Chapter 544 - 544: The Return of the Nation Destroyer and the War Princess

Brandish.

The powerful female mage who had relentlessly targeted Lucy during the battle on Tenrou Island years ago.

Her magic allowed her to alter the size and shape of objects, an extremely powerful ability that operated almost like a rule imposed directly upon matter itself.

And right now, the person she was holding in one hand was none other than Zancrow—

shrunk down to the size of a doll.

"Why is someone from the Alvarez Empire here too?!"

Gray shouted in frustration after watching every construct he created get casually erased or altered by Brandish before it could reach her.

That was when something clicked in Ankh's mind.

Jellal and the others had already told him about the Black Magic Cult.

It was supposedly an organization made up of fanatics who worshiped Zeref with almost religious devotion.

And the Alvarez Empire just happened to belong to Zeref.

Ankh narrowed his eyes.

"So that's how it is."

"Stella is working with the Black Magic Cult, and standing behind the Black Magic Cult…"

"is the Alvarez Empire."

Brandish scratched her short green hair.

She wore a fashionable cloak over what was essentially little more than an extremely revealing swimsuit, and her expression carried the exhausted emptiness of an employee who had been caught slacking off and dragged back into overtime.

"Yeah."

She answered with startling honesty.

"His Majesty ordered the Spriggan 12 to carry out infiltration operations throughout Ishgar and Guiltina."

"I finally managed to sneak away and do some traveling…"

Her shoulders slumped.

"And then, while I was passing through Stella, Mard Geer made me come help him."

Everyone stared at her.

Brandish still seemed completely unaware that she had just casually explained a large portion of Alvarez's covert military strategy to the enemy.

For several seconds, nobody knew what to say.

Then Ankh's expression suddenly changed.

The Dragon God's Arsenal appeared in his hand.

He whipped the blade toward Erza's side.

Clang—!

The sharp sound of metal striking metal rang through the campsite.

Erza's eyes widened.

She immediately grabbed Lucy and Wendy and retreated with them.

Standing where they had been only a moment earlier was another familiar woman.

Red-and-gold armor.

Short golden hair.

Sharp, heroic features.

And a katana held firmly in both hands.

She looked almost like a foreign valkyrie.

"Dimaria?"

Ankh recognized her immediately.

Back on Tenrou Island, she had been the Time Magic user who defeated Erik and Sorano, then deliberately drew Ankh into battle.

At the time, the Spriggan 12 had not yet existed as a formal title.

Dimaria and the others had simply been exceptionally talented mages whose potential rivaled people like Erza and Natsu.

But nearly eight years had passed since then.

Their growth had not stopped either.

This was not going to be an easy fight.

Dimaria pressed down with all her strength.

Her blade crept closer and closer toward Ankh's face.

Madness and obsession burned in her eyes, intense enough to border on something disturbingly possessive.

The old wound across her chest seemed to ache again.

That scar was proof of the strike with which Ankh had once "killed" her.

If Irene hadn't arrived in time back then, Dimaria would almost certainly have died.

"Eight years!"

Dimaria's voice trembled with excitement.

"Do you have any idea how I've spent these last eight years?!"

Golden Magic Power erupted across her blade.

She suddenly increased the pressure and slashed violently toward Ankh's head.

Ankh shifted his stance and blocked.

Dimaria immediately flowed into another strike.

Then another.

Her sword attacks rose one after another like crashing waves.

Ankh continued parrying while still finding enough attention to complain,

"You really shouldn't phrase it like that."

"My girlfriend might misunderstand."

"DIE!"

Dimaria's eyes nearly turned red.

Her attacks became even more vicious.

Steel descended like a storm.

Ever since losing to Ankh and barely surviving, Dimaria had never once allowed herself to slack off.

She had even largely abandoned the childish habit she had once taken such pride in—stopping time just to strip and humiliate helpless opponents.

Instead, she had devoted herself to seriously developing her Time Magic.

Her swordsmanship was now far more refined than before.

More importantly, from Ankh's perspective, her blade appeared to skip frames.

One moment it was there.

Then suddenly it had already moved farther through the attack.

The timing and rhythm were almost impossible to read normally.

This was the result of Dimaria's far deeper control over Time Magic.

Rather than relying only on complete time stops, she had learned to make delicate adjustments to the flow of time around individual movements.

And she had specifically developed this fighting style for one reason—to challenge Ankh, whose close-combat ability had always been terrifying.

Unfortunately for her, Ankh still handled the assault comfortably.

He possessed natural resistance to temporal interference.

And when it came to close combat, his talent was quite literally divine.

Dimaria had improved enormously.

It still wasn't enough to gain the upper hand.

Their battle looked as though someone had accelerated the entire world.

Dimaria seemed to possess eight arms, blades flashing everywhere at once, while Ankh moved through a forest of afterimages without ever losing control.

Brandish watched from nearby and sighed.

"Looks like Dimaria's going to lose again…"

She tilted her head.

"And she practices every single day by beating up a Fairy God of Death doll too."

"SHUT UP!"

Dimaria nearly lost her rhythm from sheer humiliation.

She screamed at her teammate,

"GO GET DRAGON CRY!"

"OR YOU'RE NEVER GETTING ANOTHER VACATION!!"

Before she had even finished speaking, her situation became worse.

Erza joined Ankh.

Dimaria's expression immediately darkened as she found herself forced into the thankless role of holding back two enemies so her teammate could complete the actual mission.

Brandish pouted.

Then she finally turned toward the others.

Except—her eyes didn't seem to be focused on Dragon Cry in Lucy's arms.

They were focused on Lucy herself.

"Don't even think about it!"

Natsu noticed immediately.

He rushed forward first and unleashed a roar.

Brandish calmly raised one hand.

Natsu suddenly felt the ground disappear beneath his feet.

"Huh?!"

The earth below him shrank away almost instantly, leaving a deep pit.

Natsu lost his balance and plummeted straight down, his roar shooting harmlessly into the sky.

It took several seconds before the distant sound of him hitting the bottom echoed upward.

Happy panicked and immediately flew down to retrieve him.

Gray and Wendy moved in to replace Natsu.

Both unleashed Slayer Magic at once.

"If you can shrink my ice…"

Gray's demonic markings spread farther across his body as he formed an enormous cannon.

"Then I'll just blast you with enough of it that you can't ignore it!"

Wendy inhaled deeply.

An Ice Devil cannon blast and a Sky Dragon's breath attack erupted together.

Brandish still wore the same bored expression of someone being forced to work on her day off.

She lightly jumped into the air.

Then she pressed one hand toward the ground.

The earth moved.

The solid ground beneath them rolled upward like soft clay.

An enormous wave of earth rose like a tsunami and swallowed both attacks.

It resembled the exquisite terrain manipulation used by Jura or Hoteye, except Brandish's magic was even broader.

Her Command T allowed her to manipulate the size and physical form of virtually any matter, not merely soil or stone.

"Tch. She's seriously annoying."

Gray gritted his teeth and immediately closed the distance.

A new Ice Devil Slayer technique formed in his hand.

"Ice Devil's Zero Longsword!"

A beautifully shaped pale-violet blade condensed from extreme cold.

Gray vanished forward.

In the next instant, he was directly in front of Brandish.

His sword came down with freezing air trailing behind it.

Brandish reacted instantly.

She ducked low and pressed one palm against the earth.

The ground beneath Gray's feet suddenly expanded upward.

His footing rose several meters in the blink of an eye.

The devastating sword strike missed Brandish completely in an almost comical fashion.

Gray's eye twitched.

Lucy, meanwhile, felt a chill run through her.

"So this is what the Spriggan 12 are like…"

Brandish had become even stronger than the woman they remembered from Tenrou Island.

Worse, she wasn't even seriously trying to fight them.

She was slipping around every attack like an eel, lazily manipulating the battlefield whenever anyone got close.

Then—Lucy suddenly felt cold air brush the back of her neck.

Her instincts screamed.

A dark, concealed power silently appeared behind her and struck toward her back.

Lucy's heart tightened.

'There's another one?!'

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