High above the chaos of the Royal Capital, in the thin, cold air of the upper atmosphere, the floating island of Extalia hung suspended like a divine judgment. It was a beautiful, serene place of white towers and flowing waterfalls, inhabited by the Exceeds—the winged cats who believed themselves to be angels ruling over the humans below.
But that serenity had been shattered.
Wendy, Carla, and Happy were seen talking with Exceeds in Extalia. They stood in the central plaza, surrounded by a hostile crowd of flying cats. Carla was on her knees, tears streaming down her face, pleading with her own kind.
"Please! You have to listen!" Carla cried out, her voice cracking. "The humans aren't worshipping you anymore! They're targeting you! A weapon is coming!"
The Exceeds jeered.
"Lies!" a burly cat shouted. "The Queen has absolute power!"
"You are a Fallen!" another hissed at Carla. "You were exiled! Why should we listen to a traitor and a human?"
Wendy stepped forward, her small hands clenched into fists. She wasn't the timid girl from Cait Shelter anymore. She was a Dragon Slayer of Fairy Tail.
"It's not a lie!" Wendy shouted, her voice amplified by a wind spell. "The King of Edolas has gone mad! He has turned my own people into crystals! He plans to crash them into this island to steal your magic! Look down! Just look down!"
The Exceeds hesitated. They looked over the edge of their island. Far below, the massive magical array of the Dragon Chain Cannon was glowing with a blinding, lethal light. And in the center, the giant Lacrima crystal was already moving, locked into the firing chamber.
Suddenly, the doors to the pristine white palace swung open.
An older female Exceed, with white fur and regal robes, stepped out. She leaned heavily on a staff, her one eye missing, covered by an eyepatch. It was Queen Shagotte.
"The child speaks the truth," Shagotte's voice was weak but carried a tremendous weight.
"Your Majesty!" the crowd gasped, bowing. "But your power... the God's Halo..."
"There is no God's Halo," Shagotte confessed, her voice trembling with the weight of a lie she had carried for years. "It was a fabrication. A story to protect us from the humans. I have no power to stop that cannon. We are not gods. We are just... cats."
She looked at the terrified faces of her people.
"This is the end of our arrogance. Fly! All of you! Leave the island! Save your lives!"
Panic erupted. The illusion of safety crumbled instantly.
But then, a rumble shook the sky.
BOOOOOOM.
The sound didn't come from the island. It came from below.
The Dragon Cannon had fired.
"It's too late!" Happy screamed, pointing down.
The Dragon Cry Lacrima had been launched. It wasn't drifting; it was rocketing upward, a golden meteor screaming through the sky, aimed directly at the heart of Extalia.
"We can't let our home be destroyed!" a warrior Exceed shouted. "Push it back!"
Dozens, then hundreds of Exceeds dived. They flew toward the massive, oncoming crystal. They placed their paws against the surface, their wings beating furiously, trying to exert enough force to divert its trajectory.
"PUSH!"
"HEAVE!"
But there is no success.
The crystal was too massive. It was a city. It was propelled by the magic of a kingdom. The Exceeds were like gnats trying to stop a freight train. They were pushed back, their wings straining, their bodies crying out in pain as the unstoppable force drove them upward, closer and closer to impact.
"It's not stopping!" Carla cried, joining the line, her own magic weak. "We're going to crash!"
The shadow of the crystal fell over the entire island. The end was seconds away.
---
Far below, a black blur tore through the sky.
Blake moved faster than sound.
Kick. Boom. Kick. Boom.
Each step on the air created a shockwave that shattered the clouds. Blake was pushing his body to the absolute limit. He wasn't flying; he was sprinting vertically, chasing a bullet.
"Faster," Blake gritted his teeth, his coat whipping violently around him. "Faster!"
He activated Soru, blurring out of existence. He overtook the crystal. He flew past the struggling Exceeds, who stared in shock as a human shot past them.
Blake positioned himself directly in the path of the crystal, between the projectile and the island. He was a speck of dust against a mountain.
He turned to face the oncoming city.
And then he uses Haki and tries to stop it.
He didn't use a sword. He didn't use a spell.
He coated his entire body, and the air in front of him, in a thick, dense layer of Advanced Armament Haki.
He slammed his hands against the leading edge of the crystal.
CRASH.
The impact was cataclysmic.
Blake felt every bone in his body groan. The momentum of the crystal slammed into him with the weight of millions of tons. He was driven backward, his boots skidding on the compressed air he had hardened with Haki.
"GGGGGRRRRAAAAAAAH!" Blake roared, the veins in his neck bulging, legs using geppo to move the crystal downwards.
He was able to slow it down.
The crystal shuddered. The insane velocity bled off slightly. The Exceeds watched in disbelief as the human held the mountain.
"He... he stopped it?" Happy gasped.
"No," Wendy whispered, her Dragon Slayer eyes seeing the truth. "He's just slowing it. The engine... the cannon below is still pushing it!"
And it was slowly moving towards Extalia.
Despite Blake's godlike strength, physics was losing to magic. The magical propulsion from the surface was relentless. Blake was being pushed back, foot by agonizing foot.
He looked back. The spires of Extalia were only a hundred yards away.
Fifty yards.
Twenty.
Blake was channeling all his strength to stop the collision.
"Think, Blake, think!" he screamed internally.
He had a weapon. The ultimate weapon against magic. Asta's Anti-Magic.
If he unleashed his Anti-Magic Zone right now, he could nullify the propulsion spell. He could shatter the magical chains binding the crystal. He could stop the motion instantly.
He wanted to use Anti-Magic Zone, but he didn't know what would happen to his friends stuck in the crystal if he used it.
The thought froze his heart colder than ice magic.
The crystal was the guild. It was Makarov. It was Mira. It was the citizens of Magnolia. They were transmuted into raw magical energy.
If Blake released a wave of Anti-Magic strong enough to stop the cannon... would he turn them back into humans? Or would he simply erase the magic that was them? Would he effectively kill everyone in Magnolia?
"I can't risk it!" Blake realized, sweat pouring down his face. "If I nullify the Lacrima, they might disappear forever!"
He had to do this the hard way. Pure, brute force.
He pulled deep into his soul. He accessed the Conqueror's Haki, flooding the area with red-black lightning. He wasn't just pushing the crystal; he was commanding the air, the wind, and the gravity to obey him.
His muscles tore. His bones creaked. The crystal slowed to a crawl, but it was still moving. The tip of the crystal touched the tip of the highest tower in Extalia.
Crunch.
Stone crumbled.
"It's hitting!" Carla screamed.
Then as he was inch away from collision...
---
Simultaneously, in the Royal Palace Control Room.
"The cannon fired!" Edolas Blake yelled, seeing the monitors flare red. "The shell is in the air!"
"We can't stop the shell," Mystogan shouted, wrestling with a guard he had just put to sleep. "But the propulsion... the Chain Cannons are still active! They are guiding it!"
Edolas Blake looked at the console. King Faust had smashed the manual release, but the automated guidance systems were still locked in. The cannon was feeding constant magical thrust to the crystal to ensure it punched through the island.
"We cut the power," Edolas Blake realized. "If we cut the thrust, it loses momentum. Earthland Me can handle the rest."
Edolas Blake raised his heavy wrench. He didn't hack the computer. He didn't type a code.
He swung the wrench with all his super-soldier strength into the main magical conduit pipe running into the console.
CLANG! HISS!
Steam and magical sparks erupted.
"Mystogan! The Rune Matrix! Disrupt it!"
Mystogan didn't hesitate. He slammed his staves into the floor.
"Five Layered Magic Circle: SACRED BREAKER!"
He didn't cast the spell on an enemy. He cast it on the room.
The magic circle expanded, shattering the delicate runic alignments that controlled the Dragon Cannon.
The console exploded. The lights died.
Outside, the massive gears of the cannon ground to a screeching halt. The beam of magical energy pushing the crystal flickered and died.
"Engine kill confirmed!" Edolas Blake coughed through the smoke.
---
High in the sky, Blake felt the shift instantly.
The relentless, driving pressure pushing against his hands vanished.
Suddenly, he wasn't fighting a rocket; he was just holding a very heavy rock.
"GOTCHA!" Blake roared.
With one final, earth-shattering exertion of Haki, he didn't just stop the crystal; he pushed it back.
He shoved the massive Lacrima away from the island. It drifted backward, suspended in the anti-gravity field of the floating islands, harmlessly hovering a few dozen yards from Extalia.
Seeing that, everyone sighs in relief.
"He did it!" Happy cheered, throwing his paws up. "He saved us!"
"The island is safe!" Wendy cried, collapsing to her knees.
The Exceeds stared in awe. The "human without magic" had done what their Queen could not.
But Blake didn't celebrate.
The adrenaline that had fueled his Geppo, his Haki, and his superhuman strength vanished the moment the danger passed. His vision blurred. His limbs felt like lead. He had held up a city against a magical nuke.
His Haki reserves were drained to absolute zero.
Blake smiled weakly at the cheering cats.
"Safe," he whispered.
His eyes rolled back. His legs gave out.
He slipped off the edge of the crystal. He plummeted toward the clouds below, a dead weight.
"BLAKE!" Wendy screamed.
"I can't reach him!" Happy cried, his wings exhausted from the struggle.
But he didn't fall far.
Two figures dived from the crowd of Exceeds.
One was a large, chubby cat with orange fur and small wings. The other was a stern-looking female cat. They moved with desperate speed.
They grabbed his coat, straining under his weight, flapping their wings furiously to arrest his fall.
"We have him!" the male cat grunted. "Heavy human!"
"Gentle, Lucky!" the female cat scolded. "He is the savior!"
These were Lucky and Marl, Happy's parents (though Happy didn't know it yet). They carried the unconscious S-Class mage carefully through the air.
They flew him up to the plaza, gently laying him down on the white stone in front of the Queen and the stunned crowd.
Wendy ran over, her hands glowing with healing magic. "Blake-san! Blake-san!"
She checked his pulse. It was strong, steady. He was just sleeping from exhaustion.
"He's okay," Wendy sobbed with relief. "He's just sleeping."
The Queen of Extalia, Shagotte, walked forward. She looked down at the human who had defied physics to save her people. She looked at the giant crystal floating harmlessly nearby. And she looked at the Exceeds who had once called humans "inferior."
"He saved us," Shagotte announced to her people. "A human saved the Divine Island. The old ways... are truly over."
As Blake slept, surrounded by angels he didn't believe in, the first phase of the war was won. Extalia stood. The guild was safe. But down below, the King was furious, and the final battle for the soul of Edolas was about to begin.