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"I step away for a little while and somehow a scene this big breaks out."
Noah gave a casual wave of his hand, tossing the still-shaken Mavis gently toward Zeref and August, then caught Erza and Mira's eyes in the crowd below and offered them a reassuring smile.
Confirming that his companions were unharmed, Noah turned back around slowly. One hand still in his pocket, he tilted his head upward and looked at the radiant Lord of All Gods hanging in the sky.
There was no reverence in his expression. Only a faint flicker of amusement.
A god? Nothing more than a naturally stronger species, the same as the Black Abyss Demon had been. And most of the gods were already dead, at that.
Could a Lord of All Gods, whose divine subordinates had all been wiped out, really still call himself by that title? It was a name with nothing left behind it. An empty threat dressed up in light.
The moment Noah appeared and made himself known, something shifted on the Lord of All Gods' face for the first time — a subtle crack in that unshakeable composure, and a wariness that had not been there before crept into his eyes.
"Mortal... you are still alive?!"
Noah let out a short, scornful laugh. "I'm a living person, so yes, I'm alive. Was I supposed to end up like the Eighteen Demon War Gods and the God of Life and Death?"
The confirmation hit its mark.
When the Lord of All Gods heard Noah name the Demon War Gods and Ankhseram, his expression turned sharply ugly.
He had been a participant in the plan to eliminate Noah from the very beginning. His role had been to use the power of Eclipse to corrupt the Celestial Spirit King, and to seal away the will of Earth Land, cutting off the world's ability to intervene on Noah's behalf.
With that single greatest variable removed, possessing Earth Land would have been unobstructed.
The Lord of All Gods had been supremely confident in the plan. The moment Noah was pulled into the Black Abyss, he had set his rebirth in motion without hesitation.
What he had never anticipated was that even with all Eighteen Demon War Gods and Ankhseram, the God of Life and Death, who at full strength was no lesser than his former self, they had still failed to destroy Noah.
And from the way this mortal was speaking, he had not merely survived. He had killed them.
The shock lasted only a moment. The Lord of All Gods composed himself and resumed his posture of cold authority. His reborn body had absorbed the Black Dragon's Magic Devouring ability. In Earth Land, a world saturated with Magic Power, he was effectively unkillable.
"Mortal."
His voice had recovered its certainty, its weight. "You are... interesting. Kneel and submit to me now, and I will overlook your disrespect."
The silence that followed was absolute.
The members of Fairy Tail glanced at each other. Everyone was thinking the same thing: how spectacularly certain of himself did someone have to be to say that to Noah? Did he have any idea what Magnetic Field Rotation could do?
Noah himself looked faintly entertained.
"A fallen god who had to steal another being's power just to reconstruct his own body is asking me to kneel?"
He took a step forward. An invisible force spread outward from him into the sky, and the Lord of All Gods felt an immense pressure descend on him from above — a dominance so absolute that even he, at the height of his reborn strength, felt it pressing down.
That damned human was actually trying to force him to the ground.
The Lord of All Gods' eyes went cold and flat.
"Blasphemer. You will pay for your arrogance."
He said nothing more. His holy flame greatsword rose, the sacred halo behind him blazed like a second sun, and every trace of white light in the sky converged toward him.
Vast divine power and Magic swelled like a rising tide without end.
"Divine Domain: Heavenly Judgment!"
The moment he finished the incantation, the space above the entire Mount Zonia range was transformed. Countless chains of sacred energy erupted from the void and coiled around Noah. Simultaneously, thousands of light spears burning with holy flames condensed in the air and fell like a torrential rain.
Each one carried the weight of divine law, enough to pierce mountains clean through and boil oceans dry.
This was power that existed beyond Magic. The power of a god.
How thoroughly exhausting.
Faced with this overwhelming barrage, Noah let out a quiet "tsk." He did not take a defensive stance. He simply raised his right hand and drew a long blade of compressed wind from the air with a casual grip.
Magnetic Field Rotation: Five Hundred Thousand Horsepower!
Magic Martial Arts: Endless Wind Severing Blade!
The blade came down. An endless tempest surged skyward in its wake, every particle of wind carrying the same force Noah had once used to annihilate the Demon War Gods and Ankhseram.
The torrential rain of holy flame spears froze in the storm, and then ceased to exist.
For the first time, genuine disbelief crossed the Lord of All Gods' face. His divine technique, unleashed with everything he had, had been broken this easily?
Seeing the storm coming for him, he blocked on instinct, divine power exploding outward to form a barrier around him as he raised the greatsword to meet it.
The clang that followed was deafening. Straining with his full strength, the Lord of All Gods held.
But when he looked at the greatsword in his hands, the blade was laced with cracks from edge to edge.
His expression darkened. He had known Noah was formidable. He had not known it was to this degree.
No matter. He now commanded the Magic Devouring ability. Though he could not consume Noah's unknown power directly, the Magic-saturated world of Earth Land was the perfect source of recovery. Within two breaths, he had drawn in the surrounding Magic and restored himself completely — armor sealed, blade whole, strength at its peak.
"It looks like you've recovered."
The voice came from directly behind him.
The Lord of All Gods' expression broke.
He had not even registered Noah moving.
Before he could react, Noah was already there, directly in front of him, throwing a single, plain, unadorned straight punch into that flawless face.
The impact was immense and muffled.
No surge of energy. No blinding light.
Just raw, absolute force.
The Lord of All Gods felt something incomprehensible slam into him. He let out a choked grunt and went flying like a comet, tearing through the bodies of several distant snow-capped mountains, sending an eruption of snow and stone into the sky.
At the edge of the abyss below, everyone stared.
That god. That terrifying, brilliant, self-proclaimed Lord of All Gods, the existence who had held them all motionless with a single gesture...
Noah had just punched him into a mountain range.
From the distant ruins where the Lord of All Gods had crashed, a pillar of holy light erupted. A divine pressure even heavier than before swept outward, and the Lord of All Gods burst from the wreckage.
His pure white armor was cracked. A thin line of golden blood ran from the corner of his mouth. The sacred halo behind him had dimmed. But the rage in his eyes had hardened into something beyond fury.
"Mortal!!! You have pushed me too far!!!"
Every trace of composed authority was gone. He roared as he absorbed Magic, channeling everything into the cracked holy sword, his entire being condensing into a single pure white torrent that stretched from earth to sky — the full measure of his power, and then beyond it, a final strike with nothing held back.
So he was going all out.
Noah studied the Lord of All Gods' frenzy and felt his own expression sharpen for the first time. A grin broke across his face.
"Now that's what I wanted to see. Come on then — and lose to me!"
Blue arcs of electrical light crackled across his body as the Magnetic Field Power surged to its ceiling. The force of it warped the space around him into visible ripples. The ground beneath his feet sank silently. Nearby rubble floated upward against gravity.
Facing that world-ending divine strike, Noah pulled his fist back.
No technique. No flourish. Just him and his fist, and the absolute intent to tear everything apart and kill what stood before him.
Magnetic Field Rotation: Five Hundred Thousand Horsepower!
Magic Martial Arts: God Severing Fist!
"AUGH—"
The Lord of All Gods watched in despair as his final attack was shredded like paper. Noah's hand drove forward without resistance, penetrating his chest, and drew out two blazing hearts of concentrated divine light from within him.
The Lord of All Gods went completely rigid.
Noah leaned close to his ear, and with a cold smile, said in a voice meant only for him:
"Gods are nothing more than creatures with more power than most. You thought that made you untouchable? You were no different from the rest of the cannon fodder I've already buried."
"Remember in whatever comes next: don't try to play god in front of me."
His fingers closed.
The heart, carrying the Lord of All Gods' lifelong power and the essence of his existence, was crushed. Golden divine blood burst outward in a brilliant spray.
The light in the Lord of All Gods' eyes went out.
An ambition that had spanned countless years and worlds, and a divine body freshly reforged from stolen power, were erased completely beneath Noah's absolute force, leaving nothing at all behind.
Noah looked up at the sky as it slowly returned to its natural color.
His mouth curved upward.
Nothing left to cast a shadow. The sunlight could reach this broken land again.