Fairy Tail: All Magic Converges in One Body

The black-armored man, dazed from having his head slammed to the ground, had no time to do anything before Hope's demonic claws lifted him high again and slammed him to the ground.

Thump! Thump! Thump...

The sound of the ground being slammed with gravity was terrifying. Hope only kindly let him go after the black-armored man was slammed to the ground for the ninth time.

The "Supreme Nine-Fall" cosplay has ended.

The ground around them was dented by the impact. The black-armored man lay motionless on the ground, the eerie blue flames in his eye sockets extinguished, and his black armor was already in pieces, revealing his desiccated body.

Erza remained on guard, cautiously approaching the fallen black-armored man. She poked his body with her longsword before saying to Hope, "It's over."

Receiving the power of the demon soul consumed a lot of magic. Hope, panting heavily, dispelled the spell, and her arms slowly returned to normal. However, some traces of the corrosive magic remained on her skin, causing a slight stinging sensation.

After catching her breath, Hope went to Erza's side and observed the black-armored man with her.

Without a doubt, the man in black armor was human, but judging from how withered his body was, he should have been dead long ago. However, the reality was that this guy was not only lively and energetic before he was defeated, but he could also use magic.

Suddenly, a word popped into Hope's mind—"puppet." It seemed that the mysterious entity controlling the ghosts behind the scenes was far more sophisticated than he had imagined.

Seeing that the pitch-black figure could no longer rise, Old Booker and the archaeological team members, who had retreated to a distance, finally relaxed and approached one by one.

"You guys are really amazing."

"Those nine consecutive falls were pretty impressive."

"As expected of Fairy Tail, you're the one to come to when you need a battle request."

"Miss Erza, please perform the costume change one more time!"

"......"

Old Booker coughed, interrupting the scholar beside him who was about to veer off-topic with praise, and came to the black-armored man's side to carefully examine his undergarments.

A dozen minutes later, Old Booker rubbed his dry eyes and said, "If I'm not mistaken, this person's clothes should be the kind of attire worn by high-ranking officials and ministers of the Doragunov Kingdom."

"So, this person is the one who betrayed Queen Irene?"

Hope looked disdainful. According to the information revealed by the warrior ghost last time, Queen Irene 400 years ago was betrayed by a group of high-ranking officials and nobles. Then, these people deceived the people with lies and incited them to commit violence against Irene.

If the civilian ghosts that roam Duskwood at night were accomplices, then this man in black armor was most likely one of the masterminds.

The mysterious being in the ruins turned the black-armored man into a puppet that was neither human nor ghost.

Hope's intuition told her that they would definitely encounter such puppets again.

Hope turned to look at Old Booker, "Old man, do you know how many high-ranking officials like this are in the Doragunov State?"

Old Booker's face darkened; he suspected that the kid was deliberately making things difficult for him.

The Kingdom of Dolagunov has been extinct for hundreds of years, and there are only a few fragments of records about it. Even that is only because of Irene, the "Mother of Dragon Slayer Mages." Otherwise, he would not have bothered to explore the history of such an insignificant little country.

Three archaeologists laboriously carried back the bloodied greatsword that the black-armored man had been knocked away from the nearby jungle. "Miss Erza, would you like this weapon?"

The Bloodstained Greatsword is extremely sharp; it can even wound Hope's demonic arm after she received Deliora's soul, and it is unaffected by the effects of corrosive dragon-slaying magic.

Such a top-tier weapon would be incredibly rare for Erza, who relies on armor and weapons in combat, but at this moment she felt a strange sense of disgust towards it.

Did that blood-stained broadsword, along with its owner, secretly stab the queen?

"Forget it, I don't need the weapons of a traitor."

Erza's voice was devoid of emotion, but everyone could tell that she found it disgusting.

The three obsequious archaeologists thought about it and realized Erza was right, so they simply threw the bloody greatsword they had painstakingly brought back onto the ground.

Such a murder weapon is better left to rot in the ground along with its owner.

Chapter 52 The Place Where a Thousand Corpses Kneel in Worship

To prevent any possibility of the zombies rising from the dead, Hope borrowed a fire and burned the black-armored man.

After dealing with this minor incident, the group was finally able to enter the royal city ruins.

Unlike the desolation of the surrounding area, the buildings here, though equally dilapidated, still offer glimpses of their former grandeur.

The massive stone wall is broken and crumbling, the exquisite reliefs are blurred by wind and frost, and the broken dome casts mottled beams of light, cutting out interplay of light and shadow on the cracked and weed-covered ground.

"Is this the capital of Doragunov? Even in its ruins, it was still quite magnificent." A young archaeologist couldn't help but exclaim in amazement, imagining the splendor of this place 400 years ago.

Unfortunately, now only ruins remain.

Old Booker and the team leader excitedly grabbed magnifying glasses and notebooks, eager to record every detail on each brick and stone. "Look at these patterns! This craftsmanship! It's absolutely a masterpiece from the heyday of that era! It's so precious!"

The other archaeologists were also busy at their own pace, some shouting excitedly at finding a surviving book, others overjoyed at discovering a relatively well-preserved ancient painting...

Unlike the excited historians, Hope frowned, his gaze sweeping over the surrounding ruins. He had scattered magical plants along the way as a warning, some of which had already silently lost their connection to him.

Beneath this desolate ruin, something seems to be lurking.

Hope stretched her newly recovered arm and whispered to Erza, "Be careful, I have a feeling there are other beings like the black-armored ones here, and there might be more than one."

Erza nodded solemnly. She was still wearing the Heavenly Wheel Armor she had worn before, and held a sharp two-handed sword in her hand, as if she had a premonition that there would be another battle to come.

The area of ​​the royal city ruins is not large, and with ruins everywhere, the group only took about half an hour to explore the ruins, even though they walked and stopped frequently.

Surprisingly, the battle that Hope and Erza were wary of did not materialize.

After a short rest, the group continued their journey and arrived at the last unexplored section of the royal city ruins.

It was a wide platform with a huge stone tablet in the center. Thousands of mummies and skeletons faced the stone tablet and knelt on the ground in a prostrate position, which looked quite eerie.

However bizarre it may be, it cannot dampen scholars' enthusiasm for historical research.

Although they gained a lot along the way, they found almost nothing truly useful, such as why the Kingdom of Doragunov had perished, why the ruins of the vanished kingdom had reappeared here, and what Queen Irene's final fate was...

The group cautiously entered the platform where thousands of "people" were kneeling in worship.

Hope, who was leading the way, spotted a somewhat familiar figure among the surrounding corpses.

Upon closer inspection, although his body was so dry that only a layer of wrinkled skin remained, Hope still recognized him as the warrior ghost who had spoken with Erza the previous night.

These skeletons must be the remains of those ghosts.

But why are they kneeling here?

While Hope was still in a daze, Old Booker had already arrived at the huge stone tablet in the center of the platform. Looking at the dense ancient characters on the stone tablet, the old man was as excited as a child.

According to Old Booker's translation, the front of the stele is engraved with the names of people. According to the inscription on the stele, these people were heroes who sacrificed themselves to protect their country during the war between humans and dragons 400 years ago.

After the war, Queen Irene, in order to commemorate them, inscribed the names of these heroes on this huge stone monument so that future generations could admire them.

The content on the front of the stone tablet was actually nothing special; it was the information recorded on the other side that made old Booker ecstatic.

Hope and Erza followed them to the back of the stone tablet, where they saw a huge stone carving depicting a dragon and a girl giving each other a high five.

There are two columns of text on each side of the stone tablet.

On one side was the inscription "May peace between humans and dragons endure forever," and on the other side was a story. Old Booker spent quite a while translating the story.

More than 400 years ago, the dragon race split into two factions due to their attitudes toward humans.

One side consists of the "Dominionists," who view humans as food and toys and believe that power allows them to do whatever they want to the weak. The other side consists of the "Coexistenceists," who are willing to communicate with humans and befriend them.

The dominant faction comprised the majority of the dragon race, and most of them were wicked dragons who committed all sorts of evil deeds and had no moral compass. They launched an unprecedented all-out war against humanity.

The immense crisis united almost all of humanity, with countless mages going to the front lines to fight the dragon. However, human magic was mostly ineffective against the naturally powerful dragons.

Fortunately, the dragons of the "coexistence faction" extended a helping hand to humanity, assisting them in resisting the evil dragons.

However, the coexistence faction was ultimately a minority among the dragons. Even a powerful dragon like the Fire Dragon King Igniel could not stop the war, and the defeat of humanity was only a matter of time.

At this critical juncture for humanity's survival, in a small country called Doragunov, a human queen and her dragon friend, who was also her mentor, created a special magic—'Enchanting Spell'.

A man and a dragon had a sudden inspiration: if the dragon's power were added to humans, would that give them the power to fight against evil dragons?

After all, only the dragons themselves can fight against them.

So they took action, and the world's first Dragon Slayer Mage was born, named "Eileen".

The dragon who bestowed its power upon Eileen was none other than the renowned scholar among the dragons, the Wise Dragon Belserion.

With the advent of Dragon Slayer Magic, more and more humans are cooperating with friendly dragons, becoming Dragon Slayer Mages by borrowing their power, which makes the evil dragons uneasy.

On a stormy day, fifty dragons attacked Irene's country. To protect Irene and the people of her country, the wise dragon Belserion was killed by the dragons, and Irene was also seriously injured.

This attack, which seemed destined to be victorious by the evil dragon, ultimately resulted in a victory for humanity due to the arrival of a mysterious and powerful figure whose name had been erased from the stone tablet.

Bercelion's sacrifice devastated Irene, and she adopted her best friend's name as her surname to commemorate his existence. And for their shared wish of "eternal peace between humans and dragons," Irene strives tirelessly...

This is all the content on the stone tablet.

This is a grand epic, and also a story of the arduous journey of a strong female protagonist's growth.

As Old Booker finished translating, no one present said a word, because they all knew that after one story ended, another would continue.

However, what followed was a dark story.

Eileen was betrayed by her subjects before she could fulfill her dream.

The dragon race also failed to coexist peacefully with humans and instead perished.

Erza stared blankly at the stone tablet, where Queen Irene's face had long been blurred by the erosion of time. Somehow, she raised her hand and touched it.

However, the moment they made contact, the thousands of corpses stood up in unison and looked at her.

Chapter 53 The Wise Dragon Reappears

The sickening sound of bones grinding together rose up from all directions like a tidal wave.

This sudden and bizarre sight sent chills down the spines of all the archaeologists, turning their faces deathly pale. Their screams caught in their throats, fearing that any noise would disturb the group of corpses.

Old Booker and Derek also felt a chill run down their spines, their hair stood on end, and they took several steps back, huddling together with their teammates.

Hope's eyes narrowed, and he flung out several magical plant seeds. The 'plant' magic caused the seeds to grow wildly as soon as they landed, with thick thorny vines bursting out of the ground and quickly forming a sharp, thorny barrier around the stone tablet.

However, these corpses did not show any signs of aggression.

They simply watched silently as thousands of mummies and skeletons focused their empty eye sockets on Erza, who was withdrawing her hand from the stone tablet. But that silent gaze was even more chilling.

Under the tense gazes of everyone, the corpses stiffly adjusted their orientation, changing from facing the stone tablet to facing Erza, who had just touched it.

Immediately afterward, just as the ghosts had done the night before, they all knelt down before their "queen".

Erza was so startled by the sight that she took a half step back. Looking at the dark mass of kneeling skeletons before her, she felt as if she could see them repenting through the corpses.