Hibiki and the others ran toward Anna and Lucy.

“Miss Anna, are you ok?” Hibiki asked Anna while Eve and Ren tried to inspect Lucy´s condition.

Anna was sitting on the ground breathing heavily; her face was pale from the drainage of magic power.

“I-I am fine, just not used to using such a large amount of magic power at once… Never thought that I would ever use that spell…” Anna said and looked at her shaking hand.

She shook her head and sighed.

“I should have listened to Irene and Tia back at the village… My strength is lacking…”

Anna never had any interest in combat, she was a teacher and researcher at heart.

Over her long journey, she had come across the zodiac keys rather by accident than actively searching for them, not that she had ever regretted it as she saw the celestial spirits as some of her closest friends.

“I wouldn´t say that your strength is lacking, that spell alone is enough proof of that.” Hibiki said, trying to console Anna.

He wasn´t wrong, the spell Urano Metria was considered one of the strongest spells that a mage can learn, only spells like Fairy Law and Abyss Break were considered above it.

However, Anna knew more than enough people that could take a hit from this spell and would have only received a scratch at best.

“Maybe so, but we were barely able to cast it, the strength of the spell had suffered as well… Hibiki, you should ask for Wendy´s help, I don´t know how taxing the spell was on Lucy.”

Anna tried to stand up, but her legs felt weak, and could barely hold her.

“Don´t worry, I have already informed Wendy and the others, she and Natsu are already on the way.” Hibiki said he helped her to stand and walk toward Lucy.

Ichiya was using his Pain Relieving Perfume to lessen the burden that Lucy´s body was suffering.

Although most of the magic for the spell came from Anna, Lucy had been seriously injured as she and Anna had cast the spell.

So, her current condition was quite worrisome.

But it didn´t take long before Wendy and Natsu, carried by Carla and Happy respectively, arrived.

“LUCY!” Natsu yelled in shock as he saw Lucy and he and Wendy hurriedly rushed toward her.

Wendy immediately used her healing magic on Wendy.

Her magic showed effect immediately as Lucy´s expression became more relaxed and the wounds on her body began to close.

Natsu clenched his fists as rage filled his head, ready to kill whoever did this.

“Don´t even bother, she is already defeated.” Anna said to Natsu, that even after not seeing her student for seven years she still could read him like an open book.

She was also grateful for how much Lucy seemed to mean to Natsu.

Wendy continued to use her magic for multiple minutes, during that time, Gray and Erza arrived as well, and both of them were shocked by Lucy´s condition as well.

Erza blamed herself, thinking that she should have searched for her instead of defeating Racer.

However, Anna reassured her that it wasn´t her fault and that she shouldn´t blame herself, this had been a prepared trap and all of them had fallen for it.

Even so, Erza still felt guilty about it.

As Wendy finished Lucy´s treatment she sat down on the ground and leaned backward, sweat covered her forehead.

Carla handed Wendy a towel and praised her for her good work, but also warned her not to overtax herself.

Wendy simply nodded and accepted the towel before hugging Carla happily and cuddling with her, simply happy that she was able to help.

Meanwhile, everyone else was trying to plan their next steps.

It was clear that the current strategy didn´t work and that Oración Seis was trying to separate them before finishing them.

However, before they could decide how to proceed a pillar of light emerged from the center of the forest and reached high into the sky, black spots were mixed into the light appearing and disappearing at random.

Everyone stared at the pillar and knew what it meant; Oración Seis had found Nirvana.

Somewhere deep in the forest, inside a large cave, Brain, Cobra, and Midnight had finally found Nirvana.

In the middle of the cave stood a large, ancient-looking tree, multiple chains with seals had been attached to the walls of the walls and had wrapped themselves around the branches of the tree.

Brain was laughing hysterically, finally, he had found the ancient weapon, and now all he had to do was to unseal it and its power would be his to command.

And to his surprise, the seal that had been used on Nirvana had been one that he knew of, in fact, it was one that the council used a lot and Brain knew them quite well as well.

In other words, it wouldn´t take even a minute to open the seal and unleash the might of Nirvana.

Cobra on the other side was itching for a fight, especially against Salamander and Titania, he needed to get some revenge for what they had done last time.

“Now that you have found the seal, I will head out and hunt some flies.” Cobra said as he turned around wanting to leave the cave.

“No…” Brain answered.

Cobra stopped and looked at his leader in confusion.

“No?”

“Yes, no. You and Midnight will stay here. I had thought that the process of unraveling the seal would take some time. But with that seal, it won´t take me a minute to unlock it. With the unleashed power of Nirvana, we will crush everyone in our path. However, I am sure that these annoying pests will try to stop us while we are heading to the guild Cait Shelter. You and Midnight will deal with them while the remaining members in the forest will distract them. I have already called them back.” Brain explained, a crazed grin on his face.

Cobra rolled his eyes before he nodded and guarded the entrance.

“Wait…? What about Hoteye? He should still be out there?” Cobra asked hurriedly as he remembered that Hoteye was still out there.

Brain felt annoyed and grunted, “That idiot will be affected by Nirvana´s light anyway, why should I recall him.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?!”

Somewhere at the edges of the forest, Jura and his team had encountered Hoteye and were currently engaging him in combat.

Lyon and Cherry had tried to catch or only slow him down, nothing that the two had thrown at him was able to even reach him, everything melted away.

Only Jura was able to face him as an equal.

While they faced each other, Hoteye continued to speak about the only thing that mattered in the world, money.

He seemed to be obsessed with it, claiming that nothing mattered, hate, love, happiness, sadness, everything was nothing compared to money.

Jura became irritated by Hoteye´s words, Jura was someone that had dedicated his life to magic.

He didn´t care for much else, the least of which was money.

The two continued to clash against each other, while Lyon and Cherry were forced to just sit and watch.

However, as the pillar of light emerged from the center of the forest, Hoteye seemed to be affected by it.

He held his head and screamed as if he was in pain.

Jura, Lyon, and Cherry stared in shock as an aura seemed to surround Hoteye, first black then becoming white before disappearing again.

After the aura disappeared, Hoteye calmed down as well.

The trio readied themselves to face their opponent again and…

“Ah! The world… The world is ruled by… by LOVE!” Hoteye said and spread his arms as if wanting to hug the three of them.

Shocked and confused the three jumped hurriedly away from Hoteye.

None of them had any idea how to handle this sudden shift in personality.

The three looked at each other trying to decide what to do.

“Oh, you don´t have to be scared of me. I was desperate to search for my younger brother from whom I had been separated since we were young… After Brain had brought me and the others out of the tower and I learned about the outside world, I thought that I would be able to find him if only I had enough money. But I see now that I was wrong in my way.”

Jura, Lyon, and Cherry stared at Hoteye with open mouths and were speechless.

Hoteye continued to talk about love, which usually would have made Cherry tune into this conversation, but not in this one.

“How… How…” Jura tried to say something but he wasn´t able to form any meaningful words, his brain was about to shut down.

“Hm?” Hoteye stopped with his mumbling about love as he heard Jura´s attempt to form a sentence.

“How this is possible? Simple, it is the power of Nirvana and the power of LOVE!”

Hoteye spread his arms again and span around.

“Brain had told us before we came here that Nirvana had the power to change light into darkness and darkness into light. Good, evil, everything changes in front of it. The mere presence of it changes those that lay at the border between good and evil. Like me.”

Sadly, Hoteye´s explanation fell on deaf ears as the three weren´t able to listen, their brains were already overloaded with this situation.

However, all three of them had one single thought.

‘WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING HERE?’

 

Hello everyone, thank you very much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.

First things first... IMMORTAL EMPIRE IS OUT AND IT ROCKS!!! Sadly it took me two days to download the 20GB for the update, I kid you not. My current internet is shit. For weeks now, my internet had been shit. Before I could download ad Steam with 1MB/sec, don´t judge this is much for me... But lately, I am happy if I get 100kb/sec. 

Luckily for me, my street gets sooner or later high-speed internet... Which the rest of the internet already had for years... Just not my street because too many didn´t want it... 

But that will still take some time, my bet is until winter.

Anyway, this arc is going to finish in the next couple of chapters then there will be some slice of life before going into the stuff that I am actually prepared for and am waiting to do since I started this whole thing.

Also, I have been reading a bit too many Naruto ff in the last couple of weeks and while writing this chapter I had an idea.

Would it be busted if an Uzumaki could use Fairy Law? I mean, Fairy Law uses its user's life force as energy and not their magic power... And Uzumakis have a ridiculous amount of it... So, yeah, I think that would be busted...