Chapter 165

Chapter 165: Chapter 165

While Marshall’s group kept Jose occupied, the second battlefield was unfolding several kilometers away.

The miniature Super Mage Giant had spent the journey on top of Phoebe’s hat surrounded by Fairy Tail members wearing the sort of smiles no defeated enemy ever wanted to see.

Before Marshall’s Form Magic wore off, they subjected the shrunken Phantom Lord headquarters and everyone inside it to a thoroughly unfair barrage of spells.

By the time Phoebe had put enough distance between the two battlefields and the shrinking effect finally dissipated, nearly half the Mages stationed in Phantom Lord’s headquarters were already unconscious.

The Super Mage Giant expanded back to its original scale with a deafening metallic groan, and Phantom Lord’s elites returned to normal size along with it.

Aria of the Sky immediately turned toward the direction Jose had been left behind.

"They’re trying to overwhelm Master with numbers."

His tears continued flowing beneath his bandages, but his voice had become urgent.

"We have to go back."

"You’re not going anywhere!"

Fairy Tail had anticipated exactly that.

Five of its stronger Mages had remained behind to stop Phantom Lord’s elites.

Elfman faced Aria.

Macao took Totomaru.

Lucy stood opposite Kisame.

Hogi blocked Sol.

And Levy—

Levy found herself staring up at Gajeel.

The Seven Sins Apostles waited nearby to interfere wherever needed.

As far as Fairy Tail was concerned, the matchup was excellent.

Sol adjusted his glasses and gave a small, condescending laugh.

"Heh. You didn’t leave even one S-Class Mage behind to deal with us? You’re taking the Element 4 rather light—"

A shadow fell over him.

"PHOEBE CHIBI!"

Phoebe’s fist came down.

Sol disappeared into the ground with a tremendous crash.

Everyone paused.

Apparently Phoebe’s rules of engagement were extremely simple.

No Fairy Tail mark?

Punch!

Gajeel stared at the crater, then slowly began laughing.

"Heh... not even the Salamander stayed?"

His gaze moved toward Levy.

"You’re all going to regret looking down on me."

His grin became predatory.

"I’ll start with you, shrimp."

Levy raised an eyebrow.

"You look exactly like the kind of brute who thinks having more magic means he doesn’t need a brain."

Gajeel’s smile disappeared.

Levy smiled sweetly.

"I bet you can’t beat me."

"You’ve got some nerve!"

Gajeel inhaled.

"Iron Dragon’s Ro—"

Nothing happened.

His cheeks puffed but no iron emerged.

He blinked.

"What?"

Then his expression changed.

"Where the hell is my Magic?!"

Around him, the rest of Phantom Lord’s elemental specialists were discovering the same thing.

Totomaru’s flames refused to appear.

Sol could no longer move the earth.

Kisame’s water failed.

Even Aria found his air manipulation abruptly cut off.

Aria ripped the bandages from his eyes and looked upward.

His face went pale.

"A Jutsu-Shiki!"

Only then did Phantom Lord notice the enormous cube-shaped barrier enclosing them.

Two lines of luminous script floated overhead.

[Entry is permitted. Exit is forbidden.]

[Elemental Magic may not be used within this area.]

For several seconds, complete silence reigned.

Then panic began.

"What?!"

"No Elemental Magic?!"

"We’re screwed! Almost everyone in Phantom Lord uses Elemental Magic!"

"Calm down!"

Someone forced himself to think.

"If Elemental Magic is forbidden, Fairy Tail can’t use it either! It’s the most common kind of Magic in the world!"

A quieter voice answered,

"Are... are you sure they actually need it?"

Everyone looked toward Fairy Tail.

Elfman was cracking his knuckles.

Macao rolled his shoulders.

Several other guild members standing inside the restriction wore deeply unpleasant smiles as they advanced.

"Come on."

Elfman grinned.

"If Magic’s off the table, we’ll just do this the old-fashioned way!"

Phantom Lord’s people reluctantly raised their fists.

Then someone noticed the second problem.

"Wait!"

He pointed outside the cube.

"They left people outside the Jutsu-Shiki!"

"What kind of dirty trick is that?!"

Another Phantom Lord Mage stared as Lucy raised a golden key.

"Hold on! Why can they still cast spells?!"

Lucy smiled.

"Sorry. Mine is Celestial Spirit Magic."

Levy lifted her pen.

"Mine is Solid Script."

The Seven Sins Gugas bounced excitedly outside the restriction.

"Gugu-gaga!"

The implication was obvious.

Their Curse-based abilities weren’t Elemental Magic either.

Phantom Lord had walked directly into a trap designed almost exclusively around their guild’s greatest strength.

Marshall had no reason to worry about that battlefield.

With the Jutsu-Shiki in place and Phoebe rampaging among them, there was a real possibility that a single artificial life-form could eventually flatten most of Phantom Lord on her own.

Jose, however, was another matter.

Among the Ten Wizard Saints, Jose was no ceremonial appointment.

Both of his primary disciplines—Darkness Magic and Shadow Magic—were approximately Level Four.

Although closely related, the two systems were fundamentally different.

Darkness Magic stood opposite Light Magic.

It was a true Elemental Magic famous for tremendous destructive power, with the attribute of Nothingness woven into its nature.

Its potential branches were numerous, strange, and often exceptionally dangerous, earning it a reputation as one of the strongest elemental disciplines.

Shadow Magic, meanwhile, was closer in nature to Heavenly Body Magic.

It manipulated shadows rather than darkness itself and possessed unusual affinities with both space and souls.

Jose had mastered both.

And yet, for perhaps the first time in decades, he had discovered a style of battle he absolutely despised.

The brats surrounding him were individually far weaker.

That wasn’t arrogance; it was simple fact.

If one of his serious attacks struck Natsu or Gray cleanly, either boy would almost certainly go down.

Even Erza and Mira had no business casually trading direct blows with the amount of power Jose could unleash.

The problem was that he couldn’t land anything cleanly.

Every time he attacked, Marshall moved them.

Jose concealed his casting.

Marshall moved them.

Jose launched an attack at one person and changed targets halfway through.

Marshall moved them.

Jose feinted with one spell while preparing another.

Marshall somehow anticipated that too!

It was infuriating!

Worse, although Fairy Tail’s attacks weren’t individually enough to overwhelm his defenses, blocking them cost magic every single time.

And the cost was accumulating.

What Jose didn’t know was that Marshall had given every member of the group an Information Magic support interface.

It provided instant team communication, tracked Jose’s movements, highlighted probable trajectories—and, most unfairly of all, relayed the hostile intent Marshall could hear directly from Jose’s thoughts.

A message appeared across the group’s shared interface.

[He’s about to summon a Shadow Army.]

Marshall immediately followed it with another.

[Cana, answer with your beasts.]

[Got it.]

Jose slammed his hands outward.

Shadows spread across the ground.

Dozens of dark creatures crawled free, surrounding Fairy Tail from every direction.

For the first time in several minutes, Jose smiled.

If he couldn’t hit the brats directly, he would simply overwhelm Marshall’s ability to protect them by flooding the field with disposable soldiers.

Then Cana scattered her cards and magical circles lit up one after another.

A monster emerged.

Then another.

Then ten.

Within seconds, dozens of powerful summoned beasts stood between Fairy Tail and Jose’s Shadow Army.

The two forces collided.

Jose’s numerical advantage vanished before it had even properly begun.

Marshall had already assigned everyone a role.

Natsu served as the tank, charging into dangerous positions, drawing Jose’s attention, and absorbing whatever pressure Marshall couldn’t completely remove.

Erza and Mira acted as secondary tanks and close-range physical attackers, both versatile enough to shift instantly between offense and defense.

Gray and Juvia functioned as artillery.

Gray constantly altered the ground with Ice-Make, slowing Jose’s movement and creating bad footing, while Juvia anchored herself near the river and fired concentrated streams of water from a distance.

Cana handled summons and support.

Marshall, meanwhile, stayed above the entire field, monitoring everyone like a commander safely standing beside a respawn point.

Another instruction appeared.

[Erza, Crimson Armor. Prepare a close-range slash.]

[Natsu, charge him. Once you enter his attack radius, I’ll switch your positions.]

Natsu grinned.

[Leave it to me!]

Erza dismissed her current armor and placed a hand against the belt around her waist.

"Henshin!"

The Crimson Armor rapidly formed around her body, sealing into place as its enhancement systems activated.

With katana in hand, Erza began running, but deliberately held back just enough to remain outside Jose’s immediate focus.

Natsu struck first.

He smashed through several shadow creatures with Fire Dragon’s Wing Attack, flames carving a path directly toward Jose.

Jose’s eyes narrowed.

That brat again.

A compact Shadow Wave formed in his hand. He had no intention of wasting serious power on someone with Natsu’s reserves.

He fired.

The attack reached Natsu but Natsu disappeared as Erza took his place.

Her sword cut cleanly through the Shadow Wave before it could fully expand, and the Crimson Armor accelerated her forward.

Jose had barely registered the substitution before Erza crossed the final distance and carved a deep slash across his defenses.

Blood sprayed.

Again.

Jose roared.

"You bastards!"

Darkness erupted from his body in a massive clearing wave, obliterating everything within dozens of meters.

Marshall teleported all six Fairy Tail Mages away at the instant of release.

Jose struck empty space.

Cana’s summons were not so fortunate.

The blast tore through her beast army and destroyed a large portion of it, finally giving Jose a brief moment of breathing room.

Then Marshall’s expression changed.

[Careful.]

The warning appeared instantly.

[He’s preparing something big.]

This time, the killing intent Jose released had no ambiguity.

It was aimed entirely at Marshall.

Marshall moved the other six far outside Jose’s line of sight but Jose noticed it.

A vicious smile appeared on his face.

"So that’s it."

Marshall’s eyes narrowed.

Jose laughed.

"You’ve been hiding it well, brat, but I finally caught the fluctuations in your Magic."

His expression twisted with satisfaction.

"You really are reading my thoughts."

Marshall said nothing.

"You think a cheap trick like that can defeat a Wizard Saint?"

A terrifying amount of magic condensed around Jose.

Marshall’s Information Magic registered the expenditure immediately.

Nearly one hundred thousand units disappeared from Jose’s reserves in a single spell.

Dark crimson-black light compressed into a narrow point.

"Shadow Kill!"

The beam launched.

It crossed the battlefield so quickly that Marshall barely had time to teleport before it passed through the place where his body had been.

He reappeared elsewhere.

The beam curved.

Marshall frowned and teleported again.

The same thing happened.

A third time.

Again, the attack turned in midair and resumed its pursuit.

Jose was breathing harder after spending so much magic at once, but he could no longer hide his delight.

"HAHAHAHA!"

"It’s useless!"

"The spell won’t stop until it hits its target!"

"Run all you want!"

"DIE!"

Marshall tested it several more times, jumping between distant coordinates and changing altitude, but every attempt produced the same result.

The dark beam simply corrected its course and continued chasing him.

Finally, Marshall stopped, he hovered motionless in the air.

Jose’s smile widened.

The beam hit.

A violent explosion swallowed Marshall and the surrounding ground.

The earth collapsed beneath the blast, leaving behind a spherical crater more than ten meters across.

"MARSHALL?!"

Six voices cried out from the distance.

The explosion had been powerful enough to frighten even Erza and Mira.

Smoke rolled upward.

For several seconds, nobody could see anything inside the crater.

Then the haze began to clear.

A figure stood at its center.

Marshall.

His clothes weren’t torn, his skin wasn’t burned.... not even the edge of his coat had been dirtied.

Jose stared speechlessly at him.

"What...?"

His face lost color.

"That’s impossible!"

"How are you unharmed?!"

Marshall slowly floated upward.

A faint smile touched his lips as he raised one hand and brought his thumb and forefinger close together, leaving only the tiniest gap.

"That’s because your attack..."

He showed Jose the distance between his fingers.

"...was still this far away from me."

Jose’s eyes widened.

Marshall’s smile deepened.

"So?"

"Was that your strongest attack?"

He tilted his head.

"If that’s all you’ve got, then I guess Jose Porla’s limit isn’t nearly as impressive as the title Wizard Saint made it sound."

Light began gathering around him.

Marshall lowered his hand.

"Now it’s my turn."

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