For a moment, Lucy didn't know whether to be happy about her irresistible charm… or horrified that it kept attracting every strange creature in existence.
The first engagement erupted on the hillside.
As the Three-Headed Dog lunged at the Lucy who was actually Gemini, Bacchus, Rocker, and Seemes sprang from their hiding spots in perfect sync.
"Pigua Palm: Under the Moon!"
"Rock Drill Fist!"
"Wild Spindle!"
Bacchus' palm slashed a white crescent through the air, striking the beast's middle head squarely.
Loka's arm spun like a drill, slamming into the left head.
Meanwhile, Seemes, his towering frame spinning like a top, smashed both fists into the right head with a bone-shaking impact.
As they struck, the Alchemy Mist around them dissolved, their silhouettes flashing into view.
Two of the three immediately suffered nosebleeds, a direct result of friendly fire, since Gemini's "Lucy form" was still mid-dance when they charged.
Even so, neither the Hellhound nor the Bee Scouts monitoring the battle had noticed their presence beforehand.
All three attacks landed clean. The Hellhound's massive body was hurled backward, crashing through trees with a series of thunderous cracks.
"Now you know the power of the Four-Headed Hounds, you mutt!" Bacchus bellowed, raising a fist.
"WILD!"
"FOUR!!!" Rocker and Seemes shouted in unison.
Gemini clapped lightly in Lucy's voice. "Wow~ That was amazing, whirly-whirly~!"
But the celebration was short-lived.
The Hellhound whimpered, blood trickling from its jaws, as it staggered back up. Its left and middle heads hung limp, the right one grotesquely twisted, but still glaring with a single blood-red eye.
"One more strike!" Seemes shouted, surging forward.
The beast growled, its one good eye locked on Gemini's "Lucy" form.
"Don't even think about running this time!" Bacchus leapt high, bringing his palm down on the Hellhound's skull.
A deep, muffled thud echoed—then the creature's body simply vanished.
Loka blinked. "Big brother, did it escape again?"
Bacchus frowned. "No… I hit it squarely. It didn't have time to regenerate, so..."
He trailed off, scowling. The way it disappeared felt eerily similar to yesterday's battle.
"Couldn't have used spatial magic that fast," he muttered. "Maybe it really was defeated this time…"
That's when the buzzing began.
Low at first, then rising into a furious roar.
The three exchanged grim looks. "Bees?! Why are they here too?!"
Back in the valley, Lucy's turn had come.
Dark clouds of bees blotted out the sun, their collective hum filling the air like thunder.
Even as the swarm surrounded her, Rhodes and Wendy remained calm, concealed within the Alchemical Mist, quietly observing.
Lucy, on the other hand, wasn't nearly as composed.
She cracked her whip with electric force, slicing through the air again and again, shouting between swings:
"Ahhhh! They're everywhere!"
It wasn't cowardice, there were simply too many. Stingers darted toward her from all directions.
Each time, a faint golden light shimmered over her skin, blocking the hits, but being engulfed by so many buzzing bodies was terrifying all the same.
"Seventeen…" Rhodes murmured, counting the enormous bees. "Only seventeen main bodies so far."
Wendy, using her keen sight, added softly, "There are also three bright-colored daylilies over there."
Rhodes nodded, eyes glinting. "Good. That means they're merging the constellations."
He watched as Lucy fought on, whip cracking like lightning through the mist.
"Come on, Lucy," he muttered under his breath. "Just hold out a little longer."
Gradually, Lucy seemed to realize that no matter how wild the swarm became, something unseen was shielding her, Rhodes' power, wrapping her like invisible armor.
Her fear ebbed.
She began to move more fluidly, turning the fight into a performance.
Sometimes she twirled and leapt away dramatically, sometimes she "fell" in mock defeat, rolling in the grass before springing back up.
From Rhodes' hidden vantage, he couldn't help but smirk.
She's really getting into character.
Rhodes thought with emotion that he would have to give Lucy more money this time.
After a while, Carla, her body still cloaked in Alchemical Mist, returned from scouting and whispered her report.
"Nine flowers by the river look suspicious."
"That makes twenty-nine," Rhodes murmured, quickly doing the math. "Still four short."
At that moment, the Crab, patrolling the nearby ridges, activated Void vision. Through its eyes, Rhodes spotted something unusual, a daylily the size of a washbasin blooming atop the mountain peak.
And just beyond that… he caught a glimpse of the other battlefield.The Hellhound was being repelled, while the Bee swarm was closing in on Bacchus' position.
No time to analyze, he needed to move.
Among the Bees attacking the hillside, he noticed three enormous ones hidden within the cloud.
"Found them all."
Without hesitation, Rhodes triggered the agreed-upon illusion signal. The hidden wild monsters received their orders and began moving to their assigned positions across the battlefield.
Wendy's eyes glowed a faint blue as she focused her breathing, locking on to her nearest target.
Once every piece was in place, Rhodes raised a hand to the sky. A golden bullet of light shot upward with a sharp whistle, and burst open like a flare.
The symbol that bloomed in the heavens was unmistakable: the Fairy Tail emblem, radiant and fierce.
Even under the blazing daylight, its brilliance was impossible to miss.
That was the signal to strike.
In an instant, every wild monster, the Void Sentinel, Void Brambleback, Gromp, and Murk Wolves, launched their ambush.
The large daylilies along the riverside and in the mountain valleys were torn apart at once, their petals scattering like sparks. The surrounding flowers shuddered violently, transforming into Bees midair and swarming toward the attackers in fury.
Farther away, three of the massive Giant Bees, their movements distinct from the rest, were surrounded by the Amaterasu Hundred Styles magic array Rhodes had pre-cast.
A blinding flash.
A thunderous BOOM.
The entire section of sky was swallowed in golden fire, vaporizing the Giant Bees and dozens of smaller ones caught in the blast.
"Sky Dragon's Roar!"
Wendy's voice rang out clear and powerful. A raging tornado burst from her mouth, sweeping up the swarm and shredding everything in its path. Two of the large Bees and a cluster of smaller ones were blown out of the air, crashing into the forest below.
"Sagittarius!"
Lucy called out, and a flurry of starlight answered her.
The centaur spirit materialized, bow at the ready, and loosed a volley of brilliant arrows. Each shot found its mark, piercing through three more Giant Bees with perfect precision.
Meanwhile, on the other battlefield, Bacchus danced through the chaos like a drunken whirlwind. His Pigua Palm struck one massive Bee squarely in the chest, splitting it clean in two.
Before he could turn to look for more, the other two were already nailed in midair by a storm of crimson feather darts, instantly reduced to drifting tufts of ash.
Up on the mountaintop, the Brambleback raised its claw high and swung down at the largest daylily.
And that's when something went wrong.
The Hellhound, which had been blown away by Bacchus earlier, suddenly reappeared, only this time, its form flickered erratically between an apple tree and a three-headed serpent.
The Brambleback's claw smashed straight into the "apple tree." The trunk shattered like glass, sending both wood and snake flying.
When the dust settled, only a single snake head rose up from the debris, hissing weakly.
At the same time, the massive daylily twisted and transformed into a towering Bee Queen.
It beat its wings once, and in that instant, hundreds of smaller Bees materialized, suicidally diving at the Treant and covering it completely.
Down below, a roar shook the ground. The Rift Herald, Rhodes' heavy assault summon, charged forward like a living tank, dragging a streak of purple energy behind it.
The Bee Queen didn't even turn. Its body flickered, vanishing mid-swing and reappearing behind the Herald in a shimmer of distorted light.
Rhodes' eyes narrowed. "It has spatial magic too?!"
He fired a concentrated beam of light magic, but once again, the Bee blinked away just before the strike hit.
This time, however, Rhodes caught something, a faint ripple left behind in the air, not from the Bee itself, but from an external interference pattern.
"It's not using its own magic," he realized grimly.
"Someone else is helping it."