After spending a few seconds completely petrified by that realization, Happy quickly recovered and puffed out his chest with pride.
"I might not know Transformation Magic yet, but I can use Aqua Aera! Carla and Lily can't do that!"
Somehow, Happy's talent for running away had been developing at an alarming rate.
Apparently, that counted as a talent too.
While Ankh and Happy were chatting, Lucy and Wendy had already finished clearing out the entire carriage of Black Magic Cult members.
Wendy, with Dragon Force active, carried raging winds behind every movement.
Each punch, kick, and sweep of her body unleashed powerful gusts that kept the enemy from getting anywhere near her.
If the Wendy of today had been thrown back eight years into the past, she could probably have competed for an S-Class candidacy in Fairy Tail even back then.
Lucy's growth was just as striking.
She was nothing like the perpetually unlucky girl who once had to rely almost entirely on her Celestial Spirits whenever a fight became serious.
Developing Star Dress had completely erased the greatest weakness of her old fighting style: her lack of personal combat ability.
Now there were two monsters with absurd physical strength rampaging through the carriage—
Lucy and Taurus.
Between the two of them, the remaining cultists were quickly swept aside.
"Ice Devil's—RAGE!!"
The roof of the carriage exploded upward.
Bone-chilling frost flooded the air so heavily that simply breathing became difficult.
Gray's roar echoed through the train as an enormous blast of Ice Devil Slayer Magic swallowed all four of Briar's emotional clones and launched them out of the carriage like discarded sacks.
Gray had now completely mastered Ice Devil Slayer Magic.
The mage who had once relied heavily on technique, creativity, and careful construction had developed into something much more direct.
He could still fight intelligently when needed, but now he also possessed the kind of overwhelming destructive power that let mages like Natsu and Laxus simply smash through whatever stood in their way.
Erza finished her own opponent at almost exactly the same time.
Jerome's corrosive sword had been eating through every crimson blade Erza sent toward him, and the self-proclaimed Dark Sword had become increasingly smug with each one he destroyed.
What he failed to notice was that Erza's blades had already passed him several times.
He didn't react at all.
Not until pain suddenly erupted across his entire body.
His vision blurred.
Jerome looked down in horror and only then realized that he had already been cut.
Several times.
By the time his consciousness began fading, the fight had long since ended.
The Black Magic Cult had arrived in overwhelming numbers and hijacked an entire train with complete confidence.
Less than three minutes later, nearly all of them had been defeated by a handful of Fairy Tail mages.
Only one battle remained.
Natsu versus Zancrow.
...
"Flame God's Arrow!"
Zancrow's sharp voice rang across the speeding train.
Black flames compressed into an explosive arrow and tore toward Natsu.
Natsu, surrounded by blazing dragon fire, showed no intention of dodging.
Instead, he opened his mouth.
Zancrow burst into arrogant laughter.
"Forgot already, Fire Dragon?! You had to empty every last drop of your own Magic Power before you could eat my god flames!"
His laughter lasted only a few seconds.
Then it slowly died in his throat.
Natsu was chewing.
The black arrow of God Slayer fire was disappearing into his mouth bite by bite, and his expression remained completely calm as he swallowed the last of it.
Cold sweat appeared across Zancrow's forehead.
"How…?"
"How the hell is that possible…?"
Natsu let out a satisfied breath after finishing the black flames.
His eyes sharpened.
"Your power feels almost exactly the same as it did back then."
Flames began gathering around his body.
"But we didn't spend all these years standing still!"
Zancrow clenched his teeth as the heat radiating from Natsu continued climbing.
To be fair, Zancrow had not literally remained at the same level.
After being crushed by Fairy Tail and nearly dying at the bottom of the sea, his drive to grow stronger had weakened considerably, and his magic had undeniably grown rusty.
But he was still a talented mage who had mastered a Lost Magic.
He had improved over the years.
The problem was simply that while Zancrow had taken a step or two forward…
Natsu had run miles ahead.
"Gray and Erza already finished their fights."
Natsu drew in a deep breath.
"I'm not gonna fall that far behind them."
Zancrow's vision suddenly blurred.
Crimson light filled his entire field of view.
Something charged straight toward him.
A humanoid monster covered in blazing red-gold dragon scales, horns rising from its head and a pair of wings extending from its back.
Heat powerful enough to melt steel rolled off its body in waves.
"Guh—!"
Zancrow barely managed a grunt before the creature slammed into him and carried him straight into the sky.
'What the hell is this thing?!'
He stared in horror.
It was Natsu.
But not the Natsu he remembered.
Zancrow hurriedly tried to counterattack, only for flames to suddenly erupt from Natsu's red-gold scales.
The heat burned him instantly.
"AAAAAGH!"
Fire Dragon King Mode!
After six months of brutal training, Natsu had finally mastered the transformation completely.
He could now enter this half-human, half-dragon combat form through his own power whenever he wanted.
At this point, the only transformation Natsu and the others still required Dragon Lacrima to achieve was complete dragonification.
Zancrow could not accept what was happening.
He was a Fire God Slayer.
Fire wasn't supposed to burn him.
Refusing to believe it, he opened his mouth and tried to devour the flames burning across Natsu's body.
That only made things worse.
The instant the Fire Dragon King's flames entered his throat, they began scorching his esophagus from the inside.
Zancrow desperately swallowed anyway.
The flames reached his lungs and stomach and immediately began burning outward through his body.
His eyes widened in agony.
Years ago, their positions had been completely reversed.
Back then, Natsu had been unable to eat Zancrow's God Slayer flames without first emptying his own Magic Power.
Now Natsu could swallow those same black flames almost casually, while Zancrow could no longer stomach Natsu's fire at all.
Of course, the fundamental properties had not changed.
God Slayer flames were still a type of fire Natsu was technically unsuited to consuming.
Natsu had simply become so much stronger than Zancrow that the incompatibility barely mattered anymore.
It was like someone with a seafood allergy licking a shrimp-flavored chip.
Technically a bad idea.
But at that tiny dose, someone with Natsu's ridiculous constitution would probably suffer little more than some itching.
Zancrow eating the Fire Dragon King's flames, however, was an entirely different matter.
His body simply wasn't capable of digesting them.
The "heat" was far beyond anything he could tolerate.
Natsu carried the despairing Zancrow into the sky as easily as someone holding a helpless chick.
Then he swung his arm.
Zancrow was hurled away.
What he saw next became the final image burned into his consciousness.
Flames spread across the heavens.
Then they began converging.
The pressure felt like standing beneath an erupting volcano.
Natsu drew back one fist as an enormous mass of orange-gold fire condensed around it, blazing in the sky like a miniature sun.
"FIRE DRAGON KING'S—"
Natsu's roar thundered across the heavens.
"CRUSHING FIST!!"
His fist connected.
The heat of a falling sun erupted around Zancrow.
A roaring flood of flame swallowed his entire body.
His skin visibly blackened and the rest of him followed.
By the time the fire finally faded, Zancrow had been completely coated in a layer of blackened charcoal, his entire body shriveled down into a small, thoroughly roasted lump.
Natsu grabbed what remained of Zancrow—or perhaps what could generously still be called "Zancrow"—and flew back toward the train.
His Fire Dragon King Mode faded automatically as he landed.
Gray looked over at him with an irritating grin.
"Took you long enough."
"Shut up!"
Natsu immediately snapped back before tossing the carbonized Zancrow toward Ankh.
"Done!"
Then he grinned proudly.
"So? What'd you think of my Fire Dragon King Mode?"
"You've definitely gotten a lot better with it."
Ankh praised him without hesitation.
He wasn't merely humoring Natsu.
Everyone really had improved far more than he had expected.
Six months of relentless training had transformed them.
The Black Magic Cult had arrived in a rush, full of murderous confidence, only to be defeated almost as quickly.
They might as well have been a group of extremely considerate deliverymen who had personally brought themselves over for interrogation.
Ankh grabbed Zancrow by the head and inspected him.
Somehow, the man was still breathing.
Barely.
Ankh gave him a light shake.
"Think you can answer questions properly now?"
His expression turned cold.
"Tell me."
"How did the Black Magic Cult know we'd be on this train?"
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