Chapter 150: Domain Expansion
The throne room of the Tower of Heaven was gone.
In its place was a gaping, circular void. The top half of the tower had been cleanly and utterly vaporized, as if a giant, invisible apple corer had punched through it. The remaining structure groaned, the crystal walls hissing and crackling from the residual energy.
Far below, Natsu, Gray, and the others, who had been watching from the beach, could only stare, their mouths agape.
"The... the tower..." Lucy whispered, her entire body trembling. "Half of it... it's just gone!"
On the ravaged, open-air platform that was once the throne room, Jellal hovered, his Meteor magic keeping him aloft. His face was a mask of pale, abject terror. He had barely escaped that... thing. That... merger.
Erza, who had been teleported to safety by Ren, was equally stunned. She looked at the smooth, circular cut, her mind struggling to comprehend the scale of destruction.
Whoosh!
Ren, still in his Gojo Satoru form, appeared beside her, his hands in his pockets.
"Oh my," Ren teased, looking up at the missing half of the tower and then at Jellal. "This tower is completely broken! Don't you want this toy anymore, Jellal-kun?"
Jellal, his chest heaving, landed on a shattered piece of the floor, his eyes blazing with a cold, desperate fury. "It doesn't matter!" he spat. "This tower has already been built, which means it genuinely existed in the past timeline! Even if it's completely destroyed, as long as I have Ultear's Arc of Time, it can be restored to its original state!"
"What I need to do now," Jellal growled, his magic flaring, "is to completely get rid of you!"
Ren just chuckled. "Don't! What about your big plan? Aren't I the 'sacrifice' to revive Zeref? At least let me live, right?"
"You are indeed the sacrifice personally chosen by Lord Zeref," Jellal said, his voice dropping. "But at this point, it's not necessarily only you. The condition for reviving Lord Zeref is to have the body of a Mage capable of rivaling the Ten Wizard Saints. You... you are too dangerous. I cannot rest easy without killing you."
Jellal struck a pose in mid-air, his left hand pointing down, his right hand tilted upwards.
A powerful, oppressive magic gathered, far more than before. The very sky above them began to change, the clouds parting as the image of the dark, starry universe appeared.
"This... this is different from before!" Erza shouted, her eyes wide. "He's not summoning the orbs... he's summoning the sky itself!"
"True Heavenly Body Magic... Grand Chariot!!"
[Akarin's Note: The author is using "Grand Chariot" again, but describes a different, more powerful attack. This is likely a fanfiction-named-variation, similar to the "True" versions of spells, to imply he is no longer holding back.]
As Jellal roared, a giant, burning meteorite was pulled from the image of the universe, breaking through the atmospheric barrier with a terrifying shriek.
"A meteorite?!!!"
Erza was stunned when she saw this. Ren was also startled. A real meteorite! This thing was a genuine, world-ending fellow.
"Since that's the case," Ren said, his smile fading, replaced by a serious, focused expression, "I'll be a little rougher, too."
He formed a series of complex hand seals.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!"
A swirling, bright blue energy orb, the size of a beach ball, appeared beside Ren, humming with the power of attraction.
"Cursed Technique Reversal: Red!"
A pulsing, crimson energy orb appeared on his other side, radiating the power of repulsion.
The two energies, one positive and one negative, began to fuse, converge, and overlap.
"Imaginary Technique..."
"...Hollow: Purple!!"
A giant, swirling purple energy orb, crackling with unimaginable power, materialized in front of Ren. It shot upward, not as a beam, but as a solid sphere, meeting the descending meteorite in the sky.
Boom-------!!
Grand Chariot and Hollow: Purple collided.
There was a moment of absolute silence.
Then, Hollow: Purple pierced the meteorite. It didn't just break it; it erased it, punching a perfect, smooth, circular hole through its center.
The meteorite, its structural integrity and magical binding completely shattered, became unstable. It erupted in a terrifying, silent explosion. The giant meteorite shattered like fireworks, scattering in all directions, a dazzling, lethal, and utterly shocking display.
Jellal's eyes widened in disbelief, his magic-wielding pose frozen. "No... how is this possible?! That was a real meteorite... how could it be shattered?!!!"
This was a real object he had summoned directly from outer space! Its power was world-destroying! Yet it was shattered by the opponent's single, purple blast.
Whoosh!
Ren's body, having teleported, appeared directly above Jellal. "Nothing is impossible," Ren said, his voice cold. "Because I am stronger than you."
Ren raised his leg high and brought it down in a devastating, Cursed Energy-infused axe-kick.
Jellal's mind was still reeling from the destruction of his ultimate attack, and Ren had appeared through teleportation. He had no time to dodge. He could only hastily raise his arms to block.
Bang!!
Jellal felt a heavy, crushing force smash onto his arms. Under this powerful force, his Meteor magic sputtered, and his body plummeted towards the shattered Tower of Paradise below.
"Ugh!!!"
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Jellal's body pierced through the remaining floors of the Tower of Paradise, one by one, like a ragdoll, about to fall to the very bottom of the tower.
"Meteor!!!"
At the last second, Jellal regained his senses and used Meteor, his body quickly flying out of a window near the tower's base.
But just as Jellal flew out, a hand—Ren's—clasped directly onto his face.
Ren had teleported again.
"To be honest," Ren's voice was dangerously calm, his fingers digging into Jellal's face, "it doesn't matter who you want to revive. I don't care at all."
"But who told you to make Erza cry?"
"I, for one, have no resistance to a girl's tears!"
Saying that, Ren ran, pressing Jellal against the side of the Tower of Paradise. He ran up the tower, shattering the walls along the way, grinding Jellal's body against the crystal.
"Wah ah ah ah ah!!!"
Jellal screamed in shock and anger. A bright, golden light erupted from his body—a desperate, full-power Meteor blast—finally escaping Ren's hand.
"I CANNOT LOSE! I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT LOSE! I WANT TO ESTABLISH A FREE NATION!!!"
"In pain and fear, ZEREF whispered to me, asking if I wanted true freedom!!!"
"I AM THE CHOSEN ONE!! I WILL ESTABLISH A TRULY FREE NATION WITH ZEREF!!!"
"I CANNOT POSSIBLY LOSE!!!"
Jellal, now floating far above the tower, his body battered and his robes torn, began to wiggle his fingers, his face a mask of insane desperation. A giant, complex magic circle appeared in the sky.
"This is... the forbidden magic, Abyss Break?!!!"
Looking at the magic circle Jellal drew, Erza immediately recognized it from her research. It was a magic formed by the four basic elements that constitute the world: earth, fire, wind, and water. Because its destructive power was absolute, it was classified as forbidden magic.
"Are you getting serious now?" Ren said, landing back on the shattered platform. "It seems it's about time to end this."
His magic power was also running low at this point. Jellal's magic—his "True" Grand Chariot—was essentially a natural domain expansion. Resisting it, even with Infinity, and then firing Hollow: Purple, had required a lot of Cursed Energy output.
Ren teleported to Erza's side, grabbing her arm.
He raised his right hand, his index and middle fingers intertwined.
He softly chanted, "Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void."
Whoosh—----!!
Ren's Domain instantly spread out. A small, black sphere erupted from his hand, engulfing the entire top of the tower, swallowing both Ren, Erza, and the stunned Jellal.
The forbidden magic Abyss Break that Jellal was activating... also stopped.
Inside the Domain, Jellal was frozen, floating in the center of an endless, beautiful, terrifying void.
"What... happened...? What is going on...? I can't see anything... I can't feel anything..."
"No... I can see everything!! I can feel everything!! Information... endless, infinite information... is constantly flooding into me!! So I... I can't... I can't do... anything!!"
Erza, who was standing safely beside Ren (who was holding her hand, protecting her from the effect), was confused. "Jellal... why did he suddenly stop moving?"
Ren explained, "This is the inside of the Limitless. I am forcibly infusing an infinite amount of invalid information into his brain, causing his cognitive system to collapse. In short... his brain has crashed and frozen."
Erza was very shocked to hear Ren's explanation. She never thought such a magic, a magic that didn't attack the body but the mind, even existed. Every one of Ren's transformations was extraordinary.
Snap!
Ren snapped his fingers, and the Domain Expansion was released.
To Lucy and the others, far below on the beach, a black sphere had suddenly appeared around the top of the Tower of Paradise, and then, just as quickly, it vanished.
Ren reverted to his original appearance, his Gojo Satoru form dissolving. Jellal, his eyes white and his mouth agape, had already fallen to the ground, motionless. His brain was paralyzed, so his body naturally couldn't move.
"Erza," Ren said, his voice now his own, "I'll leave this guy to you."
To ensure this guy was paralyzed, Ren had input ten years' worth of invalid information into Jellal's brain in those 0.2 seconds. If it were an ordinary person, they would certainly be brain-dead.
Jellal was one of the Ten Wizard Saints, and his mental power was far stronger than that of ordinary people. According to Ren's estimation, the opponent would be paralyzed for at least ten minutes. As for using magic... it might take several months before he could, so Ren wasn't worried about this guy resisting.
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