Chapter 494: How Pathetic. That Sort of Thing Was Obviously Just an Illusion
"That's good."
Noah let out a sigh of relief, glad that Sorano had actually listened to his warning.
"Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on her," Ultear smiled from the side.
"Hey! Do you guys really think I'm that unreliable?!" Sorano huffed, her face flushing with mild indignation. She raised a clenched fist, her pale skin glowing softly under the sunlight.
Ultear didn't say a word. She merely maintained her serene smile, gazing at Sorano with quiet amusement.
"Hmph!" Sorano pouted before suddenly lunging at Ultear. The two girls tackled each other, laughing and playfully bickering in the dirt.
The others couldn't help but chuckle at the lighthearted scene. Noah watched them with a soft smile, a profound sense of peace washing over him.
Suddenly, Noah felt something.
His smile vanished. He whipped his head toward the distant ocean, his expression turning incredibly grave.
He sensed an unimaginably evil, suffocating magic power surging far out at sea. It was a magical signature he had encountered once before.
A split second later, a faint flash of pitch-black light flickered against the distant horizon.
Noah instantly swiped his hand through the air, summoning his Archive interface. He pulled up the tracking map displaying Precht's exact coordinates.
On the holographic screen, the glowing red dot labeled 'Precht' was rapidly dimming. A moment later, it vanished completely.
"What's wrong?" Makarov asked anxiously, noticing Noah suddenly pull up the map and stare at the disappearing blip.
"This is a specific telemetry setting I programmed into the tracker. The brightness of the dot corresponds to the target's life force. If it dims, it means the target is growing weaker. If it vanishes completely..." Noah's fingers flew across the holographic keyboard.
"...It means he's dead," Gildarts finished the sentence, stepping up beside them.
"Yeah. Let me see exactly what happened to him," Noah replied, rapidly extracting the final data logs from the tracker he had planted on Precht.
Sensing the sudden shift in atmosphere, the Fairy Tail mages stopped their celebrating and gathered around. Hearing that Precht—the monster who had just waged war on them—was already dead, they stared at Noah's screens with burning curiosity and a hint of unease.
Meredy, hearing that her ultimate enemy was truly dead, squeezed her way to the front, watching Noah's actions with bated breath. Wendy, Yukino, and Carla followed closely behind her.
"Alright, let's see what went down," Noah murmured, having compiled the final sensory and visual data. He projected the feed onto a large screen in front of everyone.
The projection displayed a vast, empty expanse of the ocean. Precht was sitting weakly in the small wooden rowboat.
Suddenly, a young man with short black hair and dark robes floated down from the sky, hovering just above the water's surface directly in front of the boat. He stared at Precht with a chilling, apathetic expression.
"It is because of people like you... that I was molded into this," the young man spoke, his voice echoing through the projection.
"Zeref..." Makarov whispered, his face turning incredibly grim.
"Why did he go looking for Precht?" Cana asked, thoroughly confused.
"Who knows what a guy like that is thinking?" Sorano frowned.
"Quiet. Let's listen to what he has to say," Noah hushed the group, keeping his eyes glued to the screen.
"It is because of your wicked, foolish desires that Acnologia was summoned here. In other words... this era has reached its end. No one can stop it now. The world will end here."
Zeref's chilling words sent a massive shockwave through the Fairy Tail mages.
"Acnologia?!" Gildarts reacted instantly, his eyes blowing wide open in sheer horror.
"The Black Dragon of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelations... Acnologia..." Makarov trembled, his face draining of all color.
"A Dragon?! Where's the Dragon?!" Natsu's ears perked up at the magic word. He instantly fired up, trying to push his way to the front of the group.
"Calm down!" Laxus grabbed Natsu by the collar, forcefully restraining him. Laxus rarely ever saw Gildarts and Makarov react with such primal, unadulterated fear. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
"Dammit! Let me go, Laxus! I need to ask him where Igneel is!" Natsu thrashed wildly, but Laxus's grip was like an iron vice.
Gajeel also wanted to ask about the dragons, but seeing Natsu instantly shut down, he bit his tongue and held back, though he subconsciously took a few steps closer to the screen. Wendy stared at Makarov with wide, desperate eyes, hoping for an answer.
However, Makarov and Gildarts ignored them completely, their absolute focus locked onto the projection.
"Zeref... to think you would actually appear before me... Is this reality? Or a dream?"
On the screen, Precht stared at Zeref in absolute shock, his battered body trembling uncontrollably.
A second later, his shock morphed into euphoric, manic joy.
Precht tried to stand up, instinctively reaching for his pockets to grab the 'keys' he had spent decades collecting. But the moment his hand brushed his ruined robes, reality crashed down on him. He had been utterly defeated. The airship—and all his painstakingly gathered artifacts—had been confiscated by Noah. He had absolutely nothing left.
"The keys! My keys! No... they're all on the airship! DAMMIT ALL! Such a miraculous opportunity... Zeref is standing right in front of me, and I cannot awaken him because I lack the keys! DAMMIT! DAMMIT! DAMMIT!" Precht screamed into the open ocean, his face contorted in agonizing, bitter despair.
"There is no need for that. I am already awake," Zeref replied flatly.
Hearing this, Precht froze. He stared blankly at the Black Mage.
"It is not my place to judge, but... how many innocent lives did you and your subordinates extinguish just to obtain those so-called 'keys'? How pathetic. That sort of thing... was obviously just an illusion," Zeref stated coldly, looking at Precht with profound pity.
"W-What?! What did you just say?!" Precht gasped, his voice trembling violently.
"Some of the fanatical cultists who worshipped me fabricated countless fictional 'lore' and 'settings' regarding my existence. One of those fabricated myths was that specific 'keys' were required to resurrect or awaken me. Did you honestly believe the delusions of ancient cults?
"I was never asleep. The man standing before you right now... is the Black Mage, Zeref."
Zeref's words were absolute, devoid of any deception.
"T-That's impossible! I don't sense any overwhelming magic power from you! I don't feel threatened by your presence at all! If you were truly the legendary Black Mage Zeref, the strongest mage in history, how could I not sense a fraction of your power?!" Precht roared, desperately denying reality.
He had absolute confidence in his own magical perception. Even battered and broken, his decades of diving into the abyss of magic had honed his senses to absolute perfection. If the man standing before him was truly the apocalyptic Black Mage, there was no way Precht wouldn't sense it. His face twisted in stubborn, absolute denial.
"That is easily explained. It is because of my current state of mind," Zeref gritted his teeth, his voice straining slightly.
The moment the words left his mouth, the churning ocean beneath his feet suddenly went dead calm.
A suffocating, pitch-black aura began to violently bleed from his body. The sheer density of the dark magic displaced the air, generating a localized hurricane that whipped the ocean into massive, terrified waves pushing outward in all directions. His dark robes fluttered wildly in the gale, and his eyes glowed with an eerie, cursed light.
Precht had been about to argue further, but the moment Zeref's true magic erupted, his jaw snapped shut. His eyes bulged, and cold sweat instantly drenched his face.
Now, he felt it. The absolute, unfathomable, world-ending oppression radiating from Zeref.
But Precht genuinely wished he was hallucinating. Because if this was real, it meant Zeref had never been asleep. It meant that every single atrocity he had committed, every sacrifice he had made, and the decades of obsessive, agonizing research he had dedicated to finding the 'keys'... were all based on a lie.
Noah's mocking words from earlier echoed viciously in his mind. He truly had been a monumental idiot. He had thrown away his guild, his morals, and his entire life chasing a fan-fiction written by deluded cultists. It was a reality he simply could not accept.
"I... I bore witness to the horrific wars of humanity four hundred years ago. I watched countless millions die... And because of that, I finally understood the true weight and preciousness of life!"
Zeref's voice grew strained, laced with profound tragedy.
"But it was exactly then that the curse took hold. The more I value human life, the more my cursed body involuntarily steals the lives of everything around me! To stop myself from killing everyone, I have no choice but to forcefully suppress my own empathy. I must constantly force myself to forget the value of life! I... I have a heart too, you know..."
"Are you saying... you've been constantly fighting your own empathy?" Precht finally found his voice, staring at the tragic, cursed immortal in absolute horror.
"Exactly. Because I am constantly suppressing my own emotions, I cannot wield my magic freely. Naturally, you wouldn't sense any danger from me while I was in that state.
"However... when I finally allow myself to forget how precious life is... that is a different story entirely."
Zeref stared down at Precht. As he spoke, the black miasma surrounding him expanded, growing infinitely denser and more terrifying. Precht trembled violently, completely paralyzed by the sheer weight of the aura.
"The current crisis is entirely your fault. Acnologia has heralded the end of this era. It was your wicked, concentrated malice that drew him here," Zeref stated, his eyes completely devoid of warmth or mercy.
"Acnologia?! What the hell are you talking about—?!" Precht forced himself to stand up, screaming in panic.
His entire worldview had just been shattered. The man he worshipped had just told him his life's work was a pathetic joke. And now, Zeref was talking about Acnologia bringing the apocalypse? How were the two even connected?! His mind was a chaotic, fractured mess.
"You shall be punished," Zeref declared, completely ignoring Precht's frantic questions. He slowly raised his arms, pointing his right index finger toward the heavens and his left toward the earth.
"W-Wait! Hold on! I still have so many questions I need to ask you...!" Precht pleaded desperately.
He had spent fifty years searching for this man. Even if his 'keys' were a lie, he still hadn't touched the One Magic! If one method failed, he would simply find another! He just needed to escape, regroup, and try again! He refused to die here!
"Your first sin was summoning Acnologia. Your second sin..." Zeref's voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. "...was making me forget the value of life."
Zeref brought his hands together in front of him. His right index and middle fingers extended, while the others curled inward. His left index and pinky fingers extended, the others curled. He brought the bases of his palms together, aiming the complex hand seal directly at Precht.
Seeing Zeref prepare a lethal spell, Precht's survival instincts violently kicked in. He desperately drew upon the tiny fraction of magic he had recovered, intending to cast a shield and flee. He knew he stood absolutely no chance against a fully-powered, apathetic Zeref.
"Repent."
Zeref didn't even blink. The black miasma swirling around him instantly coalesced, forming a massive, pitch-black magic circle directly beneath Precht's rowboat.
BOOM!
A colossal pillar of absolute, destructive black magic erupted from the array, piercing straight into the heavens. Precht was entirely engulfed by the dark inferno.
The pillar vanished a mere second later.
When the light faded, Precht was lying flat on his back in the boat. His eyes were wide open in sheer terror, his jaw slack. Every single trace of life had been violently extinguished from his body.
"Know your place, you arrogant trash. Fall into the abyss," Zeref spat, staring at Precht's corpse with eyes that promised only death.
Suddenly, Zeref flinched. He whipped his head toward the horizon, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his cheek.
"He's here... Acnologia!"
Then, Zeref slowly turned his head. He looked directly at the invisible magical sensor Noah had planted, staring right through the screen and making direct eye contact with the Fairy Tail mages watching.
"Fight with everything you have to survive. Though... I highly doubt there is any hope left for you..."
Zeref shook his head solemnly. He waved his hand, and the projection abruptly cut to black.
~~~
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