With demonic and draconic power colliding at full force, the battle raging through Altair had long since become too violent for anyone nearby to follow properly.
Gray's freezing black ice from the underworld intertwined with Natsu's blazing Fire Dragon King flames, striking Animus from opposite sides without giving him a moment to recover.
Even after demonification granted the ancient dragon an entirely new source of power, he still couldn't withstand the two of them fighting together.
In the end, Animus was still only a dragon who had spent four hundred years clinging to life inside Sonya's body after being brought to the brink of death.
Natsu and Gray steadily maintained the upper hand, while the group heading directly for the royal palace finally located the core of Mard Geer's magic array.
It was hidden inside a secret chamber at the deepest part of the palace.
The stench of blood saturated the room.
Filth, decay, and the sheer brutality of what had taken place there were no less horrifying than anything they had seen in Zash's private dungeon.
Severed limbs and mutilated remains littered the chamber.
The girls carefully stepped across a floor stained with layers of dried black and dark-red blood, forcing themselves to suppress the nausea and anger churning inside them as they approached the sinister array at the center of the room.
Enormous magical patterns had been carved directly into the floor, though so much blood covered them that parts of the design were almost impossible to make out.
The formation still gave off a faint glow, and suspended above its center was a damaged-looking book with torn, incomplete pages.
"That's the core of the array."
Brandish closed her eyes with a quiet sigh, unwilling to keep looking at the carnage around them.
The members of the Spriggan 12 each carried out secret assignments under Zeref's orders, and unless circumstances demanded otherwise, they were generally forbidden from sharing details of those missions with one another.
Brandish had always been something of an exception.
Her personality was far too laid-back and independent for that kind of rigid obedience, and she had even told Zeref openly that she had no interest in participating in the crueler operations taking place across Ishgar.
If Lucy hadn't appeared in Stella, Brandish probably never would have come here at all.
And after seeing what had actually been happening inside the kingdom, she was more relieved than ever that she had refused those orders.
Wendy covered part of her face with one hand, barely able to look around the room.
"That book is the core?"
Brandish nodded.
"Mard Geer said he was trying to reproduce the conditions that created Dragon Cry and artificially manufacture something that could serve as a source of demonic essence."
She looked toward the floating tome.
"That is the Book of Demons."
Erza steadied herself and forced her attention away from the remains around them.
"We took Dragon Cry before he could use it, so Mard Geer never managed to complete this book properly."
"Exactly," Brandish said. "Removing the book should be enough to stop the array. Just be careful. There may be traps built into the formation."
"Leave it to me."
Erza's body flashed with light.
"Requip."
A golden suit of Valkyrie-like armor appeared around her, and four mechanical arms unfolded from attachments mounted across her back.
This was Erza's Thousand-Armed Armor.
The armor itself could interface with various forms of external technology, allowing her to attach additional devices and control them as naturally as her own limbs.
The four mechanical arms currently mounted behind her were connected through SE plugs and responded directly to her movements.
Erza extended one of the artificial arms toward the center of the array.
The sinister barrier reacted immediately.
The metal limb began dissolving as though it had been plunged into highly corrosive acid, black smoke pouring from its surface while the material rapidly disintegrated.
Erza acted before the arm could be completely destroyed.
The mechanical hand shot forward, seized the Book of Demons, and tore it out of the formation.
The instant the book left the array, its eerie glow vanished.
The strange writing across its damaged pages stopped radiating that obscure black light, leaving it looking like nothing more than an ordinary ruined tome.
Erza picked it up and stored it away.
"That should settle everything in Stella, right?"
"No."
Lucy was staring anxiously through the window.
"The array in the sky disappeared when we removed the book, but the changes it caused to the citizens haven't gone away."
Erza frowned and looked out across Altair.
The city below was still filled with blood, fire, and frozen figures.
It was difficult to imagine that only yesterday this had been a peaceful royal capital where people had gone about their normal lives.
"Contact the Magic Council and tell them to get medical teams here immediately," Erza said. "We have enough Magic Power to suppress the corruption ourselves, but ordinary civilians can't hold out for long."
Lucy immediately understood.
She pulled out her Magic Mobile Phone and began contacting their increasingly overworked "cleanup department."
Then Erza's eyes suddenly sharpened.
She spun around.
All four mechanical arms shot toward Brandish.
Lucy and Wendy both gasped and instinctively moved to stop her, but Erza's attack swept past Brandish and slammed into what appeared to be empty air beside her.
Blood sprayed from Brandish's mouth.
Her face went cold as she clutched the deep wound that had suddenly appeared through her abdomen and slowly turned her head.
"Marin…"
Erza's mechanical fist struck again.
A figure was violently knocked out of the invisible space beside Brandish and sent tumbling across the floor.
Marin rolled several times before crashing to a stop, the dagger he had just used to stab Brandish flying from his hand.
Despite being exposed, his face was twisted with excitement.
"You damn woman! You betrayed the Empire! Your position is going to be mine!"
Marin had resented Brandish for years, especially the way she barely acknowledged his attempts to flatter and impress her.
His loyalty to the Western Continent had long since curdled into something much more self-serving.
If every member of the Spriggan 12 above him conveniently died, all the better—then perhaps Marin himself could rise as the great hero of Alvarez.
Erza looked at him with undisguised contempt.
"Attacking your own companion from behind."
"Pathetic."
Brandish coughed up another mouthful of blood, then calmly ran one hand across her smooth abdomen.
Command T activated.
The gruesome hole through her stomach rapidly shrank until it disappeared completely, leaving flawless skin behind as though she had never been stabbed at all.
Marin's face immediately went pale.
Brandish dusted off her clothes.
"You don't even know your superior can do that?"
Her deadpan expression didn't change.
"Apparently you weren't much better at your job than I was."
Magic Power rolled off her body with suffocating pressure.
Marin's heart skipped.
He immediately turned to run.
He barely made it one step.
With a dull thud, he collided directly into someone standing behind him.
Marin froze.
Something was sticking out of his chest.
It was the same dagger he had just used to stab Brandish.
Slowly, stiffly, Marin raised his head.
Ankh stood over him with a completely expressionless face.
He glanced down at the knife.
"This thing really isn't as useful as a fist."
Then he pushed.
The dagger plunged straight through Marin's heart, burying itself so deeply that even the handle disappeared into his body.
Marin's eyes widened in terror.
Blood spilled from his mouth as he stared desperately at Ankh, unwilling to believe this was how his grand ambitions would end.
His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the floor before gradually losing all signs of life.
The girls, still shaken by the sudden attack, visibly relaxed the moment they realized Ankh had returned.
Erza immediately released her Requip and hurried over.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine."
Ankh glanced toward Brandish.
"Mard Geer's dead."
Then he tilted his head slightly.
"She surrendered?"
Brandish's body tensed almost imperceptibly at the question.
Lucy immediately began explaining what had happened between them.
Ankh, however, had only asked out of passing curiosity. As far as he was concerned, Brandish could belong to whichever country or faction she wanted.
If she wasn't trying to hurt Lucy, he had no reason to care.
His attention shifted to the true centerpiece of everything that had happened in Stella.
The Book of Demons.
Ankh took the incomplete tome from Erza and slowly opened it, his brows furrowing as he examined the strange pages.
Mard Geer had said this entire operation was only an experiment.
But experiments were never conducted without a purpose.
If Alvarez was testing whether this kind of large-scale transmutation could work, then somewhere, somehow, they already had a specific place where they intended to use the completed technology.
Ankh's expression gradually became more serious.
'So what exactly are they preparing for?'
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