The silver-white ice arrow punched through Fukuro's chest dead center.
The arrow kept going, momentum undiminished, and pierced straight through Keyes's robed body before burying itself in the ground behind him.
It detonated.
The earth should have blown apart. Instead, the instant it shattered, it froze. Silver-white ice erupted outward from the point of impact, plating everything within a thirty-meter radius in crystalline frost. Dirt, rocks, grass, fallen branches, all locked under a sheet of ice.
Where the arrow had punched through Fukuro's chest, there was no wound. Just a single ice flower, blooming outward from the hole, petals spreading across his torso in delicate, lethal fractals. Before the reanimated corpse could even twitch, the crystals had consumed him entirely, sealing him inside a perfect ice sculpture.
Behind him, Keyes, also pierced, flickered. His body turned translucent, ghosting like a phantom, then resolidified. He glanced down at the ice crystals forming along his robe, brushed them off with a bony hand, and looked across the frozen ground at Gray.
Gray stood with frost still rolling off his shoulders, the black Devil Slayer markings vivid against his skin.
Keyes studied him for a long moment. "That magic... Silver's magic." His hollow gaze drifted over Gray's features. The resemblance. The stance. "And his face. So that's how it is."
Keyes felt he had guessed the truth and said with some regret, "Father and son fighting each other, a battle between the dead and the living. It's truly a pity I couldn't witness it firsthand."
Gray said nothing. The temperature around him kept dropping.
On the other side of the battlefield, Lucy stared at the frozen Fukuro with wide eyes. "When did Gray get this strong?!"
Juvia clasped her hands together, eyes practically glowing. "As expected of Gray-sama! Magnificent!"
Happy tilted his head. "He took down one of Trinity Raven in a single hit. Weren't they supposed to be really strong?" He paused, tapping his chin with one paw. "Wait, how did they die the first time again? Oh right, Rhodes and Mira handled them. Never mind, then."
Natsu wasn't paying attention to any of that. He was squinting at Keyes, whose tattered black robe billowed despite there being no wind. "What's the deal with that skeleton guy? Why didn't the arrow kill him?"
"That's my opponent." Gray's voice was flat.
He was already moving, then breaking into a run, frost spreading beneath every footstep.
"Oi, GRAY!" Natsu bolted after him. "You don't just get to call dibs and..."
"Natsu!" Lucy grabbed the back of his scarf as she sprinted to keep up. "Leave Keyes to Gray, we handle the other two first!"
Meanwhile, inside Plutogrim's control room.
The uppermost screen displayed the scene above the beast's back. The Purgatory Dragon was still wreaking havoc up there, toying with Jackal and Tempester like they were chew toys, batting one aside, roasting the other, circling back to do it again.
The second screen showed the ground battle raging at Plutogrim's base.
The third was a tactical map dotted with red markers, the positions of most of Tartaros's ambush units scattered through the surrounding forest.
The remaining dozen screens displayed dense streams of images and data, all concerning the location and operational status of Face.
Crawford's pudgy fingers hammered across the virtual keyboard, sweat dripping from his chin. Every few seconds his eyes darted to the battle feeds above, then snapped back to his work.
Franmalth hovered behind him, his single eye twitching with impatience. "Former Chairman, focus. And hurry it up."
"I know, I KNOW! All connections will be finalized any moment now. Once it's done, one button, just one! and all three thousand Face units begin preheating simultaneously! I'm just about to finish the final sequen.."
CRACK.
Crawford's round belly caved inward. His eyes bulged. Blood sprayed from his mouth mid-sentence.
His heavy body launched backward like a cannonball, smashed through the control room wall, and tumbled into the corridor beyond. He didn't get up.
"Former Chairman!" Franmalth's eye went wide. He spun toward where Crawford had been standing.
A tall figure stood there. A faint green mist, the last trace of whatever movement technique had carried him here, dissipated around his frame.
Rhodes.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" Franmalth didn't register the face immediately. His fury came first. "Do you have ANY idea what you've done?! The Face plan is about to launch, do you know how much this operation is worth?! DO YOU?! The resources! The planning! The..."
Rhodes ignored him completely. He turned to the screens still floating in mid-air, scanning them one by one. "The operator's down, but the displays are still active. These screens are a function of the control room itself, not Crawford's magic?"
"Of course they are! The Former Chairman's magic just made the interface easier to navigate, but that's not the POINT! Do you hear me?! I'm talking about the cost of..." Franmalth's tirade choked off as recognition finally hit. His single eye dilated.
"You. You're that human. Rhodes. The one who killed Tempester. The one who sabotaged Jackal's mission."
"That's me." Rhodes didn't look at him. His gaze was still moving across the screens, searching.
He found what he needed on the seventh display. Face activation status. Countdown timer. Pre-heat sequence: not yet initiated.
He opened the telepathic link.
"Operation successful. Crawford is unconscious. Face has not been activated." A brief pause as he read the timer data. "And based on the countdown architecture, even if someone restarts the sequence, it'll require a full hour of preheating before it goes live."
Mira's voice echoed back in his mind, calm and clear.
"Received. Then, I'll begin on my end."
The ground shook, and the roar of the Pluto Beast came thundering through the walls of the control room. The sound was different this time. Where before it had radiated raw fury when the Purgatory Dragon had struck it, what echoed through the corridors now carried something akin to fear.
Franmalth spun around, panic written plainly across his face. "Plutogrim! What's wrong this time?!"
No answer came. The roar gradually weakened, stretched thin, and then faded into complete silence a few seconds later.
Then the ground lurched one final time.
All around them, the sounds of collapse began. Stone cracking, walls splitting, supports giving way from every direction at once. From outside, the change was stark and immediate. Every one of the Pluto Beast's enormous black tentacles had retracted and vanished without a trace. The jagged horns that had covered its surface were gone. Its massive maw had closed shut.
But it had not returned to Cube's familiar square form.
The entire island was distorted now, warped and uneven, like a Rubik's Cube with several blocks ripped free from each of its layers.
Collapses were breaking out everywhere, inside the structure and across the outer surface simultaneously. Only Tartaros's palace still held together, the minor reinforcements Mard Geer had applied to it just barely enough to keep it standing while everything around it crumbled.
The moment the shaking stopped, a figure vaulted gracefully through the window and landed without a sound beside Rhodes.
Mirajane.
She was in her Satan Soul, and the sight of her gave even the air in the room a different weight. A sleek black bodysuit covered her from neck to toe, and her hands bore the iconic demonic claws of her form, dark and gleaming.
Behind her, several segmented black ribbons floated and drifted with a slow, eerie elegance.
Her long white hair was pulled back into a ponytail secured by a crisscrossing black hairband lined with spikes, and right at the center of that hairband, the Tartaros sigil had been marked clearly.
If she had walked up to any demon on this island and introduced herself as one of the Nine Demon Gates, not a single one of them would have doubted her.
There was only one detail that broke the image. The very visible, very un-demonlike curve of her lower abdomen, which her usual figure had never carried before.
Franmalth's eyes locked onto her and stayed there. His mouth had gone dry. He could feel it radiating off her, that power, deep and unmistakable.
It was the Plutogrim's power. He knew it the way you know a scent you have lived with for years. As a demon who had mastered the Absorption Curse, he understood precisely what that meant, and the realization settling into his chest was nothing short of horrifying.
"You..." his voice came out unsteady. "What... what did you do?"
Mirajane tilted her head and pressed one clawed finger lightly to her lips, as if she were deciding how much to share.
"Oh, nothing too complicated," she said warmly. "I just watched that big guy throwing his tantrum outside, spent a little while getting to know him..." The ribbons behind her curled and drifted lazily. "And then I took his power. That is all."
"Beautiful," Rhodes said simply.
Mirajane turned to him, her expression shifting into something softer with just a hint of mischief behind her eyes. "Now, are you saying my new form is beautiful, or that what I just did was beautiful?"
Rhodes smiled. "A double meaning, obviously. Take it however you like."
It had all gone exactly according to plan.
Silver had warned them that Mard Geer intended to use the Plutogrimt to activate a magic called Joy. A magic that could instantly assimilate every living person on Cube, absorbing them directly into the creature's body and making them a permanent part of it. The moment Rhodes had heard that, the original plan of sending an elite squad onto the island to destroy it from within was scrapped entirely.
That approach would have handed Mard Geer exactly what he needed.
So Rhodes had built a new plan from scratch. First, the Magic Cannons opened fire. Then the Purgatory Dragon was sent in. Then the Rift Herald pushed forward, not to finish the beast off, but to pressure it, study it, map its attack patterns and defensive responses while keeping its attention fixed outward.
After that came the second layer. The Voidmites moved in with a feigned assault while their allies kept up a steady stream of long-range fire as cover, loud and relentless, designed purely to hold the Plutogrim's focus and buy time.
This was to buy time and create favorable conditions for Mirajane's Take Over Magic.
While the battle raged as a distraction above them, Rhodes had stayed at her side and shielded her as the two of them quietly closed the distance to the Plutogrim. Close enough to observe it in detail. Its magical output, its aura, the specific rhythm of how its power moved.
All the while, Rhodes had kept the Former Council Chairman in his sights and made sure Face never came close to being activated.
Now both threats were gone.
Rhodes exhaled slowly, eyes moving across the crumbling wreckage of what had once been Tartaros's proudest fortress. A quiet smirk settled on his face.
'Everything was going smoothly. Now, all that remained was to wipe out these demons!'