored fists.
Finding the keys had been a nightmare. Lucy's seven-year disappearance on Tenrou Island had severely delayed their plans. To make matters worse, the recent Zentopia incident—orchestrated by the Reborn Oración Seis—had resulted in the deaths or excommunication of almost every other capable Celestial Mage on the continent.
Ironically, the man who had stopped the Oración Seis crusade was Finn Hoen.
Finn knew exactly what Arcadios was plotting. But rather than stop the knight's foolish, world-ending temporal meddling, Finn was perfectly content to sit back and let the kingdom tear itself apart, creating the perfect vacuum for him to swoop in and conquer everything.
Back in the Heavenly Blue dugout, Finn casually stretched his arms.
"Yawn. Let's head back. Watching all of this is putting me to sleep."
His team had already swept both the morning event and the afternoon battle. What was the point of sticking around to hear the scoreboard announcement? It was painfully obvious they were in first place.
"Okay," Sorano, Flare, and Meredy agreed in unison. They were equally bored of watching the weaker guilds struggle, and the muggy arena weather was starting to ruin their mood.
"Aren't you going to stay and study their magic?" Ultear asked, raising an eyebrow. She knew Finn possessed an uncanny, almost terrifying innate ability to perfectly replicate any magic he witnessed.
"No need. I've already learned everything worth knowing," Finn replied smoothly.
With his Manager constantly recording data and the downloaded combat experiences from his multiverse counterparts, he had passively memorized every spell cast in the arena today. The only exception was Celestial Spirit Magic, which strictly required physical contracts with the spirits themselves.
But Celestial Magic was just a branch of spatial summoning, right? Finn recalled that in the 100 Years Quest timeline, Lucy's magic evolved to the point where she could practically summon dragons and weaponize star-dresses capable of planetary destruction. Urano Metria was just a fraction of that potential.
"Are you interested in exploring spatial Celestial Magic?" Ultear pressed.
"Not really. It's strong, but without an overwhelming magic power, it's meaningless," Finn stated pragmatically.
"You aren't wrong," Ultear sighed, unable to argue with that logic. At the end of the day, raw magical density dictated the absolute ceiling of any mage.
"Let's just go back to the hotel," Finn ordered, turning toward the exit tunnel.
However, as the five masked figures walked into the corridors, a frantic group of tournament organizers and staff members scrambled to block their path.
"Wait! Wait, please! Where are you all going?!" the head organizer panicked.
"We're going back to our hotel," Finn replied flatly. "There is no rule stating competitors must remain in the arena after their matches are concluded, correct?"
"Well... technically that's true, but are you really leaving right now? Don't you want to stay and watch the remaining matches? What about the final point tally for Day One?!"
"The result is already clear. We are number one," Finn said, his voice dripping with casual, infuriating arrogance. "As for the other matches, it doesn't matter what they do. They are all going to lose to us eventually anyway."
"....."
The staff members were completely paralyzed by his sheer audacity.
"If you're worried that leaving early means we won't have tactical information on the other guilds, don't be," Finn added, his voice projecting loudly enough to echo down the stone corridors. "Going in blind is the only way to make tomorrow's events even remotely interesting. At least this way, they won't lose quite so quickly."
Finn didn't care who heard him.
But the words carried perfectly into the arena dugouts. In that single, breathtakingly arrogant moment, every single guild participating in the Grand Magic Games united under one furious, burning goal: to completely and utterly destroy Heavenly Blue.