"That absolute monster!" Brain snarled through gritted teeth. He'd seen Dino move, but he hadn't expected that level of damage.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Natsu let Happy carry him up and away from Nirvana's interior, breaking free into open air.
Spotting the devastated leg below, Natsu burst out laughing. "Hahaha~! Your precious Nirvana's already falling apart!"
"N-Natsu! Look! The leg—it's growing back!"
Natsu snapped his gaze downward. Sure enough, the shattered remains of the leg Dino had obliterated were rising back off the ground as if pulled by an invisible force, rubble and dust swirling together and reconstituting piece by piece.
Within moments, a leg nearly identical to before had reformed, and Nirvana steadied itself.
Down below, Dino watched the whole thing with his arms crossed, looking genuinely impressed.
"It has an automatic repair system built in. The level of magic engineering in this city is seriously something else!"
Dino had spent over seven years in this world, long established as a mage of Fairy Tail. He'd seen a lot. But this kind of self-regenerating magical architecture was rare even by ancient standards—modern magic had nothing close to it. Nobody today was building mobile cities.
"How are you admiring it right now?!" Carla snapped, one eye twitching. "That thing will fire again if you don't destroy it first!"
"Fair point." Dino cracked his knuckles. "Shame to wreck something this old, but I'd rather do that than get blasted again."
He glanced over his shoulder. "Wendy, you and Carla go find whoever's injured and help them out. Stay clear of Nirvana and watch your backs. I'll handle this."
"Got it!" Wendy nodded, her expression earnest and determined.
Dino planted his feet and launched himself straight up. He kept stepping through empty air—each footstep finding impossible purchase—rising higher and higher until Nirvana's full silhouette spread out beneath him.
Wendy watched him go, eyes wide with admiration. "Dino's so cool… and he's always so considerate too."
"I won't argue that," Carla said with a small sigh. "Though his sense of morality is questionable at the best of times." She still hadn't forgotten the things he'd told Happy about finding loopholes in every rule. Most of it was probably a joke. Probably. "Anyway—let's go find the wounded. Now."
Dino touched down inside the ancient city. Walking among the crumbling streets, he could see faint echoes of what this place had once been—grand architecture, wide thoroughfares, the ghostly impression of a civilization that had thrived here centuries ago.
If this were anywhere else, archaeologists would lose their minds over this stuff.
He shook the thought off.
"But first—"
"Buzz~!"
The Tremor-Tremor Fruit power surged to life around his fist, a white spherical aura forming and intensifying as he kept condensing it. Space around his knuckles visibly warped.
Then he punched straight down.
Cracks split through the air ahead of his fist with a sound like shattering crystal.
"BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!"
The ancient city shuddered violently. Massive fractures tore across the ground in every direction, buildings collapsing into rubble, entire districts crumbling simultaneously. The six legs supporting Nirvana buckled under the transmitted force—and then the ground beneath each leg gave way entirely, all six sinking deep into the earth.
Dino blinked. Then a grin spread across his face.
"Oh?! They actually engineered a distributed shock absorption system into the foundation. These ancient mages weren't messing around!" He looked genuinely delighted. "Alright then—let's see how much you can actually take!"
He rolled his neck, cracking it. "They say a real man can tear apart a steel golem with his bare hands. I went a little easy on Nirvana last time. Not this time."
"Let's see how long you last!"
Another white tremor aura blazed to life around both fists.
He didn't hesitate this time.
"CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!"
"BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!"
One of the legs exploded outward. A section of the city buckled and collapsed inward.
Immediately—the other fist came down.
"BOOM BOOM BOOM!!"
Then again.
"BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!"
It was impossible to ignore. The ground shook continuously. The sounds of destruction rolled across the surrounding forest like rolling thunder.
For everyone present—Angel and Hoteye from the Oración Seis, the Fairy Tail mages, even Wendy and Carla—there was a very specific feeling that was hard to put into words.
None of them could so much as scratch something the size of Nirvana. And yet, watching from a distance, it looked less like a battle and more like someone enthusiastically demolishing a building they didn't like.
"Am I imagining things," Lucy said, her expression flat, "or does Dino look like he's… having fun?"
"It's a man thing," Gray said, watching with his arms folded. "Pent-up energy. Needs somewhere to go."
"…In what sense?" Lucy took a cautious step sideways, positioning herself strategically.
"WILL YOU TWO FOCUS?! The enemy's right there!"
Up on Nirvana, Brain was barely keeping his footing. Every impact from below sent shockwaves through the entire structure, the floor lurching, pillars cracking. His jaw was tight with barely contained fury.
"If we let him keep this up, even the repair system won't be able to keep pace! He'll have this thing in pieces in minutes!" He slammed his staff against the floor. "MIDNIGHT! Go deal with him NOW! Do NOT let him land another hit! The next Nirvana shot is almost fully charged!"
"Yes, Father." Midnight's voice was calm and disinterested as always. He stepped onto his flying carpet and drifted off toward Dino's position without any particular urgency.
Natsu's head snapped around the second he saw Midnight move. "Oh no you don't—!" He lunged forward to cut him off—
—and in the time it took to blink, Midnight was simply behind him, having curved around Natsu's charge like smoke in the wind.
"What the—?! How'd you—?!" Natsu spun around, but a burst of magic from Brain's staff cut across his path, forcing him to leap back.
Below, the punishment continued.
Nirvana looked awful. Under Dino's relentless demolition, entire sections had caved in, legs were partially collapsed, and the repair system was visibly struggling to keep up—the regeneration noticeably slower than it had been at the start.
The greatest magical engineering achievement of the ancient world, a mobile city designed to reshape the balance of light and darkness—
—and it was losing a fight against one man's fists.