Chapter 75: Trapped in the Abyss

The heavy wooden doors of the Sun-Dappled Inn swung open to the crisp morning air of Crocus, but inside, the lobby was already a hive of controlled chaos. Banners were being rolled up, face-paint kits were shoved into bags, and noise-makers tested with ear-splitting blasts as Fairy Tail prepared for Day Three of the Grand Magic Games.

Makarov sat on a stool near the main desk, nursing a warm cup of tea as the members of Team A and Team B filtered down the stairs. Natsu was already shadow-boxing the air, Laxus leaned casually against a pillar with his arms crossed, and Erza sat at a nearby table, methodically working her way through a massive slice of morning strawberry cake.

Makarov scanned the gathered mages, counting heads. His bushy eyebrows furrowed.

"Where is Rudra?" Makarov asked, setting his teacup down with a light clatter. "Don’t tell me he’s still sleeping."

Mirajane offered a gentle, reassuring smile from behind the front desk. "It’s possible, Master. He was up late on the balcony. I’ll go up and knock on his door."

"Good," Makarov grunted, waving a hand. "Tell him to hurry it along. The arena officials won’t hold the gates for us."

Mira nodded and glided up the wooden stairs toward the guest rooms. In her absence, the lobby buzzed with quiet anticipation.

"Wonder what kind of crazy event they’re throwing at us today," Gray muttered, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

"Doesn’t matter!" Natsu yelled, swinging a fire-wreathed fist. "Whatever it is, I’m burning it to the ground! We’re reclaiming the top spot today!"

"Try not to embarrass us in the first five minutes this time, flame-brain," Gajeel scoffed from the corner.

"What did you say, metal-head?!"

Footsteps echoed from the staircase before the squabble could escalate. Mirajane walked back into the lobby—alone. Her usual bright demeanor was replaced by a slight, puzzled frown.

Makarov blinked, looking past her shoulder. "What’s the matter, Mira? Where is he?"

"He’s not in his room, Master," Mira replied softly, holding up a spare key. "The bed hasn’t been slept in, and his things are untouched."

"Not in his room?" Erza paused mid-bite, setting her fork down. "He isn’t one to wander off without a word before a match."

Before Makarov could question her further, a tiny, barefoot figure materialized out of thin air, floating right next to the Master’s shoulder.

"Are you all looking for Rudra?" Mavis asked, popping her hands behind her back.

Makarov nearly jumped out of his skin, while the surrounding guild members nodded.

"Master Mavis," Erza said, stepping forward alongside Mira. "Did he say something to you?"

"Did he tell you where he went?" Mira added, her voice laced with concern.

"Well... not explicitly," Mavis admitted, floating down to sit cross-legged in the air. "Something came up late last night that required his attention. He told me he’d be back soon, though!"

"That reckless idiot," Makarov muttered under his breath, rubbing his temples before turning back to the roster sheet on the table. "We can’t leave a slot empty and risk disqualification."

He whipped out a feather pen and scratched out Rudra’s name from Team B’s lineup, replacing it in bold ink.

"Wendy," Makarov called out, looking toward the young Sky Slayer. "You’re stepping into Team B today. Go get your gear."

"E-Eh?! Me?!" Wendy gasped, pointing at herself in surprise before bowing frantically. "I-I’ll do my absolute best, Master!"

"Right. Everyone else, move out! The crowd is waiting!" Makarov ordered, waving the teams toward the front doors.

Natsu, Laxus, and the rest of the roster filed out into the sunny streets of Crocus, their loud banter fading into the distance. Once the lobby cleared out, leaving only the non-participating members and the First Master, Makarov turned his gaze back to Mavis. His lighthearted demeanor vanished, replaced by the sharp intensity of a guild leader.

"Alright, First," Makarov said quietly. "The kids are gone. Now tell me what actually happened."

Mavis let out a long, weary sigh, floating down until her feet touched the wooden floorboards.

"Last night, I felt a strange pulse lingering over the capital," Mavis explained, her green eyes serious. "It was cold, heavy... demonic energy. Rudra was already tracking it. Before I could stop him or gather a squad, he went to investigate the source himself."

Makarov stared at her for a long moment, the deep wrinkles on his forehead creasing further.

"Demonic energy in the middle of Crocus... during the Games?" Makarov rubbed his chin, letting out a weary breath.

Mavis caught the worry etched into his face and softened her tone. "He can handle himself."

"Hmph. It better be," Makarov grunted, turning toward the door. "Come on, First. We have a tournament to watch. Let’s trust him to finish his business and get back in time."

With a final, shared look of concern, the two left the inn, holding onto the silent hope that Rudra would wrap up his side business before the day’s matches came to a close.

___

Meanwhile, in a desolate pocket dimension far removed from human reality, the sky hung like a bruised sheet of raw scarlet over a boundless, scorched wasteland. Hot ash rained softly over jagged, lifeless stone.

Rudra trudged through the dust, his cloak snapping lazily in the dry wind. After scouring the barren expanse, he finally closed in on the source of the suffocating aura.

Lying in a ditch of cracked earth was a pint-sized, grotesque demon. Its body was torn to shreds, spewing an unnaturally dense cloud of volatile demonic energy as its life flickered out. The entire thing had been nothing more than a glorified beacon designed to bleed power until someone came looking.

Rudra looked down at the writhing creature and sighed, rolling his shoulders. "All that fuss for a dying battery."

He drew Yamato an inch from its scabbard, intending to put the beast out of its misery and immediately slice open a spatial rift back to Crocus. But before the dark steel could catch the crimson light, his Observation Haki flared to life.

Rudra paused, snapping Yamato back into its sheath with a crisp click.

A streak of dark energy tore across the red sky, descending toward the crater at blinding speed. The figure crashed into the dirt fifty paces away, kicking up a plume of ash before stepping through the haze.

It was a demoness of striking, terrifying grace. She possessed towering, swept-back horns, sweeping midnight wings, and armored blue-and-white plating that stretched sleekly across her form. Royal, lethal, and radiating raw power, her appearance eerily mirrored Mirajane’s Take Over, Satan Soul: Sitri.

Rudra opened his mouth to drawl out a dry greeting, but she cut him off, her sharp voice echoing through the hollow wasteland.

"Listen to me, descendant of Sparda!" Sitri demanded, her glowing eyes locked onto his. "You need to leave this realm immediately! This entire dimension is a trap orchestrated by Mundus—designed specifically to seal you away!"

Rudra didn’t panic. He merely tilted his head, a slow, dark smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "I see. So this whole grand spectacle was cooked up by that three-eyed wannabe god."

"Now that you understand the severity of your situation, move!" Sitri snapped, her wings flaring with impatience.

"Chill out, girl," Rudra drawled, turning his back on her with effortless nonchalance as he rested a hand on Yamato’s hilt. "I wasn’t planning on taking up permanent residence anyway."

Sitri’s voice dropped into a grave, brittle hush that stopped him in his tracks. "Wait. One more thing—whatever happens when you break out of here, do not allow the Eclipse Gate to open. If those doors swing wide, this world will fall."

Before Rudra could press her further, her form dissolved into a wave of pale, flickering mist, vanishing into the scarlet air as quickly as she had arrived.

Rudra stared at the empty space for a beat, turning his head back toward the dead horizon.

He raised Yamato, ready to sever the local space-time fabric, when the System’s voice rang sharply inside his mind.

"Not to interrupt your dramatic exit, boss, but we’ve got a major spatial breach," the System warned, a series of red danger icons blaring across his vision. "Multiple high-density portals just opened in your immediate vicinity. Origin point: deep Underworld."

Rudra didn’t even get the chance to reply.

The sky above ripped wide open. Dozens of massive, bleeding portals tore through the red atmosphere, pulsing with dark magic. Within seconds, a terrifying horde—thousands of armored hell-knights, lesser beasts, and towering demonic constructs—poured out of the rifts like a tidal wave of snapping jaws and black steel, completely encircling the crater.

Rudra looked around at the wall of snarling monsters blocking his path, his Sharingan spinning to life in the crimson glare.

"Well," Rudra muttered, drawing Yamato completely from its scabbard with a sharp, resonant hum. "So this is how he wanted to keep me busy."

The System crackled to life in his mind. "Boss, current headcount reads a hundred and twenty-three thousand hostiles. For reference, that’s roughly the population of a small city, if that city hated you personally."

"Efficient use of manpower," Rudra said, rolling his neck. "Mundus always did overcompensate."

His right eye whirled into a blood-red Mangekyo while the left flared into the purple, ripple-patterned Six Tomoe Rinnegan. A suffocating wave of Conqueror’s Haki burst outward in black-and-crimson lightning, instantly crushing the front lines into red paste before they could even draw breath.

The horde didn’t stop. They surged forward—a sea of black iron, snapping jaws, and jagged bone.

Rudra didn’t dodge so much as decline to be where the strikes landed. A hell-knight’s massive blade swept through empty air where his shoulder had been via Kamui; Yamato answered without ceremony. Blue chakra bled along the edge as a single Judgement Cut unmade three ranks of heavy armor in one motion.

"Left flank, forty meters," the System reported, flat as a weather update. "Something with wings just charged its breath weapon."

Rudra didn’t even turn his head. His Rinnegan flared—Amenotejikara.

In a split second, he swapped places with a high-ranking demon commander. The winged beast’s massive hellfire beam obliterated its own general and three hundred surrounding fiends in a blinding explosion.

"That’s cheating," the System said.

"That’s efficiency," Rudra drawled.

He thrust his open palm toward the thickest cluster of the horde. "Shinra Tensei."

A cataclysmic gravitational force slammed into the field, blasting ten thousand demons backward through the air like thrown pebbles, shattering bones and tearing flesh against the basalt cliffs.

Minutes bled into an endless rhythm of carnage. The wasteland’s red sky dimmed under thick, choking smoke. Whenever a stray claw managed to close the distance, it passed harmlessly through his phantom form, leaving the attacker exposed to a jet-black burst of Amaterasu that burned them into drifting ash.

Rudra carved through the center of the army like a blade through silk, Yamato humming relentlessly as it severed both demon hide and the localized fabric of space itself.

"Sixty thousand left," the System offered eventually.

"You’re supposed to be motivating me."

"You know what happens when you actually get motivated," the System replied. "I’m trying to spare the local geography."

Rudra exhaled through his nose—a dry, quiet chuckle—and drove Yamato through an armored construct twice his height, splitting it cleanly from root to crown.

And with that, a battle raged—a battle no one would ever know about besides the demons themselves. A battle where a single man stood against more than a hundred and twenty thousand demons alone.