Chapter 589 - 589: Mystogan's Legacy

Jellal brought his palms together, and the radiance of Heavenly Body Magic spilled between his hands until a shower of starlight began falling through the cavern.

The luminous rain spread across the entire battlefield, forcing back the controlled mages who had been relying on their overwhelming numerical advantage.

Bacchus, thoroughly drunk by this point, spread his arms like the wings of an eagle and charged through the crowd with Drunken Split-Palm, weaving between opponents and overwhelming them with his exceptional close-quarters skill.

Ichiya had transformed into a giant and was fighting in nothing but a pair of briefs, swinging enormous fists at his former guildmates in a display that was effective but absolutely horrific to look at.

Kagura continued using only the sheathed blade of her sword.

With swordsmanship that ranked among the finest on the continent, she moved through the controlled mages with frightening efficiency, knocking them unconscious one after another without drawing blood.

Ultimately, there was still a considerable difference between an elite guild mage and the true ace of a guild.

Ichiya, Bacchus, and Kagura were each among the strongest members of their respective organizations, while Jellal had once been one of the Ten Wizard Saints.

Their opponents might have possessed a huge numerical advantage, but they still couldn't bring the four of them down quickly.

That didn't mean the situation could continue indefinitely.

None of the four possessed some extraordinary bloodline or supernatural source of limitless Magic Power.

Their reserves were still finite, and if the battle dragged on long enough, they would eventually collapse from exhaustion even if nobody could defeat them directly.

Jellal realized that first.

As he felt his Magic Power draining rapidly while the number of controlled guild members seemed barely diminished, his brow furrowed.

"Everyone! Can you cover me for a moment? I need time to prepare a spell!"

Kagura, Bacchus, and Ichiya had no idea what he intended to cast, but they trusted him enough to immediately increase the intensity of their attacks.

The gap left by Jellal's withdrawal was quickly filled, preventing the enemy from breaking through.

"A way to stop everyone without hurting them…"

Jellal reached into the pack on his back.

"Luckily, I learned one."

He pulled out a crystal sphere and smashed it hard against the ground.

Light erupted from the shattered crystal.

Then five magic staves suddenly appeared in front of him.

The storage device itself was another of Warren's little inventions.

Ram Company had already purchased the rights, although the product was still an unfinished prototype and hadn't yet been released commercially.

Its basic principle was similar to the Requip Magic used by Erza and Bisca.

An intricate magical circuit inside the crystal maintained a passive Requip spell, allowing relatively small objects to remain stored inside a pocket dimension.

The problem was retrieving them.

The current prototype could only release its contents by smashing the crystal, making every unit disposable and therefore far too expensive for mass production.

Warren intended to keep refining it until he could create a portable storage tool that any mage could use freely, so Ram Company hadn't rushed the product to market.

Crime Sorcière, however, was an intelligence team funded directly by the company.

Naturally, they had access to toys nobody else could buy yet.

And the five staves Jellal had just summoned were none other than the weapons once wielded by his counterpart from another world—

Mystogan.

After returning to Edolas, Mystogan had eventually left his weapons with Makarov.

Later, seeing how sincerely Jellal had changed and how earnestly he continued walking his path of redemption, Makarov had been deeply pleased and passed the staves on to him.

Perhaps because Jellal and Mystogan were parallel-world counterparts of the same person, Jellal's progress with Mystogan's magic had been astonishingly fast.

Originally, he had only wanted another kind of magic to practice whenever his Heavenly Body Magic reached a bottleneck.

Unfortunately—or perhaps inevitably—a genius was still a genius.

Before long, he had mastered most of Mystogan's magic-circle techniques.

Jellal drove all five staves into the ground.

The lacrima embedded at their tips lit up one after another as Magic Power rose into the air.

A magic circle appeared overhead.

Then another.

And another.

Each new circle was larger than the last until five enormous formations overlapped above the cavern, covering everyone below.

Jellal clapped his hands together.

Confidence returned to his eyes.

"Five-Layered Magic Circle: Sacred Song!"

A pillar of light crashed down from the five enormous magic circles.

It expanded instantly, flooding the entire cavern and swallowing every person inside.

Several seconds later, the blinding radiance finally faded.

The mages who had been fighting so fiercely only moments before began dropping one after another like wheat before a scythe.

Those with stronger Magic Power, such as Ren and Risley, managed to remain upright a little longer.

They forced their heavy eyelids open and tried desperately to continue fighting, but even they only lasted a few more seconds before collapsing.

Soon, the entire cavern was filled with sleeping mages sprawled across the ground without the slightest concern for dignity.

The terrified civilian laborers had been caught in the spell as well, but rather than being harmed, they simply lay down where they stood and fell into peaceful sleep.

The once-chaotic underground chamber became completely silent.

Kagura stared at the scene in disbelief.

Then she turned toward Jellal, who was leaning heavily against one of the staves and breathing hard.

"If you had something this effective, why didn't you use it earlier?"

"The more tense and battle-ready the targets are, the more Magic Power it takes to force them into sleep."

Jellal struggled to catch his breath as he felt the emptiness left in his reserves.

If Jellal had one noticeable weakness compared with other mages at his level, it was probably endurance.

His total Magic Power wasn't especially impressive when compared with monsters like Laxus or Gildarts.

Of course, compared with Kagura or Ichiya, his reserves were still absurdly deep.

That only showed how expensive it had been to forcibly put this many trained mages to sleep simultaneously.

If Jellal had simply unleashed one of Heavenly Body Magic's large-scale offensive spells and killed everyone in the cavern, he probably would have spent less Magic Power.

Kagura quickly understood that as well.

She hesitated, then walked over with her usual stern expression and placed one arm around Jellal to support him.

"Thank you."

Jellal smiled.

"It was nothing. I should've done it."

Kagura pressed her lips together and awkwardly looked away.

Then her gaze shifted toward the passage leading deeper underground.

Her expression became worried again.

"We made a lot of noise. Do you think the people below already heard us?"

Jellal shook his head.

"This artificial mine is unbelievably deep. If my guess is right, Larcade should be somewhere near the lowest levels."

"Word probably hasn't reached him yet."

Bacchus took another drink from his gourd and stared into the enormous, dark mine.

"Speaking of which… what the hell are they digging for?"

His magical senses had been probing downward for some time, but he still couldn't find the bottom.

There seemed to be several more vast underground chambers beneath this one.

One of Alvarez's Spriggan 12 had crossed into another world, kidnapped an enormous number of mages, and forced them to work in a mine.

Even by the standards of everything they had encountered lately, it sounded like some kind of sick joke.

Jellal frowned.

He was equally puzzled.

Before he could answer, however, a powerful burst of Magic Power suddenly erupted from the passage they had just been discussing.

"Larcade-sama's Whiteout is far beyond the understanding of narrow-minded mages like you."

Jellal immediately grabbed Kagura and pulled her backward.

A figure emerged from the darkness.

The moment Jellal saw who it was, his expression became grim.

He let out a quiet sigh.

"So it's you…"