Cluney’s eyes flashed with malice as he stared hard at Chase, who hadn’t so much as flinched.
Two dark purple magic circles bloomed on his forearms, black mist boiling out of them and pooling around his open hands, condensing into a pair of long, black demonic claws.
Under the glow of the Swords of Revealing Light, the claws gleamed with a black shine, the kind that looked like it could cut clean through steel with one swing.
As the fearsome master of a dark guild, this was the magic Cluney had always taken the most pride in.
It worked on the same basic principle as Erza’s Requip magic, both firmly melee types at the core.
The difference was in the source: Erza pulled her weapons out of another dimension entirely, while Cluney achieved the same effect by compressing raw magic down into something solid enough to cut.
“Kid, you’re really starting to bother me.” Cluney stuck his tongue out and licked one of the demon claws, slow and unsettling.
“You’ll still be useful to me later, but before that, let me show you something first…” “What true torment and despair feels like!” His face, buried under thick, heavy muscle, twisted into something brutal, and he dropped into a crouch and exploded forward with speed that shouldn’t have belonged to something his size.
A flash of black light, and the demon claw carved a vicious arc through the air, closing on Chase in an instant.
The clash of steel rang out, sparks scattering.
Cluney’s expression shifted, and reflected deep in his furious eyes was the shape of an unfamiliar swordsman.
The figure’s eyes were steady, fearless, clad in steel armor, a purple cloak drifting slowly behind him.
Cluney’s gaze traced the longsword grinding hard against his claw, then slid past it to Chase, standing calmly behind the swordsman.
Chase’s right hand, fingers barely lifted, held a card that shimmered faintly with light.
Besides that fire-breathing bone dragon and those swords of light, his card magic can summon actual humanoid swordsmen too?!
Cluney felt the weight behind that longsword and, despite himself, felt a flicker of real alarm.
Back when he’d led Swamp Abyss as a proper guild, he’d fought plenty of card mages, enough that he’d considered himself something of an expert on how they operated.
Their magic tended to be varied, unpredictable, sure, but their bodies were always the weak point.
Ridiculously fragile, every time.
So he’d gone straight for Chase at top speed, aiming to end this in one hit.
Didn’t expect him to be holding a card like this, though.
“It’s up to you, Celtic Guard,” Chase said, revealing the mysterious figure’s name.
Obnoxious Celtic Guard.
A four-star monster card.
Superb technique, real combat instinct, and a will that doesn’t break.
Name: Obnoxious Celtic Guard Attribute: EARTH Level: 4 Type: Warrior / Effect ATK: 1400 DEF: 1200 Description: Cannot be destroyed by battle with a monster that has 1900 or more ATK.
The Celtic Guard gave Chase a small nod, let out a low shout, and drove forward with both hands locked around the hilt of his sword.
Cluney was thrown back by the sheer force of it, stumbling several meters before he caught himself.
As he found his footing, the purple cloak overhead billowed out, throwing a dark shadow across him.
The Celtic Guard flipped his blade, turning the thrust into a downward chop, and using the momentum of his own leap, brought it crashing straight down toward Cluney’s skull.
For a dark guild master with real combat experience behind him, Cluney’s reaction was fast.
He stamped down hard on the deck and swung his right arm up, deflecting the blade with his claw.
At the same moment, his left arm shot out from a completely different angle, slashing straight into the swordsman’s stomach.
The claw punched clean through the steel armor and out the other side.
Badly wounded, the Celtic Guard shattered on impact, dissolving into a scatter of drifting fragments, like a hero coming apart in the wind.
“Pathetic.
If this is really the best your cards can do, you might as well get down on your knees and beg.” Cluney sneered.
“Might even lessen the suffering a little, if you make me happy enough.” Whether it was years alone at sea talking, or just the fact that his opponent was a supposedly famous S-Class mage of Fairy Tail, something in Cluney wanted badly to see real fear on Chase’s face.
Just like all those other so-called righteous mages who’d taken this commission before him, the ones who’d ended up on their knees, crying, begging for their lives.
Instead, all that answered him was a flash of sword light from off to the side.
Cluney threw his claws up to block, but the force of the longsword still knocked him backward hard enough to send him crashing straight through the cabin wall.
Wood splintered, the whole structure collapsed, and what was left of the cabin folded into a pile of ruin.
“How?
Didn’t I already tear that thing apart?!” Cluney ripped the broken boards off himself, staring in disbelief at the Celtic Guard standing there, whole again, when he should have been gone for good.
The swordsman gripped his blade tight, expression unreadable, and said nothing at all.
Not exactly a talker, this one.
“Without a little more real effort, there’s no breaking through his defenses, dear Guild Master Cluney,” Chase’s voice drifted over from a distance.
In theory, as long as the duelist himself stayed alive, none of his card monsters could ever be truly, permanently destroyed.
That didn’t mean he could just summon them endlessly, though.
Any monster “killed” in battle dropped into a dormant state for a while afterward.
Dark Magician Girl, for instance, after taking that direct hit from Ignia’s fury, had slept for three full days and nights before she was able to wake up again.
The same rule applied to spell and trap cards too.
Of course, that dormancy could be cut short early with the right resurrection-type cards, Monster Reborn or Premature Burial among them.
But Chase generally treated cards like those as serious trump cards, not something to burn through carelessly.
The reason the Celtic Guard had come back at all was simple: his own built-in monster effect.
He couldn’t be destroyed by an opponent stronger than himself.
Not permanently, anyway.
Cluney turned toward the sound of the voice and felt his fury spike all over again.
Chase, meanwhile, sat back comfortably in a leather chair, legs crossed.
He’d even gotten his hands on a cup of black tea from somewhere.
Whatever else he was, he was the guild master of a dark guild.
A pirate captain who ran an entire stretch of sea.
When was the last time anyone had shown him this much contempt?!
His anger came roaring back all at once.
Ignoring the murder in Cluney’s glare, Chase took a sip of his tea and added, “Something like fire magic, for instance.” “You expect me to believe something that ridiculous?” Cluney’s face had gone hard and grim.
Watching his reaction, and putting it together with everything he’d seen in the fight so far, Chase concluded the man probably genuinely didn’t know a single fire spell.
That sly old fox Marshall.
Even dug up a detail this specific?
If I was ninety-nine percent sure Marshall was behind all this before, that’s a solid hundred now.
While he was still turning that over, a violent gale suddenly kicked up across the pirate ship.
Refusing to accept it, Cluney threw himself back into the fight, demon claws extended, going at the Celtic Guard in a furious close-quarters exchange.
Even accounting for the usual gap between S-Class mages, Cluney was still a genuinely top-tier fighter, well beyond what any ordinary mage could match.
A four-star Celtic Guard didn’t have much ceiling to work with.
A few exchanges in, and he’d already been torn apart again.
Then, immunity kicking back in, he simply reformed and threw himself right back into the fight.
The sheer shamelessness of it made Cluney grind his teeth.
After several rounds of this, he still hadn’t found a single opening to actually reach Chase, the one holding all the cards.
Realizing he’d eventually burn himself out at this rate, he tore the swordsman apart one more time with a single claw strike, then broke off the assault entirely.
Instead, he jumped back, putting distance between himself and the swordsman, already reforming yet again.
“Heh.
Fairy Tail, all right.
You people really are a headache.” Black mist rolled off Cluney’s arms as he deliberately let the demon claw spell dissolve, and he closed one hand around the skull necklace at his throat.
“Kid, you’re good.
Out of everyone I’ve fought so far, you’re the first one to actually make me go this far.” “But this is where it ends for you…” The skull shattered under his grip, and something ancient, something completely unlike the magic he’d used before, erupted outward, thick with a cold, crushing weight.