A cold, oppressive wave of magic power flooded the chamber.
The weaker Mages among Lyon’s followers immediately began trembling under the pressure.
Every one of them had lost family to Deliora, which was precisely why they had joined Lyon’s plan in the first place.
Now, after years of waiting, the creature they hated stood right before them, along with the man they believed could finally avenge their dead.
Even Gray’s hands and feet began to shake.
The sight of Deliora dragged memories he had spent years trying to bury back to the surface in a violent rush: a freezing winter night, the towering shadow of a demon, the screams of his family, his village reduced to rubble, howling wind, snow and ice, blood, hunger, helplessness.
All of it merged into the same nightmare that had haunted his childhood.
Ten years had passed.
Gray had believed he had moved beyond those memories long ago, but only now did he realize they had never disappeared.
He had merely buried them deep inside himself.
In a way, Ur had been right all those years ago when she said she would seal away the darkness in his heart.
Now that seal was breaking.
“We can’t beat it!” Gray shouted, panic creeping into his voice.
“Ur had to sacrifice herself just to stop that thing! How are any of us supposed to defeat it?!”
Neither Cana nor Noah, despite having known Gray for years, had ever seen him like this.
“Gray! Get a hold of yourself!”
Noah stepped forward, planted a hand firmly on Gray’s shoulder, and barked the words loudly enough to drag him back from the memories consuming him.
Lyon’s reaction was completely different.
His entire body trembled with excitement.
“Finally… finally!”
He stared at Deliora as the ice continued melting around its enormous body.
“Ten years. After ten years, I’ve finally done it. Deliora is finally coming back!”
His breathing grew heavier.
“Ur, are you watching? I’ll defeat it. I’ll accomplish what you couldn’t and prove that I surpassed you!”
Lyon knew perfectly well that the magic power he had recovered over the last hour or two was nowhere near enough for a real battle against Deliora.
But that no longer mattered.
He had devoted ten years to this moment.
Ten years spent searching for a method, gathering followers, making preparations, followed by three full years of carrying out the Moon Drip ritual.
Every sacrifice and every day of waiting had been for what was happening now.
Even in his battered condition, he had to fight.
It was not only his dream anymore.
Everyone who had followed him had placed their own hopes for revenge on this battle as well.
Lyon pushed himself forward on unsteady legs, stumbling one step at a time toward Deliora.
As he passed Noah, however, an arm blocked his path.
Lyon looked at him in surprise.
“You…? Are you really going to stop me now, after letting the ritual finish?”
“I’m not the one stopping you.”
Noah did not even turn around.
“I just thought you should know that your plan never had any chance of succeeding in the first place.”
Lyon froze.
“?!”
Gray fell silent as well.
“Ohhh, so it finally worked?”
Zalty’s voice came from the stairway behind them.
Ultear slowly descended into the chamber, still wearing her disguise.
“So this is Deliora. What terrifying magic power.” She looked up at the massive frozen demon with open interest.
“No wonder even someone like Ur could only seal it away. It’s considerably stronger than I expected.”
No one paid much attention to Zalty’s return.
Lyon and his followers had already suspected that the newcomer’s reasons for joining them might not be entirely honest, but as long as Lyon believed in his own strength, they did not consider it an immediate problem.
Gray, Cana, and Loke were even less concerned.
Whatever Zalty’s real intentions were, if he suddenly turned on them, he would immediately make an enemy of everyone in the chamber.
And Noah was still here.
They had all seen the earlier exchange between the two. New chapters come out on g.com first.
It had barely qualified as a fight.
Noah had completely overwhelmed him.
As far as they were concerned, Zalty had no chance.
Moon Drip had not yet completely dissolved Iced Shell, and since Deliora still needed some time before it was fully released, Lyon turned back toward Noah.
“What did you mean when you said my plan was doomed from the beginning? Are you saying I can’t defeat Deliora?”
“Even Ur couldn’t beat it!” Gray cut in, his panic threatening to flare again.
“What makes you think you can? The only thing we can do now is use Iced Shell again before Deliora is completely freed and seal it one more time!”
From the look in Gray’s eyes, he was genuinely considering sacrificing himself.
Lyon’s expression twisted with anger.
Even now, Gray was still trying to stop him?
“Shut up! I’ve already surpassed Ur! I can defeat Deliora!”
Noah sighed.
He took a moment to choose his words, then put on an appropriately mysterious expression.
“How much do either of you actually know about Iced Shell?”
Lyon glared at him.
“What exactly are you trying to say?”
He was beginning to find Noah’s deliberate pacing irritating.
Noah continued calmly.
“Gildarts once told me something about it. Apparently, he learned the details after meeting Ur years ago.”
Gray’s attention sharpened.
“Once Iced Shell has been cast, it is almost impossible to undo by conventional means. But sealing the target isn’t its only function.”
Noah looked toward Deliora.
“The thing trapped inside is gradually drained of its life force while the seal remains active.”
Lyon’s face changed.
“Ten years is a very long time,” Noah continued.
“Long enough, I’d say, for Iced Shell to have completely killed Deliora.”
Lyon’s breath caught.
“What did you say?”
A terrible possibility began to form in his mind.
“Then… Deliora…”
Noah nodded.
“That’s right.”
His voice was calm and certain.
“It’s already dead.”
He looked directly at Lyon.
“Ur killed it during those ten years.”
Loke stared at the frozen demon with newfound respect.
“That’s incredible.”
Cana looked toward Noah.
“So that’s why you were so certain Lyon’s plan couldn’t work. You already knew…”
She suddenly paused.
“Wait. You heard all of this from Gildarts?”
Noah glanced at her.
‘Is that seriously the part you’re focusing on?’
Lyon, meanwhile, looked as though the ground had disappeared beneath him.
“No…”
His face went pale.
“No, I don’t believe it.”
His voice began to crack.
“If that’s true, then… then I…”
“I’ll never be able to surpass Ur.”
Yet even as he denied it, he could feel the magic power radiating from Deliora steadily weakening.
Noah’s words were becoming harder and harder to reject.
Crack.
The first sound echoed through the chamber.
Then came another.
And another.
The noises multiplied rapidly.
Before Iced Shell had even completely melted away, Deliora’s enormous frozen body began breaking apart.
Flesh that had been preserved beneath frost for ten years cracked and crumbled, unable to support its own weight.
Pieces of the corpse broke loose and fell heavily to the floor.
More followed.
Then more.
The demon that had once terrorized the northern lands did not awaken.
It collapsed.
Lyon’s final hope collapsed with it.
His legs gave out, and he dropped helplessly to his knees as tears spilled from his eyes.
“Damn it!”
He slammed a fist against the ground.
Regret, frustration, grief, and the emptiness of ten wasted years tangled together until he could no longer separate one emotion from another.
I’ll seal away the darkness in your heart.
Ur’s final words resurfaced in Gray’s memory.
Gray stared at the remains of Deliora as tears gathered in his own eyes.
Only now did he truly understand what Ur had meant.
Only now could he finally release the nightmare he had carried since childhood.
“Ur…”
His voice trembled.
“Thank you.”
The tears would not stop.
Noah stood a short distance away, wearing a somewhat awkward expression.
Experiencing this scene in person felt completely different from reading it in a manga.
When he had seen it on a page, he had actually found it pretty moving.
Standing here in reality, however…
Two grown men were crying their eyes out in front of a dead demon.
The whole scene felt strangely awkward.
The silence became increasingly heavy.
Naturally, this was exactly the kind of moment that required Noah, the guild’s resident destroyer of serious moods, to step in and lighten things up.
He sighed dramatically.
“What a shame. If you’d spent more time reading instead of obsessing over surpassing Ur, you wouldn’t have wasted ten whole years on this.”
Lyon’s head dropped even lower.
Noah continued with genuine melancholy.
“Ten years, all for nothing. Honestly… how many ten-year stretches does a person even get in one lifetime?”
Lyon’s shoulders shook.
“I can’t surpass her…”
His voice broke as he mourned his shattered dream.
“I’ll never surpass Ur…”
Noah stared at him.
‘Why does this somehow feel even funnier now?’
End of Chapter 19