"Here it comes!"
Weston shouted, throwing a punch toward the incoming dark shadow.
Boom—!!
Fist collided with fist.
In the dull thud, a circular shockwave of white air erupted, turning into a gale that blew to both sides and peeled away a shallow layer of the ground.
In the next second, magic surged through Weston, and the word "Boom" popped out from his fist, transforming into a powerful energy blast that exploded on the incoming Soldier Puppets.
Boom—!!
The Soldier Puppets were instantly blown to pieces.
"Two!"
"What?"
Weston looked at the Necromancer standing to the side. Under the man's shocked gaze, Weston held up two fingers and casually stated the flaws in his magic.
"Your Necromancy has two flaws!"
"The first flaw is that the sacrifice of Necromancy cannot strengthen a puppet indefinitely."
"The upper limit of a puppet's enhancement depends on the physical strength of the deceased when they were alive."
"These puppets in your hands were just ordinary soldiers in life. Their physical strength was too low, and evolving to this level is already their limit."
"The proof is that after absorbing the energy of those ten puppets, the remaining ones only repaired their injuries, but their speed and power did not increase!"
Although Weston had only made physical contact with the Soldier Puppets once since the battle began, the few exchanges were enough for him to analyze the puppets' physical data.
Weston continued, "The second flaw is control."
"After being strengthened, these puppets have indeed surpassed most humans. Even the assassins and mercenaries of those famous Assassination Guilds cannot match them."
"But puppets are ultimately dead things, not summoned beasts like Celestial Spirits."
"They have no souls; once they lose control, they cannot move."
"They also cannot be stored away, so you must keep them with you at all times and spend a great deal of energy to control them."
"You said earlier that the fewer the puppets, the more profound your control over them becomes. This can also be understood as: the more puppets there are, the lower your control over each individual puppet."
"This is also the reason why you didn't collect all the corpses of the soldiers on the battlefield!"
Hearing this, the Necromancer's face suddenly turned dark.
Warrod's eyes lit up, and he shouted inwardly: As expected of Weston! Even though it's his first time facing such an opponent, he managed to see through all this in such a short time!
In fact, the two flaws Weston pointed out were not difficult to see. Anyone with a bit of magical knowledge could make such a judgment after a calm analysis.
Warrod had simply been blinded by rage because it was his first time seeing such evil Black Magic that desecrated life.
"Finally, your magic has one more weakness!"
"That is, once the opponent's strength is too great, no amount of puppets of this level will be useful."
"For example, right now."
"Facing me, your Soldier Puppets are simply vulnerable!"
As Weston spoke, his gaze turned cold. He moved his fingers, instantly writing the word "Slash" in the air with his magic.
In the next moment, the word "Slash" transformed into an overwhelming barrage of strikes.
One after another, incredibly swift and sharp slashes wove into an airtight net in the sky.
Instantly, marks were left on the ground, and rocks splattered everywhere.
Amidst the sound of breaking wind, the ten Soldier Puppets could not withstand the power of the slashes. They were instantly hacked to pieces, turning into clumps of magical energy that dissipated into the air.
"My— My Soldier Puppets—"
Watching his Soldier Puppets be shredded by Weston and vanish into the sky due to the exhaustion of magic, the Necromancer's eyes went blank, and cold sweat poured down his face.
At this moment, he wasn't feeling heartache over losing the puppets he had worked so hard to refine; rather, he knew that his chances of winning were now zero.
No, let alone winning, whether he could even escape from the opponent's hands was a major question.
"Hateful Weston!"
"Hateful Fairy Tail!"
"I will remember this grudge!!"
The Necromancer cursed inwardly. With a flip of his right hand, he violently thrust his magic staff into the body of one of his subordinates.
With a squelch, a pillar of blood sprayed out!
This move caught not only Warrod but even Weston off guard.
"What?!"
"He killed his own subordinate?!"
The three hundred or so men in black who had gathered here earlier had only been heavily injured by Weston's Amaterasu Hundred Styles; most of them were not yet dead.
But now, with this thrust of the Necromancer's magic staff, the man was as dead as could be.
"Is this guy planning to turn his own companion into a puppet to buy himself time to escape?"
Disregarding companions, or even slaughtering them, was something that completely crossed Fairy Tail's bottom line.
Warrod was instantly enraged, veins bulging as he prepared to rush forward and give him a beating.
"Wait!"
"This is clearly different from the Necromantic Sacrifice earlier!"
Weston quickly reached out to stop Warrod.
"Necromancy is a very dangerous Black Magic. Once you're tainted by it, your life could be in danger. It's better if we don't get close until we're sure what that guy is doing!"
"Not planning to come over?"
"Hehehe— A wise decision!"
The Necromancer sneered, channeling a surge of dark magic through his staff into the body of the dead Mage on the ground. The Mage's body suddenly began to swell like a balloon.
The next moment.
Boom!!!
The body exploded, and magic dispersed, carrying a large amount of dark green smoke that blocked the way between Weston's group and the Necromancer.
"Not good, it's poison gas!"
Weston's expression changed drastically. Covering his nose and mouth, he pulled Warrod back in a rapid retreat. "That bastard Necromancer actually refined his companion's corpse into a poison gas bomb!!"
Seeing this, Warrod felt a wave of lingering fear. Fortunately, Weston had stopped him just now!
If he had impulsively rushed up, he would likely be losing his life inside that poison gas right now!
"This poison gas— it's the same as what we saw at the river's source!"
Weston stared at the Necromancer, his face turning even colder. "As I thought, the person who poisoned the water there and caused the plague in Magnolia and many Towns was you?"
"Did you want to poison everyone in the Towns and villages downstream and use their corpses to make puppets?"
With the Corpse Poison acting as a barrier, the Necromancer believed he could certainly escape this time, so he wasn't in a hurry to run for a moment. "Ah— that is indeed one of the reasons!"
"However, my true purpose is sacrifice and resurrection!"
At this point, the Necromancer's expression gradually became crazed. "Sacrifice the Towns and villages downstream, a total of one hundred thousand lives, and then resurrect—"
"The legendary Black Wizard— Zeref!!"