"What is that?"
"Huh?"
"Why did the sky suddenly go dark?!"
Unlike the veteran mages in the stadium who could sense the terrifying, dense surge of magic power erupting from Jellal, the general audience was entirely confused. They looked up in awe and rising panic as the bright afternoon sun was swallowed by a swirling black cyclone.
"Is he serious?" Jura Neekis muttered from the Lamia Scale balcony, his expression turning incredibly grave. He knew instantly that a catastrophic level of magic was about to be unleashed.
"How can he be so reckless?!" Yajima broke into a cold sweat in the commentator's booth. If Jellal dropped a spell of this magnitude, maintaining the 'Mystogan' disguise would be completely impossible!
Down in the audience seating, two heavily cloaked figures exchanged a panicked glance.
"That magic... it can't be."
"Are you seeing this, Lahar?"
Captain Lahar and Mest Gryder of the Magic Council had been quietly enjoying the tournament—all expenses paid by their generous Chief, Finn Hoen—while simultaneously keeping an eye out for wanted fugitives. Now, they were staring directly at the exact man they had spent seven years hunting. Only Jellal Fernandes possessed that specific, apocalyptic magical signature.
However, in the end, Fairy Tail's notorious "plot armor" held true.
Even though they had essentially caught a globally wanted terrorist operating openly in a public sporting event, Mest immediately stepped in.
"Hold on, Lahar," Mest whispered, grabbing his captain's arm as Lahar reached for his communication Lacrima. "Let's wait until after the match. Just consider it a personal favor. I owe Fairy Tail a massive debt for what happened on Tenrou Island."
Lahar hesitated, glaring at the arena, but ultimately lowered his hand. He would allow 'Mystogan' to finish the match.
Standing in the center of the arena, Finn didn't need enhanced hearing to know what was happening in the stands. He was intimately familiar with the hypocritical double standards of Earthland. If any other guild had fielded a criminal, they would have been disqualified and arrested on the spot. But Fairy Tail? The Council always magically found a reason to look the other way.
Then again, Finn didn't really care. The world was an unfair place.
Right now, his attention was focused entirely on the sky.
I really don't think it's possible for me to lose this, Finn thought dryly, since even if he saw this power, he felt that Jellal was nothing.
Tearing through the swirling black clouds was a colossal, blazing sphere of extraterrestrial rock, wrapped in overlapping, glowing golden runes. It was massive—easily dwarfing the entire battlefield.
In simple terms: Jellal had literally summoned a meteor.
If that colossal rock made impact, Finn didn't think anyone in the immediate vicinity would survive. The kinetic force alone had the potential to flatten half of Crocus. How could Jellal be confident enough to drop a tactical nuke on a populated stadium?
Finn chalked it up to Shōnen protagonist logic. Jellal firmly believed his magic wouldn't hurt the innocent spectators. However, it would absolutely pulverize the Domus Flau, perfectly in line with Fairy Tail's long-standing tradition of causing catastrophic property damage wherever they went.
"OOOOOOOO!!!"
The Fairy Tail balcony erupted in cheers!
"With this, we'll definitely win!" Makarov threw his arms into the air, tears of joy streaming down his face as he imagined the 30-million Jewel grand prize finally landing in his lap.
Only—
"This is very bad," Mavis murmured, a cold sweat breaking out on her ghostly forehead.
"What's so bad, First Master? Isn't it wonderful? Mystogan is going to win!" Makarov cheered.
"Think about it logically, Makarov," Mavis sighed. "While Mystogan might win the match, if that meteor obliterates the entire arena and half the capital city... who do you think the King is going to bill for the damages?"
"Er..."
Makarov froze. The color instantly drained from his face as Mavis's terrifying logic set in. The debt from destroying the Domus Flau would eclipse their current 30-million Jewel deficit by a hundredfold!
"STOP! STOP IT! MYSTOGAN, ABORT THE SPELL!" Makarov suddenly shrieked, waving his arms frantically over the railing like a madman.
"Huh?" The rest of the guild looked at their Master in utter confusion.
But Jellal couldn't hear him. His mind was entirely consumed by the burning desire to secure a victory for Erza and the guild. He poured every last ounce of his remaining magic into the descending meteor.
"Now... let us see you survive this!" Jellal roared.
The stadium screamed as the flaming rock plummeted toward the earth.
Yet, as absolute despair gripped the crowd, Finn calmly raised his axe. In a fluid, mechanical shift, the heavy weapon rapidly reconfigured, compressing and elongating until Finn was holding a sleek, perfectly balanced katana.
He slid his left hand up to an imaginary scabbard and lowered his center of gravity, dropping into a perfect Iaido stance.
"Huh?"
Up in the stands, Erza Scarlet's eyes widened. Across the stadium, Kagura Mikazuchi of Mermaid Heel also leaned forward, completely mesmerized. Anyone trained in the ways of the sword instantly recognized the terrifying, absolute perfection of Finn's posture.
"Legion Cross."
No one in the stadium even saw him draw the blade.
There was only a single, blinding flash of silver light that momentarily outshone the meteor itself.
Suddenly, the colossal, flaming rock descending upon the Domus Flau stopped dead in mid-air. A grid of impossibly thin, glowing white lines appeared across its surface. In the blink of an eye, the massive meteor fractured into a million perfectly severed, bite-sized pieces.
Before gravity could pull the deadly hail of debris down into the stadium, a massive void of dark spatial magic opened up like a black hole above the arena. It instantly swallowed every single fragment of the meteor, pulling the debris safely into Finn's spatial inventory.
Let's not waste that, too.
Pure celestial meteor rock was an incredibly rare crafting material. There was no way he was going to let millions of Jewels worth of space rock go to waste.
Furthermore, by absorbing the debris, he cleanly prevented the kinetic fallout that would have inevitably crushed the surrounding civilian infrastructure.
Jellal stumbled forward, his arms dropping to his sides. He stared at the empty sky, utterly broken. His absolute strongest, most devastating magic had just been casually erased.
"You—"
"You lose," Finn stated calmly, the katana already fully sheathed by his side.
"Eh?" Jellal gasped, confused. He hadn't lost yet! Even if his ultimate spell had failed, Finn had to be exhausted! Jellal braced himself to cast another spell—
SHLICK.
The delayed impact of the Iaido slash finally caught up to reality.
A deep, horrific gash suddenly exploded across Jellal's right shoulder, tearing diagonally upward across the heavy fabric of his mask.
"ARRGGGGGHHH!"
Blood sprayed into the air as Jellal collapsed backward, his nervous system short-circuiting from the sheer, overwhelming agony.
Before Jellal could even hit the ground and bleed out, Finn casually flicked his wrist, instantly bathing the fallen mage in a pulse of high-tier healing magic. He had absolutely no intention of killing Jellal; he had already exacted his petty revenge the night before by thoroughly claiming Erza.
However, the precision slash had perfectly severed the straps holding Mystogan's heavy mask in place. As the mask began to slide off, threatening to expose Jellal's face to the tens of thousands of spectators and the Magic Council, Finn casually tossed a spare piece of fabric from his coat, letting it fall perfectly over Jellal's exposed features.
"Safe..."
Up on the Fairy Tail balcony, Mavis, Makarov, and Erza all collapsed against the railing, letting out massive, synchronized sighs of relief. Their hearts had practically stopped when the mask broke.
Leaving the unconscious, freshly-healed fugitive in the dirt, Finn turned his back and calmly walked toward the Heavenly Blue tunnel.
"AND... AND THE WINNER IS FINN FROM HEAVENLY BLUE!" Chapati Lola screamed, his voice breaking from sheer disbelief.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
As the deafening, earth-shaking roar of the crowd washed over the stadium, a chilling realization settled over the other contestants. Watching the masked leader walk away without a single scratch, they finally understood exactly how massive the gap in power truly was.