Chapter 542 - 542: Zash and His Hundred Ailments

"No… wait… please, no more!!"

Ankh sat comfortably on a tree stump with one leg crossed over the other, watching Zash writhe on the ground with obvious satisfaction.

"So? Ready to start talking yet?"

Ophiuchus stood beside him, eerie green light gathering around her hands like some kind of poisonous mist.

Judging from the eager smile on her face, she was enjoying this far more than anyone probably should.

The two of them looked less like heroes interrogating a criminal and more like villains trying to break some iron-willed champion of justice.

Meanwhile, Zash had somehow become the poor flower being mercilessly trampled underfoot.

Even Erza, Natsu, Gray, and the others—who were very firmly on Ankh's side—had gradually backed away with increasingly uneasy expressions.

They had originally assumed Ankh and Ophiuchus had spent the last six months developing some sophisticated interrogation technique.

They were wrong.

The moment Ophiuchus appeared, she had started piling every miserable but nonlethal illness she could think of onto Zash.

Long ago, Ophiuchus had unexpectedly inherited the power of the God of Disease and Plague.

Since she had already possessed the ability to transfer injuries and negative conditions, gaining the power to actively inflict those conditions had turned her into something far more terrifying.

The obvious question was:

What happened when a healer who could transfer illnesses suddenly learned how to cause them?

Apparently, the answer was—a torturer.

And Zash had just become their first proper test subject.

With Ankh supplying suggestions, Ophiuchus had gleefully stacked one condition after another onto him.

High blood pressure.

Heart disease.

Arthritis.

Kidney stones.

And that was only the beginning.

Depression, prostatitis, kidney failure, pathological laughter… and, though Zash had not yet realized it, impotence.

In short, Ophiuchus had taken practically every miserable condition Ankh could name and thrown the entire list at him without restraint.

At this point, Zash's skin was covered in sores, his wounds were festering, blood seeped from his eyes, nose, and mouth, and even his bones had become dangerously brittle.

From head to toe, inside and out, there was almost nothing left in good condition.

Everyone else had already retreated a good distance from what had effectively become a walking medical disaster.

Ankh, protected by Life Divine Power, remained completely unconcerned.

"You… you could at least ask me something!"

Zash was curled around himself as another kidney stone attack tore through him.

"What the hell do you even want to know?!"

Ankh raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? Still enough energy left to yell at me?"

He looked toward Ophiuchus.

"Give him hemorrhoids too."

Ophiuchus immediately brightened.

"Got it~"

"No! No, no, wait—AAAAAGH!!"

A scream so miserable that everyone hearing it instinctively winced tore through the night.

Erza, Natsu, Gray, and Lucy all sucked in a breath and collectively took another step backward.

Several of them even covered their rear ends on reflex.

Only then did Ankh finally decide to get serious.

He looked down at Zash's swollen, barely recognizable face.

"Alright."

"Tell me about your relationship with the Black Magic Cult."

Zash's mouth was covered in ulcers by now, making even speaking difficult. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he answered in a muffled, obedient voice.

"When I was still serving as Fiore's Minister of State… I was already practicing Black Magic."

"That was when I first made contact with the Black Magic Cult…"

Through Zash's halting explanation, Team Natsu gradually pieced together the history.

Zash had always been a devoted practitioner of Black Magic, and his considerable strength had eventually attracted the cult's attention.

They had invited him to join.

At the time, however, the worst of his crimes had yet to be exposed.

Zash still believed he could climb even higher within Fiore's government, so he kept his distance from the cult and maintained only limited contact.

That changed after his crimes came to light.

Once Fiore arrested and imprisoned him, Zash finally remembered the organization that had once reached out to him.

The Black Magic Cult offered him a deal.

They would arrange his escape.

In exchange, Zash would steal Dragon Cry.

After breaking him out of prison, the cult helped him raid the temple, seize the staff, and defect to Stella, where he reunited with several of their high-ranking members.

Everything after that was more or less what Ankh and the others already knew.

But one part of Zash's confession immediately caught everyone's attention.

The Black Magic Cult's high-ranking officers really were surviving members of the Seven Kin of Purgatory.

And even more importantly—the headquarters of the Black Magic Cult, one of the most dangerous organizations to emerge since the collapse of the Balam Alliance, was located inside the Kingdom of Stella.

"They stole Dragon Cry because they're preparing some kind of horrifying experiment…"

Zash swallowed painfully.

"They want to use it to turn every human on the continent into a dragon with an incomplete bloodline."

Natsu frowned and approached despite clearly not wanting to breathe anywhere near Zash.

"How the hell would that work?"

"Dragon Cry can do something like that?"

Zash weakly shook his head.

"The King of Stella… seems unusually knowledgeable about dragon-related magic."

"If he uses Dragon Cry as the core, he may actually be able to make it happen…"

Lucy tightened her grip on the staff.

A weapon created from the hatred, grief, and lingering power of countless dead dragons—

and now someone intended to use it to forcibly transform humanity itself.

Her expression became tense.

Erza frowned.

"But why?"

"Turning everyone into dragons seems like a ridiculous way to conquer the world."

"And what does the Black Magic Cult gain from it?"

"Who is actually leading them?"

Zash answered one question at a time.

"I don't know what the King of Stella ultimately wants."

"I just thought gaining the power of a dragon sounded useful, so I agreed to cooperate…"

"As for the Black Magic Cult, I think they're using Stella for something else. I don't know their real objective."

Then his voice faltered.

Fear entered his eyes.

"But…"

"I met their leader once."

"I remember him."

"He called himself…"

"Underworld King Mard Geer."

"MARD GEER?!"

Natsu's eyes widened.

Then realization hit him.

"That's right! He was the one who escaped from Laxus and Jura!"

Gray's expression changed as well.

"So Mard Geer is the one turning people into demons?"

Zash nodded frantically.

"I saw it myself!"

"He just waved his hand and transformed Rustyrose and Kain into those monsters!"

Ankh lowered his gaze thoughtfully.

"So they didn't steal the old Tartaros technology…"

"It's Mard Geer's own power now."

Apparently, the Underworld King had gained something far more dangerous during his time with the Alvarez Empire.

...

"Everyone…"

Having finally spilled everything he knew, Zash forced an ingratiating smile onto his ruined face.

"I told you everything."

"So maybe you could…"

Ankh calmly stopped the recording on his Magic Mobile Phone.

Then he gave Zash a polite smile.

Zash immediately smiled back, desperately hopeful.

Ankh pointed toward his head.

"Give him a tumor there."

Then he casually added,

"Finish him."

Ophiuchus smiled brightly.

"Understood~"

Zash's face went white.

"WAIT! WAIT, WAIT—!!"

His scream quickly dissolved into a final, agonized cry.

Ankh's expression did not change.

He simply watched until Zash stopped breathing.

Even Lucy and Wendy, the softest-hearted members present, only turned their faces away.

Neither tried to stop him.

There was nothing about Zash that deserved sympathy.

He had murdered innocent women in Fiore, destroyed countless lives through his cooperation with the Black Magic Cult, betrayed his country, slaughtered soldiers, and helped set in motion a plan that could endanger an entire continent.

Their mission had always been to recover Dragon Cry and, if possible, deal with Zash.

This was simply the final part of the job.