Chapter 28: Natural and Man-Made Disasters
"That's way too sudden! I'm seriously freaking out!" Lucy complained loudly, her voice shrill with genuine fear. The sight of railway tracks flying through the air like twisted metal ribbons was absolutely terrifying.
"Aye~~!!" Happy meowed excitedly, though even he looked a little nervous.
"The train left about twenty minutes ago, right? What's going to happen to it?"
"Haha! It'll probably go flying into the sky! Just thinking about it gets me all fired up!" Natsu had absolutely no doubt that Dino could pull it off—he'd witnessed the guy do impossible things since they were kids.
Lucy's eyes went wide as saucers. "A flying train?! I can't even picture what that would look like! This is really a 'natural disaster'!" She could already imagine how badly the members of that dark guild were about to suffer.
"Hey~! Lucy, this is a 'man-made disaster'!" Happy corrected cheerfully.
Erza smiled slightly at the display of power. "What a spectacle. After this, the Master will definitely get an earful from the Council again." She had complete faith that Dino could stop that train—once it was halted, they'd catch up in no time.
"It's fine. Gramps has always ignored what those stuffed shirts say anyway."
Soon the group rented a magic four-wheeler and set off along the railway.
Lucy asked curiously, "But why are there so many dark guilds anyway? Doesn't the Magic Council do anything about them?"
Dino explained, "The Magic Council only has jurisdiction over registered legal guilds. They don't actually have any authority over dark guilds—the Council is just an organization, after all. They can't exactly go around saying 'join us or we'll eliminate you.' Whether it's the Council or anyone else, they're all ultimately under the authority of the kingdom."
"Besides, the dark guilds have their own alliance organizations. If the Council pushes too hard, the dark guilds retaliate against regular guilds. That's why dark guilds have existed like rats in the sewers for so long."
Lucy's face paled. "Doesn't that mean we'll be targets for revenge?!"
"There have been some attempts," Dino said casually.
"What happened to them?"
"I erased them from existence."
"WHAT?!"
"I usually don't go looking for trouble with those vermin, but if they mess with Fairy Tail…" Dino's eyes glinted dangerously, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. "It doesn't matter where they hide. I hunt them down until they're too terrified to even think about touching our guild."
As an S-Class mage, Erza knew things most guild members didn't. The reason Fairy Tail wizards rarely faced trouble from dark guilds during jobs was simple—Dino had made them too afraid to try.
Meanwhile, on the train.
Eisenwald's ace, the Death God Erigor, toyed with a skull-shaped flute in his hands. "To think that Lullaby, the so-called 'Curse Song,' is just a flute. Originally a tool for curse-killing magic, but the great Dark Mage Zeref evolved it into something far more advanced. Truly terrifying. They say anyone who hears this flute's melody will be cursed to death. With this, our plan will be flawless."
"Kageyama, you did well obtaining this."
"Just good luck. I don't deserve such praise."
Erigor grinned wickedly. "The era of the Magic Council's control over wizards is ending. Next comes the age of dark guilds—led by Eisenwald!"
"YEAH!!!" The Eisenwald members roared enthusiastically.
"Ding ding ding!!"
Erigor's expression suddenly changed. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Train tracks… rattling."
Without warning, violent tremors shook the entire train. Every carriage suddenly tilted skyward at an impossible angle.
"AHHHHH!!!"
"GYAAAAH!!"
"WHAT'S HAPPENING?!!!" Eisenwald members screamed as their bodies were thrown around like ragdolls inside the carriages. The cars twisted and deformed, some members getting ejected completely—only to be crushed by the following carriages.
"CRASH! BOOM! BANG!!!"
When the train finally hit the ground, it didn't stop. Momentum sent the mangled carriages sliding and tumbling across the earth, smashing into each other repeatedly before finally coming to rest.
SLASH!
SLICE!
Two wind blades cut through the wreckage. Erigor emerged from a bisected carriage, blood trickling down his forehead but otherwise relatively unharmed.
"DAMN IT! What the hell just happened?!!!" Erigor roared furiously, his face twisted with rage and humiliation. He'd never been hit with such a devastating attack—and he had no idea where it even came from!
Gradually, survivors crawled from other carriages. They looked absolutely pathetic—nothing like the confident dark wizards who'd been planning to change the world moments ago. More than half of Eisenwald's members had died in the crash, and only the wizards' enhanced vitality had saved the rest.
"Hey! Look at the tracks behind us!" One survivor pointed at the railway with a shaking hand. The tracks were bent and twisted at unnatural angles, no longer connected to the rail bed—as if some catastrophic force had warped them.
"Someone attacked us from behind—through the railway itself!"
The surviving wizards weren't idiots. It took some intelligence to learn magic, and they quickly deduced the source of the attack.
Erigor's face darkened. "Whether our information leaked or this is about the train hijacking—it doesn't matter. No one's going to stop this plan." He held up the Lullaby flute. "Those who survived—stay here and stop whoever's coming! Don't let them interfere! This flute's song WILL be heard!"
A storm materialized beneath his feet, and Erigor shot forward on a wind current, flying along the railway tracks.