The silence in the Chat was heavy. The moment Erza's username greyed out on the system interface, A chilling echo in them. Every member froze, staring at the screen in disbelief, their own worlds, their own immediate concerns, momentarily forgotten. Time itself seemed to halt, suspended, the air thick with unspoken dread.
Then, like a dam breaking under immense pressure, the chat erupted. Messages flooded the screen, a torrent of frantic questions and desperate theories, each one reflecting the shock and fear gripping the group.
[Eternal Virgin]: What the hell just happened?! Is she gone?! This is a glitch, right, right?!
[Self-Proclaimed Human]: Is she offline? Maybe Hurt? Or.... dead?
Kenji's heart dropped, a cold, heavy stone in his chest, plummeting with sickening speed. His eyes widened, fixed on the lifeless gray of Erza's name, a stark, mocking contrast to the vibrant colors of the other active users. He quickly sent his own message. He had to put a stop to that thought, that horrifying possibility.
[Administrator - The Gamer]: No. No, she's not dead. Don't even say that. It's impossible. There has to be another explanation. It has to be. Maybe she just found a way to.....log off?
He said, but even he knew that sounded weak.
The dull, lifeless gray of Erza's name on the screen mocked him with every second that passed. He didn't want to believe the worst, couldn't believe it.
[Eternal Virgin]: In games, when a character's name is greyed out, it usually means the character is dead. Greyed out. Inactive. Game over. That's the universal sign, Kenji. You know this.
Those words, delivered with Sora's usual bluntness, echoed in Kenji's mind, a grim, undeniable truth. The room seemed colder now, the air suddenly thin and sharp, pressing in on him.
Kenji clenched his jaw, his knuckles white, digging into the soft fabric of his bedsheets.
[Administrator - The Gamer]: Let's go through the chat logs. Maybe she said something. Anything. A clue. We need to find something, anything that explains this.
Everyone began to scroll, combing frantically through Erza's past messages, their shared history, searching for any hint, any breadcrumb she might have left. Time seemed to stretch into an eternity of agonizing silence, the frantic thrum of Kenji's own racing heart. Then Kenji found it, a message from a week ago, seemingly innocuous at the time, now imbued with a terrifying, prophetic weight.
[Red Cake Boss]: S-Class Exams are coming, and Master Makorov has asked me to be one of the examiners for this year.
His eyes widened, a sudden, horrifying clarity dawning on him, like a cold, cruel light. The pieces clicked into place.
Tenrou Island.
In the canon storyline of Fairy Tail, the guild held their S-Class Exams on Tenrou Island, their most sacred ground, a place of significance to the guild. It was during this trial that everything went to hell. First, a brutal, devastating attack by the dark guild Grimoire Heart, pushing Fairy Tail to its limits, and then, the terrifying, apocalyptic arrival of Acnologia, the Black Dragon of the Apocalypse, a being of pure, unadulterated destruction.
Kenji sat back, his mind racing, piecing together information, the dread solidifying in his gut, a leaden weight. He had assumed, no, he had trusted, that by giving Erza the "Fairy Tail" anime, she would learn what was coming. That she would be ready, that she would have prepared, that she would have used the knowledge to avert disaster. Maybe inform the 3rd master of what was going to happen, and the exam would either be postponed or relocated.
Kenji had never considered that Erza wouldn't finish watching it. He had never considered that she would stop just before the most critical, world-ending event, out of a misplaced sense of honor or a desire to avoid spoilers.
He had never warned her. Not wanting to spoil anything, not wanting to interfere too much with her world without her decision, he thought it best for her to discover the story on her own, to see for her self and choose what she wanted for herself, he knew that he wouldnt have appreciated if someone knew everything about him now just throwing spoilers of his life without care so he let her make her choices.
But maybe she hadn't just reached the part about Tenrou Island. But still he was afraid of what might have happened differently, a single butterfly effect, a minor deviation from the established canon, was all it would take for something like the late activation of Fairy Sphere, or for it not to activate at all, or even getting killed before the spell was even considered. If that happened, Erza would truly be dead. The thought was a searing brand in his mind.
"Damn it!" Kenji roared, standing up from his chair with a violent shove, sending it scraping across the floor. The sound echoed through his empty house. His anger was directed not at the system, not at Erza, but at himself, at his oversight. "I should've told her! I should've warned her about Acnologia!" Erza was a friend, and now she could possibly be dead.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, then forced himself to sit back down, his body trembling with suppressed emotion, the weight of his guilt almost physically crushing him. He sent a message.
[Administrator - The Gamer]: I think I know what happened. Tenrou Island. S-Class Exams. In the anime, they were attacked by Acnologia. But a spell—Fairy Sphere—put them in a protective stasis. It froze them for seven years.
[Self-Proclaimed Human]: Seven years?! Holy Shit That long! A complete temporal displacement!
[Administrator - The Gamer]: Seven years in her world. But remember what we learned early on, our worlds aren't synchronized. Her seven years could be a day here… or a year. We don't know.
They noticed this early in the beginning of the chat group. While it seems that the time of their worlds are generally the same, they weren't perfectly in sync, it was constantly changing, never too fast or too slow, but enough to not be in synch with each other. So, depending on how the cut-off with Erza was, she could be out of touch for a day to even a year or more.
That sobered everyone. The implications were enormous, a chilling reminder of the vast, unpredictable nature of the multiverse and the thin line between dimensions. The idea of someone being trapped in a time bubble for what could be years in their own timeline, while only a short time passed for them, was a terrifying thought.
[Eternal Virgin]: At least she's not dead. Right? That's what we're hoping for. Please tell me that's what we're hoping for.
[Self-Proclaimed Human]: That's what we're hoping. That the so called Fairy Sphere activated. That's the only logical explanation for her status. The alternative is… unacceptable.
They all stayed quiet for a while.
If he could go to her world, he would, but he didn't have enough points to buy a ticket to her world, and he couldn't do side quests in the worlds of fellow members, so that won't work.
He sighed. He closed his eyes as he leaned back on his chair before taking in a deep breath. He hoped she was alright.
[Eternal Virgin]: I need to log off. I can't process this right now. My head hurts just thinking about it.
[Self-Proclaimed Human]: Same. I need to conduct some… calming experiments. Perhaps involving a very large quantity of volatile reagents. We'll check back later.
Leaving Kenji alone, the oppressive silence of his house, and the crushing weight of his guilt.
He stared at it for a while, the grayed out name before closing the system interface.
His chest ached with a dull pain. His mind swirled with vivid images of Tenrou Island's destruction, of Acnologia's terrifying power, of Erza's defiant face against an impossible foe.
In the anime, it had looked cool and epic, a new bad guy that appeared and showed levels of power never seen, and just dipped while the heroes were said to have died before they came back alive and all. But now, when he had been friends with erza, he had gotten to know her, he couldn't even explain the feeling in his chest, it felt awful. Too awful.
He needed to do something. Anything. He needed to channel this helplessness, this crushing guilt, this raw, burning emotion, into something productive, something that would make him stronger, so strong that he could prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. He would not be powerless again.
"ID Create," he commanded, his voice sharp with a new, grim resolve, a cold fury replacing his despair.
The air shimmered, distorting violently, and the grim landscape of the vampire dungeon unfolded around him. Crimson skies, jagged castles, and an overwhelming sense of dread greeted him, a perfect reflection of his inner turmoil, a desolate canvas for his rage.
No weapons. No shortcuts. Just his fists, his magic, and his unbridled fury.
Five thralls emerged first—easy prey, their shambling forms barely a challenge, their vacant eyes meeting his burning gaze. Then three low-tier vampires, their eyes glowing faintly in the dim light, drawn to his powerful aura.
He activated Enchantment Magic, layering buffs upon himself. Strength. Speed. Defense. His body surged with a glow, his muscles coiling, his senses sharpening.
He wanted to reach a level that would make even Irene Belserion green with envy, a master of enchanting, but that was for the future. For now, he would walk before he learned how to run, mastering the fundamentals, pushing them to their absolute limits.
He could already buff himself with enhanced strength, speed, and defensive properties, making him a blur of destructive force. He could give certain properties to objects. He was just going to get better, faster, stronger. He launched himself into combat, a whirlwind of rage and raw power.
A thrall lunged, a pathetic attempt at an attack. He didn't even flinch. A single, contemptuous slap, imbued with the full force of his enchanted strength, shattered the creature's skull, sending it crumbling into dust, a mere puff of smoke. Thralls were slow and weak, and he had reached the point where they could die just by him bitch-slapping them, their existence utterly insignificant before his power.
A vampire came next, faster, more agile, its fangs bared in a snarl. He ducked beneath its clawed swipe, his right arm shooting out to grab its neck before twisting violently and vaulting over its body, removing its head with a sickening snap. He threw the headless body, then the head itself, to one of the other two incoming vampires, distracting one as the head hit him on the face with a wet thump. Before it could react, he increased his speed by lowering his personal gravity and casting a simple shielding enchantment on himself, turning his arm into a hardened projectile, spearing the distracted vampire with his left arm, his arm ripping a hole in its heart as it went through cleanly, a brutal, efficient kill.
He increased the gravity around him, focusing it on the vampire that was rushing from behind him, slamming it to the ground in an instant. He looked at it as it thrashed and struggled to get up, its limbs flailing uselessly under the immense pressure, its screams muffled by the crushing force.
Then, he increased the gravity again, slowly, agonizingly increasing it, pushing it, as the vampire kept being pressed into the ground, its form flattening, the earth flattening and pressing into itself with the vampire looking like a pancake before its body exploded into a grotesque spray of blood and gore, leaving only a flattened, unrecognizable pulp. He stopped, breathing heavily, the raw power vibrating through his limbs.
Kenji stood amidst the carnage, breathing heavily, his chest heaving.
He turned, sensing more vampires in the distance. Good.
He was just getting started, he needed to burn all this anger out of him.
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