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CHAPTER 51
ON THE OFFENSIVE
"Get out of here." Gildarts ordered us as he kept his eyes intensely locked onto the opponent and began to power up. He was serious about taking this guy out all by himself. His opponent gazed back at him and also charged up magic energy. The tension between the two wizards was building with every passing second… Gildarts was right; we should be getting out of here. By staying we would only get in his way.
"Go!" He shouted, telling us one more time to leave, then charged at the enemy at full speed. An explosive battle followed, with merely the shockwaves of their punches blowing the rest of us away. It was amazing to see a fight of such high level wizards, but we really couldn't afford to waste any more time just sitting here and watching. The rest realised the same thing and we turned around, leaving it all up to Gildarts. He was the strongest wizard in our guild, and having just seen him in action, I had full confidence in his abilities to handle this foe on his own.
"Man, I can't believe we're missing out on the fight of the century!" Natsu complained loudly once we got safely away from the battlefield and entered the forest again.
"Meeting up with the others is more important right now!" Lucy harshely told him, and I fully agreed with her. Several of our other members were still scattered across the island, and possibly in danger. Getting back to the base camp and regroup should be our main priority for now. And so, we continued on our way back to the camp…
Suddenly, the ground started to shake. At first it was barely noticeable, and I thought they were just the result of Gildart's battle with the wizard from Grimoire Heart, but it rapidly grew in intensity until we could no longer ignore it. We all looked behind us to see what was causing the shaking and then saw the enormous tree, unique to this island, was tilted and slowly falling down.
"Ah! What's going on!?" Natsu yelled but continued to run. We were at least lucky the tree wasn't going to fall in this direction or else we wouldn't have been able to make it out of its way in time. At that moment, a shock went through my body and instantly drained me of all my strength and magic power. I fell on my knees and was unable to get back up.
"Guys…!?" I wanted to say something, but I felt so very dizzy, weakened and exhausted all at the same time, it was all I could utter at the moment.
"I… I'm out of strength." Wendy said and she, too, fell down, as did the others. Why were we all losing our power…? My consciousness slipped away before I could finish my thought process.
I opened my eyes again. So, I was still alive… not just that, I felt magic power flowing through my body again.
"What the…?" Natsu looked around in surprise as he got up.
"My… power is back?" Lucy and the others were experiencing the same thing. Whatever had just hit us earlier had been undone. "What just happened?" Lucy asked, but none of us could answer that. The thing that mattered was that we were still alive. I was thankful we weren't spotted by enemy forces during the period of time we were out, or things might not have looked so pretty for us now.
"Yeah… it's back all right! Let's go!" With his magic restored, Natsu was full with energy again. He ran off and we all followed behind him, in the direction of where the base camp was located.
Some time later… we finally made it back to the base camp. The whole area around it looked like it had been the place of numerous battles.
"Natsu! You guys are all back, thank goodness!" Levy greeted us as we approached the camp. She looked tired and wounded. With her were Freed and Bixlow, who weren't looking too great either. Four more wounded Fairy Tail members were here, but they were all out for the count. It seemed Gajeel still hadn't woken up since I'd last seen him… his condition must've been worse than I thought. Even Juvia and Mirajane were defeated in battle. To think some of Grimoire Heart's wizards even surpassed our S-rank members… I hoped Erza would be fine. She was still gone and I had no idea where she was and what she was doing right now.
"I'll heal them right away!" Wendy said and knelt down at our knocked out comrades.
"Oh! Hey, Natsu!" Lisanna suddenly appeared from behind one of the tents in the camp. "I know I wasn't selected as one of the participants for the trial, but Master asked me to come to help with the preparations and make food for you guys." She explained to him. "But then all of this happened…"
"I'm glad you're okay, Lisanna." Natsu said to her with a friendly smile.
"I appreciate what you're trying to do. But don't push yourself too hard healing everyone, Wendy." Lisanna turned her attention to Wendy when she saw she was already tending to the wounds of our members.
"Your magic power has been seriously over-taxed today. You need to rest for a little while." Carla adviced her, completely agreeing with what Lisanna said. Wendy didn't like it, but she knew her friends were right about her and cancelled her healing magic spell.
"Lisanna. What happened here?" Natsu inquired after looking around for a bit.
"That man over there…" She pointed at a guy lying unconscious a little away from the camp. "He attacked us here. I'm not sure why, but we suddenly lost our magic power afterward. Things were looking bad, but Freed and Bixlow fought him for us. Still… everyone has already been injured elsewhere… What are we going to do?" Lisanna's said weakly and looked like she was on the verge of crying.
"You're not allowed to cry, Lisanna! We're going to be okay!" Happy told her in an attempt to cheer her up.
"Happy's right." Lucy added.
"They're gonna pay." Natsu cracked his knuckles. Seeing all of our members in such a bad state was feeding his lust for battle and revenge for what Grimoire Heart has done. "They will pay for this."
"Grimoire Heart's ship is stationed right off the shoreline, just east of here." Lily said. "As we'll need to defend this spot, I suggest we split into two teams."
"One team will be offence, and the other team will be defence." Levy followed up. While I didn't like the idea of splitting up our forces yet again, it was going to be necessary if we wanted to beat Grimoire Heart. We need as many as we can to help fight their guild master, but we'd also need some to stay behind in case the camp gets attacked again.
"Before we decide on making teams, where are our missing members, Erza, Gray and Loke? And what do we know about the remaining enemies?" I asked.
"I don't know about Erza or Gray, but Loke has returned to the Celestial Spirit World after he won his battle against one of Grimoire Heart's members." Lucy directly answered.
"There's that girl that kicked Natsu's butt earlier uses Lost Magic that can control time. But she got away when that weirdo with the doll butted in." Happy told us.
"She didn't kick anyone's butt, and especially not mine." Natsu defended himself, but we had all seen the bad state he was in when Lucy and I bumped into him during our fight. Whoever she was, she wasn't a weakling.
"Say, Roth. Weren't you the one leaving the camp with Erza before this invasion happened? At least that's what I heard from Mira..." Lisanna asked me.
"We split up when we ran into an enemy. I don't know where she went to, and haven't seen her since then. As for the enemy, I made sure she won't wake up any time soon." I lied about the last part, but I had faith she wouldn't cause any more trouble for us.
"So, what's the strategy?" Natsu asked, starting to get bored of all the talk. "Because I'm ready to take down Hades! How about it, Lucy? Happy?"
"Aye, Sir!"
"M–Me? Wouldn't someone like Freed be a better choice?" Lucy said in surprise.
"We're a team, remember?" Happy told her with his paw held up.
"Happy's right. And I need to stay here and write an enchantment." Freed responded. He also wasn't in great shape.
"Leave the defence stuff to us!" Bixlow added with a grin and stuck out his tongue, like he often did after he finished saying something.
"I'm going with you, too!" Wendy stepped forward.
"Hold on, Wendy!" Carla tried to stop her from joining the team to confront Hades.
"They're going to need every bit of support they can get in this fight." She said with determination, and for once wouldn't let her companion hold her back.
"I'll come, too. I need to avenge Gajeel." Lily also showed up at Natsu's side.
"I'm going to stay and help Freed with his enchantment." Levy said.
"I'm going to stay with Big Sis, Mira, and Big Bro, Elf." Lisanna said.
"What'll you do, Roth?" Lucy asked me when she noticed I was the only one who hadn't decided yet.
"Obviously I'll be coming with you guys. Hades is going to pay for what he's done." I spoke without hesitation and joined Natsu's team. All of my magic power had been restored, so I'd be able to go all-out one more time. If this Hades guy was their master, he would surely be the strongest, meaning we'd need all the firepower we could get for this final fight, and so, I was planning to give it my all.
"It appears we have a plan of action." Freed concluded.
"Let's do it!" Natsu shouted, unable to hold in his excitement any longer.
"Yeah!" The rest of us shouted after him, and with that, we left.
