Looking at the Tower of Heaven, now marred by a massive, perfectly circular gouge where the magic had collided, everyone present—Jellal, Kael, Erza, and even the friends watching from a distance—felt their blood run cold.
They had barely escaped in time. Had they been even a second slower, they wouldn't have just been injured; they would have been erased from existence.
Flash!
Kael teleported back onto the fractured remains of the tower with Erza.
"Oh boy... this place is a total wreck," Kael remarked, glancing at the devastation before smirking at Jellal. "Are you sure you don't want to call it quits? Your tower isn't looking so hot."
Jellal's voice was like ice. "It doesn't matter. The tower was completed. Even if it's reduced to rubble, Ultear's 'Arc of Time' can restore it to its peak in an instant."
He glared at Kael, his killing intent overflowing. "The only thing that matters now is putting you in the ground!!"
"Whoa, easy there!" Kael teased. "Weren't you planning to use me as a sacrifice to resurrect Zeref? Shouldn't you at least try to keep me alive?"
"You were indeed the sacrifice Zeref demanded," Jellal admitted, his magic power beginning to surge once more. "But things have changed. To bring him back, I only need the body of a mage on par with the Ten Wizard Saints. You, however... you are far too dangerous. I won't be able to sleep until I know you're dead."
Jellal rose into the air, his fingers tracing a complex pattern. His left index finger pointed toward the earth while his right hand reached for the stars. The sky began to churn, the clouds parting to reveal a haunting image of the cosmos.
"True Heavenly Body Magic: Sema!!"
With Jellal's shout, the heavens seemed to split as a colossal, burning meteorite was pulled from the depths of space, hurtling toward the tower.
"A meteorite?!" Erza gasped, her face pale. Even for a mage of her caliber, the scale of this magic was terrifying.
Kael's eyes narrowed under the blindfold. "Fine then. If you're going to play dirty, I guess I'll have to get a little rougher too."
He brought his hands together, forming a specific seal.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue." A sphere of intense blue cursed energy flickered into existence to his left.
"Cursed Technique Reversal: Red." A sparking red orb materialized to his right.
He guided the two opposing forces toward each other, letting them collide and merge into a single, unstable point.
"Hollow Technique: Purple!!"
A massive wave of purple destruction erupted from Kael's hands, soaring upward to meet the falling star.
BOOM——!!
Sema and Hollow Purple collided in a blinding flash. The purple orb didn't just hit the meteorite; it cored through it like a hot needle through wax, leaving a perfectly smooth circular hole in its center.
The structural integrity of the meteorite vanished instantly. With a deafening roar, the giant rock shattered into a million pieces, falling like a rain of lethal, burning fireworks. The sight was as beautiful as it was horrifying.
Jellal's jaw dropped. "No... how is this possible?! That was a real celestial body... How could it be shattered like glass?!"
This wasn't just a magic construct; it was a physical meteorite he had summoned across the atmospheric barrier. It was supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature.
Whoosh!
Kael suddenly appeared directly above Jellal. "In this world, nothing is impossible—not when I'm stronger than you."
Kael swung his leg down in a devastating axe kick. Jellal, still reeling from the shock of his ultimate move failing, barely managed to cross his arms in a desperate block.
Bang!!
The sheer weight of the impact sent Jellal plummeting like a lead weight.
"Guaah!!"
Boom! Crash! Crash!
Jellal's body smashed through floor after floor of the Tower of Heaven, descending toward the very base of the structure.
"Meteor!" Jellal shouted, activating his speed magic just before hitting the bottom. He banked hard, flying out through a shattered window to regain his footing in the air.
But the moment he cleared the wall, a hand clamped firmly over his face.
"To be honest," Kael's voice whispered right in his ear, "I don't really care about your resurrection plans. But you made a mistake, Jellal. You made Erza cry." Kael's grip tightened. "And I've never been able to stand the sight of a girl's tears."
With a sudden burst of speed, Kael slammed Jellal back into the tower's exterior, dragging his face across the stone walls as they ran.
"Aaaargh!" Jellal screamed in a mix of pain and fury. His aura flared, the light of Meteor intensifying until he finally managed to break Kael's grip.
"I cannot lose! I will not lose!" Jellal yelled, his eyes bloodshot. "I will build my kingdom of freedom! Zeref spoke to me... in my pain, in my fear... he told me the path to true liberty!"
"I am the chosen one! I will rule beside Zeref! I WILL NOT LOSE!"
Jellal threw his hands wide, and a colossal, multi-layered magic circle formed in the sky, shimmering with four distinct colors.
Erza's heart nearly stopped. "That's... the Forbidden Magic: Abyss Break?!"
She recognized it instantly. A forbidden magic that combined the four primal elements—Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water—into a dark blast. It was a magic designed to level cities.
"Going for broke, are we?" Kael noted. He could feel his reserves dipping. Maintaining this form was taxing, and resisting a Forbidden Magic head-on would require a massive output of Cursed Energy. "I guess it's time to wrap this up."
Kael teleported back to Erza, grabbing her arm with his left hand to keep her steady. He raised his right hand, crossing his index and middle fingers in a silent, focused gesture.
He spoke the words softly, yet they resonated through the very fabric of reality:
"Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void."
Whoosh——!!
In an instant, the world changed. The sky, the tower, and the sea were replaced by a vast, empty expanse of stars and infinite white space.
The Abyss Break magic circle simply flickered and died. Jellal froze mid-air, his hands still raised, his eyes wide and vacant.
"What... what is this...?" Jellal's voice was a hollow whisper. "I can't see... I can't feel... No, I see everything! I feel everything! The information... it won't stop...!!"
Erza looked around in awe, confused as to why the terrifying Jellal had suddenly become a statue.
"This is the inner world of Unlimited Void," Kael explained calmly. "I'm flooding his brain with an infinite stream of raw, useless information. His cognitive system can't process it. To put it simply: his brain has crashed."
Erza was stunned. She had seen many forms of magic, but something that attacked the very concept of "perception" was on an entirely different level. Kael's transformations weren't just powerful—they were absolute.
Snap!
Kael snapped his fingers, and the Domain vanished.
To Lucy and the others watching from the beach, a black sphere had briefly swallowed the top of the tower before disappearing as quickly as it had arrived.
Kael reverted to his original appearance, breathing a slight sigh of relief. Jellal slumped to the ground, motionless. His mind was paralyzed; his body had forgotten how to even twitch.
"Erza," Kael said, stepping aside. "I'll leave the rest to you."
He had funneled ten years' worth of mental static into Jellal's head. For a normal person, it would have been a death sentence. But Jellal was an elite mage; he would survive, though he'd be a vegetable for at least the next ten minutes. As for using magic again? He'd be lucky if he could cast a simple spark within the next few months.
The threat was over.
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