Natsu finally cast aside his anxiety and anger and devoted himself completely to the fight.
When he entered that state—focused on nothing except the opponent in front of him—he was at his most dangerous.
With Fire Dragon King Mode active, every punch from his scale-armored fists detonated with tremendous force, and it took only moments for raging flames to engulf the entire street.
Yet Natsu's furious offensive accomplished surprisingly little.
Jellal remained perfectly composed. Starlight gathered between his fingers into tiny concentrated points, and again and again he pierced straight through Natsu's explosive flames with almost effortless precision.
"Fire Dragon King's—Crushing Fist!!"
Realizing that Jellal had already adapted to the rhythm of his attacks, Natsu immediately changed tactics.
With a roar, he compressed an enormous amount of fire around one fist, condensing flames hot enough to melt the ground beneath him until they shone with a brilliant golden light.
Then he punched.
The blazing fist resembled a miniature sun, carrying enough explosive force to smash through almost anything in its path.
Even Jellal had no intention of taking that attack directly.
He quickly crossed both arms in front of his chest, but the impact still launched him backward with tremendous force.
"Meteor!"
Before he had even finished flying through the air, starlight appeared beneath Jellal's feet.
His body transformed into a streak of golden light, shedding the remaining momentum almost instantly before he accelerated straight back toward Natsu.
Natsu continued unleashing one powerful technique after another, and from the outside it almost looked as though Jellal was constantly being driven back.
But Natsu was already breathing heavily.
His Magic Power was being consumed at an alarming rate.
Jellal, meanwhile, remained completely uninjured despite standing amid the heat waves and firestorms.
His calm movements made the battle look less like a desperate fight and more like an elegant performance.
In this timeline, Natsu and Jellal had never truly fought each other to the death.
Yet now that they were finally exchanging blows without restraint, Natsu could feel an enormous pressure coming from him.
It reminded him of fighting Laxus.
No matter how fiercely he attacked, the person in front of him seemed immovable, leaving Natsu struggling to find any obvious weakness he could exploit.
Jellal had long stood beside Laxus as one of the strongest mages of their generation, yet even many members of Fairy Tail had never fully appreciated just how dangerous a master of Heavenly Body Magic could be.
Heavenly Body Magic itself was an ancient forbidden art.
Its destructive potential was so extreme that even in the modern era, the Magic Council explicitly classified many of its techniques as prohibited magic.
Then again, forbidden knowledge had never exactly been impossible to obtain.
If Naruto could get his hands on the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique as a kid, someone who had grown up in the dark side of the magical world like Jellal naturally had his own ways of acquiring Heavenly Body Magic.
After avoiding Natsu's fiercest attacks long enough to fully understand the destructive output of Fire Dragon King Mode, Jellal abruptly abandoned his earlier defensive posture.
Golden light gathered around his raised hand as he pointed toward the sky.
"Sagittarius."
Natsu blinked.
Above and behind Jellal, countless stars suddenly appeared through the clouds, gradually connecting into the unmistakable constellation of Sagittarius.
Natsu recognized it.
Whenever Lucy summoned Sagittarius, he had occasionally seen a similar star pattern form overhead.
But when Jellal invoked that constellation, the Magic Power radiating from it was almost suffocating.
The constellation became the source point for countless streaks of light.
Meteors transformed into arrows and rained down toward Natsu in overwhelming numbers, combining the impact of falling stars with the density of a tidal wave.
Natsu immediately concentrated Magic Power into both arms and braced himself.
The bombardment began.
Explosions thundered without pause as the street beneath him was torn apart.
Natsu desperately blocked and deflected the incoming projectiles, but the meteor shower was simply too dense.
More and more attacks broke through his defense until his entire body was covered in wounds.
Eventually, a direct hit blasted him out of the smoke.
Natsu crashed across the ruined street before forcing himself painfully back to his feet.
He stared at Jellal with genuine surprise.
He had always known Jellal was strong.
He hadn't realized the gap could feel this oppressive.
From the beginning, Natsu's overwhelming offense had accomplished almost nothing.
Even the constant changes in rhythm, technique, and tactics that he had developed through years of battle had failed to catch Jellal off guard.
Jellal remained as calm as ever as he slowly approached.
"Magic this powerful should be erased."
Natsu's face flushed with indignation.
"Are you seriously making fun of me?!"
Jellal's own Magic Power was far more absurd.
Heavenly Body Magic belonged to a rare class of persistent formula-based magic.
Rather than generating all of its power solely from the caster, it resonated with celestial phenomena that already existed in the heavens and used those arrangements as magical formulas to produce tremendous destructive force.
Whoever had first invented the system must have been some kind of lunatic genius.
They had effectively turned the enormously complicated arrangement of stars into spell formulas.
Even if Freed spent another ten years studying magical scripts, he might still struggle to perform calculations on this level.
That also explained why Natsu's usual combat tactics weren't working.
A Heavenly Body Magic user needed extraordinary mental strength just to synchronize with celestial wavelengths, enough computational ability to model enormous numbers of stellar trajectories in real time, and sufficient Magic Power to maintain connections across incomprehensible distances.
The magic demanded monstrous "hardware" and equally monstrous "software."
Anyone capable of doing that kind of insane mathematics was hardly going to struggle with the comparatively simple calculations involved in reading an opponent during battle.
Covered in wounds from what had essentially been a Gatling barrage of meteors, Natsu used the brief pause to glance toward the others.
Fairy Tail had improved tremendously over the past six months.
Unfortunately, Ultear and the others were geniuses of the same era and had grown stronger as well.
Back when the legal guilds fought the Oración Seis and the Seven Kin of Purgatory, victory had often required several people working together against individual members.
Now the situation had been reversed, with Gray and the others finding themselves outnumbered by those very same former enemies.
And the battle was steadily turning against them.
Natsu clenched his teeth.
Then he glanced toward Happy behind him.
"Ankh and Erza probably got held up too. Happy, get everyone out of here and go find them."
Happy looked at him worriedly.
"What about you?"
Natsu shook his head, stubborn defiance filling his eyes.
"I haven't lost yet."
"That isn't going to convince Gray and the others to leave…"
Happy clearly had no intention of abandoning everyone either.
The problem was that they were fighting old friends. Most of Fairy Tail couldn't bring themselves to attack seriously.
Natsu was probably the only one reckless enough to fight without hesitating.
Unfortunately, his opponent happened to be Jellal.
Just as Natsu was about to insist that Happy evacuate everyone, a furious shout suddenly rang out from above.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM, JELLAL!"
Everyone froze.
A lithe figure descended from the sky with a white blade raised overhead. Crushing gravity wrapped around the sword as it came down with terrifying force.
Jellal immediately leaned backward and drifted away like a falling leaf.
The slash struck the ground.
A tremendous blade of force carved through the street and left an enormous scar stretching far into the distance.
"Kagura?"
Natsu stared at the unexpected reinforcement.
"What are you doing here?"
"And she's not the only one."
Behind Natsu, Bacchus spread both arms like the wings of an eagle.
His drunken Split-Palm swept outward in a seemingly casual motion, immediately breaking through the enemies surrounding Wendy and giving her room to retreat.
Erza arrived immediately afterward in her Heaven's Wheel Armor.
Countless swords appeared around her in midair and descended in a glittering storm, forcing Ultear and Meredy apart.
Ankh flashed in behind them before either woman could recover and caught both of them.
Ultear froze when she saw who was holding her.
Then she immediately began struggling with everything she had.
"Alright, enough."
Ankh raised one hand.
A crimson magic circle spread across both women.
"Separation Enchantment."
Magic flowed through their bodies, tracing the foreign influence buried within them. Moments later, an eerie white light was forcibly extracted from each woman.
The instant the strange energy separated from them, it tried to burrow into Ankh instead.
He didn't give it the chance.
Ankh closed his hand around the white light and crushed it into nothing.
Ultear and Meredy stood there blankly as clarity returned to their eyes.
They looked around at the devastated street, then at everyone surrounding them.
Ultear blinked.
"What the hell is going on?"