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Magnolia's once quiet streets were now torn apart by the chaos of magical light and explosions.
Dozens of dark guilds affiliated with Grimoire Heart, along with several others that had eagerly joined upon hearing of the war against Fairy Tail, were swarming toward the city center with all the swagger of scavengers who'd already counted their kill.
The allied dark guild forces had swelled to over 400 mages — far exceeding the initial count.
These hyenas, drawn by the scent of blood, were certain they could devour the strongest light guild in Fiore. After all, Fairy Tail only had around 100 members.
Four hundred against a hundred. The advantage is ours.
But reality has a way of shattering illusions. Before the hyenas even reached Fairy Tail, they stumbled straight into a trap the lions had been quietly preparing for them.
On West Street, a thick wall of ice mist surged without warning, blanketing the road and flash-freezing eight or nine dark mages at the front of the formation in an instant. A heartbeat later, a scorching pillar of fire erupted from the flank, engulfing the rear of the squad and sending them crashing to the ground.
A unit of twenty mages was reduced to a single shell-shocked survivor in the blink of an eye.
The attack had come too fast, too fierce. In the mist churned up by the collision of ice and fire, that lone survivor stared in wide-eyed terror as two figures stepped out of the haze toward him.
"Y-You — don't — don't come any closer!"
He managed exactly one line of dialogue before his luck ran out. A single punch, and he crumpled to the ground, out cold.
Natsu withdrew his fist and surveyed the sprawl of unconscious dark mages with open contempt. "They're seriously weak. They went down before I even got warmed up."
Gray glanced at the aftermath and nodded slowly, genuinely unsure whether the dark guild mages were just that weak — or whether they themselves had simply become that much stronger since their Magical Power transformation.
Natsu turned to his companion, who had, at some point, lost his shirt again with an insufferably triumphant grin. "Gray~" he said, adopting Happy's signature lilting tone, "I knocked out two more than you just now~"
"That makes the score 11 to 9. I'm in the lead~"
Gray's expression curdled immediately. He hadn't expected Natsu to be keeping score, and he certainly hadn't agreed to any competition. That was completely unfair.
But no matter the stakes, Gray refused to be outdone by that idiot.
"Tch! What does it matter who's ahead right now!"
"I'll catch up, no, I'll surpass you!"
And with that, Gray took off toward South Street.
According to the intelligence Warren had relayed across the guild via his Telepathy magic, the invaders were split into twenty squads. There was still time to snatch enemies from other people's defense zones.
He was only two points behind. He'd close the gap in no time.
Natsu watched Gray bolt off and blinked. It took him a full ten seconds to process what had just happened.
Oh. Gray's going to other zones to rack up knockouts.
"Hey, that's not fair!"
Competing with Gray for targets now was definitely a lost cause, so a thoroughly indignant Natsu turned and made for East Street to start his own count.
He'd barely taken a step, though, when something made him stop. He looked up — toward Grimoire Heart's airship hanging in the sky — and watched as a column of black flame plummeted from it like a meteor.
The flagstones below detonated into lava on impact. A wave of scorching hot air rolled outward in all directions.
Zancrow landed in the crater he'd made, blond hair wild and red eyes gleaming. He grinned up at Natsu and licked his lips, bloodlust burning in his gaze. "Ha — now we're talking! The rats finally decided to show their faces!"
Natsu frowned. This blond guy was already running his mouth, and he hadn't even said anything worth listening to yet.
Before Natsu could respond, Zancrow pressed on. "'Fire Dragon' Natsu — yeah, I've heard of you. The Fire Dragon Slayer. Today I'll show you what the strongest fire magic really looks like." He spread his arms dramatically. "Fire God's—"
There was a muffled thud, and his declaration stopped dead.
Zancrow looked down in disbelief at the fist pressed into his chest — wrapped in crimson flames, it had crossed the distance between them before he'd even registered Natsu moving. The raw magical impact hit like a battering ram, violently interrupting his spell.
He coughed up blood. His body staggered backward of its own accord, and he only managed to skid to a halt some ten meters away.
Clutching his chest, feeling the lingering force of that single punch, Zancrow's arrogance cracked. His expression shifted into something far more serious — and far less comfortable. Those damned intelligence guys.
He cursed under his breath. The report on "Fire Dragon Natsu" had said nothing about speed like that. That punch hadn't just been raw strength. The explosive acceleration behind it, the magic-driven burst — it had far exceeded anything he'd been prepared for.
"The strongest fire magic?"
Natsu shook out his smoking fist, a wild grin spreading across his face. His eyes were burning — and not just with fire. There was a clarity to his battle intent, pure and hot, that made Zancrow's look like a cheap imitation. "Stop muttering to yourself. Igneel's flames are the strongest fire magic there is."
"You miserable little—!"
Zancrow's patience snapped. He'd been humiliated twice over already, and his anger boiled up past the point of strategy. He slammed his palms together, and black flames began condensing furiously between them, growing denser, hotter, darker.
"I am a God Slayer! Fire God Slayer Magic is the strongest magic in existence!"
He inhaled sharply — and released.
"Fire God's Bellow!"
A massive torrent of black God flames surged toward Natsu with catastrophic force.
Natsu didn't dodge. He drew in a deep breath, his chest expanding, and then unleashed everything in a single roar — a violent crimson tide of Dragon fire erupting outward like a burst dam, meeting the black wall head-on.
The two flames collided. They tore at each other, consumed and were consumed, neither giving ground.
Then the shockwave hit.
A ring of pure destructive force blasted outward in every direction, shattering doors and windows on both sides of the street, cracking the flagstones underfoot. Red and crimson intertwined with pitch black as the two enormous streams of fire coiled and clawed at each other, rising like twin serpents into the smoke-filled sky and turning the entire block into something that looked very much like purgatory.
When the firestorm finally dissipated, it left behind molten patches of ground and thick, swirling scorch smoke.
Zancrow was breathing hard, his arms scorched black, his sleeves reduced to tatters, his appearance thoroughly wrecked.
Natsu's clothes were barely dirty.
The shock on Zancrow's face curdled into something closer to horror. His Fire God Slayer Magic had been fought to a standstill — by Dragon Slayer fire.
"Impossible! How does a god's fire lose to a dragon's fire?!"
The flagstones beneath his feet shattered and sank under the force of his rage. Black flames surged back to life, and this time they carried something different — not just heat, but a gnawing, penetrating destructive energy that began eating through the surrounding buildings like rot.
Zancrow poured everything he had into it, his expression twisting, black flames blooming larger and larger with a cold, annihilating hunger.
"Die!"
"Fire God's Supper!"
Facing the overwhelming pressure of the spell bearing down on him, Natsu looked — annoyed.
"Hey! Stop blowing up the buildings, you idiot! Do you have any idea how much it costs to rebuild these?!"
He drew his fist back.
"Magic Power Rotation — Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!"
A fist wrapped in roiling dragon scale patterns tore straight through the wall of black flames like they were paper — driven by an absolute, crushing force — and connected with Zancrow's face with a crack that split the air like thunder.
The impact was total. Blood and broken teeth flew. Zancrow's body left the ground and became a projectile, punching through the walls of one building, then the next, then the next — a trail of rubble, dust, and destruction stretching down the block behind him.
Brick and stone rained down. A cloud of debris billowed up.
Natsu stared at the structural wreckage Zancrow had carved through the street.
Then he remembered what he'd said approximately two seconds before throwing that punch.
He fell silent.