Chapter 264
The first event had certainly lived up to the "fun" part of the finals.
The Mages hadn’t been allowed to use Magic, so there were no spectacular spell clashes, but the audience had still thoroughly enjoyed watching them shoot at each other with magical firearms.
Before long, people were even asking where they could play a game like this themselves.
Helpful locals quickly pointed them toward the Tower of Heaven attraction in Magnolia, which already offered something similar.
Apparently, Fairy Tail had used the tournament to advertise another new attraction.
Typical Fairy Tail.
They had tens of thousands of people watching what was effectively a commercial for their own business—and the audience was still applauding them for it.
After a short break, the second event began: a two-person team battle.
Marshall’s team first had to decide who would represent them.
"The objective is to seize the Fairy Heart gem in the center of the battlefield and bring it back to your own camp. It’s basically Capture the Flag again, except the fighting will probably be a lot more direct this time."
Marshall looked around at the four girls.
"So... who wants to go?"
S-Class Mages were prohibited from participating in this round, which meant the girls would have to handle it themselves.
In terms of pure combat strength, Marshall roughly ranked the four as Cana > Levy = Juvia > Lucy.
𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚
Even Lucy, the weakest of them, had already built a decent S-Class foundation by now, so none of them were exactly weak.
Levy raised her hand.
"How about Juvia and me? We’re both pretty well-rounded. No matter which two they send out, we should be able to handle it."
Levy and Juvia had already fought each other seriously in private before, so they knew each other’s capabilities extremely well.
Levy felt that the two of them would make a very balanced combination.
Marshall considered it.
"Your Script Magic is about on par with Freed’s, but physically you’re at a disadvantage against him. Juvia’s main weakness is that her total Magic Power still isn’t especially high, and Evergreen’s Stone Eyes could be troublesome if she gets caught by them..."
At that moment, Cana pulled out a card and waved it in front of Marshall with a grin.
"Hey. If I use this to summon ’Marshall’ into the match, does that count as breaking the rules?"
"!?"
Marshall stared at the card.
It was the Marshall Summon Card he had made a long time ago, capable of summoning one of his Thought Projections to fight beside its owner.
He had given one to each of the girls, but none of them had ever actually used theirs.
They seemed to treat the cards more like lucky charms than combat tools and had never seriously considered calling Marshall in for help.
But right now... the idea actually fit the rules surprisingly well.
"This... probably doesn’t count as cheating?" Marshall said uncertainly. "It’s your Magic, after all. Nobody ever said Summoning Magic wasn’t allowed to summon a person..."
Cana grinned and produced another card.
This one had [Father] written across it.
"Exactly what I was thinking. Technically, I can summon Gildarts too. Who exactly is supposed to beat me if I do that~?"
She tucked the cards away.
"So let me handle this round. Lucy can come with me. The two of us will be enough."
Marshall almost lost it.
Was this Cana’s way of compensating for Gildarts not participating in the tournament himself?
"Huh? M-Me?"
Lucy pointed at herself in surprise.
She hadn’t even expected to compete.
With everyone else so much stronger, she’d kept quiet because she didn’t think she had much say in the matter.
"Hehe. What do you think?" Cana slung an arm around her. "Two summoners going in together. Between the two of us, we can field enough bodies for an army. We’ll bury those guys!"
Marshall considered the combination.
It actually wasn’t bad.
Cana possessed the most Magic Power among the four girls.
Lucy possessed... the most luck among the four girls.
Maybe those two together would work surprisingly well.
The Marshall Team finalized its representatives, and the Thunder God Team soon announced theirs as well: Freed and Bickslow.
The Fairy Heart Capture Battle began!
There was something almost fated about the matchup as both pairs stepped onto the battlefield.
The arena was a small island, with the Fairy Heart gem resting on a stone pedestal at its center.
To win, a team had to seize the gem and successfully retreat with it to their own camp.
Of course, simply beating the opposing pair unconscious was also a perfectly valid strategy.
The moment the match began, Cana summoned a whole swarm of magical beasts and ordered them forward.
At this point, she had become rather similar to Gildarts in one particular respect: she simply had absurd amounts of raw Magic Power to throw around.
Her summoning cards barely consumed anything compared to her reserves, so she could afford to spam them without concern.
Despite what she had said earlier, Cana had no intention of summoning Marshall or Gildarts to instantly end the match.
She had her own reason for entering.
Cana wanted to prove to Gildarts, right here in the arena, that she had already grown into a Mage capable of standing on her own.
That was also why she had deliberately chosen Lucy, the weakest teammate, as her partner.
In other words—
Cana intended to fight both opponents herself.
Lucy was basically just along for the ride!
The two climbed onto a large flying beast and headed toward the center of the island.
"Wow! Cana, these summoning cards are seriously convenient!" Lucy said excitedly. "They might actually be easier to use than Celestial Spirits. By the way, how many magical-beast cards do you even have?"
Poor Lucy had absolutely no idea that Cana had selected her specifically because she considered her the easiest teammate to carry.
Lucy thought Cana trusted her strength.
So she had happily tagged along.
"My magical beasts?" Cana scratched her cheek. "Huh... I’ve honestly never counted. Whenever I’m bored, I go catch a few, and I’ve still got all the older ones sitting in storage. Maybe one or two thousand?"
Lucy was speechless.
"Though I might not actually have that many anymore," Cana added. "Some of the originals could’ve died by now. That’s the inconvenient part of this Magic. Unlike Celestial Spirits, magical beasts don’t live forever."
Then she shrugged.
"Besides, we’ve also got summon cards for Gluttony and Greed, right? If things really go badly, we can just play those two and make it four against two. There’s no way we lose."
"..."
Only then did Lucy remember that she was carrying a Greed Summon Card herself.
Little Greed was usually so busy socializing that she rarely followed Lucy home anymore.
Lucy had almost forgotten that, technically speaking, there were two "Lucys" living in her apartment.
"But honestly, I think the two of us can win without any of that."
Cana drew another card and held it between two fingers, a distinctly wicked smile appearing on her face.
Then she hurled it toward the center of the island.
"Sealing Card—Crush!"
The next instant—the entire island shattered.
Literally.
It broke apart as though Gildarts himself had descended from the sky and punched the battlefield with all his strength.
Huge cracks tore through the island, stone plates split apart, and entire sections collapsed toward the water.
The destructive force was more terrifying than anything seen in the earlier matches.
Lucy went completely blank.
’Girl, what the hell?!’
’Since when were you this strong?!’
"Ah! Wrong one, wrong one!" Cana hurriedly waved her hands. "I grabbed the wrong card! I meant to use the weaker version, not that one..."
She looked genuinely embarrassed!
Recently, Cana had squeezed quite a lot of useful material out of Gildarts, including the card she had just thrown.
That particular card contained a sealed use of Gildarts’s Crush Magic, essentially functioning as a one-use magical scroll.
Unfortunately, Cana had so many different cards stuffed into storage that she had mixed up which version carried which level of power.
"Whatever. They’re panicking over there!"
Cana immediately stopped worrying about it.
"Now’s our chance! Let’s grab the Fairy Heart!"
Freed and Bickslow had nearly fallen into one of the enormous fissures when the island split apart and were still scrambling to regain their footing.
Cana seized the opportunity.
She ordered the giant bird beneath them to swoop down, grab the entire stone pedestal containing the Fairy Heart in its beak, and immediately turn around to flee.
"Don’t even think about it!"
Freed’s voice rang out behind them.
"Dark écriture—Darkness!"
Dark markings spread across his body as he transformed into a demonic form and launched himself through the air toward Cana.
Laxus was counting on him.
There was no way Freed intended to lose here!
"Lucy, keep going!" Cana shouted. "I’ll deal with him!"
She activated a [Wings] card.
A pair of wings appeared behind Cana, and she immediately launched herself off the magical beast to intercept Freed in midair.
The two charged straight toward one another.
The real battle had finally begun!
---------
Read 40 Chapters ahead and support me on patreon.
patreon (.)com/Newbietranslator