Chapter 563: August the "Calamity" and Irene the "Despair"
For the next several weeks, Noah methodically followed his planned route. He moved seamlessly from one city to the next, infiltrating every single bookstore and systematically digitizing their entire collections into his Archive.
Simultaneously, he passively monitored the conversations of the local citizens and the Imperial soldiers, specifically filtering for any intelligence regarding the Empire's top-tier mages: the Spriggan 12.
Based on the military chatter and the classified documents he managed to slice from the less-secured government facilities, Noah realized something important. The current roster of the Spriggan 12—and their overall combat capabilities—were significantly weaker than the terrifying force they would become six years from now in the canonical timeline.
Unless they were all flawlessly hiding their true strength, they simply weren't at that apocalyptic level yet. But given what Noah knew about their notoriously arrogant and flamboyant personalities, it was highly unlikely they were holding back.
Furthermore, a few of the names the soldiers mentioned weren't the legendary shields from the original timeline; they were clearly predecessors who would eventually be replaced.
Armed with this knowledge, Noah wasn't particularly worried about the majority of the Spriggan 12. He just needed to maintain his stealth wards and avoid drawing unnecessary attention.
However, there were two massive, glaring exceptions.
The two individuals standing at the absolute pinnacle of the Spriggan 12: August, the "Calamity," and Irene, the "Despair."
These two were in a completely different dimension from the rest of the shields. According to the imperial records, whenever either of them took to the battlefield, the scale of destruction was unimaginable. Their mere presence guaranteed absolute, unquestionable victory. The gap in raw power between them and the other ten shields was an insurmountable chasm.
Along with Zeref, August and Irene were the only people in the entire Alvarez Empire that Noah needed to be genuinely wary of.
Fortunately, Noah's intelligence gathering revealed their standard movements. Irene rarely left the northern territory she personally governed, and August almost never left the Imperial Capital.
Therefore, Noah's strategy was simple: completely avoid Irene's territory and save the Imperial Capital for the very end of his scouting mission.
At a pace of roughly two to three cities a day, it took Noah just over two weeks to sweep through every major and mid-sized city in the Alvarez Empire. He deliberately skipped the smaller, rural towns; the major metropolitan hubs provided more than enough intelligence, making the smaller detours a waste of time.
He absorbed the contents of every major bookstore into his Archive and raided the local government mainframes whenever security was lax.
Over those two weeks, Noah didn't just gather political and geographical data; he amassed a staggering, unprecedented collection of foreign magical theory. The sheer volume of new spells and arcane concepts vastly enriched his mental database.
Outside of traveling and gathering intel, Noah spent every single waking second completely immersed in this newly acquired magical knowledge. He was so captivated by the foreign theories that he nearly forgot to sleep. However, remembering his promise to Ultear and the girls, he forced himself to tear his eyes away from the holographic screens and strictly maintained his healthy sleep schedule.
After sweeping the entire empire—excluding Irene's territory and the capital—Noah found a secluded, abandoned cave to bunker down in. He spent the next few days aggressively organizing the massive mountain of intelligence he had gathered and thoroughly studying the most practical spells he had discovered.
By the time he finished, a full month had passed since he first arrived on the Western Continent.
It was finally time to head to the Imperial Capital and attempt to make contact with August the "Calamity."
Both August and Irene possessed incredibly deep, tragic ties to Fairy Tail.
August was the child Mavis had been desperately searching for—the infant abandoned by Precht eighty-eight years ago.
Born with an unfathomable, staggering amount of magic that was neither inherently light nor dark, August possessed a terrifyingly advanced intellect from the moment he drew his first breath. He remembered Precht's exact words when he was abandoned, meaning he had always known exactly who his parents were.
After being left in the wilderness, he endured an agonizing, brutal childhood where simply surviving took every ounce of his strength. Eventually, he crossed paths with Zeref.
Zeref, completely unaware that the boy was his own biological son, took him in. August eventually became Zeref's most trusted subordinate, helping him build the Alvarez Empire from the ground up.
Because the boy strongly resembled Mavis, Zeref had named him "August"—the month in which Zeref and Mavis had shared a brief, profoundly special time together. It was highly likely that August had been conceived during that exact month.
For over eighty years, August had never told Zeref the truth about his parentage. Knowing he was Zeref's son fueled an absolute, unwavering loyalty to the Black Wizard. He had poured his heart and soul into building and protecting the Alvarez Empire simply because it was his father's dream.
As for Irene... her full name was Irene Belserion.
Just from the surname, it was obvious she was tied to Erza. More specifically, Irene was Erza's biological mother. It was exactly because Noah knew this history that he had officially given Erza the surname "Belserion" years ago.
Irene was a woman from four hundred years in the past. She was the original creator of Dragon Slayer Magic—the Mother of all Dragon Slayers.
During the apocalyptic Dragon King Festival, humanity was on the verge of extinction. The dragons who hated humans were winning, and the dragons who allied with humanity were being slaughtered. Desperate to turn the tide, Irene proposed enchanting the power of dragons directly into human bodies.
Because the magic was forged in the absolute desperation of a losing war, there was no time for careful theoretical research or long-term clinical trials. No one understood the horrific side effects.
The human body and mind simply weren't designed to contain the overwhelming, primal power of a dragon. As the Dragon Slayers fought, the magic corrupted their minds, driving them into a violent, bloodthirsty frenzy where they slaughtered friend and foe alike. More terrifyingly, the magic aggressively mutated their physical bodies.
Without a method to halt the corruption, a Dragon Slayer would inevitably mutate into a fully-fledged dragon.
Irene herself fell victim to this process. Because her inherent magical power was so absolute, she successfully suppressed the mental madness. However, she couldn't stop the physical mutation. Her body slowly began to dragonify.
The timing couldn't have been worse. The war had just ended. Humanity had just watched Acnologia—a human Dragon Slayer—transform into a monstrous Black Dragon and slaughter the remaining dragons. The sheer terror of witnessing Dragonification made humanity paranoid.
Led by her politically-arranged husband, a general from a neighboring kingdom, the people turned on Irene and threw her into a dungeon.
Tragically, Irene was already pregnant with Erza at the time.
To protect her unborn child, Irene endured unspeakable torture, violence, and humiliation in that dungeon for three agonizing years. She used her magic to halt her pregnancy, refusing to let her child be born into a prison.
Finally, her husband entered her cell and announced her execution date. Desperate, Irene pleaded with him to at least spare their child.
He didn't believe her. He claimed it was biologically impossible to be pregnant for three years. He drew his sword, declaring he would cut her stomach open to prove she was lying.
That threat instantly shattered Irene's restraint. Driven by absolute, primal maternal rage, she fully transformed into a massive dragon, crushed her husband, shattered the prison, obliterated half the city with a single roar, and fled into the desolate mountains.
For centuries, Irene wandered alone. She firmly believed she was a human, not a monster. She despised her dragon body and spent hundreds of years desperately searching for a way to turn back. She failed every single time.
Then, roughly twenty years ago, she encountered Zeref.
Living up to his title as the greatest magical genius in history, Zeref effortlessly enchanted her, restoring her human appearance.
Irene was ecstatic. Just looking human again was enough to bring her tears of joy.
But the joy was short-lived. She quickly realized the enchantment was purely cosmetic. She couldn't taste food. She couldn't sleep. Her sensory perceptions of temperature, pain, and touch were completely distorted. Fundamentally, she was still a dragon trapped in a human shell.
The psychological whiplash of regaining her human body only to realize she was still a monster completely broke her mind. Driven to the brink of insanity by centuries of suffering and fresh despair, she made a horrific decision.
She decided to use her Enchantment Magic to overwrite the personality of the infant she still carried in her womb. She planned to enchant her own soul into her newborn daughter, effectively stealing the child's true human body to be reborn.
But at the absolute final moment, as she looked down at the baby she had endured three years of torture to protect, her maternal love overpowered her madness. She realized she could never harm her daughter.
Terrified that her madness would return and she would eventually follow through with the dark enchantment, she abandoned the infant in the sleepy village of Rosemary, instantly fleeing the continent to continue searching for a cure.
Eventually, to repay Zeref for restoring her human appearance, she joined the Alvarez Empire and became one of his greatest weapons.
Those were the tragic, twisted histories of the two strongest shields.
Given his current strength and stealth capabilities, Noah could theoretically approach either of them. But after carefully analyzing the variables, he decided to target August first.
The reasoning was purely pragmatic. Based on Noah's memories and his recent intelligence gathering, August possessed a relatively calm, stoic, and rational temperament. He was one of the few shields who could actually be reasoned with.
Irene, on the other hand, was wildly unstable. Centuries of psychological torture and biological dysphoria had left her volatile, irritable, and prone to violent outbursts.
If Noah suddenly appeared before Irene, her dragon senses would instantly detect his unfathomable magical power. As a top-tier threat appearing within the Empire, she would be immediately hostile.
If he tried to leverage Erza's name to calm her down, her shattered mental state might cause her to violently snap and attack him outright. If they fought, the sheer scale of the battle would instantly alert Zeref and the entire Imperial Army, completely ruining his stealth mission. If he didn't fight back and just fled, it would still put the Empire on high alert.
Furthermore, as a Dragon Slayer, Irene possessed an incredibly sharp sense of smell. If Noah got close, she would immediately recognize Erza's scent lingering on his clothes and magic. The variables were simply too chaotic to risk an encounter right now.
August, however, was a much safer bet. While he would undoubtedly be wary of Noah's immense power, his stable temperament meant he wouldn't attack blindly.
More importantly, Noah clearly remembered August's dying wish from the original timeline. The old man didn't care about conquering the world or achieving godhood. As his life faded, his only desire was simply to be held in his mother's embrace, even just once.
He had spent his entire life desperately craving parental love, yet he had never revealed his identity to his father or sought out his mother.
Armed with this profound psychological leverage, Noah was absolutely confident he could bring August to the negotiating table.
Noah had already prepared Mavis for the revelation. Once he located August, all he had to do was facilitate a meeting between them. Once August realized his mother had been desperately searching for him and still loved him, the old man's hostility would instantly evaporate.
Because of the timeline, Zeref hadn't yet initiated his grand crusade to invade Ishgar and seize Fairy Heart. The gears of war hadn't started turning.
Therefore, as Zeref's loyal son and the highest-ranking general of Alvarez, August currently had absolutely no political or personal conflict of interest with Fairy Tail or Mavis. It was the perfect window to bring the lost son home.
~~~
Get early access to 50+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn