Chapter 152
Natsu’s battle ended far sooner than anyone might have expected.
No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t land a clean hit on any of the Seven Sins Apostles.
Every time he charged one of them, Greed shifted their positions.
Whenever he tried to compensate, Pride’s weapons forced him to dodge, Lust’s vines interfered with his footing, Gluttony’s gravity threw off his balance, or Wrath sent another burst of electricity through him.
All Natsu could really do was get angrier, throw out increasingly reckless attacks, and burn through his magic power at an alarming rate.
Less than half an hour later, even his Dragon Slayer stamina finally gave out.
Natsu dropped to one knee, breathing heavily, with barely enough strength left to keep the flames flickering around his hands.
Lust immediately took advantage of the opening.
Thick vines burst from the ground and wrapped around his arms, legs, and torso until he was almost completely cocooned.
"Let... me... go..."
Natsu still tried to shout at them, so Lust calmly produced another thick root and shoved it sideways between his teeth.
"Mmph! MMMMMMPH!"
His furious protests immediately became incomprehensible.
Lucy and Happy were also wrapped in vines shortly afterward, though considerably more loosely.
Neither of them had actually been fighting, so the restraints were mainly there to stop them from interfering with anything else.
Gray and Lyon, however, were still going.
Their fight had lasted far longer than Marshall had expected, largely because Lyon was somehow beginning to lose.
In terms of raw magic power, Lyon actually held a slight advantage over Gray.
Unfortunately, the man had developed the terrible habit of using Ice-Make with only one hand because, in his own opinion, it looked much cooler that way.
The result was exactly what anyone with common sense would expect.
His constructs were weaker, so his control suffered.
And Gray, who had spent years being taught that Ice-Make was supposed to be performed with both hands, was rapidly exploiting every weakness Lyon created for himself.
"DON’T UNDERESTIMATE A FAIRY TAIL MAGE!"
Gray roared as he smashed through another of Lyon’s attacks and countered immediately.
Somehow, despite the difference in raw magic power, Gray’s momentum kept building.
His attacks became sharper and more aggressive, while Lyon was steadily forced backward.
Watching from above, Marshall eventually decided he had seen enough.
’This idiot is actually going to lose.’
So he sent Ultear in.
The balance of the fight changed almost instantly.
Gray had already been struggling against Lyon’s Ice-Make when a second opponent joined the battle, and he soon discovered exactly how unpleasant it was to be attacked by both of Ur’s other students at the same time.
Lyon pressured him from the front while Ultear struck whenever he tried to reposition.
Gray managed to block the first few attacks and even attempted to counter, but he was quickly overwhelmed by the two-on-one assault.
Before long, he was being knocked back and forth between them with almost no opportunity to retaliate.
Marshall watched several particularly vicious blows land and became increasingly convinced that at least some of them had nothing to do with strategy.
There was definitely some personal resentment mixed in there.
Whatever the case, the result was decisive.
Gray lost.
With that, Natsu, Gray, Lucy, and Happy were all captured.
The four were eventually tied to wooden crosses with vines and displayed side by side in what could only be described as an extremely humiliating defeat.
Natsu and Gray both hung their heads in silence.
Their hair cast shadows over their eyes, and neither of them seemed willing to look at anyone.
Considering how confidently the two of them had charged into the ruins earlier, the contrast was almost painful.
Their pride had taken considerably more damage than their bodies.
Lucy, ironically, was the only one who hadn’t been seriously hurt, yet she was crying harder than either of them.
Part of that was acting.
Unfortunately, not all of it was.
She genuinely had no idea whether the current situation was still following Marshall’s plan.
He had told her to stay out of the fight, and obviously the Seven Sins Apostles hadn’t hurt her, but being tied to a cross beside Natsu and Gray while surrounded by people pretending to be murderous cultists was a little beyond what she had been expecting.
Worse, she couldn’t reveal that she knew Marshall was involved.
So Lucy did the only thing she could think of and miserably complained to herself as though her life choices had finally caught up with her.
"I’m so stupid... really..."
She sniffled.
"I never should’ve taken an S-Class quest."
"These enemies are way beyond anything we can handle!"
Then her tears came harder.
"Waaah... I was wrong! I want to go back to the guild! (π_π)"
Happy, tied beside her, stared at her uncertainly.
Even he wasn’t entirely sure how much of this was acting anymore.
Then, at last, Lucy heard the voice she had been desperately waiting for.
[All right, I’m coming.]
Her eyes immediately brightened.
[Don’t expose my identity yet, understood?]
Lucy almost nodded before catching herself.
A moment later, another black-robed figure descended from the night sky.
Unlike the seven Apostles, whose masks each bore the name of a sin, this figure wore a mask marked with two characters.
[Benevolence.]
Lucy was speechless.
’...What?’
Of all the intimidating titles Marshall could have chosen for himself, that was apparently the one he had settled on.
Before she could recover from the absurdity of it, everyone around them lowered their heads respectfully.
"Aitei-sama!"
Marshall hadn’t even bothered disguising his voice.
Lucy almost wanted to scream at him.
Fortunately, Natsu and Gray were both so exhausted and mentally battered by their defeats that neither appeared to notice anything strange about it.
Marshall descended until his feet hovered just above the ground and calmly surveyed the battlefield.
"Looks like everything has been taken care of."
Lyon lowered his head.
"Yes, Aitei-sama. Thank you for your assistance."
Marshall nodded.
"Then let’s go. Deliora’s seal should be almost completely undone."
The Seven Sins Apostles immediately fell in behind him.
Gluttony raised one hand, and the gravity surrounding the four wooden crosses changed.
Natsu, Gray, Lucy, and Happy slowly floated into the air, still bound in place, before drifting after the group like trophies being carried home after a successful hunt.
Natsu immediately began struggling again.
"MMMMMPH!"
Nobody paid him any attention.
...
They soon reached the chamber where Deliora had been sealed.
Moonlight poured through the ancient altar and fell across the enormous mass of ice at its center.
The frozen prison that had contained the demon for years was visibly melting now, water running down its surface as more of Deliora’s monstrous body was gradually exposed.
The sight finally broke Gray’s silence.
"Lyon!"
He jerked against the vines restraining him.
"Stop this! You know how terrifying Deliora is! We can’t defeat that thing!"
Lyon continued walking without responding.
Gray struggled harder.
"There’s still time to turn back!"
That finally made Lyon stop.
He looked over his shoulder, his expression unreadable.
"Ur told you the exact same thing back then, didn’t she?"
Gray froze.
The words struck directly at the guilt he had carried for years.
His fingers clenched against the vines.
"..."
For a moment, he couldn’t answer.
Then he gritted his teeth.
"I already know I was wrong!"
His voice rose.
"So now you’re going to repeat the exact same mistake I made?! Lyon!"
Lyon remained unmoved.
"Gray, if someone refuses to overcome the fear of their past, they can never move forward."
He turned toward Deliora.
"This time, I will kill Deliora!"
Gray opened his mouth, ready to argue again, but Marshall spoke before he could.
"I don’t think either of you needs to keep arguing."
Everyone looked toward him.
Marshall’s gaze remained on the gigantic demon as the ice around its head continued to melt.
"Because this demon..."
He paused only long enough to confirm what his senses were already telling him.
"...is already dead."
Several people reacted at once.
"Eh?"
"What?"
Gray stared at him.
Marshall floated a little closer to the frozen demon.
"It seems that after all these years, Ur’s ice already killed this particular body."
His tone remained matter-of-fact.
"You don’t need to kill Deliora again."
By that point, most of the ice around Deliora’s head had melted away, allowing Marshall to sense the demon directly without the frozen seal interfering.
There was nothing inside.
No Curse Power.
No magic.
No life.
Deliora’s enormous body was nothing more than an empty shell.
Ur’s Iced Shell had done its job long ago.
Yet as Marshall examined the demon more closely, he detected something else.
Something he hadn’t expected at all.
He floated upward until he was level with Deliora’s enormous head, then reached out and placed one hand against its forehead.
Almost immediately, two streams of light emerged.
One was black, the other was white.
The black light flowed from Deliora’s body, while the white light emerged from the remnants of Ur’s ice.
Neither resisted him.
In fact, both streams seemed to move toward Marshall’s hand of their own accord, gathering in his palm as naturally as water flowing downhill.
Marshall barely had time to examine them before a sharp crack echoed through the chamber.
Crack.
A fracture appeared across Deliora’s body.
Then another.
In seconds, cracks spread across the enormous demon from head to toe, branching in every direction until its entire body resembled a shattered statue barely holding itself together.
Then Deliora collapsed.
The gigantic body broke apart into countless pieces, which crumbled further as they fell.
Before any of the fragments could even hit the ground properly, they disintegrated into ash and scattered across the chamber.
"...It broke?"
Someone whispered.
For the people gathered there who had lost families to Deliora, watched their homes destroyed by the demon, or spent years shaping their entire lives around hatred and revenge, the sight of that empty space seemed almost impossible to understand.
The monster they had hated for so long was simply gone.
Not defeated in some grand battle.
Not slain by Lyon after years of preparation.
It had already been dead.
And now even its remains had disappeared.
Something inside them seemed to give way along with Deliora’s body.
Not painfully.
It felt more like a burden they had carried for so long that they had forgotten what life felt like without it had finally been lifted from their shoulders.
Toby was the first to break.
He dropped to his knees and began sobbing loudly.
Sherry raised both hands to cover her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stared at the place where Deliora had stood.
Yuka lowered his head and said nothing.
Lyon simply stared.
For years, defeating Deliora had been the goal around which he had structured almost everything he did.
Now the demon was gone, and worse, he hadn’t been the one to defeat it at all.
He collapsed to the ground without a word.
Gray remained where he was, still tied to the cross, staring at the empty chamber with an expression that even he probably couldn’t have explained.
Relief.
Grief.
Guilt.
Disbelief.
The realization that Ur’s sacrifice had not been meaningless.
All of it seemed to hit him at once.
Ultear moved.
She walked quietly toward what remained of the ice and placed one hand against its melting surface.
Then she stood there in silence.
Marshall, meanwhile, was far more interested in the two strange lights now resting in his palm.
His expression gradually became peculiar.
The first thing he noticed was that he hadn’t actually done anything to create them.
The moment he had placed his hand near Deliora, both lights had practically swum into his palm by themselves.
The second thing was even stranger.
Despite having never seen anything like them before, he somehow knew exactly what they were.
Information.
Not ordinary records or memories stored in a conventional form, but two highly compressed masses of pure information.
The black one contained information related to Deliora: its nature as a demon, aspects of its body, and knowledge connected to its existence.
The white one was different.
Marshall focused on it for several seconds.
’These are... Ur’s memories?’
His eyes narrowed.
’Wait.’
He looked between the two lights.
’Information Magic can do this too?’
Apparently, information could be separated from its original carrier, compressed, and preserved externally in the form of light.
That was new.
Marshall had understood for some time that Super Archive could transfer enormous quantities of information directly into someone’s mind, but there were obvious dangers to doing that carelessly.
If too much information was forced into a person’s brain too quickly, the mental burden could cause serious damage.
These constructs worked differently.
Rather than forcing everything into the mind at once, they behaved more like self-contained archives.
The information existed independently and could be accessed gradually whenever the recipient wanted.
It was clearly a more sophisticated application of Information Magic than anything Marshall had previously used.
Now that he had seen the structure directly, however, the principle behind it was no longer mysterious.
He could reproduce it.
That realization alone made the discovery valuable.
Marshall temporarily set aside the black archive containing Deliora’s information and focused on the white one instead.
After carefully checking it for anything suspicious—hidden commands, magical traps, foreign interference, or any other unpleasant surprise—he opened it.
Countless memories immediately unfolded before him.
Every single one centered on the same person.
Ultear.
Marshall saw Ur holding her newborn daughter for the first time.
He felt the overwhelming love contained within the memory and saw the name she had chosen for the child.
Ultear.
Ur’s tear.
The memories continued.
A small child.
A mother’s affection.
Ur caring for her daughter with all the tenderness anyone could have asked for.
Then the situation changed.
Ultear’s enormous magic power began placing an unbearable strain on her young body.
Her health deteriorated, and Ur, terrified that her daughter might die, desperately searched for help.
Eventually, she brought Ultear to the Bureau of Magical Development for treatment.
She entrusted her daughter to them because she believed they could save her.
And later... The Bureau told Ur that Ultear had died.
Marshall finally understood.
’So that’s what happened.’
The pieces fit together immediately.
There was no abandonment in these memories.
No rejection.
No mother deciding her child had become inconvenient and leaving her behind.
Ur had loved Ultear.
She had brought her daughter to the Bureau because she wanted her healed, and she had spent the rest of her life believing Ultear was dead.
Ultear had misunderstood her mother for all these years.
Marshall closed the archive and remained silent for a moment.
Then he looked toward Ultear.
She was still standing beside the melting remnants of Ur’s ice.
Marshall approached her.
Ultear noticed him and turned slightly, confusion appearing in her eyes.
Before she could ask what he wanted, Marshall raised the ’white information light’ and gently pressed it against her.
The memories flowed into her.
Ultear froze.
Her entire body went rigid.
For several seconds, she didn’t move at all.
Then her shoulders began trembling.
Her hands followed.
Soon, her entire body was shaking.
Marshall said nothing.
There was nothing he needed to explain.
Ultear had spent years believing she had been abandoned by the one person whose love she had wanted most.
Words from a stranger wouldn’t have been enough to undo that.
Ur’s own memories were different.
There could be no misunderstanding what they contained.
Ultear abruptly turned away.
Then she ran.
She moved so quickly that nobody had time to stop her.
Within moments she had disappeared from the chamber entirely, leaving only a few scattered tears glittering briefly in the air behind her.
Lyon stared after her in confusion.
"What happened to him?"
Marshall glanced toward the passage where Ultear had vanished.
"Nothing."
He turned away again.
"Some people just need a little time alone."
He made no attempt to follow.
There was nothing he could say that Ultear needed to hear right now.
Those memories belonged to Ur, and whatever Ultear felt after seeing them was something she would have to confront for herself.
Marshall instead floated back toward Natsu and Gray.
Both Fairy Tail mages were still helplessly tied to their wooden crosses.
Natsu had finally managed to spit the root from his mouth at some point, although judging by his exhausted expression, he no longer had enough energy left to start shouting again.
Gray looked equally miserable.
Marshall stopped directly in front of them and a smile slowly formed beneath his mask.
"Well then."
Both men looked up.
"Deliora’s matter is finished."
Marshall allowed his gaze to move between them.
"So now..."
His eyes curved with unmistakable amusement.
"What exactly should I do with the two of you?"
Neither answered.
Marshall leaned forward slightly.
"Hmm?"
His smile widened beneath the mask.
"Mages of Fairy Tail?"