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In that single instant, his greatest source of power had been destroyed.
And with the Devil's Heart, something else shattered: Hades' understanding of magic, built up across decades of relentless pursuit. His vast knowledge, his profound comprehension of how magic worked in this world, could not fully account for Noah's power, which seemed to exist outside the framework of magic itself.
Decades of work. The beautiful vision of the Ultimate Magic World, the goal he had sacrificed everything to reach. All of it, broken by a single punch from this young man.
"...Pfft."
A mouthful of scalding blood spilled from Hades' lips, staining his white beard and the front of his robes.
It wasn't just the backlash from the Devil's Heart's destruction. This was something deeper, a spiritual wound, the kind left behind when everything a person has built their identity on is stripped away in a single moment.
His entire magical framework, his years of research into the very essence of magic, seemed pale and absurd in the face of Noah's power. Something he could neither classify nor fully comprehend.
"Is this the path of magic you've been walking?"
Noah hadn't moved an inch. The enormous destructive energy that should have been enough to tear an airship apart had been annihilated and scattered by him in an even more violent fashion, leaving only twisted, melted wreckage across the surrounding bulkheads and pipes.
He looked at Hades' hunched back, his once-towering presence now guttering like a candle in a draft, and spoke calmly, with just the faintest trace of something that was not quite mockery.
"For an illusion, you betrayed your companions. You abandoned your original purpose. You turned yourself into something that can barely be called human."
"What do you know!"
Hades' head snapped up. His single eye was bloodshot, wild with a madness that was really just desperation wearing a different mask. His voice came out hoarse, like a wounded animal's. "If the Ultimate Magic World arrives, if the Abyss of Magic descends upon this world, I will find a way to revive Mavis! And then Mavis, and Yuri, and Warrod… we… we…"
But even as the words left him, the rest died in his throat.
Because he already knew the answer.
Hades stopped. He couldn't continue, because he could hear, clear as day, what each of them would say if they were standing in front of him.
Mavis. Her eyes pure as open sky, always full of hope for the future. She would look at him with quiet sorrow, and ask in that soft voice of hers: "Precht, why did you turn the world that everyone holds dear into this?"
Yuri. That hot temper, that complete inability to hold back. He'd probably be yelling before he even finished looking at him. "Bastard Precht! Have you lost your mind?! Look at what you've done! Can you even face the people who trusted us and built the guild with us?!"
And Warrod. That old friend who always wore a gentle smile and loved his jokes. Warrod would probably just shake his head and sigh. Slowly. Once.
And say nothing.
All at once, Hades felt something like a hallucination take hold of him.
The cold metal walls of the energy room vanished. The shattered tank was gone. In their place was sunlight. The kind that fell through the windows on the day Fairy Tail was first founded.
The sound of laughter filling the guild hall.
Mavis's gentle smile. Yuri's hand clapping his shoulder with a laugh too big for the room. Warrod holding out a cup of wine. Those warm memories, the ones he had locked away and told himself were buried long ago, the ones he had replaced with the ruthless single-minded will of Hades, came flooding back now, breaking through every wall he had built with ambition and darkness, overwhelming him completely.
He looked down at his trembling hands.
These hands had once held the banner that symbolized everything the guild stood for. They had also been soaked in the blood of countless innocents.
A profound self-loathing settled over him, cold as deep water, and with it came an emptiness unlike anything he had felt in years. He suddenly felt unsteady, as though the floor beneath him were not a damaged airship but the edge of a crack above a bottomless abyss.
Slowly, he raised his head. The mad wildness in his eye had faded. What was left was a flat, still grayness, the look of a man who had run out of reasons to keep going.
"Mavis… Warrod… Yuri…"
"I can't go back."
"I destroyed everything."
"I was the most foolish lost soul of all."
Noah looked at the broken man in front of him and felt a quiet surprise.
So the root of it was this. The reason Precht had become Hades was Mavis, or rather, the grief of losing her and an obsession with undoing that loss that had long since gone beyond the bounds of reason. He had taken the wrong path and gotten himself hopelessly trapped inside it.
That so-called Ultimate Magic World — even Zeref himself had never confirmed such a thing was possible. The likelihood of its existence was vanishingly small. Noah suspected it was a fantasy Hades had constructed for himself, something to give meaning to the sacrifices after he had already strayed too far to turn back.
Then the airship shuddered.
Something had struck it from outside.
Noah frowned. He had only wanted the airship as a trophy. Why did it seem like everyone was intent on battering it today? Though he himself hadn't exactly treated it gently.
He looked at the badly damaged hull around him and sighed. Given the state of it already, one more opening wouldn't make much difference. He chopped his hand at the nearest intact bulkhead.
A clean, two-person-wide gap opened instantly.
What he saw outside brought him to a brief pause.
Dense black masses of Etherious swarmed the airship like a dark cloud, spreading out to cover Magnolia below as well.
He wasn't concerned about the town. His guildmates were practically playing a game down there. The Etherious in the streets were numerous, but most of them were no different from cannon fodder. The real threats, the higher-ranking ones, were engaged with Erza and the others.
What caught his attention was the cubic floating fortress directly opposite the airship. It kept disgorging more Etherious in an endless stream.
And on the airship's deck, Gildarts was locked in fierce combat with a young man in black, long dark hair, a book in one hand.
That was the source of the shaking.
"Tartaros."
Hades' voice came from behind him. "There must have been a spy among my people. They passed word of Zeref's location to them."
Noah understood. Dark guilds inherently distrusted one another, even allied ones. And Tartaros, composed entirely of Etherious, would naturally move the moment they learned their creator was nearby. Of course they would come.
He didn't pay their arrival much mind. Oración Seis had fallen to Fairy Tail. Grimoire Heart would follow. Tartaros was simply next in line.
Besides, like Grimoire Heart, Tartaros also had Noah's own people embedded within it.
His gaze drifted toward the cubic floating fortress. Columns of Ice Devil Slayer Magic were erupting from it in massive bursts.
Noah smiled slightly. It seemed Silver was going to have quite a day.
"Hey! Noah!"
Gildarts, mid-battle, spotted Noah watching from the opening and bellowed across the gap. "The book this guy is holding — it's E.N.D.!"