As Alex is running to Tenrou Island, a barrage of magic attacks are flying toward him. The low rank members of Grimoire Heart are shooting their long range magic attacks from the coast.
Hades orders them to shoot their strongest attacks without worrying about their magic power consumption. Even their strongest attacks might not damage Alex, after all, not to mention their half-assed attacks.
Alex jumps left and right to dodge their magic attacks while still rushing toward the island. He can see their attacks clearly, so he can dodge them rather easily, and their attacks aren't that fast to begin with.
While dodging left and right, Alex suddenly senses a much powerful magic attack mixed among the weak magic attacks. He quickly finds it, a dark ball that's unusually smaller than the magic attacks around it.
Despite its size, Alex can feel that it's much stronger than the others, and through experience, he instinctively knows that a magic attack with a small size but packed with power usually has a wide range, just like his Tailed Beast Bomb.
That's why Alex jumps far to the left because he doesn't know how wide its area of effect will be. He makes the correct decision because when the attack lands on the water, everything in the radius of 40 meters suddenly gets sucked into the dark ball, including the magic attacks.
"This is..... Gravity Magic. So it's his attack."
Alex immediately knows that it must be Bluenote Stinger's attack. He doesn't know how strong Bluenote really is. In the story, he gave Gildarts a really hard time, so he must be strong, but Alex can't really understand how strong he truly is just from the story, without seeing it himself.
"Hmm, he can use this level of long distance attack, huh? This is troublesome."
Bluenote should be stronger than the 7 Kin of Purgatory because he is their Deputy Commander or someone equal to a Vice Guild Master. That means he is 2nd only to Hades and in Dark Guilds, their hierarchy usually represents their strength.
"Hmm, let's reduce their number before I face them head-on."
Alex's 5 tails rise and spread. Their tips are pointing at the Dark Mages on the coast. Then bright orange magic circles appear on the tails. A bright orange ball the size of a basketball appears on each magic circle.
"Boil Release: Scorching Explosives!"
The bright orange balls are shooting toward the Dark Mages. After the bright orange balls fly, more balls are produced on the magic circles. Alex also shot them at the Dark Mages on the coast while running on the sea.
Powerful explosions are created by the bright orange balls when they hit anything. Some Dark Mages try to defend by using things like magic shields. But the weak Dark Mages' shields get destroyed easily by the explosions, so they can't defend themselves anymore.
Furthermore, not only the explosions have powerful impacts, they also produce very hot steam. After all, Boil Release is the combination of Fire and Water Release. It's basically boiling water and the explosions are steam explosions.
Very quickly, the area around the Dark Mages is covered with thick hot steam. It's so hot that they feel as if they are being cooked now. Even magic shields are useless against the hot steam. Unless they can seal the whole space around them, they can't do anything about the spreading steam.
The steam even forces the stronger Mages like the 7 Kin of Purgatory to retreat. They have no way to help their weaker members. It's difficult enough to protect themselves from the hot steam because they can only get away from the steam to avoid getting affected.
Well, it's not like they care much about the weak members' lives. Dark Mages like them don't really care about each other to begin with, so they don't really care if their average members die because they can always recruit more.
Though the higher ups are still angry by their members' death. Not because the members' lives are valuable, but because they've spent a lot of resources for the members and recruiting will take time.
Well, they still have many members from their subordinate Guilds to be recruited into their main Guild. Typical Dark Guilds are treating their members as disposable. Only the strong ones like their 7 Kin of Purgatory are valuable to their Guild.
"Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Damn! What kind of magic is this? Why's the heat affecting me? I should be immune to heat just as I'm immune to fire." Zancrow is puzzled because as a Fire God Slayer, he should be immune to heat because of his fire immunity.
"Maybe because it's steam, not just heat. Steam is made of hot water vapor, so this is not fire, but water. That's why you are still affected."
Hades isn't exactly wrong, but he's also not fully correct either. Although Boil Release is the combination of Fire and Water elements, it is still a whole different element, so Zancrow's fire immunity becomes useless against Boil Release.
The high-ranking Grimoire Heart Mages retreat while watching their men being cooked alive by the hot steam. Only a few manage to escape like them, but even those people have gotten their skin and flesh that's close to the skin burnt by the steam's scorching heat.
So even if they aren't dead, they are already half-dead after touching the steam. Burnt skin is very painful and it's also deadly because the blood veins under the skin are also cooked and the blood hardens when cooked, so blood can't flow properly anymore, leading to death if not handled quickly.
"We shouldn't think of his magic as ordinary magic. There must be a lot of things we don't know about him and his magic. No! It should be correct to say that we know too little about him. Zancrow, just like how you are affected by the heat just now, you should also expect that his fire can affect you if he uses Fire Magic later."
"What?! Are you serious, Guild Master? I can understand if it's other magic, but Fire Magic affects me? You should stop joking." Zancrow is very confident that no Fire Magic can harm him as a Fire God Slayer that he thinks to be the highest level Fire Magic.
"I just want you to be wary. After all, his Fire Magic might not be normal Fire Magic."
"Master is right. I once heard that someone thought he used Water Magic. Turned out, that water ball is highly acidic and can melt metal almost instantly. So while it might look like Fire Magic, he might be using something different, that's why you need to be careful." Brain, the one who investigated Alex the most warns Zancrow.
"Tsk! I understand, alright?"
"This also applies to all of you. Be careful with him because he might be much stronger than we thought. We must dispose of him so we can bring Lord Zeref back to our base."
Hades looks at the fallen airship quite far in the west. The airship is damaged when crashing onto the island and it loses a lot of energy after using that shield to block Alex's Giant Isobu tail attack. So now, Rustyrose is repairing the airship using his Arc of Embodiment.
Zeref is still unconscious inside the airship after receiving Alex's powerful blow. He can't die, but he still can receive damages. When Alex hit him, he was quite weakened after trying to stop the sudden death wave, so Alex's attack caused more damage than it was supposed to, and it was enough to knock Zeref out for a while.
Zeref will wake up soon, but he is defenseless now when he is unconscious. That's why Grimoire Heart can't let Alex find Zeref because they know he'll try to kill Zeref. Even though they know that Zeref is immortal, they still won't let Alex punch their Lord again.
"Heh, you lot are quick to escape. But you are really heartless. Leaving your comrades when they were cooked alive to save your own skin, literally saving your skin."
Alex comes out of the steam-covered area in his Humanoid Kokuo form. He needs to stay in Kokuo form to avoid being burnt by his own Magic. It won't be funny to be killed by his own magic just because he transforms into another Tailed Beast.
"Hmm, 1 is missing. Oh, seems like he is in the airship, together with Zeref." Alex looks around a little because he doesn't see Rustyrose and finds the guy in the fallen airship with his magic sense.
"Well, doesn't matter. I'll still beat you up to pulp before beating Zeref too. But I'll make sure to take my time beating you, Brain, or should I call you Zero? I've been looking for you all this time to pay the debt from years ago. I hope you've prepared yourself because the interest has grown too big after all these years."
Alex is smiling, but they can feel his chilling bloodlust and killing intent. They've faced many people with such strong killing intent and bloodlust. But what they feel from Alex is on a whole different level which makes them realize that they are facing a real monster.
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Ch. 188. Lucy's and Cana's Show