"I told you to let go, didn't I? You really should listen when people give you advice."
Finn stood up slowly, looking down with cold, apathetic eyes as Natsu's shattered hand went entirely limp. "Or would you prefer I break every other bone in your body?"
"Grnn!" Natsu bit down hard on his lip, choking back a scream as he clutched his mangled wrist against his chest.
"This is getting incredibly troublesome," Finn sighed, rolling his shoulders.
He realized that forcing Natsu into submission through sheer blunt force was going to take entirely too long. The Fire Dragon Slayer was just too stubbornly durable. Beating him half to death clearly wasn't the most efficient way to end this.
"Geez... you know what? How about we settle this another way?" Finn offered, dusting off his coat.
"What?" Natsu growled, glaring up through a swollen eye.
"I don't make a hobby out of torturing people. But you seem to be too battle-crazed—or perhaps you've just been hit in the head too many times—to understand when you are completely outmatched."
"....." Natsu ground his teeth, his flames flickering erratically.
"So, I will offer you a compromise so you can finally comprehend the absolute abyss between our levels of strength," Finn stated calmly. "You are going to hit me with your absolute strongest technique. I will destroy it. Then, I will respond with a single technique of my own. When you survive it, you will admit defeat. Deal?"
Natsu opened his mouth to shout a furious rejection, but Finn's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"Or, I can just shatter both of your kneecaps right now so you can never stand again. Your choice."
"..."
The words died in Natsu's throat. He stared at Finn's hands, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck. The blinding, agonizing pain radiating from his wrist was a vivid reminder that Finn wasn't bluffing.
This was the very first time Natsu had ever faced an opponent like this. He had fought monsters, demons, and dark guild masters. But all of them had fought with passion, malice, or grand ideological fury. They gave their all, and Natsu gave his all in return.
But fighting Finn? It was like fighting a boring task. Finn wasn't taking this seriously at all; he looked at Natsu the way a homeowner looks at a stubborn cockroach. Natsu knew with absolute, terrifying certainty that if killing was permitted in the Games, Finn would have decapitated him five minutes ago and already been back at his hotel.
"...What kind of technique are you going to use?" Natsu finally asked, his voice tight.
"Hmm...." Finn tapped his chin thoughtfully, then turned his gaze up toward the commentator's booth. "Excuse me. Is it okay if I cut this entire arena in half?"
"Er...." Chapati Lola froze, completely unsure how to legally answer that question on a live broadcast.
"Are you actually capable of doing that, pumpkin?!"
The giant pumpkin mascot, Mato, suddenly leaned over the VIP balcony, shouting down at Finn with genuine curiosity.
"I can. But is the Royal Family going to send me an invoice for the property damage?" Finn asked casually.
"Don't worry about that at all! The kingdom has a massive collateral damage budget set aside just for these Games! Don't hold back, give it your all! We will handle all the reparations, pumpkin!" Mato cheered excitedly.
"Good to know," Finn nodded. "In that case, I really should have just let Mystogan's meteor smash into the city earlier. Catching it was a massive waste of my magic power."
"Err... well, the Crown still deeply thanks you for preventing that, pumpkin," Mato sweatdropped awkwardly.
"If you truly want to thank me, send a monetary bonus to my hotel suite tonight."
"Ah, um, yes! Understood!"
"...."
The entire stadium listened to the absurd exchange in complete silence.
"ARE YOU PLAYING WITH ME?!" Natsu finally snapped, his rage boiling over at being completely ignored. The heat radiating from his body spiked so violently that the stone floor beneath his boots began to glow orange and melt.
"Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you," Finn said, turning his attention back to the raging Dragon Slayer. "Give it everything you have. Even if I'm not fully paying attention, I'll be fine. Just hurry up."
"DON'T YOU DARE LOOK DOWN ON ME! I'LL MAKE YOU REGRET THIS, YOU BASTARD!"
Natsu's magical aura erupted into a towering inferno. The sheer thermal radiation forced the audience in the front rows to shield their faces.
"Dammit, Natsu!" Gray cursed from the Fairy Tail dugout. He, Lyon, and several other Ice and Water mages frantically cast cooling barriers over the stands to prevent the audience from spontaneously combusting.
Ignoring the chaos he was causing, Natsu focused every ounce of his draconic fury into his uninjured hand and his blazing core. The fire compressed, shifting from a bright orange into a highly concentrated, blinding crimson. He swept his arms in a violent, circular, cross-cutting motion, unleashing a cascading torrent of swirling, blade-like flames.
"Dragon Slayer's Secret Art: Crimson Lotus: Exploding Flame Blade!"
"AAAAAAAAAA!!!"
With a deafening roar, the massive, spiraling vortex of fire tore across the arena. It wasn't just a blast of heat; it was a continuous, grinding barrage of explosive, physical blades of fire designed to utterly shred whatever they touched. The inferno completely engulfed Finn's position, swallowing him in a towering pillar of destruction.
"STAY DOWN!" Natsu screamed, panting heavily.
"Hmm..."
Standing perfectly unharmed in the dead center of the inferno, Finn analyzed the spell. He realized Natsu wasn't entirely brainless. His draconic instincts gave him a profound, subconscious understanding of magical physics. This specific Secret Art was explicitly designed to smash through a dragon's scales, crush its entrails, and reap its soul. It was a brilliant combination of blunt-force concussion, piercing slashing damage, and extreme thermal devastation.
"It's an interesting technique. But..."
Suddenly, the roaring flames stalled.
An immense, suffocating pressure slammed down over the entire stadium. A deep, terrifying hum vibrated through the very bedrock of the Domus Flau. Sharp, jagged bolts of black-and-red lightning began to crackle and arc through the air around the center of the inferno.
A cold sweat broke out across the skin of every mage in the capital. It was the sensation of absolute, unavoidable calamity. It was the feeling a normal human gets when staring down a massive tsunami or a Category 5 hurricane—the primal realization that you can do nothing but pray.
The crimson flames were violently blown away, revealing Finn.
He was holding the glowing saber with one hand. The blade was now wrapped in dense, crackling arcs of black-and-red lightning, exuding a pressure that paralyzed Natsu completely.
The Fire Dragon Slayer couldn't move a single muscle. He could only stare in wide-eyed, primal horror as Finn swung the blade.
"Dragon Extinction."
It wasn't just a physical cut. The blade severed the very concept of the space in front of it.
The crescent-shaped slash of black-and-red energy instantly annihilated Natsu's remaining fire. It cleaved silently through the reinforced stone of the arena floor, sliced effortlessly through the towering stadium walls, and continued upward, literally parting the clouds and splitting the sky in two.
Natsu was violently thrown backward by the sheer kinetic shockwave.
He crashed into the dirt, trembling uncontrollably. He looked to his left. The flawless, bottomless chasm that had just carved the Domus Flau perfectly in half was exactly one millimeter away from his shoulder.
Finn had deliberately missed him. If Finn's wrist had twitched even a fraction of an inch, Natsu—and the dragon sleeping inside him—would have been erased from existence.
There was no way to defeat this.
That singular, absolute thought echoed simultaneously through the minds of everyone in the stadium.
"You are a million years too early to cross blades with me," Finn said calmly.
He let the saber dissolve into light. Without another word, he turned and walked toward the exit tunnel, letting out a casual yawn.
"T-THE... THE WINNER IS FINN FROM HEAVENLY BLUE!!!" Chapati Lola shrieked, his voice cracking wildly.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
The crowd's roar was deafening, drowning out the sound of the crumbling masonry. Finn walked away into the shadows, leaving Natsu Dragneel kneeling in the dirt. The Fire Dragon Slayer couldn't even force a word out of his throat, his good hand trembling violently as he clenched the dirt in absolute, crushing despair at how hopelessly weak he truly was.