Arthur blinked, the creature didn’t wait for him to gather his senses after his brain had had its external CPU unplugged without preparation, but continued to speak. “You may remember certain bounties could change the world state,” The one that had ensured he would have eventful times popped up in his mind. It made good luck better, bad luck worse, and just ensured he’d have an eventful life as things were more likely to happen around him. He was afraid it was largely responsible for his recent encounters with God Serena.
“These are most commonly given and accepted at the beginning of a jump. However this is not universally the case.” The bounty from Serena had already begun collection when things froze, and the pleasurable sensation was running through Arthur’s mind; he could feel each Choice Point he got. And watch in dismay as all the other Fairy Tail bounties got reduced in value. He had crossed another threshold, and would have to work harder for each Choice Point he got from here on.
But there was the new bounty; it offered up to 380 Choice Point; almost equal to killing Acnologia at this point. The Army of Evil. It talked about the four captains, Erza Knightwalker, Panther Lily, Hughes, Sugarboy, and how by accepting this bounty it would see to it that 6 individuals within the Edolas army awakened new power or found lost relics which brought them to the capital and made them stronger than Erza Knightwalker. For each one he defeated in personal combat (summons were allowed) he would get Choice Point, the higher their rank the more Choice Points he’d get. Their special weapons would join him between worlds and be as certain to function across various Jumps with differing metaphysics as the Black Blade. It also noted that he had to not destroy the loot before obtaining it; though once successfully awarded it would “respawn if destroyed.”
“You really expect me to take that bounty?” Arthur asked, looking at it.
“Each of them will be weaker than the one you just slew, I assure you,” The Smiley Face said. “And you don’t even have to kill them. This is just to keep things interesting. It’d not be fun if you simply marched over the royal army. You have captured the king. You’ve got them in checkmate. You’ve already faced worse.”
“And it gives so much for no reason?” Arthur said in the most petulantly sarcastic voice he could manage.
“Would you even consider it if it was less? As it is your victory here is a sure thing. Oh, how you go about it might be worth checking out, but the paths all lead to a certain victory. This gives extra because it’s not something you can take up opportunistically. By selecting this you guarantee yourself trouble.” The Smiley Face asked. “Still you’re on the clock. It’s a limited time offer after all.”
Then they left, leaving Arthur to consider.
380 CP. That was a big purchase. With the 200 CP he’d just gotten that opened up a lot of options. He could grab one of the big purchases. He could increase his magic to the level of August. He could grab Born to Bash. And that was without considering their tools and weapons. It was almost too good to pass up.
But he had to beat them. It probably meant he couldn’t just threaten the king’s life. Instead of going in there and saying “Checkmate,” he’d have to fight. He’d almost won. He’d fought a battle against a living nightmare. Did he even want to consider going double or nothing?
He’d not only be risking his own life. He’d be endangering Wendy, and everyone in the lacrima. But that 380 CP might mean the difference between life and death. He could buy Enchantment magic with it and hopefully save Byaku, and ensure Kiria didn’t become a dragon. He could buy Takeover Satan Soul and try to learn Takeover Dragon Soul, or simply consume Tartaros. He could open his Second Origin and if he also took Magic Power 5 he’d have magic to threaten a continent.
It would give him power enough to make fighting the Dragon Gods and Acnologia a real possibility. To make it where he didn’t need to let things proceed as they should. No.
He shook his head. The moment he interfered in Ishgar things were no longer proceeding as they should. With Serena dead there was no guarantee Zeref wouldn’t invade years earlier. And if he fought Grimoire Heart before they attacked Tenrou Island would Zeref even leave and without his gambit could they kill Acnologia.
He had already destroyed the rails. If he hadn’t when he recklessly chose to have an eventful life here, he had when he had come to Ishgar. He’d already ensured the Grand Magic Games arc wouldn’t happen how it had previously. And with it Tartaros arc was probably off. And if Tartaros went off wrong, who was to say that the ending would go right.
There was no safety net. There was no guarantee of the future. And he had destroyed it. He’d have to live with that fact. He’d have to grow to where he could accept it. He felt like he was going to be sick on his stomach. But if he was going to grow he’d need more power.
He clicked accept.
The world resumed as if nothing had happened. Except the pounding headache and his overclocking magic temporarily running haywire before crashing. But Arthur knew he had changed it. Already the weight of the realization was making him dry heave. He’d eaten some vendor food in the capital - it’d been a long day and he was hungry - but now he had uneaten it. The realization that he had disrupted the canon flow of events irrevocably had hit him like a ton of bricks, even if at the moment he realized that the Fairy Fic bounty had pinged offering him another 100 CP for having done so.
Arthur accepted the choice points with a feeling of guilt. It was confirmation of his sin. But had he had a choice in the matter? Besides he remembered what he’d been told when he asked about the Eventful Times bounty in the first place; it wasn’t a matter of actually changing the world - though he had the feeling this time the bounty was - but he had been put into a world line which had had such greater fluctuations of probability already.
He told himself that he hadn’t destroyed the world’s safety net, merely only now realized himself that it had never been there. Still he felt like he was going to get vertigo from staring down at the fall he was tightroping across.
The first thing he needed to do was to get his Archive magic up again and he could teleport Wendy free, give her an X-Ball and let her serve as a base camp with her healing magic.
The only problem was that Wendy’s magical signature could not be found by his Archive. She was no longer in its range. He stared at the hard light console he had manifested and the answer remained the same. The castle, and everything in it, could no longer be detected or sensed through his Archive magic. He couldn’t get a transporter lock on Wendy. He’d known he’d chosen to make a cakewalk into a trial by fire, but he’d only known it in his head. No he’d assumed that this was still Fairy Tail. That this still worked on shonen rules. That was an assumption that could no longer be followed.
He’d lived here. These were people. Still with Serena dead he had his sword and his keys once more, and 200 Choice Points of emergency discretionary funds. It was time to stir up the hornet’s nest.
He took out Enif’s key and focused. He wasn’t summoning the Pegasus, but instead he was calling on his Star Dress. The outfit looked like some anime depiction of hoplite armor. It was a pale bronze, consisting of a metal ‘helmet’ which failed to do anything but frame the face, bracers, greeves, breastplate, pauldrons, boots, skirt, and gauntlets. It also didn’t have Enif’s energy drain issue.
Bronze wings spread from the back of the armor as he kicked off the ground and began running, feet seeming to strike the air and push him higher and forward as he sped forward. He immediately began to slow. It wasn’t the air ripping from his lungs, his speed too fast for him to possibly breathe - the armor accounted for that - but he had passed into the city more than a mile away before he even realized it despite overclocking.
He was still braking, his Territory Armor forming around him to make sure he didn’t go splat if he hit the castle at this speed, when he struck something hard, and yet instead of breaking, or breaking him, it was yielding around him, until it finally let him pass through it. Immediately he felt the difference. There was another magical force wrestling with the power of his Territory, spatial magic on a scale that was immense. It couldn’t break his armor, but he could feel it weakening it. His Archive’s sensors almost went dead as well, warning popping into his brain about interference.
The castle as a whole looked different, and he didn’t think that it was his much closer proximity compared to viewing it from afar earlier. It had been impossibly large, especially for stone, dwarfing a city highrise, but it had looked like a medieval castle writ large. Now it looked like something out of a space opera, the stone had begun to meld together, and lacrima grew from its outer walls like so many pimples on a teenager’s face, but bearing gun barrels instead of blackheads.
It was only his overclocked mind and the sheer speed of his bronze pegasus armor that allowed Arthur to dodge the blasts from those guns. One after another they began firing at him, forcing him to weave, zip, and dodge through the sky. Still it was only a short period before one hit him despite his speed.
Arthur felt his heart pound in his chest as the energy struck him, each beat working to drive him further and further into rage and pain and paradoxically power. His armor crumbled from him in flakes of crystal, turning into lacrima under the baleful light. But Arthur was not being changed thus. Each pounding of his heart made scales form on his arm, black as the abyssal depths, his eyes turning into snake-like slits. And his power seemed to grow.
His Archive magic was already processing what the beam was actually doing as it worked to turn him into lacrima from the heart outwards. But the weapon was calibrated for humans and exceeds; it was not calibrated for a dragon or a dragon slayer. Arthur’s muscles bulged as he landed on the ground, his face distending outwards.
His mouth opened and darkness shot forth. The crystalline coating of the castle turned the bolt of shadows to the side, sending the darkness shooting out in a dozen directions, but Arthur was a fifth generation dragon slayer in the throes of the dragon force. It was not capable of completely blocking his roar. The blast tore through the outer walls and several inner ones, leaving soldiers amassed to prepare to fight him, laying beaten and crushed and a great corridor carved through the castle’s chambers, rubble falling from where he’d torn through magically reinforced walls like they were cardboard.
Arthur had never used the full force of his dragon’s roar in combat or out of it. He had always held back subconsciously. He had feared the utter destruction it was capable of. The walls, made to resist magical attacks, had blunted it severely, but they had not stopped it from cutting a line from the outside to the outside again.
A young girl clutched the arm of the old man who had been her mentor, tears feeling her eyes. He had been King Faust’s chief of staff, a not negligible defender of the castle himself, albeit one aged past his prime. She had been his assistant. All that remained of him now was his arm.
Arthur paid no heed to the damage he had inflicted, striding through the blasted apart walls as a lumbering beast he strode into the castle seeking out the heart of what had hurt him. He walked straight over the man who had been the guardian of the castle. His armor had saved his life, though without medical attention it would still fade.
He raised his head and roared again, the beam of unlight scything its way through the castle. It did not penetrate the wall where it hit it, not in the brief strafe he was performing, but several stories of the castle began to crumble and fall. His head pounded, his mind was frantic and crazed. The overclocking spell was not calibrated for the Dragon Force, and his additional thought processes were still relatively human, but unfortunately seemed to be nothing more than a gadfly tormenting the beast he had become.
A man leapt down from one of the higher stories. He wore pink armor, a sword in his hand. He didn’t have a plan. He just knew that if this beast kept destroying the castle more people would be hurt and die. He couldn’t even guess at their numbers.
Arthur’s clawed right hand rose and darkness lashed out. It was the darkness dragon’s claw, and it struck his pink armor and rent it asunder. There was the notification ping of a bounty completed, as Arthur’s mouth opened and he stopped himself.
There was, after all, something still human in Arthur. He had not been a dragon slayer long enough to develop their keen nose, much less truly begin dragonification. The dragon force was already fading and his body was reverting to normal. But he could feel that something had changed. That he was less human and more dragon than he had been before. There was a rage that lingered, itching deep under his skin, deep, deep within him. It was a dragon’s fury carved now somewhere in his soul. His Overclocked mind helped him hold it back, distancing himself from the fury, but it was still there inside of him.
Accepting the additional challenge had been a mistake. Still it seemed no one else was brave enough to face the half-dragon, and that people were instead fleeing the castle en masse. He’d torn the soldier’s uniform he’d been wearing before he’d gone for his Star Dress, and he’d dropped the spear. He’d have to find a new one; plenty were laying about here anyway.
But he reached for the army captain’s sword instead. He wasn’t sure what it was other than that it was the one that was part of his reward. He’d luckily not destroyed it. He couldn’t stow it with the king with the interference; it was too likely to explode his pocket dimension. Though maybe a sword that didn’t eat souls would be useful.
And then he grabbed his keys. He wasn’t holding anything back this time.
“Open Gate of the Eagle!” He shouted.
Altair manifested, the bearded yellow eagle appearing in a flash of lightning.
“Kii! What do you need? Kii!”
Arthur didn’t answer but instead summoned forth the pegasus Enif, allowing the winged bronze horse to appear and begin his voracious drain of Arthur’s magical energy.
“Whereyougottogo?” Enif asked.
Arthur opened his Archive, a projection of Wendy’s face appearing from the physical manifestation. “I believe she’s in this structure. Both of you, go find her, and bring her to me.”
“Fasterthanyoucansaygetitdone,” Enif said in a rush and began to gallop, wings spreading.
“Kii! Right away! Kii!” The eagle said, spreading his wings and turning to fly.
“And keep your eyes open for anything that looks important!” He screamed after them. Then Arthur was left alone with his new, suddenly more developed sense of smell and his thoughts. Or so he expected and assumed. It would seem the castle had other ideas.
He had damaged who knew what within it with his blasts. Whatever he had damaged, though, it seemed to include whatever was blocking his Archive magic’s ability to telepathically network and its long range, well he’d call them sensors but it was almost more thought collectors.
It could detect Wendy, Enif, and Altair. He could establish telepathic communication, and while Territory Magic was still more difficult than it should be within the area, he wasn’t blind anymore.
He also wasn’t alone. Creatures were approaching. Each about man height, and as far as a glance could tell, identical in height. They seemed to be armor built on a thin skeletal framework. Their heads were helmets with gun barrels in them. Their neck was skeletally thin though. Their chests were breastplates but at the stomach it again narrowed to spine-like thickness, a ball for an ass, with spindly legs thickening towards the feet as plates covered their knees down. Their arms likewise started off almost skeletal in nature before thickening into armored plates. Each carried a polearm and a shield, and there was a piece of lacrima embedded into their hearts.
“Impressive. Tell me, which one are you really a dragon slayer or dragon?” A familiar voice sounded from a wall. It was an audio transference magic, his Archive had helpfully identified it as such. Details like that, and his impending murder by firing squad helped distract him from the chill the voice sent down his spine. “I’d love to know. By how remiss of me. I’m Zero, chief magical tool engineer of the Kingdom of Edolas, and now, well I seem to be part of a new magical tool. It really is amazing. But… I worry about my humanity. Sorry, I’m rambling a bit, and I know you’re busy, but I felt that given your own seemingly liminal state you could possibly help me in finding out my own position on the matter.”
Arthur was fighting, even as “Zero” droned on. He’d have called the man Brain, and Arthur found himself wondering if Zero had simply been his real name. Those lacrima soldiers had begun an assault, beam weapons firing from their mouths, and electricity starting to crackle from their polearms. With his Territory at best at half-strength Arthur could feel each blow that struck his Territory Armor, that personal field of warped space that in large part kept outside physics on the outside, could only handle so much force or energy at once, and the beams were tearing little holes in it.
There was a flash of sidereal silver as he donned his next star dress. Enif’s hadn’t recharged, he’d not get to go on any flying flash assaults. Kochab’s would do however. The blue bear’s star dress manifested as a suit of bulky, blue, armor. Rounder than was optimal, and with a round bear-head helmet which - in grand fiction fashion showed the face almost completely - the armor, of course, made Arthur himself look something like a bear.
He caught an electrified pike on his arm, lightning crackling across the outside of his arm, until he grabbed another lacrima soldier that had rushed in close to help pin his movements. The electricity flowed from one side of the armor to the other, surging through the soldier and exploding its crystalline heart causing it to fall to the ground.
Opening his archive’s smallest console, he established mental communications with Enif and Altair. “New plan. Sending you the target’s position. Save her.” Even as he spoke, beams of energy burned against the armor of his star dress, and Arthur could feel the heat through his armor; it might not be enough for this fight on its own.
Of course his Archive being functional had other uses. He knew where Wendy was. He could cut loose a lot more knowing where he needed not to avoid damaging to stop from making Wendy collateral.
He focused his energy as much as he could, and released a massive, destructive dragon’s roar. It lacked some of the force that it had possessed during the dragon force, but it still blew away the lacrima soldiers in that direction, and shattered several rooms. Something exploded, and then something else did, and an alert pinged in his mind. A second soldier captain had been defeated. Arthur didn’t stop to see which one it was.
“Could you please not attack the castle like that,” Zero’s voice said. “I think you destroyed something important in the castle’s control systems. It’s getting unwieldy now. I’d really rather you just surrender. You can’t win, my lacrima soldiers are endless, and my weapons are many. I’d prefer not to have to hurt you. Can’t we just talk?”
“Call off your soldiers and we can talk,” Arthur said, as he drew his black sword and smashed the lacrima of one of them, feeling a bit of magical essence flow into him as its animating force faded. It was little. Miniscule compared to even the weakest dark guilders he’d slain with it. But it was there. There was a curt fury somewhere in his voice, a sharpness that came from the rage he was trying to fight down.
“Deal,” Zero’s voice said. “This battle is hurting far too many people as it is. If we can have peace that would be preferable.”
Arthur breathed deeply as the lacrima soldiers began to stand down, their upper bodies going more than half limp. “I’m certain we can come to some agreement to end further conflict.”
“Turn the lacrima back into people, and send them back to Earthland, and I will return your king,” Arthur offered.
“I’m sorry. We need that lacrima. With it we may be able to gain infinitely renewable magical power. You’ve seen the world, the wasteland around the capital from the lack of magical energy in the land, and how even further afield the people suffer for the lack. We can turn this world into a paradise, if a relatively few must suffer, you must realize the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” Zero said, pain in his voice. “I know it must sound cruel, but…”
Enif burst into the room. “I’vegotthegirlnowwh-” The pegasus stopped for a split second as he realized he did not in fact ‘have the girl’. “Berightback.” He turned and flew back down the hallway.
“... you must understand I can’t betray my world like that. I could send the girl you’re trying to rescue back, or you back, or maybe even part of the lacrima, it’s larger than is absolutely necessary. But we need a dragon slayer, and we need a large part of the lacrima. Still with the castle’s new systems I should be able to create an anima precise enough to send some of the lacrima back. If I had a good way to find specific individuals I might could even extract them separately.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“What good would sending them back as lacrima do?” Arthur asked.
“Oh, that’s simple. A reverse trip through the anima should undo the change into lacrima. Sorry, did I forget to mention that?”
“So I give you the king and you keep me prisoner, and return a small number of the abducted citizens?” Arthur asked.
“You know when you put it that way it does sound unfair. But remember I have the whole castle to bring you down with, and Knightwalker is on her way back…”
“Kii! I’ve got the girl!” Altair said, flying into the room with Wendy in his talons. “Enif is fighting Miss Angel. Kii!”
“... You can’t win. All you can do is spitefully cause more death and destruction. Surely you agree that unnecessary killing is undesirable… Hey stop feeding that girl things, we’re supposed to be having a parley, not just giving you time for tactical planning.”
Arthur had handed Wendy the canister of X-Balls. “Altair, take Wendy to the lacrima in town. Get her to fix it, and give these to whoever’s inside. They’ll fix their ability to use magic.”
“Kii! Right away! Kii!” The eagle shrieked.
“Wait… how do I fix it?” Wendy cried, but it was too late, the eagle was carrying her away.
“You realize I’m going to have to shoot that eagle down, don’t you?” Zero said from the machine.
“Don’t you dare,” Arthur stated and raised his head. The roar tore through the castle.
“Stop, you’re damaging ME,” Zero’s voice sounded pained, as the ground began to light alive with electricity. The energy was too much for the Kochab-armor to simply absorb. Arthur could feel it bringing him to his knees, as he continued to roar.
A large chunk of the castle began to crumble and fall, cracking off and coming down to slam into the ground. “It’s too much,” Zero howled. “THREAT LEVEL SURPASSING ACCEPTABLE PARAMETER. BEGINNING EMERGENCY COUNTERMEASURES.” Zero’s voice had gone strangely flat, and unemotive. He was speaking without feeling.
The electricity redoubled and redoubled again. The lacrima soldiers were exploding from the energy, but more were coming, firing at him before they died. Arthur’s hands planted on the floor, darkness exploding from him. It was Serena’s spell; Banishing Shadow, a pure sphere of darkness dragon slayer magic, consuming everything in its wake. He formed his territory around him then as he fell through the vacuum he had made, not even the magical field of the castle existing within it. Air rushed to fill the void he had made, and filled his screaming lungs as he fell.
He landed on his feet, rising to them. Enif’s gate had been closed, the drain had stopped. He’d lost a powerful soldier. But he didn’t have time to think about that. He felt space begin to warp around him, sounds like a storm beginning in the room. It was Anima. He could recognize it as such. But it was a concentrated and more intensely focused version of it. The castle was trying to eject him from this dimension. Arthur gathered his territory around him, letting his Overclocked mind bleed more and more into the Archive, or perhaps vice versa, his magic working based on its sensors. It was a battle of spatial magic in its purest form, a question of whose sorcery was supreme.
Arthur had more raw power, and more skill than the castle’s operator, but it was not a pure comparison of power and skill. The magics were not exactly equal. Territory was superior in many ways; it could teleport things, create barriers, alter the rules of space. It was spatial manipulation and warping. The sub-space magic anima, however, had only one purpose and function. It was a specialized tool, every element of it designed for the task. Arthur was stronger and more skilled, but he was in a knife fight with a pocket knife against a man with a bowie knife.
He lost track of his own physical senses, his entire mind focused on the Archive’s sensors and the magic he was combating. His pocket dimensions, tied to reality through him and his magic, were being torn asunder. The world in which he kept Faust burst, the bloody lacrima, still partially encased in Serena’s flesh, and the king of Edolas spilling out. The anima would pull them away, and Arthur might never find them again. He reached for the lacrima grabbing it and holding on, even as the Dimension Black he’d been remiss in properly rebuilding popped. This was a dimension of dark magic, however, a world of destruction and when it popped it released a spout of dark magic which shot through the walls. One of the projectors being used to focus and target the anima effect melted away. It was enough to disrupt the balance of the fight, and the battle Arthur had been losing seemed to have turned somewhat. Still it was a tug of war, and one of them needed to disrupt the other. The only problem was that he was too busy not losing to do anything else. And he knew that meant sooner or later Zero would get help.
While Arthur and Zero were preoccupied with each other, there were still others in the castle. Altair had identified the woman as Miss Angel. She had fought him, and defeated Enif, though the fight had not been an easy win for her. She was limping, leaning on a wall for support. In one arm she held a golden tommy gun, her body clad in a loose, form-concealing nun’s habit, complete with a cornette. But the face was the same. Angel of the Oracion Seis. Or at least the Edolas version of her. Though given her history she had never taken up that code name; she was still simply Sorano.
“This is not what must be,” Sorano said as she took in the situation. “You can’t banish our good king to another world! Zero, you must halt this at once!”
“THREAT LEVEL EXCEEDS PARAMETERS. ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ARE UNIMPORTANT.” Sorano could recognize the voice, but Zero had never been that cold and emotionless. He had always been a kind man. A man who put the needs of others before himself. Sorano could not believe that he was a coward who would betray their most gracious and magnificent king. No, this wasn’t Zero. This was the magical tool he had found. This was Brain.
“He is our king! All other considerations than that are unimportant! We have sworn him our undying loyalty and fealty!” Sorano raised the golden gun and began to sweep it in an arc of fire. Bullets of sand struck the anima projectors one after another, exploding in a shower of sand each time.
“NEW THREAT IDENTIFied. No!” Zero’s voice broke in a pained gasp. “This device. It’s almost like it has a will of its own,” He stated. “I’m sorry, Sorano. The damage got too great, and it wanted to survive, and it only saw one route to doing that.”
“Don’t worry, if he threatens our king, now that I have the power to do something about it, nothing will stop me.”
Arthur was just staring at the woman. She was talking about beating him in a fight. He knew that. But she was Angel. The voice was the same. The face was the same. The outfit was thankfully a lot less distracting. He knew he should bring her down without hesitation. He’d get Choice Points. He’d complete a bounty.
But she was Angel, and Arthur knew himself better than to deny he’d been crushing on her for some time. She was attractive, she tolerated his presence, and he was lonely. It was enough to make him develop a crush. He didn’t think it was anything more, and besides the only reason she’d look his way twice was that he was ‘saving her’. Nothing would come of it. Nothing should come of it. It’d end badly, and the idea of rejection terrified him.
But this wasn’t Angel. This was just someone else with her face. Still it was hard to hit the girl that you wished you could ask out on a date, even if it was just someone who looked like her. The worst thing about it all was that how he felt right now he wasn’t sure he’d hold back from lethal force once a fight started. The itch to rage, lash out, and crush his enemy was burning inside of himself.
Arthur decided to split the difference. A silver key teleported into his hand, the castle’s interference with his spatial magic seemed to have abated; whatever field it was using to prevent it had been shut down when it attempted to transport him to another dimension. In an instant Orion had appeared. He was smaller than he usually was, a trick of manipulating his parameters during his summoning. Still he towered over Arthur and Sorano.
“You want a fight, Orion? Knock Angel out without injuring her. Bonus points for the more of the castle you wreck in the process,” Arthur said. It was only then that he realized King Faust had disappeared while he was preoccupied with staring. He cursed himself out as a slow witted fool.
If he was an Earthland mage he could have tracked him with Archive magic. But he didn’t have magical energy of his own for it to sense and follow. It struck Arthur that there were only two, well three thanks to him, exits from the room. He didn’t go past Angel, and he didn’t fly out of the hole in the roof. Arthur turned and began to run after Faust.
Sorano was battered and tired. The eagle had electrocuted her, and the pegasus had kicked her. She’d finally defeated it with her new staff, or well it was a staff when she’d found it and picked it up. The weapon had changed since then. It was a golden scepter which she felt almost wrong touching; it obviously belonged to a king. But her king, the only king who mattered, had been abducted, and she would see him free, free to bring down the false goddess who lorded over the lives of humanity with her dark power, and free mankind forever from the tyranny of the so-called ‘angels’.
Once she had touched it, though, she had known how to use it. It was the oddest experience in her life. She expected Zero had gone through much the same when he touched that black box labeled b.R.A.I.N. She’d known how to use it, not just in the sense that she had suddenly understood the intricacies of its magical capabilities, but had known it had the power to possibly save her king.
Zero’s b.R.A.I.N. had transformed the castle into a magical fortress. Her staff was simpler, but that didn’t stop it from being powerful. It had seen her through against those two winged pests, even if she’d not stopped one from escaping.
She didn’t have time to stay here and play with the giant. The villain was chasing her one true king. It was not something that she’d allow. She raised her gun, pulling back on the trigger sending a spurt of several bullets towards it. Each one was super compacted magical sand, striking into the creature’s body and breaching its skin. Then they’d explode, a grenade of magical sand capable of shattering stone or tearing through steel.
She didn’t pause to watch the result, but she sped forward. She might not look it, but she was a trained knight and soldier of the country. She tried to weave past the giant, but her haste was apparently misguided. The creature had been hurt, five purple splotches forming upon its body where the bullets had exploded, but it was not some mere brute beast, the spirit was also a warrior.
Several of the creature’s leather belts which crisscrossed its body and limbs reached out and grasped for her, but Sorano’s gun transformed - an image something like a sideways 69 flashing as it did so - becoming a pair of oddly shaped swords. If anything it looked more like a giant pair of scissors which had been split into its two blades, the hilts awkward for use of them as swords. Not that it mattered for how Sorano intended to use them as each of the swords created a cutting field, slicing through the belts.
It was too little too late. Orion’s belts had caused her to pause, and his follow up blow was already connecting by the time her swords cut them. Shallow cuts appeared across the blue giant’s limb, as its fist connected hard with her body sending her flying into one of the walls.
Then the floor surged to life with lightning magic around the giant, the energy surging up through it.
“Sorry, Sorano. Was a bit distracted. I hate to say it, but his majesty and the invader escaped through the secret escape tunnel, and Brain can’t see them from there. I may have failed the king, but don’t worry, Sorano, I won’t fail you as well, I can turn all the weapons of this chamber towards the giant. The invader hasn’t damaged the sensors and weapons of the castle here, and I doubt this giant is a real threat. Sorano? She left?”
She had run forward, a symbol like a stylized ‘m’ with an extra line that went out and curved back to cross the third leg, changing from the twin swords into a long, golden whip which stretched out, and wrapped around a hanging piece of damaged ceiling of the floor several stories above and pulled her partway up as she swung across the electrified room only for the whip to uncoil and let her land on the far side. She was already running. Her king was in danger, and Zero was keeping the giant occupied.
But not as occupied as hoped. Zero had held back from using the castle’s main weapons on Arthur. Last time they’d nearly turned him into a monster the castle could not survive. He was willing to risk them against the giant. The beams fired, their energy working to transform the giant into a chunk of lacrima through the magic inside of itself.
Only it wasn’t human. The beams were not yet calibrated for a celestial spirit, and the modifications would take time. Time Zero did not have as the beams disrupted the alterations to its summoning, making the giant swell back to full size.
“Oh, that was quite unexpected. I do have to say I wonder, Mr. Giant, if you can understand me and if you can understand me if you can reply. I’d love to know more about you. Does Earthland have many of your kind? Why did the magic make you grow? Was that a result of your nature or some interaction with the magic the invader used to summon you? It really is a great shame we have to fight. Are you certain that you can’t get your summoner to reconsider…”
Orion ignored the garrulous voice coming from the castle’s speakers. Orion had initially dismissed the permission to smash the castle as merely a disappointing authorization for collateral damage. Now Orion was realizing that it had been because the castle itself was his summoner’s principal opponent, and he was being told to fight part of the fight, and allowed to judge for himself if he needed to help with the other part.
Orion walked forward, smashing through the ceiling with his stride, his hand coming down to cause the castle to collapse down and bury the escape tunnel. He had seen where Angel was heading and observed her speed. He was Orion, and his appellation was the hunter. To think he’d not be able to predict the movement of some fleeing game was the height of hubris.
He’d been told to knock her out. He’d trust Arthur that Angel would be an exciting opponent, and that she needed to be focused on instead of the castle. But if the castle was going to be attacking him he’d take any pot shots he needed.
As he stepped towards the edge of the castle, the annoying chatterbox was still droning on. It was actually mildly useful. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. I wonder how you’ll do against my lacrima soldiers. Your summoner smashed so many I didn’t have any in the area before, but as you can see they are arriving. Oh that’s not good. You really do seem to be making quick work of them. I really ought to have sent them into the basement where you couldn’t swat them shouldn’t I? Hmm I’ve lost control of the outer segment in that part. You’re really not nice to my magic tool are you? I really feel like I’m talking to myself.”
Sorano was rushing forward when the ceiling began to collapse down onto her. The astrological symbol for Taurus flashed over her weapon as it changed into a double headed golden ax. She felt strength surging through her body as she blocked the rubble, and knocked it to the side. Her body hurt. The eagle’s electricity, the pegasus’s kicks, and now having the ceiling collapse onto her. It all was adding up. The electricity had left her nerves damaged; they might heal with time and treatment, but her body wasn’t moving properly. The pegasus’s blows to her body had left her body feeling like tenderized meat, bruises across her torso, possibly some small fractures in one arm and leg; at the very least her leg hurt with each step. And even with the strength of her Zodiac Staff’s Taurus Mode the rubble had been enough to leave her other shoulder numb.
The effect of Zero’s b.R.A.I.N. was fading now that the rubble was no longer part of the castle’s structure. It was easy, even with both her arms wounded, one completely limp, to blast away the rubble in a single, powerful swing of the ax, and she pushed herself forward. She had a king-napper to deal with and a king to rescue.
Faust was panting when Arthur had caught up. Arthur wasn’t the best fighter, but his body was up to the level expected of a high end mage in Fairy Tail, and his endurance was a little better than that. Faust was an old man unaccustomed to physical strain; even slowed by his ‘Star Dress’ armor Arthur was able to quickly overtake him.
Arthur’s power armor gauntleted hand was reaching out for him when suddenly a spear struck him a half dozen times in quick succession. Even with his overclocked mind, he couldn’t really keep up with the superhuman speed, and his body lagged even further behind. It didn’t completely matter, though. Attacks of that level couldn’t damage Kochab’s armor.
Arthur’s hand, not even slowed by the blows, grasped Faust by the hair just as he had been reaching to, pulling back on his head. But Arthur’s attention was diverted. The spearman who had attacked him was no man. It was Erza Knightwalker; and before his deal with the devil, she had been the strongest combatant in all of Edolas with the single most dangerous weapon other than potentially the Dorma Anim.
Now, however, she was not. He’d created 6 more powerful, and more dangerous foes. And somehow that gave him an odd feeling of calm, and certainty as he faced her down. The nerves, and terror that gripped his subconscious normally in battle simply wasn’t there. The unconscious hesitation and worry wasn’t slowing him down.
Knightwalker lunged, her spear - as fast as Racer seemed during his slow magic - sweeping to cut the king’s hair, and Arthur’s territory magic lashed out. Knightwalker’s spear changed mid cut, its head changing in a flash of light to a simple, straight bladed head in white and pale silver glowing with its own inner light. Arthur felt his spell to rip it from her hands severed by its blade, even as it passed through the king’s hair without cutting it.
Arthur’s surprise was evident on his face. How’d she known? Was it just some fine tuned battle instinct? He wanted to call foul, but there was no one to call foul to. Instead he turned his hand over 200 degrees around as he pulled it back.
Knightwalker leapt backwards, dodging the dragon of dark energy that rose up from the ground. Arthur didn’t have Serena’s hybrid theory, but his archive had seen the spell often enough for him to copy and modify it.
Knightwalker leapt to dodge the second as well, then the third. The first three didn’t merely rise up, though. The dragons were still there, whipping about and moving. Her spear, still in its magic rending form, cut through one, and then another, before the fourth head hit her from below. She was knocked up through the escape tunnel’s roof, disappearing from sight, but Arthur could feel the dragon of darkness and where she was when she finally struck it down. The remaining 4 heads rose almost in sync, and came at her along with the surviving head.
Knightwalker cut down four of them before the fifth drove her back down into the ground before him, the stone floor cratering enough that Arthur’s feet slipped in the sudden incline, pulling him down into a clumsy heap with the king.
Even so, Knightwalker was rising to her feet.
“You’ve lost, and I’ve got your king; surrender or he dies,” Arthur said as Faust gasped and choked. He was rising, lifting Faust by his throat in the process. There was a bubbling fury in his throat. It was one he felt, but he knew it wasn’t truly his fury. It was a dragon’s rage.
“I can’t,” Knightwalker said. “Eternal magic is more important than the life of the king.” She lunged then, her spear still in its magic cutting form. It couldn’t cut physical objects, that’d been shown, but as long as it was in that form Arthur couldn’t teleport it, and if she timed it right she could change it to its most powerful form and destroy him.
Only Arthur didn’t need to teleport the spear. The spear struck his spirit dress, dispelling the armor he was wearing, but it didn’t penetrate his skin; Knightwalker no longer held it to drive it forward. Instead the red-haired woman was falling from the air.
Arthur wrapped Faust’s legs in a construction of his space, the distorted space of his territory wrapping around his lower body. Given he doubted that simply removing Knightwalker from the battlefield would count as defeating her, he would need his hands for the fight that was coming.
Even the loss of her spear didn’t really deter Knightwalker. She rose to her feet and lunged, her hand striking the armoring layer of his Territory magic which formed between her and him. She reached for her spear, only for a dismissive sweep of Arthur’s hand to send her flying back into a wall as his magic hit her like a crashing wave of lead. Cracks formed in the stone, but she still strained against his magic.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Arthur said. “Surrender and…”
His Archive magic screamed a warning, his Overclocked mind reacting without his full conscious awareness of what magical threat he was answering, only that it was big. A massive vertical cyclone of water hit against it, with force enough that he had to reinforce the barrier.
It was Angel, or Edolas’s version of her. His chest ached to see her arm hanging limp by her side. She looked too much like Angel even if he was rather certain Angel would hate any outfit that concealed her body that much. He watched as the golden water gun in her hand transformed into a sword, the symbol of Leo the lion, not that Arthur recognized it, flashing across it as it shone and changed.
She was charging towards him, a brilliant light, like staring into a nuclear furnace or the sun itself, shining from the blade. There was too much sheer magical force pouring out of it at the moment for him to teleport it, so he just kept up that shield of force, letting the blade’s light hit his space. The distortion did have an effect of only letting some of the light through, but it was still enough to make him pull his head away from the blinding flash.
“Sorano?” Knightwalker said as she fell to her feet. Arthur had gotten distracted, holding the king and blocking the blow. “What is that sword?”
“My weapon,” Sorano said. “The blade that will save the king. The Zodiac Weapon Astra.” Though as the symbol of Aries the ram flashed across it, it had become a shepherd’s crook, its golden head glowing with a soft, pink light, a similar light forming around the king.
Arthur didn’t need his Archive magic to alert him that it was a form of spatial magic. Being a Dragon Slayer had bought him the time needed to stop Anima, he was too slow to react as the crook shepherded the king to Edolas-Angel’s side. No. She was Sorano. If that was Angel’s real name, she hadn’t felt the need to tell him that.
“Knightwalker take the king, I’ll handle him,” Sorano said, trying and failing to sound confident.
“Like hell you will. The king can handle himself, we get rid of him together, and I take back my spear.”
Arthur wished it was a sword. He knew how to use a sword. The spear; well his Archive was telling him how to use its magic, but not how to use it. Still he let it change, shifting from its Rune Save form to what his Archive had identified as Silfarion. He didn’t know how to use a spear, but he could still bash someone in the head with a stick and with its speed, the dragon rage in him, and his strength, behind it the blow was enough to bring Knightwalker to her knees as he moved to cut Faust off from the castle proper.
Arthur wasn’t sure what was happening there, but given Orion’s gate had just closed it was not a very safe place for him one way or another. He needed to keep these captains divided. Though arguably good news on that front said that the 8th ranked, and lowest powered, captain he’d not defeated had had his weapon destroyed. It was probably Panther Lily, so it didn’t mean he wasn’t a threat, but it was still better than facing him with it. Though it did mean he wouldn’t be able to acquire it himself.
Sorano was rushing, but Arthur still held his Territory magic; another reason to make sure they didn’t escape back to the castle. The forcefield blocked her blow, and halted Knightwalker’s approach. “You’re both badly beaten, don’t make me hurt you. Drop your weapon and surrender and I will remove you from the field of battle.”
Sorano screamed, not words, but a cathartic vent of emotion. Libra’s symbol flashed as her star weapon shifted from sword to staff. It struck his barrier and Arthur felt his space twist, the ethernado that had infused the area with his spell being forcibly discharged destructively. It was a blow that turned the magical energy of the struck target against itself.
Sorano followed up immediately pushing forward and forcing Arthur to deflect with his spear. He wasn’t fighting someone actually super fast here, and while she was skilled, she was no Suzaku, and with only one arm her grip on the quarterstaff was awkward and weak.
He blocked merely one blow, Knightwalker taking the opportunity to kick him in the head. It was already too late, though, the magic staff was gone from Sorano’s hand. In the staff form it wasn’t outputting massive magical force. It disappeared from her hand, even as Knightwalker grasped her spear.
“I don’t know how you figured out my weapon but I will show you-” She cut off as his Territory magic sent her flying into a wall. Arthur was torn when he saw that she finally slumped to the ground; a part of him was relieved, but another part of him wished she’d stayed up so he could continue to smash and receive the catharsis of battle. Faust and Sorano, though, were turning and running down the hallway. Sorano dived for the golden staff only for it to reappear in Arthur’s hand.
“You’ve lost. Don’t make me hurt you,” He said. He was finally running out of the extra boost of magical energy that killing Serena had given him. But that still left his normal stores full. Faust was still running, Sorano turning as if she was going to make a valiant last stand.
Arthur teleported to block the king’s path, hitting him with the zodiac staff. It wasn’t hard enough to knock him out, Arthur was actively trying not to kill him. He was still useful if taken alive. Still it was enough to make him stumble backwards, lowering his head.
“I surrender. I’ll go quietly. Spare my life, and those of my people and we will use Anima to return the lacrima to Earthland and restore the people within it,” King Faust said.
Sorano looked at the king, tears building in her eyes, and sank to her knees. The sheer grit that had kept her standing had run out and she soon felt the embrace of unconsciousness.