Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Chapter 33: The Five Months of Separated Training Sessions! Sabertooth's Mages Get Stronger! Theories In The Forest's and Meadow's Shades of Green!
After retrieving Sara's books from Parmanie Town, the group of Sabertooth mages had gone back to their guild in Kogane. Getting back to the town of Kogane meant they could return to looking for more jobs to do in that following week, as well as looking for the next legendary ring. However, the thought of looking for the next legendary ring had made Sting and Lucy both realize something that had to be addressed on their next little date. They both felt like they needed to get stronger, along with their other friends, and none of the protagonists could just rely on strategies or massive boosts in power that enhanced some spells to be incredibly powerful.
The mages themselves needed to get incredibly powerful, and Sting had ordered the group to take easy jobs while also training intensely with their magic for the next five months. This training period was necessary, since Sting thought about how he and Lucy couldn't do any major damage to Miru and Shizue in either of those crucial fights against those mages without creating ideas for powering up spells or having someone intervene to help them out enough for those fights to both end in a draw. This predicament that Sting and Lucy were faced with also heavily applied to Risa and Rogue, who greatly struggled against Miru and Shizue before they were saved by the arrival of their friends.
Even though Lucy and Sting had arrived to help out Risa and Rogue in that fight, they still weren't fast or strong enough to help them out in the fight against Kyoko. Risa wasn't able to defeat that vicious princess without enhancement, as well as letting herself get overtaken by her feelings of rage towards Kyoko, and Risa needed time to learn how to control her rage. Getting control over her rage would prevent her from harming Lucy like how she had done when she was still enraged at Kyoko, and that would probably help her also be able to use Psychic Magic that would be in the color of dark magenta.
Combining her magenta-colored spells of Psychic Magic with Rogue's Shadow Dragon Slayer Magic was something Risa deemed too be too risky to do constantly, causing her to feel like she needed to train on her own on the route near the town of Kirliahoshi. Before leaving for her solo training, Risa did remember to briefly teach Lucy about how Psychic Magic was different from her previous types of magic because of how it didn't just require magical power. It would require Lucy to put emotion into her spells, and different levels of emotion were required for different spells. Lucy attempted to master eight spells of Psychic Magic from some of Sara's different books while training in the mountains during the first month of training, but higher-level spells rarely showed their effects. The fact that those spells wouldn't display their effects to the beginner who wielded Psychic Magic made Lucy feel like she needed to train with an expert for the remaining four months. Unfortunately, those four months required Lucy to spend time training with her strongest enemies.
Lucy had to train with Shizue and Miru, both women looking quite fashionable to match their fierceness. Shizue wore a bubblegum pink jean jacket over her fuchsia tank top that complimented her light pink khaki shorts, and she also wore some plain pink stockings with hot pink orbs designed near their tops while she also wore some fuchsia wedges. Miru's wedges were in the color of hot pink, and she wore a rose pink party dress with the design of four pink orbs in larger circles on the front of it while the design was underneath her chest area. Above her chest area and neck, Miru had the petals of a bubblegum pink tulip forming the flower on the left side of her hot pink headband. Even though Miru could foresee her best fashion choices for each day, she looked quite strict while wondering if the new psychic wizard could keep working hard to overcome spells that previously put her in disadvantageous positions.
"Psychic Spatial Twist!" Miru shouted fiercely with a stern facial expression, as she fired the attack directly at Lucy.
Lucy exclaimed with a determined look on her face while shooting out a plain pink beam from her left hand, "First spell of Psychic Magic, I call upon thee! Zen Psychotic Beam!"
"Learn to focus that power elsewhere to help with your reaction time!" Miru told Lucy in a strict manner, narrowing her eyes as she could foresee what would happen in this current training lesson.
Shizue yelled with seriousness in her voice, smirking in an overconfident manner from how Lucy's guard was lowered, "Psi Gravity!"
Before Lucy could react, Shizue's fuchsia pink eyes glowed in the color of light pink. They looked directly at Lucy's spell, before Shizue used her psychic abilities to make gravity push the spell back towards Lucy. Lucy's attack split into four dazzling beams that grew more powerful from Lucy closing her eyes to telepathically send energy into spell right after firing it, but Shizue's gravity-altering spell also pulled Miru's sphere closer for it to touch the attacks. They all soon distorted, before their psychic energy made the hot pink sphere get boosted in power, and Lucy was engulfed in a hot pink blast!
The intensity of the blast sent Lucy flying high into the air, prompting her to activate another spell of Psychic Magic. Lucy's second spell made a pink aura surround her body, and she stretched out her left hand to aim it down at Miru. The woman with rosewood pink eyes got to see the pink aura remove itself from Lucy's body, before it quickly floated down to touch Miru for her body to be surrounded by the aura. Lucy simply closed her eyes to focus her mind's energy, before thinking about the image of it striking Miru, and the moment where ahe opened her eyes was the moment where Miru became engulfed in a pink sphere that quickly detonated to create an average-sized blast!
The attack sent Miru rolling across the pink tiles of Parmanie Town's ruins, but she quickly got up to activate the spell known as Wondrous Psychic Screen. That spell involved a hot pink aura engulfing both of her hands while she aimed them at the space in front of her, causing her hands to soon be pressed up against a glass-like square of psychic energy that was in the color of hot pink, and this spell could reduce the power of Lucy's attacks for a limited amount of time. This seemed like a good defensive tactic to use against Lucy, but Miru watched her start to smile as if she thought about a plan for handling that defensive spell.
"Third spell of Psychic Magic, I call upon thee! Psychic Synchronic Ring!" Lucy shouted with a serious look on her face, before a pink ring was created in between her hands.
Shizue responded loudly while running towards Lucy, foreseeing her strategy to the point where a spell had to be activated, "I won't let you do that, Blondie! You'll have to deal with Fuchsia Psychotic Aurora Crush!"
Miru simply told Lucy in a soft tone of voice, smirking as her psychic abilities informed her of what Lucy needed to do, "Get ready for this, you psychic newbie. Let's see if you can figure out what to do."
Shizue's eyes returned to their normal fuchsia color, before glowing in that shade of pink, and she aimed her hands at Lucy's spell. Upon seeing the ring, Shizue smiled from how her hands brightly glowed fuchsia pink. She fired a fuchsia pink beam from them, making the beam strike the plain pink ring to create a fuchsia beam that was in the form of aurora lights. The aurora lights were in varying shades of pink, and they soon created a sphere around Lucy. The sphere's light was so bright to where Lucy couldn't keep her eyes open to see the fuchsia spheres of aurora lights surrounding the main sphere. She also couldn't see the pink ring starting to brightly glow, before the opposing spell was suddenly absorbed into it, and accidentally putting her hands together caused the fuchsia aura to engulf her hands.
Lucy felt an immense amount of magical power in her hands, and she felt like this power boost would allow her to spare some magical power by making some Psychic Magic go down to her feet. Lucy chose to quickly run straight towards Miru, who silently theorized that Lucy's third spell could only assist her by absorbing spells, and she watched Lucy send magical power into her eyes for them to become pink like a true psychic wizard. Lucy got to briefly foresee Miru attempt to increase the power of her pink screen by firing the Psychotic Dazzling Aura spell at it to combine the screen with the magic and its aftereffect, so Lucy would have to interrupt that plan.
She interrupted it by aggressively punching Miru's screen with one of her fists, causing the Wondrous Psychic Screen spell to distort in various directions before it shattered into pieces. Lucy still had her fist firmly on the screen that was getting pulled apart to loudly shatter, and she merely watched the massive fuchsia pink explosion occur. The pink smoke was the perfect cover for Miru to use the Psychic Dazzling Aurora spell, which was a large pink sphere that had been sparkly. Lucy decided to strike the pink sphere with her other fist, seeing it distort in several directions before creating a light pink blast, and hitting the bright attack directly at close-range caused Lucy to start feeling like she had a headache with dizziness from staring at the bright flash while the aftereffect of the spell made her fist feel like it just absorbed the density of a shield. Despite how Lucy's spell helped her overcome Miru's defensive tactic, it wouldn't stop her from stumbling around with feelings of dizziness.
"W-well, that's just great! I can't... I can't see straight, Miru, and there are many more of you! If you're trying to clone yourself now, then I'll have to get rid of them all! Fourth spell... Fourth spell, I call upon thee! Psychic Sanctum!" Lucy exclaimed with high amounts of frustration and anger in her voice, as she swayed back and forth during her moments of stumbling while her eyes saw the image of Miru replicating to just circle around her.
Shizue thought to herself with her left eye twitching in a comical manner while she looked stunned, "At least Miru and I finally found a way to make this girl unleash her fourth spell of Psychic Magic without it proving to be pointless this time."
Miru thought to herself while looking quite calm, her eyes showing some curiosity, "I wonder what this spell's effect will be."
The effect of the spell made Lucy close her eyes for a moment, and her body started to be relaxed. Her mind also started feeling some peace while a plain pink orb appeared in her right hand, and the orb had pink beams shining from it when Lucy briefly had a happy thought in her dizzied state. When she started thinking of more peaceful things, the pink orb shined again and again to display its brightness. The orb was actually gaining more power from how it could shine in response to Lucy's happy thoughts, almost like it used those thoughts as an energy source for feeding itself, and even Lucy's thoughts of goofily giggling while dizzy simply made the pink orb continue to radiate with its light. Seeing the continuously pulsating light nearly blinded Miru and Shizue, which made the supporting mage of the duo start to wonder how her former opponent who used light had been doing with his own training.
Meanwhile, in the Fushigidane Forest...
Sting trained with his White Dragon Slayer Magic in the dense forest that was near the town of Ryokufū, consuming sunlight that shined down on different areas of the forest for him to activate new techniques. Sting's first new technique was known as White Dragon's Holy Spear, which simply made him fire a white beam of light from his mouth while the light had a spearhead. The beam of light soon split into two smaller beams that both curved in opposite directions to strike the same tree, creating two powerful blasts of white light, and this spell seemed like it could strike enemies with a high amount of precision.
His next new spell was just as precise, and it was known as White Dragon's Light Shield. This spell merely created a white sphere of light around Sting, before many white beams of light started to protrude outward from the sphere to look like white spikes. Those spikes touched some of the trees, creating white explosions of light around Sting, and even the remains of the trees ended up exploding when sunlight touched them. Sting's spell sent the light of his magic up towards the sun, causing his light to also be cast down upon that area of the forest, so the destruction of the debris wasn't surprising to him.
The third new spell would always surprise Sting, however. That was because of how the spell known as Light Conversion required Sting to aim his hands at certain objects. He aimed them at some of the remaining trees, causing his hands to glow in a white color while they soon gathered up bright silhouettes that resembled the shadows of the trees. The white silhouettes let themselves get absorbed into Sting's hands for him to take in their energy, and he quickly fired ten thin beams from his fingertips. His fingers were aimed at different trees, causing the beams to strike them, but something interesting occurred.
Sting perceived it to be interesting how the beams started to make the trees turn black like shadows, before they ended up imploding with white bursts of light destroying them from inside. Those white bursts of light even made the black shadows spread outward to where they were on the grass and other parts of the forest where plants could still be affected by both light and shadows. The plants that had all their light taken away were going to end up being destroyed by Sting's magic, since they only became shadows that were too weak to exist without some natural light that couldn't annihilate them.
"Since the sunlight itself didn't destroy those trees, I guess that using my magic on them is a good way to inflict damage." Sting stated aloud with a confident smile on his face, as he closely looked at all the destruction in this area of the forest.
Sting thought to himself in a calm manner, as he went deeper into the forest to not be surrounded by high amounts of light, "Then again, striking more than ten targets on one field could be useful for if Lucy and I ever encounter an enemy like Shizue ever again."
Thinking about how he and Lucy only managed to make their battles against Shizue and Miru end in stalemates caused Sting to unleash his fourth new spell at full force, wanting to test it out, and the spell was known as White Dragon's Holy Blinding. This spell appropriately blinded anyone who saw Sting fire a large twister of white light from his mouth, and the twister was aimed at the center of this dark part of the forest. The light ended up bursting to create an aurora of white light that went up into the air while parts of the light moved in curving directions like a snake, and all of the plants that were caught in the light ended up being engulfed in a white aura.
The sight of that aura prompted Sting to use the fifth new spell that was known as White Dragon's Tilting Light, and Sting fired several white beams of light from his hands. The lights went straight towards the aurora-covered section of the forest, before ricocheting off of the radiance that was being created by the light. The beams of light ended up bouncing away in different directions, before the white aura engulfed them to strengthen their power, and they were redirected towards the forest that was covered in the lights of the white aurora. When they struck the aurora itself, one blast occurred in the center of the aurora before it spun outward for its light to produce more white blasts.
Sting was sent flying backwards to land on the ground, seeing the brightness of this attack be so intense to where his opponents wouldn't be able to tell if the blinding aurora immobilizing them was going to be worse than Sting's follow-up spell. The light from that spell soon faded away, revealing that trees and bushes were decimated, some of them even falling over while being set ablaze by the blasts, and Sting took notice of all the destruction. Even though his spells had been destroying the forest, Sting started to look mindful as he remembered that a town was near here. Since the townspeople probably didn't want the forest destroyed, Sting would have to somehow restore the plants to not being so badly harmed.
"In order to keep those people from sending a bunch of complaints to Sabertooth, I'll just have to see what else I can do with my magic." Sting thought to himself with a small frown on his face, wondering if his next spell could be useful.
Sting's sixth new spell was known as White Dragon's Dispersed Light, and this spell made a white aura engulf Sting's body. The aura looked similar to when Sting would activate his spell called White Drive, but the difference was that Sting had to spin around rapidly for this spell to show its effect. When he started spinning, the aura began focusing itself into Sting's hands before going outward to make its light touch many of the damaged plants. The light made the plants start growing back to normal, almost like this was an enhancement spell for powering up living things.
This spell could enhance anything that Sting struck with his magic, but the white light that he generated from spinning around rapidly also proved to create white explosions around him when what seemed like a gust of Wind Magic appeared to be aimed at him. The blond-haired dragon slayer hastily turned around to narrow his blue eyes at the sight of a girl who had wavy pale green hair that went well with her pale green lowered surgical mask that matched her orange eyes, and she wore a pale green jacket with emerald green stripes on the sides over her white shirt while her shorts were jungle green like her high-heeled shoes.
Sting glanced at her outfit for a moment, before seeing her look up with a miffed facial expression at how the destroyed trees caused so much sunlight to be in this area, and she looked even more frustrated that Sting wasn't someone who she seemed to be looking for. She did start to frown at him in disgust, due to how his enhancement spell only made the plants partially grow back, and this girl who smelled like a strange scent of perfume began to grumble words about having to regrow plants with her magic for more research. Sting chose to ignore her words pertaining to research, before quickly running out of the forest to reach the path back to the town of Parmanie where Lucy was still probably training quite hard, and Sting remained calm as he wondered if Rogue's training session involved any surprises.
Elsewhere, in Noire Town...
Rogue's training sessions in the town of Noire were definitely filled with surprises, such as how the very first surprise involved the fact that the town was perpetually having black smog in the air while the fancy-looking residents didn't seem to mind. Those residents were either males who wore black business suits or women who wore fancy grey coats with black skirts to match their onyx black shoes, The fashion of this town also strangely involved residents having black hair while the small amount of residents worked in small black buildings with pricey items in their shops, but this place wasn't as elegant as Parmanie Town.
The lack of actual elegance stemmed from how the residents tended to be furious at Rogue for refusing to buy expensive items that would make their town thrive, as they didn't care that the town' abundance of shadows made this place be ideal for his training. Rogue found himself having to spend each day fighting against Noire Town's residents, who all wielded Shadow Magic at high levels while they were also part of a dark guild containing mages who confounded Rogue by constantly vanishing into the shadows during fights. He couldn't even detect their scents during the first month because of the black smog, so going to Noire Town always put Rogue in the position of being at a disadvantage.
Even eating the Shadow Magic of his opponents never gave Rogue a major advantage, since the fancy mages trained hard to be very durable against people who used powerful magic. Rogue couldn't even use his first new spell known as Shadow Dragon's Gravity without groaning in frustration, due to the fact of how the townspeople were unfazed by him firing a black sphere of shadowy energy from his mouth, and they were also unfazed by how the spell pulled them towards their shadows to create small black explosions when they were pushed into directly touching their shadows.
The townspeople were currently fighting against Rogue while he focused primarily on continuing to strengthen his other new spells, such as one called Shadowy Immobilization. That spell appropriately used a foe's shadow to immobilize them, before more shadows came from nearby to form two layers of black rings around Rogue's opponent. His enemies always got caught in this trap's smaller ring, which made them unable to move while the larger ring's area contained magic that would detonate if someone or their shadow left the big ring.
"Since that spell won't work if many opponents are immobilized, a new strategy has to be created. Shadowy Spread!" Rogue calmly stated aloud with an emotionless facial expression, before aiming his hand at the townspeople and sounding quite stern.
One of the females exclaimed with a strict look on her face, "Don't just use one attack, Rogue! That's not going to help you in places with stronger enemies!"
Another female wizard told him with an encouraging facial expression, as she remembered that he had discussed the past months with her, "You can do this, Rogue! Just think of fighting hard for Risa's sake! In fact, fight hard like we're those restless zealots who nearly killed you!"
That prompted Rogue to use the Shadowy Spread spell from his other hand, effectively shooting out two black vortexes of shadowy energy that twisted together to form a larger attack, their shadows forming a larger one that extended from Rogue's hand to touch the wider ring, and the moment that the shadow made contact with the wider ring's area right before Rogue retracted the shadow was when he decided to let the vortexes hit his opponents at the exact same time as the rings detonating. All of the detonating blasts were in an onyx black color, their power being quite immense, and Rogue could hear his opponents screaming in pain.
The pain didn't stop a girl with long black hair from aggressively running out of the smoke, and she made a black aura of Shadow Magic engulf her fist while preparing to strike Rogue. He quickly activated the fourth new spell that he created, which was known as Shadow Void. Rogue wasted no time with firing a black sphere from his left hand, and it surrounded his opponent to where she soon saw nothing but darkness. The woman felt herself be pulled down into the shadowy depths while Rogue lowered his hand down to his side, and Rogue watched the sphere go down into its own shadow.
Once it completely went down into its own shadow, the black sphere could faintly be heard exploding. The explosion made that woman scream in more pain than before, and she was propelled up from a nearby shadow to now be in the sky. As she was about to fall down from the sky, her body became a black silhouette that resembled her shadow. The aftereffect of Shadow Void was that it turned opponents into their silhouettes, which currently caused the woman to disappear when she fell into a building's shadow, and she got thrown out of that shadow to be in the sky again.
"Since you're in the sky, you thankfully can't change direction in midair." Rogue sternly told her, as he activated a new spell called Shadow Dragon's Puppetry.
The woman responded in an astounded manner, looking quite shocked while her body turned back to normal, "What?!"
She couldn't react fast enough to the sight of Rogue aiming his right hand up at her, and the black aura that surrounded his hand soon sprang up into the air to surround the woman's body. She watched it even cover the long black hair that fell to her hips, and her scarlet red eyes expressed shock at this spell. They were more shocked at how a black silhouette of her own body soon appeared in front of her in midair, before Rogue purposely aimed his hands at the shadows of buildings to change them into black drills. Rogue pretended to throw the two large drills, and they warped up to the woman's silhouette for her to throw them.
She hastily threw them, causing a large blast of black shadows to occur in midair, which made the woman scream in excruciating pain while she fell to the ground. She was sent rolling across the street, before two men with messy black hair took over her role in the fight by running towards Rogue with shadows that resembled black flames in their hands. They blew the shadows towards Rogue, who activated his sixth new spell of Shadow Dragon Slayer Magic. The spell was simply called Shadow Sword, and it created two black swords in Rogue's hands. The swords were quite large, and making slashing motions with them caused the blades to create shadowy waves that attracted the flames to them. The shadowy fire became absorbed by the blades, but Rogue felt power enter his hands as if he had actually eaten the magic.
His swords could absorb plain shadows and Shadow Magic, before transferring the energy into Rogue's body. That was a beneficial effect, but Rogue's months of training with these swords made him see that he could create slashes to even make waves of shadows be destructive. The only downside to his destructive slashes was that each sword could only make those slashes occur six times, before disappearing from Rogue's hands, and any leftover shadows that hadn't exploded would end up detonating like bombs. Rogue would end up feeling the impacts of the explosions on his hands, causing him pain, and this spell with a drawback made him start to look quite curious as he wondered how Risa was doing with her psychic shields.
Concurrently, on the route near Kirliahoshi Town...
Risa activated the spell known as Psychic Magenta Cosmic Shields to make two large heart-shaped shields float in midair while they were in front of her, and she focused her magenta Psychic Magic into her hands. They were pushing the shields towards Risa's six clones who all agreed to be her training partners, and Risa found herself to still be struggling against her opponents firing Esper Balls that were all charged up from being a plain shade of pink to now be magenta-colored. The attacks all struck the shields, resulting in blasts that aggressively pushed them back, and Risa could feel the impacts on her hands.
She winced in pain from how the shields were being damaged, but Risa wasted no time with building up enough magical power to use the spell known as Cosmic Cerise Psi. She managed to create a cerise pink sphere in her left hand, seeing the sphere to have two layers while she could now create its color from imagining it with psychic energy in her mind during the spell's creation, and Risa threw it at her left hand's shield! That shield began to be engulfed in a cerise pink aura, before fully healing itself, and the shield soon had two magenta pink swords intersecting in front of the fuchsia heart like an image of a barrier while the blades had light pink wings protruding from them.
The blades slowly spun after the shield was attacked, before sending out a light pink aura that healed Risa's injured hand. She wasted no time with using Cosmic Cerise Psi on the other shield that was close to fully breaking, forming another orb in the same hand to throw at that shield. It also powered up, before healing Risa's other hand, and the repaired shield looked just as strong as the other one. With her defenses seeming to be very strong, Risa felt like she could work on just fusing her offensive spells again. She decided to start with the Esper Ball spell being created in one hand, before creating the Psychotic Slicer spell in the other hand, but what happened next was something that even Risa couldn't foresee.
She looked surprised at how slamming her hands and spells together not only enlarged the Esper Ball, but it had crescent-shaped beams swirling all around it at high speeds. The projectile was in Lucy's left hand, and she watched it glow in a plain pink color. As the spell glowed, one of her clones obeyed Risa's commanding thought to use the Shadowy Psychic's Psychokinetic Magenta Scream spell. The clone fired a magenta-colored vortex of psychic power and shadowy energy from her mouth, only to see Risa throw the Esper Psycho Slashing Spear spell at it, and the clone smirked in an arrogant manner from thinking that Risa made an absurd decision to use that seemingly weaker spell. However, the real Risa began to smirk with the utmost confidence at her plan.
"It's not just about which moves are stronger in a collision! In fact, battling against psychics is more about wisdom and strategy!" Risa explained to her clones in a calm tone, before giggling happily.
The leader of the clones asked her with a stern facial expression, before grinning evilly to get more into the role of being Risa's enemy right now, "Oh, really? Then, what's your wise move going to be for when you get torn to shreds?"
"I'm not going to get torn to shreds. In fact, this next spell of mine is going to rip yours apart with a nice twist added to it." Risa responded nicely while smiling, before strangely making her hands be engulfed in two different shades of pink.
Risa shot out a zigzagging vortex of cerise pink Psychic Magic from her left hand, which was a spell known as Psychic Cerise Confusion, but she wasn't done. Risa proceeded to fire a hot pink beam from her right hand, and that spell was known as Psychic Flair Boost. The spell was weirdly aimed at the zigzagging vortex, going in a straight line to catch up with its target, and making the slightest bit of contact with that spell caused the hot pink beam to start having a hot pink beam spiraling around it as if a power boost had occurred.
There was definitely an increase in power, due to how the cerise-colored attack also doubled in size, and the two spells soon fused together to create an attack that hastily alternated between being cerise pink or hot pink. Its psychic energy grew from passing by Esper Psycho Slashing Spear, before growing even more from how it was getting quite close to the attack that Risa's clone had unleashed, and the speed of the spell increased from gathering the psychic energy in the area to have more hot pink beams spinning around it to coat it. The coated spell soon struck the magenta vortex to ultimately tear through it, before the collision itself created three large blasts that were in three different shades of pink.
The three blasts also released a high amount of Psychic Magic that powered up Risa's previous fusion spell, making it grow much larger with multiple pink auras surrounding it, and Risa slyly activated the Stellar Psi spell to push that spell forward. It quickly went into the blasts right before detonating, creating another pink blast that made the clones let out pained screams, and they were sent flying quite high into the air. As they were in the sky, they were immobilized and soon felt heavy slashes of psychic energy strike them from multiple directions. The pink slashes of psychic energy were all crescent-shaped, but they were much larger than Psychotic Slicer's effect to create painful wounds on the bodies of the clones.
"Those spells were powerful, but maybe I could try to fuse more of my magenta spells of Psychic Magic together. That could give me more power, and I'd probably be able to master the dark magenta spells at a quicker rate." Risa stated aloud with an optimistic smile on her face, thinking that she could learn to control her most powerful spells.
Risa started to silently think to herself about that situation with a slightly anxious look on her face, "Then again, unleashing those dark magenta spells with my feelings of rage will only will make me just unleash them until I burn myself out. After all, Yukino's not here to stop me or let Lucy restrain me."
Burning her magical power out was something that Risa didn't want to do, even though there was a high amount of absorbable Psychic Magic in the area for her to train for long amounts of time. She could try to use those dark magenta spells for a high amount of time without passing out, but Risa also wondered if she would end up going berserk again. She didn't want to crazily attack any people who would be walking on this route, and Risa looked down at the ground to see that it was already heavily damaged with several craters in the ground.
The wrecked ground made Risa's magenta eyes take notice of the many shadows that were stretching out from the cracks in this dirt path, making her think about how combining shadows with her magenta magic created such a powerful and vicious shade of Psychic Magic, and she wondered if it would be possible for her to create those spells without needing to rely on immense amounts of rage. Even though Psychic Magic required Risa to make her emotions work in conjunction with her magical power, she worried about getting consumed by any rage-inducing thoughts.
Risa closed her eyes while deciding to activate Stellar Psi again, aiming her hands down at the shadows to simply lift them off the ground, and she quickly opened them again to see that some of the ground's shadows were floating in midair. She moved all the shadows towards her left hand, grabbing them to mold them all into being a black sphere, and Risa created the Gleaming Magenta Psi Aurora spell in her other hand. She watched herself get consumed by a magenta pink sphere of energy, before placing the black orb on top of her right hand for the sphere to become dark magenta. The dark magenta sphere soon ended up bursting to create several waves of Psychic Magic in that color, creating a light that was in the eerie color of dark magenta, and putting her hands into the strange light only made an aura of that color engulf Risa's body. She felt herself have a tremendous boost in power, before noticing that the right half of her body became black like shadows, but Risa foresaw that she had to quickly run away from this fusion spell. The attack called Dark Psi Aurora ended up twisting a wide amount of spatial matter on this route, causing the trees and ground to start bending in very crazy directions, and Risa used her new surge in power to run back to the Sabertiooth guild. As Risa ran away at very high speeds, she smiled with some relief because of how she didn't have to deal with the dark magenta explosions that occurred from how the distorted energy in the dark magenta spell seemed very unstable.
Five hours later, at the Sabertooth guild...
In contrast to how Risa's spell was quite unstable, Risa found herself and the team to all be feeling very stable after another day of training. All of the mages had stories to share about any improvements that were reached during their training sessions, especially Yukino. She had been training in a place that was quite far away from everyone else, wanting to put herself in a harsh environment where she could train with her Celestial Spirits while also gaining some new magic that could be very useful in situations where she'd need to use it.
The new magic made Yukino feel glad that she gained more weapons, since her keys could possibly end up being stolen by enemies, and the items for Yukino's Holder Magic faintly glimmered from the left pocket of her sky blue pants. Those pants matched her plain blue crop top that went well with her light blue flat shoes, and Yukino wore a light blue rose in her hair that was somewhat longer now. Yukino's new style of fashion came from one of the northernmost towns in the kingdom of Fiore, as she had to fully adapt to colder temperatures while that also included her decisions pertaining to fashion.
Fashion was also something Risa had updated herself on, too. She now wore a one-shoulder magenta midriff top with a light pink heart on her left shoulder where the ruffles of the midriff top were located. A sleeve of magenta ruffles was on her right arm, too. There were also magenta ruffles at the bottoms of her knee-length light pink jeans, and those ruffles matched her magenta pink belt that was worn above her jeans. Risa's pink jeans also went well with her strap heels that were in a fuchsia shade of pink, and Risa wore a light pink headband that rested behind the cherry red sunglasses on her forehead.
Risa wasn't the only one wearing sunglasses, though. Lucy proceeded to put on some square-shaped sunglasses that had light pink frames, feeling like she needed to keep herself from nearly getting blinded by the light that came from blasts created by spells that came from Shizue or Miru, and Lucy's training lessons for getting stronger didn't just involve making her eyes get accustomed to the intense pink lights during the important tasks of foreseeing her foes' attacks. Miru and Shizue also tried to make Lucy get more accustomed to being very fashionable, due to how she was the princess of Kuchiba Town, and Lucy chose to take their advice as a way to prevent her fashion dilemmas from making her interrupt Risa's training. Lucy wore a halter dress with many layers, and the top layer light pink while it was shaped like a bow.
The top layer had hot pink orbs going down the middle, which complimented the two hot pink halter straps, and the next layer of the dress was bubblegum pink. The third layer below that one was light pink, before the fourth and final layer of the dress was bubblegum pink. The halter dress stopped at the middle of Lucy's thighs, exposing a portion of her legs. Lucy wore fuchsia knee-high boots with heels, which had cerise pink bows on her ankles, and her fuchsia knee-high socks were somewhat visible. In contrast to that, a plain pink bow could clearly be seen on the left side of Lucy's head while she had her green hair in a side ponytail.
"The ladies of our team are looking strong, and they're very beautiful." Sting commented with a calm smile on his face, as he looked at Lucy's outfit before smirking in a flirty manner.
Lucy replied kindly, as her cheeks blushed pink from Sting looking at her, "Thank you, Sting. We all have flair now, which is definitely a nice addition to our strength."
Rogue commented in a stern manner, as he started to think about how Lucy still wasn't in her own body, "Let's just hope that we're formidable enough to help Lucy get the rest of those legendary rings."
The shadow dragon slayer thought about how the group hadn't made any progress with finding the last three rings, due to their training and how no easy jobs ever revealed a legendary ring as one of the rewards. The rewards were small amounts of money that didn't even total up to high amounts of jewels when the mages finished their separate jobs, and even getting permission to take jobs from Noire Town didn't help Rogue with getting tons of jewels or getting any crucial information on the remaining locations of the legendary rings.
He glanced at the four rings on Lucy's hand, before looking down at the black ankle boots that went well with his black kimono that was partially open to reveal his onyx black armor. The armor had some black bracelets that coiled around his neck's portion of black armor, and Rogue's left shoulder was exposed to reveal his black guild mark of Sabertooth. The guild's insignia was as black as his hair, which was now put up into a ponytail, and the black insignia matched an onyx black sash that was around his waist. Rogue's dark color of fashion made him start to think about how Lucy found her first four rings in seemingly bright locations, which was why her clothes usually consisted of bright colors, so maybe the group needed to look for the rings in a dark place.
Searching for the rings in seemingly darker towns would be something for Rogue to discuss with Sting, who noticeably wore a white jacket that was opened up with an open yellow shirt protruding from it while he wore a white belt with some dark pants slightly tucked into his black boots. Sting turned to Rogue, curiously wondering why his fashion caught Rogue's interest, and Sting gently placed a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder while his hands had white gloves on them. Sting thought that Rogue must've been thinking about how his own fashion sense was funnily overshadowed by Sting's fashion sense, but Rogue gave him a serious look.
"If you think that we're prepared enough, Sting, then we should probably get back to looking for the rings. Based on how the remaining rings may pertain to the darker colors that exist, maybe we could try looking for one in a place where no one else would think that a ring could reside." Rogue explained to Sting in a calm manner, folding his arms as he wondered if this theory needed to be tested.
Sting responded to him with a somewhat relaxed facial expression, as he spoke with the feeling of hope in his voice, "Rogue, that's an interesting observation for us to think about. Maybe we should think about a ring possibly being near the place where I was training, since I encountered a strange girl in the forest. She seemed to be there to look at plants, but she wore a surgical mask and her scent wasn't like any perfumes I've ever smelled."
Rogue asked Sting in with a curious facial expression, before widening his eyes at a memory from Fiore's map, "Sting, didn't you tell me that you were training in the Fushigidane Forest near the Lostlorn Meadow? Sting, if the ring is in the town near those places..."
"I didn't pass through the town, Rogue. That place's perfume was so heavily in the air like someone needed to spray so much of it, and I'd rather not choke on fragrances that could eventually stink." Sting replied to Rogue with a look of assurance on his face, not wanting him to worry.
Rogue hadn't heard anything about the perfume being what gave off bad odors in that particular town, as he had only heard little rumors about how the perfume in that place always smelled so good while the leaves on the trees also tasted delicious, but what gave off a bad odor was supposedly some kind of illness. Rogue hadn't smelled anything sickly before to really have a major understanding of why exactly there was a horrible aroma in that town, but going to that place was a plan that reeked of possibly encountering trouble. Of course, the trouble could hopefully be handled by the dragon slayers and their teammates.
As the mages from Sabertooth were all ready to talk about improving on their plans for training until the end of the fifth and final month, Sting still had something on his mind. The girl who he encountered in the Fushigidane Forest didn't just hate him for destroying plants, but she seemed to be looking for a certain person. If that person was being targeted, then Sting hoped to possibly find them during the rest of his training. Even though he would be training in the forest to get stronger, Sting felt like it would benefit him to ask the townspeople for some information. However, the act of Sting wanting information on the townspeople would probably be an ironic idea to certain people who knew his name.
How was Chapter 33? Feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. Lucy and her friends have gone through a five-month time-skip to get stronger. Yes, a time-skip of five months is necessary for them to not be at weak levels of power. They may not be overly strong, especially with how the next arc seems to be making many things ambiguous to them. In fact, one unclear thing that will be explained is how people near the Verdure Forest know Sting. That may not be the biggest surprise in a town where perfume seems to go through the air. Yukino's new skills will also be surprising, but one major surprise that I can reveal is that more Sting x Lucy moments will happen in the next chapter where a new arc begins! That's right. This is the last chapter of the post-Fuchsia Psychic Arc! The next chapter is where a new arc will finally occur, and it shall be interesting to write about! I'll update soon. :)
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