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CHAPTER START---
Sitting behind the treeline on a rocky hillside, Oberon looks out at the clearing in the middle of the valley. Flanked on all sides by high rocky mountains. His eyes stay focused on the fortress in the middle of the valley, surrounded by a high wall, manned by guards.
They patrol diligently under the morning sun, enjoying the cool weather here in Sin, but he and Laxus are simply waiting for the right time. Behind him, Laxus is pacing back and forth, heart beating like a drum line against the pressure of what they're doing.
"Don't be so anxious, it'll only ruin your focus."
"Telling people not to be anxious doesn't work," Laxus scoffs. "How are you so calm."
"I've been S-Class for years, I'm used to lives depending on me."
"Yeah well, this is new to me. Is it time yet? Show me the timers."
Oberon rolls his eyes, but raises a hand to summon a screen of Super Archive. On it is a map of Ishgar, with the other Resurrection Altar locations marked, each hosting the local time for that region.
Before coming to Sin, Laxus and Oberon confirmed the location of the base in Bellum, then came to Sin and waited for everyone to get into position. A simultaneous strike to take advantage of the already lacking communication between locations.
"Remember, ten minutes or the signal, whichever is first," Oberon says as he gets up. "I'm moving to the road. I need to clear the path for the Rune Knights while you're inside. One minute."
"Yeah," Oberon walks deeper into the treeline, disappearing among the foliage to quietly handle the cultist's checkpoint on the only road leading into this valley. Laxus leans against a tree as his friend's scent retreats, focused entirely on the fortress.
"S-Class," he mutters. "Yeah, this really is a different world."
With that, he activates his invisibility Magic, perfectly disappearing and walking toward the fortress. It doesn't take long to reach the outer wall, and single out one of the men patrolling it. He quietly follows the man until he sees him speaking to another cultist.
They each wield spears, and quickly begin some idle chatter. He takes a few seconds to observe them, seeing one of the men take out a pack of cigarettes and lean his spear against the wall.
'Now is my chance,' he thinks before getting closer to the men.
On the one who is facing away from him, he casts Sleep Magic, which causes his Invisibility Magic to stop. The man immediately begins falling to the ground, and the other notices Laxus the moment he's visible.
Sleep Magic is easier to use on people who are unaware of you, as even a basic awareness of its use breaks the Spell, and Laxus is a novice. For this reason, he appears as a bolt of golden lightning beside the waking man, grabbing the back of his head and slamming his face into the dirt.
The man's brain rattles into unconsciousness as his skull fractures, but the pained whimpers from his body remind Laxus that he's still alive. He does all of this and still has time to catch the sleeping man before he hits the ground, which would have woken him.
Laxus places one hand on the ground, using Earth Magic that he and Oberon learned from Jura. He creates a small Magic Circle on the dirt, which softens it enough for the sleeping man to comfortably sink a few feet down, then it hardens again, leaving a small hole for him to breathe.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," he says before transforming into the now buried man, picking up his spear, and holding the injured cultist over his shoulder.
"I really hope this works," he says in the man's voice while walking over to the checkpoint at the outer wall. Transformation Magic has, theoretically, no limit. But changing your volume and mass requires more Magic Energy, so taking a different size isn't common.
Luckily for him, Dreyar blood and a Dragon Lacrima each give him a high Magic Energy capacity, allowing him to maintain an adult disguise. And he's able to quickly understand people's clothes, appearance, voice, and even their scent thanks to his high aptitude for observation and adaptation.
This allows him to perfectly mimic a person after only observing them for a few seconds, and is why the guards don't spare him a second glance when he arrives at the gates.
"He fell and hit a stone!" Laxus yells to them. "We need to get him inside!"
They all spring into action immediately, not wanting to lose one of the rare people willing to follow their mission. Laxus is escorted through the gate and into the fortress, directed up some stairs and through corridors to the infirmary.
There he sees enough equipment and medicine to supply the Magnolia Hospital twice over, and a dedicated set of doctors that immediately take the man from him into another room.
He turns to the man who left the others at the main gate and escorted him in. "We need to go to our boss, they'll want the full story, which includes what you saw." He gestures to the door, signalling the man to lead the way.
"Yeah, he'll be pissed. Just don't expect me to put my neck out for you," the man says before leading Laxus out of the medical room.
Laxus is soaking in everything he can, focusing on the scents, sounds, and sights. Using his draconic senses to their limit, do everything to push past the strong scent of iron in the air. But with each step, the scent only grows.
"He's probably down in the mines right now," the escort says as they exit the hallway and take a short elevator ride below the surface.
As they descend, Laxus feels his ability to sense Magic stifled. 'They have a Barrier set up…'
The elevator descends for a few more seconds before it stops at the first of what he can see is many floors of a Lacrima Mine. Extending deep underground, these mines collect condensed Magic Energy. Fiore controls and hosts most of them on Ishgar, leading to its vast wealth.
But this one was much smaller than those. Here he could only see Lacrima's the size of fingernails in the walls, and extracting them were men, women, and children, of all ages and levels of health.
He stands there, stunned, as his escort speaks to one of the men near the lift.
Laxus's eyes shift to the people, seeing each of them wearing two cuffs that aren't connected to each other. But each cuff has a red Lacrima built into it, it's purpose obvious to him.
'Magic Binding cuffs with a built in explosive in case they run or try to get rid of them. I'll have to find the control room. Then I—'
"The Guard Commander is back in his office, he's already done with inspections," the escort says, and Laxus snaps back to attention and follows the man into the lift.
'Guard Commander? That means there is a higher level person here, if this guy is just the head of security.' The lift ascends back to the surface, and they walk back through the fortress. Laxus sees slaves carrying carts filled with Lacrima Crystals into a massive atrium near the entrance. A vast hall with a Magic Circle carved into the floor.
The room is the size of a football field, supporting the massive Runes carved into it. In the middle of it is a hole where they dump all the Lacrima. And as the walls rise, they close in, forming a conical shape leading to a point above the middle of the floor.
'They don't have the luxury of a hollow mountain being their base. That Magic Circle only collects the Magic Energy, I need to find the one connected to the resurrection ritual. It should be directly above. The Magic Energy will erupt like a geyser, so…'
His gaze shifts upward, and he sees a Magic Circle carved into the ceiling. The exact design Oberon expected.
'The room is on the other side of that,' He narrows his eyes at it before they enter another maze of hallways. They pass by a few guards on the way up to the Guard Commander's office, and after knocking, enter to see the man studying a ledger on his desk.
"What do you want?" the old and frail man in much more embellished robes glares at them, his voice harsh and tone curt.
The escort steps aside, allowing Laxus to walk ahead of him. "There was a accident, one of the outer wall guards was seriously injured."
"Is that all?" The man slams his hand on the desk. "A shipment of new slaves is late and you're here to tell me about some clumsy person getting hurt!?"
Laxus and his escort remain silent as the man walks over to the wall beside his desk, where a mic is built into it. He presses a button and speaks into it. "Double shifts until the new set arrives! No breaks!"
Laxus barely stops himself from flinching as he hears the man's voice from every loudspeaker of the announcement system in the fortress.
"You two. If that's all you have to say, get back to work."
"Yes Sir!" the escort says, taking his spear and turning to leave.
Laxus remains in place as his escort quickly and fearfully leaves, and the man looks back thought he open door to see the Guard Commander also staring at Laxus.
"There is something urgent I need to discuss with the Guard Commander. There may be a problem at the Altar in Iceberg."
"How do you know where it—" the man cuts himself off, glaring at Laxus before looking to the escort. "Leave us, and forget you heard that."
The man nods sharply and shuts the door before scurrying back to the outer wall.
"Approach."
Laxus nods and walks to the desk, now standing within arms reach of the man. "How do you know ab—" Before the man can even finish speaking, Laxus's fist crashes into his throat.
The man gasps for air, feeling a scant few drops of blood flowing down his throat as Laxus's transformation ends, and the boy grabs his head, shocking him into unconsciousness.
He catches the unconscious man before he flops onto the desk, and instantly transforms into him.
"Just a few more minutes," he mutters in the man's voice while placing the old man on the floor behind the desk. He Requips the entire ledger before rifling through the desk, taking anything that looks important, and finding a map of the fortress.
Or more accurately, a diagram of this base's altar room. 'Magic Energy from the Lacrima's get shot upward at the Resurrection Altar to power it, I need to get some evidence of that before they can destroy it…'
He finishes seizing everything useful in the room and walks over to the announcement system, activating it. "Bring all slaves to the Lacrima collection room for interrogation and disciplinary action! No exceptions! Now!"
Every guard in the fortress is on edge at those words, moving quickly to gather up everyone and bring them into the main room.
'This place is a lot smaller that the last base, so that should be fine,' he turn leaves the room, still appearing as the Guard Commander, and finds the Altar Room.
Entering it, he sees a few cultists tending to it, each a Mage with a staff focusing Magic Energy into the rune that's carved into the large altar. "I want a update on the reinforcement progress."
A robed woman turns to him. "We just updated the Head Overseer."
"And now I'm asking," he narrows his eyes at her. "There was a security problem. I'm doing a full check."
"I see. Reinforcement is progressing well. It should be able to handle the Magic Energy within a year."
"Good, but there was a problem in Iceberg," he says, causing them all to turn to him. "The Head Overseer needs you, immediately. No none will be allowed in here until you return."
"Do we know the nature of the problem?" she asks.
"We believe there may have been a imbalance in their Altar R—"
"Those fools!" she begins marching out of the room. "How dare they delay Lord Zeref's resurrection!"
All the other Mages follow her, leaving Laxus alone in the room. He quickly discards the transformation, Requipping a Kamera and taking pictures of everything before storing it and resuming his transformation.
'I've only got a few minutes before someone tries to contact Iceberg and realize the communication room is sabotaged…' he suppresses a smile while rushing to where the slaves are gathered.
There he sees thousands of slaves gathered, many of whom are injured or sick, forced to work through it or be killed. Some are holding up or even carrying others, because he called for no exceptions in this gathering.
He raises a single hand, and the guards knock the ground with the base of their spears, silencing the murmuring crowd. Tension in the room grows as people look at him fearfully, a sight that makes him sick to his stomach, but he maintains his composure.
Seconds stretch into nearly half a minute, and finally a small explosion echoes through the halls above.
The slaves and guards look up instinctively, wondering what happened. And a moment later all of their Magic Binding cuffs deactivate and pop off, the Explosive Lacrimas going dormant on the floor.
The guards are stunned for a moment, as suddenly they are outnumbered dozens to one. They prepare to thrust their spears forward or unleash Magics upon the crowd, but a bolt of golden lightning dances through the room.
It fries each guard until they're blackened, frightening the slaves who instinctively shield themselves from it. But it never touches them, they instead hear the constant crackling and arcing of electricity above, opening their eyes to see Laxus Dreyar hovering above them.
"C'mon, follow me!" he waves while moving toward the main doors, blasting any guards that get in their way.
On the way out, some of the slaves who were Mages before use what little Magic Energy they can muster to help, and during the fight he can hear people muttering his name. Only a handful of people recognize him, but with each passing barrier, the hope grows in the crowd.
Laxus is forced to dart around the massive crowd as a bolt of lightning, protecting them from cultists on all sides as they break out of the massive main gate, entering the field between the fortress and outer wall.
The moment the doors explode outward, that sound begins the secondary phase of this assault. Before the guards could turn and attack Laxus and the crowd, beams of Light Magic descended, punching them into the dirt with intense concussive force.
The people at the front of the crowd see the outer wall, and hear Laxus at the back of the crowd fighting the approaching cultists. Thousands of people rushing toward a dooryard no wider than a single street.
The fortress was designed intentionally so they could easily move the slaves into the inner field for punishment and occasionally culling, but so it would take a long time for a rebellion to leave the outer wall. All supported by the fact that everyone was wearing a remote-activated bomb that suppressed Magics.
The sound of battle behind them shakes their faith, knowing the few Mages with them would have to fight hundreds of cultists to stall. But moments later, the entire outer wall is torn away and thrown aside.
Gravity shifted in the most absurd way, ripping it from the ground to leave a clear path forward, revealing that on the other side of the wall is an entire legion of Rune Knights, ready for battle and to provide aid. With a young boy standing in the air above them.
"Oberon!" A few of the people rejoice, confusing most of the crowd that have been enslaved since before he joined Fairy Tail.
Oberon waves while flying over them, rushing to the back of the crowd to support Laxus and the others…
CHAPTER END---
Discord: discord .gg /eHuxNeZfyS [Come chat with me]
pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
You.tube: @KeanuEugene [Giving away all my writing knowledge]