Chapter 598 - 598: Larcade's Death

"No… I already became a god…"

Perhaps Elentear had been kind enough to leave its disastrous new tenant with one final moment of clarity before moving out.

As the lower half of Larcade's body began dissolving back into natural energy, his consciousness briefly returned.

His face had already stiffened so badly that he could no longer form any real expression. Only his faint, trembling voice revealed the confusion and fear beneath it.

Ankh sat on a nearby rock and kindly answered him.

"A god's power wouldn't be rejected by an entire world like this. You rushed things."

At this point, Ankh was certain that Zeref had never ordered what Larcade had done in Elentear.

The reason was simple.

The entire plan was far too reckless.

It didn't resemble the work of a Black Wizard capable of creating an entire race of demons.

Larcade had believed that obtaining "infinite Magic Power" would allow him to become a god. So he had set his sights on Elentear's absurd magical circulation system and tried to turn himself into a reserve battery connected to the Magic Power of an entire world.

The problem was that no matter how impressive the hardware was, a powerful machine was useless if the system running it couldn't handle the load.

For a divine body, an effectively endless supply of energy was little more than a basic requirement.

Even Ankh still possessed a finite amount of Magic Power within his own body, but his efficiency at converting ambient power had long since reached a level comparable to Larcade's false-god form.

His recovery rate was extraordinary.

More importantly, it was stable.

Larcade, on the other hand, seemed desperate to prove something.

For whatever reason, he had extracted and converted Natsu's constitution into his own, then confidently used that supposed "ultimate demon body" as the vessel for his ascension.

And that had become the greatest flaw in the entire plan.

In truth, if Larcade had followed orders, remained patient, and steadily developed his operation in Elentear, his artificial-god project might genuinely have succeeded someday.

At the very least, against almost anyone other than Ankh, the resulting power would have been overwhelming.

"Next life, just stick to your Desire Magic."

Ankh shook his head.

"Stop chasing infinite Magic Power."

He pulled the weapon he had planted in the ground free, then drove it into Larcade's body.

With one precise movement, Ankh cut out the heart inside him.

The organ had already stopped beating.

Its white-gold brilliance was gone, leaving behind something that looked more like a strange crystal than living flesh.

Without the heart acting as a circulation core, without his original body, and with his soul already collapsing, not even a god could have saved Larcade now.

His eyes locked desperately onto the heart in Ankh's hand.

With the last of his strength, he forced out a bitter whisper.

"What do you know…"

"That was Father's… hope…"

"And proof that I… was Father's…"

His voice became weaker and weaker.

Larcade never finished the sentence.

The perfect body created from immense Magic Power and what he believed to be the strongest demonic bloodline finally dissolved completely back into Elentear.

And Larcade himself vanished with it.

As though he had never existed at all.

Ankh weighed the crystalline heart in his palm and watched the last remnants of Larcade's Magic Power return to nature.

"He kept chasing infinite Magic Power…"

Ankh sighed.

"…and forgot what actually made him dangerous as a demon."

To be fair, Larcade's Desire Magic was an exceptionally dangerous ability against living beings.

If he had ever raised it to the level of divine power, it might genuinely have threatened even gods once they possessed exploitable weaknesses.

Ironically, the moment Larcade obtained his so-called infinite Magic Power, he could no longer properly use the very magic that made him special.

Even the way he had attacked Ankh afterward had been incredibly crude, relying almost entirely on throwing absurd quantities of Magic Power around.

Without that enormous volume, the transformed Larcade had arguably been less threatening than his original self.

Ankh shook his head again, then turned his attention toward his newly acquired prize.

The white-gold heart.

It had effectively been born from the destruction of Alta Face, shaped through Elentear's natural magical laws into a vessel capable of letting the world's Magic Power forcibly move into a new host.

Now, however, it was little more than an empty shell left behind by Elentear's magical circulation.

"This thing is useful…"

Ankh turned it over in his hand.

"But at the same time…"

The first use that came to mind was obvious.

With enough modification, he could turn it into an artificial magic container with an absurdly large capacity.

But using something that had once carried the circulation of an entire world merely to enhance a single person felt wasteful.

Then Ankh suddenly remembered something.

Nirvana.

Ever since he and Jellal stole Nirvana's core during the Oración Seis incident, they still hadn't gotten around to rebuilding the mobile magical city.

His eyes brightened.

"I could build a new Nirvana powered by the white-gold heart…"

"And if the system's designed properly, it could probably power the entire city too."

Ankh's thoughts accelerated.

"Maybe even a country."

"Or an island."

Now that he had figured out what he wanted to do with it, Ankh happily stored the heart away.

He could experiment properly once he returned home.

Conveniently enough, he was already involved in a project to acquire territory of his own in Ishgar.

Once that was finalized, he would finally have somewhere suitable for the kind of ridiculous large-scale experiments he kept coming up with.

With Larcade dealt with, Ankh turned back to find his companions.

Elentear was currently in complete chaos.

The geography of the entire world had changed to varying degrees, while many regions had suffered terrible casualties from the Nail Grime.

Rescue operations were underway everywhere.

The Great White Priestess and the other women of Whiteout Village might have been arrogant, abrasive, and occasionally infuriating, but at a time like this they were at least living up to the responsibilities they claimed to carry.

They were already traveling from place to place helping survivors.

Many of the Ishgar mages who had been rescued and hadn't fallen victim to Larcade's Desire Magic had also volunteered to help.

As for the others…

Most of them were still hiding at Black Moon Mountain, wishing the ground would swallow them out of sheer embarrassment.

After all, what they had experienced under Larcade's magic was normally something that lasted only a few brief seconds.

This time, it had happened publicly.

And lasted nearly half an hour.

Those with weaker constitutions were genuinely still half-dead from exhaustion.

Ankh had no intention of assigning them more work.

Fairy Tail and the others had already done more than enough for Elentear.

There was no reason to bend over backward helping people they barely knew, especially when their relationship with Whiteout Village and Faris had hardly been friendly to begin with.

...

Inside one of the pavilions at Black Moon Mountain, Ankh sat beside a bed and stared helplessly at Natsu.

"You lost that much blood and you're still this energetic?"

Natsu sat shirtless with a thick layer of bandages wrapped around his chest.

He grinned without a care in the world.

"It hurt like hell back then, but I'm way better now!"

When Larcade used the completed Infinite Source to extract the power hidden within Natsu's constitution, the process had nearly drained him dry.

If it had continued much longer, Natsu really would have died from blood loss on the spot.

Fortunately, Fairy Tail had no shortage of exceptional healers.

As long as Natsu still had a breath left in him, they had ways to pull him back.

Lucy finally relaxed enough to glare at him.

"If Ankh and the others had arrived any later, you would've been sucked dry like a corpse."

Natsu only laughed as usual.

His carefree attitude gradually eased the mood among everyone who had come to visit him.

Everyone except Gray.

Gray sat near the doorway in silence.

His gaze remained fixed on Natsu, his expression shifting between unease and something much darker.

He couldn't stop remembering what he had seen when Natsu's blood was being extracted.

Those faint demonic traits.

That unmistakable aura.

Combined with several strange coincidences from the past, Gray was hardly the only one who had begun drawing conclusions.

Lucy and Wendy had noticed enough to form suspicions of their own.

None of them simply wanted to believe what those suspicions implied.

Ankh had naturally noticed Gray's unusual mood as well.

After watching him for a moment, he stood and headed toward the door.

"Gray."

He glanced back.

"Come with me."