Arthur didn't waste time with a direct flight path.
He activated his subtle Dragon's Aura to enhance his speed, moving at a velocity thatde the dense jungle of Galuna Island blur.
He flew directly toward the cursed ruins, leaving Erza to deal with the chaos caused by Natsu and Gray's unsanctioned mission.
His target, Lyon Vastia, was already at the edge of the cavern containing the gargantuan demon, Deliora.
Lyon was frantically preparing to execute his plan: using his highly advanced Ice-Make Magic to melt the containment ice, which was already being weakened by the cursed moonlight.
Arthur appeared silently, his presence instantly overwhelming the immediate area.
Lyon, sensing the immense, unknown power, whirled around, ready to defend himself. Before he could utter a single spell, Arthur acted.
He didn't use a flashy, named technique.
He simply leveraged his vast magical knowledge, recalling the elemental superiority inherent in certain dimensions—specifically, the elemental hierarchies of the High School DxD world, where ice magic was often subordinate to absolute concepts.
Arthur exerted his will, infusing his power with a conceptual definition of Absolute Zero.
"What happened…"
Lyon gasped, his voice instantly muffled.
He found himself completely enveloped and frozen in a block of ice that was not merely cold, but conceptually frozen.
The ice was not of this world; it was absolute and utterly non-negotiable.
Lyon immediately tried to shatter the ice with his own potent Ice-Make Magic, but the effort was useless.
His own magic simply failed to recognize the containment as a physical object to be countered.
It was a frozen concept of "stop," and he could not do anything at all.
Arthur then swept his gaze across the area, and with the same absolute ease, he similarly froze Sherry Blendy, Yuka Suzuki, and Toby Horhorta—Lyon's entire contingent—mid-action.
Arthur looked down at the immobilized group, their faces etched in shock.
He shook his head, a faint sigh escaping his lips.
"I am too strong for them. This barely qualifies as a challenge."
As he watched the defeated mages, Arthur received a predictable update from the governing system.
[MISSION COMPLETE: INTERCEPT THE DARK GUILD'S PLANS AND PREVENT THE DESTRUCTION OF GALUNA ISLAND. REWARD: 5,000 DUNGEON POINTS.]
The reward was minimal. Arthur was already a conceptual powerhouse.
Adding 5,000 points to his already overflowing reserve was, as he surmised, like adding a drop of water into a river; it wasn't going to help anything anymore.
The Tower's incentive system was proving increasingly obsolete for him.
Arthur walked toward the massive, monstrous figure of Deliora, the great demon sealed within the Ice-Shell.
He activated his Soul Magic and analyzed the creature.
He felt a deep wave of disappointment.
The demon's power was significant by Fiore's standards, but against his power, it was utterly underwhelming. Its parameters were low, its magical abilities limited primarily to a powerful, destructive magic beam and the frustrating trait of immortality.
Arthur could destroy the demon easily.
The hard part was not the creature, but the conceptual knot it represented: the life of Ur, Gray and Lyon's mentor, who had sacrificed her physical body to become the Ice-Shell that contained the demon.
'Let's mess up with the time concept... But only on a small scale…'
Arthur knew the dangers of temporal manipulation, even with his power.
It was the one area where his raw, destructive force could create truly unpredictable, chaotic consequences.
Yet, the puzzle was too tempting.
He was curious how Ur could be saved without destroying the narrative's emotional core.
'I wasn't a cat, so curiosity could never kill me...'
Arthur mused, a dangerous glint entering his eyes.
He focused his Reality Blending on the frozen ice encasing Deliora, not to melt it, but to analyze the temporal state of the life force bound within.