Chapter 345: Enemy Attack! Enemy Attack!
In the deepest, most secluded chambers of the Tartaros floating fortress, the air was thick with the intoxicating scent of sweat, sweet incense, and raw lust.
Two women were hopelessly entangled in the center of a massive, silk-draped bed. Their pale, contrasting bodies writhed and intertwined under the dim, flickering candlelight, letting out a continuous symphony of seductive, breathy moans.
Seilah's delicate, alabaster skin flushed a deep, feverish pink as she arched her back. Her slender fingers desperately gripped the silken bedsheets, knuckles turning white as an overwhelming wave of pleasure wracked her body. Hovering above her, Kyōka smiled, her predatory, commanding presence melting into something entirely carnal. Kyōka's hands, normally used to torture and break the strongest of mages, were now tracing the soft curves of Seilah's thighs with agonizing slowness, eliciting soft, high-pitched whimpers from the raven-haired demoness.
"Kyōka-sama... ah..." Seilah gasped, her chest heaving as their lips crashed together in a hungry, wet kiss. They were entirely unguarded in their private sanctuary, the sound of their passionate embrace echoing through the stone-walled room.
The two demons were already drowning in their shared desire, completely oblivious to the fact that they were not alone.
Hidden perfectly within the dark shadows of the chamber's high ceiling, a pair of sharp eyes took in the highly erotic, uncensored spectacle in its entirety.
Well... this is certainly a development, Ren muttered to himself, his internal voice tinged with dry amusement.
To be completely honest, witnessing the two highest-ranking female demons of Tartaros engaged in such a passionate, uninhibited display was undeniably stimulating. The visual alone was enough to test the discipline of any man. However, Ren was a professional, and he was currently deep behind enemy lines inside the most dangerous Dark Guild on the continent. He was in no mood to sit back and appreciate an erotic live show right now.
"I originally only intended to sweep the area to see if there was any useful intelligence," Ren whispered under his breath. "I didn't expect to walk into this."
Knowing he wouldn't find any tactical blueprints or Council secrets in this particular bedchamber, he decided to take his leave before things escalated any further.
Swish!
Without a single ripple in the air or a trace of magical fluctuation, Ren vanished instantly into the shadows, leaving the two demonesses to their heated tryst.
Tartaros Control Center
Far away from the private quarters, deep within the mechanical heart of the floating cube known as Plutogrim, the atmosphere was drastically different. The cold, sterile room was illuminated by the neon-blue glow of dozens of floating, holographic screens.
"Have you found Jellal Fernandes's whereabouts? Tell me, Former Chairman!"
Franmalth paced anxiously around the room. The bulbous, cyclopean demon rubbed his hands together, his single massive eye locked onto the human working at the terminal.
Former Council Chairman Crawford Theme stood at the center of the room, his hands moving frantically like a conductor orchestrating a symphony. He was continuously operating the detection matrix of his signature magic, his eyes darting across the flowing streams of data.
"Let me concentrate, you fool!" Crawford snapped, sweat beading on his wrinkled forehead. "I am connecting my Archive with real-time atmospheric conditions, cross-referencing magical signatures, and searching for all mages across the entire continent of Ishgar!"
Franmalth bounced on his stubby legs, his impatience bubbling over. "As long as we find and kill Jellal, the final seal on Face can be activated! How many Souls is this incredible detection ability worth? Tell me! How many Souls?!"
"Just let me work! I will definitely find him," Crawford muttered, his fingers typing furiously against the holographic keys.
`[BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!]`
At that exact moment, a sharp, piercing prompt sounded from the main console. A large golden notification box expanded in the center of the Archive network.
Franmalth gasped, rushing forward and nearly knocking Crawford over. "What's wrong, Former Chairman? Did you find Jellal?! Is he on the screen?"
"Shut up!! Shut up, shut up! Just be quiet for a single moment!!" Crawford roared, his face turning red with manic excitement.
"Former Chairman? Did you find him?!"
"No! I didn't find Jellal, but there's even better news!" Crawford threw his head back and let out a breathless, arrogant laugh. "I have successfully transferred the sealing key using the absolute administrative authority of my Archive. In other words, the final key previously held by Jellal has now been forcibly transferred to me!"
The Former Council Chairman stood tall, a profoundly proud and triumphant expression plastered across his aged face. He looked at the demon as if expecting applause.
Franmalth blinked his single eye in sheer disbelief. "To... yourself?!"
"Exactly!! Do you see my brilliance?!" Crawford boasted, waving a hand over the glowing screens. "Using the exact same magical principle, the key can be transferred again to a suitable vessel. Then, by simply killing that unfortunate scapegoat, the Seal will be permanently broken!"
Franmalth tilted his head, struggling to compute the logic. "A suitable vessel? Who would that be?"
"It doesn't matter who it is! Any random person off the street will do. A peasant, a foot soldier, anyone!"
"Wait... wait a second!" Franmalth raised his hands, his massive eye widening in sudden horror. "So what you're saying is... right now, at this very moment, you have become the final key to Face. Is that right?!"
"Isn't that what I just said, you imbecile?" Crawford huffed, completely oblivious to the danger he had just placed himself in. "To think such a magnificent, unprecedented method could be used... even I have to marvel at how overwhelmingly powerful my Archive truly is! With this, the Seal on Face will be broken, magic will be wiped from Ishgar, and the new world will be in my grasp!!"
Franmalth paused, processing the sheer absurdity of the human's hubris. Slowly, a sinister, greedy smile stretched across his face. He began to chuckle, praising the old man. "Hehehe... To think such a strictly hidden, heavily guarded key could be transferred so easily into our own headquarters. It's truly unbelievable. What a bargain!"
"This is the undeniable authority and power of the Council Chairman!"
Crawford laughed triumphantly, his voice echoing off the metallic walls of the control room. He felt like a god among men, holding the fate of the entire magical world in the palm of his hands.
At that moment, the temperature in the room plummeted. A chilling voice cut through the sound of their laughter like a razor blade.
"Found you."
Crawford froze. Franmalth whipped around, his single eye shrinking in shock.
"Who's there?!" Franmalth shouted, his face contorting into a vicious snarl.
Stepping out from the blind spot of the doorway was a young man. He had striking blond hair and wore a sleek blue shinobi uniform. Draped over his shoulders was a pristine white haori, the words 'Fourth Hokage' emblazoned across the back in bold, blood-red kanji.
Before either the demon or the corrupt politician could react, Ren raised his hand. With a flick of his wrist, he hurled a strange, three-pronged kunai directly between the two of them.
Shoo!
The blade whistled through the air. In the blink of an eye, a flash of golden light illuminated the room. Ren bypassed physical space entirely, appearing instantaneously where the kunai was mid-flight, directly in front of the two stunned villains.
In Ren's right hand, a sphere of highly condensed, wildly spinning azure energy was already howling.
Ren thrust the Rasengan directly into Franmalth's bulbous stomach.
"Ugh—AAAAAAHH!!"
The grinding, tearing force of the spiraling chakra ripped into Franmalth's demonic flesh. The sheer kinetic impact of the attack folded the demon in half. His massive body was launched backward like a cannonball, the wind pressure alone shattering the surrounding Archive screens into dust.
BOOM—!
Franmalth smashed effortlessly through the thick, reinforced stone wall of the control center, leaving a massive crater and a cloud of debris in his wake.
"What in the world—?!"
Crawford Theme was paralyzed with terror. His legs felt like jelly, his triumphant bravado instantly replaced by sheer, suffocating fear. He turned to run, but before he could even take a single step, Ren's hand shot out like a viper.
Ren grabbed the Former Council Chairman tightly by the collar of his expensive robes.
"Let me go! Do you know who I am?!" Crawford screamed.
Ren didn't bother to reply. Another flash of blinding yellow light swallowed them both, and in the next fraction of a second, the control room was completely empty.
Moments later, Franmalth pulled himself out of the rubble. He coughed violently, gripping his bruised stomach as he furiously stomped back into the room. He looked toward where the Former Council Chairman had been standing, only to find the spot entirely devoid of life. Both the blond-haired intruder and their most valuable asset had completely vanished into thin air.
"NO! NO, NO, NO!!" Franmalth shrieked, slamming his fist onto the emergency console.
`[EMERGENCY ALARM INITIATED: INTRUDER DETECTED]`
"Enemy attack!! Enemy attack!!" Franmalth's magically amplified voice roared through the intercoms.
A piercing, blood-curdling siren instantly began to ring out, echoing through every twisting hallway and dark corridor of Tartaros.
Back in the private chambers, Kyōka and Seilah were violently jolted from their haze of passion. The blaring alarm shattered the romantic atmosphere like glass.
Both women froze, their expressions rapidly shifting from flushed desire to absolute outrage.
"An intruder?!" Kyōka hissed, her sharp claws digging into the mattress.
The other members of Tartaros scattered across the floating island were equally stunned. The fortress of Plutogrim was a massive, cubic island that moved freely and unpredictably high in the sky. It was completely cloaked from conventional magical radars. In the entire history of the Dark Guild, there had never once been an intruder.
Within minutes, Kyōka, Seilah, and the remaining available members of the Nine Demon Gates rushed toward the command center, quickly adjusting their uniforms.
Bursting through the ruined doorway, Kyōka glared at the pulverized wall and the frantically typing Franmalth.
Kyōka hurriedly demanded, "Franmalth, what exactly is the situation here?! An intruder? Where is the Former Council Chairman?!"
Crawford Theme was the linchpin of their entire operation. He was the sole key figure related to whether they could successfully activate the Face bomb and wipe out Ishgar's magic.
Franmalth trembled slightly under Kyōka's murderous aura. "Just now, the Former Council Chairman managed to transfer the sealing key from Jellal to himself! But right after that, a blond-haired human suddenly appeared out of nowhere. That man was extremely fast... no, it wasn't just speed, it was instantaneous! He knocked me away with a swirling sphere of energy in a single hit. By the time I stood up from the rubble, that bastard and the Former Council Chairman had both disappeared!"
"What?!"
Kyōka's face twisted into an ugly, furious sneer. "You said the Former Council Chairman brought the key into his own body?! Then why the hell didn't you kill him immediately?!"
"I... he had only just finished telling me!" Franmalth cried out, feeling incredibly wronged by the accusation. "Before I could even raise my hand to act, that blond guy appeared and ambushed us..."
"Search the perimeter! Activate the detection network immediately!" Kyōka ordered, her voice laced with venom. "At the same time, send out all the foot soldiers to conduct a grid-by-grid search of the entire island! No one escapes Plutogrim!"
Franmalth immediately began using the remains of the system to run localized scans, but the results came up empty. There was absolutely no anomalous magic reaction anywhere on the island. A large swarm of Tartaros soldiers also began tearing through the corridors, but in the end, they found absolutely nothing.
The intruder was gone.
"What is going on? How did an intruder bypass our defenses? Who exactly is the opponent?"
Kyōka's expression was incredibly grim. An unknown enemy had suddenly appeared directly inside the Netherworld Island, right in their most secure sector, and they didn't even know the opponent's identity. Moreover, the absolute key figure for the Face project had been snatched right from under their noses.
This was a catastrophic failure, an absolutely humiliating disgrace for the Nine Demon Gates.
"Franmalth, focus," Kyōka commanded coldly. "What did the opponent look like?"
Franmalth rubbed his chin, pulling up his memory. "The intruder... well, he was rather handsome. He had spiky blond hair, was wearing a blue combat outfit, and had a white coat draped over him. Oh! He had the words 'Fourth Hokage' written in red on his back."
Kyōka frowned heavily as she listened. The physical description was extremely specific and clear, but searching through her vast lifespan, she had no information about this man in her memory.
"Wait..." Franmalth muttered, his eye twitching. "I... I seem to have some impression of this man..."
As Franmalth spoke, he felt a strange resonance within his magic. He was absolutely sure he, personally, had never met this blond intruder. Therefore, it must mean that someone among the thousands of Souls he had absorbed over the years had seen him.
Franmalth closed his eye, his bulbous body rippling as he sifted through the agonizing memories of the dead. Faces flashed across his torso in a grotesque display until he stopped on one specific soul. An old man with an eye patch and a long white beard.
Then, Franmalth's eye snapped open, and he suddenly shouted, "I've got it!! I know who it is!!"
"Who is it?!" Kyōka hurriedly asked, her patience wearing paper-thin. If they didn't know who took Crawford, searching for them across the massive Ishgar continent would be like looking for a needle in the ocean.
"It's Fairy Tail!! That guy is a mage from Fairy Tail!" Franmalth screamed, pointing a stubby finger in the air. "I've seen his face clearly in the Soul memories of Hades, the former guild master of Grimoire Heart whom I absorbed on Tenrou Island! That guy's name is... is... Ren!"
"Ren?!"
Seilah, standing just behind Kyōka, gave a small, uncharacteristic cry of surprise. Her dark eyes widened. She and Kyōka had just been intimately discussing this exact man in bed not long ago, marveling at the reports of his anomalous abilities. She hadn't expected to hear his name screamed out as the architect of their current disaster.
Seilah looked toward her superior.
Kyōka's expression was deeply unsightly. To be completely honest, after reviewing the footage of Ren's overwhelming, logic-defying performance during the Grand Magic Games, she didn't really want to initiate a direct conflict with Fairy Tail just yet. She had fully intended to wait. She thought that once Face was activated and magic was erased from the continent, monsters like Ren would naturally die off without her needing to lift a finger.
She had never expected that Ren would take the initiative to bypass their defenses, come directly to their doorstep, and snatch away the key figure required for activating the bomb. This situation had escalated from a minor annoyance into a highly troublesome threat.
"Fairy Tail?"
Stepping forward with heavily armored footsteps was the towering, four-armed demon. Ezel gritted his jagged teeth, his muscular body trembling with rage. "A mere human Mage Guild dares to provoke Tartaros? They dare to steal from the demons of Zeref?! Kill them! Kill, kill, kill!!"
Standing beside him, the shark-like demon crossed his massive arms. Torafuzar let out a deep, rumbling sigh. "Although I usually despise your reckless, bloodthirsty personality, Ezel... this time, I must agree. We indeed need to make those arrogant humans understand the ultimate price of provoking the Underworld."
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