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ArabicFairy Tail: My Magic is a Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck — Chapter 74
Chapter 74: Demons Dancing Under the Night Sky
At the edge of Galuna Island, the air hummed with a strange, reversing current.
Amidst a low, rumbling roar, shattered rocks levitated and flowed backward. Splintered wood chips knit themselves together in midair. The ruined village, left dilapidated after the fierce assault by Yuka and his cohorts, reconstructed itself at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Ultear stood at the center of the phenomenon, holding a glowing sphere aloft. She was channeling a Lost Magic capable of reversing time for inanimate objects—the Arc of Time.
Watching the sheer scale of the restoration, Lucy stood completely dumbfounded. ‘Such powerful Magic Power… I’ve never seen anything like it. She really is Ur’s daughter…’
Natsu, completely unfazed by the miraculous display, bounded over and slapped a hand onto Ultear’s shoulder. “Not bad, Blacky!” he praised with a wide, toothy grin. “Although it’s a bit like that masked bastard’s Magic, and your smell is super similar, you’re way stronger than him!”
Ultear’s eye twitched. ‘Is it possible that I am the masked bastard you’re talking about, and also…’
She swatted his hand away. “My name is Ultear, not Blacky!”
“Ah haha, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter!” Natsu scratched the back of his head, flashing an impossibly bright smile.
Standing a few paces away, Chase watched the exchange. For a brief moment, he genuinely couldn’t tell if the Dragon Slayer was playing the fool with masterful precision or if he was just genuinely that slow on the uptake.
He let out a quiet breath. The latter possibility was definitely greater. When it came to anything outside of brawling and protecting his guildmates, Natsu was a complete and utter idiot.
“Hey! What are you Mages standing around for?!”
The Village Chief, whose body had almost entirely mutated into a towering, grotesque demon, stomped his foot irritably. “Why haven’t you destroyed the moon yet?! Destroy the moon!!”
He didn’t care about the restored houses; his frantic, bloodshot eyes remained glued to the oppressive purple orb hanging in the sky.
“I already told you, that kind of thing isn’t something humans can just do!” Lucy waved her hands frantically, trying her best to soothe the towering chief’s frayed nerves.
A sudden spike of dread hit her. The Deliora crisis was technically resolved, but their S-Class request still had absolutely no leads!
Seeing the blonde’s panic, Ultear stepped forward, fully intending to reveal the truth behind this so-called demon village. Before she could speak, Ur reached out and gently blocked her path.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to stretch,” the older ice Mage said, a confident smirk playing on her lips. “Let me give my foolish, idiotic disciple a proper lesson after so long.”
She cast a sideways glance at Gray.
A prominent tic mark throbbed on Gray’s forehead. ‘So you only have one disciple, huh?!’
Though Ur had spent years trapped as unmelting ice, her sharp intellect and vast experience remained perfectly intact. After gathering the general situation from the frantic villagers, she pieced the puzzle together in seconds.
“So, your bodies started changing into this appearance when the purple moon first appeared three years ago, right?” Ur asked, looking up at the Village Chief, who had finally stopped yelling.
“To be precise, everyone only turns into a demon when the purple moon comes out at night,” the Chief corrected with a heavy sigh.
“Living on the exact same island, only the local villagers are affected, while Lyon and his group haven’t shown a single symptom.” Ur narrowed her eyes, pacing slowly as she thought aloud. When it came to Moon Drop—the very Magic designed to melt her Iced Shell—she understood its properties far better than Gray or Natsu ever could. “The timelines completely overlap, but the results are entirely different. Hmm, in this situation, there’s only one—uh-oh!”
Mid-stride, she let out a sharp yelp, missed her footing entirely, and vanished into the earth. She had stepped right into the concealed pitfall Lucy had dug earlier to trap Yuka.
The pit that was supposed to be prepared for Erza had claimed Ur instead.
“Again?! Someone fell for it again?!”
“It was such a clumsy trap!”
“Could that blonde girl really be a tactical genius?!”
The villagers gasped in disbelief, pointing at the hole. The Arc of Time had perfectly restored the trap along with the ground!
Lucy broke out in a cold sweat, shaking her head so fast her vision blurred. ‘It’s not my fault! It’s not my fault!’
Happy fluttered over, hovering right next to her ear. “Hey, hey, Lucy, you’re dripping a lot of juice.”
“Damn cat, that’s sweat!” Lucy snapped, her teeth bared.
Down in the hole, Ur nimbly vaulted up the dirt wall and landed back on the surface. She dusted off her clothes and casually finished her previous sentence without missing a beat. “…One possibility! All the problems are coming from the moon!”
As for completely losing face in front of her disciples and her newly reunited daughter? She simply chose to pretend it never happened.
‘Wow, what terrifying mental fortitude. She might actually rival Erza,’ Lucy grumbled inwardly, though she let out a long sigh of relief that she wasn’t being punished for the trap.
“So!” Ur slammed her fist into her open palm, her eyes burning with sudden, fiery motivation. “Let’s listen to the Village Chief and destroy the purple moon in the sky!”
Natsu, Lucy, Happy, and Gray stared at her.
“Nani?!!!”
Ignoring their dropped jaws, Ur had no intention of explaining the physics behind her plan. She preferred to teach through action.
“Gray, Lyon! Let me see what level you’ve cultivated your Magic to over these past few years!”
She planted her feet wide, overlapping her fists and palms before slowly drawing her arms back to her waist—the absolute standard, flawless stance for Ice-Make Magic. After a brief period of bodily adaptation, her immense Magic Power was finally flowing freely through her veins again.
Gray and Lyon instantly recognized the spell she was preparing. The confusion over destroying the moon vanished, replaced by identical, fiercely excited grins.
“No problem!” they shouted in unison.
In a flash of flying garments, the two young men stripped down to their underwear. They took their places flanking Ur, striking the exact same stance. A freezing, biting mist began to radiate from their palms, chilling the humid island air.
For a brief, beautiful moment, it felt like a return to the snowy mountains of their past.
“A-And me.” Ultear stepped forward, a faint blush dusting her cheeks as she silently took her place beside them. Alongside her Arc of Time, she had inherited her mother’s Molding Magic, and her proficiency with it was terrifyingly strong.
“Molding Magic: Ice-Make: Geyser!!”
The four Mages shouted in perfect synchronization. They slammed their palms against the earth. A massive, slowly rotating white Magic circle erupted beneath their feet.
Ice shards exploded outward. The ambient temperature plummeted to freezing in a fraction of a second. Massive, overlapping pillars of jagged ice erupted from the soil, surging upward section by section at blinding speed. The frozen geyser tore through the night sky, hurtling higher and higher until it forcefully collided with the purple moon!
Under Lucy’s horrified, unblinking gaze, the purple moon—and the invisible energy membrane surrounding it—was violently pierced by the ice.
Dense, spiderweb cracks spread across the sky itself.
With a deafening, glass-shattering crack, the purple sky broke apart.
The oppressive atmosphere instantly vanished, revealing a stunning, boundless starry sky. Brilliant, pure silver moonlight washed over the island.
“The moon is still there? Wait, no… was that shattered purple moon just an illusion?!” Lucy gasped, staring at the real, pristine moon hanging peacefully among the stars.
“That’s right. The Moon Drop magic circle required gathering moonlight over a massive span of time. As the years passed, the residual energy condensed into a substance similar to a Magic membrane, covering the entire island like a dome,” Chase explained, standing calmly with his hands in his pockets as magical fragments dissolved like snow around him. “The purple moon we saw earlier was just a visual distortion caused by looking through that tainted membrane.”
“Chase, you really knew all along, didn’t you?” Lucy sighed, a weary but fond smile touching her lips. “Well, at least everyone in the village should have recovered their human forms by now…”
She turned around, fully expecting to see a crowd of normal humans.
Instead, she was met with the exact same crowd of towering, horned, and clawed demons.
“Huh?! They haven’t changed back?!”
The villagers, who had just been cheering at the destruction of the purple sky, suddenly realized this cruel reality. Their monstrous faces fell into expressions of utter despair and dejection.
“Didn’t Ur just point out that Lyon and his followers never showed similar symptoms?” Chase raised a hand, lazily pointing toward the village entrance. Yuka, Toby, and the rest of Lyon’s cult had arrived at some point, looking perfectly human. “In other words, the energy membrane never possessed the negative effect of turning humans into demons.”
“Wait, Chase… you don’t mean…”
Lucy’s eyes widened. She finally grasped the horrifying crux of the problem. Moving at the speed of light, she dove behind Chase’s back, peering around his shoulder at the residents with absolute terror.
“That’s right. They weren’t humans to begin with. They are demons who possess the ability to transform into human appearances.”
Ultear walked over slowly, a gentle smile on her face as she affirmed the truth. “The only effect the Moon Drop’s corrupted light had on them was distorting their memories.”
“Eh?!!!”
As the truth settled in, the fog over the villagers’ minds finally lifted.
The final piece of the puzzle arrived in the form of Bobo—the Village Chief’s son, whom the Chief believed he had personally killed, and the very same boatman who had ferried Natsu’s team to Galuna Island.
With his appearance and tearful explanation, the villagers completely remembered their past. Overjoyed, they unfurled their massive, leathery demon wings, taking to the air to express their sheer elation at regaining their true selves.
Chase, Lucy, Ur, and the rest of the Fairy Tail Mages stood back and watched. It was a bizarre, beautiful scene that perfectly encapsulated the chaotic heart of their guild: terrifying demons with simple, pure smiles, dancing gracefully under the pristine night sky.
“Even though they’re demons, they really are just like spirits,” Lucy murmured, her fear melting away into a soft, awe-struck sigh.
“Indeed.” Chase rubbed his chin, his expression turning deadpan and serious. “Since we’re all the way out here, should we catch one to take back as a souvenir for Mira?”
Lucy froze. “…Are you serious?”
“Huh, does Lucy want one too?”
“No! Not at all! And don’t say such terrifying things while we’re looking at such a beautiful scene!”
“Aye~!” Happy flew past her head, rolling his tongue. “Lucy is so silly. She doesn’t even know Chase is just teasing her.”
“Shut up, you dumb cat!!”