Mard Geer flipped his palm, and the earth answered.
Dense thorns erupted from the ground in every direction. Each one was as thick as a giant python, twisting and coiling as they surged outward. Within seconds, the entire clearing in front of Plutogrim's ruins was smothered in a writhing carpet of black thorns.
Not just Natsu and Gray. Rhodes, Mira, Juvia, Lucy, Happy. All of them caught inside the attack's range.
Of the group, only Lucy actually panicked. "What kind of range is THAT?!"
"Freeze!"
Gray stomped down on a curved thorn beneath his foot. Frost exploded outward from the point of contact, racing across the surface of every thorn in sight. In a single breath, the entire forest of writhing vines locked solid. Frozen mid-motion.
Even Mard Geer's feet and right arm were caught in the flash freeze.
Juvia clutched her cheeks. "As expected of Gray-sama!"
Happy blinked. "No matter how many times I see it, Gray's new magic is ridiculously strong."
Mard Geer looked down at his frozen hand. Flexed his fingers experimentally against the ice. It didn't crack. "This ice..." His frown deepened. "Was Silver's magic truly this potent?"
"I'm not done!" Gray was already moving. He vaulted onto the frozen thorns and sprinted across them, using the icy surface like a highway. He closed the distance to Mard Geer in seconds.
"Hmph." Mard Geer shattered the ice binding his limbs with a pulse of curse power. "Prison Flower!"
Thick black vines erupted from his back, climbing three, four stories high before arching forward like striking cobras. At each tip, a massive flower bud swelled. Covered in barbed spikes. Each one the size of a carriage.
The buds swung down at Gray like wrecking balls.
Gray didn't dodge. He swept his right hand across the air in front of him. The nearest flower bud froze solid mid-swing, its momentum dying instantly. The ice spread down the stem, which cracked under the sudden weight of its own frozen head. The whole thing toppled and shattered against the ground in a spray of icy fragments.
Before the pieces stopped skidding, Gray dropped to one knee and pressed both palms flat against the frozen earth.
A miniature iceberg erupted beneath Mard Geer's feet. It swallowed him whole in an instant, sealing the demon king inside a solid mountain of silver-white ice.
Gray didn't stop. He pressed his right fist into his left palm.
"Ice Devil: Zeroth Long Sword!"
A blade of condensed ice formed in his grip and he swung it in a clean horizontal arc aimed at the iceberg's center.
The iceberg exploded before the slash arrived.
Mard Geer stood in the shower of ice fragments, and he was no longer the same. Two horns had sprouted from his skull. His hair swept upward in wild spikes. His ears had elongated to sharp points. A hard, mask-like plate covered his face, and from his back, a pair of dark demon wings spread wide.
His aura hadn't just increased, it had shifted. The air around him felt heavier.
"I am Mard Geer Tartaros." His voice resonated with something deeper than sound. "King of the Underworld. The Absolute Demon."
A vortex of purple-black energy gathered in his right hand. Gray's ice blade met it mid-swing and was swallowed. The cursed energy ate through the ice like acid, dissolving the sword before it could bite.
"Disappear!" Mard Geer launched skyward, wings beating once, and thrust his hand downward. "Dea Yggdrasil!"
A colossal tree trunk materialized above Gray. It radiated a suffocating aura of death, omen, and ruin. Pure negative energy given physical form.
It came down at an angle, pressing toward Gray like a collapsing building.
'No time to dodge.'
Gray braced himself, ice flooding to both arms, preparing to take the full weight of it.
The Purgatory Dragon appeared out of nowhere.
One second the sky beside Mard Geer was empty. The next, a massive scaled tail whipped across the demon king's face with a crack that echoed across the battlefield. Mard Geer rocketed sideways and plowed through what remained of Plutogrim's castle walls, disappearing into the rubble.
The Dea Yggdrasil vanished the instant its caster lost focus.
Natsu had been standing beside Gray, flames already roaring up his arm, ready to jump in. He stared at the empty space where the attack had been. Then at the hole in the wall where Mard Geer had gone through. Then up at the Purgatory Dragon, who was picking something out of his teeth with one claw.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, UNCLE?!" Natsu jumped up, fists clenched, veins popping on his forehead. "Don't just butt into our fight like that!"
The Purgatory Dragon smacked his lips, looking supremely unbothered. "This is the thanks I get? How boring." He yawned. Literally yawned. "Fine. He didn't seem that strong anyway. You kids play."
He gave Rhodes a casual nod and vanished, dissolving into embers.
Though not before sending Rhodes a private suggestion through their link: 'That brat needs combat training. Badly. Add it to the schedule.'
Rhodes mentally agreed without hesitation.
Lucy looked around at the quiet battlefield. The settling dust. The lack of screaming. She ventured, carefully, "Is it... over? Just like that?"
Rhodes glanced at her. He could already feel it. The aura in the ruins wasn't fading.
"Since you went ahead and asked that," he said, "definitely not."
A massive section of rubble detonated outward. Stone and debris flew in every direction as Mard Geer shot back into the sky, wings spread, mask cracked but holding. The tail-whip had left a visible mark across his cheek. It hadn't improved his mood.
He didn't look at where the dragon had gone. Didn't care anymore. His eyes were fixed on the people below, burning with a fury that had passed through anger and come out the other side into something cold and absolute.
"You have completely enraged me." His voice carried across the entire battlefield. "Ultimate Curse: Memento Mori!"
Thick black mist engulfed everything.
It poured out from Mard Geer like ink bleeding into water. Resentment. Jealousy. Hatred. Every kind of negative emotion humanity had ever produced seemed to bleed from that darkness, pressing against the skin, crawling into the lungs, whispering things that made the soul want to curl up and stop existing.
A single glance into the mist was enough to feel the weight of it. The sheer, crushing oppression.
The mist gathered. Condensed. Spiraled upward into a pillar of black smoke that punched through the sky like a fist breaking through a ceiling.
Mard Geer watched from above. 'Victory was certain now.'
"This is the Ultimate Curse," he declared, spreading his arms wide, "created for a single purpose: to kill Zeref himself. It cannot be blocked. Those struck by this curse are neither alive nor dead. There is only annihilation."
The black pillar detonated.
The frozen ground, the soil beneath it, the rubble, the rocks. None of it held. The blast turned solid earth into liquid, sent debris flying outward like water splashing from a boulder thrown into a lake. Shockwaves rippled outward in concentric rings, flattening everything they touched.
Mard Geer closed his eyes, savoring the destruction. "What a pity. Under the Ultimate Curse, I can't even appreciate your final screams."
He opened his eyes. Smiled.
"But that's fine. Just disappear quietly, Fairy Tail."
"Excuse me." A voice from below. "Who did you say should disappear?"
"WHAT?!"
Mard Geer stared down at the center of the blast zone.
The dust cleared. Blown away by a gust of wind that had no natural origin.
Natsu and Gray stood in defensive stances, battered but upright. Behind them, Lucy, Juvia, and Happy.
And in front of all of them, five figures stood shoulder to shoulder.
Rhodes. Mira. Laxus. Erza. Makarov.
Not a scratch.
Mard Geer's mind went blank. "This is impossible. My Ultimate Curse... my Ultimate Cur..."
The words wouldn't finish. His brain couldn't reconcile what his eyes were showing him.
Mira tilted her head, looking at the new arrivals with pleasant surprise. "You all finished up that quickly?"
Erza crossed her arms. "The Voidmites kept multiplying on our front, while on the enemy's side, reinforcements stopped coming entirely. Some of their forces even pulled back without explanation. It wasn't a difficult cleanup."
Makarov surveyed the battlefield with the practiced eye of a man who had fought more wars than he cared to count. "It seems your operation went smoothly?"
Rhodes grinned. "Oh, just a small harvest. Nothing major."
Laxus cracked his neck, electricity sparking across his shoulders. "It's not over yet."
Lucy leaned toward Happy and whispered, "I was going to say... the enemy is literally still floating right there staring at us. Why did everyone suddenly start chatting?"
Happy raised a paw. "Aye! Because when those five are standing in front of you, it's kind of impossible to feel nervous, right?"
"Juvia is nervous whenever she sees Gray-sama!"
"Sorry, I got distracted too." Rhodes snapped back to focus with a one-second pause of self-reflection. "Let's wrap this up."
He barely finished the sentence before the five of them moved.
"Ice Make: War Spear!"
Gray thrust both hands forward. A massive lance of sculpted ice, intricate and vicious, materialized and shot toward Mard Geer like a ballistic missile.
"Giant's Wrath!"
Makarov's fist swelled to the size of a house. He brought it down from above, the air pressure alone enough to crack the ground.
"Dragon Slayer Secret Art: Crimson Lotus: Exploding Flame Blade!"
Natsu spun, and spiraling torrents of fire erupted from both arms, converging into a devastating wheel of flames that screamed across the sky.
"Dragon Slayer Secret Art: Roaring Thunder!"
Laxus opened his mouth. A column of lightning so bright it turned the world white for a full second tore from his jaws and struck downward.
"Nakagami Starlight!"
Erza, clad in her Nakagami Armor, swung her halberd in a single, perfect arc. A crescent of pure light followed the blade's path, cutting through the air itself.
Five attacks. Five of Fairy Tail's strongest. All converging on a single point in the sky.
Mard Geer's scream was lost in the impact.
"Enough, enough." Rhodes held up a hand, stopping Mira, Lucy, and Juvia mid-cast. He quietly dismissed the Fairy Glitter he'd been charging in his other hand. "I think that'll do."
...
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